The Thalmor's Ultimate Goal & The Towers Theory | The Elder Scrolls Podcast #7

[Music] what is up ladies and gentlemen welcome back to fudge muppet i'm scott and i'm here with michael and drew and today we are discussing everything thalmore all about that elven supremacist organization but as we'll get into they didn't start off as a supremacist organization as such so who wants to take the reigns to start all right all right what i would like to say is and this is something i find really interesting about the first thalmor because we've got to separate them from the old myriad dominion we don't know when they started like when you look into the law it's like oh the thalma were there and then the first dominion started in the second era and then the thalmor were incorporated into the first dominion but before they were kind of like a a bureau tasked with protecting old mary heritage or safeguarding it right but i just find that quite interesting because we don't know what that means and often a lot of the quotes you get about the thalmor are from the thaumor so it's their version of events that they want to tell you yeah and i always just i always just wondered if maybe they weren't this kind of you know ben stiller night at the museum watch keepers of heritage like one might infer but instead more like a propaganda machine if that makes sense yeah like safeguard safeguarding old mary heritage in the sense of you know working with misinformation and defaming any i don't know political rivals or upstart groups that threaten the current pro oldmer kind of supremacy way of life or nationalism this is this is not 100 canon it's just something that i was thinking about because safeguarding ultimary heritage i mean you could assassinate someone in the name of doing that do you know what i mean and i mean if they had those views from the beginning um it seems like they would have been really suppressed by the fact that they were just tasked to do day-to-day affairs and they had members they had khajiit members and bosma members as well so it doesn't really align with how we see them now as being you know purely xenophobic and supremacist they were they kind of just did what the old mary dominion said because they weren't in control of everything back then yeah for sure but even even before that i mean like before they were even in the old marriage canyon there's just this there's just this line that they were just um safeguarding or mary heritage but i i don't know man like you could plot various plans to sabotage other provinces and keep the kind of dominant ideologies in other societies as those that see the somerset isles in a good light or are beneficial to the goals of the somerset isles government or at the very least the weakened and easy targets if like other places and need to be attacked but pretty much everything they've been doing recently that type of thing maybe that was going on way before the first dominion kind of came to be anyway the way i see it is that originally they were like more like a heritage based like not just like a museum looking thing but they would have had like a uh big um cultural responsibility and probably like you know maybe uh maintaining big libraries of their genealogy and bloodlines and stuff like that but from my understanding like the first dominion with queen iran and stuff that sort of was the first time it brought the thalmor into like a important governmental role like sort of they had they expanded their um their their responsibilities into sort of a little bit more like connected to military sort of larger scale political kind of things rather than just being you know the the bloodline tracking kind of i i just don't know man i i would be i would be really surprised if that's all they were if they were like oh we're gonna start this dominion really powerful thing and do you know who we're gonna get and make responsible to be all of our diplomats and then and like kind of engage in all these nefarious affairs oh these historian blood keepers but the blood but the blood keeper genealogy stuff is so essential to like ultimate society that it would be a high-ranking thing like it could be interconnected with the monarchy to like the do you i mean so oh i'm not doubting that they were responsible for that i just the more i was reading into it the more i was thinking that they could have easily been involved in other things even if it was just propaganda because by definition to safeguard the heritage involves keeping it as dominant and proud and say there was some other group of high elves at the time and they were you know started a political group and it had more cosmopolitan ideals you know and it's like oh here's this faction and their goal is safeguarding old mary heritage i just i don't know maybe it's just my own personal head canon but i can see some conspiracy theory stuff i struggle to see them being that radical that early but that that's just me because they i don't know i feel like if they were that radical they wouldn't be so willing to kind of just do the really mundane stuff when the old married dominion rises up i also feel like it's got to be they're a little bit more palatable than the modern ones for eso to join the albemarle dominion like and queen a ran in her goals like oh you know we need to take the ruby throne from the from the lesser races of men because they're lesser races and they need guidance versus sort of let's obliterate them kind of thing compared to the modern world oh for sure for sure i'm not saying obliterate other like main factions i just mean kind of controlling the viewpoint of the people in their own dominion territory since they have been like we know they they will cull populations of like kind of families and stuff involved with rebellions and things like that and the thing that's interesting though is as soon as queen aaron kind of you know got the thalmor involved there were multiple branches too yeah it wasn't it so there was the the thalmor in the diplomatic kind of sense but then they had this other group which was the the fist of the thalmor which was kind of like a more militant arm yeah yeah and then there was also a divine prosecution divine prosecution i think it was called in charge with like hunting hunting down heresy basically daedra which really annoys me when you look at what they did with the great war but we'll discuss that later yeah um i think the real thing that radicalized them was was the so involving the second dominion so like after eso the events of eso the aldmeri dominion collapses at some point some point and then reforms in um year 830 and this is in part to um you know help us a blockade against tiber septim's expanding empire but they also had other political interests and so on for taking valenwood including like dealing with piracy and stuff like that but they what's interesting is they sort of um use it it's kind of i'm not even quite sure because originally the thalmor in the first dominion are at the behest of the monarchy right and by the third dominion the idea is that the falmor is this sort of political party that completely usurps the monarchy and disbands it so there's no longer monarchy but in the second dominion i'm not quite sure the phrasing is often like used as the thalmor as a new governing body of valenwood so i'm not sure if that's like an ultima king but then you've got them using the thalmor to control valenwood are you so you're talking about the second ordinary dominion it's not stated like in a way that's completely simple to understand but from what i can see it may just be that the thalmor was kind of a group given to control vale and wood but not the summers kind of like obviously they would have prevalence uh sorry prevalence in the somerset isles too but yeah they used they used the ancient treaty to take it yep there was this ancient treaty where it was basically saying our ancestors signed this treaty like thousand years ago and we have claimed to the throne because in valencia at the time different wood elf groups were kind of like no the thrones owls know the thrones elves meanwhile they're having skirmishes with like collovians up from cyrodiil and then i think one of the groups was like um you know what we're going to make a kind of peace alliance with the colovians in order to um if if they help us put our claimant on the throne we'll give him some territory and then the found the summer said i was kind of government hearing this was like no way so then they came in and kind of took over and like you said with many other goals such as the piracy and stuff that was kind of being harbored in valenwood and also hammerfell i think um yeah and then then type of septum came with the numidium it was all gone yeah it's important to note that like the second dominion is like the least fleshed out because really it serves as a purpose in the history book to explain certain other events whereas the first dominion you know being part of eso's events and then obviously the third dominion we experience in skyrim so we don't know much about the you know the expansiveness of the second dominion and all the intricacies and so on i feel like there was more going on behind the scenes because the idea like it's they kind of hide behind the idea that they're there to deal with these these pirates who have havens in valenwood but you don't really need to become the governing body of the province just to deal with piracy when you're you know you're basically in an alliance with them or you are an alliance with them so you can just go and deal with it there it seems like they had much bigger plans but then yeah as michael just said typocepting comes and ruins all of it yeah it's it's definitely a like a shrouded purpose kind of thing and that's why i think mainly is to stop tiber septim because he's conquering all of tamriel and they wanted to create sort of an efficient block like consider that they've also said to have the most powerful navy and all of tamriel it's like are they really being challenged by pirates that bad it's just a convenient excuse to take it and i mean that's classic thalmor behavior though isn't it there's always an altruistic kind of motive because they were also saying it wasn't just pirates they used their old claim to then be like you know we're bringing stability to the the bosma people because they're constantly fighting over a throne so like oh i'll just be the leader and and you guys can chill out it's also convenient that these pirates were also in southern hammerfell which is you know a place where they would soon want to push their influence yeah but ultimately they get dissolved and so basically tiber septim uses the numidium and essentially nukes the somerset isles and just absolutely for the first time makes them submit by force so um then he's basically united all of tamriel um and you can imagine a lot of high elves did not like that so um going forward um they sort of suffer through the septum dynasty for the entirety of the third era uh then we get to the oblivion crisis and the thalmor are sort of a very you know elven supremacist pro um independency kind of government and um they early in the fourth era so just proceeding after crystal tower gets destroyed and everything um so then the the thalmor basically stage a coup i think it's year 2022 of the fourth era and they basically knock out um the ultimate monarchy so there is no longer a king so i'm also interested like i don't know what the government form is like whether it's sort of like a like like a oligarchy sort of council kind of thing or if there is a democratic element or you know you know what i mean yeah absolutely i actually find that super interesting because when i was kind of doing some research for this podcast i'm like who is the leader of the foul more like there's no name that you hear in skyrim like this is the current leader like queen ehren or something like that you know but we do know that queen aaron and this is way before skyrim she had this inner council of various dominion uh members and you had kijit and you had bosma but they were seen more as like figureheads like kind of leaders who are there for representation but they don't really wield any actual power i would but we also know that many of the members were confidential and i can imagine that a similar situation could be enforced around the time of skyrim where the thalmor kind of has this council of sorts but it's not like there's a figurehead leader you know it's a bit just like a party yeah they might have some kind of president president sounds like such a funny word to put into like very modern yeah but you know some form of that i don't know what you call it like dictator or whatever but i'm sure they have some sort of like um at least public representative because there's likely is some sort of shadowy stuff going on behind like that's part of i guess the thalmor's interest is you don't um is that it's not clear who you're fighting it's just sort of like the idea of the thalmor like and you're not sure what their goals are exactly i kind of imagine that the the hot fuzz council where they all just gathered the greater good yeah and that is an effective thing in a way if you think about it that really helps them because if you don't know where the head of the snake is you can't really cut it off like with an m with an empire kill the emperor you cause a ton of chaos you know with the storm cloaks kill ulfric ton of chaos um i'm not sure what the deal is with hammerfell it seems like they have more of a lots of different kingdoms situations yeah they've had a high likelihood of war but i don't know yeah that is concurrent yeah exactly but that i mean that makes the thalmor a a big threat in that way well it's interesting to note that we do have characters that are referred to as like lords or like ladies and stuff as well which i i to me like as much as they've gotten rid of the monarchy perhaps like this is still you know lots of noble structure and so on like it's also a very ultimate thing like they it might not be exactly like a rise it's not like a rise up of the people sort of communist uprising type thing it might just be sort of uh just the elven supremacy angles whereas they still value like being elven supremacists would value things like um superior like bloodlines and families and stuff like that it's more so just getting rid of the the control like that being the kings and stuff at the top but then again like all kings kings are sort of behest to their um you know their what if barons dukes whatever i don't know exactly what they use in the summerset isles but um yeah i think they have a hard time actually getting rid of all nobility in the somerset isles like i don't think it's just switched to sort of like a you know 20th century government type you know what i mean like yeah a bit more nuanced than that but yeah so they uh and basically they get up into valenwood's business and they back a coup in valenwood um and they manage to take valenwood for the thalmor and they form reform the third aldmeri dominion yeah and then elsewhere gets involved yeah eventually yeah they the moons mysteriously disappear they use some kind of special dawn magics to bring them back take credit yeah well that's what they claim like so so the void nights i'm pretty sure it's two years where the moons disappear and obviously if you're familiar with khajiit law that the moons are vital to their religion their culture but also even their biology it'll be interesting to know what actually happened to the khajiit born in those phases of the moons where well where there are no moons um but ultimately i i don't necessarily think it is a thought like they were actually behind it i don't know like i i just i just don't get the vibes that like i get the the thelma are powerful but they're not that powerful do you know what i mean that oh i mean all it takes is them to have one super powerful wizard of sigic monk type capabilities to take them away for a bit but i do agree with you it could have just happened from some mysterious force and they're like let's take credit for this yeah it's also the reason i don't think they're that powerful is sort of how they kind of not fear but they're behind in terms of like the psijic order like there's this kind of like the sigic order are sort of seen as like a like a um not an outcast wrong word um like a renegade faction is the kind of way that seems to be implied when ankano talks about them and so on and so so the vibe i would get is that they're like in the citric order are very powerful then i don't even know if they could just make two moons heavenly bodies just disappear so i'm just sort of why i don't think the thalmor and i just feel like if they have that kind of power then why haven't they just rocked up and done whatever they want to do and it took them a long time it only took them seven years i mean seven years is quite a long time it took them seven years to bring valenwood under into the dominion but it took another 70 maybe more it was like 29 through to first fourth era 115 so that's a long time if if they could have done that that easily you'd think they would have done it much earlier yeah they also interesting just note is they dissolved the elsewhere confederacy and into the um kingdoms of anakin and palentine so it kind of um once again they've kind of got like two vassal kingdoms now and i guess they've got their own monarchies and and whatnot but um outside of that we then move forward to uh year 171 where the great war breaks out and the daedra get sorry the thalmor get help from the daydream well yeah and things start getting messed up legends did but um yeah so like the general gist of the great war because we know i don't think we're going to go in and discuss every single individual little battle but they were attacking both hammerfell and cyrodiil at the same time and um they they do get in there and they're able to take cyrodiil what i do like is apparently originally their plan was to um just kind of attack cyrodiil to weaken it for the moment while they take hammerfell and there's this idea that they were like wait a minute cyridil is much weaker than we thought let's go for gold yeah yeah and then they um and then well i mean they do actually get managed to take it which is pretty cool as well but um yeah ultimately um i i think we should also just mention that they were before the great war actually broke out they basically took all the the heads of these blades agents and poured them out onto the floor to the to the emperor and basically said he has signed the white gold concord um and then well they they said sign it i think and then they said no and then they threw their heads on the floor i always wondered the logistics of that how do you bring that many heads and not have someone see it first and be like oh my god there's a bunch of decapitated big cart with like you know a big top over it you'd have to wonder about all those it doesn't it doesn't smell or anything yeah because yeah it's a special magic to sustain these hairs because they transported it far well too like because it was all the blades agents in valenwood and elsewhere right so like i'm pretty sure or at least summer said i was in velen what it was it was it was all the blades in kind of dominion areas i believe yeah well they so they go on with the great war they nearly win but then there's the whole battle of the red ring and there's some sort of monumental um uh stratagems there and they end up the imperials end up winning um the elder scrolls legends storyline involves this and i really hate it because it makes um to me it undermines lord narafin like or in the thalmor as well so lord narafin is the guy who was basically assaulting cyrodiil he was in control of and then a phalanx of argonians just appears [Laughter] but um what sort of like bothers me about it is so basically they're adding this sort of storyline where where uh lord narafin is trying to um unleash this thing called the culling which is like this sort of daedric thing that's going to basically like kill a bunch of um kill like these imperials and so on it's just basically to me it's just this real like weak source evil sort of like it i like it before because with the thalmor the idea is that they're this really evil reprehensible uh faction but their motivations are sort of like aedric if you know what i mean like they believe in the aedra so they present as sort of like the good gods and we're doing this in the name of the good gods and for the elves and stuff like that it seems like on paper you could be like a holy purpose but it's you know obviously devastating and horrible but instead they sort of had to it undermines it if it's like oh it's only because this is evil daedra worshipping stuff going on as well the only thing that actually hints to that in the i think it's in the great war book is that lord narafin is is like captured and he's in a cage hanging off for 32 days or something off the edge of the tower a white girl tower but then these winged daedra supposedly pick him up and carry him away and that's a cool little like rumor but i just i'm not a fan of the the daedra connection there and i think i think the the main thing that annoys me about it is that you can just continue to write the thalmorin as the evil like kind of faction with the aedric influence like you can do an edric faction evil well they were doing it yeah they were doing it and then they just like oh let's just chuck in the kind of generic kind of fantasy enemy that we always like to use as the evil like you know evil armies and just give them to the most aedric opposed faction in the game i mean like i was saying before they even had this kind of thalmor branch early on and their whole purpose was to seek out heresy and daedra worshippers and like kill them yeah it kind of just removes the nuance from it um yeah but uh yeah so in the end um the imperials win the great war but then they do sort of not win they they have to sign the white con concord the white gold concordance titus mead the second he uh capitulates to the thalmor and talos worship is outlawed and um but hammerfall really doesn't like this and they keep fighting on because part of the the treaty was that hammerfell was to be given to the thaumoros or large parts of southern hemisphere hammerfell i think it was but um which they took anyway yeah but then basically um the red guards end up fighting on by themselves for another i think it's five years or something but then they sign a treaty uh the second treaty of stras makai so they're no longer at war but yeah they managed to secure their own independence and their own autonomy and they didn't have to be a part of the white gold concord or anything um yeah and then we so then we move on uh we have the the markarth incident where you have um ulfric coming into um into mark after to help the y'all retake the city from the four swarm or the richmond at the time um but yeah and then so so basically ulfric wanted to worship talos and as long as that's secured and they can do that it'll be a sweet deal so he takes smart carth for him but then he ends up getting arrested basically by the imperials when the thalmor catch wind of it and then because that sort of threatened the the treaty it's like oh well look you nords aren't you know you imperials aren't taking this serious enough um then it allowed them to start deploying a lot more um foul more justicias to all of their you know imperial lands and stuff so uh ev everything went to thalmor's way i mean in one of the texts it even says that because obviously after the uh hammerfell was able to defeat them they kind of looked at the empire as weak and you should have just kept fighting like we kicked them away how come you couldn't have just kept doing that um but apparently that kind of fractured alliance between hammerfell and the empire was a long-term goal of the foul more anyway and then obviously they just yeah and then they just create more division obviously with skyrim and the civil war so they've they're like the puppet masters yeah well that's been mentioned in a few um texts so that they're often um they don't outnumber the imperials but they're just sort of like genius and patience also like they can play the long game because they've got life spans of hundreds of years and theoretically like the thalmor i can imagine that there are high elves that were around when tiber septim just nuked somerset isles with a new medium so they sort of grow bitter and they've kind of been planning and waiting and orchestrating they wait for the entirety of a third empire for 433 years or whatever to crumble and then they start making their moves and they they can be that way and they can now say that it really kind of makes the great war make a bit more sense because after saying that it seems weird that they would fight a war on two fronts especially when one of those fronts is hammerfell you know trying to march through the the desert while simultaneously trying to take the imperial city so if they're really trying to drive a wedge between hammerfell um cyrodiil and eventually skyrim then that kind of makes a lot more sense so i like that absolutely and it's sort of part of their like uh their modus operandi because they they do the same thing in skyrim they try and fracture it like ulfric was ulfric i made a video on this it's better to go and look at the ulfric explained video because it explains like his sort of motivations of basically like a deep shame but ulfric was captured during the great war and he was tortured and stuff but he was tortured to the point where he gave up you know information about the imperials in it but little did he know that the imperial city had already been successfully taken but ulfric was led to believe that the information he gave caused it to be taken so he sort of takes that kind of it kind of feels like he's trying to like he's over the top pro pro-nordic anti-empire actions and anti-thelma stuff is really like trying to to cope and like to compensate for his greatest failure which wasn't you know it didn't actually have any tangible effects but um and letting him go off um you know he indirectly becomes an asset of the thalmor to you know cause more dissension amongst um amongst skyrim so you've got hammerfell not lacking the the cyrodilics you've got skyrim to fight divided you know the empire is losing out slowly withering and crumbling but uh yeah i guess we can start talking about their overall end game philosophy and stuff like we can we'll talk about what we know first and then we can start getting into some of the theories well i guess we should note that the thalmor have always been like super supremacist like you know uh yeah at the very least at the very least they've always been very invested in like heritage and nationalistic look i'll even say this if you go back to the first dominion go go play elder scrolls online and i know it can just be because they look like the designers are like oh look at what the foul more like in skyrim let's make them similar and notice girls online but they have all those same quotes about men sucking but even the other races in the dominion like unless you are a high elf some of the kind of higher ups will treat you like your dirt you know and they've always had this kind of look of we need to control the lands because the foolish other races can't do it it gives me massive animal farm vibes like all animals are equal except some animals are more equal than others yeah like especially when their allies are literally cat people but ultimately yeah then they go back even further you go through their heritage you go back even more and it's about kind of them being descended from spirits and wanting to kind of go back to that form without mortality without being trapped yeah like i think like all of the you know if you think of the thalmor as like the epitome or extreme of um ultimate ideology which is that they hate law khan and they hate the idea that he um betrayed them and basically turned uh made mundus and that's basically and drain them of their power secretly um and so you know they're tr they're stuck in this mortal prison i'm pretty sure there's even um quotes about trinimac debating another god and i was saying like trinimac was saying that his um the appropriate response to the creation of mortality was tears or something like that um and lamenting it's like but but uh yeah and that sort of so you know we can infer a lot from that about the thalmor so they're obviously going to take those sort of elven very annuic sort of ideals to an extreme and which people use in other theories like the stuff of the towers theory but like before we just jump into that i was going to say it might be a good idea to just sort of like throw down what we can canonly talk about first then that obviously they want to get rid of talos you know if you look into the metaphysics and stuff of of the elder scrolls then worship is very important to gods and their continued existence as gods with variations it gets complicated but for the most part it's vital and they want to erase talos from worship you know they don't want him worshipped anymore because they don't think he he's a god it's well i think they like secretly know he's a god like an actual like divine entity but they're like no let's get rid of him we want nothing because he's a champion of man essentially well they hate the apologist of men in stendar so you can imagine how much they'd hate talos being an actor yeah absolutely and and they so so we can we can pretty much all agree and say that they want to get rid of talos the concept they don't want talos to be a concept anymore because they want his worship outlawed and they want descendants to know nothing about him um so that goal you know we can infer a lot from that you know connected to like taos theory and other stuff and what people have said but um we know that is a hundred percent for sure and i mean it could be as simple as because of what they did to them in the sec during the second aldmeri dominion when tiber septim conquered the numidium with the sorry conquer the summons that i was with and medium they're not going to want to worship or have a god worshipped that did this you know like tiber septim but i can't imagine that they'd be bent on total tamrielic domination just because they're yeah yeah a bit i mean that's conquest in itself you know is is kind of a reason to you know because with the towers theory we're gonna get to it's a lot about location and we can see that the falmouth and the old mary dominion are pushing to those locations but simply controlling those locations in and of itself could be the reason you know but but we'll get into it well what's interesting too is that there are some like you know and we'll talk about it we'll kind of like uh stress test the towers theory but some people point out like so skyrim they have part motivation but the idea of the deactivation like snow throat the tower sundered and bleeding um that idea that the civil war is kind of what's causing it but other people like because there's no certain answers the heart to what the heart of the st of the snow tower is um that it might because it could be even the time wound at the top of um you know where you go back in time and see aldon like that kind of thing like it might be due to alduin's returning or or what not that deactivates or whatnot but the assumption is is that it's deactivated at the end of skyrim so you could argue that the thalmor's moves in there and and and you know causing that divide is for that reason but it could also be for the same reason that it just divides people politically so they can conquer but it's interesting because we don't know what like adamantine tower is one of the is you know what could be the last one it could be um i'll just i'll just i'll just give a quick primer for anyone who doesn't know like the basic idea of the towers just in case we skimmed over it a bit but basically there are these towers all around tamriel that supposedly like kind of hold up the world or hold reality in place and then there's this other concept that all of these towers have what's called a stone and that if you kind of remove the stone you or destroy it you deactivate said tower and then it goes even further to say if you just if you deactivate all the towers you will undo creation itself and then the idea with the foul more is that that's what they want so they can go back to the spirit form yeah just like a little spider easy way to look at the towers as well is it's as scott mentioned earlier it's put in the form of a wheel so the the rim of the wheel is a furious the spirit realm the eight spokes are the towers slash the earth bones mundus is the center of center of the wheel and then the spaces in between are oblivion the void yeah and then yeah that's a that's an interesting isn't it yeah no no that isn't no yeah yeah it's itself now no no no because then you have each between the spaces in between the towers of the 16 daedric princes and the realms but there is also stuff like that is a nice neat cosmology but there are also things like there could be more daedric princes there could be more towers or there could be less and more and and so on no i just like it explained like that yeah it's just a it's like a really nice i can really see the wheel you know that's cool yeah so for the most part um they could potentially all be deactivated or destroyed these towers um except one and it could then that one most likely one is the adamantine tower which is you know where um convention was at the start of all creation it's it was a tower made by the gods it was like you know the first kind of tower really um but yes so that's that's their that's their you know sort of going on theory about unmake the world the only other sort of cannon thing i can think of is literally just one line from ankano and the college of winterhold questline and this is about their intense intention maybe he's goes like oh you've come for me have you you think i don't know what you're up to you think i can't destroy you the power to unmake the world at my fingertips and you think you can do anything about it and he's like you know using some like electric control magic on the eye of magnus um and magnus is the architect of mundus as well exactly and it's also worth noting that just to clarify again the towers idea that there's these towers that kind of prop up reality as the mortals know it that is more canon than the idea that it's the thalmor's goal to get rid of it like that's the part where there's not as much evidence but the the evidence for that being these towers that are powerful and and do kind of contribute to the universe in a special way there's more of it yeah still not here it seems obvious as well but like just the choice of the word unmake like if you've got this evil villain who who can kill or destroy anything it's like why are you saying unmake rather than just i'm going to destroy you i'm going to unmake you exactly you know it's one quote but it's kind of you know it's particularly written that way yeah because it's mentioned in one of the greg keys novels it's infernal city isn't it that one is this the towers quote yeah it's prince atrobus made i can read it if you'd like well some think that the white gold tower and some other towers around tamriel help well hold the world up or something like that others believe that before the dragon broke the tower helped protect us from invasion from oblivion they helped keep mundus the world from dissolving back into oblivion or something like that anyway everyone seems to agree it has power but no one knows exactly what kind yeah the co also worth noting that the concept of towers has been a thing for a while like it's sort of mentioned in um i'm pretty sure in the 36 lessons of effects there's stuff that talk about these ideas like you know the wheel and the towers and stuff like that like it's not just a skyrim like let's make up a theory around the thalmor however michael kirkbride who was also um the writer for um a lot of morrowind's law um and he bits and knights the nine stuff but you know he writes a lot of stuff outside of an official capacity so you can't take it strictly canon you know what i mean but it's very interesting regardless he one of the i'll read this out and it's basically um something he said in a forum once but um yeah um this is a it's about the ultima sort of their commentary on talos so to kill man is to reach heaven from where we came before the doom drums iniquity when we accomplish this we can escape the mockery and long shame of the material prison to achieve this goal we must one erase the upstart talos from the mythic his presence fortifies the wheel of convention and binds our souls to this plane two remove man not just from the world but from the pattern of possibility so that the very idea of them can be forgotten and thereby never again repeated three with talos and the sons of talos removed the dragon will become ours to unbind the world of mortals will be over the dragon will uncoil his hold on the stagnancy of linear time and move as a free serpent again moving through the ether without measure or burden spilling time along the innumerable roads we once traveled and that and with that we will regain the mantle of the imperishable spirit so pretty so obviously stuff yeah if we want to break that that down a bit like one erase the upstart talos from the mythic and his presence fortifies the wheel of convention so that's fortifying the idea of mortality he's a god of man that's also interesting before that was saying to kill man is to reach heaven so it's to kind of to get rid of this sort of paramedic element this element that fortifies this idea of mortality if you get rid of men you'll stop having this pro-mortality group on it's a bit it's a bit hard to understand you know i have heard this really weird idea out there that talos is a tower yeah there's like all these things you go convention 2.0 and like yeah there's heaps of heaps of weird stuff which honestly i don't want to dive deep into because i don't think i'd do it just um there is the the to remove man not just from the world but from the pattern of possibility that's actually related to to that is is the idea at least from what i've heard before is that talos is a tower and because he is kind of like the the law khan reborn he's that sort of champion of man of this sort of material thing um if you remove talos and then therefore eliminate all man um but not just from even the current pattern of possibility that's even talking about like calpers basically so the very idea that they could be forgotten and they can't come back in another calper and instead of this endless cycle if we keep having this sort of elf men dynamic kind of thing or a new wake-up but is that true would that actually work what would that stop men from being in another cow park or are they just being hopeful well because i'm not quite sure if it's the idea is that talos is lorcan reborn so that they can be in the next calper and champion the cause of men he can kind of fulfill lorkhan's shoes in the next calper like he is the one that creates yeah it gets kind of strange and this is also dealing with stuff that's well outside of canon but and then obviously when it's for saying the dragon will become ours to unbind that's just the idea that they they can take akatosh and you know control him basically and then they're not stuck we're like unbind if you imagine it has a coil and it's like calpers going around and round and round and round in time and they're sort of stuck in this sort of mortal existence of rebirth and death even of the immortal universe but if they can unbind it then they can be free it's no longer that coil but there's obviously other readings to it all um do you guys have any i mean one thing about that because we're going to keep talking about the towers is like it's very easy to write off everything we've just said it's like this is coda it's not in the law but at the same time it's like when you've got someone like michael kirkbride who was kind of fundamental in establishing some of these story lines like this you know the the um the anu medium and the um and the heart of lorcan what's up what all of that stuff um you can't really separate it from where it was going even after certain people leave the teams it's kind of like if you imagine it like a song of ice and fire and game of thrones it's like they only had certain books to work with but they kind of have to go the same direction otherwise you know you take a complete left turn and then you know it all kind of means nothing you have to wreck on half the law so i kind of personally take it as canon even though you're not supposed to yeah and even though they might just rip on half the law because that's what i feel like almost it's kind of like the feeling and wild and you know this is a divisive topic but you know how you start with the force awakens and then there was the last jedi because it did such a flip and it was so unexpected and all that kind of stuff uh in part that kind of like do you know what i mean like that's obviously um let's see what we call the oh my god jj abrams did not have the last jedi in plan and that wasn't the concept then so between the three movies you've got this kind of one black sheep in the middle which kind of like divides it and then i kind of tries to re-correct the course and stuff but by then it's you know what i mean it's kind of suffers for it but um hot take yeah i i i mean i agree yeah i know what you mean um with the lack i don't know like we can talk maybe we can do a whole episode about challenging the ideas of canon and stuff like that and whether it's even uh relevant because you know explicitly like playing the sand demon build in skyrim is a canon experience because you did it and you've done all of the things that were there in the bounds of the game but like is it canon that you did exactly this or like killed exactly that person and like do you know what i mean um so yeah there's some interesting stuff one thing that i guess uh sort of goes against the towers theory is because it's become a very like accepted idea and so on and i think it is it's a really cool like it's it fits very well philosophically with the thalmor it's that no one's debating that and so on but more so about the the towers and their purpose because they obviously have some sort of metaphysical greater purpose and so on but um i heard one theory about sort of like a it's like it's very related to like the myth and storytelling so if you if you if you view elder scrolls as a song like all the vibrations and the music and stuff like that that these towers are sort of like these um solidifications of mythology and story so so you have the first one which is adamantine tower and that kind of creates mortality or something like that but then when you create when white gold tower is created by the aliens and so on what that has to do with is is it it's bound to the amulet of kings and and then all of the ailid story and mythology which is essential to building into the all the three empires and that sort of age of dragon ball and stuff that it sort of encapsulates all of that like mythology and stuff and in the same way like snow throat tower that's tower is more so about um the the dragons and the nords and elder when there's the time wound at the top and then alduin comes back and then that sort of whole story of existence is is kind of the tower but the heart or whatever is deactivated kind of at the end of the story sort of same with red mountain and laura khan like its story existed since the heart of lorcan was kind of found and then all the way until the you know the god divine gods the tribunal sorry um abused it but then it was like deactivated or the enchantments were shattered or whatever the deal is with the heart itself um once that sort of nerve room prophecy and stuff all kind of gets resolved it kind of and the animation is destroyed uh sorry not the enemy a cool khan um it kind of resolves that story in the mythology so they're kind of like and we know like mythology's super important to the elder scrolls but it's kind of like personified stories of it so like that's their sort of metaphysical um relevancy yeah so it's like the white gold tower was originally built as an imitation of the adamantine tower but once it's had its own saga and you know all of the reality has been built around it and mundus continues to exist and the story is told it's no different in terms of its power at that point because it's you know it's established itself it's not just a mimicry anymore and in the in the in the same way the purpose of them and why i guess they're kind of like the other way you could look at it is kind of quick let's let's resolve all these stories and towers so we can unbind creation because the more mythology that entrenches reality as real so like you've got the white gold gold tower and all that stuff you've got you know um the crystal tower and all of that kind of stuff around it it kind of fortifies this the reality do you know what i mean isn't that sort of their purpose as the tower so the more stories there are like more like mythology it kind of reinforces this sort of metaphysical yeah and the adamantine tower is the one that's kind of been left out so far like obviously the aurical tower in supposedly in yokuda it's sunk it's it's gone it's not important anymore but it just so happens that it's almost confirmed that the centerpiece of the elder scrolls six is right at the heart of the iliac bay it's the adamantine tower it's about to get its major story well that's the other thing what kind of the adamantine's towers story is by kind of default is like its end point is kind of all of existence because it is its beginning was the mortal realm and then its end point will be the end of the mortal realm whereas all of the other towers had their time in their story like the aura calc tower it was relevant left-handed elves yokuta is all there so so what you're saying is at the end of elder scrolls six even if you stop the foul more from destroying the tower its saga has come to an end no more elder scrolls no no no no elder scrolls seven is a new dawn yeah what's going on the next cowboy yeah i don't know i think i prefer the idea that the towers have i agree with that just a story it's an interesting other one so it ended with them being destroyed this one doesn't necessarily have to end that way yeah okay that's true yeah the towers it's not like that it has to like play its course as much as like you can actively try and and like destroy it i guess like it's not it's not still that it's just sort of what they're kind of representing of in the metaphysical realm like they are solidifying reality through myth like if you go if you if you look at the idea of reality is a lie right and mythology is two people who believe it is truth then that truth is fortifying reality and and sort of covering up the lie that is you know your reality because you're all spirits in the aetherius realm and stuff in reality yeah yeah i know a lot of a lot of listeners love all this stuff but i'm feeling sorry for the people who clicked the video like yeah tell me more about the high elves in their black robes and taking some talos worshipper as prisoner through the lands of skyrim and using magic spells and having bound swords and then it's just like it's time to wake up you know the story's ongoing will come along they're just trying to write the end of the the conclusion to the story we all woke up and that's it that's all they want to do it's just a big problem like i actually just as a little note on that you know one thing a little chris it's not my favorite thing but how the thalmor used bound swords i would rather than not have as much emphasis on conjuration like something else instead i feel like it's far more their style even like beautiful elven craftsmanship of real swords like i get that they're trying to go like ooh the elves they're magical but it's not my favorite thing but that's like a little yeah you could just you could just give them some beautifully um carved elven looking sword but then enchanted and then that would be a perfect magic i know that still involves soul gems and like that but it's less like i'm calling this sword from oblivion type you know yeah yeah less purple energy going on yeah absolutely yeah but like i mean we could talk about people would probably be interested to hear is is sort of like um what we think they're gonna do in elder scrolls six and really like i made a tiny little uh post on twitter you can check that out but it was just um when we were doing like and was writing stuff for the ideal uh elder scrolls sticks high rock which is just which is not out yet it's just got a lot of stuff on it but it was just sort of an intro sort of making a um sort of bringing the plot around so it's going to be a great war and adamantine tower type thing like that's that's a very uh good direction that they could go and they have been in eso involving the towers a lot more and bringing up this concept of towers and stuff a lot and not while not directly being like oh that's the thermal ultimate goal or anything like that it's just it's kind of does help um it's just put out there in the law it's being mentioned more so that they could go this direction if they wanted to and i think for an elder scrolls six it's something that you know everyone wants to see more with the great war the thalmor sort of resolved because this is all sort of alluded to and hyped up at the same time i think people also want something big and epic and metaphysical but i think if they do do something that's just like oh a daedric invasion by period or something like that it's kind of underwhelming and the reason i think they might go balls to the wall is that you know it's todd's talked about how he wants it to be a game that lasts for 10 years afterwards say it comes out 2024 it's been like well over 10 years since skyrim he'll want this game to come out and last till at least 2034. you know what i mean in terms of its cult following and so on so i feel like going out on a big note like using everything they've got potentially like the most big epic i i feel like you can't really get much more epic than the not even just like oh we're going to return to the dawn era the literal destruction of the elder scrolls universe and it also ties in nicely with the thalmor so uh and resolves it i definitely agree and i think because i'm i was brainstorming a video which is kind of like the five most likely plots for elder scrolls six but as i was looking at them what you really could have and look everything todd says i take with a massive grain of salt in terms of it's going to be this ambitious it's going to last this long i mean obviously it's in their interests for it to be a good game but you know you never know but um basically you could put all of these plot ideas into the whole game like it could involve all of them to various degrees like there could be you know um another great war people talk about that people talk about infighting and controlling kingdoms in daggerfall and like having siege mechanics and stuff and things like that and then they also talk about a akaviri invasion even i know that gets really crazy but todd also talked about this idea with the original idea they kind of were throwing around for skyrim yeah um about akavir being involved there is you could have a whole lot of stuff in elder scrolls six that involves the thalmor another great war um even i mean even soul singing i hope not i don't want them to just drag and born and it's kind of like begging for a revival so it does really if they have the southern shores of the iliac bay and hammerfell it would be weird not to involve like heavy warrior culture stuff and it's very similar to the to using the voice in skyrim yeah it is and just let me reiterate i'm not saying this is what i want i'm not i'm thinking about what they would do potentially you know what i mean it doesn't mean it doesn't mean i endorse they can also easily do a plot like if they don't want to sort of like if they feel the towers theory is a little contrived they could do something like it could just involve the adamantine tower like because it's like if you if you think about that being like the the final like pin in holding creation together like they could be like destroying it to undo creation that way it seems a little like right so what's the alternative oh like if instead of the explanation of like all of these different types because you know how it's kind of vague like oh is is snow throat deactivated what's its heart or is it you know what i mean and also oh what does it mean with a coral tower and thrash like is that one of the towers or what i mean it's a bit all of the tower stuff is a little bit vague like in the way that if you think about how expensive the elder scrolls is with the wheel it's nice with the eight spokes and stuff but oh there could be more spokes or they could also be more expensive yeah there could be things on akavir that that just span that out so we don't know but they they could um but this is also based on like that it's primed for the thalmor because it's probably high rock or hammerfell or both or both if they go nuts like that but um i think you know if they do um i don't know like it doesn't even have to be a great war it could be like a hammerfell attack break sorry some the thalmor break the treaty with hammerfell and then they start attacking and then there's sort of like all of the political stuff between the maybe some of the forebears want the imperials to come and support them and help them against them or or whatnot you know what i mean and we also don't know what the canon is with skyrim either that could definitely be interesting depending on which way it goes with the civil war for some reason i feel like they'll try and avoid it like if you have for example like some hammerfell story in the year 202 or something like that and they try and say that it's ongoing because some people posit the idea that the canon ending for skyrim is if you just did the main quest go straight through the bank quest you get the quest called season unending which is you know the civil war debate thing that you've got to do mediate between all frick and tullius but that's a nice thing as well i think it's kind of without confirming it do you know what i mean because because i mean elder scrolls for as a general rule has always tried to not invalidate the choices of your previous experiences in other games and so on by saying like oh this is the i mean often there hasn't really been a choice but in the same way that the nero vereen doesn't cannonly become the head of house rhetorian or house lalu or or the arch mage of the mages guild or stuff like that you know so we can see where they where they go with it but but yeah are there any are there any i come absolutely i do do apologize i actually completely forgot to put this out first as a community post to gather questions but in my defense the thalmor is a pretty tight topic like there's not a lot to say like i can't think more outside of them yeah i think i think a lot of the questions we would get would be things that we've already answered anyway like what do you think of the towers theory yeah what do you think will happen in elder scrolls six stuff like that which is is really interesting to think about back on the topic of what you were saying in terms of um the civil war being untold i actually do not care like i had a real good think about all the outcomes and i'm happy with any of them i'm happy with a stormcloak victory i'm happy with an empire victory i'm happy with leaving it how it is i think you could pull off a really cool kind of narrative whichever way you go it's just going to be different i think i'm least happy with the imperials winning just because it's not as interesting like a like if this it strengthens their them a bit much that makes the thalmor not seem like as much of a threat stormcloaks winning is cooler i think for a more complex story like you remember that video you made where you were saying imagine the dragonborn helps the stormcloaks and then he'd be leading the stormcloaks but also has all the powers of the film and can bend will and you know control dragons that's a game changer no matter what happens yeah but i think for the most part like like i don't doubt that implemented canon thing like that that involves your player agency if you know what i mean like they could just me too but like with the with the stormcloaks winning it's just if you had a setting in hammerfell or high rock then you there's a lot more like political diversity so you can have like these nationalistic nords over the over the border and or maybe that you know certain characters coming in and you've also got imperial characters from cyrodiil or high rock or written characters and do you want to mean it just it just makes it a little bit more of a mixed bag versus if it's like oh everything's imperial again it's all sweet cool i i think i prefer the civil war one the season and ending the most but um yeah i also because i i don't know what they're gonna do to the dragonborn character whether they'll sort of like get rid of him somehow like whether he's like last seen on solstheim on the because they got rid of the nerve ring by sending him to akavir they got rid of the the hero of kvatch by making him show gaurav like yeah i don't know maybe maybe he dies and or like becomes like trapped in apocrypha after dealing with mirak and becomes the new champion who knows yeah but i feel like they've got to they've got to get some tidy way to get what is basically a walking god out of the playing field so that you can be a walking god in elder scrolls six you know but yeah i think i think that pretty much tidies up everything um thalma wise i don't know if there's any ending any parting comments it's all been said i mean if i can throw one thing out there i would like them to double down on the thalmor's elvenness so like if you would and what i mean by that is that in skyrim they just basically serve to be oh we're auntie thalmor whereas i would love to see a lot more of their actual culture and traditions being like pushed to the front like and also that you know them talking about the pantheon with like you know auriel and trinimac and and stuff like that you know what i mean like really honing in on that elvish side of things a little bit more than just being anti you know um and also maybe some aesthetic diversity i mean the black and gold's cool but you know let's let's see some other cool things you know but yeah yeah all right well thank you everyone so much for watching stay tuned to the community tab on youtube because we will remember i hope to post uh the topic of next podcast before we do it so we can get questions ahead of time social media links are in the description this has been michael scott and drew from fudge muppet and we look forward to nerding out with you all again very soon

Channel: FudgeMuppet

Views: 111,666

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Id: khP7z-oAqWI

Length: 60min 52sec (3652 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 23 2020