The Thieves Guild's Weird Little Secret

hey how's it going guys it's Nate here and welcome back to another one of these Skyrim investigative videos where we break down an Elder Scrolls 5 related mystery or theory to its fullest extent and try to consider all of the evidence possible not only over examining the game itself but also the games files and other sources beyond anyway today I'd like to tackle what I personally consider to be the biggest and strangest unanswered question related to Skyrim's Thieves Guild as there's a certain member of the faction whom at face value appears to be relatively forgettable and looks like a little more than a filler character that actually has a past shrouded in ambiguity and he may very well be related to one of the biggest unexplained events in Elder Scrolls history this is a topic we've briefly explored before for a couple of minutes in a previous list but an entire video gives us the opportunity to go over what we missed and the research since then as well as additional Elder Scrolls content that's released has resulted in some unexpected discoveries so without any further ado let's do further alrighty meet rune this is the man our story centers on today he's a member of rifton's Thieves Guild that by all appearances is as generic as a character gets like most everyone else in his faction he lives at the guilds headquarters beneath the city in rifton's rat way sewers and specifically dwells in the cistern an area of the tunnels that we the player can only access if we've at least completed the Thieves guilds first couple of missions so we can't even interact with rune unless we've gotten started with the quest line now for the most part he just kind of hangs around the cistern and vibes a bit like that's everything he does that's his entire purpose in the game rune has no role in any quests nor do any of his colleagues even talk much about him however once we joined the guild as a new recruit we can speak to him and he does have some unique dialogue if not a lot take a listen who I deal with Mike and frankly I don't care being brought up by a poor family I had to learn how to steal if I want to make ends meet breno factually caught me trying to pick his pocket in the market he was anyone else I would have gotten away later I'm glad when you've decided to let me join we've tried to make some point for him ever since okay so it's not even a dialogue tree or anything fancy but in these brief statements rune reveals a lot about his past he tells us he's an orphan with no knowledge of his birth parents that he was raised by a fisherman and that he got started with the guild that after he was caught trying to steal from one of its members who was apparently rather impressed and invited him to join for now this is quite literally all were able to know about him however later on in the guilds quest line after we've completed a few missions rune will get a full of dialogue tree and will be able to learn even more I've never seen anyone with skills like yours I just wanted to let you know that if you need anything you can talk to me my father told me he found me as a young boy in the wreckage of a ship that sank off of the coast near Solitude all he found in my pocket was a tiny smooth stone inscribed with some sort of strange rules no one does I've even taken the damn thing to the college of winterhold I must have spent every last coin I've made with the guild trying to find out what it means perhaps they could be nonsense he named scribbles done by someone in idle boredom but if not if they actually means something they might tell me where I'm from what ship I was on everything actually the fisherman who found me the man I call my father gave it to me thought it was fitting I suppose I never changed it because it never felt right to do so I appreciate that this is even more revealing the man was apparently just found in some ship wreckage by a fisherman with nothing but a tiny stone in his pocket that had some strange runes on it the generous fisherman took him in and decided to name him after the rock now rune emphasizes that he's virtually spent his entire life trying to unravel his past and he's definitely not lying because on a cupboard in the cistern we can find a letter ax that was written to rune by a private investigator he hired it reads quote room I've used every source at my disposal and I still can't find a trace of your parents whoever they are they've completely erased themselves from history this is quite a feat considering the quality of my sources if I come up with anything else I'll be certain to contact you signed FL Newberry huh remember rune also claims to have reached out to the College of Winterhold and various other institutions about the stone in his pocket and now we know that not even actual private detectives he's hired are able to find a trace of his family clearly this is no ordinary disappearance this wasn't just a boy who survived an ordinary shipwreck with his family something bigger is at play here sadly this is largely where our trail runs cold at least in Skyrim there are no more letters or dialogue pertaining to the mystery rune doesn't say anything else if we ourselves wonder all over the coasts of Solitude where the boy was apparently found well we can encounter a ship record to it none of them are very special or contain any references to this debacle now I'm going to argue that there are some very strong connections to two other Elder Scrolls games specifically oblivion and ESO that we can identify and they fuel some compelling theories but before we dive into that I'd first like to talk about what seems to be the community consensus that has developed around this topic most of the people who seem to be posting about this unanswered question on various forms and even the people I talked to believe that rune story may be related to cut content and this is actually what I thought was true for a while as well maybe the reason why Bethesda left us on such a cliffhanger was because they originally intended to do more with rune story and explain it but ultimately chose not to it may be due to a lack of time or just a decision to change the narrative this has always made sense to me there's a lot of cut content in Skyrim but after spending quite a few hours running through the game's files with a handful of modders who understand Skyrim's creation get better than myself I can confidently say that certainly isn't the case there is no evidence Bethesda cut anything related to rune at all in our time scanning we found no quest markers no unused assets no lingering unused dialogue scripts nothing at all whenever the devs cut content they always leave behind a mountain of stuff in the files and there's not the least of that here okay so if runes tale is being told exactly the way Bethesda intended then what could the truth be well let's start by talking about that odd stone room was allegedly found with that gave him his name in the first place how annoyingly we never get a chance to see it making the task of analyzing it very difficult according to rune it was small smooth and had strange runes or markings on it that no one's ever been able to translate or identify when I first heard this description of the rock I had immediately assumed that maybe those strange symbols could be writing in Daedric or Doba Zul or even dwarven it makes some sense none of those languages are well understood by the common folk however considering the fact that roon took this rock to experts all over the world including folks at the College of Winterhold who literally study this kind of thing for a living I'm willing to bet it's none of those languages it's something totally different I think what roon may have is something called a rune stone I know very creative so for those of you who aren't familiar with the concept rune stones are an object that was introduced with the Elder Scrolls online which released years after Skyrim they appear as small stones with the mysterious type of writing engraved in them perfectly matching what rune from the thieves guild claims to possess admittedly it's a vague description though in ESO rune stones can be collected from nodes that spawn in the wild and a few are even sold by enchanters a-- they play a pretty big role in the game's enchanting system it can help us create a variety of powerful enchanted gear frustratingly though and so doesn't really explain these rune stones very well or offer us with a whole lot of Laura they mostly feel like a gameplay mechanic there is a single book we can find written by a member of Essos mages guild called the Enigma of rune stones that does acknowledge the mysterious nature behind the rocks and claims their origin and text are very uncertain the book states that some people believe rune stones were already on Tamriel well before the arrival of any elves or humans at all tens of thousands of years ago in the maratha era literally before anybody started recording history the text also points out that other scholars suspect rune stones could have been the result of a magical experiment gone wrong by early elven civilizations on Tamriel also way back in the maratha era so while these rocks from ESO almost perfectly fit the verbal description of rune stone were given in Skyrim they're called rune stones they sound so similar this connection still fails to explain so much we still don't know who runes parents were what happened to them how come no one can figure out heck why would ruin have a rune stone rock to begin with so much is still left vague another theory that's been proposed which would explain quite a bit more alleges that one of runes parents could have been the gray fox so this idea would have some huge significance on the elder scrolls as Laura but before we break that down I should probably explain who the gray fox actually Inza the gray fox is the title given to whomever Dawn's the gray cowl of nocturnal an artifact of the Daedric goddess of the night darkness and luck legend has it that the cowl was stolen from the goddess nocturnal personally by a gifted thief named amber Darrell off some time long ago after stealing the cowl Darrell off went on to found the Thieves Guild and become its first Grandmaster and the guild master in ceará della taking on the title the gray fox future leaders of the guild would have the cowl passed down to them as well as that title the thing about the gray cowl is that its power causes its wearer to completely lose their identity and who they were before putting on the mask wearers lose most of their memories personality traits etc it effectively makes you into a new person not only that but it even erases any memories other people may have had a view so not only would you forget your family for instance but your family would even forget you the result of this is that people who wear the grey cowl just sort of disappear and fully immerse themselves in the gray fox persona quick note I should clarify while the Thieves Guild has since grown to have chapters in every province across Tamriel each one independently run by its own guild master the gray fox is implied to be the overall leader of the entire organization by the time the events of the Elder Scrolls for Oblivion kickoff greyfox currently running the guild is a man named Corvis whom bran ox an imperial noble and count of the city of anvil wa much of Oblivion's guilds a later quest line revolves around this man struggle with balancing his two identities he wants to be the leader of the guild and lead it to glory but he also doesn't want to lose who he was and long story short Corvus ultimately decides that losing his old identity and connections to his family is just too much so he surrenders the cowl to the player and makes you the new gray fox and guild master before returning to his old life perhaps after the events of oblivion the cowl could have found its way to someone other than the player character and that person could have been runes old mother or father I find this especially likely because in Oblivion were constantly told that the cowl quote-unquote erases its wearer from history like seriously that phrase erases you from history is used repeatedly and if you remember the note rune had sent to him by that Detective at Ville Newbury the detective explicitly states that it's almost like runes parents quote erased themselves from history this could be a coincidence but I think this is very important to point out could it be that one of or both of runes parents really did just that and erase themselves it's possible that maybe his mother passed away at childbirth and his father dawn at the cowl and left him not long after in Skyrim the fate of the gray fox is otherwise left totally untouched by Bethesda the rift in chapter we do business with is led by its killed master Mercer Freya who is a nutcase in his own right but there are no references at all to a higher-up Grand Master or Fox admittedly in Mercer phrase house there's actually an item called the bust of the grey fox which is a stone bust of the gray fox what it sounds like but it has no significance in the game all we can do is pick it up and sell it as you can probably already tell I'm a big fan of this theory I think it makes so much sense and seems like just such a cool story though I still have to concede it has its problems firstly it does nothing to elaborate on why he would have been found with that rune stone which is a huge part of the mystery and what I find even more damaging to this idea are some of the releases or really one of the releases on Skyrim's creation Club yes I know everyone's favorite totally not controversial microtransaction marketplace OS on November 20th of 2019 a new mod was added to the creation Club called the gray cowl returns a priced at 250 credits or roughly two dollars and fifty cents this purchase offers exactly what its name implies allows players to complete a very short quest in Skyrim in order to obtain the gray cowl of nocturnal from oblivion and the quest were given completely contradicts the theory I presented earlier the mission alleges that the current gray fox during the events of skyrim isn't runes dad or mom or something like that instead it's a random up wealthy Nord named Piaf Dora who before donning the gray cowl and becoming the new gray fox was apparently at the head of a large and powerful Nord clan called the ice blades ax in his journals Peter expresses great regret for leaving behind the ice blades to become the gray fox he says that in his absence his sister who is totally unprepared for leadership rose to the helm and sadly she was assassinated he blames her death on himself now all he wants to do is give up the cowl and return to his old clan and raise his sister's son who she left behind thus he ends up offering the hood to the Dragonborn and we get to become the new gray fox at least that's how the creation works out if this quest holds up as canon if bethesda decides it is narrative lee correct it totally debunks our earlier theory the good news is that there's still a very vibrant debate regard whether or not anything on the creation Club should be considered canon when asked on their forms of various Bethesda Community Managers and representatives have said that they try to make creation club content lore friendly but they don't want to comment on whether or not it will be canon evidently not even they know so this is all up in the air maybe this quest holds true and debunks my previous theory or maybe it's not even considered when they write the next game and moons parents may still very well be a grey fox hole right so this is where I had originally intended to end the video back when I was working on its script I wanted to talk about rune explained that the stone II had was probably a rune stone from PSO and then discussed the gray fox theory but before I was able to finish narrating this video I stumbled across one last piece of information relating to those rune stones that I'd like to share with you you see on the Elder Scrolls Online's development team at ZeniMax online studios there's a single man called the lore master his entire job is to keep track of Elder Scrolls lore and help develop stories for the franchise moving forward prior to 2019 the Elder Scrolls lore master was a man named Lawrence Schick and oh my gosh everyone absolutely loved him the dude was incredibly engaged with the community and clearly loved and was passionate about the universe as a whole well one of the traditions he started was creating a web series called the lore masters archive that would be published to ESO swept site periodically the lore masters archive was essentially a giant Q&A where players could ask Lawrence all sorts of questions about the elder scrolls as law history and mysteries the catch was that Lawrence wouldn't respond to these questions as Lawrence instead he'd adopt the persona of one of the elder scrolls as characters of and pretend to respond on behalf of them for example in one issue of the archive he took up the persona of Abner thorn the leader of the Empire's elder council the grand chancellor and went on to respond to all sorts of questions about imperial government and rule any who in one issue Lawrence took up the identity of the guy who authored the book the Enigma of rune stones of and deployer asked him a question about what those stones actually are this was Lawrence's response remember in this response he's assuming the identity of the author of that book quote the rune names clearly form a language that is coherent and consistent if limited the question is what language is it this is where we begin to run out of answers as the roon language seems to derive from no known historic or predawn culture my personal best guess is that it is a language that was entirely invented by some dawn era enchanter or school of enchanters who left no other record of their existence than the spread of rune stones across Tamriel the dawn era was of course basically prehistoric Tamriel before elves or Nords ever arrived this response though does appear to clarify that the stones are very very old and have advanced writing on them maybe runes parents were collectors of these objects or had some sort of plan for them and we're going out looking for them or perhaps one simply fell into his family's possession and they kept it as a collectible it's not an especially climactic or satisfying conclusion but it does allude to the possibility that long before men and myrrh arrived on this continent there was an advanced race of individuals doing quite a bit of enchanting who they were the LFA now extinct beast peoples that's unclear but maybe they're the source of runes great frustration whatever the case this is where we are going to end today's video The Curious Case of rifton's or fin de thank you so much for stopping by everybody what do you think is really going on here is it cut content is runes father the gray fox something else leave a comment down below as always like ratings are very much appreciated again thanks for watching and hope to catch you all in my next video peace out everyone

Channel: TheEpicNate315

Views: 948,681

Rating: 4.9275236 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: D1bnd3Uk0Js

Length: 21min 47sec (1307 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 01 2020