We’ve Cracked The Companions' Biggest Mystery

hey how's it going guys it's Nate here and as you've probably noticed over the last few months we have been working on a giant Skyrim Mysteries Iceberg on the channel in a dramatic effort to document virtually every single unexplained Elder Scrolls phenomenon and put them all in a neat little package and while we're still not entirely done with that series turns out it's gonna need another hour I figured this week we take a bit of a break and turn our gaze to a specific mystery that I think deserves far more attention than the passing mention it received that being the Curious Case of the ancient Sky Forge indeed the sky Forge as it's aptly named is a large blacksmith furnace located next to the companions's hall in Whiterun according to Legend it is the greatest hottest Forge in all of Tamriel and it has the ability to produce several unique forms of Steel that can't be smithed anywhere else as an emblem of its Enigma the forge is overlooked by a distinct and mysterious avian statue that no one in Whiterun knows anything about however while Bethesda clearly intended for this simmering smelter to be an object of Limitless speculation there are several Clues and vague hints scattered across Skyrim and other Elder Scrolls games that when assembled together paint a fascinating history of this strange device so pull a chair up by the fire pour out a glass of your finest black Briar reserve and relax as we begin our investigation into Skyrim's most mysterious metal manufactury but first quick word from today's video sponsor raid Shadow Legends has taken over and the gaming will never be the same again raid is the first game to bring a true console level experience to your phone like any self-respecting RPG raid has its own set of factions my top three favorite ones include the banner Lords an army of noble humans inspired by medieval English and French Knights The Barbarians of harkan are perhaps my second favorite a legion of brutes who offer their services to the 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return to the story of the forge indeed the sky forges reputation precedes itself as characters all throughout the game mentioned the durability of its steel and the legends of its blacksmith notably alavor of Riverwood who offers the player a smithing tutorial after our escape from Helgen we'll tell the Dragonborn to quote remember him when we're crafting Skyforge steel after completing our training you have talent keep working at your craft and you'll be a fine Smith one day why don't you keep that dagger and helmet maybe you'll remember me when you're making Sky Forge steel huh furthermore within the city of Windhelm on the other side of the map local blacksmith Owen Gola War Anvil commonly markets his Goods as every bit as sharp as what you'll find in Whiterun and when asked what he means he explains that the city's Sky Forge is world renowned that forges have their own personalities and that the sky forges blacksmith yorlund greymane is lucky to work with such a device everyone says yorland greymane is the best Smith in Skyrim I plan to change a few Minds about that every bit as sharp as what you'll find in Whiterun I respect yorland but he has the Good Fortune to work the sky Forge something about the fires their steel just holds tighter if that makes any sense you know what I mean forges have personalities right evidently the sky Forge is so well known for its unique properties that even the undead have remarks about it should the dovikin enter Whiterun alongside the ghost of Lucy and LaChance a follower we can acquire at the climax of The Dark Brotherhood storyline he may say the following line of dialogue Whiterun home mouth the sky Forge it is set a blade forged in its fires can cut through sinew as if it were parchment now this isn't a dark brotherhood video so I don't want to spend too much time talking about Lucian but the fact that this ghost knows about the sky Forge is an especially big deal as long time fans will recall Lucy and LaChance was a character from The Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion who lived 200 years prior to the events of Skyrim in southern cyrodiil so if he or his ghost has knowledge about it it's clearly quite well known but perhaps the best Authority on the sky Forge is its Forge master yorlund greymane who has worked it all his life according to your land the greymane family has been operating the furnace for as long as anyone can remember and it's Bar None the greatest in Tamriel evidently its Embers just burn hotter and more consistently than what is supposed to be possible and that enables it to produce higher quality Metals no one knows who built the thing though the sky Forge I my clan fathers have worked it since the first gray Mains came to Whiterun Skyforge steel is my art and honor the companions need the best so they come to me Skyforge steel is all the companions will use for good reason at night the eyes of the forges Hawk statue glow and ominous yellow alluding to a deeper magical connection the most immediate impact of this place on gameplay is our ability to purchase exclusive Sky Forge steel gear from your London at a slight markup Skyforge steel items are essentially just lighter and more powerful versions of normal steel equipment and they are frequently used by characters across Whiterun but very rare everywhere else while this is all the base game really tells us about this guy Forge it's big it's famous it's powerful it's suspicious you get the idea an analysis of Skyrim's early history and particularly the history of the Companions Guild who you'll note just so happen to live right next to the sky Forge provides some fascinating context to explain and for it all to make sense we'll have to start at the beginning the beginning of Nord settlement in Tamriel you see According to some emphasis on some will get back to that later Nords are not actually native inhabitants of Skyrim or Tamriel in general instead they hail from a now lost mysterious continent known as atmora located somewhere far across the northern Seas we know very little about atmora it allegedly sort of disappeared or became lost to modern society several thousand years ago but it's described as a remarkably cold Icy and hostile Place almost like in Antarctica or Northern Scandinavia sometime more than 4 000 years ago deep in the moretic era Nord supposedly began sailing down from their frostbitten Homeland and establishing colonies on tamriel's Northern Shores at the time Skyrim was dominated by a now extinct race of elves aptly called snow elves who had their own culture cities Technologies and Society they were a truly once great ancient civilization at first the early Nord settlers and elves got along well and lived in harmony but their peaceful coexistence was not meant to be and eventually war broke out enter a man named yiskramor yiskramora was supposedly the leader of one of the many Nord colonies in Skyrim and shortly after hostilities broke out his settlement was destroyed this prompted him to flee back to atmora and gather an army of 500 of the continent's greatest warriors he and his newly assembled Force then returned to Tamriel and opened up a can of whoop ass on the yells iskramor and his 500 companions quickly won a series of decisive victories over their pointed-eared adversaries and while details are rather sparse it seems that within a few months the entire snow Elven military had been destroyed and thus the Nordic Invaders were free to begin laying Siege to the cities and resettling the land with their kin and this is where we get our first written accounts of the sky Forge because after this moment the 500 companions decided to split up into separate groups and each began conquering a different swath of Skyrim one of these groups was the crew of a ship called the yorvisker and they sailed down the White River into the modern Valley of Whiterun where they encountered this megalithic bird Monument for the the first time and well I'll just read the account from songs of the return which is basically a Nord Book of Genesis if you will quote South words they went by beast and by foot elves they found though none remained to tell what those battles entailed the numbers of the yovaskar never faltered so shrewd were they in battle with Minds as sharp as their blades once as the Sun Beat from its high home Yonder the tiny the one who ran ahead came over the hill to tell what was seen amidst a vast plane his eyes had met a monument of a bird whose eyes and Beak were opened in flame when his brothers and sisters crested the hill they too saw its Glory but they were afraid for no Elven settlement could be seen to the horizon this is not seemly said clue is not this wide land fit for Harvest why have not the elves vile to their coat seem to exploit and tame it they asked of their Elven captives for they had many what they found unfit about these planes yet even the captives who still bore their tongues could say nothing of the valley they looked with fear at the winged Colossus and from their babblings did the Warriors of the yovasker learn that it was older than even the elves themselves of those who rotted solid from its mother's Stone nothing could be said but it was known to drive a magic almost as old as nirn itself some remnant of the God's efforts to render a paradise in Mundus before the shattering of Lor Khan the first of many this crew of the yovasker heathens and ancestors to us all feared no stories or Gods indeed if there was something the elves feared they would have it for their own thus began the labors once more of Monroe and manway whose eager hands laid to the Atmore in Wood which had borne them all across the sea and what was their ship became their shelter as this Valley became their purview until the end of all their days thus began the building of the great City circled by the running of the white Rivera as brought forth by these beloved of East grimora yet but 22 of the Glamorous 500 companions so there you have it when the first Nords arrived in the modern Valley of Whiterun they found that the sky Forge was already here not only that but evidently the snow elves themselves were uncertain and Afraid of the device refusing to build anywhere near it despite the valley being some of the most fertile land in Tamriel the crew of the yovaskar Apparently thought this was funny and just to spite their defeated foes they overturned their ship right next to the megalith and built their famous Mead Hall eventually the area grew into the modern great city of Whiterun that we know it today so if the Nords didn't build it and the elves didn't build it then who exactly did well before we try to answer that question I'd like to point out some things that we learn about the sky Forge during the events of the companions Quest line as several crucial Revelations are made throughout the narrative indeed Midway through the guild storyline we learned that the companions as leading members are all secretly werewolves pledged to her scene Daedric god of man beasts note not all of the companions are in on this it's just the five highest ranking Warriors they call themselves The Circle and will invite the player to join them should we accept and we have to in order to continue the story they'll reveal a hidden chamber Beneath The Sky Forge called the underforge with a shrine to her scene where an initiation ritual will be performed on the Dragonborn and will gain the power to transform into a werewolf once a day so the sky Forge apparently has a secret compartment what on Earth is this place none of our histories or any dialogue mention the secret cave Beneath The Sky Forge thankfully shortly after the ceremony we can ask skeor one of the members of the circle that exact question to which he'll say the following here's all you need to know jorvaskar is the oldest building in Whiterun the sky Forge was here long before it was and the underforge Taps an ancient magic that is older than men or elves we bring you here to make you stronger New Blood now let's move you still need to prove yourself well mm-hmm Taps into an ancient magic older than men or elves what funnily enough the remainder of the companions Quest line largely revolves around undoing their curse with her scene evidently many members of The Guild don't actually want to be werewolves as their status forbids them from entering sovngarde upon death instead they're forced to spend the afterlife in her scene's realm of Oblivion here's the faction's leader Cod lack white Mane's opinion on it in any case I have a task for you have you heard the story of how we came to be werewolves the boy has a nugget of Truth but the reality is more complicated than that it always is the companions are nearly 5 000 years old this matter of Beast blood has only troubled us for a few hundred one of my predecessors was a good but short-sighted man he made a bargain with the witches of Glenn moral coven if the companions would hunt in the name of their lord here scene we would be granted great power they did not believe that change would be permanent The Witches offered payment like anyone else but we had been deceived [Music] The Witches didn't lie of course but it's more than our bodies the disease you see affects not just our bodies it seeps into the spirit upon death werewolves are claimed by hercing for his hunting grounds for some this is a paradise they want nothing more than to chase prey with their Master for eternity and that is their choice but I'm still a true Nord and I wish for sovngarde as my spirit home that's what I've spent my Twilight years trying to find out and now I found the answer the witch's magic ensnared us and only their magic can release us they won't give it willingly but we can extract their foul Powers by force I want you to seek them out go to their Coven in the wilderness strike them down as a true warrior of the Wild so according to Cod lack the companions have not always been werewolves their relationship with her scene only began a few hundred years ago suggesting that whatever magic the sky Forge is associated with isn't the Daedric Lords at least not originally nonetheless we eventually succeed in revoking the curse and shortly thereafter codlak will pass away interestingly enough the final companion's Quest will see us attend his funeral where the harbinger's body is burned on a pyre atop of the sky Forge evidently this is the tradition whenever a companion's Harbinger passes the sky Forge serves as their pyre immediately after the funeral procession ends we can speak with yorlund greymane and he'll say the following new lines of dialogue you know since kaduck's funeral the sky Forge feels more awake it's always been said that the Sorrows of the heroes of old are what gives skyford steel its strength but I think the forge knows the greatness of kodak's soul I can't really explain but it feels like it's Young I always it could now Forge metal the likes of which hasn't been seen since era's long forgotten I'm eager to try perhaps because Cadillac was the first companion leader in centuries to have been freed from the curse the forge accepted him in a way that it hadn't for other recent leaders and indeed following this brief exchange if we enter the forge's smithing menu we'll find that we can now craft unique Nord hero gear Nord hero gear is basically just highly buffed ancient Nord equipment that weighs less and Carries more damage slash protection than the normal stuff notably the only way to acquire ancient Nord gear is to occasionally Loop bits of it from fallen drauger in tombs it's generally not craftable at least until we complete this Quest and access the sky Forge I should mention that the Nord hero items we can now craft are distinct from the sky Forge steel items we can purchase from your London evidently he remains the only blacksmith in the world capable of producing that but even so this moment has dramatic consequences on the game's lore and raises several new questions could it be that all of the ancient Nord gear we find in Ruins and at the hands of drauger was originally created here or used a similar type of Soul magic is that why the secrets behind its designs seem to have been lost to history also if the sky Forge was here before the Nords and elves as all of our sources reiterate why is its unique ability so associated with Nord culture well I have a theory but first there's one more thing I'd like to show you just Northwest of Whiterun south of volunrund is a banded occupied ancient Nord Fortress called Silent moons camp at face value this place doesn't seem particularly noteworthy it's just one of several minor ruins controlled by miscellaneous Marauders however further inspection will reveal this site to be far more than meets the eye because at the top of the Fortress the dovikin will find another uniquely named Forge this one titled the lunar Forge and on a nearby crafting table lies a book called notes on the lunar Forge it reads quote I've managed to get the forge itself up and running but again I find nothing special about its workings these weapons were clearly forged here yet the secret of their enchantment remains elusive all I've been able to discern so far is some connection between the weapons power and the appearance of the moons the weapons themselves are crafted of what seems to be normal metal but while the moons are high above they gain an additional ability it seems that once the sun has gone down the lunar weapons take on a vampire-like power transferring a small amount of Health from the victim to the user and indeed all throughout silent Moon's Camp the player can find various lunar Enchanted steel gear which offer considerable absorb Health bonuses though only at night when under the presence of a full moon notably as the book alludes to we can't actually craft any of these for ourselves at the forge the author of the texts mentions being able to get it up and running but being unable to figure out how to craft these weapons for himself and we can't do it either this all seems like the lead up to some sort of quest where we resurrect and re-awake the lunar Forge but there's none of that in the game it just kind of all ends right here on a cliffhanger a look in Skyrim's creation kit suggests that there may have at one point in time been planned by Bethesda for allowing the crafting of these items here as well as potentially some additional content but it's not exactly obvious there's a couple of unused enchantments in the files that seem related to this though it's hard to be sure and even then it's so little that if Bethesda did have bigger plans with the lunar Forge then they must have been abandoned very early on in the game's development no matter it's hard to believe that this device isn't in some way associated with the one in Whiterun I mean what a coincidence that would be right some folks just decided to put a lunar Forge a couple miles away from the sky Forge come on so once again we're left to ask what's going on here if these tools truly do predate both man and myrrh who could have been behind them well to get to the bottom of that question let's revisit that excerpt from songs of the return that we read earlier where the Nords ask their Elven captives about the colossus's origin the final paragraph reads quote from their babblings did the Warriors of the yovasker learn that the sky Forge was older than even the elves themselves of those rotted solid from its mother Stone nothing could be said but it was known to drive a magic almost as old as the nerd itself some remnant of the gods's efforts to render a paradise in Mundus before the shattering of Lor Khan end quote well to the untrained eye that may read as just a bunch of Elder Scrolls gibberish these are actually very specific directions on where we should look to you see the gods's effort to render a paradise in Mundus before the shattering of lorcan is in my opinion and evidently the YouTube user bad luck's opinion who nailed this thing in a comment a clear nod to an event known as the El nafe Wars the El nafe were a collection of mysterious beings who blurred the lines between gods and Mortals and inhabited nirn before it was even fully formed Legend has it that they were once Gods themselves who decided or were tricked into depending on who you ask sacrifice much of their Divinity in order to help form the world as we know it Legend has it that the ancient El nafe were divided into two groups one being called The Old El nafe who allegedly arrived on the planet first all together at the same time and built a sort of advanced luxurious Society for themselves and the other group would become known as the wandering El nafe and they arrived on nern scattered separately at different times and places largely left to face this new world without the Comforts of the Old El nafe here's what the anuad says on the matter a large fragment of the El nafe World landed unknown relatively intact and the El nafe living there were the ancestors of the myrrh these El nafe fortified their borders from the chaos outside hid their pocket of calm and attempted to live on as before other El nafe arrived on nirns scattered amid the confused jumble of the shattered worlds wandering and finding each other over the years eventually the wandering El nafe found the hidden land of the Old El nafe and were amazed and joyful to find their kin living amid the Splendor of Ages past the wandering El nafe expected to be welcomed into the peaceful realm but the old El nafe looked on them as degenerates fallen from their former glory for whatever reason War then broke out and raged across the whole of nirn the old El nafe retained their ancient power and knowledge but The Wanderers were more numerous and toughened by their long struggle to survive this war reshaped the face of nerd sinking much of the land beneath new oceans and leaving the lands as we know them Tamriel akavira at Mora and yokuda the old El nafe realm although ruined became Tamriel the remnants of The Wanderers were left divided on the other three continents end quote so this great mythical conflict is essentially what shaped the World As We Know It And defined the Divide between man and mirror Who Remain at odds with each other to this very day but where does the sky Forge fit into it all well during this mythical event it's believed that kind Nord goddess of wind sky and storm as well as her husband sure AKA Lor Khan both fought alongside the ancestors of men and the sky Forge has kind written all over it for one her symbol is the hawk which well yeah the connection there is obvious but the White Run Valley is also heavily associated with the wind as well being described as perhaps the windiest place on Tamriel so it makes sense that she and or her followers would maintain a special connection to this place furthermore and this is the icing on the cake for me in the Elder Scrolls Online players who earn the Grand Master crafter achievement will be rewarded with the blueprint to a sky Forge steel Hammer which is Enchanted with storm magic I.E kinds Magic this hypothesis if you will would also explain why the snow elves feared the sky Forge so much as the sky Forge would have been used against their old elnfe ancestors so many thousands of years ago okay Nate that all adds up and makes sense but what about the lunar Forge what does this have to do with kind and the El nafe well you see dear viewer during this war kind's husband to lorcon or Shore as he's known as to the Nords also fought with the Realms of men sometime during or towards the end of the struggle Lor Khan was captured by the gods of the Old El nafe who according to the book lunar lorcon sundered kind's husband splitting him into two halves which they casted into the cosmos becoming the two moons masser and secunda as the sky forges intertwined with the magic of kind the lunar Forge seems to pay homage to her partner and this is why both furnaces are located so close to each other it's a representation of their Cosmic Union my suspicion is that whatever content Bethesda cut from The Silent Moon's Camp location would have shed more light on this but alas such are the woes of game development speaking of cut content I originally planned for this video to only be 20 minutes long but here we are at the 35 minute Mark so I think this is where we are going to finally wrap up thanks for stopping by everybody I know with the story of kind lorkhan the elnafe and all of that jazz can be very difficult to understand and while I did my best to explain it for the purposes of this video I think it would be worthwhile to do a full one hour Deep dive on the subject sometime in the very near future so expect that video coming out relatively soon but anyway I hope you all enjoyed I think we really did get to the bottom of this mystery like I think it's kind of hard to dispute this Theory but if you do have your own ideas please share them in the comment section down below I'd love to hear more perspectives on this thing again thanks for stopping by and I hope to catch you all in my next video peace out everyone

Channel: TheEpicNate315

Views: 779,548

Keywords: Skyrim, The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim, Skyrim Special Edition, Skyrim Anniversary Edition, Skyrim Mystery, Skyrim Mysteries, Skyrim Theories, Skyrim Iceberg, Skyrim Tiny Details, Ten Tiny Details, Skyrim Skyforge

Id: r3CH1xp3DVo

Length: 34min 34sec (2074 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 26 2022