Dragon Break book in ESO

Habodek

So, why is it that the book Where were you when the Dragon Broke? is ingame in Elder Scrolls Online.

I found it on a bookshelf in Stonesfall, in the Mephala's Nest dungeon and immediately realized that it probably shouldn't exist there. Mostly because it discusses the events of both Daggerfall and Morrowind over 700 years in the future from when Online is set.

Did Akatosh REALLY screw up?
Did the devs just copy and paste a bunch of Skyrim books without regard to the 7 century time difference?
As one of the contributing authors, does Mannimarco have knowledge of the future?
Any other wild theories?

Acer

Why do you think this book is out of place? The Middle Dawn was in the First Era. There's no mention of the events of Morrowind and Daggerfall.

Habodek

ESO takes place in 2E582.
Tiber Septim isn't born until 2E830.

The portion written by R'leyt-harhr specifically refers to the the Numidium being assembled twice. Once by Tiber Septim in Rimmen.(circa 2E897) And then the second time is in the Iliac Bay area. (the events of TES:Daggerfall circa 3E417)

Mempomaniac

This is obviously a plot by Sheogorath to confuse us.

Wabbajack. Wabbajack. Wabbajack.

Acer

Sorry, didn't notice that.
Also, this is not the first book to break the dragon. See Ruminations on the Elder Scrolls, it hints at it being out of place.

opaj

A lot of the books are anachronistic. Heck, the very first book I read in the beta (The Buying Game) was written by someone who won't even be born for another 500 years at least. It sounds like they're doing this on purpose (as Acer mentioned, Ruminations on the Elder Scrolls is pretty explicit about this), but I don't know what their endgame is just yet.

Habodek

Interesting. Hadn't seen that one.
I suppose that book would also qualify as getting caught up in a time warp from one dragon break to another. Player characters tend to cause dragon breaks. I don't recall if Arena caused one, but there's one on record for the events of Daggerfall, Morrowind, and Obilivion. If the last dragonborn cause a beak (highly likely due to the different possible outcomes of the civil war at the least), the 'Ruminations' book as well as a copy of 'Where were you' and others could have been caught up in the tide and sucked backward to an earlier break, such as the middle dawn break. Thus ending up buried in ancient libraries by the time ESO rolls around.

I like that 'Ruminations' is noted by a character as well. It makes me happy that the devs are paying attention to the lore in this detail, and it opens up all sorts of temporal paradox fun with fore-knowledge not exclusively the domain of the elder scrolls themselves.

ZiRM

The Dragon Debate! Here we go...

Acer

The only dragon break that happened during a game was Daggerfall's because of its multiple endings. It's a bit of poor writing if they use a dragon break every game.

On the topic of the dragon broken books, it could be justified as someone taking it from Apocrypha, since the Princes exist through time once Hermaeus Mora gets a new book, it was always there.

Aulakauss

Well, there is a popular theory that the entirety of ESO is the inside of a Dragon Break. The Hero for The Event is shattered into an insane amount of pieces (the many player characters), instances or 'phasing' is semi-intersecting timelines trying to make sense of themselves (and respawning bosses are part of this issue).

If we go with this theory (which I am; look at my sig here and on BGSF), then the Dragon has broken so spectacularly in this event that books out of place in time are minor comparatively.

And by this theory also, from the other end of all this it all happened at once and the details are hard to pin down. Nobody's going to probably remember that there were books in there written by people who aren't going to be born for Eras about things that happened centuries ago but haven't actually happened..

Omgzzwtf

Aulakauss wrote: »

Well, there is a popular theory that the entirety of ESO is the inside of a Dragon Break. The Hero for The Event is shattered into an insane amount of pieces (the many player characters), instances or 'phasing' is semi-intersecting timelines trying to make sense of themselves (and respawning bosses are part of this issue).

If we go with this theory (which I am; look at my sig here and on BGSF), then the Dragon has broken so spectacularly in this event that books out of place in time are minor comparatively.

And by this theory also, from the other end of all this it all happened at once and the details are hard to pin down. Nobody's going to probably remember that there were books in there written by people who aren't going to be born for Eras about things that happened centuries ago but haven't actually happened..

*brain explodes*

Habodek

Wow, that actually makes a lot of sense.
I was wondering how the 'multiple heroes in the same tale of one hero' would work out. I mean, If time shattered, and the soul of the hero did too (as the player-character is supposedly soulless), then all player-characters running around would be the same person to the rest of Tamriel. That would be a giant paradox!
As an MMO, it's linear, unlike the save-state nonlinear aspect of previous player-character dragon breaking adventures. But a shatter-styled dragon break as the major subplot this definitely works.

Aulakauss

Omgzzwtf wrote: »

*brain explodes*

Well, my work here is done, then..