An honourable Telvanni? Now that can't be right...

So, this is a weirdness from Morrowind. As in, TES3. There are two characters with the Releth surname in the game, plus their tomb on Azura's Coast.

One of them is a Clothier in Ald'Ruhn, the other is a member of House Telvanni that can become a Mouth, potentially, during the course of a playthrough.

Ignoring ESO for the moment, my expectation, simply looking at TES3 would be that the Releth family is another minor house, with no direct tie to any of the Great Houses. And that Enar Releth probably joined the Telvanni. (Since, signing up with a house is a fairly common means of social advancement on Vvardenfell in the Third Era.)

So, now we've got the tomb in ESO, and the Balmora questline.

There's basically three possibilities.

ZOS's writers lifted the name from one of the NPC quest givers in Ald'Ruhn and used it as the jumping off point for the Balmora questline. But, simultaneously, someone else noted the tomb and linked it with house Telvanni, because of the NPC there.

Releth is a minor house, that has aligned itself with the Telvanni and Redoran in the past. Historically it may have stronger ties to House Telvanni, but during the events of ESO, the house's formal allegiance lies with Redoran (which may be at an end by the time you leave Vvardenfell).

The name doesn't actually refer to a single house at all. The Releth minor house, who have an ancestral tomb, and the unrelated group who are active in Balmora in 2e and Ald'Ruhn in 3e, and are firmly aligned with Redoran.

Something else interesting that I hadn't remembered. ESO is the only Elder Scrolls game where the Redoran surname actually appears. Their ancestral tomb appears in Morrowind, but none of the house members you interact with in any other game actually carries the name. (16 Members of the Redoran family appear in ESO.) Make of this what you will. It's probably not relevant, but it caught my attention when I was checking through the surname lists on UESP.

Truthsnark wrote: »

I also noticed this while I was writing down the tomb/House affiliations listed in ESO. I like to give my Dunmer last names that are appropriate to the House they belong to, and when I saw that they put the House symbol on the tombs, I tracked them. There even appeared to be some House Dagoth names, based on the symbols shown.

House Family Name
Dagoth Favel
Dagoth Ginith
Dagoth Rethandus

On one level, that's not particularly surprising. Before the events of Red Mountain, the Sixth House was a major part of Chimer culture. The tombs date back to the original Velothi colonization of Vvardenfell (I think). So it would make sense that a few families with close ties to house Dagoth would be in the game.

Okay, but now we've got something really interesting floating around. ESO has NPCs from all three of those families.

Gols Ginith is in Vivec, with Morrowind. He's a random justice NPC, so nothing too interesting there.

Varis Ginith is an NPC (a nightblade) in TES3. Along with everyone else in the smuggler's den he inhabits, he's hostile to the player.

In TES3 their family tomb was a Vampire lair. I don't think there's anything significant about that, and none of the vampires within were from known six house allies. (They were all Dunmer, however, so draw your own conclusions there.) (This is also the target destination for the Lord Irarak quest, where you're sent to kill a vampire who's set himself up as a god. I don't think the parallels actually mean anything, but it's an interesting footnote.)

There's nothing particularly significant about the Rethandus ancestral tomb in Morrowind. It's just an undead and daedra dungeon. UESP helpfully notes that there are no known members of the family, except that's not actually true, anymore.

Aamela Rethandus can be found in Selfora's inn in Deshaan, and is encountered as you follow the main questline for that zone.

Favel's a similar situation. We've got a tomb, with a couple undead and an ancestral spirit in TES3. There's a copy of Lessons of Vivec, Sermon 35 in there. (This might actually be an important piece of information.)

There's actually three NPCs with the Favel name, two of those might not be relevant, but I'll include them anyway.

Favel Gobor is a House Hlaalu hireling in TES3. He can be found in a cornerclub in the Foreign Quarter. That he shares a first name with the sixth house is probably a coincidence. Except, remember, under some circumstances the Dunmer would stick their family name first, and then their personal name. We're talking about House Dagoth, after all, not House Ur. I'd bury a pin in this one, because, like I said, I think ti's a coincidence.

The other one that's dubious is simply named Favel. A female chef in Shad Astula (so again, Deshaan). As with Favel Gobor, this could be a first name. But, I'm including it because there is a real chance this is her surname.

The third NPC is Dedaenc Favel, in ESO's Mournhold. He's a Justice NPC, so you can blade of woe him if you feel like it.

There's at least one more known Dagoth family, Nirith. Who were (apparently) nobles in House Dagoth before Red Mountain. There've been four NPCs, the two you encounter in Forgotten Wastes (Tythis, and Nevena), and two in TES3. One is Uryne Nirith, a witness to Ralen Hlaalo's murder, with the commoner class, and the other is Giryn Nirith, (a hostile archer located in a stronghold in The West Gash, along with a mix of bandits). I don't think there's any significance to Giryn holding up in an old Chimer Stronghold, but anything's possible.

We've also got Wakener Maras from the same quest as Tythis and Nevena, but that may not be his surname, (Wakener is obviously a title), and the name Maras never appears elsewhere (that I can find).

Thanks to Online: Morrowind, we actually have a better picture of what's going on (though TES3 does, kind of, explain this, the Vvardenfell expansion spells it out.)

We know that after Red Mountain, House Dagoth, and all of the families loyal to them had their holdings and titles stripped. The name Dagoth was blackened (not technically purged completely, but no longer acknowledged as a great house.) The ancestral tombs from existing members were left unmolested. (This is probably because of Dunmer superstitions involving the dead superseding the Tribunal's willingness to press the issue.)

The assumption is that in most cases members of the Dagoth families forgot their heritage. It's clear that the families continued to use their tombs, and it appears that at some point the Favel family were actually tribunal adherents. This would probably be less surprising if we didn't have a member of the Nirith family who became an Ordinator, and another who became a scribe for the temple. Interestingly, I don't see any mention of Ash Statues popping up in any of their tombs, so either these weren't intended to be Sixth House tombs in TES3, or the families were completely unaffiliated with the Sixth House Cult.

Now, there is one weirdness in ESO. The members of Sixth House families we can identify seem to have gravitated towards the members of the Tribunal they could gain access to. Again, all of them are either in Deshaan or on Vvardenfell, and in the case of Vvardenfell they're all in or from Vivec. In Deshaan, we have one that's in Mournhold, and (maybe) one just across the water at Shad Astula.

Normally, I'd doubt this actually meant anything. I'd assume that ZOS simply grabbed known Dunmer names and sprinkled them across the map. Except identifying these three as House Dagoth is something that comes from ESO. So, I can't think this was entirely accidental.

A reasonable assumption is, there's a setting bible, probably originally written during the development of TES3, that details which names are associated with which houses. Because internal documents like this are never scrutinized, they're somewhat prone to minor errors and omissions.

The setting bible probably identifies those tombs as affiliated with house Dagoth. But, they may also be on a master list of family names that ZOS pulled from when they were naming random background NPCs.

Truthsnark wrote: »

Perhaps these families voluntarily assimilated into other Houses away from House Dagoth and were allowed to retain their tombs and names.

Though this is not in ESO, the Poison Song does indicate that perhaps the Children from the families of Dagoth were assimilated into the other Houses :P

starkerealm wrote: »

lordrichter wrote: »

starkerealm wrote: »

A reasonable assumption is, there's a setting bible, probably originally written during the development of TES3, that details which names are associated with which houses. Because internal documents like this are never scrutinized, they're somewhat prone to minor errors and omissions.

The setting bible probably identifies those tombs as affiliated with house Dagoth. But, they may also be on a master list of family names that ZOS pulled from when they were naming random background NPCs.

I suspect that no one in the studio cares about a "bible". They assigned names and houses as they pleased, perhaps with minimal research, and any inconsistencies that they introduce become part of the natural variation of life. I think the fans take Elder Scrolls lore to be an order of magnitude (or two) more rigid than ZOS or BGS.

Setting bibles are a pretty common element of game development. It would be legitimately surprising if one didn't exist, and the number of errors you'd find in ESO would be orders of magnitude more severe if one doesn't exist.

I am sure they have official lore, and people who 'enforce' it. I am merely saying that it isn't as much of a holy item to them, as it is to fans. Yeah, the lore person can say "can't do that", but I expect it is more "do this instead", since the lore person is not a producer or director. This means that they are free to do as they please, even if it breaks lore. When it does break lore, it is the natural variation of life, or a 'mistake' or 'vague place' in the lore.

starkerealm wrote: »

lordrichter wrote: »

starkerealm wrote: »

lordrichter wrote: »

starkerealm wrote: »

A reasonable assumption is, there's a setting bible, probably originally written during the development of TES3, that details which names are associated with which houses. Because internal documents like this are never scrutinized, they're somewhat prone to minor errors and omissions.

The setting bible probably identifies those tombs as affiliated with house Dagoth. But, they may also be on a master list of family names that ZOS pulled from when they were naming random background NPCs.

I suspect that no one in the studio cares about a "bible". They assigned names and houses as they pleased, perhaps with minimal research, and any inconsistencies that they introduce become part of the natural variation of life. I think the fans take Elder Scrolls lore to be an order of magnitude (or two) more rigid than ZOS or BGS.

Setting bibles are a pretty common element of game development. It would be legitimately surprising if one didn't exist, and the number of errors you'd find in ESO would be orders of magnitude more severe if one doesn't exist.

I am sure they have official lore, and people who 'enforce' it. I am merely saying that it isn't as much of a holy item to them, as it is to fans. Yeah, the lore person can say "can't do that", but I expect it is more "do this instead", since the lore person is not a producer or director. This means that they are free to do as they please, even if it breaks lore. When it does break lore, it is the natural variation of life, or a 'mistake' or 'vague place' in the lore.

"Setting bible," is the technical term. It's not an indication that the thing is treated with any particular reverence. Hell, the Black Isle era Fallout Setting Bible's available online if you want to see what one of these things looks like.

I know they exist. Even the Star Trek TV show had one. I am sure that there is an Elder Scrolls Bible that has been assembled, but as you noted, it is not treated with any particular reverence. By them. Meanwhile, to a lot of players, it is. The thing with the Elder Scrolls lore is that it can change, even contradict itself, and that is perfectly fine. To the developers. The lore exists to guide the developers, not constrain them needlessly.

We're just discussing here. I get the feeling that we are on the same page regarding this.