In TES physics and metaphysics are very strongly connected. Essentially the mundus seems to be a realm of spirit and consciousness upon which physical laws are imposed, externally. The adherence to these laws appears to be imperfect at times. This kind of creates a situation were macroscopic events adhere to some principles of quantum mechanics with a bit of relativity here and there, whilst classical physics apply on a middle local level (a single observer perceives a coherent world around him).
Namely these seem to be superposition, uncertainty and measurements (perception) affecting the system. On larger scales events appear to be physically blurry/to adhere to uncertainty (the german name for Heisenberg's uncertainty principle could also be translated with blurryness relation) especially after some time passed or from a far distance(more so than in our world, I really mean physically not only because of limited observation/messaging). The Nerevar probably isn't a definite being anymore after some time.
Factoring into this is superposition. Events seem to be happening in different versions on the same place and time, only one being observed by a given local observer (measurement defines the system) whilst all being equally true/merging for a distant observer, especially during dragon breaks (but not only I guess). Given the spiritual nature of everything, and beings actually being spirits forced into physical rules (more voluntary in the case of bosmer), individual perception seems to shape reality even more than IRL. So maybe every being maybe has it's own individual altered version of the mundus, still affecting - and appearing in - that of others. This allows us all to be the only vestige and being right at the same time. The others are merely projections of themselves into your own Mundus, not being vestige here (this might also be helped by vestiges (higher soulshriven) being almost-daedra).
All of this together with often non linear time easily allows to (and at the same time not to) squeeze a couple of million years into the ~6000 years of history and events to happen out of sequence.

Dude its a game, can't we just enjoy how amazing the zone looks. I don't give a crap about the geology. Its a fantasy world and they can make it follow what ever rules they want.

Ihsan997 wrote: »

Perhaps the origins of Nirn according to all of the popular pantheons are mistaken. This is probably one of the least likely scenarios, but it popped into my mind.

What if the Divines were truly powerful Aedric beings, but not as powerful as mortals on Nirn think they are? What if the creation of Mundus according to extant theologies in the TES universe are simply wrong?

It’s a long shot, but theoretically possible. Maybe Nirn did evolve over time like Earth, but with the addition of magic and powerful spirits. Let’s imagine that only and then stop for a second, going no further. Mortals would naturally fill in the gaps in their knowledge, seeing magic and monsters and all kinds of crazy stuff, and then inventing a young-Nirn creation story which didn’t include - couldn’t include - Nirn’s geological history prior to the evolution of intelligence and recorded history. As a real life example, I once read a theory that the ancient Egyptian gods were actually just effective and benevolent tribal leaders in pre-historic, perhaps pre-civilized Egypt whose biographies became embellished over generations. This, Horus wasn’t some eagle dude who fought demons; he was just an awesome Neolithic chief who shared his meat with everybody in the tribe.

That scenario could make for some interesting stories. Imagine Nirn in the future where magic just becomes technology, new theories of the expansion of Mundus develop, and attendance rates at the temple of the Divines drops. Along with all the negative aspects of modern society too...

...and then Mehrunes Dagon invades a second time and people believe in magic again lol

Anyway, just an additional idea, if a less likely one. Every time I interact with priests or talk to daedra and nature spirits in any game in the series, I just sit there and think: “what makes you believe that you’re understanding of the world is correct? What if Mundus is much older than you realize?”

An interesting thought, definitely, that Nirn could be closer to our Earth than we think in that regard. But, if that were the case, it would kind of take away the "magic" that is the Elder Scrolls Lore. It is a fantasy world, after all, and IMHO, it's one of - if not the best fantasy world out there. Yes, even besting Tolkien. The Lore is incredibly deep, and at some points very obscure (more or less thanks to Kirkbride, but we don't talk about that skooma-addict star wars fanboy's work after he left the team), which makes it stand out amongst other, similar fantasy worlds.
Still, a very interesting thought, worthy of an insightful

Maybe the truth is somewhere in betwenn? Maybe the aedra didn't create the mundus, but heavily influenced and shaped it. It would still allow a lot of the stories to persist. Maybe there really was no time "before" (causally not chronologically, obviously) akatosh created it. Maybe the Divines really lost a majority of their power in mundus, a necessary step for the major transformations they performed. That might even explain the towers. As not as powerfull as we thought individuals they needed some machines to perform their tasks (and stabilize the results).

Ihsan997 wrote: »

Trust me, I’m with you there, Benzux. I love TES lore, and my suggestion would make Mundus mundane. I was just wondering out loud because the OP did make a good point - the geology of the zone either developed over eons, or was intelligently designed with a magic wand.

The latter makes one feel warm and fuzzy inside; the former forces one to adult too hard, and robs us of the magic.

Then again...doesn’t Vivec allude to knowing that he’s just a character in a game during his dialogue in TES: Morrowind? That would both rob us of the magic and magically hand wave away inconvenient truths. Kind of like the worst of both worlds.

I haven't played that much Morrowind, so I can't really say anything about his dialogue, but I think what you're referring to has something to do with the "tower" concept associated with CHIM, where upon reaching the state of CHIM, a mortal is able to perceive what is known as the "Tower" (different from the Towers erected by the various races of Mer that keep Mundus stable), and essentially realize that they don't actually exist, and everything is an illusion. Failing keep your individuality when facing the Tower, and failing to "accept" the Tower results in "Zero Sum", where you're Alt + F4'ed out of the universe for the rest of eternity.
In any case, Kirkbride is most likely behind the dialogue, just like he is behind the whole ordeal with CHIM. It's crazy, makes no sense, but is interesting.

RaddlemanNumber7 wrote: »

So, I see no reason why these millions-of-years-old rock strata can't be viewed as physical manifestations of et'ada dreams that have somehow survived the Sundering. But, making up a story like that lacks any kind of authorisation, and I think that's the biggest part of the problem for me here.

As someone both very into science and storytelling, I can understand the want to apply detailed science to fiction. I definitely do that all the time. But, I think you have to keep a tight hold on what is not only the heart of storytelling but also the heart of science when you do: curiosity.

You're looking at the game world and questioning what you see because of what you think you know, rather than questioning what you think you know because of what you see. In the real world, we have to rethink our knowledge by examining other theories and doing research. In a fictional world, while we can also examine other theories, there's a limit to how much "official" material there can be. The authors will never be able to make something as detailed and boundless as our own surroundings are. There will not be an "official" answer to every question we can fathom. So you have to use your own imagination and share what you make instead, and since works like this are still in active creation, what you make may well shape the future of Tamriel.

RaddlemanNumber7 wrote: »

I wish this generation of TES Lore writers could come out with something as sophisticated as that old TESIII / TESIV lore. It was fun, very interesting to read and quite challenging to rationalise. Instead we just have scenery designers gushing about "real-world analogues" and "grounding things in reality". OK, it's still challenging, but not in the right way. To me it lacks any of the authority provided by the published lore, and instead simply looks like some sort of mistake on the part of ZOS. It's something that has to be wished away, not something that can be built upon.

I think that comparing new lore writing to older lore writing is a bit of a flawed train of thought in general, especially when something is a team-creation and writers can be in flux, but I feel there are many things to consider in your frustration here. The first of which is that the closer to the moment of the stories inception you get, the more you can expect to see large-scale impactful decisions on the lore of the universe. When your story lives in such a richly detailed fantasy environment, at some point the decisions you make on how to progress become more confined. You're bound by the rules that were set down at the beginning, or you have to create a moment where things change.

It seems like a lot of people invested in the lore of the world put the creators in a catch-22. They want new information that's large and impactful— but that also never disagrees with anything that came before it. We can't really have it both ways, especially if we want the content creators to release things in any sort of timely fashion. If we want significant new information, we have to accept the ripples that come with it, and work with the creators in extrapolating on where those ripples collide instead of demanding that they never collided at all.

When it comes to creativity, "mistakes" have to be opportunities.

Nothing new was ever created without a need for it.

Finally, I don't want to just answer this with a "suspension of disbelief" hand wave, but I do feel the need to give a reminder that higher graphics standards require more realistic visual details. You as the player get to sift out what you feel is part of the medium and what is part of the story.

Just like I don't think anyone looked at old low-polygon models and said "according to this screenshot, the physics of Nirn limit the ability of physical objects to curve visibly", a visual storytelling medium will always struggle to convey fiction and fantasy. It's easier to rationalize mesh-limits as a media flaw, but realism can be information overload. You have to view real-world tie-ins to visual design like shooting a film on location. Maybe New Zealand isn't the perfect mirror of Middle Earth in LotR, and there might be some problems lore-wise if you examine too literally. But, it was the best they could do to create a visual representation of the world at the time.


Aaaand on a final and different note from the rest of my post: my favorite quantum-physics connection to TES lore is how Dwemer Tonal Architecture is basically just string theory, applied!


(Edited for grammar correction)

Elsonso wrote: »

You missed the most glaring problem with what you quoted, and that is that the past generation of lore writers were quite heavily into "real-world analogues", themselves. I think that people look back and don't see it.

On other notes... This is an old thread that has been resurrected a couple of times.

That is very true! I just wanted to offer an additional perspective that I think isn't often acknowledged.

As for the thread being old— this is my first venture into the "Lore" subforum and it was within the first 5-6 topics when I responded, having been last posted in within the month, so I don't feel it was really a necro-response. Sorry that you've seen it rise a few times though!

Kittytravel wrote: »

Mages. Dragons. Gods. Daedra.
The other 5000 options that exist on Nirn but don't exist on Earth.
There are literally so many outside factors here that comparing it to Earth geology is extremely asinine.

That is kind of my point, if not my style.

Reading back through the thread a lot of posters seem to have missed the link at the beginning of my OP, and the bit where I quote the zone's designers saying that the geology of Elsweyr is intended to be an analogue of real world geology.

For those of you who are struggling with the meaning of the noun "analogue" my on-line dictionary says:

analogue
[ˈanəlɒɡ]

NOUN
1. a person or thing seen as comparable to another.

You can rest assured that I would not have made any comparison between Elsweyr geology and real world geology if the game's designers hadn't repeatedly and emphatically stated that they were meant to be comparable. They even go so far as to say it is all "grounded in reality."

But, that was last year's joke. The game has moved on, and so have I. Can't wait to see what the devs are going to poke me in the eye with this year

A theory it could be explained by the dragonbreaks. Each dragonbreak rewrites time. Takes it all back to the dawn so to speak and time is rewritten though lives and everything can be changed so can the landscape. Rimmen was the site where the Talos Walking Brass activation event happened so the landscape around it might have been altered by that. Since time gets re written areas might also change. Over and over again. So there has been several dragonbreaks. Three of them caused by walking Brass Tower the one that caused the dwemer to disapear. One by an elder scroll and another by those doing the Akatosh/Auriel separation thing.

Warp in the west is the most notable since it altered the fate of orcs throughout time and also altered the landscape of Cyrodiil. That is why even in this era they are treated the same way they were after the warp in the west. So even if the world is several thousand years old. Each dragonbreak takes it back to the dawn and rewrites history so to speak possibly making the word far older. That is how I see it. Say each timeline shard lasts for so long. Each of those shards are going back to the dawn. All together might add up the total of years onto the age of the world.
Example world is 5000 years old time splits into 8 shards. Each going back to the dawn time is restored to normal and all shards as one. 8 times 5000 is 40000. So now the world would be 40000 years old and not 5000 years old. I'm guessing that is how it would work.
So each time, a dragonbreak happens All the possible outcomes plus those that manipulate the dragonbreak for their benefit basically are those that control those dragonbreak shards. When timeline is merged back together. All their will basically became reality. The reason why the dwemer all ceased to exist but one was because of the dragonbreak many manipulated the reality to get rid of them. So to speak so when that was all put back together. All those outcomes happened. This is what wiped out the dwemer. Making it so they never existed at all even though they did. This can also explain the dwemer ruins and how they can last so long. How many ruins and advances they have even though clearly they didn't have time to build all that I doubt they can do all that in a few hundred years.

Age of the world is around 4933 that is counting the years all the way to the event of Skyrim not counting the middle dawn number could be a little off but. Then dragonbreaks if each dragonbreak causes time to split into 8 shards. Going by the five known dragonbreaks that would be 40 times reality has been altered. Now times that by the number of years and you get 197320 now times the number of years that was the middle dawn the longest dragonbreak you get 199095880. The number of years will be off as each dragonbreak could have smaller shards to it. So the time line will be far younger as is the world but if you do this type of math. With this example the world would be nineteen million nine hundred nine thousand, five thousand eight hundred and eighty years old. That would make Nirn far Older then it is. So it would be both young and old. Going by this theory. But still younger then earth if science about the age of the earth is correct. Plenty of time for the rock formations and everything to form. As the process likely works the same and the dragonbreak if my theory is correct can make it old enough for it to look like that. Even if the age of Nirn is officially much younger. It can still be older because of the dragonbreak phenomenon.

Time is likely different in elder scrolls then it is in real life. Future present and past might not be so separate. So all three are basically happening at once. Because of this an alternation of the present alters the past. This is what the dragonbreak does.Some areas can be protected like Morrowind. Because of the Three being able to do that other areas not so much. Even a localized dragonbreak can alter the past so much that the entire timeline changes. Like we can clearly see the with Daggerfall Covenant and the orcs. Eso is in the post all the other dragonbreaks revised reality that goes int other games of Red Guard, Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim and Blades. Arena and Daggerfall are the old reality is the pre warp in the west timeline much of those games content has been retconned out in some form or another because it was too d&d and the dragonbreak did that. Thus explaining Sheogoraths dialog about the first two game events and basically . treating it as if it already happened and we are not in that timeline bu the revised one.
https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Where_Were_You_..._Dragon_Broke
All the dragonbreaks go back to the same dawn period is what I'm getting the impression of going by the text of the book I linked above.

What, what! It breaks lore!!!!!!