getty.adam_ESO wrote: »

There is a fifth classification which has been omitted by the author and that is the type embodied by the player character. The soulless husk, animated and controlled by it's own volition.

You have to accept that we, the players, are each undead in the respect that we have died and returned from death, albeit without a soul. This makes us unique in the sense that most soulless undead require a second party determining their actions (ie: skeletons & zombies) and all other free-willed undead require the presence of a soul.

Similarly, we are each Necromancers in our own right as defined by the author as our soulless nature not only enables by requires us to manipulate the souls of others to maintain our own existence by means of soul stones and wayshrine; which I assume to be soul-powered as well as they act as anchors for our souless forms to rejoin the land of the living should we perish in battle.

Perplexing issues, to say the least. We are each a conundrum wrapped in a riddle and deep-fried in mystery.

Elder Scrolls Wiki wrote:

At the beginning of the game, the Vestige is a prisoner, captured by Molag Bal who has stolen their soul. There is an ancient prophecy in the Elder Scrolls, which states that the Vestige will thwart Molag Bal's plan to merge the world of Tamriel with the realm of Coldharbour in Oblivion. During the events of The Elder Scrolls Online, the Vestige attempts to reclaim their soul from the Daedric Prince and stop the merger of Oblivion and Tamriel.

So the question then becomes, how is the vestige able to maintain any sense of self or identity once their soul has been removed?

To help answer that, I would humbly offer a snippet of lore from one of my own works in the tome "On Geomancy" from a mod I wrote for Skyrim titled Phinix Geomancy:

Author Unknown wrote:

The key to Geomancy, as the tonal engineers of the ancient Dwemer surely knew, is resonance. Since we are endeavoring to "tune" a specific Aetherial signature into a material substrate, we require a catalyst that is both energetic and perpetual, which is where conventional alchemical methods break down. In the past some have achieved limited success through direct magical inception, typically involving meditation in one form or another and demanding rigorous mental exercise, however in modern practice it has been found to be far more convenient to introduce the concept of the soul gem as an energy source.

As it is generally understood the gem itself is a matrix, a refractory lens through which the perpetuation of quantifiable "soul energy" in our physical plane can be observed and thus defined. All things possess soul energy to some extent, by their very definition as existing. It is the identity of that being which resonates in eternal Aetherius through time as a universal constant.

Soul energy itself is perhaps the most important constant that is known. It fostered the breakthrough hypothesis of the projected universe, which originally led to the discovery of teleportation in the Alteration school.

I would further put forward that this "soul energy" consists of two fundamental components: The "carrier" frequency, which is the energy itself, quantifiable yet infinite, and the "information" it contains, that being what defines the soul itself as well as the potency of the energy required to contain it.

As the soul grows, the energy granted by timeless Aetherius grows to accommodate it.

This is analogous to a pulse of light along a fiber optic cable. The same physical number of photons may encode specific data, pure static, or simply "null bits" of singularly aligned energy. If the burst DOES contain information, the quantity of energy or number of photons required to encode it will vary to accommodate the scope of that information. The bigger the soul, the greater the energy required to encode it.

The "shard of Aetherius" is much like a burst of photonic energy, in that the quantity or strength of that projection into Mundus is representative of the original information or "soul" defining its scope. In other words, the information of the soul remains in the realm of Molag Bal, however the exact parameters of the energy required to encode it is maintained as a reflection in the timeless realm of Akatosh and Aetherius.

We know from lore the Daedric beings cannot create nor destroy, only manipulate. They are able to manipulate the contents of the player's carrier wave, container, data file, energy burst, but not the carrier itself, which remains constant.

Furthermore I would put forward that there are certain pre-dispositions based on the location of that empty carrier signature within Aetherius. The nature of the soul, now void, would have placed it in a specific category, realm, or spectrum of Aetherius. Based on that placement, which remains unchanged, certain characteristics of the original soul remain as predispositions inherited by proximity to other coded signatures within that same spectrum of Atherial energy.

A reverent, creative, and benevolent individual for example, would not have seen their energy pattern co-populating the same part of the spectrum as those of malevolent tyrants. Therefore even if blanked out, certain characteristics of their frequency domain will still bleed through and pre-dispose that carrier to the nature of its original occupant.

Think of it this way. You have a file on your hard drive that takes up 10MB of space. Imagine Molag Bal infected your system with a virus and changed all the bits for that file from 1's and 0's to all 0's. You would still have the same size file taking up space on your hard drive. It would have the same exact number of bits. It just wouldn't contain any data.

Furthermore, you probably don't just dump all your files into one giant folder labeled "Stuff." Most sensible people will instead make categories of sub folders like "Documents", "Games", etc., and further divide those into things like "Nature", "Spirituality", Recipes", etc.

So, your soul-containing file, now empty, will still exist in one of these defined sub-categories, which will give it "clues" as to the nature of what it was, allowing a conduit of sorts that facilitates its re-emergent nature.

In ESO Molag Bal is able to separate the information from the carrier by creating an equal sized file on his own Daedric hard drive and transferring that data to it. He may manipulate that data, or recombine it in whatever way suits his fancy (keeping in mind that the over-manipulation of information leads to degradation thereby nullifying the entire point of taking it in the first place, much like Photoshop mashups gone horribly wrong.)

The player however is free to re-emerge and what's more, the combination of re-introduction of elements from their past identity, along with the new experiences they will encounter from this point forward, will potentially allow them to attain an even greater energy signature than what was previously stolen from them.

OnoSendai wrote: »

Interesting how Phrastus of Elinhir 'ignores' the existence of Lamae Beolfag. Ignorance or fear, I wonder?

Indeed, an interesting aside to all this is the concept of the Vestige as a vampire. Specifically, a child of Blood-Matron Lamae.

Because the immortal children of Lamae came to be through a drop of a Daedric Lord's essence incarnate into Mundus, the same Daedric Lord that has captured the player's soul and made it part of himself and his domain, there is a unique dynamic at work in the imbuing of that same Daedric essence into the living essence of the Vestige.

Consider what we learn during the quest "Eyes of Azura" when the mage Vastarie is able to use the bound soul of the Twilight Irrai as a conduit from Cold Harbor back to her binding tablet in Nirn. Clearly there is a link maintained between the vessel and the information it once contained.

Knowing this, receiving the blood of the same prince that now controls your soul may give the player access potentially to information not only about their past life, identity, and experiences, but also, the mind of the Lord of Brutality that stole it from you, much as Valen is able to see into the mind of Molag Bal as Molag Bal peered into his.

This opens up the potential for a powerful personality to fight Molag Bal on multiple levels, that being the obvious fight to prevent the plane meld, and also the inner war to win back pieces of your former life through the conduit of immortal daedric essence that binds you through his blood.

Furthermore, we know that the children of Lamae bear no allegiance to Molag Bal, and in fact defy him and his influence. They take his "gift" of immortality and use it for their own purpose, a new creation unto themselves. It is quite possibly a way around the Faustian bargain of giving up one's soul for immortality; a way for the Vestige to gain not only a blank slate to start again the building of their soul and free will, but also, a conduit to regain elements of their previous identity while enjoying the benefits of immortality that essence grants.

Of course there are still shortcomings, the most obvious being the need to feed. It is also possible that a weaker being might be overwhelmed by the vastness of the mind of Cold Harbor, driven mad attempting to find themselves through such a dark filter. Yet the Vestige is a unique and powerful individual and may indeed succeed at drawing pieces of themselves back into their new form without becoming lost or unable to separate that which was their own and that which has become of what was formerly theirs within the twisted mind of Molag Bal.

If successful, it is entirely conceivable for a "good-aligned" vampire to emerge as a result, even if "chaotic-good" is much more likely. There are of course those clans which have no such interest in spiritual matters and immerse themselves mindlessly in the blood thirst, those being the lesser vampires and the truly cursed these cautionary generalities are penned about.

The Soul of the Vestige