Telvanni Towers shown in ESO live

Valorin

So I just watched yesterday's ESO live, and it looks really awesome and I can't wait to play and see Vvardenfell again, BUT, to put it clear and simple:

Telvanni Mushroom Towers are _NOT_ based on stone towers. They are grown. There are no stone stairs leading to the door, there is no stone floor inside, there are no stone walls, no stone at all I have ever seen in TES3 or Neloth's tower in TES5. There are stairs and winding paths, but it's evidently not made of stone.

Usually I am not a big lore nerd, but I am part of "The Great House Telvanni" RP/social guild, and many of our guildies are pretty much soaked in lore, specifically on the Great House Telvanni.
The towers are made from a special kind of Mushroom magically grown to become those towers. I don't think I even have to start lore ranting here, especially because I am not even very good with the details (I bet others will cover this soon...), but it takes a simple google search for "Telvanni Mushroom Tower" and a good look at all the pictures to see: NO STONE AT ALL. Or just get good old TES3 running and walk around in Sadrith Mora, or look at Tel Mithryn on Solstheim in TES5. I love the design and looks of the towers I saw on ESO live, which makes the stone base even more painfully to look at.

I guess my guildies are not the only ones who have waited to see Telvanni Towers in ESO. It's kind of the main attraction in the coming Chapter.

Seraphayel

We are several hundred years in the past. Maybe the Telvanni back then used stone towers as base for their mushroom towers until something in the future happened and they stopped to do so? We simply don't know.

R1ckyDaMan

Seraphayel wrote: »

We are several hundred years in the past. Maybe the Telvanni back then used stone towers as base for their mushroom towers until something in the future happened and they stopped to do so? We simply don't know.

Or maybe ZOS got lazy and decided it was easier to copy and paste.

Darlon

R1ckyDaMan wrote: »

Seraphayel wrote: »

We are several hundred years in the past. Maybe the Telvanni back then used stone towers as base for their mushroom towers until something in the future happened and they stopped to do so? We simply don't know.

Or maybe ZOS got lazy and decided it was easier to copy and paste.

Don't know where you saw any copy and paste, but I don't think what was shown yesterday looks like anything we have ingame now...

AzraelKrieg

Seraphayel wrote: »

We are several hundred years in the past. Maybe the Telvanni back then used stone towers as base for their mushroom towers until something in the future happened and they stopped to do so? We simply don't know.

I'm gonna go with this unless Loremaster Lawrence says otherwise.

Faulgor

Well, it's different now. I certainly prefer ESO's towers to Tel Mithryn, which was just a large mushroom. I think the new ones look actually pretty cool, the smaller ones remind me of Tel Vos.




In this concept art, you can also see how the stone tower eventually crumbles away as the mushrooms grow.

Tyrobag

I'm not crazy about it either. However one could argue that since the mushrooms eventually fully consume the tower anyway, after time most of the older towers have been entirely consumed. Any newer towers may have been purposely grown without any stone structure because the resident Telvanni wanted to appear more powerful, and eventually the practice of basing on a stone tower died off. It is a slight lore discrepancy, but can be explained.

WhiteCoatSyndrome

Faulgor wrote: »

In this concept art, you can also see how the stone tower eventually crumbles away as the mushrooms grow.

I like this concept and it makes a lot of sense. I can't see any self-respecting Telvanni wizard being willing to camp out in a tent for the decades it would take for a house-sized mushroom to grow.

And if it could be done easily in a few days, then the things would be EVERYWHERE--anyone with a bit of magicka could make them, and they wouldn't be specific to Telvanni wizards.

Ratzkifal

From what I know about the lore, my best guess is that the original towers used by the Telvanni are the Aldmeri wizard towers, built by the Aldmeri explorers in the Merethic Era, which were later modified with the mushroom growing magical seeds by the Telvanni. The black colour is probably just because basalt is black and there is plenty of it on Vvardenfell.
I think that just like the concept arts shows, the stone towers are just the skeleton for the growing mushroom, which is not a requirement for a Telvanni tower to exist, but a welcome opportunity.

I could go a little more into detail but that would violate the NDA and even then it is still just speculation.

grizzledcroc

Lore was changed thats pretty much it . It was a conscious design change same as with the silt striders. You can interpret it any way you want.