Who is the Tom Bombadil of TESO lore?

Bananko · August 13

As well as his wife Goldberry?

Anhedonie · August 13

You would probably want to give some context.

Red_Feather · August 13

Anhedonie wrote: »

You would probably want to give some context.

Ancient mysterious person that is not famous and the subject of rumours.

YandereGirlfriend · August 13

Probably M'aiq.

I was wondering in which way you meant this question. I was originally thinking "Who is the cool character that shows up in earlier works (Tolkein books) but who gets dropped completely from later adaptations (the LoTR movies)" and trying to fit that into the TES mythos.

aaisoaho · August 13

Well, there's a lot of qualities that applies to Tom Bombadil, which makes the question harder to answer.

Tom Bombadil is a character that doesn't really fit into the world he lives in. He seems to be a godlike character, but his magic is not the same as others and there is not a lot known about him. He is quite carefree and does nor understand the importance of the ring and the war. He is also quite eccentric.

Before Elsweyr, I would've said Cadwell could fit the bill, since there was not a lot known about his background and his magic is a bit different from others and he lives by his own rules.

RebornV3x · August 13

M'aiq possibly tho I don't know a whole lot about Tom Bombadil

Thannazzar · August 13

Uncle Sheo

Nairinhe · August 13

The Vestige

Mindcr0w · August 13

The Mudcrab Merchant.

Creeper is Goldberry.

Michae · August 13

Dringoth maybe? Silly ancient wanderer that nobody knows about?

Aztrias · August 13

Divayth Fyr, goldberry is his cloned wives/daughters

redgreensunset · August 13

Why would there be one? This isn't Tolkien.

RaddlemanNumber7 · August 13

The SIlvenar and the Green Lady

Kyatos · August 13

why should TESO have it's own "Tom Bombadil"?

Nairinhe · August 13

Kyatos wrote: »

why should TESO have it's own "Tom Bombadil"?

Why shouldn't we discuss if does or not?

Lord-Otto · August 13

There isn't one.
Tom Bombadil seems to be a sort of avatar of Arda itself. That's why he's singing so much, the world of Arda was sung into existence. Therefore, it is condensed music.
Nirn was made with magic and the remains of gods. It's an emalgamation of a lot of beings, therefore having a single representative is difficult.

Danikat · August 13

Lord-Otto wrote: »

There isn't one.
Tom Bombadil seems to be a sort of avatar of Arda itself. That's why he's singing so much, the world of Arda was sung into existence. Therefore, it is condensed music.
Nirn was made with magic and the remains of gods. It's an emalgamation of a lot of beings, therefore having a single representative is difficult.

By that logic I'd say the TES equivalent is Y'ffre, the God of Song and Forest (mainly worshipped by the bosmer, but also altmer and bretons). Or possibly the khajiiti deity Nirni, who is literally Nirn but with it's own personality and awareness. But I don't think Nirni has an avatar that people could interact with, she just exists as the planet.

But I also agree that the OP really needs to elaborate on their question. Tom Bombadil is a complicated character and it's unlikely there would be a direct comparison in other works that isn't a complete rip-off (something I don't think Bethesda, or ZOS, would do), so without more info on what aspects of his character they consider important and how they'd compare other characters I think it's difficult to say which TES characters are equivalents.

Elsonso · August 13

I am thinking that this is a meta discussion. Are we talking about a mysterious character that is helpful to the protagonist, but only in a very limited scope, and one who is not allowed to help outside of that scope because they represent the shortcut to the main story? An unimportant character but not so unimportant that it needs to be removed, except for the movie version of the story?

My first thought was Skald-King Jorunn

McMasterx · August 13

By all accounts, past, present, and future. I'd have to say it's Lorkhan, and to an extent, Talos. He (arguably) appears near the end of the main storyline of TES:III Morrowind, with some last words of advice, and talk of the Empire.

StamPlar_1976 · August 13

Who?

FrancisCrawford · August 13

Aztrias wrote: »

Divayth Fyr, goldberry is his cloned wives/daughters

He's at the opposite end of the self-importance spectrum from Tom Bombadil.

He also seems lke, on the whole, an urban and/or urbane guy. (Note for example the discussion of him in the blue crafting stylebooks.)

Lord-Otto · August 13

Danikat wrote: »

Lord-Otto wrote: »

There isn't one.
Tom Bombadil seems to be a sort of avatar of Arda itself. That's why he's singing so much, the world of Arda was sung into existence. Therefore, it is condensed music.
Nirn was made with magic and the remains of gods. It's an emalgamation of a lot of beings, therefore having a single representative is difficult.

By that logic I'd say the TES equivalent is Y'ffre, the God of Song and Forest (mainly worshipped by the bosmer, but also altmer and bretons). Or possibly the khajiiti deity Nirni, who is literally Nirn but with it's own personality and awareness. But I don't think Nirni has an avatar that people could interact with, she just exists as the planet.

But I also agree that the OP really needs to elaborate on their question. Tom Bombadil is a complicated character and it's unlikely there would be a direct comparison in other works that isn't a complete rip-off (something I don't think Bethesda, or ZOS, would do), so without more info on what aspects of his character they consider important and how they'd compare other characters I think it's difficult to say which TES characters are equivalents.

No, song is the manifest in Tolkien's world. TES' world is made with magic and god corpses.
Nirn, the goddess, was an initial thought of mine, as well. But she isn't a person in the world. She is literally the planet, much like Gaia in greek mythology.

AlnilamE · August 13

The old tree in Grathwood. I forget his name.

Saucy_Jack · August 13

Pie King

Nirntrotter · August 13

+1 for M'aiq

Guyle · August 13

Vivec, just cuz all the weird stuff he does is kind of on par with the ability to make wights go away by basically singing "go the hell away'o"

Tandor · August 13

Santie Claws, would be my suggestion

!

Sylvermynx · August 13

AlnilamE wrote: »

The old tree in Grathwood. I forget his name.

Brackenleaf?

rfennell_ESO · August 14

Well, we can see who read the books and who watched the movies.

For reference sake Tom Bombadil is an elder power, who is beyond and older than the lore of the lord of the rings. He also isn't particularly interested in power or even the outside world. He's sort of like pure neutrality, He isn't going to help good or evil and isn't affected by them, he will "be" after they fight... regardless of the outcome.

In the books there are powers that exist that are beyond the scope of elves and men. Much of it was stripped from the movies or replaced with nonsense. Like the mountain the fellowship tries to go over isn't "bewitched by Saruman" it's just an ancient power that doesn't like dwarves, elves or men.

Overall there really isn't any entity that would be akin to Tom Bombadil as everything in ESO is story driven. Tom Bombadil is an intentional mystery that doesn't advance the story line at all. That's likely why he was stripped from LOTR, as was the Barrow downs and the wights. Of course, quite a bit of the LOTR movies left out quite a bit of the books, particularly the end of the books which was sacrilege. The scouring of the shire is sort of the one thing that should never have been left out of a movie as it completes the story arc of the hobbits.

EramTheLiar · August 14

Sheogorath.

Danikat · August 14

rfennell_ESO wrote: »

Well, we can see who read the books and who watched the movies.

For reference sake Tom Bombadil is an elder power, who is beyond and older than the lore of the lord of the rings. He also isn't particularly interested in power or even the outside world. He's sort of like pure neutrality, He isn't going to help good or evil and isn't affected by them, he will "be" after they fight... regardless of the outcome.

In the books there are powers that exist that are beyond the scope of elves and men. Much of it was stripped from the movies or replaced with nonsense. Like the mountain the fellowship tries to go over isn't "bewitched by Saruman" it's just an ancient power that doesn't like dwarves, elves or men.

Overall there really isn't any entity that would be akin to Tom Bombadil as everything in ESO is story driven. Tom Bombadil is an intentional mystery that doesn't advance the story line at all. That's likely why he was stripped from LOTR, as was the Barrow downs and the wights. Of course, quite a bit of the LOTR movies left out quite a bit of the books, particularly the end of the books which was sacrilege. The scouring of the shire is sort of the one thing that should never have been left out of a movie as it completes the story arc of the hobbits.

Out-of-universe Tom Bombadil was a character Tolkien made up for stories he told his children. He wasn't originally part of Middle Earth at all, including him in Lord of the Rings was a surprise specifically for his children and the handful of other people who knew the character, kind of an easter egg.

I can understand why the people writing the movies saw his appearance as a largely stand-alone section which could be safely cut out to try to fit the story into 3 movies (even with 3 unusually long films they were seriously pressed for time). The biggest problem with it IMO is that it meant also cutting the Barrow Downs, which meant we never get to see where Merry and Pippin get their swords or hear the history behind them, which means when they got to the end of the third film when Pippin and Eowyn take down the Witch-King all the context of the sword Pippin used being specifically designed to make him vulnerable was gone and they had to act like the entire thing worked on a stupid verbal technicality of Eowyn not being a man.

Overall I think they did a good job with the movies given the limitations of the medium, which calls for a very different kind of story telling (certainly better than any of the other attempted adaptions) but that did annoy me. That and the stupid mangling of Arwen's story, where they claimed the problem with her marrying Aragon is that she'd out live him and then be left alone, as if none of the other elves would be willing to wait a trivial amount of time to go to Valinor (even though the books clearly state they never all left Middle Earth at all, they just increasingly avoided humans until we stopped believing they even existed). It also made Elrond look like he was just being unfair to his daughter, when I think it was pretty understandable he didn't want to lose yet another family member to a heavy-handed ultimatum thanks to some of their ancestors questionable decisions.