What happened to the Vestige's soul, who really stole it ? - possible spoiler !

Ashnarug

according to the original tutorial ... "I died, but that was only the beginning …. I awoke in Oblivion. My body is intact, but my soul has been torn from my body. I must find a way out of this nightmare place to reclaim what was lost to me, or I will be damned for all eternity."

but since "The Gate of Adamant" you already have no soul ... case in point "Carzog's Demise" on Betnikh. You can only defeat Vardan because your soul is missing.

Once again with the new permanent tutorial which came out in 2021 you start the game without a soul. What really happened to it ? You didn't die when Mannimarco sacrificed you because your soul was already missing.

Maybe as Norianwe of Clan Direnni explained "… we may never know why you were [brought here]. But I believe there was intention here. Something, whether it be the stars, the Gallery, or the Tower itself placed you here for a reason … Matters in Tamriel are bleak. War rages in Cyrodiil, Daedric Princes conspire, Dragons ride the winds of Elsweyr … The Second Era needs a savior. I believe the Gallery — perhaps even the Adamantine Tower itself — chose you."

Dr_Con

I'm sure it'll be addressed later in a Star Wars: Rogue One plot hole cover-up sort of fashion (don't get me wrong, I loved that they did that while others may hate it), but this does not change the fact that all the dialogue from the base game tells you that what Mannimarco did happened, as well as the daedric princes, and the three living gods all with divine insight all say or tell you that this has happened to you.

I do think there is a primary fix that needs to happen to satisfy us lore critics. Fortunately the writers also wrote into their game that existence and events are fluid, meaning anything is possible, due to the elder scrolls themselves, and everything written into them (including the vestige). Look no further than the "An Accounting of the Elder Scrolls" by Quintus Nerevelus. They're able to retcon just about anything.

VaranisArano

The new tutorial appears to confirm the Paragon theory presented in this lorebook: https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Chaotic_Creatia:_The_Azure_Plasm

"His theory is that the Soul Shriven's bodies are flawed because they have lost the focusing principle of their Anuic souls, so their vestiges are imperfect patterns. I concurred that this was likely, and then proposed the theoretical possibility of a Soul Shriven who, despite having lost his or her soul, possessed some other intrinsic Anuic aspect. This shall-we-say "paragon" Soul Shriven would form an unflawed body in Coldharbour that was a perfect duplicate of the body worn in Mundus. In fact, if this paragon bore a sufficiently high Anuic valence, upon contact with Padomaic creatia its body would form almost instantaneously."

"The Sojourner scoffed at my theory, but seemed taken with the idea nonetheless. He went on to speculate that if such a thing were possible, it would probably occur in a situation where the Mundus was in existential jeopardy. In that case the Heart of Nirn would spontaneously generate such "paragon" individuals as a way of defending itself from destruction, in a manner analogous to the way the mortal body fights off infection."


The new tutorial is fairly irrelevant to me, since my Vestige got the original tutorial, and I roleplay her accordingly. None of this "you're an ordained hero, Harry" stuff for her.

Oakenaxe

Once again with the new permanent tutorial which came out in 2021 you start the game without a soul. What really happened to it ? You didn't die when Mannimarco sacrificed you because your soul was already missing.

- This is a good question! How/Why are we a Soul Shriven already?

SeaGtGruff

That has been my theory since even before the new tutorial, when (starting with the Morrowind chapter?) the original tutorial was replaced and it became possible to run around Tamriel without having to escape from the Wailing Prison first.

katanagirl1

I’ve always been upset by the fact that all soul-shriven except your character and Cadwell are mindless husks. No explanation is given in game for this.

Maitsukas

My head canon is this:
You are sacrificed to Molag Bal, and you need to escape from Coldharbour. With the help of the Prophet, you manage to escape to Nirn, but end up in different places — him in the Harborage, you on Balfiera.

This bit of Norianwe's dialogue seems to hint at this as well:
"Once the gates came to life, rifts opened. You fell out of one of them. The Daedra, Shyazzel, emerged from another."

Jaimeh

I think the fact that you can do events in any order messes up the story a bit, but originally, the Vestige was a human that got abducted by the worm cult, so that Mannimarco could take their soul, and that's how they ended up in Coldharbour. However, because they were a prophesized hero, they weren't like other soul shriven, and eventually were able to defeat Molag Bal. In end, Meridia transported them to the Coloured Rooms and gave them their soul back.

EnerG

I mean not everything NEEDS to be lined up in lore. Lore and gameplay are two different things, in lore the DragonBorn could shout mountains to pieces, in game? No such thing.

The canon lore is the original cold harbor tutorial. All other tutorials as well as balifera were created to get new players with that expansion up too speed with the chapters story and start then off at the content they paid for. Nothing HAS to be reconciled here.

I_killed_Vivec

Dr_Con wrote: »

I'm sure it'll be addressed later in a Star Wars: Rogue One plot hole cover-up sort of fashion (don't get me wrong, I loved that they did that while others may hate it), but this does not change the fact that all the dialogue from the base game tells you that what Mannimarco did happened, as well as the daedric princes, and the three living gods all with divine insight all say or tell you that this has happened to you.

I think you mean false gods with heretical insight...

To my mind, regardless of how or why, the matter of what happened is resolved when you get it back.

Even Ole Moley seems to confirm it, but he could have been lying;)

Sarannah

Somewhere during the main quest this is explained if I remember correctly. It was molag bal's minions(deadra/soul shriven/etc) collecting souls for molag bal, for some reason. Yours was just one of them. The soul shriven are ones who lost their souls ages ago, making them go insane. Whereas we just lost ours(we're still sane), and there our story about being the vestige starts.

Atleast, that is how I see it. And how I believe it was told during the main quest.

katanagirl1

Isn’t Cadwell supposed to be a really old soul-shriven? How is he still sentient, although a bit crazy?

Sarannah

katanagirl1 wrote: »

Isn’t Cadwell supposed to be a really old soul-shriven? How is he still sentient, although a bit crazy?

Don't think he is a soul shriven, nor lost his soul. He can portal himself around, and knows ways in and out of coldharbour. He's probably only there because he likes the company, as noone there thinks he's strange. In one of the DLC stories we have to make cadwell whole again, finding his other split off part. He's probably partly insane because he is not whole, or it is just him being like that as a personality.

Sheridan

Ashnarug wrote: »

Maybe as Norianwe of Clan Direnni explained…

Or maybe developers screwed up their own story by adding new tutorials and turning the real start of the game into an optional sidequest.

OtarTheMad

I think that the new permanent tutorial is just trying to tie things together and make sense of a game that is pretty old. I mean you have to figure that when the original tutorial (coldharbour one) was made the game was completely different, the vision was so different, it was back in 2014 after all. We had vet zones that turned into forced group areas, no such thing as One Tamriel, Craglorn was a Group Adventure Zone, Murkmire was planned to be one as well and was even in a different place than the one we got later, Orsinium was specified as a year after, Spellcrafting was supposed to come out but then for whatever reason... probably the fact that no one liked forced group content so Vet zones and Craglorn were empty unless you were grinding, the vision changed. Spellcrafting died, Orsinium was back in the right year, Craglorn was changed, and Murkmire was shelved to be redone. I think parts of the old Murkmire were in Blackwood.

The tutorials that came out with each chapter were really just a way to catch people up quickly and not isolate new players from the zone they paid for. You still had a preferred path in terms of when to do certain zones, especially if you want things to make sense, but overall... you could do whatever. This might have been a mistake however, they could have just kept the original tutorial and maybe just changed where it dropped you at the end.

I like that they hinted that you may be some Avatar or something like that sent by the Tower (or Aedra) to save the second era though. Also, have to remember that Daedric realms do take place outside of time as well. The way I wrote my character's backstory though is that the first time escaping Coldharbour, the way my character did it, lead to landing at Balfiera Island and getting short-term amnesia. So when they got knocked out and killed by Mannimarco, that was actually the second time but escaping, because it was a different way, did not lead to a memory issue.

RaddlemanNumber7

I like all this muddle and confusion, it provides lots of choices for different character stories - different start points, skipping the Balfiera tutorial, not doing the Main Quest, being an avatar or not, choices about what it is that Meridia offers you as "your soul", what exactly is a "soul" anyway, etc. It's all good fun, and has provided me with years of entertainment.

There was an early pre-release version of the Main Quest where Mannimarco has your soul trapped in a soul gem. I've used that too in one of my character stories.

A few seemingly out-of-place comments by NPC's are a small price to pay for all that goodness.

ZOS_Hadeostry

Greetings,

After further review we have decided to move this thread to a category we think is more appropriate for this topic.

Thank you for your understanding

katanagirl1

Sarannah wrote: »

katanagirl1 wrote: »

Isn’t Cadwell supposed to be a really old soul-shriven? How is he still sentient, although a bit crazy?

Don't think he is a soul shriven, nor lost his soul. He can portal himself around, and knows ways in and out of coldharbour. He's probably only there because he likes the company, as noone there thinks he's strange. In one of the DLC stories we have to make cadwell whole again, finding his other split off part. He's probably partly insane because he is not whole, or it is just him being like that as a personality.

Lol, don’t get me started on that terribly written story in Elsweyr. That’s not how necromancy works.

Sounds like you haven’t been playing since the original Coldharbour tutorial.

Mesite

I'm sure Razum-Dar has something to do with it. He seems to follow me everywhere

Eporem

Ashnarug wrote: »

Once again with the new permanent tutorial which came out in 2021 you start the game without a soul. What really happened to it ? You didn't die when Mannimarco sacrificed you because your soul was already missing.

How do you know you begin without a soul in the new tutorial...

VaranisArano

Eporem wrote: »

Ashnarug wrote: »

Once again with the new permanent tutorial which came out in 2021 you start the game without a soul. What really happened to it ? You didn't die when Mannimarco sacrificed you because your soul was already missing.

How do you know you begin without a soul in the new tutorial...

Because, barring time travel shenanigans, you can do quests that explicitly refer to you having no soul straight out of the new tutorial while ignoring the start of the Main Quest. You have not yet been sacrificed by Mannimarco, yet your soul is missing.

Since Morrowind, ZOS has really sacrificed the internal chronology of their story to the expediency of getting players to the latest content.