Rohais (my Breton main) was on her way to Summerset when she got kidnapped by Maormer pirates, sold off to Mannimarco and sacrificed. Everyone else isn’t ‘the Vestige’ in my head canon regardless if they completed the questline or not; Away-From-Keyboard is an ex-slave she met, Khayrat is a fire-and-brimstone priest of the Eight who was trying to bring people into the fold over in Pact territory before getting turned into a vampire, Aetius is one of Rohais’ underworld contacts, Eristaanwe is one of Rohais’ distant relatives on the Altmer branch (Eris is an ouster/apraxic due to going mad - she loudly proclaimed she wouldn’t live in Summerset until the buildings stopped being human and moved to the Shivering Isles, where she collects vampires). Nizirri is a follower of the Hungry Cat who works at Rohais’ Embassy in Craglorn. Hlani is an acquaintance and bubbly, helpful sort who left Morrowind because she felt really sorry for all those non-Dunmer who don’t get to talk to their relatives after they die and is trying to help them fix that.

Some entity behind a giant glowing rectangle, powered by eldritch energy, got drunk one evening and started pressing random buttons on an interface it knew nothing about. Next thing you know its mind gets trapped inside of a strange avatar in a high latency world.

My main character is Tacitus Verus (Silence Made Real). He's my "main character" only because his backstory helps define the space in which my other 19 characters exist. The backstory is an attempt to provide a single, coherent, lore-friendly explanation for the whole ESO in-game experience. One truth to rule them all.

Tacitus Verus is a depersonalised avatar of Lorkhan, so he is very much The Vestige. Especially since the game starts right outside the Zero Tower these days.

I give all of my characters backstories (some more complex than others) that cover who they were in their "old" life and what led to them getting sacrificed. So all of them are or would be the Vestige in their own timelines, assuming I ever played through the story with them.

I have them posted here, although it's probably time for an updated post that includes my arcanists and other incidental alts. I tend to like character concepts where they're nobody special to start with and then they get pulled into bigger events and rise to the heroic occasion.

My main character, Ilsabet, was a stablemaster's daughter in Glenumbra who ran afoul of bandits and was sold out to the Worm Cult. She started out as a scared kid with no idea what was going on, but she was resourceful and good with a bow and she did her best when people started relying on her for help. And now she's a jaded on-call adventurer for whom saving the world is just another Tirdas.

My main is a wealthy Altmer, named Isachar Daerenfel, who was originally slated to take over his father's trading company. However, in his studies, he ends up way more interested in magic. After his father relinquishes control of the company due to the rising tensions of the war, he sets the company up to essentially run itself and then embarks on adventures that lead him first to the Mage's Guild, then to the Psijic Order, and he ends up wandering Tamriel somewhat like Gandalf. He adventures, advises the Dominion's war efforts, and helps people all over the world.

The story is a lot more complex than that, diving deep into the lore and metaphysics of Tamriel (actually writing a lengthy plot for him) and I kinda just think about the base game plot in the background, it's not really the focus. I might work it into the main plot of my character at some point, though; if I do, the events of the Mage's Guild and Psijic stories will be different and/or take place at different times than they actually do in the game, however.

My second character is an Imperial Dragonknight named Septimus Adeodatus, he was raised by a Dunmer father and mother (both are Ordinators) and from an early age, he learned the Akaviri martial arts. He couldn't become an Ordinator himself but his parents encouraged him to learn how to fight and command. At the age of 16, he ended up signing up with the Imperial Legion to join Emperor Varen's campaigns, as he truly believed Varen would restore the glory of the Reman Empire (which he grew to admire during his studies). When Varen disappeared and the Empire shattered, he returned back home to Stonefalls and basically became a mercenary adventurer across the land (eventually working to keep the Pact territories safe). When the Three Banners War began in earnest, he'd occasionally return to Cyrodiil and aid the Pact's efforts but primarily spent his time keeping the homeland safe. He eventually earns a gilded wreath and much prestige for his efforts, with King Jorunn promising to make him the Emperor if the Pact won the war; obviously, Emperor Septimus would be exceptionally friendly toward the Pact, ensuring that it maintains the majority of the power in the new Empire. This character essentially ignores the Vestige plot entirely.

I also have two other characters but I haven't come up with extensive backstories for them yet. I'm thinking I'll have at least one of them centered around the Vestige plot, though; I'd love to write a story around that, as the ESO base game plot is pretty awesome.

joshisanonymous wrote: »

The Vestige kind of does a ton of stuff and always for the greater good, which is limiting if you don't envision your character as a supernatural, highly productive do-gooder. So what's your characters backstory and how does it fit in or not?

A vestige?

In my opinion the idea of a unique Vestige is deeply flawed to begin with.
We're not even sure it is a dev-intended sort of "canon" fact, besides the main character syndrom displayed by the base main questline. A syndrom that could be arguably applyable to 90% of the quests in MMORPGs, since they are always designed and built as (solo) RPG quests. (i.e. even the Scholarium's story let you think you are the first character ever to enter it for centuries, yet it is obvious the place is open to the wider Mages Guild and adventurers' crowd afterwards.)

But I notice most players and all the fans' sites still treat the Vestige and this story as if it were a unique being, each player pettily headcanonizing one's Main Character as this unique Vestige regardless of any logic in a multiplayer world.
Yet the starting scenes and base story already stated there were a continent-scaled "Soulburst event" and also, thousands of characters were captured and sacrificed by the Worm Cult, quite some of them being able to escape one way or another.

So my first point here:
Even if "the Vestige" story is about exceptional stuff (championning Meridia and fighting Molag Bal in person) it is by no means less a multiplayer-multiple Class of characters than "the Sorcerer","the Thief", "the Nebarra/Psijic", "the Archaeologist", "the Scholarium scribe" and so on.

My second point is ALL the Fans sites writers (who are solo RPG players thinking as solo RPG critics) are wrong, and I won't elaborate on that any longer.

But even if they were unique, in the end of the day, we should see all this happening everywhere all at once as a Warp in Tamriel, a Dragon Break of some sort.


What being Vestige implies?

To come back to OP's main point, indeed the story of the a Vestige is not neutral. Said character is a high-end powerful and mystical champion, personally supported by Meridia and, most disturbingly, a soulless being - a former Soul Shriven.
A rebel to Molag Bal's rule.

Narratively, you can have been a peasant or a godlike magic user, all your backstory's previous power is removed by this starting event and you have to regain it, by training and finding sky glass - which is a convenient justification for the adventure.

As for me, I do have such a base-story Main Character (Altarya, a falmer/altmer frost priestess) who is this kind of a living mystery and got this level of power, fighting Molag Bal thanks to Meridia's blessings, so she can suit that kind-of-Vestige class, in a wider sense, but I don't see her as a Vestige precisely.

Regarding alts, the oldest characters may have been into Coldharbor's jails if I forgot to skip the old tutorial zone, but as soon as it was possible, newer characters started in the Chapter's noobzone of the moment and never talked to the cringe Worm Cultist in disguise - never following the path of a Soul Shriven.
In general, I create a new character for a new zone or story, or I use an alt who already fits the theme of it - for example, my Khajiit to deal with Elsweyr's stakes.
Any of them is no Vestige, even less that Altarya.

I picked up my main character's name from internet TES orc name generator....
And, didn't plan any of back ground story from 2014...Sorry my character.

Ajaxandriel wrote: »

DTLight wrote: »

Nevermind the bit I said earlier, this would also still be untrue due to them being a Prisoner, a specific concept or person during a period of time that is more capable than others- among other things.

Your interpretation of a "specific concept or person" that is contradictory with a multiplayer game to begin with, but also contradictory with soloplayer games of which each instance is meant to be canon somehow, since TES3 and the Warp in the West.

"Prisoner" is the Elder Scrolls' jargon for the concept of Adventurers or Heroes in other classic fantasy settings. Many fictional settings do acknowledge a difference between the common mortals and the (playable) protagonist, uniqueness is not a mandatory feature of the concept.

DTLight wrote: »

the Numinous.

This is the most non-canonical piece of canon one could use as an evidence - since it was moot when Auridon released and it was plain retconned when Summerset released.

But yet again, the Numinous as a draft for the Soulshriven concept - and a diegetic placeholder for Player-Adventurer - was meant to be multiple:

“Title and social status are of supreme importance to the Altmer! The Queen has granted all Numinous the noble title of “Optimate” – an honor indeed! You need defer to no one of lower status than a Kinlord.”

Soulshriven/Numinous is the diegetic explanation of why the adventurers can't die - as a MMORPG mechanic that is acknowledged.

Some RPG settings justify this, by gods or angel's will - notoriously the graveyard in WoW - some others by time-warping or "re-tell the story otherwise", ESO chose primarly this "soulless" or "tainted soul" condition as a solution.

DTLight wrote: »

With all that said, as you yourself have done already, anyone can RP as whatever they wish; I just don't agree with what you've said about the Vestige as a character.

Well, it seems I still won't agree with yours either

Pretty sure Daggerfall's Warp in the West is only meant to canonize that specific game's multiple endings, it does not somehow mean that every possible decision in every other game is also canon, especially given that Daggerfall is really the only one that has multiple endings to its main quest (sure, you can sever the threads of fate in Morrowind by murderhobo-ing everyone, but it doesn't lead to an actual, concrete ending, and even killing Vivec is just another path that one can take to reach the canon one). What does "canonize" every possible decision, however, is Ithelia and the Many Paths, though without her ability to observe the Many Paths, it begs the question of whether they could be considered to even exist any more at all.