Scaletho wrote: »

Hello,
Is there any Lore about the end of Vestige? Their final destiny, after ESO era heroic deeds. I'm curious about the transition between ESO era and the subsequent lore. I mean, Talos as emperor happened before or after ESO era?

Talos as emperor I believe happened after the ESO era.. in the future..

Tiber Septim is 800ish years away and don't forget it's 3 dudes in a trenchcoat masquerading as one, long before being deified as Talos.

It's useful to keep https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Vestige_(creature) in mind, as well as https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Souls#Vestiges - the Prophet gaslights us a lot, about his identity as well as about our importance - but in some cut content, the vestige was a "numinous" and everyone knew, as soul shriven, were a creature type.

In other words, every sacrifice-victim is dead - we died in that first quest https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Online:Soul_Shriven_in_Coldharbour - and what's left behind is a daedric soul shoved into that persons corpse (which is what we are). This is why we reform at blue-fire shrines or with soul-gems, while normal people die; this is why we learn skills faster than most mortals; this is why we even go toe-to-toe against daedric princes.

There are thousands of soul-shriven around, but some of escaped, and this is why at Dark Anchors you hear Molag Bal gloat that we'll ultimately serve his purposes. He doesn't care that we escaped - look at the mind-shriven in Imperial City for comparison, they resist but eventually are overcome and enslaved. Molag Bal expects all of us "escaped" soul-shriven to revert eventually and became useful pawns (consider WHY even make soul shriven out of daedric souls? welp, we make great infiltrators given how we look like people).

No idea if we'll get lore in the future - but I could see a future where we're our friends & family are all aging normally, and here we are, this daedric abomination that LOOKS like the person they know but isn't really. Do heroes hunt down the abominations? Does the restoration of the dragon fires mean we can no longer rez at wayshrines? Do we degenerate into monsters eventually? Who knows

If and when Elder Scrolls 6 comes out we’ll probably get a lore book or two for the Vestige and the events of ESO like we did for the events of Oblivion in Skyrim.

Prophet_of_Malacath wrote: »

Tiber Septim is 800ish years away and don't forget it's 3 dudes in a trenchcoat masquerading as one, long before being deified as Talos.

It's useful to keep https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Vestige_(creature) in mind, as well as https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Souls#Vestiges - the Prophet gaslights us a lot, about his identity as well as about our importance - but in some cut content, the vestige was a "numinous" and everyone knew, as soul shriven, were a creature type.

In other words, every sacrifice-victim is dead - we died in that first quest https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Online:Soul_Shriven_in_Coldharbour - and what's left behind is a daedric soul shoved into that persons corpse (which is what we are). This is why we reform at blue-fire shrines or with soul-gems, while normal people die; this is why we learn skills faster than most mortals; this is why we even go toe-to-toe against daedric princes.

There are thousands of soul-shriven around, but some of escaped, and this is why at Dark Anchors you hear Molag Bal gloat that we'll ultimately serve his purposes. He doesn't care that we escaped - look at the mind-shriven in Imperial City for comparison, they resist but eventually are overcome and enslaved. Molag Bal expects all of us "escaped" soul-shriven to revert eventually and became useful pawns (consider WHY even make soul shriven out of daedric souls? welp, we make great infiltrators given how we look like people).

No idea if we'll get lore in the future - but I could see a future where we're our friends & family are all aging normally, and here we are, this daedric abomination that LOOKS like the person they know but isn't really. Do heroes hunt down the abominations? Does the restoration of the dragon fires mean we can no longer rez at wayshrines? Do we degenerate into monsters eventually? Who knows

I think the player character is different to other soul shriven/vestiges though, firstly because they're attuned to Mundus through the skyshards, and later because they get their mortal soul back at the end of the main storyline. I'm not entirely sure what happens to the daedric vestige that was animating them when that happens. Obviously they're not entirely mortal because they can still reform at a wayshrine if they're killed, but I think it means they won't degrade over time like other soul shriven. I think it also means they're free from Molag Bal's control.

I like the idea that when the Dragon Fires are relit the player character (and other vestiges) can no longer reform. It's a new concept to me but it would explain why they're not around in later games. (I know the Dragon Fires are also unlit in Oblivion and I forget what the situation is in Skyrim, but I think the vestige would have been mortal for the time they were lit in between, which was a few centuries.)

Scaletho wrote: »

I read some player saying that after all events of "Vestige Era", Daggerfall Covernant did not survived the death of King Emeric, Aldmeri had the same fate after the Veiled Alliance rebound and dead of the Queen, and Ebonheart faction broke down due a huge and nasty war between Argonians and Dark Elves (the later restarted the slavery of Argonians hence launching a revenge from them).

That mean all factions fallen in chaos and at some point later Abnur Tharn used the Amulet of King to ascend Talos to the Dragon blood's dinasty of emperors.

Do all this stands as canonical or this dramatic version is false?

It's all canon, but most of what happens during ESO was forgotten in later centuries because relatively few records survived. There's various reasons for that but some of the main ones are not many people having the time and ability to create records to begin with, centuries of fighting between different factions leading to a lot of important places where records would be stored getting destroyed and a fair bit of revisionist history from Tiber Septim when he took over, to make his rule seem more legitimate and inevitable.

Until ESO was released the period the game is set in was simply known as the Interregnum and refered to as a period of endless in-fighting between factions trying to claim control of the continent, while the Dragon Fires remained unlit allowing daedra to attack Nirn.

I think ZOS picked this period partially because not much was known about it, which gave them the freedom to create stories and the endless war and lack of protection from daedra gave them a lot of material to work with, but also because they knew they wanted a large scale PvP campaign and the endless war over control of Tamriel let them set one up without having the problem that lots of players would want to pick the winning side (or the one most likely to win) and that would put the other sides at a disadvantage. We already know none of the alliances win, so no one needs to worry about it.

Danikat wrote: »

I think the player character is different to other soul shriven/vestiges though...Obviously they're not entirely mortal

Yes!
& I have often wondered if our character is the quasi-mortal "Aspect" of another Daedric Prince
(like Darien and Meridia, or that Dunmer Lady who is an Aspect of Boethiah)

Pheefs wrote: »

Danikat wrote: »

I think the player character is different to other soul shriven/vestiges though...Obviously they're not entirely mortal

Yes!
& I have often wondered if our character is the quasi-mortal "Aspect" of another Daedric Prince
(like Darien and Meridia, or that Dunmer Lady who is an Aspect of Boethiah)

No. We are Vestige as in the lore. that's why we made the main story for heck sake.

Prophet_of_Malacath wrote: »

Tiber Septim is 800ish years away

According to uesp Tiber Septim was most likely born in 2e 828 which is 246 years after ESO's start date(2e 582), 800ish years away would be closer to Elder Scrolls: Morrowind's time.

francesinhalover wrote: »

Is eso even canon to the series? I see it has alt universe.

ESO is canon, yes.

ghastley wrote: »

It is always the same year in ESO

still one of the most bizarre decisions they've made, really. They should've just stuck with what Orsinium started, with moving the years along.

Danikat wrote: »

I think the player character is different to other soul shriven/vestiges though, firstly because they're attuned to Mundus through the skyshards, and later because they get their mortal soul back at the end of the main storyline. I'm not entirely sure what happens to the daedric vestige that was animating them when that happens. Obviously they're not entirely mortal because they can still reform at a wayshrine if they're killed, but I think it means they won't degrade over time like other soul shriven. I think it also means they're free from Molag Bal's control.

The Vestige is different because they are a "paragon Soul Shriven"

Such are the facts. What follows is speculation, born of conversations with the Sojourner during his infrequent and unpredictable visits. 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.

Chaotic Creatia: The Azure Plasm by Doctor Rhythandius

As for the their soul and the daedric animus--we don't know, I think. The answer could be anything from

- Like the other soul gems Vestige "consumes", they "consumed" it, which would be quite morbid
- it replaced the daedric animus with their own animus (soul) leaving them even more of a quasi-daedra than before (most likely, imo)

Basically, post MQ, the Vestige is in a weird quasi-daedric state. Not really mortal, not a daedra, just some other weird thing entirely.

Prophet_of_Malacath wrote: »

the Prophet gaslights us a lot, about his identity as well as about our importance

It's astounding how much people seem to miss this, then taking any tiny wording detail and in-universe speculation as face-value

The Vestige arc is a bitter taste from the old base game storytelling, and a sad memory of the not-that-good game ESO was at the time, also storytelling-wise.
They were well-advised to put this aside and to let the focus move freely to any chapter's story instead, quickly replacing the intro zone at Coldharbor with other starting zones.

My concerns about "the" Vestige:

Ajaxandriel wrote: »

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.

Kavreiss wrote: »

plus molag bal repeatedly states he will make sure no tales of your exploits survive.

Jokes on him, when I'm long gone and nobody knows what I did, I still did those things and that's why Nirn isn't part of coldharbor.