TIL: Today I Learned

[Takhisis]

*panserbjörne

 

[Arakhor]

The Internet would seem to be in my favour, good sir.

 

[Takhisis]

I beg to disagree, based on my postulate that

Å Ä Ö > Æ Ø Å​

QED

 

[Ajidica]

I'm not sure, and have no desire to find out. Generally, the more I learn about a thing, the more I come to appreciate it. But this doesn't hold true for two things I can think of: the Nords,

What's wrong with the Nords? They borrowed a bit too heavily from real Scandinavia but Talos Stormcrown is pretty neat.

and virtually anything Kirkbride touches. TES is cool until you find those things he came up with; then it just gets so absurd it makes me want to abandon TES entirely, so I ignore as much Kirkbride stuff as I can.

While a lot of Kirkbride's work is fevered ramblings induced by high quality hallucinogenics; his work still made Morrowind one of the most interesting and deep RPGs out there. The Tribunal Temple - blessed be ALMSIVI- is still the best fleshed out fictional religion bar none. The level of detail exploring how the Tribunal transformed Dunmer society -the transformation of the Chimer to Dunmer, the Prophet Veloth, and the Anticipations- is astounding, and the world feels real.
One of the great things about Morrowind is that you have the feeling that the world existed before you, and will continue to exist after you. I didn't get that feeling at all in Oblivion. (Why is there this massive dungeon buried underground? Why does this Ayleid "city" consist of a number of narrow corridors? ***** if I know!)
Some of the stuff, like whatever CHIM is, is just strange and the 36 Lessons of Vivic gets a bit too weird at times, but by and large Kirkbride's writing in Morrowind hold up.

 

[Phrossack]

I beg to disagree, based on my postulate that

Å Ä Ö > Æ Ø Å​

QED

You would say that, since you already speak East Swedish...

Spoiler TES talk :

What's wrong with the Nords? They borrowed a bit too heavily from real Scandinavia but Talos Stormcrown is pretty neat.

Skyrim was my first TES game. Prior to that, and specifically Fall from Heaven, I'd avoided fantasy entirely. So the Nords were the first TES people I really got to know. At first, I thought they were alright, their incredibly stupid looking Conan the Barbarian armor being balanced by being vaguely interesting, but over time, I came to like them less and less. They're a One-Hat Culture of Proud Warrior Race guys, and that's basically it. A large amount of them are little more than headstrong, arrogant, xenophobic, closed-minded brutes; just look at how many look down on pretty much all other races, reject magic and stealth entirely, and care about nothing but mead and war. Mead is tasty, I'll give them that, but Skyrim as a whole is provincial and backwards. My negative attitudes are tempered by the amount of decent Nords like Balgruuf and Rikke, but even they can't change the fact that Nord culture does not really produce anything of note other than warriors and piles of dead Snow Elves, Reachmen, and others. The real Norse, in addition to having vastly superior fashion sense, could at least say they were far-traveling traders and explorers.

Talos is another example of a mind[fornication]. A Nord (born in High Rock, though) named Hjalti seems to have been a successful war leader and was called Tiber Septim as well for some reason, and after slaughtering the Reachmen, was also nicknamed Talos, and was also nicknamed Ysmir (though others have also been called Ysmir). Then his soul somehow combined with some other Nord named Wulfharth, and with the soul of a third man named Zurin Arctus. And this fused soul became a god and the ruler of all Tamriel. With the help of a giant robot. In a fantasy setting. Or something like that; it's trippy stuff.

While a lot of Kirkbride's work is fevered ramblings induced by high quality hallucinogenics; his work still made Morrowind one of the most interesting and deep RPGs out there. The Tribunal Temple - blessed be ALMSIVI- is still the best fleshed out fictional religion bar none. The level of detail exploring how the Tribunal transformed Dunmer society -the transformation of the Chimer to Dunmer, the Prophet Veloth, and the Anticipations- is astounding, and the world feels real.
One of the great things about Morrowind is that you have the feeling that the world existed before you, and will continue to exist after you. I didn't get that feeling at all in Oblivion. (Why is there this massive dungeon buried underground? Why does this Ayleid "city" consist of a number of narrow corridors? ***** if I know!)
Some of the stuff, like whatever CHIM is, is just strange and the 36 Lessons of Vivic gets a bit too weird at times, but by and large Kirkbride's writing in Morrowind hold up.

Having never played Morrowind, I've still gathered that the religion, land, and culture of the Dunmer are unique and pretty fleshed out. The 36 Lessons are really out there, from what I've gathered.

I don't know anything about Kirkbride's personal life, but I think his ideas aren't drug-induced rambles so much as attempts to combine strange religions, magic, multiverse and quantum theory, and stuff he finds cool and funny. The result is deeply bizarre and jarringly different from the rest of the TES universe much of the time; time-traveling cyborg knights and spaceships just don't fit into what is otherwise a firmly fantasy setting and really ruin immersion for me.

I love learning about the Empire's politics and day to day operations; I wish there were real novels written involving Decumus Scotti, since "The Argonian Account" is just wonderful with its combination of humor, politics, adventure, and realistic treatment of running a province. I love learning about the Falmer and the Reachmen, and about the Great War. All of this perfectly fits in the setting. Not everything Kirkbride adds is ridiculous. But sometimes in TES, you'll come across something so bizarrely written that "purple prose" doesn't begin to cover it; it's less purple than it is circularly polarized light, or some combination of colors only mantis shrimp can see, all written in Nahuatl in Kufic Arabic script. And when you come across that, you can bet it's Kirkbride.

 

[Takhisis]

East Swe- oh, no you didn't, you colonial chronic misspeller.

 

[Ajidica]

Spoiler we really need a dedicated TES thread for mods to move all this stuff to :

Talos is another example of a mind[fornication]. A Nord (born in High Rock, though) named Hjalti seems to have been a successful war leader and was called Tiber Septim as well for some reason, and after slaughtering the Reachmen, was also nicknamed Talos, and was also nicknamed Ysmir (though others have also been called Ysmir). Then his soul somehow combined with some other Nord named Wulfharth, and with the soul of a third man named Zurin Arctus. And this fused soul became a god and the ruler of all Tamriel.

Oh yeah, I forgot about the Shezarines. Well, I don't think that was Kirkbride because Zurin Arctus/the Underking stuff was in Daggerfall which I don't think he was a part of.

With the help of a giant robot.

Ain't nothing wrong with a Dwemer construct powered by the soul of a dead god!

Spoiler size :

Having never played Morrowind, I've still gathered that the religion, land, and culture of the Dunmer are unique and pretty fleshed out. The 36 Lessons are really out there, from what I've gathered.

Next time Morrowind is on sale, you are buying it, installing the Sound and Graphics overhaul, and playing it. "Unique and pretty fleshed out" doesn't cut it. The Chantry in Dragon Age is "unique and pretty fleshed out". The Tribunal Temple and the ALMSIVI are in an entirely different league.

I don't know anything about Kirkbride's personal life, but I think his ideas aren't drug-induced rambles so much as attempts to combine strange religions, magic, multiverse and quantum theory, and stuff he finds cool and funny. The result is deeply bizarre and jarringly different from the rest of the TES universe much of the time; time-traveling cyborg knights and spaceships just don't fit into what is otherwise a firmly fantasy setting and really ruin immersion for me.

I haven't encountered any spaceships or time-traveling cyborg knights in TES, so any of those things are solely Kirkbride's fevered ramblings. If they do exist in TES, they are hidden better than the truth about the death of Lord Indoril Nerevar in 36 Lessons of Vivec.

Spoiler :

"He was not born a god. His destiny did not lead him to this crime. He chose this path of his own free will. He stole the godhood and murdered the Hortator. Vivec wrote this."
"FOUL MURDER."

I love learning about the Empire's politics and day to day operations; I wish there were real novels written involving Decumus Scotti, since "The Argonian Account" is just wonderful with its combination of humor, politics, adventure, and realistic treatment of running a province.

I tend to be a sucker for world-spanning empires, but Oblivion ruined the Empire for me. In Morrowind they were depicted as a hybrid of Imperial Rome, Elizabethan England, and Hindu mystics. Oblivion ditched all of that and made them generic fantasy Europe. And we didn't even get a suit of Colovian Fur Armor.

 

[Arakhor]

I would definitely recommend buying Morrowind - it's now available on GOG too.

As for Hjalti/Tiber Septim/Talos, a man becoming a hero and a hero becoming a god is going to have lots of stuff written about him, especially if he also became emperor of the known world along the way. I prefer to read most of the shenanigans as being in-universe and therefore entirely subject to bias and error.

 

[trader/warrior]

The best thing I ever did for my interest in TES was purposely staying away from going too deep into the lore. I read tons of ingame books, so I know almost all the concepts and words, but always keep my access to information fragmented enough to keep some mystery in it, and as a player I can feel like someone who knows the world, but doesn't have some huge meta-overview of it. I like the weird stuff like the 36 lessons of Vivec, the content of the books might not make that much sense, but the 36 lessons of Vivec as a whole certainly make sense as a religious text in the world of morrowind IMO.

Oh, I was sure this was the Video Game thread that regularly gets taken over by TES discussions, so not to OT...

 

[yung.carl.jung]

Can someone who is much more well-versed than me in Morrowind lore and trivia please for the love of god create an external thread? I have so many questions left unanswered even after almost ten years of playing it, there are things I vaguely remember yet cannot seem to encounter anywhere else on the internet, there are lots of secret spots/hiding spots I found in one of my walkthroughs yet never encountered in another and so forth.

I also would really love to read up on/ have a conversation about lore. I am the exact opposite opinion of Phrossack, if anything the more "esoteric" parts of TES lore have always spoken to me the most. To some people it might be ridiculous, I don't really give a care. Since he mentioned space travel and multiverse theory, two aspects I was semi-aware of my interest has piqued even more. I would be forever thankful if someone takes time to make a dedicated Morrowind (or rather TES?) thread on this subforum!

To me personally Morrowind is the best game ever made period, I have not played anything that comes close in terms of immersion, sheer amount of texts, quests, factions, guilds, storylines, depth of "plot", detail, really the only thing I can critique is the gameplay, like the miserable weapon skill system and the awkward interface, but I'm the kind of player who doesn't care about that as much.

I still replay Morrowind every two or three years. It just never stops for me, I don't even know why at this point. For everyone who hasn't read it, there's a really famous "creepypasta" on Morrowind that has achieved legendary status. It's entertaining for sure:

http://creepypasta.wikia.com/wiki/Jvk1166z.esp

 

[Kyriakos]

Link to video.

 

[Arakhor]

Is it bad that I knew what that video was going to be, even before I clicked on it?

 

[Takhisis]

Yes. You should play Fallout rather than that Elder Scrolls thing.

 

[Old Hippy]

Is it bad that I knew what that video was going to be, even before I clicked on it?

what's bad is my character has the same beard and hairstyle...

 

[Arakhor]

Well, you are an old hippy.

 

[GoodEnoughForMe]

TIL bun cha is amazing

 

[Mouthwash]

TIL that George H.W. Bush is still alive. I assumed he'd died a while ago.

 

[timtofly]

TIL that George H.W. Bush is still alive. I assumed he'd died a while ago.

TDI heard. Some of the Bush clan stated they were voting for Hilary.

 

[Snerk]

TIL that in 1929 parliament changed the city name Trondheim back to it old Norse name Nidaros. But after a year of protests they had to go back on it.

 

[Lohrenswald]

IIRC that was what stopped the process of "norwegifying" a lot of place names

also storting=GREAT COUNCIL lol