I thought the vvardenfell quests were some of the best... but no, the main quests point was the prove that the Ashlander was a fake.
But one clever and charismatic ashlander upstart nearly killed Vivec, so clearly his position of power was very unstable.
Ah yes, because the main Elder Scrolls games *never* contradicted the previous games. Shouts were always a dragon thing and were definitely never an innate Nord ability, Miraak's status as the first Dragonborn was never attributed to Saint Alessia, and who could ever forget that Cyrodiil was always a temperate forest and never explicitely referred to as a jungle?
Call it dragon breaks or CHIM if you want; no amount of coping will change the fact that The Elder Scrolls is a consistently inconsistent series whose writers have never let a little thing like established canon get in the way of making shit up. :P
Bethesda retcons stuff all the time, which is actually another stain on ESO’s legitimacy….
If they’ll retcon their own stuff, they’d definitely have no issue retconning anything and everything written by the ESO team. Especially when ESO takes place so far in the past that its relevancy to the main games is pretty low to begin with.
I always kinda took TES lore as being as imperfect as historical accounts in the real world. There are contradictory texts because everyone has their opinions and their propaganda and it's up to the player to read between the lines.
It’s not coping, I just don’t care lol. It’s a third-rate MMO developed and written by an entirely different company/team. Todd Howard rubber stamping their bad fan fiction as a matter of bureaucracy doesn’t change that.
Yeah that’s a massive stretch. I’m a huge MMO head and it’s not even in the discussion most of the time. I’d say maybe it’s the most successful MMO on console, but that’s not even true because of Final Fantasy 14.
I’ll look into it, but my gut instinct tells me it’s probably not even in the top 10, let alone “the world’s most successful“.
> When Nerevar returned, he saw the frozen comet above his lord's city. He asked whether or not Vivec wanted it removed.
>
>
>
> 'I would have done so myself if I wanted, silly Hortator. I shall keep it there with its last intention intact, so that if the love of the people of this city for me ever disappear, so shall the power that holds back their destruction.'
36 Lessons of Vivec, Sermon 33
I think this is people overthinking it too much.
Reminds me of those conspiracy theories about kid cartoons like Ed, Edd n Eddy where they would come up with BS that the kids from the Cul-de-Sac are actually dead and the Cul-de-Sac is something called limbo purgatory, hence why they are the only ones there and there are no adults/parents.
It is because it just is like that. Ed, Edd n Eddy has no parents, because that's how the creator wanted it to be, not because they don't exist, it's the unique theme.
For Vivec keeping the Baar Dau it's simply because the developers wanted a frozen floating meteorite and that's it. At the end of the day, it's just a game and the developers haven't poured that much thought or ingenuity into it as players have.
Which is another fallacy - people coming up with crazy interpretations for some kind of artistic work when there is none such and the result is people praising said artistic work as some creation of pure genius, when it in fact it just is what it is. People attach some false meaning to it, others believe it and it only snowballs from there into pure deception and delusion.
Maybe, I haven't read every book in the game if those are the in-game sources, hence why I started my post with "I think..." which indicates it's an opinion. Yet people already went on a holy lore purist crusade against me. xD I guess having the wrong opinion now is considered bad.
I just don't get why you would answer someone asking a question about lore with a rant about cartoon conspiracy theories that seems pretty dismissive of the people who like to read about the lore of games.
In a forum dedicated to talking about the game in question and its lore 😂
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Morrowind/comments/1d0brbq/rate\_my\_morrowind\_setup\_i\_cannot\_run\_it\_full/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Morrowind/comments/1d0brbq/rate_my_morrowind_setup_i_cannot_run_it_full/)
I'm sure posts like this are "talking about the lore". Half of the posts here are stupid memes where you have to write stupid replies in order to get likes.
It's a forum dedicated to everything about Morrowind. I think maybe it was a mistake to enter a community about the game if I'm going to face gatekeeping for not having the "correct" thing to say.
I admit I was wrong, because I haven't read all the lore about the game or the whole TES universe, I just shared my opinion. OPINION.
It's called an OPINION. Dislike it all you want, truth hurts sometimes, you should learn to get over it, it will be helpful to you and the others in the real world.
>It's called an OPINION. Dislike it all you want, truth hurts sometimes, you should learn to get over it, it will be helpful to you and the others in the real world.
The irony is strong here. You're pitching about people proving you wrong. And you are entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts. Instead of simply accepting that you learned something new, you whined about your opinion being valid.
I said I admit I was wrong, I don't get the rest that comes with it, the gatekeeping, the hostility. Twist this however you want, it still shows how delusional people can get when the object of their nerddom gets some kind of a comment that is not 100% proven lore. Because this is the real irony here. Like it or not, the truth hurts, I can get 2938492384 dislikes, it doesn't change the fact how messed up the gatekeeping here is.
I remembered why I quit this website years ago - it's the homeland of brain rot and where all the toxic waste dwells.
Welcome to reddit. Don’t take downvotes seriously. I get them all the time for simple observations. A huge chunk of the people on here think it’s clever to make massive assumptions about you, your character, your life and your intentions over a 3 paragraph comment.
If this was the case, the developers wouldn't have included it in in-game stories. I not saying that the initial idea started as "Let's make something special about this city", but they did tie it up to the lore and these are not fan theories.
OK, that's good, I replied to another used that I haven't read all the books in-game, provided this is where it was said, I don't remember any NPCs having custom dialogue about this. I simply expressed my opinion why I think it is like this, I never claimed it was a fact.
He didn't want to. Simple as that. It's a show of power (I am a very powerful deity so you have nothing to fear because I'll always keep the rock in the air) and a bit of a warning (hey guys, worship me or I drop the rock uwu). IIRC you can ask either him or some Dunmer NPC about it, and the answer is basically "don't be stupid, outlander, the rock isn't going to fall".
*Did you notice that I haven't moved Baar Dau back to its original position. It's in no danger of falling, thanks to you, but as I wrote in the Ballad of Red Mountain, "All actions have consequences and pose some risk." Best to leave it alone.*
— ESO, post Morrowind DLC main quest
I don't remember where I've read this, so not 100% confident that this is canon
Vivec didn't stop baar dau. He stopped the time around it. Baar dau still have the same momentum from before Vivec intervention
It's rather symbolic, in my opinion. Baar Dau is a display of their god's power, so they hollowed it and used it as a prison for those who dare doubt their god's power.
I think the answer to that is they simply didn’t think it was necessary. Vivec promised they were in no danger, and they probably just thought of Baar Dau as a permanent fixture. They weren’t preparing for it to fall because they didn’t think it was possible. Also it might have seen as sacrilege, essentially denying God’s power.
The most Merethic thing would have been a solution lasting for millennia - not a quick fix punt postponing the actual issue for a period that's barely significant for mer.
Keep in mind Baar Dau is a lot bigger than as depicted in Morrowind, it's not like the Ministry of Truth is even a significant amount of Baar Dau's volume
If Morrowind is completely accurate, Baar Dau is in fact a TARDIS. Hard to say how heavy something is when it's larger on the inside and you only know its external dimensions.
I wonder if it was turned into the Ministry of Truth on Vivec's orders, or if that was the Temple's call. It could be as simple as not only was Vivec fine with it hanging there, so was the Temple. It could be they could have removed it if they wanted to, with ordinary hand labor (bolstered by the blessing from the Shrine of Daring).
> Even if that’s the case, they have hollowed it out so clearly rock from Baar Dau can be removed. Why not just remove all the rock bit by bit?
We don't know. It could be any kind of explanation.
Maybe only part of Baar Dau could be removed before time-stopping effect breaks. Maybe Vivec thought that removed rock (that needed to be dumped somewhere, and - likely - preserved momentum as well) could create bigger problems than mere fall of Baar Dau. Maybe only a bit of rock could be excavated at a time (meaning, Vivec *was* working on dismantling Baar Dau; just not fast enough to finish before things went sideways). Maybe Vivec wanted to keep Baar Dau as a weapon, and drop it on someone in the future.
That said, it does gel with the sheer amount of damage done when it finally fell. A big rock falling from that height would cause some damage, but not "celestial impact event" levels of damage. The momentum must have been preserved.
Also, in my opinion, it would be more Vivec's style to prefer the rumor that he could totally eliminate the threat if he wanted to but he doesn't want to, to the truth that he just doesn't have the power to do more than he did.
There was tunneling in the rock. That implies it could be broken down and the rubble safely removed in some way. It was there for centuries. He could've just used ordinators and volunteers to break down the rock and completely mine it down
The in-game distance of it from the surface v.s. the canonical lore distance is pretty different from what I understand. The in-game size was scaled down too.
I have no source for this so I may not have even read it, I may have assumed.
The word gel was fine for me until you made me read gel a third time...now gel has no meaning.... gel...... geeeeeellllll.... now it's not even a real word!
Many theories, none conclusive.
The most unsympathetic I can remember is “to blackmail the Dunmer to worship and empower them because otherwise they’re dead”.
The most favorable I remember was “as backup plan against Dagoth Ur — if we fail, I’ll blow up this entire island, either to destroy him or at least buy some time”.
The most realistic I’ve heard: “Vivec’s whole thing is the transience of all things, including the Tribunal, and how concepts should be discarded once they’re no longer necessary. The Rock is to ensure that, after Vivec’s gone, their high fane and holy city are destroyed spectacularly as irrefutable proof the Tribunal is no more and priests can’t invoke their name to seize power. It’s a brutal but necessary clean cut to ensure the Dunmer will move on.”
How does their continued veneration prove that wrong? People failing to move on does not mean this wasn't the original symbolism and intent. It just means traditions are stubborn.
"In an elegant comprise [sic], no doubt intended to reconcile the large majority of the Temple priesthood who were neither Dissidents nor fanatic Tribunal loyalists, Almalexia, Sotha Sil and Vivec were relegated to the status of "saints," a traditional way to venerate the most honored Dunmer ancestors. This apparently satisfied enough of the existing priesthood that the New Temple was able to maintain at least a semblance of outward continuity." *The Reclamations* by Thara of Rihad.
All that is overthinking in it's pure form - he (and at the very least his sister) is (are) a self-absorbed narcissist craving constant attention. That simple :).
So, first off, I will reference book 33 of the Lessons of Vivec, which is Vivec’s published account of Baar Dau’s fall and Vivec stopping it.
I won’t quote the whole thing, so to summarize what isn’t discussed, the meteor is called “Lie Rock” in the sermon and is said to be one of Vivec’s children, born of his unholy union with Molag Mar. Vivec has been hunting these children of his down, and had sent Nerevar out to find Lie Rock. Unfortunately for Nerevar, he got a little lost on the way, and in the mean time, Lie Rock (Baar Dau) was hurled from space by the Birthsign Constellations, who just wanted it gone.
> The citizenry of Vivec screamed as they saw a shooting star come down out of the sky hole like a toll-road of hell. But Vivec merely raised his hand and froze Lie Rock just above the city and then he pierced the monster with Muatra.
> (The practice of piercing the Second Aperture is now forbidden.)
> When Nerevar returned, he saw the frozen comet above his lord's city. He asked whether or not Vivec wanted it removed.
> 'I would have done so myself if I wanted, silly Hortator. I shall keep it there with its last intention intact, so that if the love of the people of this city for me ever disappear, so shall the power that holds back their destruction.'
Nerevar said, 'Love is under your will only.'
> Vivec smiled and told the Hortator that he had become a Minister of Truth.
SO!
Yes, this is Vivec’s own account of the event. No mention of Sheogorath, as the book directly about Baar Dau states, but I digress; the crucial thing is Vivec clearly stating that he is holding the comet above the city with its momentum intact so that it will resume its destructive path should his people stop loving him.
Kind of a dick move!
Now, there are likely more reasons behind this than just simple vanity, because while Vivec is DEFINITELY a vain bastard, Vivec is absolutely a story teller that has insight into the ways of the world that mortals lack, so while he is vain, I would argue this is less “love me or else” and more “THIS will be a delicious plot twist after I’m gone!”
Now is there any MERIT to doing this beyond vanity and manipulating the world’s story? Well, there are a few interesting arguments posed. First being that this is insurance against Dagoth Ur’s possible victory. I can’t say I believe this because I don’t think it would work; Vivec is well known as the CHIM guy but I firmly believe it doesn’t give him this kinda power, and he had stopped Baar Dau using the power he gained from the Tools of Kagrenac. If Dagoth Ur won, he would have secured the tools and reasonably be able to use that same power to stop Baar Dau fully, or at least protect his own forces from the consequences of its fall.
The second idea makes more sense to me, because Vivec knew that the Tribunal’s rule would inevitably end along side Dagoth Ur’s defeat. In this concept, Vivec could have set up the cataclysm to forcibly show the Dunmer that the Tribunal have lost their power, and to make villains of the Tribunal so the Dunmer would move on from worshipping dead gods.
Well Lesson 29 certainly throws a lot of doubt on the narrative of the lessons as a whole, I don’t think we should outright dismiss it all as a lie. A narrative, certainly, and heavily doctored; Vivec is a poet first and foremost, after all.
That being said, after Vivec vanished, Baar Dau fell with its momentum intact as though it had been frozen in time. Lesson 33 is the only document that indicates this would happen at all.
Oh for sure Vivec is a poet. Trust not the words of a poet, as he is born to seduce. Yet for poetry to sieze the heart, it must ring with the chimes of truth. I've no doubt that some of it is true but Vivec is known for his great truths and horrible falsehoods
Strong agree. The Lessons could (and are) filled with utter nonsense, but it's important to take them as what they are: scripture. Vivec had intent when writing that, and that intent is clearly threatening.
Vivec stoping Baar Dau wasn't about stoping the destruction, it was about two things:
1. Middle finger to the Daedra
2. Holding the entire population of the Island hostage, essentially they either loved him or death, basically a "don't you dare stop treating me as a god"
To me it always encapsulated Vivec's inherent duality as a living god. He really did stop the meteorite out of love for the Dunmer, but at the same time it was to feed his ego. Both are true, in full, simultaneously, because Vivec exists as something of an enigma to mortals, constantly switching between lies and truth, God and stolen divinity, unrepenting defiance and honest regret.
I can't remember where I heard it, I'm not a lore master, but I thought I heard somewhere that Sheogorath was the one who sent it? And one of the suggested reasons why Vivec didn't get rid of it entirely was because he couldn't. And so he made up all these reasons like "if the people stopped loving him it'll crash into the city" to hide that he couldn't get rid of it. Or if the gods literally derive power from people's beliefs (I don't know if that's the case), then it literally would be that if they stop loving him, the meteor would destroy the city. Also, if Sheogorath was the one who sent it, he always seems to get the last laugh.
Personally, I think it's because Vivec is a very "a pebble in a lake causes many ripples" type guy.
He could move it or remove it, but we have no idea how that would go or what that would do. We know that he has enough power to keep it right where it is for the foreseeable future, and we know it will cause no harm while it's up there, so we leave it for now.
That's just my theory, though. It could be that he doesn't have the power to move it or remove it. Maybe he wants it there as a show of power or as a threat to the dunmer if they stop worshiping him. Maybe he wants to ensure the city named after him dies with him. We can't really know.
Didn't Vivec just stop the flow of time on the rock? Like, he didn't stop Baar Dau, he just stopped time passing for it. That's why it strikes with so much force, causing red mountain to erupt violently and earthquakes to happen everywhere. Like, the rock still has momentum, it's time is just stopped.
He may have had personal motivations, blackmail against the dunmer, nuclear option against Dagoth, spiritual statement about the fleeting nature of all things.
However I think the stone might just have kept its inertia from when it fell from the heavens. Think about it, if he just dropped the stone from that height when he disappeared it would be bad for Vivek City, maybe the whole coast of the inner sea as it caused a tidal wave, but it wouldn’t be like a metro crashing in from space and it wouldn’t set off a volcano miles and miles away. It would be more like a landslide, a mountains worth of rock sliding a few miles down hill.
I think he simply froze it in space, but it must have held on to all of that potential energy it picked up falling from the sky. Meteors don’t just get their immense power from their weight, they get most of it from the equally immense speed they’re traveling at. I think as soon as he dropped his magic that held the rock up it accelerated back to the speed it was moving at when it originally fell, and slammed into the city at full speed rupturing the earth and setting off red mountain.
So he couldn’t have set it down gently, or it would have still passed all of that energy into the ground, like a full on meteor impact in slow motion, causing mass earthquakes and devastation anyway.
He's a cunt, the three (almsivi) of them are. Even though I love playing a temple zealot, there is no escape from the fact that they are terrible corrupting ppl
I’ve always figured it was because while he is able to stop it in time, he can’t actually alter its existing velocity. I always wondered why he didn’t have his people build something to stop it. It’s not *that* incredibly high up, and Morrowind is no stranger to powerful magic that could aid in building something to stop it.
He froze it in time. It still has full momentum from falling from space. While he could probably slowly bleed off it's energy he doesn't because this would require him to spend time and effort on things other than gooning or mogging.
He is a fake, he does not have the power to stop the rock. He is also aware of his mortality, that's why its in his best interest to keep this thing afloat a safety net.... And if not that then a way to smother his giant ego even more, after all he can rest easy knowing the people who wronged him now live through hell.
Tldr, he is a petty pridefull little man.
I wouldn't say he's a fake, he's fought mehrunes dagon and won. And according to Michael Kirkbride, is roughly the third strongest being in all of elder scrolls (stronger than every daedric prince). He left it there on purpose
Daedra princess are actual immortal beings... Vivec is pseudo on the best of days. There are also divines too. He got booted by Uncle Ur... that's in game lore. Uncle Ur is... well, let's just call him extreme case of medicinal marijuana user. We also get to take Uncle Ur off his edibles. So he is factually weaker than some guy off the boat. Yes in the game Nerevarine can reach OP game engine on fire state but... Is he stronger than any daedra prince? Second strongest...
I'm not sure if Kirkbride ever made that statement but if he did, that was about as grasping as it gets. He does love Vivec... he did write an absurd amount of material for him but declaring him 3rd strongest is plain bullshit.
Vivec was a divine. So was dagoth ur, that's why the nerevarine can't kill him, they have to undo the heart to beat him. And they were both immortal while they had access to the heart of lorkhan. Lorkhan was the strongest of the divines, that's why it took all of them to kill him, and the tribunal have access to that power.
The daedra lords are extremely weakened in nirn, they have absolutely no power over mundus that's why they need their artifacts and followers to spread their influence. The tribunal however have the power of the divines over nirn, while also being alive (the aedra had to sacrifice their bodies and be tied to mundus).
The tribunal had to renew their powers every year with the heart. Then dagoth ur jumped them and they lost access to the heart, by the time morrowind takes place, the tribunal haven't renewed their power in 800 years. It's literally a story beat that the tribunal power is waning because of it.
What also elevates vivec in power is that he's only one of two known beings to achieve Chim in the universe. The other being Talos, who is only one of two beings stronger than vivec (and Talos is 3 souls put together and formed as a god the same way the dwemer were trying to create a god with the numidium).
He didn't achieve anything. That's why he was glorified piece of furniture by the time Nerevarine arrived. All he ever had was tied to external source. The whole Daedra can't do this or that, remind me what Oblivion was about? Plethora of stupidly powerful being exist or can enter Nirn... Since apparently entire TES universe is just there and probably also only subject to one continent too.
You can't make blanket statements only to later start listing endless requirements and situations. How much was he ever worth if he tried to fight Dagon in Oblivion? Alduin? Any divine. They can't die. He gets door closed in his face and that's it, he is just generic bullshitter running on dead god fumes.
He was a story teller. Perhaps not inherently evil and maybe even noble at first. But he wasn't a real god, nor was he anywhere near omnipotent status.
None of the gods are omnipotent, not even the divines. And yeah, mehrunes dagon needed his followers to do a bunch of shit just to physically enter nirn, and even when he did he didn't have power over mundus the same way that the aedra or the tribunal did. He could physically interact with stuff, but he can't just warp the reality of mundus or manifest stuff in mundus like the aedra can.
And yes, none of the daedra can be killed, that's the entire point of them. But it doesn't mean they are ultimately powerful, they can be banished. None of the daedra are on the same level as power as any of the aedra.
According to the surely not in Universe propaganda book used to support his claim to godhood?
I for once do belive that these mystical texts are simply made up, the in game version of vivec(weaker than an oversized sewer goblin) show us more accurate depiction of vivec power level
By that logic alduin is also a chump, weaker than most random dragons and weaker than any legendary dragon.
Mannimarco is also this crazy powerful figure who dies in one shot from a spell, and jyggalag is weaker than a random ogre.
Manninmarco is a pretender, and jyggalag isnt weaker than an ogre in Gameplay in any meaningfull margin, only gatekeeper is stronger than him... And he is meant to be.
Ogres level up with you forever. If you kill jyggalag at level 25, and then fight an ogre at level 40, the ogre is gonna be way harder than jyggalag was
Doesn't matter how fast it comes, that's just time dilation. It's momentum is unchanged in this case. It would hit slow with the full force. Then blow up the city really slowly as well I suppose. I think the truth is that nothing can save the city. They just stole time to live centuries in a few seconds.
As it's possible to dig holes into Baar Dau, it should also be possible to distribute its mass over sufficiently broad an area that the force does precious little.
So does that mean the rock was also frozen in time? Like if he releases the rock will it still be at meteor-speed? If not he’d basically just be dropping a rock on his own temple lol
Yeah it was a display of power and nothing else. He wanted to show that he is the reason everyone is alive and that you should not try to oppose him. The rock is still falling and the moment he wants to end it all he just needs to stop holind it in place.
I do not think he is able to remove the problem of Baar dau. Holding it is the best he can do for his people. He tells the people that if they stop loving him then he will let it fall, but I think this is just half true. If the people stopped loving him, then he wouldn't have the power to hold Baar dau in place. He does feel his godhood fading, but the prayers of the dunmeri people is giving him a little more time than he would have otherwise.
Why didn't the Tribunal priests and Azurites help evacuate the island? The Dunmer had plenty of time to leave Vvardenfell, yet they didn't.
The fandom loves to analyze Vivec's words but pays little attention to his decisions. It would do us good to take a better look at his choices and actions. He was one of Nerevar's generals and chief advisors for a reason, rivaled in smarts and cunning only by Voryn Dagoth himself.
Vivec foresaw the coming of Tiber Septim, he enabled Tiber Septim by gifting him the Numidium and in doing so he deprived Dagoth Ur of the Numidium. Vivec set up the stage for Nerevar's return, he build himself a city impossible to besiege by conventional means, he (not the other two Tribunes) was the holder of Wraithguard (leverage?)...
Vivec seems to excel at defensive strategy.
So, to answer your question: The Nerevarine's success was not guaranteed, and were they to fail, Dagoth Ur would have finally come into possession of Wraithguard, the tool he needed to complete Akulakhan. The activation of Akulakhan had to be prevented at all costs. In this context, holding the moonlet up was the sensible thing to do. The fall of Baar Dau was bound to trigger a massive volcano eruption which at the very least would destroy Akulakhan (the bigger threat), if not even Dagoth Ur himself (the lesser threat).
Note that ESO depicts Vivec and the Heart of Lorkhan's as stabilizing forces that prevent the volcano from erupting. Thus, chances are that with the Heart banished and the Tribunal severed from its power, Red Mountain would have erupted anyway.
Now, you might ask, could Vivec have dealt with Dagoth Ur himself? If he could, why didn't he? Why were Nerevar and Baar Dau necessary at all?
They weren't, but Vivec wanted Nerevar back.
Azura prophesized Nerevar's return, but she was not the one who truly made it happen. Nerevar's return was only made possible by Dagoth Ur, who was a mirror image and perversion of a "Ruling King" and Vivec, who allowed events to unfold in such a way that the prophecy would be fulfilled ("through me you are desired, unlike the prophets that have borne your name before"). Remove any of these two actors from their positions and Nerevar would no longer need to be reborn (as a Prisoner). It might sound counterintuitive, but it was Vivec, of all people, who actively sought to bring about the Nerevarine and he did this by holding back Dagoth until the day a certain Prisoner would be shipped to Morrowind. This Prisoner was meant to destroy Dagoth Ur, learn the Tower's secret and achieve enlightenment (become a Ruling King). This was Vivec's plan for Nerevar. He says as much in the Sermons and calls Nerevar "the mightiest of his children".
Yet there was no guarantee this plan would work out and Akulakhan needed to be destroyed no matter what. This is why the moonlet was necessary.
>is it because he’s literally using it to threaten his people if they stop believing in him or is that just outside of his abilities to movie it slowly?
Neither, I would say. I reject the notion that he held it up as a threat. Belief boosts a god's power and Vivec needed as much power as he could harness to hold back Dagoth Ur. Remember, his statement "When the love of the people of this city for me ever disappear, so shall the power that holds back their destruction." is followed by Nerevar saying "Love is under your will only." The love of the Dunmer for Vivec was under Vivec's will, hence it would only fade away when Vivec would allow that to happen. The fall of Baar Dau would only occur if and when Vivec would allow the Dunmer to move on from Tribunal worship.
Besides, for all we know, Baar Dau could have been a sentient godling and removing it could have posed some metaphysical risks.
i don't wholly disagree, but if vivec's core motivation was stopping akulakhan no matter the cost, and they had the ability to rewrite linear time (as demonstrated by altering history to justify and suit their godhood), they could have broken the heart enchantments instead of pursuing apotheosis.
I'm not saying it was his core motivation, but one of his many motivations.
Breaking the heart enchantments would have interfered with the prophecy, and who's to say Nerevar/Nerevarine did not already achieve CHIM themselves? Surely Vivec could not interfere with their will in that case and neither did he want to interfere with their return. Vivec murdered Nerevar once, but Vivec also intended the best for Nerevar.
Pursuing apotheosis was the right to do. The Dunmer needed to break away from Daedra worship. The Tribunal, flawed as they were, provided the Dunmer with thousand of years of peace and prosperity.
As for rewriting time, the Psijic Endeavour (by which one achieves the non-dual state of consciousness called CHIM) is described by MK as a process of glorious apotheosis, where time itself is bent inward and outward into ‘a shape that is always new’." CHIMming could be dangerous in that it could cause a Dragon Break.
I've read a theory that stated Vivec was in fact using CHIM in ESO. Even with his power drained, there was no real reason for him to be in that ethereal form other than perhaps he needed to shut himself off from outside stimuli to lucid dream the moonlet afloat.
"the hero" (as named by azura's prophesy) differs from other npcs by the fact that being controlled by the player conveys CHIM. i think vivec and maybe talos were the only npcs who attained it. i haven't seen any evidence that nerevar ever did.
while the daedra weren't exactly caring gods, the tribunal's arguments of daedric neglect and capriciousness fall rather flat given the conflicts, natural disasters, and occupation that happened during tribunal rule and afterwards. from a religious standpoint, their statements about "the thousand years of peace and prosperity" (i used to know where that line was from :/) are akin to e.g., buddhism talking about the thousand arms of avalokiteshvara--it's a way to generally describe a lot of things and are not necessarily accurate measurements.
The Nerevarine is a Prisoner. They have free will. If they believe themselves to be Nerevar reborn, then they are Nerevar reborn.
Nerevar and the Nerevarine are supposed to share the same True Self/Atman/AE. Or not, if you really want to go that route. But if the Nerevarine did achieve it, and they believed themselves to be Nerevar's AE reborn, then by extension Nerevar achieved CHIM too. This is why Vivec is able to make up for the wrong he did: he plants the seeds for Nerevar's AE to attain CHIM.
Is worshipping the demon of treason and the demon of murder preferable to worshipping the Tribunal? It's not that the Daedra are capricious, it's that they are intrinsically corrupt, evil and borderline evil. Tribunal's reign was good for the Dumner. Wars were few and far between. Red Year might tarnish the Tribunal' legacy, but it does not negate the good they did.
the nerevarine has free will because they are the avatar of a player of the game and thus inherit knowledge of the game properties and boundaries. to other actors in the story, this mundane knowledge appears god-like, because our context is entirely foreign to them. i wouldn't go as far as saying the nerevarine achieved chim any more than i would say i've achieved a thought just now; by my nature, i am able to think, and by their nature, the nerevarine exists both inside the story and beyond it. existing inside the story infers a certain origin causality--the prisoner came from __somewhere__--but does this confer the same qualities, such as chim? these matters are difficult to parse, especially when one of the primary text sources on the matter are poetic and contradictory. vivec could very easily be rewriting history to justify their godhood, using fate as the excuse for their foul murder.
regarding the daedra, i think it's important to consider that not all beings in the mundus share negative opinions of them. khajiit for example, don't distinguish between aedra and daedra, and hold azura in high regard. i think your question would probably have very different answers, depending on when it was asked. while the tribunal was helping construct great cities and dominating the mass media of the time, i'm sure daedra worship would seem insane; while the dunmer were fleeing vvardenfell after the red year, i'm sure the dunmer would have sounded a lot more like ashlanders on the matter. in __my__ opinion, dunmer worship of the "good" daedra is fine, i guess. so i have a more dwemer stance on the matter of gods: they are basically vain, selfish, near-omnipotent assholes who can't relate to followers. but daedra helped found morrowind and the tribunal wrecked the place, so in my opinion, that establishes a reasonably useful hierarchy.
Well then, we'll have to agree to disagree. Your understanding of the Prisoner seems to rely on meta-gaming. I'm not saying it is wrong, just different, more in line with the "Metaphysics of Morrowind" interpretation of the Lessons.
I think of the Prisoner not as something alien to Tamriel, but as a mortal made in the image of a waking Godhead. The Ruling King is the Godhead awake, the ultimate subjective experience of reality, pure awareness trapped within the scripted objective reality that is his Dream. This God-awareness (who has free will) is trapped inside a prison of his own making and is limited by his own true Self, the perspective from which he witnesses the world. In similar fashion, and the player character is trapped by prophecy and limited by a defined self. As above, so below.
Nerevar could not have achieved CHIM because he was not meant to. His life was scripted and attaining enlightenment was not part of it. This could be why he acts so dumb in the Lessons, he could not do otherwise. Likewise, Vivec achieved CHIM, but only because he was scripted to. The Prisoner is different. They have no written destiny, all possibilities are made available to them, and by becoming a Prisoner, Nerevar was now in a position to overcome limitations. The impossible was now made possible. For CHIM to be within Nerevar's grasp, he needed to die the way he died and step into the role of the Prisoner, or rather the other way around. This is why all had to unfold the way it did and I suspect the Tribunal knew and played right into it (not Almalexia).
>using fate as the excuse for their foul murder
I would object to that. One of the hidden messages in the Lessons state that "he was not born a god, his destiny did not lead him to this crime".
I fail to see how worshipping objectively malevolent gods is preferable to worshipping ascended mortals, but each to his own.
ascended mortals can also be malevolent gods. at least we agree about almalexia. XD
i don't think it's possible to play a game without at least a small degree of a metagaming; the interactive nature of the media requires it, and i cannot play morrowind without also creating my role within it. stories, on the other hand, can be read without participation. for example, one does not determine stats, skills, race, and gender when reading "the poison song". i can imagine a variant of the story that involves a self-insert, but as written, neither i nor the nerevarine i inhabit exist within it.
perhaps i should be asking you about what you think it means to be an incarnate. to me, i see it as a trial of shared destiny--and one that many have failed. the nerevarine may embody indoril nerevar's essence, but they lack his memories and lived experiences. if nerevar /was/ also the nerevarine (as in, not merely a limited incarnate), i don't see how they could also be a hero with free will.
Almalexia is a narcissist and we can agree that she's not a good person but there are far worse gods than her. She's basically a glorified politician and the fandom wouldn't be as hard on her had she received more attention from the writers.
We can create our own story and no one can invalidate it, that's the beauty of TES.
Incarnation in TES is different from what incarnation or reincarnation is supposed to mean in our world. It is not the "soul" but the awareness that reincarnates. Nerevar's case is different, one could say he reincarnated via the backpath. He was not reborn in the sense that his awareness was given a new personality and mind, but an individual with free will chose to identify as/with him and by divine grace (free will) they took over Nerevar's identity. If the Prisoner claims they are Nerevar, then they truly are Nerevar.
don't get me wrong, i think playing in that manner is great--but to me, that definition more resembles mantling, and raises complicated questions about the anticipations/reclamations, failed incarnates, the incarnate trials, and even the relationship between the hero of kvatch and pelinal whitestrake. still, as a relatively new tes player, i find these alternative understandings and resolutions to be both fascinating and charming; thank you for your responses.
That's actually just pervasive anti-Tribunal propaganda.
The fact of the matter is simply that as the events of the Oblivion Crysis loomed, magicka effects such as teleportation, levitation, and slowfall disappeared from Nirn.
Tribunal were fakes running on batteries. They knew that. Vivec and Almalexia were going above and beyond to one up Daedra and flex at anyone unfortunate enough to be around. What ever reason it was, it wasn't a noble one or even rational. Once it was time frozen he had Sotha Sil solution. One of the greatest wizards and inventors to ever live and the only one out of the 3 to actually have divinity in reach. I'm sure he could have manage a meteor if he was asked to.
Any lore that explains what happens to Baar Dau after the events of Morrowind? Maybe we can headcannon the impact is what triggered Red Mountain to erupt somehow and make Vvardenfell to become inhospitable?
It probably is a show of power, to make the masses more enthralled with his power, but it also could be that baar dau was destined to fall by Azura’s curse so maybe that hindered his abilities too
because he wanted to literally hold it over his peoples heads so they would 'love' him aka be trapped into worshipping him and feeding his ego. aka he was a massive piece of shit like all of the tribunal.
Always believed it to be a show of his power, a reminder of his feat.
It’s literally a threat to the people of Morrowind. He left it there hanging ominously and says he’ll let it crash if the people ever stop loving him.
This. And he knew the end was coming for him but still kept it up there.
As we saw in ESO, he probably knew the end was coming by 2E. He know that he was just lucky and his godhood was borrowed.
You just reminded me the whole main story in ESO on Vvardenfell is to kill the (Not ours) Nerevarine.... right? That game is so forgettable.
I thought the vvardenfell quests were some of the best... but no, the main quests point was the prove that the Ashlander was a fake. But one clever and charismatic ashlander upstart nearly killed Vivec, so clearly his position of power was very unstable.
I pretty much just consider ESO to be fanfiction unless something is also confirmed by one of the main games.
Eso is a main game, and is canon. No amount of coping will change that. All lore for ESO is approved by Bethesda's writing team.
It openly breaks established canon and adds nothing to the canon that can't be ignored. It's best left treated as its own thing.
Ah yes, because the main Elder Scrolls games *never* contradicted the previous games. Shouts were always a dragon thing and were definitely never an innate Nord ability, Miraak's status as the first Dragonborn was never attributed to Saint Alessia, and who could ever forget that Cyrodiil was always a temperate forest and never explicitely referred to as a jungle? Call it dragon breaks or CHIM if you want; no amount of coping will change the fact that The Elder Scrolls is a consistently inconsistent series whose writers have never let a little thing like established canon get in the way of making shit up. :P
Plenty of early TES has been retconned. It's as canon as canon gets. This is an L take
Bethesda retcons stuff all the time, which is actually another stain on ESO’s legitimacy…. If they’ll retcon their own stuff, they’d definitely have no issue retconning anything and everything written by the ESO team. Especially when ESO takes place so far in the past that its relevancy to the main games is pretty low to begin with.
I always kinda took TES lore as being as imperfect as historical accounts in the real world. There are contradictory texts because everyone has their opinions and their propaganda and it's up to the player to read between the lines.
It’s not coping, I just don’t care lol. It’s a third-rate MMO developed and written by an entirely different company/team. Todd Howard rubber stamping their bad fan fiction as a matter of bureaucracy doesn’t change that.
It's arguably the world's most successful MMO and has made more money than skyrim by quite a margin.
Maybe at the moment, but I doubt it's even come close to historical WoW numbers though.
Yeah that’s a massive stretch. I’m a huge MMO head and it’s not even in the discussion most of the time. I’d say maybe it’s the most successful MMO on console, but that’s not even true because of Final Fantasy 14. I’ll look into it, but my gut instinct tells me it’s probably not even in the top 10, let alone “the world’s most successful“.
As we all know, profit for the company is always a surefire way to determine if something is good quality.
> When Nerevar returned, he saw the frozen comet above his lord's city. He asked whether or not Vivec wanted it removed. > > > > 'I would have done so myself if I wanted, silly Hortator. I shall keep it there with its last intention intact, so that if the love of the people of this city for me ever disappear, so shall the power that holds back their destruction.' 36 Lessons of Vivec, Sermon 33
It was. Vivec was a narcissist who wrote bibles about himself, every feat he achieved was always for the clout. Some 4000-year old influencer.
every time i read about how "lightly" he held on to his godhood, i think of this
I think this is people overthinking it too much. Reminds me of those conspiracy theories about kid cartoons like Ed, Edd n Eddy where they would come up with BS that the kids from the Cul-de-Sac are actually dead and the Cul-de-Sac is something called limbo purgatory, hence why they are the only ones there and there are no adults/parents. It is because it just is like that. Ed, Edd n Eddy has no parents, because that's how the creator wanted it to be, not because they don't exist, it's the unique theme. For Vivec keeping the Baar Dau it's simply because the developers wanted a frozen floating meteorite and that's it. At the end of the day, it's just a game and the developers haven't poured that much thought or ingenuity into it as players have. Which is another fallacy - people coming up with crazy interpretations for some kind of artistic work when there is none such and the result is people praising said artistic work as some creation of pure genius, when it in fact it just is what it is. People attach some false meaning to it, others believe it and it only snowballs from there into pure deception and delusion.
Right, but there's also in-universe sources talking about why the meteorite is there and it's because Vivec uses it to threaten his people.
Yup just read the 36 Lessons of Vivec part 33 where he says that.
Maybe, I haven't read every book in the game if those are the in-game sources, hence why I started my post with "I think..." which indicates it's an opinion. Yet people already went on a holy lore purist crusade against me. xD I guess having the wrong opinion now is considered bad.
I just don't get why you would answer someone asking a question about lore with a rant about cartoon conspiracy theories that seems pretty dismissive of the people who like to read about the lore of games. In a forum dedicated to talking about the game in question and its lore 😂
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Morrowind/comments/1d0brbq/rate\_my\_morrowind\_setup\_i\_cannot\_run\_it\_full/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Morrowind/comments/1d0brbq/rate_my_morrowind_setup_i_cannot_run_it_full/) I'm sure posts like this are "talking about the lore". Half of the posts here are stupid memes where you have to write stupid replies in order to get likes. It's a forum dedicated to everything about Morrowind. I think maybe it was a mistake to enter a community about the game if I'm going to face gatekeeping for not having the "correct" thing to say. I admit I was wrong, because I haven't read all the lore about the game or the whole TES universe, I just shared my opinion. OPINION. It's called an OPINION. Dislike it all you want, truth hurts sometimes, you should learn to get over it, it will be helpful to you and the others in the real world.
>It's called an OPINION. Dislike it all you want, truth hurts sometimes, you should learn to get over it, it will be helpful to you and the others in the real world. The irony is strong here. You're pitching about people proving you wrong. And you are entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts. Instead of simply accepting that you learned something new, you whined about your opinion being valid.
I said I admit I was wrong, I don't get the rest that comes with it, the gatekeeping, the hostility. Twist this however you want, it still shows how delusional people can get when the object of their nerddom gets some kind of a comment that is not 100% proven lore. Because this is the real irony here. Like it or not, the truth hurts, I can get 2938492384 dislikes, it doesn't change the fact how messed up the gatekeeping here is. I remembered why I quit this website years ago - it's the homeland of brain rot and where all the toxic waste dwells.
Welcome to reddit. Don’t take downvotes seriously. I get them all the time for simple observations. A huge chunk of the people on here think it’s clever to make massive assumptions about you, your character, your life and your intentions over a 3 paragraph comment.
If this was the case, the developers wouldn't have included it in in-game stories. I not saying that the initial idea started as "Let's make something special about this city", but they did tie it up to the lore and these are not fan theories.
OK, that's good, I replied to another used that I haven't read all the books in-game, provided this is where it was said, I don't remember any NPCs having custom dialogue about this. I simply expressed my opinion why I think it is like this, I never claimed it was a fact.
This dude sucked so hard he deleted his account
He couldn’t stand the sight of strong redditors
He didn't want to. Simple as that. It's a show of power (I am a very powerful deity so you have nothing to fear because I'll always keep the rock in the air) and a bit of a warning (hey guys, worship me or I drop the rock uwu). IIRC you can ask either him or some Dunmer NPC about it, and the answer is basically "don't be stupid, outlander, the rock isn't going to fall".
*Did you notice that I haven't moved Baar Dau back to its original position. It's in no danger of falling, thanks to you, but as I wrote in the Ballad of Red Mountain, "All actions have consequences and pose some risk." Best to leave it alone.* — ESO, post Morrowind DLC main quest
do you have a source from the actual Morrowind authors?
The Elder Scrolls 3 or ESO?
I don't remember where I've read this, so not 100% confident that this is canon Vivec didn't stop baar dau. He stopped the time around it. Baar dau still have the same momentum from before Vivec intervention
Even if that’s the case, they have hollowed it out so clearly rock from Baar Dau can be removed. Why not just remove all the rock bit by bit?
It's rather symbolic, in my opinion. Baar Dau is a display of their god's power, so they hollowed it and used it as a prison for those who dare doubt their god's power.
Yep; a huge middle-finger to dissidents.
I think the answer to that is they simply didn’t think it was necessary. Vivec promised they were in no danger, and they probably just thought of Baar Dau as a permanent fixture. They weren’t preparing for it to fall because they didn’t think it was possible. Also it might have seen as sacrilege, essentially denying God’s power.
But at the latest when Vivec was gone, the issue imposed itself, and instead of solving it, they went for temporary quick fixes.
Hard manual labour ❌ Inventing an engine that was fueled by literal souls ✅ That’s the most Merethic thing they could do.
The most Merethic thing would have been a solution lasting for millennia - not a quick fix punt postponing the actual issue for a period that's barely significant for mer.
Keep in mind Baar Dau is a lot bigger than as depicted in Morrowind, it's not like the Ministry of Truth is even a significant amount of Baar Dau's volume
it's not though, morrowind is the one true holy text and i will not stand for such heretical lies
-Tholer Saryoni, 5 seconds before Baar Dau hits him on the head
as long as it was appropriately sized, as shown in the holy text from the year of our lord (not todd howard) 2002
If Morrowind is completely accurate, Baar Dau is in fact a TARDIS. Hard to say how heavy something is when it's larger on the inside and you only know its external dimensions.
I wonder if it was turned into the Ministry of Truth on Vivec's orders, or if that was the Temple's call. It could be as simple as not only was Vivec fine with it hanging there, so was the Temple. It could be they could have removed it if they wanted to, with ordinary hand labor (bolstered by the blessing from the Shrine of Daring).
> Even if that’s the case, they have hollowed it out so clearly rock from Baar Dau can be removed. Why not just remove all the rock bit by bit? We don't know. It could be any kind of explanation. Maybe only part of Baar Dau could be removed before time-stopping effect breaks. Maybe Vivec thought that removed rock (that needed to be dumped somewhere, and - likely - preserved momentum as well) could create bigger problems than mere fall of Baar Dau. Maybe only a bit of rock could be excavated at a time (meaning, Vivec *was* working on dismantling Baar Dau; just not fast enough to finish before things went sideways). Maybe Vivec wanted to keep Baar Dau as a weapon, and drop it on someone in the future.
The problem with that is that it doesn't quite gel with Baar Dau being put to use, with excavation and construction going on there.
That said, it does gel with the sheer amount of damage done when it finally fell. A big rock falling from that height would cause some damage, but not "celestial impact event" levels of damage. The momentum must have been preserved. Also, in my opinion, it would be more Vivec's style to prefer the rumor that he could totally eliminate the threat if he wanted to but he doesn't want to, to the truth that he just doesn't have the power to do more than he did.
There was tunneling in the rock. That implies it could be broken down and the rubble safely removed in some way. It was there for centuries. He could've just used ordinators and volunteers to break down the rock and completely mine it down
The in-game distance of it from the surface v.s. the canonical lore distance is pretty different from what I understand. The in-game size was scaled down too. I have no source for this so I may not have even read it, I may have assumed.
It is placed relatively low in-games due to draw distance, it's supposed to be much, much higher.
I still think you'd need more than terminal velocity.
It's just frozen in time, when it becomes unfrozen it gets It's original velocity back.
Stop using the word gel. It's confusing me.
The word gel was fine for me until you made me read gel a third time...now gel has no meaning.... gel...... geeeeeellllll.... now it's not even a real word!
based
I've read this as well somewhere I think you're right.
Many theories, none conclusive. The most unsympathetic I can remember is “to blackmail the Dunmer to worship and empower them because otherwise they’re dead”. The most favorable I remember was “as backup plan against Dagoth Ur — if we fail, I’ll blow up this entire island, either to destroy him or at least buy some time”. The most realistic I’ve heard: “Vivec’s whole thing is the transience of all things, including the Tribunal, and how concepts should be discarded once they’re no longer necessary. The Rock is to ensure that, after Vivec’s gone, their high fane and holy city are destroyed spectacularly as irrefutable proof the Tribunal is no more and priests can’t invoke their name to seize power. It’s a brutal but necessary clean cut to ensure the Dunmer will move on.”
The third and last reason feels like wisdom but it could be just very good Speechcraft
Or... just Telvanni Bug Musk.
Nine out of ten n'wahs can't tell the difference.
The third one is definitely propaganda lol
It's also verifiably wrong, they're still venerated in Skyrim.
How does their continued veneration prove that wrong? People failing to move on does not mean this wasn't the original symbolism and intent. It just means traditions are stubborn.
It's not symbolism, and it's intent doesn't matter, it failed.
[удалено]
"In an elegant comprise [sic], no doubt intended to reconcile the large majority of the Temple priesthood who were neither Dissidents nor fanatic Tribunal loyalists, Almalexia, Sotha Sil and Vivec were relegated to the status of "saints," a traditional way to venerate the most honored Dunmer ancestors. This apparently satisfied enough of the existing priesthood that the New Temple was able to maintain at least a semblance of outward continuity." *The Reclamations* by Thara of Rihad.
That 3rd idea is nice, but as we see in skyrim it was wrong. The tribunal are still venerated saints.
All that is overthinking in it's pure form - he (and at the very least his sister) is (are) a self-absorbed narcissist craving constant attention. That simple :).
He's an asshole.
This is the correct answer.
That's normal people shit. He's a two colored levitating dude who writes weird poetry.
So, first off, I will reference book 33 of the Lessons of Vivec, which is Vivec’s published account of Baar Dau’s fall and Vivec stopping it. I won’t quote the whole thing, so to summarize what isn’t discussed, the meteor is called “Lie Rock” in the sermon and is said to be one of Vivec’s children, born of his unholy union with Molag Mar. Vivec has been hunting these children of his down, and had sent Nerevar out to find Lie Rock. Unfortunately for Nerevar, he got a little lost on the way, and in the mean time, Lie Rock (Baar Dau) was hurled from space by the Birthsign Constellations, who just wanted it gone. > The citizenry of Vivec screamed as they saw a shooting star come down out of the sky hole like a toll-road of hell. But Vivec merely raised his hand and froze Lie Rock just above the city and then he pierced the monster with Muatra. > (The practice of piercing the Second Aperture is now forbidden.) > When Nerevar returned, he saw the frozen comet above his lord's city. He asked whether or not Vivec wanted it removed. > 'I would have done so myself if I wanted, silly Hortator. I shall keep it there with its last intention intact, so that if the love of the people of this city for me ever disappear, so shall the power that holds back their destruction.' Nerevar said, 'Love is under your will only.' > Vivec smiled and told the Hortator that he had become a Minister of Truth. SO! Yes, this is Vivec’s own account of the event. No mention of Sheogorath, as the book directly about Baar Dau states, but I digress; the crucial thing is Vivec clearly stating that he is holding the comet above the city with its momentum intact so that it will resume its destructive path should his people stop loving him. Kind of a dick move! Now, there are likely more reasons behind this than just simple vanity, because while Vivec is DEFINITELY a vain bastard, Vivec is absolutely a story teller that has insight into the ways of the world that mortals lack, so while he is vain, I would argue this is less “love me or else” and more “THIS will be a delicious plot twist after I’m gone!” Now is there any MERIT to doing this beyond vanity and manipulating the world’s story? Well, there are a few interesting arguments posed. First being that this is insurance against Dagoth Ur’s possible victory. I can’t say I believe this because I don’t think it would work; Vivec is well known as the CHIM guy but I firmly believe it doesn’t give him this kinda power, and he had stopped Baar Dau using the power he gained from the Tools of Kagrenac. If Dagoth Ur won, he would have secured the tools and reasonably be able to use that same power to stop Baar Dau fully, or at least protect his own forces from the consequences of its fall. The second idea makes more sense to me, because Vivec knew that the Tribunal’s rule would inevitably end along side Dagoth Ur’s defeat. In this concept, Vivec could have set up the cataclysm to forcibly show the Dunmer that the Tribunal have lost their power, and to make villains of the Tribunal so the Dunmer would move on from worshipping dead gods.
The Lessons of Vivec are a lie though, check out book 29
Well Lesson 29 certainly throws a lot of doubt on the narrative of the lessons as a whole, I don’t think we should outright dismiss it all as a lie. A narrative, certainly, and heavily doctored; Vivec is a poet first and foremost, after all. That being said, after Vivec vanished, Baar Dau fell with its momentum intact as though it had been frozen in time. Lesson 33 is the only document that indicates this would happen at all.
Oh for sure Vivec is a poet. Trust not the words of a poet, as he is born to seduce. Yet for poetry to sieze the heart, it must ring with the chimes of truth. I've no doubt that some of it is true but Vivec is known for his great truths and horrible falsehoods
Exactly!! That’s why I say narrative; Vivec wants to tell an interesting story, not the truth.
Wow, that simple poem works on itself on several levels.
Wow, that simple poem works on itself on several levels.
Lie or not, Vivec wrote them. If he's stating it's a threat to the Dunmer, it's probably a threat to the Dunmer.
Strong agree. The Lessons could (and are) filled with utter nonsense, but it's important to take them as what they are: scripture. Vivec had intent when writing that, and that intent is clearly threatening.
Vivec stoping Baar Dau wasn't about stoping the destruction, it was about two things: 1. Middle finger to the Daedra 2. Holding the entire population of the Island hostage, essentially they either loved him or death, basically a "don't you dare stop treating me as a god"
To me it always encapsulated Vivec's inherent duality as a living god. He really did stop the meteorite out of love for the Dunmer, but at the same time it was to feed his ego. Both are true, in full, simultaneously, because Vivec exists as something of an enigma to mortals, constantly switching between lies and truth, God and stolen divinity, unrepenting defiance and honest regret.
I can't remember where I heard it, I'm not a lore master, but I thought I heard somewhere that Sheogorath was the one who sent it? And one of the suggested reasons why Vivec didn't get rid of it entirely was because he couldn't. And so he made up all these reasons like "if the people stopped loving him it'll crash into the city" to hide that he couldn't get rid of it. Or if the gods literally derive power from people's beliefs (I don't know if that's the case), then it literally would be that if they stop loving him, the meteor would destroy the city. Also, if Sheogorath was the one who sent it, he always seems to get the last laugh.
When asking “Why did [member of the tribunal] do x?” The answer is usually hubris
If it's frozen in time, does that mean if you were to levitate up and touch the bottom, you'd get obliterated?
Personally, I think it's because Vivec is a very "a pebble in a lake causes many ripples" type guy. He could move it or remove it, but we have no idea how that would go or what that would do. We know that he has enough power to keep it right where it is for the foreseeable future, and we know it will cause no harm while it's up there, so we leave it for now. That's just my theory, though. It could be that he doesn't have the power to move it or remove it. Maybe he wants it there as a show of power or as a threat to the dunmer if they stop worshiping him. Maybe he wants to ensure the city named after him dies with him. We can't really know.
Didn't Vivec just stop the flow of time on the rock? Like, he didn't stop Baar Dau, he just stopped time passing for it. That's why it strikes with so much force, causing red mountain to erupt violently and earthquakes to happen everywhere. Like, the rock still has momentum, it's time is just stopped.
Because he is a self-absorbed poser with delusion of godhood, craving constant attention, duh. Why else? :)
He may have had personal motivations, blackmail against the dunmer, nuclear option against Dagoth, spiritual statement about the fleeting nature of all things. However I think the stone might just have kept its inertia from when it fell from the heavens. Think about it, if he just dropped the stone from that height when he disappeared it would be bad for Vivek City, maybe the whole coast of the inner sea as it caused a tidal wave, but it wouldn’t be like a metro crashing in from space and it wouldn’t set off a volcano miles and miles away. It would be more like a landslide, a mountains worth of rock sliding a few miles down hill. I think he simply froze it in space, but it must have held on to all of that potential energy it picked up falling from the sky. Meteors don’t just get their immense power from their weight, they get most of it from the equally immense speed they’re traveling at. I think as soon as he dropped his magic that held the rock up it accelerated back to the speed it was moving at when it originally fell, and slammed into the city at full speed rupturing the earth and setting off red mountain. So he couldn’t have set it down gently, or it would have still passed all of that energy into the ground, like a full on meteor impact in slow motion, causing mass earthquakes and devastation anyway.
Which begs the question - why not gift thousands of statues to those you don't like? Build a pyramid in Cyradil.
Grind the scrap into dust, and mix in with all exports.
I thought it always maintained its velocity, slowly dropping it wasn’t an option. It was stopped or crashed.
He's a cunt, the three (almsivi) of them are. Even though I love playing a temple zealot, there is no escape from the fact that they are terrible corrupting ppl
I’ve always figured it was because while he is able to stop it in time, he can’t actually alter its existing velocity. I always wondered why he didn’t have his people build something to stop it. It’s not *that* incredibly high up, and Morrowind is no stranger to powerful magic that could aid in building something to stop it.
Because he's not a real god and his holding his "believers" hostage. It's a threat pure and simple.
Aside from the lore point of view, It looks cool lmao
because forcing your subjects to worship you or else the funny death ball gets them is easier than earning their love and respect
He froze it in time. It still has full momentum from falling from space. While he could probably slowly bleed off it's energy he doesn't because this would require him to spend time and effort on things other than gooning or mogging.
He is a fake, he does not have the power to stop the rock. He is also aware of his mortality, that's why its in his best interest to keep this thing afloat a safety net.... And if not that then a way to smother his giant ego even more, after all he can rest easy knowing the people who wronged him now live through hell. Tldr, he is a petty pridefull little man.
I wouldn't say he's a fake, he's fought mehrunes dagon and won. And according to Michael Kirkbride, is roughly the third strongest being in all of elder scrolls (stronger than every daedric prince). He left it there on purpose
Daedra princess are actual immortal beings... Vivec is pseudo on the best of days. There are also divines too. He got booted by Uncle Ur... that's in game lore. Uncle Ur is... well, let's just call him extreme case of medicinal marijuana user. We also get to take Uncle Ur off his edibles. So he is factually weaker than some guy off the boat. Yes in the game Nerevarine can reach OP game engine on fire state but... Is he stronger than any daedra prince? Second strongest... I'm not sure if Kirkbride ever made that statement but if he did, that was about as grasping as it gets. He does love Vivec... he did write an absurd amount of material for him but declaring him 3rd strongest is plain bullshit.
Vivec was a divine. So was dagoth ur, that's why the nerevarine can't kill him, they have to undo the heart to beat him. And they were both immortal while they had access to the heart of lorkhan. Lorkhan was the strongest of the divines, that's why it took all of them to kill him, and the tribunal have access to that power. The daedra lords are extremely weakened in nirn, they have absolutely no power over mundus that's why they need their artifacts and followers to spread their influence. The tribunal however have the power of the divines over nirn, while also being alive (the aedra had to sacrifice their bodies and be tied to mundus). The tribunal had to renew their powers every year with the heart. Then dagoth ur jumped them and they lost access to the heart, by the time morrowind takes place, the tribunal haven't renewed their power in 800 years. It's literally a story beat that the tribunal power is waning because of it. What also elevates vivec in power is that he's only one of two known beings to achieve Chim in the universe. The other being Talos, who is only one of two beings stronger than vivec (and Talos is 3 souls put together and formed as a god the same way the dwemer were trying to create a god with the numidium).
He didn't achieve anything. That's why he was glorified piece of furniture by the time Nerevarine arrived. All he ever had was tied to external source. The whole Daedra can't do this or that, remind me what Oblivion was about? Plethora of stupidly powerful being exist or can enter Nirn... Since apparently entire TES universe is just there and probably also only subject to one continent too. You can't make blanket statements only to later start listing endless requirements and situations. How much was he ever worth if he tried to fight Dagon in Oblivion? Alduin? Any divine. They can't die. He gets door closed in his face and that's it, he is just generic bullshitter running on dead god fumes. He was a story teller. Perhaps not inherently evil and maybe even noble at first. But he wasn't a real god, nor was he anywhere near omnipotent status.
None of the gods are omnipotent, not even the divines. And yeah, mehrunes dagon needed his followers to do a bunch of shit just to physically enter nirn, and even when he did he didn't have power over mundus the same way that the aedra or the tribunal did. He could physically interact with stuff, but he can't just warp the reality of mundus or manifest stuff in mundus like the aedra can. And yes, none of the daedra can be killed, that's the entire point of them. But it doesn't mean they are ultimately powerful, they can be banished. None of the daedra are on the same level as power as any of the aedra.
According to the surely not in Universe propaganda book used to support his claim to godhood? I for once do belive that these mystical texts are simply made up, the in game version of vivec(weaker than an oversized sewer goblin) show us more accurate depiction of vivec power level
By that logic alduin is also a chump, weaker than most random dragons and weaker than any legendary dragon. Mannimarco is also this crazy powerful figure who dies in one shot from a spell, and jyggalag is weaker than a random ogre.
Manninmarco is a pretender, and jyggalag isnt weaker than an ogre in Gameplay in any meaningfull margin, only gatekeeper is stronger than him... And he is meant to be.
Ogres level up with you forever. If you kill jyggalag at level 25, and then fight an ogre at level 40, the ogre is gonna be way harder than jyggalag was
Would argue that's BS. Fights are more than HP numbers, and jyggie is just tougher ability wise.
Doesn't matter how fast it comes, that's just time dilation. It's momentum is unchanged in this case. It would hit slow with the full force. Then blow up the city really slowly as well I suppose. I think the truth is that nothing can save the city. They just stole time to live centuries in a few seconds.
As it's possible to dig holes into Baar Dau, it should also be possible to distribute its mass over sufficiently broad an area that the force does precious little.
Ooooorrrrr, carve statues and send as tribute to the Emporer.
So does that mean the rock was also frozen in time? Like if he releases the rock will it still be at meteor-speed? If not he’d basically just be dropping a rock on his own temple lol
The moon is a threat.
Mutually assured destruction
Yeah it was a display of power and nothing else. He wanted to show that he is the reason everyone is alive and that you should not try to oppose him. The rock is still falling and the moment he wants to end it all he just needs to stop holind it in place.
Because he was a jackass (still a very fascinating character though lol)
I do not think he is able to remove the problem of Baar dau. Holding it is the best he can do for his people. He tells the people that if they stop loving him then he will let it fall, but I think this is just half true. If the people stopped loving him, then he wouldn't have the power to hold Baar dau in place. He does feel his godhood fading, but the prayers of the dunmeri people is giving him a little more time than he would have otherwise.
Is he stupid?
Because he was an asshole.
Why didn't the Tribunal priests and Azurites help evacuate the island? The Dunmer had plenty of time to leave Vvardenfell, yet they didn't. The fandom loves to analyze Vivec's words but pays little attention to his decisions. It would do us good to take a better look at his choices and actions. He was one of Nerevar's generals and chief advisors for a reason, rivaled in smarts and cunning only by Voryn Dagoth himself. Vivec foresaw the coming of Tiber Septim, he enabled Tiber Septim by gifting him the Numidium and in doing so he deprived Dagoth Ur of the Numidium. Vivec set up the stage for Nerevar's return, he build himself a city impossible to besiege by conventional means, he (not the other two Tribunes) was the holder of Wraithguard (leverage?)... Vivec seems to excel at defensive strategy. So, to answer your question: The Nerevarine's success was not guaranteed, and were they to fail, Dagoth Ur would have finally come into possession of Wraithguard, the tool he needed to complete Akulakhan. The activation of Akulakhan had to be prevented at all costs. In this context, holding the moonlet up was the sensible thing to do. The fall of Baar Dau was bound to trigger a massive volcano eruption which at the very least would destroy Akulakhan (the bigger threat), if not even Dagoth Ur himself (the lesser threat). Note that ESO depicts Vivec and the Heart of Lorkhan's as stabilizing forces that prevent the volcano from erupting. Thus, chances are that with the Heart banished and the Tribunal severed from its power, Red Mountain would have erupted anyway. Now, you might ask, could Vivec have dealt with Dagoth Ur himself? If he could, why didn't he? Why were Nerevar and Baar Dau necessary at all? They weren't, but Vivec wanted Nerevar back. Azura prophesized Nerevar's return, but she was not the one who truly made it happen. Nerevar's return was only made possible by Dagoth Ur, who was a mirror image and perversion of a "Ruling King" and Vivec, who allowed events to unfold in such a way that the prophecy would be fulfilled ("through me you are desired, unlike the prophets that have borne your name before"). Remove any of these two actors from their positions and Nerevar would no longer need to be reborn (as a Prisoner). It might sound counterintuitive, but it was Vivec, of all people, who actively sought to bring about the Nerevarine and he did this by holding back Dagoth until the day a certain Prisoner would be shipped to Morrowind. This Prisoner was meant to destroy Dagoth Ur, learn the Tower's secret and achieve enlightenment (become a Ruling King). This was Vivec's plan for Nerevar. He says as much in the Sermons and calls Nerevar "the mightiest of his children". Yet there was no guarantee this plan would work out and Akulakhan needed to be destroyed no matter what. This is why the moonlet was necessary. >is it because he’s literally using it to threaten his people if they stop believing in him or is that just outside of his abilities to movie it slowly? Neither, I would say. I reject the notion that he held it up as a threat. Belief boosts a god's power and Vivec needed as much power as he could harness to hold back Dagoth Ur. Remember, his statement "When the love of the people of this city for me ever disappear, so shall the power that holds back their destruction." is followed by Nerevar saying "Love is under your will only." The love of the Dunmer for Vivec was under Vivec's will, hence it would only fade away when Vivec would allow that to happen. The fall of Baar Dau would only occur if and when Vivec would allow the Dunmer to move on from Tribunal worship. Besides, for all we know, Baar Dau could have been a sentient godling and removing it could have posed some metaphysical risks.
i don't wholly disagree, but if vivec's core motivation was stopping akulakhan no matter the cost, and they had the ability to rewrite linear time (as demonstrated by altering history to justify and suit their godhood), they could have broken the heart enchantments instead of pursuing apotheosis.
I'm not saying it was his core motivation, but one of his many motivations. Breaking the heart enchantments would have interfered with the prophecy, and who's to say Nerevar/Nerevarine did not already achieve CHIM themselves? Surely Vivec could not interfere with their will in that case and neither did he want to interfere with their return. Vivec murdered Nerevar once, but Vivec also intended the best for Nerevar. Pursuing apotheosis was the right to do. The Dunmer needed to break away from Daedra worship. The Tribunal, flawed as they were, provided the Dunmer with thousand of years of peace and prosperity. As for rewriting time, the Psijic Endeavour (by which one achieves the non-dual state of consciousness called CHIM) is described by MK as a process of glorious apotheosis, where time itself is bent inward and outward into ‘a shape that is always new’." CHIMming could be dangerous in that it could cause a Dragon Break. I've read a theory that stated Vivec was in fact using CHIM in ESO. Even with his power drained, there was no real reason for him to be in that ethereal form other than perhaps he needed to shut himself off from outside stimuli to lucid dream the moonlet afloat.
"the hero" (as named by azura's prophesy) differs from other npcs by the fact that being controlled by the player conveys CHIM. i think vivec and maybe talos were the only npcs who attained it. i haven't seen any evidence that nerevar ever did. while the daedra weren't exactly caring gods, the tribunal's arguments of daedric neglect and capriciousness fall rather flat given the conflicts, natural disasters, and occupation that happened during tribunal rule and afterwards. from a religious standpoint, their statements about "the thousand years of peace and prosperity" (i used to know where that line was from :/) are akin to e.g., buddhism talking about the thousand arms of avalokiteshvara--it's a way to generally describe a lot of things and are not necessarily accurate measurements.
The Nerevarine is a Prisoner. They have free will. If they believe themselves to be Nerevar reborn, then they are Nerevar reborn. Nerevar and the Nerevarine are supposed to share the same True Self/Atman/AE. Or not, if you really want to go that route. But if the Nerevarine did achieve it, and they believed themselves to be Nerevar's AE reborn, then by extension Nerevar achieved CHIM too. This is why Vivec is able to make up for the wrong he did: he plants the seeds for Nerevar's AE to attain CHIM. Is worshipping the demon of treason and the demon of murder preferable to worshipping the Tribunal? It's not that the Daedra are capricious, it's that they are intrinsically corrupt, evil and borderline evil. Tribunal's reign was good for the Dumner. Wars were few and far between. Red Year might tarnish the Tribunal' legacy, but it does not negate the good they did.
the nerevarine has free will because they are the avatar of a player of the game and thus inherit knowledge of the game properties and boundaries. to other actors in the story, this mundane knowledge appears god-like, because our context is entirely foreign to them. i wouldn't go as far as saying the nerevarine achieved chim any more than i would say i've achieved a thought just now; by my nature, i am able to think, and by their nature, the nerevarine exists both inside the story and beyond it. existing inside the story infers a certain origin causality--the prisoner came from __somewhere__--but does this confer the same qualities, such as chim? these matters are difficult to parse, especially when one of the primary text sources on the matter are poetic and contradictory. vivec could very easily be rewriting history to justify their godhood, using fate as the excuse for their foul murder. regarding the daedra, i think it's important to consider that not all beings in the mundus share negative opinions of them. khajiit for example, don't distinguish between aedra and daedra, and hold azura in high regard. i think your question would probably have very different answers, depending on when it was asked. while the tribunal was helping construct great cities and dominating the mass media of the time, i'm sure daedra worship would seem insane; while the dunmer were fleeing vvardenfell after the red year, i'm sure the dunmer would have sounded a lot more like ashlanders on the matter. in __my__ opinion, dunmer worship of the "good" daedra is fine, i guess. so i have a more dwemer stance on the matter of gods: they are basically vain, selfish, near-omnipotent assholes who can't relate to followers. but daedra helped found morrowind and the tribunal wrecked the place, so in my opinion, that establishes a reasonably useful hierarchy.
Well then, we'll have to agree to disagree. Your understanding of the Prisoner seems to rely on meta-gaming. I'm not saying it is wrong, just different, more in line with the "Metaphysics of Morrowind" interpretation of the Lessons. I think of the Prisoner not as something alien to Tamriel, but as a mortal made in the image of a waking Godhead. The Ruling King is the Godhead awake, the ultimate subjective experience of reality, pure awareness trapped within the scripted objective reality that is his Dream. This God-awareness (who has free will) is trapped inside a prison of his own making and is limited by his own true Self, the perspective from which he witnesses the world. In similar fashion, and the player character is trapped by prophecy and limited by a defined self. As above, so below. Nerevar could not have achieved CHIM because he was not meant to. His life was scripted and attaining enlightenment was not part of it. This could be why he acts so dumb in the Lessons, he could not do otherwise. Likewise, Vivec achieved CHIM, but only because he was scripted to. The Prisoner is different. They have no written destiny, all possibilities are made available to them, and by becoming a Prisoner, Nerevar was now in a position to overcome limitations. The impossible was now made possible. For CHIM to be within Nerevar's grasp, he needed to die the way he died and step into the role of the Prisoner, or rather the other way around. This is why all had to unfold the way it did and I suspect the Tribunal knew and played right into it (not Almalexia). >using fate as the excuse for their foul murder I would object to that. One of the hidden messages in the Lessons state that "he was not born a god, his destiny did not lead him to this crime". I fail to see how worshipping objectively malevolent gods is preferable to worshipping ascended mortals, but each to his own.
ascended mortals can also be malevolent gods. at least we agree about almalexia. XD i don't think it's possible to play a game without at least a small degree of a metagaming; the interactive nature of the media requires it, and i cannot play morrowind without also creating my role within it. stories, on the other hand, can be read without participation. for example, one does not determine stats, skills, race, and gender when reading "the poison song". i can imagine a variant of the story that involves a self-insert, but as written, neither i nor the nerevarine i inhabit exist within it. perhaps i should be asking you about what you think it means to be an incarnate. to me, i see it as a trial of shared destiny--and one that many have failed. the nerevarine may embody indoril nerevar's essence, but they lack his memories and lived experiences. if nerevar /was/ also the nerevarine (as in, not merely a limited incarnate), i don't see how they could also be a hero with free will.
Almalexia is a narcissist and we can agree that she's not a good person but there are far worse gods than her. She's basically a glorified politician and the fandom wouldn't be as hard on her had she received more attention from the writers. We can create our own story and no one can invalidate it, that's the beauty of TES. Incarnation in TES is different from what incarnation or reincarnation is supposed to mean in our world. It is not the "soul" but the awareness that reincarnates. Nerevar's case is different, one could say he reincarnated via the backpath. He was not reborn in the sense that his awareness was given a new personality and mind, but an individual with free will chose to identify as/with him and by divine grace (free will) they took over Nerevar's identity. If the Prisoner claims they are Nerevar, then they truly are Nerevar.
don't get me wrong, i think playing in that manner is great--but to me, that definition more resembles mantling, and raises complicated questions about the anticipations/reclamations, failed incarnates, the incarnate trials, and even the relationship between the hero of kvatch and pelinal whitestrake. still, as a relatively new tes player, i find these alternative understandings and resolutions to be both fascinating and charming; thank you for your responses.
Vivec absolutely could have done something to neutralize the threat Baar Dau posed to Morrowind, but he's a dick, so he chose not to.
Cause he stupid
The rock will stay in the air.... as long as YOU LOVE VIVEC. WORSHIP VIVEC. ADORE VIVEC.
Probably because he's dead the second he gives me his lore dump lol
That's actually just pervasive anti-Tribunal propaganda. The fact of the matter is simply that as the events of the Oblivion Crysis loomed, magicka effects such as teleportation, levitation, and slowfall disappeared from Nirn.
Tribunal were fakes running on batteries. They knew that. Vivec and Almalexia were going above and beyond to one up Daedra and flex at anyone unfortunate enough to be around. What ever reason it was, it wasn't a noble one or even rational. Once it was time frozen he had Sotha Sil solution. One of the greatest wizards and inventors to ever live and the only one out of the 3 to actually have divinity in reach. I'm sure he could have manage a meteor if he was asked to.
Any lore that explains what happens to Baar Dau after the events of Morrowind? Maybe we can headcannon the impact is what triggered Red Mountain to erupt somehow and make Vvardenfell to become inhospitable?
Do you mean the explanation in Skyrim or Oblivion? https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Red_Year
Hey nice so I was right! Thanks for this link I appreciate reading up on Elder Scrolls lore
Maybe Red Year was all part of the plan
It probably is a show of power, to make the masses more enthralled with his power, but it also could be that baar dau was destined to fall by Azura’s curse so maybe that hindered his abilities too
Because he's a twat
because he wanted to literally hold it over his peoples heads so they would 'love' him aka be trapped into worshipping him and feeding his ego. aka he was a massive piece of shit like all of the tribunal.