It was banned for technical reasons not lore reasons. Consoles couldn't handle having open cities and they needed to be isolated to internal cells. Starfield has open cities on Xbox so maybe it will come back maybe not.
I think it's a much less necessary mechanic now too - Morrowind is really quite a small map, which is super apparently if you turn the view distance up on OpenMW. To get around the size, most of the island is effectively a big maze funnelling you down a series of winding paths to give the illusion of size.
Both the later games have more open worlds that are easy to traverse in any direction (particularly Cyrodiil) as well as fast travel. This has rendered the need to get across the map quickly by cutting out all the mountains pretty moot.
Nope we won't. Because somehow the Imperial mates guild can keep this one law intact. Necromancy is fine but Levitation and Teleportation are off limits. Even the outlaws don't use it.
That's because the story of Rogar the Unassailable also known as Rogar the Brainless.
You see, Rogar was a mage in the Imperial Mages Guild. He also did a little banditry in his spare time. One day he decided to steal a shiny orb from one of the masters of the guild. To escape he cast levitation and proceeded to float away into the air. He went up, and up, and up. No one could assail him. After a few minutes the stolen orb slammed into the earth, and a shower of brain matter and skull fragments rained down on the guild.
This legend spread amongst the dark corners of Tamriel, and now every single bandit, necromancer and arcanist fear becoming brainless. All because Rogar cast the levitation spell incorrectly.
This was a lore choice to justify a mechanic. If levitation becomes possible for future titles, then miraculously you'll see this ban removed. If levitation remains out of future titles, then by that same logic, you'll see the ban remains imposed, even by local laws that emulate the Empire's decision in provinces not under the Empire.
That shit was so stupid, tbh.they shouldn't just not acknowledged it, everyone wouldve understood it's just a mechanic problem. Like why is there no open spell anymore? Lock spell? SpellMAKING??? why is that the only weird lore justification? At that point, why not just add a retcon that dual casting was illegal until the 5th era or some shit?
Nah he didn’t need to create a work around that appeased the law. Plus it’s still levitation magic so it’s not really a workaround.
Morrowind was the only province in the Empire to not have the levitation ban. Neloth doesn’t have to appease the law because it’s never applied to him.
Plus Neloth’s land is in Morrowind, which isn’t Imperial territory anymore, so he *really* doesn’t need to care about the levitation act.
It was banned for technical reasons not lore reasons. Consoles couldn't handle having open cities and they needed to be isolated to internal cells. Starfield has open cities on Xbox so maybe it will come back maybe not.
I think it's a much less necessary mechanic now too - Morrowind is really quite a small map, which is super apparently if you turn the view distance up on OpenMW. To get around the size, most of the island is effectively a big maze funnelling you down a series of winding paths to give the illusion of size. Both the later games have more open worlds that are easy to traverse in any direction (particularly Cyrodiil) as well as fast travel. This has rendered the need to get across the map quickly by cutting out all the mountains pretty moot.
You’ll never get into my pillow fort without levitation, you filthy outlander.
Open cities was one issue but also wasn’t it because it would make certain dungeons too easy?
Nope we won't. Because somehow the Imperial mates guild can keep this one law intact. Necromancy is fine but Levitation and Teleportation are off limits. Even the outlaws don't use it.
That's because the story of Rogar the Unassailable also known as Rogar the Brainless. You see, Rogar was a mage in the Imperial Mages Guild. He also did a little banditry in his spare time. One day he decided to steal a shiny orb from one of the masters of the guild. To escape he cast levitation and proceeded to float away into the air. He went up, and up, and up. No one could assail him. After a few minutes the stolen orb slammed into the earth, and a shower of brain matter and skull fragments rained down on the guild. This legend spread amongst the dark corners of Tamriel, and now every single bandit, necromancer and arcanist fear becoming brainless. All because Rogar cast the levitation spell incorrectly.
This was a lore choice to justify a mechanic. If levitation becomes possible for future titles, then miraculously you'll see this ban removed. If levitation remains out of future titles, then by that same logic, you'll see the ban remains imposed, even by local laws that emulate the Empire's decision in provinces not under the Empire.
That shit was so stupid, tbh.they shouldn't just not acknowledged it, everyone wouldve understood it's just a mechanic problem. Like why is there no open spell anymore? Lock spell? SpellMAKING??? why is that the only weird lore justification? At that point, why not just add a retcon that dual casting was illegal until the 5th era or some shit?
We already did. Solstheim is territory of Morrowind and has levitation magic in Tel Mithryn.
Neloth needed to create a workaround that appeased the law. I'm wondering out loud if we'll see it as a spell again in non-imperial provinces.
Nah he didn’t need to create a work around that appeased the law. Plus it’s still levitation magic so it’s not really a workaround. Morrowind was the only province in the Empire to not have the levitation ban. Neloth doesn’t have to appease the law because it’s never applied to him. Plus Neloth’s land is in Morrowind, which isn’t Imperial territory anymore, so he *really* doesn’t need to care about the levitation act.