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40 - Skyrim DLC Chat: Dawnguard, Dragonborn, Vampires, Miraak · Mythic Mind Games

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hey there, welcome back to Mythic Mind Games. Today, we're
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: gonna be wrapping up the Elder Scrolls and Philosophy series
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: with our general chat on Skyrim's DLC, Dragon Born, and
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Don Guard. Now, technically I do still owe you one
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: philosophy video on this material, but right now I'm into
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: the Silmarlian material for that Mythic Mind course, and so
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: I'll get back around to that last philosophy video already.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: I already have something in mind that we talk about
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: specifically regarding Dragonborn and philosophy, so we'll get there eventually,
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: but for now, this is going to be the last
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: episode in this series, and then moving forward to Mythic
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: Mind Games, we're gonna be doing I think we've got
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: five episodes coming up of just different things that people
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: in the Mythic mind community wanted to be talking about,
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: so it'd be a little bit of an eclectic run
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: for the next few episodes. And so next time we're
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: gonna be looking at Expedition thirty three as the first
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: in this run of various games, and then after that
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: we'll be getting back to our final Fantasy series. So
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: now let's get to our episode on Skyrim's DLC Guard
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: and dragon Born. I hope you enjoy it all right,
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: pray talk some Don Guard and Dragonborn.
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: And hearth Fire.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: Don't forget and yes, and we can talk about the
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: houses that you've built or something out of us. Welcome
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: to the Elder Scrolls and Philosophy. As we wrap up
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: with our last live discussion of the study. Although as
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: we've talked about, we'll revisit some of this material at
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: some point, but in this one we're talking about the
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: Skyrim DLC, specifically Don Guard and Dragonborn. And I say
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: we just go in release order, and so we can
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: start with Don Guard and then hit up dragon Borne.
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: So uh see, I mean initial thoughts. I really I
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: like Don Guard. I really liked it when it came out.
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: I like the Elder Scrolls. Vampire stuff. There wasn't a
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: lot of that in Oblivion. I mean, you could become
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: a vampire and there are some vampires, but not a
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: lot of like vampire centric quest stuff, lore stuff, which
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: you do have back in Moroin, where you can even
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: you join, like you can join a certain client of
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: vampires and you have unique quests and whatnot. And obviously
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: Morowin you know you can't really go too far with that.
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: It's it's pretty isolated to that dynamic of the game.
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: But nonetheless, I appreciate be able to get back into more
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: vampire stuff, and you know, had the option of joining them,
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: had the option of playing the vampire hunter paladin type.
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: So I don't I enjoyed it from a gameplay angle.
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: I didn't say a whole lot about philosophy or you know,
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: lore stuff, but I enjoy it. That's my basic first
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: impression of opening thoughts here. Tyler, tell me some opening
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: thoughts here about Don Guard.
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: I think.
• 3:12
  Speaker 3: One thing are enjoy Don Guard doing, aside from kind
• 3:16
  Speaker 3: of what you've already said, is they kind of leaned
• 3:20
  Speaker 3: into another kind of character study with with Sarrana a
• 3:25
  Speaker 3: little bit, trying to trying to work their their their
• 3:29
  Speaker 3: writing skills a little bit and their their storytelling a
• 3:32
  Speaker 3: little bit through a different character and actually having like
• 3:35
  Speaker 3: a real character arc for someone, even though like you
• 3:39
  Speaker 3: may not always.
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: Depending on the play through, get to lean into the
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: whole thing.
• 3:43
  Speaker 3: But it's interesting being able to see that because I mean,
• 3:47
  Speaker 3: but as in general, they definitely kind of lean into
• 3:49
  Speaker 3: having more real kind of companions with real stories and
• 3:53
  Speaker 3: stuff kind of as they because even like with Fallout four,
• 3:58
  Speaker 3: they have much more you know, opinion led centric stories,
• 4:02
  Speaker 3: and then then you know, just working through later installments
• 4:07
  Speaker 3: like Starfield does as well, where they really try.
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: To even though I don't really like any of them.
• 4:13
  Speaker 3: But they really try to tell stories through characters and
• 4:17
  Speaker 3: it is kind of an interesting way to look at it.
• 4:20
  Speaker 3: And also being able to experience Elder Scrolls through the
• 4:24
  Speaker 3: eyes of somebody else too is also just another interesting thing.
• 4:28
  Speaker 3: The eyes with someone in the game can just provide
• 4:30
  Speaker 3: it just a different outlook than being a you know,
• 4:33
  Speaker 3: being your your character and just kind of telling and
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  Speaker 3: being your story and just like kind of like what
• 4:39
  Speaker 3: Oblivion did with with Martin in a way too, were
• 4:42
  Speaker 3: experiencing that.
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: But yeah, just initial thoughts there.
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's good points. So Ron is definitely
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: a unique contribution to Skyrim. I mean, I can't think
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: of any other companions in the game that actually have
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: anything like meaningful personality or narrative arcs. They're just You're
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: there to carry your burdens. That's what they're there for.
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: And so yeah, Ron definitely does add that unique dynamic.
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: Eean tell us something about Don Guarden.
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  Speaker 4: Uh, Sarana is the only character in Skyrim with a
• 5:12
  Speaker 4: character arc.
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: That's true.
• 5:14
  Speaker 4: Yes, it's been a hot minute since I played don Guard.
• 5:22
  Speaker 4: Uh shame, so I don't I don't remember much of it.
• 5:28
  Speaker 4: I plan to get to it. Obviously that didn't happen.
• 5:31
  Speaker 4: I like I remember it being. I remember thinking, you know,
• 5:34
  Speaker 4: this is Serrana's story, kind of like what we were
• 5:36
  Speaker 4: talking about, this is Sarrana's story, not really your story,
• 5:39
  Speaker 4: because you're kind of ferrying her around and she's the
• 5:42
  Speaker 4: one kind of doing all of the talking, uh, you know,
• 5:45
  Speaker 4: kind of with every character you interact with the other.
• 5:49
  Speaker 4: Thing I noticed about this story, and this was kind
• 5:53
  Speaker 4: of a pet peeve of mine, was there's just like
• 5:58
  Speaker 4: there's elder scrolls ling around everywhere, which I which I
• 6:03
  Speaker 4: just found to be, you know, really really goofy, so
• 6:06
  Speaker 4: because I read because it's like you know, I mean,
• 6:09
  Speaker 4: it's it's it's the namesake of the series. But they're
• 6:12
  Speaker 4: also supposed to be like you know, these like these
• 6:14
  Speaker 4: incredibly rare powerful things, these these fragments of creation you
• 6:19
  Speaker 4: know kind of in in kind of in in you know,
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  Speaker 4: manifested in in a scroll form that you can't really read,
• 6:26
  Speaker 4: and those who can read them they go blind, right,
• 6:29
  Speaker 4: But it was such I remember it being such a
• 6:32
  Speaker 4: big deal in Oblivion, where the culmination of the Thieves
• 6:37
  Speaker 4: Guild heist is We're going to scale White Gold Tower
• 6:42
  Speaker 4: and we're going to steal an Elder Scroll, and like
• 6:45
  Speaker 4: what a what a big deal that was because like
• 6:48
  Speaker 4: these things just like you get that, you get the
• 6:51
  Speaker 4: sense that they you know that they're just not really
• 6:56
  Speaker 4: to be found anywhere. I think the Duemmer Empire was
• 7:01
  Speaker 4: in possession of one, which I believe actually comes up
• 7:04
  Speaker 4: in Don Guard, but you get you get an Elder
• 7:07
  Speaker 4: Scroll as part of the main plot in Skyrim, which
• 7:09
  Speaker 4: I didn't really begrudge, you know, the game for I
• 7:12
  Speaker 4: thought that was, you know, perfectly cool. But then you
• 7:15
  Speaker 4: wake up Sarana and Sarana has an Elder Scroll, and
• 7:19
  Speaker 4: then it's like, oh, we need to get like doesn't
• 7:22
  Speaker 4: her mom have an Elder Scroll? Is that right, Tyler? Yeah,
• 7:25
  Speaker 4: so it's like, oh, so her mom has an Elder Scroll?
• 7:27
  Speaker 4: I car it felt like, can can somebody correct me
• 7:31
  Speaker 4: on the number? Because I didn't check before coming in here.
• 7:33
  Speaker 4: I didn't think too. I feel like by the time
• 7:36
  Speaker 4: we get to the end of all of Skyrim's stories,
• 7:39
  Speaker 4: there's like five or six Elder scrolls in your back pocket.
• 7:42
  Speaker 4: There's three, okay three.
• 7:45
  Speaker 3: Because they reused the they reuse the.
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: One from the main story. Got it, part of the
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: as part of the story.
• 7:52
  Speaker 4: Got it. Got it. So I I just I thought
• 7:55
  Speaker 4: that was I thought that was absolutely crazy. Other than that,
• 8:00
  Speaker 4: at uh no, yeah, Don Guard, darn Guard was cool.
• 8:06
  Speaker 4: I liked it. The significance of Oreo Oreo or I'm
• 8:10
  Speaker 4: just gonna you know, he's Oreo now he's the significance
• 8:13
  Speaker 4: of Oreo's bow just like went completely over my head
• 8:17
  Speaker 4: because I didn't know the lore. And again, these games
• 8:21
  Speaker 4: don't really give it to you like Morowind does. So
• 8:28
  Speaker 4: there's like a lot of significant things that are going
• 8:31
  Speaker 4: on that are just they just kind of that probably
• 8:34
  Speaker 4: just fly over most people's heads.
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: But uh.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, so Don Guard's like, that's that's that's my opener.
• 8:42
  Speaker 4: Don Guard's cool.
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah. The Elder Schools issue you're bringing up, it kind
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: of reminds me of what you brought up in the
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: Fallout four chat about how in three the whole point
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: is about this water purification thing, and then four you
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: can just build them in your settlements left and right.
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: It's like it kind of trivia's the whole point of
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: the previous narrative. And I think that largely could be
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: said of what we get in Skyrim, maybe Don Guard
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: in particular relative to the Thief Heist and Oblivion, which
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: I thought about that as well, because what made that
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: such a cool thing is that build up. If you're
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: getting all these different things and you don't even really
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: know why till finally you find out. It's like the
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: you know, I picture of Nick Cage, We're gonna steal
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: the Elder Scroll And that's what it makes it such
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  Speaker 1: a big thing.
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  Speaker 4: It makes it such a It's one of the things
• 9:32
  Speaker 4: that just makes the Thieves Guild and Oblivion just just
• 9:37
  Speaker 4: one of the greatest quest lines, not just not just
• 9:41
  Speaker 4: an Elder Scrolls I'd say, I'd say maybe in gaming,
• 9:45
  Speaker 4: but definitely definitely in Elder Scrolls. And it just I
• 9:51
  Speaker 4: look at Skyrim's Thieves Guild and it just makes me
• 9:53
  Speaker 4: realize it's just so lacking by comparison. But that's you know,
• 9:57
  Speaker 4: we're not here to talk about the Thieves Guild. We're
• 9:59
  Speaker 4: here to talk about Don Guard.
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: Right, Oh uh, Jacob are you either. Do you have
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: anything that you want to see about Don Guard?
• 10:10
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I was just gonna preface it by saying that
• 10:14
  Speaker 5: I think it's everything that I'm gonna say in this
• 10:17
  Speaker 5: entire discussion is based upon memories that are from like
• 10:21
  Speaker 5: a decade ago. It's been a very long time since
• 10:23
  Speaker 5: I've touched any of these DLCs. But uh, as for
• 10:26
  Speaker 5: Don Guard, I think I actually think I prefer it
• 10:31
  Speaker 5: over Dragonborn, which is, I know, kind of a wild statement.
• 10:34
  Speaker 5: A lot of people prefer Dragon Born.
• 10:36
  Speaker 4: No, I think I agree with you. Continue. Yeah, it's
• 10:41
  Speaker 4: just I.
• 10:41
  Speaker 5: Like how how much lore it drops. You know, I'm
• 10:43
  Speaker 5: not a huge fan of the whole vampire concept in general,
• 10:48
  Speaker 5: Like I mean, it's just never been that much of it.
• 10:50
  Speaker 5: It hasn't appealed that much to me. But I do
• 10:54
  Speaker 5: like how much lore has dropped in it. You know,
• 10:56
  Speaker 5: you get to see soul Karen for a bit. You know.
• 10:59
  Speaker 5: Of course, as as Ian said, the you know Oriole's
• 11:03
  Speaker 5: bo or Orio's bo. Sorry, but no, I just I
• 11:08
  Speaker 5: like a lot of the lore that is added in it.
• 11:11
  Speaker 5: And it also does a pretty like you guys were saying,
• 11:15
  Speaker 5: you know, it's Sarrana, it does a pretty good job
• 11:17
  Speaker 5: of showing that not all the vampires are you know,
• 11:21
  Speaker 5: just these no one sided animals essentially, And I do
• 11:28
  Speaker 5: think it also did lay the the not really a precedent,
• 11:35
  Speaker 5: but the desire for Bethesta to continue writing more complex
• 11:39
  Speaker 5: companion storylines for better or for worse in the future game.
• 11:42
  Speaker 5: So yeah, I just in general, I really did enjoy
• 11:45
  Speaker 5: Don Guard back in the day, and I definitely need
• 11:48
  Speaker 5: to replay it.
• 11:49
  Speaker 4: So something I so something that I was kind of
• 11:53
  Speaker 4: thinking of that Andrew reminded me of when he said
• 11:57
  Speaker 4: something and then you, Jacob kind of reminded me again,
• 12:00
  Speaker 4: was I was thinking. I was thinking about the count
• 12:05
  Speaker 4: of skin Grad in Oblivion, who spoilers is also a vampire,
• 12:13
  Speaker 4: and he and he's he's also kind of an example
• 12:16
  Speaker 4: of the new the nuanced character type where you know,
• 12:22
  Speaker 4: he this you know this, you know this is a
• 12:24
  Speaker 4: guy who is a you know, he is a good
• 12:26
  Speaker 4: man who kind of keeps his he keeps his nature
• 12:31
  Speaker 4: both secret and in check, and he really like, you know,
• 12:34
  Speaker 4: he's a character that you almost unlike all the other
• 12:37
  Speaker 4: counts in the game, he's a character you almost never
• 12:39
  Speaker 4: see because he just like he just keeps himself. Uh,
• 12:42
  Speaker 4: you know, not even like publicly in court. You know,
• 12:44
  Speaker 4: he just kind of keeps himself hidden, and it's very
• 12:46
  Speaker 4: difficult to get an appointment with him, if at all. Uh.
• 12:50
  Speaker 4: And but you you get to, you get to talk
• 12:52
  Speaker 4: with him in the Major's Guild Quest, and then he
• 12:54
  Speaker 4: comes up most prominently in the Vampire Quest, which some
• 12:57
  Speaker 4: people consider to be a very long and the cure
• 13:01
  Speaker 4: vampirism quest and oblivion. Some people consider it to be
• 13:04
  Speaker 4: kind of like a long and tedious quest, but it
• 13:06
  Speaker 4: is a very reward It has a very rewarding culmination
• 13:11
  Speaker 4: where you get to where the Count of skin Grad
• 13:14
  Speaker 4: is actually helping you cure your vamporism. And but he's
• 13:18
  Speaker 4: not just doing it for you. And you find out
• 13:20
  Speaker 4: at the end he's not doing it for he's not
• 13:24
  Speaker 4: doing it for himself. He doesn't care about himself. He's
• 13:27
  Speaker 4: he's he's he's kind of content to do things the
• 13:30
  Speaker 4: way he's doing them. But he's he's getting the cure
• 13:36
  Speaker 4: for his wife. You find out, you have like this reveal,
• 13:39
  Speaker 4: he has a wife. His wife is a vampire, and
• 13:43
  Speaker 4: she she hates it. She's miserable, you know, and she
• 13:46
  Speaker 4: just wants to die, but she can't die because she's
• 13:48
  Speaker 4: a vampire. So she's in a constant state of torpoor basically.
• 13:53
  Speaker 4: And when you get the cure at the end, you
• 13:56
  Speaker 4: actually get to be with the Count at his at
• 14:01
  Speaker 4: his wife's bedside and he and he cures her of
• 14:04
  Speaker 4: her vanpirism, and in doing because she was already in
• 14:07
  Speaker 4: tour poor, in doing that and becoming mortal again, she
• 14:09
  Speaker 4: just dies as she is cured, and he just kind
• 14:11
  Speaker 4: of he kind of he he lets go of somebody
• 14:14
  Speaker 4: that he that he's been holding onto, you know, all
• 14:17
  Speaker 4: this time, that he loves, and but he lets her go,
• 14:21
  Speaker 4: lets her, you know, let's her finally be at you know,
• 14:23
  Speaker 4: be cured and be at peace and just kind of
• 14:26
  Speaker 4: end let her and finally just give her what she
• 14:29
  Speaker 4: wants and let her dot and lets her die. And
• 14:30
  Speaker 4: he didn't. Then he's just kind of like, you know,
• 14:32
  Speaker 4: all right, you know, you know, you fulfilled your into
• 14:36
  Speaker 4: the bargain, I've fulfilled mine. I'd like to be alone
• 14:38
  Speaker 4: for a while. And it was just I remember that
• 14:40
  Speaker 4: just really stuck out to me. It's just that the
• 14:42
  Speaker 4: Count of skin Grad is just an incredible character, like
• 14:45
  Speaker 4: vampire in the setting.
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a that's a good I mean, even it's
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: not Dongar specific, it's a good vampire connection. And honestly,
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: I don't think I heard did the Cure Vampism quest
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: because in Oblivia an Skyrim, it's so easy to live
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: as a vampire. If I'd go that route, then figure
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: why get rid of it? Yeah, And I will say
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: that I agree with Jacob that I like the additions
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: to the lord that you get in Don Guard regarding
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: vampire soul care and all that stuff. Although as I've
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: talked about in the discord, I hate going to the
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: Soul Cairn. I get the same feeling I get when
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: I'm playing Dragon Age and I know I have to
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: go into the fade. It's like it's it's something that
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: I feel like should be really cool, but just isn't.
• 15:31
  Speaker 4: I feel like the fade in the Deep Roads, yeah,
• 15:34
  Speaker 4: or just or just like yeah, yeah, definitely know what
• 15:38
  Speaker 4: you mean. Yeah, I don't think anybody likes the Soul Cairen.
• 15:41
  Speaker 4: Soul Cairen is one of those things where it's really
• 15:44
  Speaker 4: cool if you like, it's really only cool if you
• 15:47
  Speaker 4: know what it is and kind of like it's place
• 15:50
  Speaker 4: and it's like it's place in its history in the
• 15:53
  Speaker 4: world otherwise, because yeah, it's not it's it's uh, I
• 15:57
  Speaker 4: don't know. Does anybody else want to say anything about
• 15:59
  Speaker 4: the Soul care Aaron or the Ideal Masters.
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: Well, maybe we should review. I mean, somebody who naturally
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: knows the Lord a bit better than I do, perhaps
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: or remembers it, because it's been a while for me
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: and I haven't done whole lot of review.
• 16:10
  Speaker 3: When you get soul trapped, it's specifically the black soul
• 16:14
  Speaker 3: jams being is because that's the only one that's large
• 16:18
  Speaker 3: enough to capture a you know, a soul of a
• 16:21
  Speaker 3: man or mr.
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: But it's the place where the souls go.
• 16:25
  Speaker 3: And then it's also kind of the land of the
• 16:26
  Speaker 3: Ideal Masters, which yeah, I don't like.
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: I said, I don't really know too.
• 16:30
  Speaker 3: Much more other than just like, yeah, it's a there's
• 16:35
  Speaker 3: a close tie between the Ideal Masters and necromancy in general,
• 16:39
  Speaker 3: and you know, essentially like a lot of necromancers at
• 16:44
  Speaker 3: the peak of their powers like to strict try to
• 16:47
  Speaker 3: get in touch with the.
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: Ideal Masters, and usually they get pretty messed up with it.
• 16:50
  Speaker 3: And I think, I mean, we see just some footprints
• 16:56
  Speaker 3: of their actions through like let's surround his mom same
• 17:00
  Speaker 3: Erica or something when she when she strikes a deal
• 17:03
  Speaker 3: and gets trapped because like something about like since she's
• 17:09
  Speaker 3: a vampire, she'll never die and so she's going to
• 17:11
  Speaker 3: be stuck in this place for eternity, or or even
• 17:14
  Speaker 3: the dragon Dernevier like in his quest for necromancy, like
• 17:20
  Speaker 3: he also like gets trapped there by the Ideal Masters,
• 17:24
  Speaker 3: and the only way that he give me set free
• 17:26
  Speaker 3: is when you shout him back into into the overworld,
• 17:29
  Speaker 3: which I mean it's like really fun to do because
• 17:32
  Speaker 3: he's a sick looking dragon. But yeah, but I mean
• 17:35
  Speaker 3: any deeper than that, now I've too.
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: Much more than that.
• 17:39
  Speaker 4: All I remember is that the Ideal Masters are kind
• 17:41
  Speaker 4: of like this you know Ivory Tower, Inner Circle of
• 17:46
  Speaker 4: just like necromancer in cells that you just you know,
• 17:51
  Speaker 4: made their own, made their own use their powerful necromancy
• 17:54
  Speaker 4: to just kind of make their own pocket plane. I
• 17:56
  Speaker 4: want to say the story of the Ideal Masters and
• 17:59
  Speaker 4: the Soul Care and come up in battle Spire. I
• 18:03
  Speaker 4: think it's Battlespire. I'm not sure that's where it first
• 18:06
  Speaker 4: came up. And so you deal there's there's a story
• 18:09
  Speaker 4: where you deal with the I where you kind of
• 18:11
  Speaker 4: deal with those guys, and it's you know, they're I mean,
• 18:14
  Speaker 4: you know they're they're they're jerks. You know. They they've
• 18:17
  Speaker 4: got they've got there, they've got their they've got their
• 18:19
  Speaker 4: own ideal way of doing things, which is not so
• 18:22
  Speaker 4: ideal for everybody else's.
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: I wonder where they got the name the ideal masters,
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: I mean the ideal like that that means.
• 18:32
  Speaker 4: Something it does, but I don't remember. I can't give
• 18:35
  Speaker 4: you an answer. I feel like since you know, I
• 18:38
  Speaker 4: feel like this is like a really good segue to
• 18:41
  Speaker 4: talk to to continue the subject of uh uh just
• 18:45
  Speaker 4: uh necromancy and vampires and like mulog Bah mullig Ball
• 18:51
  Speaker 4: kind of like in general, because it's all it's all
• 18:53
  Speaker 4: connected and relevant to what's going on. Uh Tyler, I
• 18:56
  Speaker 4: thought you said you had some notes on mullig Ball
• 18:58
  Speaker 4: or some of that stuff.
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: So I.
• 19:05
  Speaker 3: So I didn't get too much into the deep lore stuff.
• 19:08
  Speaker 3: The most of my notes are are tying to just
• 19:12
  Speaker 3: some of like understanding the philosophical or just trying to
• 19:16
  Speaker 3: grapple with a lot of just some of the some
• 19:21
  Speaker 3: of the philosophical implications of like vampiism and what it
• 19:24
  Speaker 3: does to the person that becomes a vampire. And this
• 19:28
  Speaker 3: definitely tied in a lot more you know, primary world
• 19:32
  Speaker 3: sources I've been rereading. I've been reading through Consolation of
• 19:38
  Speaker 3: Philosophy in Boetheas and and so like the one thing
• 19:42
  Speaker 3: I came across and I was reading book three, and
• 19:47
  Speaker 3: I just came across like when talking about what it
• 19:51
  Speaker 3: means to be like a living creature and unity, like
• 19:54
  Speaker 3: what that looks like and how you know, just the
• 19:57
  Speaker 3: unity of the body.
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: And the soul, and and how vampirism.
• 20:00
  Speaker 3: You suck one out right, so you're you're sucking out
• 20:03
  Speaker 3: the soul and you have this body you have and
• 20:06
  Speaker 3: so I don't know, I kind of just started running
• 20:09
  Speaker 3: with that for a while. But I don't know if
• 20:11
  Speaker 3: for if you want to go there at this point. Uh,
• 20:14
  Speaker 3: but I yeah, I just had a really yeah, just
• 20:19
  Speaker 3: really had some thoughts on that.
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: I guess.
• 20:22
  Speaker 4: I mean, if I if I get my esoteric rabbit hole,
• 20:24
  Speaker 4: I think you can have an esoteric rabbit hole. But
• 20:28
  Speaker 4: my opinion.
• 20:30
  Speaker 3: So so I mean, yeah, so just I think just
• 20:34
  Speaker 3: like the vampism gives us, gives us a look at
• 20:36
  Speaker 3: like what it needs to like give up our soul
• 20:38
  Speaker 3: and what what that could do to our to our
• 20:40
  Speaker 3: bodies in general, because you can see that vampires obviously
• 20:43
  Speaker 3: are are given these are.
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: Are in a through obtaining new power. They're they're becoming.
• 20:51
  Speaker 3: Weaker in a lot of different ways, right and so
• 20:55
  Speaker 3: and so like obviously vampires are they have a they
• 20:59
  Speaker 3: don't soun isn't very kind to them?
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: Fire is it very kind to them?
• 21:03
  Speaker 3: And and and silver as well. So you're looking at
• 21:07
  Speaker 3: these and also they they're pretty much a slave to
• 21:11
  Speaker 3: their thirst and and it's I just you know, found
• 21:16
  Speaker 3: it just like that thought really interesting that when we
• 21:19
  Speaker 3: remove the soul once it's very similar with the with
• 21:22
  Speaker 3: the werewolves, where you're you're becoming a primal being, you're
• 21:27
  Speaker 3: becoming a very like you're becoming a beast, you know,
• 21:31
  Speaker 3: and and and giving into these uh to what is
• 21:35
  Speaker 3: human and unnatural way of living by becoming more like,
• 21:38
  Speaker 3: you know, the beast. While trying to say that you're
• 21:41
  Speaker 3: given this power and also the inability to dive through
• 21:45
  Speaker 3: natural causes as well. It's just these curses that you're
• 21:48
  Speaker 3: given that are seen as power and what that can
• 21:51
  Speaker 3: do to the human state. And so after doing that,
• 21:55
  Speaker 3: I kind of was able to dive deeper into like
• 21:58
  Speaker 3: a character study of hearken a little bit more about
• 22:00
  Speaker 3: his stuff.
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: But yeah, just find to be that there for a bit.
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think you're making a good point. I appreciate
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: the symbolism of the vampire relative too, the sorts of
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: things that Bowethias talks about, right that you know Boethius
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: for anyone listening who isn't familiar, I mean, he was
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: a Christian Roman statesman, senator, philosopher after the deposition of
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: the last Western Roman emperor. So he's operating under this
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: barbarian foreign king, but nonetheless he's living his life according
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: to reason, according to virtue. Everything seems to be going
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: pretty well for him in the domain of fortune, but
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: then through no fault of his own, that all gets
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: stripped away as some false accusations are brought against him
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: regarding exedition against the king who's in charge. He's accused
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: of witchcraft, all these sorts of things that are just
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: thrown at him, really because he earned some political enemies
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: by uncovering some corruption in the Senate, and so he
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: gets everything stripped away. He's in pretty and he's in
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: house arrest awaiting his execution, and he's dealing with his
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: question of like, how do I make sense out of this?
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: Why is it that the wicked seem to prosper will
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: the righteous tend to suffer? It's a question that you
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: find straight out of scripture. But he's dealing with it
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: in his own, very personal kind of way because of
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: his personal situation. And he talks about the fact that
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: you know, even as Augustine says, that you know, the wicked,
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: though they may reign, are actually slaves to as many
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: masters as they have vices, because the reality is that
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: there are all kinds of things we can do that
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: give us the appearance of power over changing fortune. This
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: is why wicked people can seem to prosper in this
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: life through wicked means. But the reality is we never
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: have control over fortune, over what happens. And it doesn't
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: matter how much you guard your health. For example, you
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: can still get cancer, get hit by a car. You know,
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: it doesn't matter. You know how good you are with
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: your money, I mean, obviously we should be good stewards
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: of our money. But the same time, any number of
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: things can strike to take away your fortune through no
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: fault of your own, and so we never really have
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: power over the movement of circumstance as such. But what
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: we do always have power. The only true human power
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: is power over ourselves, right, and so real freedom, real
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: power comes through the path of virtue. Whereas just giving
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: ourselves over to vice, giving ourselves over to consumption, as
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: you said, it makes us less real, less people, less powerful,
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: as now we are entirely dependent on the satisfaction of
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: our base drives. Aristotle talks about that seems sort of
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: stuff where he says that man is situated so that
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: rightly ordered, he is the strongest of the beast, the
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: strongest of you know, living things, the best of living things.
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: But when he is disordered, he becomes worse than the beast,
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: because he's armed with reason, but in a kind of
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: reason that creates a whole in existence. And that's a
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: kurkey Guard. I mean, we're kind of jumping all over
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: the place because they're all making the same sort of point.
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: When Guard says that death is not actually the worst
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: thing that can happen, you know, the real sickness unto
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: death is despair, the kind of despair that is a
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: living death, of foregoing hope, of the real hope of existence.
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: And so what you're doing is you're living, and maybe
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: you even seem to be prospering, but in reality, you're
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: not giving anything to the world. You're just consuming at
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: all times. And so that gives us this this vampire idea.
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: And I appreciate what he brought up about the Countess.
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: I suppose that of skin Grad or the Count's wife,
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: that her healing was her death, because that is actually
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: a freedom relative to the living death of her despair
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: in vamporism. And so I think that's something really significant
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: going on there. And so I didn't really add a
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: whole lot to the conversation, but just kind of riffing
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: off and echoing what Tyler's bringing up that I think
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: that there is a lot of there's a lot of
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: merit to that sort of analysis. Now, what we gonna
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: say about Harkin.
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: Through the story?
• 26:06
  Speaker 3: You know, once again, I think it's Valerica, his wife,
• 26:11
  Speaker 3: you know, brings up this idea, like she has this
• 26:15
  Speaker 3: vision of like so let's say Hearken succeeds and he's
• 26:17
  Speaker 3: able to shoot out the sun, which is kind of
• 26:19
  Speaker 3: the main goal of Hearken here is to get Ariols
• 26:23
  Speaker 3: bow to or Orio's bow to dip the some arrows
• 26:28
  Speaker 3: into some of the daughters of Cold Harbor's blood, which
• 26:33
  Speaker 3: will essentially give them a power to erase the power
• 26:37
  Speaker 3: of the sun, allowing vampires to essentially, in their full
• 26:41
  Speaker 3: power room free in the world. And so Valerica sits
• 26:46
  Speaker 3: back and said, okay, So if Herken succeeds, this will
• 26:51
  Speaker 3: be the end of vampires, because the people of Tamael
• 26:54
  Speaker 3: will now seek out more actively to hunt out the
• 26:57
  Speaker 3: vampires to fight them. And so for Hearken then to
• 27:01
  Speaker 3: continue to self preserve as and to grow and to
• 27:07
  Speaker 3: he has to commit more evil and more sin, and
• 27:11
  Speaker 3: there will never be And so in Boethius and the Constellation,
• 27:14
  Speaker 3: it talks about how you know the sin begets sin
• 27:18
  Speaker 3: that there will be you can't you can't achieve happiness,
• 27:22
  Speaker 3: you can't which you can't achieve that fulfillment through committing
• 27:26
  Speaker 3: sin is just going to be get more having to
• 27:28
  Speaker 3: commit sin over and over again. This is in the
• 27:31
  Speaker 3: cycle that this path of destruction. So essentially, no matter
• 27:34
  Speaker 3: what happens, it seems as though Harken is walking the
• 27:37
  Speaker 3: path of his own destruction through his uh yeah, through
• 27:42
  Speaker 3: his seeking of more power, through his seeking of.
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: Being able to dominate in a.
• 27:48
  Speaker 3: Sense, or even just to be able to live in
• 27:51
  Speaker 3: accordance with what he believes is the way to live.
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean evil ultimately consumes itself. I mean it's
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: it's certainly a very Christian idea. I mean, you know,
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: we see this that in that the greatest victory is
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: the death of Christ. Right, evil ultimately consumes itself or
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: or this to pull in Tolkien's you know some of
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: the t some of the civil Earlian stuff that you know,
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: Angolian is this creature that consumes light and ultimately ends
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: up essentially consuming herself more or less. And because you know,
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: when your whole life is identified by hunger by what
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: can I consume rather than what can I receive of
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: the reality that is already given to me? Right, that
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: that's the Boethian idea, that that all we really need
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: for beatitude is already available to us, because existence itself
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: is fundamentally good, and you can follow the great chain
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: of being of existence ultimately to the one source of existence,
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: who is God, the source of all beatitude, and so
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: that beatitude is always available to you in any circumstance.
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: It doesn't matter if you find yourself. You know, at
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: the top the world, you're the emperor, excuse me, the
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: Emperor of Rome. It doesn't matter if you are falsely
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: imprisoned and you have your entire fortune takeaway and you're
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: waiting your unjust execution. The reality is that by being
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: part of this chain of being that finds its way
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: back in the independent existence and the goodness of God,
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: the attitude is always available to you, if only you
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: would receive it. And so it's a difference between receiving
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: what's already there and living in accordance with the consumption
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: and making hunger rather than satisfaction. You're driving impulse, and
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: when hunger it's your driving impulse. Well, then you're actually
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: seeking more hunger rather than satisfaction of that which you
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: hunger for. And so in the end you just consume
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: even yourself. You become a shadow of a person too.
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: Now pull in some great divorce immetry, and I'm just
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: all over the place in my references today.
• 29:53
  Speaker 4: It's a really like like I was thinking about how
• 29:56
  Speaker 4: with vamporism, like it really is in a lot of ways,
• 30:00
  Speaker 4: it's a really good uh picture of kind of like
• 30:03
  Speaker 4: how you know, uh sin works so it's like this,
• 30:07
  Speaker 4: there is the how in how evil works, there is
• 30:10
  Speaker 4: this there is this promise of kind of like, oh,
• 30:14
  Speaker 4: this thing that will give you what you want and
• 30:17
  Speaker 4: what will satisfy you. But you know, you'll, you know, you'll,
• 30:20
  Speaker 4: you're you're kind of like you know what Jesus says,
• 30:22
  Speaker 4: You're always going to go back to the well. You're
• 30:24
  Speaker 4: always going to go back to the well for the
• 30:25
  Speaker 4: more water. Well in the case of the vampire, they're
• 30:27
  Speaker 4: always going back for you know, uh, you know, it
• 30:32
  Speaker 4: depends on the culture, you know, but typically it's blood.
• 30:34
  Speaker 4: You know, it's it's always more blood. There's and like
• 30:37
  Speaker 4: with vampires specifically, there's something about there's something about them
• 30:42
  Speaker 4: that is very about their nature. It's very you know,
• 30:47
  Speaker 4: it's it's it's it's very relationship focused. Like it has
• 30:51
  Speaker 4: to do it has to do with relationships. It has
• 30:52
  Speaker 4: to do with uh, you know, you know, to one another,
• 30:56
  Speaker 4: like you uh, you know, sexuality, you know, things like that,
• 30:59
  Speaker 4: and just like you know, the kind of uh be
• 31:01
  Speaker 4: like you know, being being a you know, being like
• 31:06
  Speaker 4: an a being a predator, being an abuser, you know,
• 31:10
  Speaker 4: and you know you and you're you're like you're this
• 31:14
  Speaker 4: you are a slave to like you know this, you
• 31:17
  Speaker 4: know this thirst, you know that we've been talking about,
• 31:19
  Speaker 4: Like it's it's not it's not it's not a it's
• 31:22
  Speaker 4: not a promise of never ending life. It's a promise
• 31:24
  Speaker 4: of never ending destruction. And it affects everybody, just absolutely
• 31:29
  Speaker 4: everybody around you. And how that's there's just there, there's
• 31:35
  Speaker 4: just an absolutely oppressive and parasitic nature to it, which
• 31:42
  Speaker 4: is just you know, very much what you know, it's
• 31:45
  Speaker 4: very much what Mullock Bows, Mullig bow is about, you know,
• 31:49
  Speaker 4: very and like you know, as you know, as far
• 31:51
  Speaker 4: as Elder scrolls go goes because he he is the
• 31:54
  Speaker 4: or he is the origin of vampires. Don't look up
• 31:57
  Speaker 4: the origin of vampires and Elder scrolls and Elder scrolls.
• 32:01
  Speaker 4: It's it's like, you know, it's it's it's it's kind
• 32:05
  Speaker 4: of adult only, like it's not pretty, like it's it's
• 32:08
  Speaker 4: it's really not pretty. But you know, you know, not
• 32:12
  Speaker 4: not not unless you got a strong stomach for that
• 32:14
  Speaker 4: sort of thing. But it really but it but it's
• 32:17
  Speaker 4: a but what it does further showcase like you know,
• 32:21
  Speaker 4: I bring you know, you know, part of the reason
• 32:22
  Speaker 4: I bring this up is that it further showcases that
• 32:25
  Speaker 4: idea of just like that just completely you know, uh
• 32:33
  Speaker 4: debased sense of just you know, oppressive and predatory power
• 32:40
  Speaker 4: that that that is just that just kind of like
• 32:42
  Speaker 4: you know, makes these you know, makes these these these
• 32:45
  Speaker 4: these false promises. I guess I didn't. I didn't write
• 32:49
  Speaker 4: this bit down. This is me going off the cuff.
• 32:52
  Speaker 3: Well, I would just say it's a twisting of very
• 32:54
  Speaker 3: beautiful things. Yeah, because it's it's this, it's this taking
• 32:57
  Speaker 3: it so I mean, to fulfill the Thursday mean, like
• 33:00
  Speaker 3: you think of work traditionally and other medians where we
• 33:03
  Speaker 3: see the like pictures of vampires where they're you know,
• 33:08
  Speaker 3: they're seducing.
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: A woman and and bringing them in and and and
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: then using that.
• 33:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and and and and just abusing a lot of
• 33:18
  Speaker 3: the beautiful things that make that can make living so
• 33:21
  Speaker 3: you know, so so filled with joy and fulfilling.
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: It's just that it's.
• 33:28
  Speaker 3: Once again further shows what you know, what sin and
• 33:32
  Speaker 3: and this this evil nature can bring about that some
• 33:36
  Speaker 3: of these great intimate moments are now replaced with this
• 33:40
  Speaker 3: of fulfilling and need of of thirst of yeah, of
• 33:45
  Speaker 3: needing to devour rather than truly connecting and so further
• 33:49
  Speaker 3: isolating the vampires, which vampires aren't as isolated in the
• 33:55
  Speaker 3: al the Scrolls world, but but more traditionally it's a
• 33:58
  Speaker 3: very isolating thing to be in.
• 34:00
  Speaker 4: Yeah, like they're like there there's this very like it's
• 34:03
  Speaker 4: interesting because I was reading somewhere, like I don't remember exactly,
• 34:06
  Speaker 4: I was reading somewhere that like apparently there is there
• 34:11
  Speaker 4: is speculation or evidence to show that in a previous
• 34:14
  Speaker 4: Kalpa Mole like Baal may have at one point been
• 34:18
  Speaker 4: a like actually like a god of love who was
• 34:21
  Speaker 4: like twisted into like this horrible reversal of that kind
• 34:26
  Speaker 4: of like in the current iteration of the Elder Scrolls
• 34:29
  Speaker 4: of the Elder Scrolls universe. And and it's interesting because
• 34:33
  Speaker 4: like so like so what I what I what I'm
• 34:35
  Speaker 4: about to say here, Like I'm not giving like I'm
• 34:38
  Speaker 4: not trying to like make Moloch Ball look sympathetic in
• 34:44
  Speaker 4: any way, shape or form. He is like you know,
• 34:46
  Speaker 4: he is like you know, built from the ground up
• 34:48
  Speaker 4: to be like this irredeemable just like one of the
• 34:51
  Speaker 4: just like the worst of the worst some some of
• 34:54
  Speaker 4: the worst of the worst of the daydra But what's
• 34:56
  Speaker 4: really really interesting is that in his transformation, like there
• 35:00
  Speaker 4: is there is kind of like this this brutal cycle
• 35:03
  Speaker 4: of like uh of like uh and a like an
• 35:08
  Speaker 4: abuse becomes an abuser where uh where like there's like
• 35:13
  Speaker 4: all like the day, a lot of the other none
• 35:15
  Speaker 4: of the other data might like mullag Ball either, and
• 35:18
  Speaker 4: they really like to pick on him, just like in
• 35:20
  Speaker 4: just kind of like horrible ways like if you if
• 35:22
  Speaker 4: you actually read like the thirty six Sermons of the Vek.
• 35:25
  Speaker 4: The VEC himself like took advantage of muleg Ball, Like
• 35:29
  Speaker 4: I'm not going to get into the details of it,
• 35:31
  Speaker 4: we don't need to do that, but he took advantage
• 35:32
  Speaker 4: of muleg Ball so that he could learn basically the
• 35:36
  Speaker 4: secrets of Kim. I don't remember, like all the stories
• 35:40
  Speaker 4: are in the details. But like Azura took advantage of
• 35:43
  Speaker 4: muleg Ball, Meridia took advantage of muleg Ball, and it
• 35:48
  Speaker 4: was like it was like one and there's actually something
• 35:50
  Speaker 4: there's like an interesting aside there when it comes to
• 35:52
  Speaker 4: kind of like evil and its desires. Apparently mullog Ball
• 35:56
  Speaker 4: has kind of like his own kind of like kind
• 36:01
  Speaker 4: of like love or desire for Meridia, who herself was
• 36:04
  Speaker 4: once kind of like an angel of light. And I
• 36:09
  Speaker 4: always thought, I always I found that really really interesting
• 36:12
  Speaker 4: because it reminded me of like more Goth uh pining
• 36:16
  Speaker 4: for Elbaret, kind of pining for Elberet's light, and how
• 36:19
  Speaker 4: like she would shun him. And there's this idea, like
• 36:21
  Speaker 4: there's this idea in this idea in Tolkien of kind
• 36:25
  Speaker 4: of like evil like does both desiring and hating goodness.
• 36:29
  Speaker 4: Like you when you see that with you see that
• 36:32
  Speaker 4: with Sourn, You see that with more Goth and you
• 36:35
  Speaker 4: see it with Sourn, you see it with even Gallum,
• 36:39
  Speaker 4: you see it with the ring Rates, you see you
• 36:40
  Speaker 4: see it even with the with the barrel whites. You know,
• 36:43
  Speaker 4: kind of like just like the the the the loving
• 36:46
  Speaker 4: and hating of blood that no longer courses through their veins,
• 36:49
  Speaker 4: like you know, blood in this context, which is you know,
• 36:51
  Speaker 4: which is like a thing of life, you know, like
• 36:54
  Speaker 4: you know it is you know, it is a you
• 36:55
  Speaker 4: know it is we always think of blood and violent context,
• 36:57
  Speaker 4: but here it is like a like it is a
• 37:00
  Speaker 4: like it is a good and like beautiful thing that
• 37:02
  Speaker 4: makes us what we are, makes us alive. And so
• 37:06
  Speaker 4: there's so it's really so I found that I thought
• 37:09
  Speaker 4: that was really really interesting that you kind of have
• 37:11
  Speaker 4: like this thing where like even in Ball's horribleness, like
• 37:14
  Speaker 4: he kind of desires Meridia's light, but like you know,
• 37:17
  Speaker 4: he can't be anything other than what he is, and
• 37:20
  Speaker 4: Meridia kind of like you know, and Meridia does what
• 37:24
  Speaker 4: she does, and it like like it it it it
• 37:29
  Speaker 4: kind of like and and it's just like it's one
• 37:33
  Speaker 4: of those things where like all of these characters are
• 37:35
  Speaker 4: act are actively making Mullagbao even worse than he already is,
• 37:41
  Speaker 4: like perpetuating, perpetuating the cycle.
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's interesting. And for specifically for for Gollum to
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: bring up this principle you're bringing up that Gandalf says
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: that he loved and hated the Ring as he loved
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: and hated himself. And I think that that is a
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: good way of getting into this kind of perversion of
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: the goodness that exists around us, even the very goodness
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: of life itself, is focused on consumption rather than the
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: kind of giving and beholding that's necessary for active fellowship.
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: And it reminds me of the same kind of thing
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: that I make in just about every context I'm having
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: philosophy conversations and that is the major difference between the
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: classical world or the pre modern world in the modern world.
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: And yes, I'm about to call pushmodern vampires, because like
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: you go to the pre modern world, you go to
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: even like the ancient Pagans, the Greeks, the Romans, and
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: certainly into the Christian period than the medieval period. You
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: have this idea that we exist within a given context
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: that is real, and that it is more real than
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: we are as particular beings in that context, even as
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: the broad narrative, the broad story, is more real than
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: an individual, particular character or event, And in fact, it
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: is the story that gives reality to the character, is
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: the story that gives reality to the event. And so
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: too our task and the path of virtue is to
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: discover the place that we have within the broader context
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: of the story of reality. And so Plato Aristotle that
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: they're they're worried about, or they're concerned rather about pursuing
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: the good. How do I live in the way that
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: a human is supposed to live? And as I pursue
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: that goal, I find myself more connected with the story
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: of reality, and by extension, I find myself more connected
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: with other people. Our fellowship becomes real because that fellowship
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: partakes of the real. The capital are real. Now as
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: we move further into the modern period of thought, and
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: especially into the postmodern period of thought, but really beginning
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: with dickcart who you know, Dickcard, the father and modernity,
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: he doesn't begin with something like God or even the
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: good as an abstract sends. His philosophy begins with himself.
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: I think, therefore I am. That is the foundation of
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: his philosophy. And then it's not a big step from
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: there to the postmodern period, where now we're very explicitly
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: going to say there is no such thing as reality.
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: There's only me. I don't contextualize myself within reality. I
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: can textualize reality within myself, and so now all I
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: can really do is consume. I bring things into myself
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: rather than partaking in a shared reality with the people
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: around me. And so this leads to narcissism, not as
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: a bug, but by design. Right, everything is about me.
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: I have the right to define reality, and you also
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: have the right to define reality, which means we have
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: no place of meeting between us, right, And so this
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: leads to a kind of vamporism, which you know in
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: the past would have been seen as a defect, like
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: there's something wrong with you if you aren't isolating yourself
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: from the world around you, if you're isolating yourself from
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: a shared reality. In fact, that's what the word idiot means. Idiots.
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: It means like you. It means your own like you
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: have your own understanding of things that's different from the
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: way that things actually are. But now we're trained to
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: be idiots by design, right to be isolated, to be
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: radically individualistic. Well, at the same time, there's a lot
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: of push for collectivism and how that works together. I
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: don't know. It's kind of irrational, but that's the name
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: of the game in the era of postmodernism. Now all
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: the super abstract relative to the vampires of the Elder scrolls.
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: But at the same time, I think that there is
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: a correlation in that the life of consumption, the life
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: of defining reality within myself, it is isolating, it is despairing.
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: And so even if you gain a certain degree of power,
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: well you lose the significance that makes any kind of
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: power actually valuable. You end up consuming yourself in the end.
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: Now is are the brightest Elder scrolls trying to say
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: that not necessarily, but in portraying vampires, I think that
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: they are providing a good case study for that sort
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: of life.
• 42:09
  Speaker 4: I thought Jacob was going to say something.
• 42:13
  Speaker 5: I made a quick joke about you were explaining the
• 42:17
  Speaker 5: meaning of the word idiot, and I was like, so
• 42:19
  Speaker 5: that explains everything about why I am the way I am.
• 42:22
  Speaker 5: But but no, I was just one thing I was
• 42:27
  Speaker 5: going to comment on was you were talking about contextualizing
• 42:31
  Speaker 5: reality about your around yourself and making it about you know,
• 42:35
  Speaker 5: your perception of reality, rather than the shared perception or
• 42:39
  Speaker 5: the shared reality. And I was thinking the thing that
• 42:43
  Speaker 5: that immediately made me think of in context of the
• 42:46
  Speaker 5: Elder Scrolls is the whole concept of kim because the
• 42:51
  Speaker 5: idea of that is basically, you're seeing the way reality
• 42:53
  Speaker 5: actually is. You know, you're just a pigment of an
• 42:55
  Speaker 5: imagination in the middle of a dream, and you're telling
• 42:59
  Speaker 5: that that realization of reality.
• 43:02
  Speaker 4: No I am not.
• 43:04
  Speaker 5: I am something completely different. I exist, even though you're
• 43:08
  Speaker 5: saying I don't exist. You know, everything, reality itself is
• 43:11
  Speaker 5: telling that person they don't exist, but they're telling reality. No,
• 43:15
  Speaker 5: I do exist. I'm not just you know, the figment
• 43:18
  Speaker 5: of somebody's imagination. And the ironic part about that is that,
• 43:24
  Speaker 5: you know, you look at some of the things that
• 43:26
  Speaker 5: Kirkbride wrote in like the love Letter to the Fit
• 43:29
  Speaker 5: there I believe is what it is, and he can
• 43:32
  Speaker 5: you know, he essentially tries to.
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: Say that.
• 43:40
  Speaker 5: Love is like the key to stopping landfall, you know,
• 43:44
  Speaker 5: which is this big apocalyptic event in coda and all that.
• 43:48
  Speaker 5: But you know, it's just kind of ironic to me that,
• 43:52
  Speaker 5: you know, the whole idea of Kim is actually kind
• 43:55
  Speaker 5: of a selfish concept, especially compared to Amorant, where you'resentially
• 44:01
  Speaker 5: sacrificing yourself to create a you know, a quote unquote
• 44:04
  Speaker 5: better reality. You know. So I just thought that was
• 44:08
  Speaker 5: kind of an interesting like that that was the first
• 44:10
  Speaker 5: thing that came to mind when I was when I
• 44:12
  Speaker 5: was listening to Andrew talk about how uh, you know,
• 44:16
  Speaker 5: putting you know, centering yourself, making reality center around what
• 44:20
  Speaker 5: you believe, and you know, yeah, I don't know if
• 44:23
  Speaker 5: that really made any sense, but.
• 44:26
  Speaker 4: I think it did. You're kind of so like there's
• 44:28
  Speaker 4: a lot of and it's I would say, it's like
• 44:31
  Speaker 4: I would say, it's kind of like a like, you know,
• 44:35
  Speaker 4: spirit of the Age thing, So it's not you know,
• 44:37
  Speaker 4: it's not unique to Elder scrolls, but a lot of
• 44:39
  Speaker 4: what's kind of going on in the ideas and they
• 44:43
  Speaker 4: a lot of for a lot of game stories, Uh,
• 44:47
  Speaker 4: writers tend to lean into like these self actualization ideas
• 44:51
  Speaker 4: a lot, just kind of like as a rule, since
• 44:54
  Speaker 4: you are, like, you know, you are playing like the
• 44:58
  Speaker 4: character in the story, and you have like you know,
• 45:02
  Speaker 4: that degree of control over the story and you know,
• 45:05
  Speaker 4: and the world as a player in a video game,
• 45:08
  Speaker 4: so they tend to they they you know, they they
• 45:11
  Speaker 4: tend to lean into those self actualization ideas kind of
• 45:14
  Speaker 4: like a lot, if if only as like a as
• 45:21
  Speaker 4: like a kind of like a token gesture nod to
• 45:24
  Speaker 4: you know, hey, you know, you're playing a video game.
• 45:28
  Speaker 4: But like so I think that's like, like, I no,
• 45:33
  Speaker 4: I understood what you're saying. I'm assuming that's kind of
• 45:36
  Speaker 4: that's kind of like what you were talking about there.
• 45:39
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I was just basically talking about how, you know,
• 45:43
  Speaker 5: just the philosophical concept of KIM more so than what
• 45:47
  Speaker 5: it actually you know, practically means gameplay.
• 45:51
  Speaker 4: I think there, I think there is a point of
• 45:52
  Speaker 4: nuance that is worth pointing out when we're talking about
• 45:55
  Speaker 4: like Kim and the dream and stuff like that. I
• 45:57
  Speaker 4: think it's I think it's not necessarily I don't think.
• 46:02
  Speaker 4: I don't think is Kim necessarily realizing that like, oh,
• 46:07
  Speaker 4: it's a dream and so therefore you don't exist. It's
• 46:09
  Speaker 4: not really it's not really saying that again, Like you know,
• 46:13
  Speaker 4: like Kirkbride is kind of talking about the idea of
• 46:16
  Speaker 4: divine hypnagogia as basically he's he's a he's equating lucid
• 46:20
  Speaker 4: dreaming to playing a game basically, and uh so, I
• 46:25
  Speaker 4: I think kind of like what he was trying to
• 46:28
  Speaker 4: explain through Vivec and some of these other characters was
• 46:31
  Speaker 4: more specifically like, Okay, you realize that you're in the
• 46:35
  Speaker 4: dream of the Godhead, so you can come out, you
• 46:37
  Speaker 4: can walk away with And I've like made arguments here
• 46:41
  Speaker 4: and elsewhere for kind of like like you know, kind
• 46:44
  Speaker 4: of like you know, divine lucid dreaming is something much
• 46:46
  Speaker 4: more real and much more powerful than like mortal lucid dreaming.
• 46:50
  Speaker 4: But like the idea is not so much that you
• 46:52
  Speaker 4: don't exist. It's more like you can look at it
• 46:54
  Speaker 4: one of two ways, Like you can either you can
• 46:58
  Speaker 4: either see yourself as being kind of like in this
• 47:01
  Speaker 4: dream and then come to the conclusion that, oh I
• 47:04
  Speaker 4: don't exist, at which point you zero sum, which is
• 47:07
  Speaker 4: like an actual thing, which is like an actual state
• 47:10
  Speaker 4: that they describe in the game, where like you cease
• 47:12
  Speaker 4: to exist or you kind of say like you or
• 47:16
  Speaker 4: like you use your ego and you exert, you exert,
• 47:20
  Speaker 4: you assert your existence and say I am something more,
• 47:24
  Speaker 4: you know, acknowledging kind of like acknowledging your place within
• 47:28
  Speaker 4: kind of like the established order, at which point you
• 47:30
  Speaker 4: become your own like lucid dreamer and exert some control
• 47:36
  Speaker 4: over your surroundings. And that's kind of like reaching him
• 47:40
  Speaker 4: at least the first stage of Kim anyway. But like
• 47:43
  Speaker 4: you know, so it's still very much that self actualization idea,
• 47:46
  Speaker 4: but like at the same time, it's like it's it's
• 47:50
  Speaker 4: not really it's not really about saying, oh I don't exist,
• 47:53
  Speaker 4: like I don't exist as a conclusion you can come to,
• 47:57
  Speaker 4: but you know, and then like you know, if you're
• 47:59
  Speaker 4: not careful, bad things can happen, like within the context
• 48:02
  Speaker 4: of like you know, the metaphysics of the world, you know,
• 48:05
  Speaker 4: but or yeah, that I lost my train of thoughts.
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: Sorry, I mean Yeah, as I argued in my lessons
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: of a Vec video and my understanding of Ken, which
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: very well may be deficient, it very much seems to
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: me to be a Nietzschean will to power sort of
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: situation where you're looking into the abyss, You're looking into
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: reality as such and recognizing that it doesn't ultimately have
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: constraints over you unless you allow it to have ultimate
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: constraints over you, that you know, you have the ability
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: to transcend the world as it's given to you and
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: essentially to assert your own values. That's my understanding of
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: what the Vec did, and that's how he became a
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: god of sorts, essentially by willing it to be so.
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: And that's exactly what needs to prescribes and it feeds
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: right into my picture of Postmonerent philosophy. Taken broadly, I mean,
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: there are postmod certain postmoderns that I like. There's certain
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: elements of Postmondor philosophy I like, but yeah, yeah, yeah,
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: taking it broadly, it is this isolating well philosophy of idiots,
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: and to me like that that's what Kim seems to be.
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: That sort of self actualization so called, which actually leads
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: to becoming less of an actual self because the idea
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: of self itself doesn't mean anything.
• 49:28
  Speaker 4: Kim is so complicated, like I didn't I did, I
• 49:32
  Speaker 4: didn't come here with my Kim notes. But like there
• 49:35
  Speaker 4: there is like you know, there there is truth in
• 49:37
  Speaker 4: what you're saying there, Like like with with Kim, I
• 49:42
  Speaker 4: was actually thinking about the something like with regards to vampirism,
• 49:47
  Speaker 4: mulagbal and necromancy. Something that struck struck stuck out to
• 49:51
  Speaker 4: me with necromancy is there's kind of like a banality
• 49:53
  Speaker 4: of evil idea. We've talked about the more extremes of
• 49:56
  Speaker 4: evil in this in this particular context, necromancy in Elder
• 50:00
  Speaker 4: Scrolls makes me think of the banality of evil because
• 50:02
  Speaker 4: if you notice, when it comes to like the conjuration
• 50:05
  Speaker 4: and mysticism schools of magic UH like magic items, which
• 50:10
  Speaker 4: are very very common in the world of Elder Scrolls.
• 50:13
  Speaker 4: And I believe it was actually Uh Valerian Galerian, the
• 50:17
  Speaker 4: mystic UH who kind of popularized accessible magic, magic and
• 50:25
  Speaker 4: magic items to like the lower classes, you know, within
• 50:30
  Speaker 4: within Elder Scroll societies. All of those magic items require
• 50:34
  Speaker 4: UH soul gems to operate, you know, like like like
• 50:40
  Speaker 4: just like anything if you're using if you're using like magic,
• 50:42
  Speaker 4: anything that like isn't a spell, you know, which which
• 50:46
  Speaker 4: like magic itself comes from etherorioists. But if you're powering something,
• 50:49
  Speaker 4: you need a soul gym, like and and that's how
• 50:51
  Speaker 4: everything in this world operates, and like the it is
• 50:54
  Speaker 4: described in multiple sources how the various mechanics of kind
• 50:58
  Speaker 4: of like how of like summoning the dead like you know,
• 51:01
  Speaker 4: dunmer spirit ancestors or ghosts or skeletons or you know whatever,
• 51:06
  Speaker 4: or again just using a soul gym for whatever it's
• 51:12
  Speaker 4: it's like this very basically it's not it's not a
• 51:17
  Speaker 4: pleasant experience for the person whose soul is being used
• 51:20
  Speaker 4: or for the person who's being conjured. Like even if
• 51:23
  Speaker 4: there's like you know, even if there is like a
• 51:26
  Speaker 4: semi willingness to it, like in the case of like
• 51:28
  Speaker 4: a Dunmer ancestor spirit, like there are there are accounts
• 51:32
  Speaker 4: within the Elder Scrolls that actually describe like being summoned
• 51:36
  Speaker 4: or being used as fuel for a magic item as
• 51:39
  Speaker 4: a very unpleasant experienced, unpleasant experience for like you know,
• 51:44
  Speaker 4: whoever's soul is like being used, you know, for that process.
• 51:48
  Speaker 4: So you're summoning that you know, you're you're summoning that
• 51:51
  Speaker 4: skeleton or that ghost or even that dunmer ancestor spirit
• 51:54
  Speaker 4: who is willing, who is willing to help their you know,
• 51:57
  Speaker 4: their their their their descendants, but they're kind of miserable,
• 52:01
  Speaker 4: you know while they're doing it. There's like there's like
• 52:03
  Speaker 4: an unwilling like you know, forcefulness like to it and
• 52:07
  Speaker 4: kind of like what and like a damage to like
• 52:10
  Speaker 4: you're very to like you're very being that's happening in
• 52:13
  Speaker 4: the process, and it's a it's a practice that is
• 52:16
  Speaker 4: like like as as much as characters like arch made
• 52:20
  Speaker 4: s Traven in Oblivion or whatever make a big deal
• 52:22
  Speaker 4: about necromancy, and you've got various factions within the older
• 52:26
  Speaker 4: skills that have strong opinions on necromancy, there is nevertheless
• 52:30
  Speaker 4: a very a very very common accepted practice of soul
• 52:35
  Speaker 4: gyms for most people as batteries. Like there's so like
• 52:38
  Speaker 4: there there's kind of like this it's kind of like
• 52:40
  Speaker 4: you know, the the the again, it's a banality of
• 52:43
  Speaker 4: evil idea where it's like you know you you kind
• 52:46
  Speaker 4: of you know you you you you pay laps lip
• 52:49
  Speaker 4: service or opposition to some forms of necromancy, but other
• 52:53
  Speaker 4: versions of necromancy, you know, uh, you're you're okay with
• 52:58
  Speaker 4: I mean, even if you're using like an animal soul,
• 53:00
  Speaker 4: like that soul of that animal like is suffering. I
• 53:03
  Speaker 4: mean there's like a whole debate, you know, on you know,
• 53:05
  Speaker 4: whether or not we can find that justifiable. But like
• 53:08
  Speaker 4: it's one of those things where it's a it's just
• 53:11
  Speaker 4: a I just thought of it as just a really
• 53:12
  Speaker 4: fascinating aspect, just like of like like everyday life in
• 53:16
  Speaker 4: the Elder Scrolls, where you know, we're kind of we're
• 53:19
  Speaker 4: kind of you know, there were something that's taken for granted,
• 53:24
  Speaker 4: like because it because it because it's convenient, like it
• 53:28
  Speaker 4: it it all like it almost makes me it. That's
• 53:31
  Speaker 4: that's that's that's that's a bit of a tangent. But
• 53:33
  Speaker 4: I was thinking of like kind of like a Thomas
• 53:35
  Speaker 4: Jefferson's like house, he had like all of these built
• 53:39
  Speaker 4: in modern conveniences where he could, like you know, he
• 53:42
  Speaker 4: could like you know, push like push a button and
• 53:44
  Speaker 4: like you know, like like a bottle of wine would
• 53:46
  Speaker 4: pop out of the wall. But like what was kind
• 53:48
  Speaker 4: of like making all of that, you know, like what
• 53:51
  Speaker 4: was kind of making all of that stuff possible. Was
• 53:53
  Speaker 4: like all of these like slaves that many of them
• 53:56
  Speaker 4: were were his children that he that he had like uh,
• 54:01
  Speaker 4: that he had like in these secret hallways like between walls,
• 54:04
  Speaker 4: between rooms kind of like running back and forth, kind
• 54:06
  Speaker 4: of like providing all of these like like kind of
• 54:09
  Speaker 4: like all of these like little services throughout his house
• 54:11
  Speaker 4: that like made for actually like something equivocable to like
• 54:16
  Speaker 4: a twentieth or twenty first century comfortable like you know,
• 54:22
  Speaker 4: modern lifestyle and level of comfort, which like in his
• 54:27
  Speaker 4: own letters sometimes he talks like, you know, he acknowledges
• 54:30
  Speaker 4: occasionally admits his own discomfort about it, but like he's
• 54:33
  Speaker 4: unwilling to give it up because like it's too like
• 54:35
  Speaker 4: it's it's it's like it's too it's too comfortable, it's
• 54:38
  Speaker 4: too convenient to give up like all of these like
• 54:40
  Speaker 4: to give up this crazy little house that he's designed
• 54:43
  Speaker 4: for himself basically of like you know power, you know,
• 54:46
  Speaker 4: functioning powered by all of the slaves. And I was
• 54:48
  Speaker 4: just but I was kind of I don't know that
• 54:51
  Speaker 4: that's kind of the that's kind of my me drawing
• 54:56
  Speaker 4: connections there, but I was just thinking about that in
• 54:58
  Speaker 4: the context of soul gims, and I just thought that
• 54:59
  Speaker 4: was really fascinating. If that makes any sense to anybody.
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: How dare you malign America? Sir?
• 55:08
  Speaker 4: Listen? You can you can, you can read it. It's
• 55:13
  Speaker 4: all there.
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: That's a good connection.
• 55:16
  Speaker 3: So you're telling me I should feel bad for having
• 55:18
  Speaker 3: the two hundred filled black soul gems in my cupboard
• 55:21
  Speaker 3: right now?
• 55:24
  Speaker 4: Listen, you know, I mean we got like, I've got this,
• 55:30
  Speaker 4: you know, I've got this like soul gym right here.
• 55:32
  Speaker 4: It's it's I mean, you.
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: Know, except I think those usually hold our own souls.
• 55:39
  Speaker 5: Right right, Yeah, I'm just gonna just very briefly mentioned
• 55:44
  Speaker 5: that if you're interested in the history of Beniccalarian and
• 55:51
  Speaker 5: Mena Marco, you can actually get a lot of that
• 55:53
  Speaker 5: story in the E s O expansion Somerset, best expansion
• 55:57
  Speaker 5: in the game, by the way. But also so just
• 56:00
  Speaker 5: I wanted to make one other quick point about, you know,
• 56:03
  Speaker 5: talking about the soul gems, and we were talking about
• 56:06
  Speaker 5: the soul Caaren earlier and the idea of death not
• 56:10
  Speaker 5: being the worst thing that could happen to you. Again,
• 56:14
  Speaker 5: I'd spent a very long time since I've played Don Guard,
• 56:17
  Speaker 5: but I vaguely. Remember there were quite a few NPCs
• 56:20
  Speaker 5: you could talk to in there that were basically just
• 56:22
  Speaker 5: trapped because they were in you know, they were trapped
• 56:25
  Speaker 5: by you know, a black soul gem, and you know
• 56:28
  Speaker 5: a lot of them I'm sure would definitely prefer death
• 56:31
  Speaker 5: over being basically tormented essentially in this you know, this
• 56:35
  Speaker 5: realm of purple light all the time, you know. But yeah,
• 56:40
  Speaker 5: I just I definitely think that the whole soul gem
• 56:43
  Speaker 5: concept as a whole, even even the non even the
• 56:47
  Speaker 5: ones for just animals and non sentient beings, is kind
• 56:50
  Speaker 5: of disturbing because the implication is that even non sentient
• 56:56
  Speaker 5: beings and the Elder scrolls have a type of soul,
• 56:59
  Speaker 5: and that means that if you're you know, you're trapping
• 57:02
  Speaker 5: these animals, you're essentially holding them against their you know,
• 57:04
  Speaker 5: not I wouldn't say will, because if they're not sentient,
• 57:07
  Speaker 5: they don't really have a will, but it you know,
• 57:11
  Speaker 5: if it's if it's an unpleasant experience for you know,
• 57:15
  Speaker 5: fully sentient beings to be trapped, then I'm sure that
• 57:18
  Speaker 5: they're kind of suffering to an extent if they're you know,
• 57:22
  Speaker 5: if they're just animals and you know, of course that
• 57:24
  Speaker 5: could go into a discussion about like, you know, animal
• 57:28
  Speaker 5: cruelty and all of that. But yeah, the whole soldiering
• 57:33
  Speaker 5: con soule gem concept is definitely very disturbing the more
• 57:36
  Speaker 5: you look into it. I mean, they look cool in
• 57:38
  Speaker 5: the game, but that's about it.
• 57:40
  Speaker 4: And then you do you know, you don't. You don't
• 57:41
  Speaker 4: get relief. You don't get relief for your battery life efforts.
• 57:45
  Speaker 4: You just go straight to the soul caarn like exactly. Congratulations.
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: I mean I did appreciate what's this thing? Is it
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: Saint Jube or well, how do how do you say
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: his name?
• 57:59
  Speaker 4: Something like that?
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, well, whatever his name is. I've always appreciated
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: his inclusion in that. As somebody who entered Scrolls through Morrowind,
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: I really appreciate that they worked in the hate for
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: the wind Racers into the story so organically. Although I
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: never did clict off of pages.
• 58:20
  Speaker 5: I also loved how they canonized him as a saint
• 58:23
  Speaker 5: for doing that.
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: Right, that's a good touch.
• 58:26
  Speaker 4: It's so funny.
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: Well, is there anything else pressing to talk about don
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: Guard before moving on to Dragonboorn, which I probably haven't
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: even lesson to mention actually, because I agree with Jacob,
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: I like Don Guard more. But yeah, anything else to
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: say about On Guard Don Guard, You.
• 58:43
  Speaker 4: You apparently can get an armored troll in the game.
• 58:47
  Speaker 4: What I did not remember that at all. I don't
• 58:50
  Speaker 4: remember that at all. Like I was looking at that
• 58:51
  Speaker 4: that blew my mind.
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: Guard.
• 58:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you can miss most of even if you joined
• 58:58
  Speaker 3: the Don Guard, you can miss most of the content
• 59:00
  Speaker 3: because it's off to the side and you can just
• 59:02
  Speaker 3: plow through the story and not do any of it.
• 59:05
  Speaker 3: And there's actually some little fun things to do, like yeah,
• 59:08
  Speaker 3: arm patrols and there's some huskies that you can get
• 59:11
  Speaker 3: and all that kind of stuff.
• 59:15
  Speaker 5: Well, one thing just that I liked about Don Guard
• 59:18
  Speaker 5: was the sequence in the Forgotten Veil because it was
• 59:21
  Speaker 5: so juxtaposed. You know, Donguard as a whole is a
• 59:26
  Speaker 5: very Gothic dark DLC because you know, I mean, it's vampires,
• 59:30
  Speaker 5: and then you get this just this brief segment of
• 59:33
  Speaker 5: the game or the DLC where you go to this place.
• 59:36
  Speaker 5: It's very serene, very beautiful to look at. And I
• 59:40
  Speaker 5: always thought that that was a really it was a
• 59:44
  Speaker 5: moment that really stuck with me, I think maybe more
• 59:47
  Speaker 5: than the rest of the DLC. Even though the Forgotten
• 59:50
  Speaker 5: Veil is only a tiny little piece of the whole story,
• 59:53
  Speaker 5: it just stuck with me because of how much of
• 59:56
  Speaker 5: a dichotomy there was between that really peaceful, beautiful segment
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 5: and then the rest of the whole DLC, which is
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 5: very dark and bloody and all of that.
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 4: But Don Guard's got cool vibes.
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: Don Guard does have cool vibes.
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 5: Good summary.
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 4: I think, I think uh as a as a quick aside,
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 4: I think, at Andrew, I'm so sorry, man, my ADHD
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 4: deleted your name from my brain for like two seconds,
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 4: I think, and I think Andrew, Uh. What I'm getting
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 4: from all of this is that he would maybe like
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 4: Vampire the Mask Garade.
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: It's possible. Yeah, I've never played, but yeah, I mean
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: I like, I like vampire stuff. It's not like, you know,
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: one of my main things, but I enjoy it, and
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: I like I like the vibes of Don Guard. You know,
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: whether I'm making my evil vampire playthrough or the righteous
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: go Kill the undead, you know, both of them. I
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: think have a certain appeal of them. All right, Well,
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: now as we turn to Dragon Born, new Little Sugar Hit,
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: So I'm switching franchises with my Sunset Sasprilla here, But
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: for for this one, honestly, I like the return to
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: soul Seim again as more one guy. I enjoy that aesthetic.
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: I like getting back there having some of these Moro
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: Win vibes coming through. Beyond that, I personally don't find
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: Dragonborn very compelling. I don't really like doing it very much.
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: But I don't know that that's my pretty lame opening
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: thoughts here, Tyler, What do you have to say here?
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 3: So I I just played through it last week this
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 3: past week, and I was kind of amazed at how very,
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 3: very very short the story is. Like it's it's like
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 3: three missions and then you're done. It's like, all right, really,
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 3: I mean it's it's probably it's probably more than that,
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 3: but I'm pretty sure I spent like less.
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 2: Than an hour plow through the main story. I mean,
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 2: because you can have.
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 3: But the appeal of Dragon Born is more of Solstein
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 3: related content, and then I think the actual story itself
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 3: because it's a fun tie to and also in a way,
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 3: you get to see some of the changes in Denver
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 3: culture after the tribunal have passed, and you hear about
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 3: the reclamation reclamation is what I think that they call it,
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 3: where that you know, back to worship being the good,
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 3: good Dandra and uh, and then getting a little bit
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 3: more into just kind of the aftermath of you know,
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 3: what happened to the island, you know, after the empire
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 3: Withdrew and yeah, just there's a lot of little fun
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 3: little nuggets there, but for the story itself, like, yeah,
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 3: you go to you pretty much can get away with
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 3: going to aograph twice and that's that's her.
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 2: That's the story.
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 3: Where there are I think five Black books in total
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 3: that you can get and explore, you know that that plaint.
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 2: Of Oblievion more but.
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 3: And yeah, so but I do like the the seeing
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 3: Hermatus more more involved in a story and just kind
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 3: of exploring that idea, just the idea of what you
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 3: know that that Dajre represents to the world. And I
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 3: think just that in general could be enough to explore.
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 3: But I also did write down quite a bit of
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 3: skull stuff, again because I can't help myself but be
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 3: in love with the skull, because I pretty much end
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 3: most of my playthroughs throwing on the skull clothes and
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 3: and and just retiring in their little village and and
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 3: being happy, uh, communing with the all maker for the
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 3: rest of my dragonboards life.
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 2: So that's that's usually how it ends.
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 3: But I've I've got some more some more Boethius ties here.
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 2: If for for interesting, go for it.
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 3: I'll need a second here, hold on, gotta get through
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 3: this document here.
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 4: Bullog Ball is uh God, get off down guard. Hermeus
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 4: Mora not muleg Ball, not mull Egball. Her Maus Mora
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 4: is one of my favorite Dadrik princes and Oblivio and Eltrickles.
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: Why is that?
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 4: I just think he's cool, Like I like, like just
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 4: like just very broadly, very simply, so I like, I
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 4: like kind of like love CRAFTI and Eldrich beings. So
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 4: I just I think he's cool just like you know,
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 4: just an amalgamation of eyeballs and tentacles and uh you
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 4: mysterious knowledge, uh like you know, just kind of very
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 4: very simply, just you know that just kind of I
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 4: like that sort of stuff just to in fiction.
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 3: And he's he's kind of in a sense, I would say,
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 3: maybe like one of the most different of of the
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 3: dander too, in that he doesn't just even the way
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 3: that's presented to you because many of the other danger
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 3: take on beast your or humanoid forms, whereas her Master.
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 2: Almost did it too.
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 3: Hermeus mora is this is this abyss of eyeballs and
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 3: tentacles and and and.
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 2: And also too.
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 3: I just you know, as far as like the gameplay goes,
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 3: you can never skip the dialogue just plowing through it.
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 3: You have to sit there and listen, which is which
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 3: I in a way is It is kind of in
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 3: a way genius of the developers if it was intentional,
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 3: because it forces you to like dread this thing, and
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 3: which is a very interesting thought. But yeah, there's and
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 3: two just like this idea of like, you know, Apocrypha
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 3: is there for you, oh scholar, go on in, like
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 3: have a look. You'll find what you're looking for, but
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 3: you'll never find what you're looking for. And it talks
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 3: of like many of those seeking knowledge get lost in
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 3: Apocrypha forever because they're just looking for.
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 2: That final bit that will round off their ability to
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 2: know what they need to know. And it's just an.
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 3: Unending lust for knowledge that you get while you're there,
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 3: and and his wanting to ensnare you into your curiosity
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 3: and ambition and believing that the knowledge will provide some
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 3: sort of salvation, but in the end you get stuck
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 3: in his grasp because he's trying to extract as much
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 3: from you as as he can because he wants.
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 2: To add to his hoarde of knowledge. And anyways, it's
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 2: just a really cool Yeah.
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: I appreciate that framing. So when academia there there are
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 1: many such cases do but that's extinctly of that that
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 1: draw to knowledge for for the sake of identity, but
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: ultimately the the kind of quest that ultimately consumes your
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: your identity, much as think of like the Faustus essentially,
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: where you're you're selling your soul for knowledge is never
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: going to allow you to actually know who was truly
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 1: worth knowing you you Yeah, I'm just repeating what you said.
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 1: So I think that's a good point.
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 3: Then I guess getting into when I was when I
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 3: was playing the game the So there's there was one
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 3: quote that so storn is the is the shaman of
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 3: the Skull, and and part of the story is that
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 3: hermeus More.
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 2: Will give you the last bit of what you need
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 2: to go.
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 3: Find Mirak, the first dragon born, if in return he
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 3: gets the secrets of the Skull, like he's trying to
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 3: get this last vestige of knowledge from the skull that
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 3: he needs, and so Storn is willing to give that
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 3: up because he sees the folly or the danger of Mirak,
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 3: and so he says it is the only way to
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 3: freeze Soul's time forever from Mirac's shadow. There comes a
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 3: time when everything must change. Nothing that lives remains the
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 3: same forever. Do not fear me, my daughter. This is
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 3: the destiny that they all maker has laid out for me.
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 3: And so that made me think, you know, just in
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 3: our chaotic world that we live in, and this is
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 3: something I like even try to bring to a lot
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 3: of my counseling session, especially when we're doing Christian counseling,
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 3: because it's easier to try and do this that you know,
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 3: we get stuck in this chaos of the world that
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 3: we're living in and everything seems so random and nature
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 3: itself is pushing us and pulling us in different ways.
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 3: And even looking at the skull themselves is like they
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 3: subject themselves to a lie that is able to that
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 3: they're able to die from things that civilized people don't
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 3: die from, right, that they are killed by snowstorms when
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 3: everyone else has houses or the wolves will get them
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 3: while they're gathering firewood. But you know, most of the
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 3: civilized world doesn't need to deal with that. And and
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 3: and so it tied in like really try to ground
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 3: in the people and my people and and this and
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 3: the unchanging like there's there's trying to ground them in
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 3: something that is stable. And and I think that in
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 3: a way, the the Skull talk about like the all
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 3: Makers like a rip like a river where the souls
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 3: are flowing in and out, but it's like the steady flow,
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 3: and there's the steady will, and there's steady something happening
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 3: with with the all Maker that is tied to the
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 3: land that they're trying.
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 2: To live in harmony with.
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so I just thought interesting, like this, like things
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 3: are changing, things will change, I have to do this,
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 3: this is the will of the.
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 2: All Maker and it'll be okay.
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 3: And it was just an interesting It just got me
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 3: thinking more about that in general. And then I guess
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 3: the quote from Boethius is you know, is from book
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 3: three's it uh So nature's fixed order could not proceed
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 3: on its path, and various kinds of change could not
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 3: exhibit motions so orderly in place, time, effect, distance from
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 3: one another in nature unless there was one unmoving and
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 3: stable power to regulate them. So for this power, whatever
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 3: it is through which creation remains in existence and in motion,
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 3: I use the word which all people use, namely God.
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 3: And so like this, there's something stable. There has to
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 3: be something foundational, something stable here, because even in like
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 3: in the older scrolls world, there has to be something
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 3: there to keep the thing flowing, to regulate this chaos,
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 3: because if not, if the objects is emogon when it entroprey,
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 3: you take its way and it would just all unravel
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 3: what's holding it together?
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 1: But yes, yeah, and you find this idea not only
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 1: in explicitly in Christian philosophy, such as in the likes
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: of Boetheis, but I mean even go to the pre
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: Socratic philosopher Heraclitis, who says that all of existence is
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 1: like a river that's constantly moving, and so you can
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: never step into the same water. Twice you step into
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: the river, step out, you step back in. You're in
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: new water now. And he says, this is what all
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 1: of existence is like, except if everything is given over
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 1: to change, then there's at least one thing that does
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 1: not change, namely the principle of change itself, that all
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: things may be continually moving, but things move in an orderly,
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 1: predictable kind of manner. And so when you understand the
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 1: principle of change behind the moving river, well now you
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 1: actually can understand the river. And his the word he
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 1: uses for this stable reality is the logoss the word
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 1: same idea that you know we see at the beginning
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 1: of John's Gospel in our can holagas in the beginning
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 1: was the word. And so you find this idea all
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 1: the way back in Heraclitus, that in a world that
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 1: is constantly changing, there must be something that's not changing.
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 1: And the path of wisdom is anchoring yourself in that
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 1: which does not change. Because when you are anchored and
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 1: that which does not change, then changing fortune can't actually
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: do you any harm. Socrates says, looking down the court
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 1: of Athens that's about to execute him. You cannot do
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 1: harm to a good man, because one who is based
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 1: in goodness, Well, that relationship can only be severed if
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 1: he were to play the coward and run away from it,
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 1: if he were to break that relationship, but it cannot
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 1: be taken away by external means. And so yeah, I
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 1: think that's a good connection. And you know, you find
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 1: those ideas in a lot of the Northern tails that
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 1: the Skull are obviously swept up in or inspired by.
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: You know, look at the likes of Beowulf, where you know,
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 1: Beowolf is able to just throw himself into any danger,
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 1: not always guaranteed of temporal victory, but as long as
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 1: he is playing the heroic role that he is meant
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 1: to play, well, he figures that's good enough. God's going
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 1: to decide what the consequences are, or you know, Fate
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 1: is going to decide what the consequences are, because you know,
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 1: sometimes the religion of Bewolf is a little bit vague
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 1: intentionally so, but nonetheless, the point is that things are
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 1: going to work out, that the way that they're going
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 1: to work out, my job is to do what I
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 1: need to do. It's it's a very anti consequentialist sort
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 1: of philosophy, very virtue based, and I think that there
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 1: is a lot of power in that, in recognizing that
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 1: strength is in virtue regardless of changing circumstance. And again,
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 1: so many of these points that I'm making, I'm really
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 1: just echoing what Tyler's saying here. Uh So everyone go
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 1: read Boethius.
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 3: There's this really cool course life, Death and Meaning that
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 3: you can take on the Mythic Mind.
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 1: Yes, Patreon dot com slash Mythic Mind.
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 4: Everybody like Covenant subscribe.
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, and by the way, just for a little plug,
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 1: I will be unloading that course on the podcast starting
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 1: in the beginning of the new year, so look forward
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 1: to that. I don't know anything else about Dragon Born.
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 1: Maybe somebody can tell me. You know, I kind of
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 1: led with this question last time of who is Aldoin.
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 1: I think this will be an easier question who is Mirak,
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 1: because I obviously I've played this not recently, but I've
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 1: played through the DLC a number of times. I still
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 1: don't really know.
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 5: All I know is he's supposedly the first dragon. That's
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 5: about all I know about him.
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 4: So Daryloth did a really fun little video just kind
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 4: of like so uh, Daryloth was like a was like
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 4: a history student in college. So he likes to kind
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 4: of like take his education, that education and apply it
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 4: to like how he does his like elder scrolls, like
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 4: lore videos. He did a fun little exercise on kind
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 4: of like how we like kind of like how we
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 4: like uh like study and research and like test history.
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 4: Like he kind of took like those principles and he
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 4: applied it to Mirak and did a fun little exercise
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 4: like I'm not gonna I'm not gonna like go through
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 4: the video like, but basically he does this little exercise
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 4: on was Mirak really the first dragon born or is
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 4: this kind of like a like a like a like
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 4: a like a thing of legends and myth and propaganda
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 4: or you know whatever, like you know, what do you know?
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 5: What?
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 4: What do the so to say? And it was it
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 4: was a fun little it was a fun little exercise.
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 4: His conclusion was basically that you know, there is kind
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 4: of like like academically historically, there is room for probable
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 4: doubt that he is not necessarily, like you know, the
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 4: the first dragon born simply put, I think, you know,
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 4: for the purposes of the story, that really just kind
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 4: of like matter to us, like, you know, he may
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 4: as well be the first dragon born. And we kind
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 4: of talked about how like what a dragonborn is is
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 4: just kind of like it's kind of up to like
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 4: kind of like what Akatash is kind of planning or
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 4: trying to do in that particular given moment in place
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 4: and time and you know whatever, you know, you know
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 4: simply that they just you know, a dragon born is
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 4: somebody who has Akatash's blood for you know, one reason
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 4: or another, one calling or another. And if I remember right,
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 4: if I remember right, his his like you know, his
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 4: his his initial I think he was called by Acotash
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 4: to be Aldowin's like original slayer, to be Aldowin's kind
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 4: of like original kind of like you know, the hand
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 4: of judgment on like you know, a fallen corrupted Aldowin
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 4: that had you know, kind of like you know, kind
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 4: of strayed from his nature as we kind of talked
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 4: about in the in the Skyrim episode. And he doesn't
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 4: do that, Like we have this theme of betrayal where
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 4: he kind of he kind of betrays the calling of
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 4: Acotash for his own gains in pursuing kind of like
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 4: the power and knowledge that will like God, I didn't
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 4: almostate it again that uh that hermeas Mora provides. But
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 4: he was I know, we know he was a dragon
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 4: priest and uh, like I don't know, like and the
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 4: dragon priests were basically kind of like the intermediaries for
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 4: the Dragon Tyrant and their uh and their human subjects
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 4: in the the Marathic era, right. But that's that's that's
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 4: that's kind of that's that's kind of the Uh that's
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 4: kind of the simple version of it. I don't know
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 4: how much more there is. There's a there's a cool
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 4: legend where he kind of goes to war with another
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 4: dragon priest and their their their power of the According
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 4: to legend, anyway, their power of the voice separated Solstein
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 4: from the mainland and made it the island the mainland
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 4: of Skyrim, and made it the island that it is now.
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 4: If you know, like you know, we know, like you know,
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 4: elder scrolls, unreliable narrators, blah blah blah blah blah, if
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 4: the legends are to be believed, and you know, in
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 4: this in this world of myth, myth and magic, we've
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 4: got about as much reason to trust in these stories
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 4: as we do not to. That's kind of the fun
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 4: of it. But uh, yeah, he like you know, his
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 4: job was to kill Aldowin, and then he didn't do that,
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 4: and then uh Mullig bow yoinked him to apocrypha and
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 4: made him his plaything, and then he was trying to
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 4: betray uh Hermez Mora. Did I call him millig Ball again?
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 4: So yeah, any like comment and subscribe this what this
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 4: is when you come here for folks anyway, But yeah,
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 4: he was trying to portray him hermeuz Mora and escape.
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 4: So Himris Mora makes you his new champion. I think
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 4: it's kind of the gist of that. Is that about, right,
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 4: Jacob Tyler? Somebody help?
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 1: That sounds right.
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 4: There's a lot of interesting there. There is like interesting
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 4: lore there, especially kind of like with Soulstein, as Tyler
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 4: was talking about. I did not really by the time,
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 4: like I loved don Guard, but by the time dragon
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 4: Board came out, I was kind of done with Skyrim
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 4: and I didn't really give it the time of day
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 4: or the attention that it deserved like I had. I
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 4: did not explore Soulsteim at all. I didn't have the patience.
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 4: I didn't have the connection to Morowind at that time,
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 4: so like, I didn't care. I just wanted to get
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 4: the main story done and over with. And I remember
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 4: it being I remember it being kind of a slog.
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 4: There was cool stuff like I think I would have
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 4: liked it more if I wasn't burned out at the time. Again,
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 4: I really I do want to give I do want
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 4: to give Dragonborn a fair shake and see if my
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 4: opinion changes on it. But does that answer your question, Andrew?
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, and I need to give another shake too.
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 1: I look forward to returning to some of these things
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 1: now that a lot of my perspective on game storytelling
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 1: and things, it's different than it was when I last
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 1: played through these things, and so I look forward to that.
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 1: Although I just feel like Apocrypha. You can get some
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 1: cool perks from it, but I feel like it's more
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 1: fade stuff.
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 4: I was really excited to go to Apocrypha because, like again,
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 4: I was interested to see her Maus more Uh's world,
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 4: you know, so like I was interested in seeing that.
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 4: I think the bummer for me, I think the bummer
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 4: for me was that it was kind you know Tyler
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 4: was talking about it's kind of a linear dungeon. No,
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 4: so you don't so like some of the some of
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 4: the magic of it being a world unto itself is
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 4: kind of lost. Not that I wanted like this big,
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 4: huge whole other like Apocryphal place to explore necessarily, but
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 4: it would have been nice if it was not a corridor.
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah, in a sense, like when you when you think
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 3: of what that world would be, you would think more.
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 2: Of the labyrinth.
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 3: But yeah, and they they tried to give the illusion
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 3: of a labyrinth by making these different you know, effects happen.
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 2: But in the end, like you know where you're going.
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 4: It really was the fade, wasn't it. I didn't even
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 4: think about that until Andrews said it. Oh my gosh, yeah,
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 4: you know what is funny though, I was just thinking
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 4: about Mirac's actually kind of a punk, like he couldn't
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 4: even in the battle with the other dragon priest, like
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 4: he had to be saved by his dadra and then
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 4: like if you like you know, like he like he
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 4: chose not to fight all to win for one reason
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 4: or another, like you know, we don't really know because
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 4: we weren't really there.
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 3: Just to interjectory quick too, like at the very beginning
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 3: is like, oh I could have done that, but a
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 3: different path.
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 4: Yeah, Like yeah, I think, yeah, Like I think that's
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 4: a line you get if you have already killed out
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 4: the way, like he doesn't say it if you haven't
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 4: killed out the win yet. I don't know what he
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 4: says in place of that, but if you but he's like, oh,
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 4: I couldn't. I could have done it. You know, it's like, dude,
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 4: shut up, like and then and then and then you
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 4: punk him, like you know, it's he's it's for for
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 4: for being somebody as apparently as powerful as he is,
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 4: Like he's really he's really not all that apparently.
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 5: Well to to play Devil's Advocate here, Merrock is more
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 5: of a just you know, he's he's just quote unquote
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 5: just a dragon born, Whereas you look at the last
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 5: dragon born in Skyrim, and it's heavily implied that it's
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 5: a Chezarine, and you know, if that's the case, then
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 5: he's probably got a little bit more power or a
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 5: little bit more destiny. I guess to wipe the floor
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 5: with him, I don't know.
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 4: But there there is there is a case to be made,
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 4: Like I don't know how much evidence there is, but
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 4: I do agree with you there there is a case
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 4: to be made that every player character is potentially a
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 4: Chazerine in some form. Like that's that that's a whole
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 4: thing that we really don't have time to get into. Uh,
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 4: you know, basically basically like you know, an in car,
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 4: you know, an incarnation of Lurcan, a mover and shaker
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 4: of change of change in the world. Uh, but yeah,
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 4: it's it's it's kind of a so so like there
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 4: is definitely some merit to what you're saying there, but
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 4: even so having the power of having like the blood
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 4: of Acotash, like the power of Acotosh granted to him,
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 4: and also having the power of the Voice, you know,
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 4: which we kind of talked about last time, Like you know,
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 4: the full extent of the reality the reality bending capabilities
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 4: of the Voice is just like you know, not is
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 4: something that's not really expressed in the games. And yet
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 4: and yet Mirek is just still kind of like again
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 4: like he just he just kind of fails at everything
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 4: he does. It's it's it's practically speaking.
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 3: It because you do get to see the extent of
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 3: the power of his ability to bend minds. I mean,
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 3: he essentially enslaves half of the island by the time
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 3: you get there to his will. It's just when you
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 3: get there and fight him, it's like, well, there it is.
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 2: There's your power and all it's to be.
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 3: But but his ability to bend minds, I mean, it's
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 3: really is a powerful thing.
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 2: And his ability to enslave and it's just i wish
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 2: it was more.
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 3: Brought out, because it's it's just so easy to beat
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 3: the story.
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 2: It's I mean, it's just it's too easy.
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 3: To get through, and it's kind of unfortunate because like, yeah,
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 3: the dude had slaves. The entire like island enslaved, and
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 3: they had anything from a rikling to a to a reaver,
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 3: to bandits to you know, to the skull like everybody
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 3: was susceptible to it.
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 1: And uh yeah, and the best use of slaves you
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 1: could come up with was like standing around these pillars.
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 2: Carry rocks.
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 1: He's not a very good slave master.
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 5: I think that's part of the reason why I preferred
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 5: Don Guard was because, you know, the whole promise of
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 5: Dragonborn was really awesome.
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 5: Yeah, you get to meet the quote unquote first dragon
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 5: board and you get to battle them, and it's this
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 5: really apocalyptic It's it's like an apocalypse right after a
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 5: potential apocalypse, you know, But then it doesn't quite live
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 5: up to that. I mean, like I said, there's cool
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 5: stuff in it. I did enjoy it, It's just it
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 5: didn't quite live up to the promise that I thought
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 5: it had, at least for me.
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 4: I exactly.
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I need to replay it at some point too, because,
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 5: like I said, it's been probably over a decade at
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 5: this point. I think the first time I ever played
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 5: it was when I got the Elder Scrolls Anthology, because
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 5: I didn't have the DLCs before I got that, and
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 5: so I kind of burst through down Guard, and then
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 5: of course I did all the grinding you needed for
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 5: hearth Fire, and then I decided to go for Dragon
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 5: Born as the last thing. And by that point, like
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 5: Ian said, I was kind of burned out on it,
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 5: not not the game as a whole, but just kind
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 5: of on the whole grind of playing the game for
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 5: hours and hours every day, you know. So so yeah,
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 5: I definitely need to need to revisit it at some point,
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 5: see how my opinion changes nowadays.
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah, And I would say, just based off of it,
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 3: seemed like they spent the bulk of their development on
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 3: the sandbox, on Soul's time, on the stories within the island,
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 3: and then it was like, well, here's a hook to
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 3: get you there. We'll wrap that up, and here's the
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 3: island to play with, because like I said, there's there's
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 3: and now actually have playing have been being played.
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 2: Or I guess walked through Blood Moon. I haven't played
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 2: it yet, but having.
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 3: It was really interesting to see that they you can
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 3: touch on each of a lot a lot of the
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 3: stories in Blood Moon again through Dragonborn, and it's even
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 3: more fun to know that these other people and and
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 3: like even with like a car Stag like you could
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 3: you can summon his ghosts and it's like the only
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 3: actual kind of tough boss battle and the entirety of
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 3: the older scrolls, but because he's got a lot of
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 3: really cool effects that make him difficult to fight, but.
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 2: You can still cheesse your way through it.
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 3: But but still, like just all these different callbacks are
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 3: just really fun. And then and then too, like being
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 3: able to the mead Hall the thirst Meat Hall, like
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 3: you're able to either side with the with the Riklings
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 3: and and and hold the mead haller you can decide
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 3: with some Nords and you can take it over and
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 3: and have it be a proper meat hall again. But
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 3: it's more fun to de side with the Reclaims because
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 3: you get one as a follower and you can and
• 1:28:41
  Speaker 3: they join you and throw spears everywhere and it's a
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 3: good time. And and so there's like this there's a
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 3: lot of these little stories and and they and and
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 3: soul Stem that are really interesting and fun. It's just
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 3: they have the story itself. But like, having just played
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 3: this past week, I was like, yeah, that's why I
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 3: don't remember anything, because it's like half a paragraph of content.
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 4: Like I was going to ask you, since you played recently,
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 4: about more, uh, since it'd be more fresh in your
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 4: mind about Soulstein and just like how like how fleshed
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 4: out that was as a sandbox? I was going to
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 4: ask you like about that and whether or not were
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 4: there any were there any like, uh like, how rich
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 4: is Sulstein as a sandbox? And Skyriman were there any
• 1:29:25
  Speaker 4: themes that kind of jumped out to you?
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 3: It's snowy, Yeah, there's ash and then there's snow.
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 1: I guess pretty cool.
• 1:29:36
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I love my my star room set right now.
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 2: It's pretty. It's pretty nice.
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 4: I'm sorry. I didn't mean to put you on the spot.
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 2: No, yeah, I guess I don't. I guess I don't know.
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 3: I guess I don't not answer that really well, but
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 3: I guess it. It It is able to to pack
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 3: a punch because there's there's there's a lot to do,
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 3: and there's you know, whereas like with Don Guard, like
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 3: the the story itself is what's carrying you through kind
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 3: of the content, and there's enough in the story, whereas,
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 3: like I said, the island itself, because you know, you
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 3: can be part of the revitalization of Raven Rock, you
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 3: know by and there's you know, an assassination plot with
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 3: the more tongue, like there's.
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 4: This is crazy to me because again like I didn't
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 4: do any of it, like I just I just I
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 4: just at the time, I want to go back. There's time.
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 3: There's there's a mission where you can invest in a
• 1:30:31
  Speaker 3: mining thing that requires you to keep pouring gold into
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 3: this dummy who keeps losing his miners. And you you
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 3: leave and then something happens and a courier comes and
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 3: you go back and oh people are dead again, and
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 3: oh there's dragger everywhere. And so there's these there's these
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 3: fun little stories. And then there's Intel Mithrin. There's Neeloth
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 3: that he's at Tel Vannie, right, and so there's there's
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 3: a little tell Vanni story line there that's I think.
• 1:31:02
  Speaker 3: Actually the character himself is kind of fun, funny and
• 1:31:05
  Speaker 3: goofy and enjoyable to you know, to play with to
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 3: you know, to be round and so like, yeah, there's
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 3: these little things that it does in some ways not
• 1:31:17
  Speaker 3: with the richness, but it still is able to call
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 3: back to some of the quirkiness Ofmorrow, and that is enjoyable.
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 3: I think that's probably where a lot of people get
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 3: the enjoyment from that.
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 2: Actually enjoyed the Dragon Board was.
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 3: It's more of just being able to say, hey, I
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 3: remember that, I remember that, And there are there's some
• 1:31:34
  Speaker 3: actually funny, goofy characters in there too that kind of
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 3: make it worth it as well.
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 4: But yeah, didn't you say that you wanted to bring
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 4: up Avar Stone Singer?
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 3: Well, I guess yes, it was, you know, yeah, Well, well,
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 3: essentially in this story again, like we're able to relive
• 1:31:59
  Speaker 3: a bar Stones Singer's story again, where in Blood Moon
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 3: you have this marching to the stones where it's a
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 3: little bit more concrete where you're actually doing the tasks
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 3: again in Blood Moon of what Avars Stone Singer did,
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 3: but in this one you do have to make a
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 3: pilgrimage to the various stones as an avar and there
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 3: is an adversary and the adversary the adversary stand in
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 3: the adversary stand and is more of a mirror, is
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 3: more alluding to like mirak as the Adversary standing or Hermeusmora,
• 1:32:31
  Speaker 3: whichever which That's kind of the whole point of the
• 1:32:34
  Speaker 3: story is that you know, of that of that myth,
• 1:32:37
  Speaker 3: is that it's kind of a placeholder myth that just
• 1:32:40
  Speaker 3: kind of keeps reliving itself over time. And I just
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 3: thought that was a really cool thing, that reading of
• 1:32:46
  Speaker 3: Our Stone Singer actually within the blood Moon content and
• 1:32:50
  Speaker 3: then kind of re re reliving it again in a
• 1:32:53
  Speaker 3: different way, and the Dragonborn DLC is just seeing that
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 3: kind of through line is always really fun.
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 2: In these games.
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 4: It's almost like there's a never ending cycle of mono myths.
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 4: The same story just keeps playing out over and over
• 1:33:09
  Speaker 4: and over again, almost like it's like like an echo
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 4: of the story. I don't know you.
• 1:33:17
  Speaker 5: Brought that up, but one thing I was actually going
• 1:33:20
  Speaker 5: to say, I was going to fit it in wherever
• 1:33:22
  Speaker 5: I could, was that, you know, with the Skull and
• 1:33:24
  Speaker 5: the whole concept of the all Maker and the Adversary,
• 1:33:27
  Speaker 5: it kind of reminds me of how if you look
• 1:33:30
  Speaker 5: throughout history and different cultures, they get certain aspects of
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 5: the truth correct, Like I mean, you have the flood
• 1:33:38
  Speaker 5: story and a lot of cultures there are you know,
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 5: christ archetypes in some of the myths and stuff like that,
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 5: and it kind of reminded me of that because you know,
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 5: the all maker and the adversary and in the skull
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 5: Loar is kind of like au and Potome. So it
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 5: just it was kind of a reflection to me of
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 5: how history callult throughout history, kind of like I said,
• 1:34:02
  Speaker 5: get certain aspects of the truth right, even if they
• 1:34:04
  Speaker 5: don't get the whole truth right. It's like a you know,
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 5: it's definitely a natural inclination of humans to look to
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 5: the divine and to also carry down word of mouth stories.
• 1:34:18
  Speaker 5: You know, I can't think of the word for that,
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 5: but when you when you carry down the oral tradition,
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 5: That's what I'm thinking of. But yeah, that that's just
• 1:34:26
  Speaker 5: what it made me think of when I was recalling
• 1:34:29
  Speaker 5: the whole skull uh theology. I guess you would call it.
• 1:34:34
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's cool. I'm really sorry, Jacob.
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 1: No, No, it's a good point. I still how much
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 1: to add to that, I think it is we're saying, though, Now,
• 1:34:48
  Speaker 1: anything else from Dragon Born before we move on to
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 1: heart Fire, of course.
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 2: I'm ready.
• 1:34:54
  Speaker 4: No, no, tell.
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 1: Me about the philosophy of Iron Nails.
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 4: I'm scrolling through my notes. There has to be something.
• 1:35:04
  Speaker 5: Hey, hey, you gotta you gotta be fair to Hearthfire.
• 1:35:07
  Speaker 5: It does add the adoption system, so you can actually
• 1:35:10
  Speaker 5: create a family in the game.
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 4: So that's true, you child, your mind.
• 1:35:17
  Speaker 2: Now I have some gold in a house you when
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 2: I come go hang out with me.
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 4: This is gone in such an unfortunate direction.
• 1:35:30
  Speaker 2: I will say.
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 3: The one thing I'm here's a stretch, right for the stretch,
• 1:35:35
  Speaker 3: the one thing I find interesting just from I do some.
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 2: Carpentery in my in my life.
• 1:35:43
  Speaker 3: Okay, So and there is something too, because this is
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 3: this is the trap I fall into, Like the only
• 1:35:50
  Speaker 3: thing I really love and fall out for.
• 1:35:53
  Speaker 2: Is just building things, because I just love building things.
• 1:35:56
  Speaker 2: I love building things.
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 3: And there there really is something magical happening when you're
• 1:36:04
  Speaker 3: building something. And I think, now, hearth Fire, it's this
• 1:36:07
  Speaker 3: you know, rinse, repeat, it's not very creative and it's
• 1:36:11
  Speaker 3: it's done for you. And it was really disappointing me
• 1:36:13
  Speaker 3: because when I saw the DLC was coming, I was like,
• 1:36:16
  Speaker 3: I've got this perfect spot for a house in the
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 3: rift overseeing and you know, East March, it's it's next
• 1:36:21
  Speaker 3: to this pond. It's very ideal, like it's perfect, and
• 1:36:24
  Speaker 3: I think, oh, they have preset places for.
• 1:36:25
  Speaker 2: Your darn it.
• 1:36:27
  Speaker 3: But there's really something about playing your roots and how
• 1:36:30
  Speaker 3: you know, just how fulfilling the simple life really can be.
• 1:36:35
  Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, that's what I actually enjoyed about it myself,
• 1:36:38
  Speaker 5: was you know, I mean, Skyrim' is such a grandiose
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 5: story about you know, becoming essentially the savior of the
• 1:36:44
  Speaker 5: world and in your era. And you know, one thing
• 1:36:48
  Speaker 5: I always loved about the older Scrolls games is just
• 1:36:50
  Speaker 5: the sheer freedom to essentially quite literally do whatever you
• 1:36:55
  Speaker 5: want the game. You can you can play the you know,
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 5: you can play hours of these games just walking around
• 1:37:00
  Speaker 5: the world, picking up you know, items, making a collection
• 1:37:03
  Speaker 5: of some sort, and so having the ability to not
• 1:37:08
  Speaker 5: have to stay within one of the specific cities and
• 1:37:11
  Speaker 5: actually kind of customize your house, even if it was
• 1:37:14
  Speaker 5: pretty rudimentary. It was just kind of nice to be
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 5: able to do that because you could essentially retire from
• 1:37:22
  Speaker 5: all the crazy adventuring and start to live a character
• 1:37:26
  Speaker 5: that's basically just hanging out with your family, maybe visiting
• 1:37:30
  Speaker 5: the nearest city for a bit, and you know, protecting
• 1:37:34
  Speaker 5: your family from local threats and everything like that. So yeah,
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 5: it definitely wasn't anything incredible. It was definitely very bare
• 1:37:42
  Speaker 5: bones early concepts. And like Tyler rusaying about Fallout four,
• 1:37:47
  Speaker 5: I enjoy building. I said in the Fallout four episode
• 1:37:51
  Speaker 5: that I put over a thousand hours into that game,
• 1:37:52
  Speaker 5: and a good chunk of that is because of building.
• 1:37:55
  Speaker 5: But yeah, I just I really do enjoy the ability
• 1:37:58
  Speaker 5: to have a space in the game, whether that's an
• 1:38:02
  Speaker 5: actual like preset playerhouse or something you can build, because
• 1:38:06
  Speaker 5: it just makes the world feel more livable, Like you
• 1:38:10
  Speaker 5: actually can feel like you can live in the world
• 1:38:12
  Speaker 5: and not just play a video game, if that makes
• 1:38:15
  Speaker 5: any sense.
• 1:38:16
  Speaker 4: If only having a family in the game wasn't so
• 1:38:18
  Speaker 4: lifeless fair point. Yeah.
• 1:38:23
  Speaker 3: And two, like with some games like There's this really
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 3: what I've always thought would be interesting, and that is
• 1:38:29
  Speaker 3: to have like a really cool like air you know,
• 1:38:33
  Speaker 3: like you know, like molding an air to the game
• 1:38:36
  Speaker 3: where you can you know, pour some time into training
• 1:38:40
  Speaker 3: this child to be the next champion of.
• 1:38:42
  Speaker 2: Skyrim, you know, and then when you play with them,
• 1:38:45
  Speaker 2: that's that's right, you carry on that story as as
• 1:38:48
  Speaker 2: the air.
• 1:38:49
  Speaker 5: Yes, a Crusader Kings does that, but it's a strategy game.
• 1:38:54
  Speaker 2: It's a really well and it's a really fun concept
• 1:38:57
  Speaker 2: that they put. One of the.
• 1:38:59
  Speaker 3: Only table top games I played is The One Ring,
• 1:39:02
  Speaker 3: a Lord of the Rings role playing game, and there
• 1:39:04
  Speaker 3: is an air component to the game that actually is
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 3: really actually kind of interesting in a way to carry
• 1:39:12
  Speaker 3: on the game that's really really fun and narratively sound,
• 1:39:16
  Speaker 3: and it really helps with keeping gameplay moving to in case,
• 1:39:20
  Speaker 3: you know, the troll smashes your face in non accident.
• 1:39:23
  Speaker 4: So I was thinking about that too. I was thinking
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 4: about how the One Ring game t t RPG has
• 1:39:30
  Speaker 4: kind of like that that legacy system where you can
• 1:39:33
  Speaker 4: kind of like retire, that you can kind of retire
• 1:39:36
  Speaker 4: one adventure or adventurer and kind of pass the torch
• 1:39:38
  Speaker 4: off to another, kind of like baked into the game rules.
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 4: I thought, just as you guys were talking, I thought
• 1:39:44
  Speaker 4: the exact same thing. Go ahead.
• 1:39:48
  Speaker 1: Oh no, I didn't say no. You said that family
• 1:39:51
  Speaker 1: life in Skyrim is pretty empty. But I mean you
• 1:39:55
  Speaker 1: can open a store and buy your stuff. I mean.
• 1:39:59
  Speaker 3: That you can, and somehow, what if my children got
• 1:40:05
  Speaker 3: a hold of an ancestor Mothwing. I don't know how
• 1:40:07
  Speaker 3: that happened, but they put it in a chest for
• 1:40:09
  Speaker 3: me so kind.
• 1:40:11
  Speaker 5: I like to give my kids Shepherd's pie. Sometimes that's
• 1:40:14
  Speaker 5: about it.
• 1:40:15
  Speaker 4: An ancestor Mothwing, I have questions. I know he better
• 1:40:22
  Speaker 4: not be reading elder scrolls with that moth wing, Sir.
• 1:40:27
  Speaker 1: House is vision.
• 1:40:30
  Speaker 4: It's definitely the building. It was definitely a proof of
• 1:40:33
  Speaker 4: concept for what they were going to do with Fallout four.
• 1:40:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean I like the building stuff. It's cool
• 1:40:39
  Speaker 1: to have somewhere to hang all your trophies and whatnot.
• 1:40:41
  Speaker 1: So it's cool. But none know, there's so much to
• 1:40:44
  Speaker 1: you discussed about it.
• 1:40:46
  Speaker 4: I was one of those people who I never really
• 1:40:48
  Speaker 4: I didn't really have the urge to build things. So
• 1:40:52
  Speaker 4: I didn't really I didn't really have like the interest
• 1:40:55
  Speaker 4: or the I didn't really have the interest. I did try.
• 1:40:58
  Speaker 4: I did try, and then when I found out I
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 4: couldn't have all of the rooms I wanted on the house,
• 1:41:03
  Speaker 4: I had to pick and choose rooms like that was
• 1:41:06
  Speaker 4: that that was no bueno. I do. I do have
• 1:41:10
  Speaker 4: to say. I think it's there. I think they changed.
• 1:41:14
  Speaker 4: It's definitely different in Fallout four. I think, yeah, okay, yeah, yeah, thanks,
• 1:41:19
  Speaker 4: that's that's why. Yeah, I'm so glad I have you
• 1:41:21
  Speaker 4: guys here.
• 1:41:21
  Speaker 3: Yea, the all system is a lot more and there's
• 1:41:27
  Speaker 3: a lot more to it, and you can do automated
• 1:41:30
  Speaker 3: stuff and work with electricity and.
• 1:41:33
  Speaker 2: Have unlimited clean energy, which would completely break the entire
• 1:41:38
  Speaker 2: story of New Vegas. But whatever.
• 1:41:41
  Speaker 4: A Fallout three actually all the fallout, all the fallout
• 1:41:47
  Speaker 4: really you're getting a water chip and fall Out one
• 1:41:50
  Speaker 4: and it's like, you know, and it's like, oh hey,
• 1:41:52
  Speaker 4: like if we but you get there and it's like,
• 1:41:54
  Speaker 4: oh no, someone else is using this water chip. If
• 1:41:57
  Speaker 4: we take them then they won't have water, like you know,
• 1:41:59
  Speaker 4: I'm I mean these guys to death. What do I do? Like,
• 1:42:02
  Speaker 4: you know, there there there there was no such thing
• 1:42:06
  Speaker 4: like fall Out one, fall Up two, fall Out New Vegas.
• 1:42:08
  Speaker 4: There there's no such thing as not having like a
• 1:42:11
  Speaker 4: horrible moral quandary.
• 1:42:14
  Speaker 1: Well, any other final thoughts on Skyrim BLC. We will
• 1:42:18
  Speaker 1: revisit eld school stuff sometimes, but in the meantime, you
• 1:42:21
  Speaker 1: all are more than welcome to participate in the games
• 1:42:23
  Speaker 1: podcast or anywhere else that you want to jump in.
• 1:42:25
  Speaker 1: We'll be doing some more stuff with the movies and
• 1:42:27
  Speaker 1: shows in the new year. But whether see your on
• 1:42:30
  Speaker 1: the discord or in more episodes, it has been a
• 1:42:34
  Speaker 1: pleasure and I look forward to the road ahead.
• 1:42:37
  Speaker 4: I absolutely love doing this with every single one of
• 1:42:39
  Speaker 4: you guys. Likewise, and I'm and I'm I'm really I'm
• 1:42:42
  Speaker 4: really sad that the other guys, like Kyle and uh uh,
• 1:42:49
  Speaker 4: I'm drawing, I'm drawing a blank on some of the
• 1:42:50
  Speaker 4: other guys. I'm so sorry. Yeah, but like here, but
• 1:42:54
  Speaker 4: I like, I I really do. I really do miss
• 1:42:57
  Speaker 4: having them here as well. I really do, but like, yeah,
• 1:43:02
  Speaker 4: but it was, it was, it was. It was so
• 1:43:04
  Speaker 4: much fun to uh like be a part of this,
• 1:43:06
  Speaker 4: and I look forward to uh yuh you know, doing
• 1:43:11
  Speaker 4: you know, doing some more in the future and whatever
• 1:43:13
  Speaker 4: comes next.
• 1:43:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and we'll meet together to write our book at
• 1:43:17
  Speaker 1: some point.
• 1:43:18
  Speaker 2: Yes, got my document.
• 1:43:21
  Speaker 4: We'll make we'll we'll make we'll make our own elder scrolls. Yes,
• 1:43:26
  Speaker 4: philosophy to do it right.
• 1:43:28
  Speaker 1: That's right, all right, Thanks you guys.
• 1:44:00
  Speaker 4: Z