Latest / Mythic Mind Games / 38 - Skyrim Chat: Civil War, Dragonborn, Talos, Northern Mythos

Transcript

38 - Skyrim Chat: Civil War, Dragonborn, Talos, Northern Mythos · Mythic Mind Games

• 0:18
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Elder Scrolls of Philosophy. As we continue
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: now with Skyrim, which is probably the game that's most
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: familiar to the most number of people, I would assume,
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: even though out of the three main games that we're
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: looking at in the study, I would say it's probably
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: the most shallow as an RPG, which kind of continuing
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: I guess some of the thoughts moving from the Fallout
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: four conversation we had that but as the games, they
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: tend to get more shallow on the story, more shallow
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: on the RPG, even if they do polish up the
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: actual gameplay. And I enjoy playing this game. This is
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: probably the Elder Scrolls that I put the most hours in.
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: All right, let's let me pull up steamroll fast. Let's
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: see where we're at. Yeah, we'll see this one. Between
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: the Special Edition and original, we're looking at about a
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: thousand hours, which for me is a pretty big number.
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: So yeah, this is definitely the one I put the
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: most hours into, despite it being a little bit weaker
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: owned story, but nonetheless I really enjoy it. I love
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: the Nord, the northern feel to it. You know, I
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: love northern stories, I love Norse legends, and so This
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: definitely fits that that kind of aesthetic that really vibes
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: with me. You know, I love bey Wolf and the
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: Volk songs and all that sort of stuff, So I
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: really enjoy this. As I mentioned the end the discord,
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: I haven't done a whole lot of preparation, as I'm
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: missing the semester grating, so I may have more questions
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: for you guys, which based on the discord, you guys
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: know some things about Skyrm, about the Lord. So I
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: just look forward seeing where this conversation goes. But let's
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: begin opening thoughts, personal experience, that sort of thing. Uh, Tyler,
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: why don't you take it first?
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So I guess we're comparing hours here of played.
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: So I there's got this on the three sixties, so
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: I probably put about five hundred into that, and then
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: on Steam here the original Skyrim another five hundred there,
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: and then special Edition is over a thousand. So it's
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: a scary number to look at. But I mean, I
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: very much love this one. I mean it's this weird
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: like love and wishing for more, especially the more that
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: been engaging with the rest of the Elder scrolls at large.
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: But I still and to most of that is due
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: to being able to mod the game and really kind
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: of make the game my own much more than the
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: other ones ever got to that point.
• 2:45
  Speaker 3: But yeah, so very much.
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: Also love the you know, the the Nordic and the
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: feel of the game. Esthetically, it's a great sandbox, it's
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: soundtrack wise, I can get lost in that for hours,
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: you know, and all those things, and so overall really
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: excited to dive deeper into it because I've been reading
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: too much.
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean there's something, there's something nice about you.
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: You're walking out the snowy night, northern lights, the secunda hits,
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: and it's just you know, it's excellent esthetics in this
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: game for sure, right.
• 3:23
  Speaker 4: Ian Skyrim is probably like so for me, Oblivion was
• 3:31
  Speaker 4: my game, right that was the game that I put
• 3:34
  Speaker 4: the most hours into. If I had to guess, I
• 3:36
  Speaker 4: don't know. I got it on three sixty, so I
• 3:37
  Speaker 4: don't know. If I had to guess, I probably put
• 3:39
  Speaker 4: like a thousand hours into it. I've been putting time
• 3:42
  Speaker 4: into it again ever since the remaster came out, having
• 3:44
  Speaker 4: a lot of fun with it. When Skyrim came out,
• 3:48
  Speaker 4: I put my time in, I had fun. It didn't
• 3:51
  Speaker 4: stick with me the way Oblivion did. And by the
• 3:55
  Speaker 4: time I got by the time I got to the DLC,
• 3:57
  Speaker 4: I was just kind of burned out. So I didn't
• 3:59
  Speaker 4: really give like the attention that that deserved, I will say.
• 4:03
  Speaker 4: So I agree with I agree with Snyder. So I
• 4:06
  Speaker 4: love the Norse world again, love the Norse legends, love
• 4:08
  Speaker 4: the bull songs, you know, love the poetic eta. I
• 4:11
  Speaker 4: was actually listening to the Jack Jackson Crawford audiobook last week,
• 4:17
  Speaker 4: kind of like in preparation, just to kind of get
• 4:19
  Speaker 4: me in the mood. So I guess I want to
• 4:22
  Speaker 4: I want to make some compare and contrast points with
• 4:24
  Speaker 4: like Oblivion and Skyrim. Right, So I think Oblivion, I
• 4:28
  Speaker 4: think Skyrim does a better job esthetically expressing its world
• 4:32
  Speaker 4: than Oblivion does. Brought like generally speaking, Oblivion kind of
• 4:38
  Speaker 4: feels like a ren fare and Skyrim feels more like
• 4:44
  Speaker 4: an actual place with with some caveats, with with some
• 4:48
  Speaker 4: caveats to that which we can you know, which which
• 4:51
  Speaker 4: we can probably get into later. I'll put a pin
• 4:53
  Speaker 4: in that. I think I think it feels like I feel.
• 4:57
  Speaker 4: I think the world feels more real and more a
• 5:00
  Speaker 4: live broadly speaking, than Oblivion does. In some ways, Oblivion
• 5:06
  Speaker 4: definitely feels more alive than Skyrim does in other ways.
• 5:12
  Speaker 4: So Oblivion is, for example, very you have like all
• 5:18
  Speaker 4: of the you can basically, you know, kind of like
• 5:20
  Speaker 4: talk to any n PC in the game, and they
• 5:23
  Speaker 4: have their dedicated schedule. We may have talked about this
• 5:25
  Speaker 4: in the ayble of an episode. I don't remember. They've
• 5:27
  Speaker 4: got their dedicated schedule. They got their kind of like
• 5:29
  Speaker 4: their own little dedicated story. Like I when I was
• 5:32
  Speaker 4: doing a Thieves Guild quest, I randomly broke into a
• 5:35
  Speaker 4: Kajitte's house right and he and I didn't know he
• 5:39
  Speaker 4: was home, and I was like, oh crap, you know,
• 5:41
  Speaker 4: there's somebody here. But fortunately he didn't get mad at
• 5:44
  Speaker 4: me for breaking in. He just started talking to me
• 5:47
  Speaker 4: about how excited he was that he worked really really
• 5:50
  Speaker 4: really hard to save up money to and now he's
• 5:52
  Speaker 4: a homeowner in the Imperial City. And suddenly I felt
• 5:55
  Speaker 4: like a terrible person, and I turned around and said, well,
• 5:59
  Speaker 4: I'm just gonna go somewhere else and not rob this
• 6:02
  Speaker 4: guy's house. I guess, uh, like that is the sort
• 6:05
  Speaker 4: So that is that is like the sort of thing
• 6:08
  Speaker 4: that Oblivion does really well that Skyrim doesn't. So much
• 6:13
  Speaker 4: Skyrim feels in that particular respect, Skyrim feels more like
• 6:19
  Speaker 4: a theme park with NPCs that feel less alive than
• 6:21
  Speaker 4: Oblivion in PCs, but you have like more like stylistically
• 6:29
  Speaker 4: and aesthetically expressive and diverse cities in Skyrim compared to Oblivion,
• 6:38
  Speaker 4: I think, like I think Oblivion has better quests on
• 6:41
  Speaker 4: the whole, Uh, Skyrim has I was gonna say, I
• 6:46
  Speaker 4: was gonna say, maybe maybe a better sandbox, but I
• 6:50
  Speaker 4: don't know about that so much. There's positives and negatives
• 6:54
  Speaker 4: to both. When making this comparison, I'm sorry, I actually
• 6:57
  Speaker 4: did not prepare like, uh, like any gaming notes specifically.
• 7:02
  Speaker 4: I've been so deep in the lore.
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: No that's time. But I mean I'm really willing to
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: say that Skyrim is a better sandbox because I mean,
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: for sandboxes. I mean, maybe you could disagree with that,
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: and maybe you can make that point and prove me wrong.
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: That it's very possible. I think, as far as the
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: sandbox element goes, in many ways, just being newer gives
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: it an edge up. I mean, obviously the Oblivion remaster,
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: you know, that has something to do with it, but
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: even the mechanically it's still essentially the same as Oblivion.
• 7:32
  Speaker 4: I think it's yes and no. I think probably kind
• 7:36
  Speaker 4: of going back to my original point, I think it's
• 7:38
  Speaker 4: a better world than Oblivion's.
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: That's true.
• 7:41
  Speaker 4: I think it's a better world than Oblivion's, but Oblivion
• 7:44
  Speaker 4: has the better has the better quests. Yeah, it's very simply,
• 7:50
  Speaker 4: very simply yeah.
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: I mean Oblivion definitely feels I mean, as you said,
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: it's like ren Fair, it feels more like fantasy. That's
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: that's what Oblivion feels like. It's more fantastical Skyrim, which
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: makes it a more diverse kind of world. I mean
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: in Skyrim. You know, in Oblivion you have all kinds
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: different landscapes and scenery to go through and environments. In
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: Skyrim you have snow and then a little bit less snow.
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: It's a love for bland.
• 8:14
  Speaker 4: It's definitely washed out, a lot more washed out in
• 8:17
  Speaker 4: its color palette. You do have some biomes, like you've
• 8:19
  Speaker 4: got like the snow in the north. You've got like
• 8:21
  Speaker 4: kind of like the kind of like the beautiful autumn
• 8:24
  Speaker 4: scenery in the kind of like in the southeast. If
• 8:28
  Speaker 4: you if you if you go to Markarth, it's rocks,
• 8:33
  Speaker 4: uh in the in the middle, in the middle of
• 8:34
  Speaker 4: in the middle of the map. You've got the plane
• 8:37
  Speaker 4: with the with the city that is very very obviously
• 8:41
  Speaker 4: modeled on uh uh ataras even with like the you
• 8:48
  Speaker 4: know and the city you know, you've got you've got
• 8:50
  Speaker 4: the city on the hill in the valley surrounded by
• 8:52
  Speaker 4: the mountains, and you've got the guards have got horses
• 8:55
  Speaker 4: on their shields. The wizard's name is Secret Fire. He's
• 9:00
  Speaker 4: not a terribly Gandalf character, but you know, but you know,
• 9:04
  Speaker 4: the East, the easter egg, the Lord of the Rings.
• 9:06
  Speaker 4: Easter Eggs are there and right want right one white
• 9:08
  Speaker 4: run sorry, which is cool?
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: You tell me that Fantasy game was inspired at least
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: in part by Tolkien's so surprising.
• 9:17
  Speaker 4: Oh I would I would never suggest, never, No, I
• 9:22
  Speaker 4: would say, like I would say, one of the things
• 9:25
  Speaker 4: that makes the world feel more alive is you've got
• 9:30
  Speaker 4: you have you have like you you have like cultural
• 9:33
  Speaker 4: and religious conflict, which is like the which is like
• 9:36
  Speaker 4: the sort of thing that's like not president oblivion. You've
• 9:39
  Speaker 4: got like hints of stuff and oblivion. Like I've been
• 9:42
  Speaker 4: so like I've been in my replay of Oblivion, I've
• 9:45
  Speaker 4: noticed that there is a lot more There's a lot
• 9:48
  Speaker 4: more like nuance and under the hood stuff going on
• 9:51
  Speaker 4: that I didn't notice before. That's interesting kind of if
• 9:53
  Speaker 4: you're paying attention to kind of like what the NPCs
• 9:56
  Speaker 4: are doing and saying and like what's going on in
• 9:58
  Speaker 4: the world. But it's all kind of like on the
• 10:00
  Speaker 4: micro scale because the macro scale is deadra are invading.
• 10:08
  Speaker 4: I guess with Skyrim it's dragons are invading. But you
• 10:11
  Speaker 4: do have you do have like a world that is
• 10:15
  Speaker 4: acted very much in like uh, you know, political, religious,
• 10:19
  Speaker 4: and social churt turmoil, which is uh, you know which
• 10:23
  Speaker 4: which is more interesting, I would say than what Oblivion
• 10:27
  Speaker 4: has going for it in that particular respect.
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: Tyler, do you have any thoughts on Skyrim in relation
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: to Oblivion or.
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: I guess we're there. Well, it's one thing too that
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: feels more. The Oblivion. NPCs also have much more random
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: encounters with one another, whereas Skyrim itself is much more
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: scripted because Skyrim is trying to push you to do
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: certain things at certain times, and Oblivion they they you
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: can pick up on certain conversations that may lead you
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: to thing, but they're not with dedicated you know, NPCs
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: that are trying to push you in that way. That
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: you may overhear a conversation that may you know, initiate something,
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: but it's a very randomly put together sequence of words
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: that happened at times. But it is If I played
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: the remaster, it was like you could feel some more
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: of that random is built in, and and also the
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: random humor that may come up where it's like, oh,
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: did you hear that the emperor was killed?
• 11:32
  Speaker 3: I don't care, Okay, goodbye.
• 11:36
  Speaker 4: Part of the.
• 11:38
  Speaker 3: You just don't get that Inscim at all.
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: I mean, there's there's there's a lot of that charm
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: that's missing for sure, because the quirkiness of certain mechanics
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: that they built for Oblivion just aren't there Inskirim because
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: they're they're trying to make a more polished game, which
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: I get, but also like at the same time, it's like, yeah,
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: they're they're also trying to put you more on rails
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: so you can figure things out faster, so you don't
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: have to think about it too much, so you can
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: just get gone where you need to go, and that,
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: you know, in certain respects is nice, but also it
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: takes away the kind of fun sometimes of actually exploring.
• 12:16
  Speaker 4: I would think that, yeah, so I've So something I've
• 12:19
  Speaker 4: noticed especially since like say Fallout three, right, So Bethesda
• 12:24
  Speaker 4: is very very anxious part part part of part of
• 12:28
  Speaker 4: this comes from looking at statistics, which I think is
• 12:31
  Speaker 4: a mistake for people to do look at statistics.
• 12:34
  Speaker 3: Uh, but.
• 12:36
  Speaker 4: Statistically speaking, maybe not even ten percent of your players
• 12:41
  Speaker 4: like are gonna you know, are going to see you know,
• 12:46
  Speaker 4: more than a sorry, I got, I got, I got
• 12:51
  Speaker 4: the I got the number, I got the numbers mixed up.
• 12:52
  Speaker 4: This is what I get for not looking at statistics.
• 12:55
  Speaker 4: But basically, most players are most players are not going
• 12:59
  Speaker 4: to see like ninety nine percent of your world, right,
• 13:02
  Speaker 4: They're only going to see like, you know, one percent,
• 13:03
  Speaker 4: five percent of your whatever it is. So it feels
• 13:06
  Speaker 4: like there's a lot of anxious that there's a lot
• 13:08
  Speaker 4: of anxiousness, a lot of anxiety around kind of front
• 13:12
  Speaker 4: loading certain experiences. Like in Fallout three, it's oh, we
• 13:17
  Speaker 4: want you know, you get we want you to get
• 13:19
  Speaker 4: to d C so you can fight the behemoth with
• 13:21
  Speaker 4: a with a with a fat man. In in Skyrim,
• 13:25
  Speaker 4: it's you know, we want you to see the dragon
• 13:27
  Speaker 4: and get your first shout right away. In Fallout four,
• 13:31
  Speaker 4: it's you know, we want you to get in the
• 13:33
  Speaker 4: power suit right away, so that a death clock can
• 13:36
  Speaker 4: randomly come into the city for no reason while you're
• 13:40
  Speaker 4: fighting bandits, so that you can fight a death claw
• 13:43
  Speaker 4: in power armor and it it it's very.
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: Like it.
• 13:50
  Speaker 4: It's one of it's one of it's, it's it's it's
• 13:52
  Speaker 4: a reoccurring theme in Bethesda games because that I think
• 13:57
  Speaker 4: goes along with kind of that rail idea that Tyler
• 14:00
  Speaker 4: is talking about.
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a good point. They're very much yelling at
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: you to pay attention to them and the things that
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: they have to offer in these games by giving you
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: this experiences so early versus going off and discovering them eventually.
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: Right because like you think of oblivion or like spellcrafting,
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: like how many people even know that spellcrafting is a thing,
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: but imagining if they had spellcrafting now, it'd be like, Hey,
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: let's go make our first spell now, like at the
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: beginning of the game, so we can engage with this content.
• 14:30
  Speaker 3: So we make sure that you do it, you know,
• 14:32
  Speaker 3: it's like or just strip it.
• 14:34
  Speaker 4: If there's one thing I learned about enchanting in uh
• 14:38
  Speaker 4: in Skyrim, it's that Bethesda is afraid of it like
• 14:43
  Speaker 4: ever ever since spell ever since spellcrafting, like in in
• 14:48
  Speaker 4: the previous games. You know, it's it can be. It
• 14:51
  Speaker 4: can be so insanely broken, and it feels like they're
• 14:54
  Speaker 4: scared to let players do that again.
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: I mean it does break the game. I mean, once
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: you max out smithing and enchanting, it's it's over. And
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: they're not fun. It's not fun.
• 15:07
  Speaker 4: They they take forever to level up, like I've never
• 15:10
  Speaker 4: maxed those skills, Like maybe maybe there's something I'm missing
• 15:13
  Speaker 4: out on, Like I'm sure there probably is, but like
• 15:15
  Speaker 4: the work it takes to get there was not worth
• 15:18
  Speaker 4: it to me, Like I I can I can do,
• 15:22
  Speaker 4: I can do more with less an oblivion skill a
• 15:26
  Speaker 4: spell crafting.
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I actually do think that the crafting in Skyrim
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: kind of kills experience because one hand, whenever a player,
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: I always do it because that's how you get the
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: best stuff. But at the same time, once you get
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: the best stuff, the game's over. I very much prefer
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: the idea of having to go out and find your equipment.
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: I think it adds so much more to the adventure,
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: into the immersion.
• 15:48
  Speaker 4: I understand. I understand that. I understand that argument. I
• 15:53
  Speaker 4: also see the appeal of like being able to make
• 15:56
  Speaker 4: your own crazy thing as well. I don't like, I
• 16:00
  Speaker 4: don't know if there's a right answer here.
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: Well, I would say they could just do it better.
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: I mean, even like the Fallout four's modding system, you know,
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: their version of enchantments in the way that you put
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: your weapons together, like you can customize things and do
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: cool stuff without necessarily making things overpowered. I feel like
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: there could be some enchanting version of that, or ssmitting
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: version of that.
• 16:20
  Speaker 4: I think they tried. I don't know the ins and
• 16:22
  Speaker 4: outs of again, the enchanting, because I never really I
• 16:25
  Speaker 4: never really played with that. I tried. I tried to
• 16:28
  Speaker 4: get back into Skyrim for this talk, and to be
• 16:31
  Speaker 4: perfectly honest, I actually had a really hard time getting
• 16:34
  Speaker 4: back into the game. I wasn't really enjoying it for
• 16:37
  Speaker 4: whatever reason. I just wanted to go back to oblivion exploring.
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: Just like the finding of those weapons and those artifacts
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: and stuff.
• 16:48
  Speaker 3: It is cheapened when you can craft your own stuff.
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: That's because you come up with the weapon as cool
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: as like Dawnbreaker, and it's like, look at this thing,
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: It's awesome. But like literally you could get a repid
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: much early still as early in the game. That's just
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: way better so quickly, and it's just like, what's the
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: point of having this?
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: You know, the only point is for role playing purposes, right.
• 17:13
  Speaker 3: Right, which you can do it. It's possible.
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean, you know, if I remember playing
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: a paladin vampire one hundred swords, then yeah, it's cool
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: to you know, see it explode as you Hey guys,
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: So you can justify that way, but it's not necessarily
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: in strict gameplay terms. There's anything else we don't even
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: just basic gameplay before we start to turn into more
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: lower philosophy stuff.
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: Well, I would just say it, there's been there's always
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: seems to be a push in gaming, and you know,
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: I you know Ian you mentioned in our chats before,
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: just like the thirty seconds of fun trying to get
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: into engaged and stuff's happening at the time. So I've
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: been playing can come to the too, and it's really interesting.
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: And this is also kind of in Red Dead Redemption
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: as well, where it's amazing how slow sometimes those sequences
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: are between action and how those are highly enjoyed games
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: and yet they could be so slow. To let the
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: world breathe a little bit, and I do hope that
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: there will be some hits picked up here, because I
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: think even like Skyrin could be enjoyed so much more
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: if you would just slow down the experience a little
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: more and actually look around and see things like actually
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: look at Aldouin's Wall, which we'll talk about, and explore
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: the prophecy and read these books like you can so
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: easily just fly through everything and have just no appreciation,
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: which like, sure, there's a large group of gamers I'd
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: rather do.
• 18:48
  Speaker 3: That, but.
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: It's amazing just what happens to the world when you
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: just let it breathe a little bit more.
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: Yes, when the game is run by quest markers and
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: fast travel and buttons, then yeah, well you lose the
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: RPG element, you lose a story, you lose the quasi
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: literary value that good games can have. I mean, one
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: of my favorite games, or what's become one of my
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: favorite games just this year, is Red Dead Redemption too
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: you you mentioned it. I think it's just a fantastic game,
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: fantastic story, but it is almost a painfully slow start
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: with that the whole snow sequence, that whole chapter one.
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: But at the same time, you know, especially the first
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: time through it does force you to get into the
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: world versus just be a person mashing buttons and clicking
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: through dialogue, and that I think really does add something
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: profound to the game. You know. It's just like when
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: you're reading a good book, not every page is going
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: to be super exciting, Like sometimes you need to slow down,
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: you need to get immersed, you need to learn about
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: the details, because that makes the exciting things more fulfilling.
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: And I think the same thing holds true to game.
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: It's part of my ongoing thesis for doing things like
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: this that there is a kind of resonance betwe good
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: literature and good games, and when that's missing, that residence
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: is missing. I think we're moving in the direction of
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: mere amusement as opposed to musing. Right amusement, Pure amusement
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: is largely a waste of time. Like I think it's
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: fine to unplug for some time and not everything has
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: to be super productive, like that's that's fine. But at
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: the same time, I think that if we're going to
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: give a number of hours of precious hours of our
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: mortal lives to a game, like there should be some
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: return in that. There should be some musing. Admits the amusement,
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: and I think that the let's just jump in action
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: that we get in these modern games, there's something missing there.
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: But maybe we just need to talk about kind of
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: broad scale story stuff and then maybe work our way
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: into whatever nitty green stuff you guys want to get into.
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: So I have a question that I don't really have
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: an answer to, but I feel like I should. What
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: is Aldoin?
• 20:58
  Speaker 4: Does that answer your question?
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: That's about as much as I have. Is he akatash?
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: Is he some?
• 21:06
  Speaker 4: What?
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: What is this?
• 21:07
  Speaker 4: I do have a I do have a whole thing
• 21:09
  Speaker 4: prepared for you. I don't know if we want to
• 21:12
  Speaker 4: uh maybe do like a quick synopsis of the story
• 21:17
  Speaker 4: or not? Or like or is that something you're gonna
• 21:21
  Speaker 4: cover like in a video.
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: Like no fair enough? That's probably worthwhile.
• 21:26
  Speaker 4: I think I think Tyler should be the one to
• 21:27
  Speaker 4: do it, since she finished the main story recently. Also,
• 21:31
  Speaker 4: uh just and we'll get more into this later. If
• 21:34
  Speaker 4: we were to give Tyler a flat cap, like he would,
• 21:37
  Speaker 4: he's the spitting image of Michael Kirkbride. So like, I
• 21:42
  Speaker 4: don't know if you guys have seen a picture of
• 21:43
  Speaker 4: Michael Kirkbride, but like, like, give Tyler a flat cap
• 21:48
  Speaker 4: and he's Michael Kirkbride, so I think he should give
• 21:50
  Speaker 4: us the synopsis, and he didn't. He didn't. He didn't
• 21:53
  Speaker 4: work for Skyrim, but like you know, on Skyrim, but
• 21:57
  Speaker 4: you know, I think Tyler should be the one to
• 21:59
  Speaker 4: do that all the time.
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: And just a quick note too, before we started, I
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: started writing down the quick synopsis of the of the
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: quest line and I nailed down word for word just
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: off the top of behind the name for each quest
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: without having to look it up. And also I've been
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: moved on to the synopsis of the Companions, the Thieves Skilled,
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: and the Dark Brotherhood and the College of Winterhold, and
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: I have got pretty.
• 22:26
  Speaker 3: Good stepsis for all. It's just from the top of
• 22:28
  Speaker 3: my head.
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: So uh, I yes, I have a problem with this game,
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: but as much as as much as tell sit here
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: and bash it too at the same time, like I
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: can't help.
• 22:40
  Speaker 4: But Skyrim is a cool game. I know there's probably
• 22:43
  Speaker 4: a lot of Skyrim fans that are like upset with
• 22:45
  Speaker 4: how we opened this show, but like you know, like
• 22:49
  Speaker 4: Skyrim is a great game. There's a reason why people
• 22:51
  Speaker 4: are still playing it.
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I under said there's a fallout. John, you
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: can love a game that you have strong criticisms for. Yeah,
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: this is just Hours. It's probably the I would say,
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: the second most played game in my library, even though
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: it's I think it's the weakest of these Elder Scrolls.
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: So I don't know how that works out.
• 23:10
  Speaker 4: If well, if I it is, Yeah, I would agree
• 23:13
  Speaker 4: with that. If I, if I had actually sat down,
• 23:16
  Speaker 4: there's so much to talk about with these games. If
• 23:18
  Speaker 4: I had actually prepared, like sat down and prepared to
• 23:22
  Speaker 4: talk about the nitty gritty of like gameplay and you
• 23:25
  Speaker 4: know whatever, then I would have had more prepared responses
• 23:30
  Speaker 4: for that sort of thing, for talking about that start stuffhere.
• 23:32
  Speaker 4: We can talk about the good things, we can talk
• 23:34
  Speaker 4: about the bad things, we can talk about you know whatever.
• 23:36
  Speaker 4: But I didn't. I'm kind of blying here because I
• 23:39
  Speaker 4: put my energy into something else. But Tyler, mister Kirkbride, sir,
• 23:43
  Speaker 4: what is that synopsis?
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: Well, so you start off the game, Hey, you you're
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: finally awake, and so yeah, I mean you start off
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: with that, like aedy with any just get an Elder
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: Scrolls game. You're just this unknown prisoner and you, you know, sleep,
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: you build your character and then you hop right into
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: getting your head lopped off, and this dragon shows up
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: and it starts wrecking the town and everyone's freaking out,
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: and so you run to the town and you get
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: introduced to some of the Civil War, you know, dialogue
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: going on and some of the stort of building there.
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: You make your way to Riverwood and you you know,
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: warn then move on to White Run to warn the
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: yr All that hey, there's a dragon.
• 24:35
  Speaker 3: It's destroying stuff. What do we do?
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: And so essentially the game, you find a dragon, discover
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: that you're a dragon born by absorbing its soul, and
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: then you learn how to shout, and then the Gray
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: Beards call for you. So you go visit the Gray
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: Beards and they also confirm, Hey, you're this dragon born guy,
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: but we.
• 24:59
  Speaker 3: Have this little for you. You go on that mission.
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: Turns out you can't finish the mission because someone stole
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: the horn, and so you have to go find who
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: stole the horn, and then you meet the Blades and
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: then so that introduces that storyline and then you're able
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: then to go and finish the Graybeard stuff and be
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: introduced as dragon born. The yell at you for a
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: little bit and you finish your learning of shouting and
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: so you then so that kind of wraps up the
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: Graybeards for a while, and the Blades take you and
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: you go and kill a dragon, and Delphine's like, yes,
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: you are dragon Board. Now we got to go and
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: filtrate this place to go find out what's going on,
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: and so you go infiltrate the fou Our Embassy and
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: then you go and that's starts a little adventure to
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: find Esburn, and Esburn and Delphine then lead you to
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: Aldoin's Wall, which.
• 25:58
  Speaker 3: That'll be a lot of fun to talk about.
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: And that's where you learned about the special shout to
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: take out All Doin, because hey, it's all Doing that's
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: come back and it's the world leader.
• 26:09
  Speaker 3: It's the end of times.
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: But there's this prophecy where this dragon Board is able
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: to come in and stop it, but it's the Od
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: of the world who knows.
• 26:17
  Speaker 3: And so you go and learn dragon Ren.
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: You find an older scroll, oldest girl helps you learn
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: the dragon Wren shout. You fight All Doin, You kind
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: of beat him, but don't really, and then you have
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: to meet him in Soavan Guard because the only way
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: to feed him is going and feeding him outside of
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: time in this special place in Soavann Guard and you
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: go do so.
• 26:38
  Speaker 3: So general synopsis of the game.
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: General synopsis that's far more detail than I would have provided.
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: If I gave a synopsis, I cut it much shorter
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: than I had planned as well.
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: That brings me back to my question, what is al doing?
• 26:56
  Speaker 4: So? This is where it gets This is where it
• 26:59
  Speaker 4: gets really messy. It's also it's interesting, but it's also
• 27:03
  Speaker 4: really messy, and it's one of the things that I
• 27:06
  Speaker 4: feel like, so one of my criticisms for and I
• 27:09
  Speaker 4: would say for both Skyrim and Oblivion, I have to say,
• 27:12
  Speaker 4: after like exposing myself more and more to Morowind and
• 27:16
  Speaker 4: just like Morowind's way of just like telling its story
• 27:19
  Speaker 4: and like revealing its world through its story and having
• 27:23
  Speaker 4: everything connected together in a very Lord of the Rings
• 27:25
  Speaker 4: style way, where like you know, the law informs the
• 27:29
  Speaker 4: the story the adventure. I feel so disillusioned with Oblivion
• 27:34
  Speaker 4: and Skyrim, because especially Skyrim even more so than Oblivion,
• 27:39
  Speaker 4: but there they both kind of commit the same sin
• 27:41
  Speaker 4: where they don't really do a good job like showing
• 27:45
  Speaker 4: you the world and how like interesting and deep and
• 27:50
  Speaker 4: weird it really is and just how much stuff is
• 27:54
  Speaker 4: going on that's actually kind of like informing all of
• 27:57
  Speaker 4: these quests and decisions. And Aldown is one of those
• 28:03
  Speaker 4: really interesting characters where you can go down a rabbit
• 28:09
  Speaker 4: hole of Elder Scrolls cosmology and not really get an answer. So, uh,
• 28:16
  Speaker 4: if this is your first time, uh listening to us
• 28:20
  Speaker 4: talk about this stuff, these ideas. One of the one
• 28:24
  Speaker 4: of the narrative design philosophies of the Elder Scrolls in
• 28:29
  Speaker 4: general across all the games is unreliable narrators. You know,
• 28:33
  Speaker 4: everyone's you know, you have you have you know, like
• 28:36
  Speaker 4: you know, biased historians, you know who are you know
• 28:40
  Speaker 4: who are in the game, you know, and characters who
• 28:42
  Speaker 4: are writing and talking about things that are happening in
• 28:45
  Speaker 4: the world or their religion, or their their philosophy, the theology,
• 28:49
  Speaker 4: their mythology. It's all from their own perspective and there
• 28:53
  Speaker 4: there really is no authoritative voice in the Elder Scrolls,
• 29:01
  Speaker 4: so a lot of it is meant to be contradictory
• 29:03
  Speaker 4: and it is meant to be confusing, and you know,
• 29:06
  Speaker 4: they they they kind of they kind of want you
• 29:09
  Speaker 4: to kind of come to your own conclusions, even if
• 29:11
  Speaker 4: those conclusions are wrong, and they invite you to actually
• 29:16
  Speaker 4: go on the journey of being a researcher, a historian,
• 29:21
  Speaker 4: an archaeologist, and like getting into the nitty greedy And
• 29:25
  Speaker 4: one of the things that makes this world so incredible
• 29:27
  Speaker 4: is that you can do those things, Like you can
• 29:29
  Speaker 4: do all of those things that I just said, and
• 29:33
  Speaker 4: you know kind of like do your own research and
• 29:35
  Speaker 4: make your own dissertations and theses on just kind of
• 29:39
  Speaker 4: like stuff that's that you know that seems to be
• 29:42
  Speaker 4: going on, and if you're willing to go down that
• 29:45
  Speaker 4: rabbit hole, you will go insane. Like, to be perfectly
• 29:49
  Speaker 4: honest with you, guys, I'm not sure I'm okay anymore,
• 29:52
  Speaker 4: but I've had fun doing it. So the question is
• 29:56
  Speaker 4: kind of like what is aldowin? And I hope you
• 30:00
  Speaker 4: all watched uh Snyder's really really really good breakdown of
• 30:04
  Speaker 4: like like succinct to break down of the mono myth,
• 30:07
  Speaker 4: like that will help a lot with this discussion discussion,
• 30:11
  Speaker 4: because there is just there is so much to get into,
• 30:15
  Speaker 4: but there's a there's a very a very very short
• 30:18
  Speaker 4: version that just doesn't get talked about in these games
• 30:21
  Speaker 4: at all. It's you know, since since morawind Is, you
• 30:25
  Speaker 4: basically had two gods. Just to keep it simple, you
• 30:30
  Speaker 4: had Ariel and you had Lorcan, right, and these gods
• 30:35
  Speaker 4: were responsible for basically making the world, making the universe essentially,
• 30:41
  Speaker 4: and uh lor And it depends on whether you talk
• 30:46
  Speaker 4: to the elves or whether you talk to the men.
• 30:49
  Speaker 4: If you talk to the elves, Lorcan was the trickster
• 30:53
  Speaker 4: god who tricked all the all the all the other
• 30:56
  Speaker 4: gods into making the world in which they lost all
• 30:58
  Speaker 4: their power. And then they killed Lorcan in punishment, basically
• 31:03
  Speaker 4: ripped his heart out of his chest, you know, chucked
• 31:07
  Speaker 4: it across the world and that made a volcano, and
• 31:11
  Speaker 4: that is basically you know, and then you know, cue
• 31:14
  Speaker 4: the story of Morowind and also kind of everything that
• 31:19
  Speaker 4: kind of comes after that. If you are men, if
• 31:21
  Speaker 4: you're on, if you're a human, you probably think that
• 31:24
  Speaker 4: Lorcan was a good guy and appealed to kind of
• 31:29
  Speaker 4: like the better nature of the gods that it was
• 31:33
  Speaker 4: worth the sacrifice of their power to make creation so
• 31:39
  Speaker 4: that all mortal beings could ascend and have a better life.
• 31:46
  Speaker 4: Which is it is Lorcan a good guy? Is lurk
• 31:48
  Speaker 4: On a bad guy? It's not really it's not really
• 31:51
  Speaker 4: well explained. All of these gods have different names and
• 31:56
  Speaker 4: they all have like different mythologies across all of the
• 31:59
  Speaker 4: various cultures in the game. There's some really really really
• 32:02
  Speaker 4: cool stuff there. If you're familiar with Skyrim and Oblivion,
• 32:06
  Speaker 4: you've probably heard the name Akatash a lot, the dragon
• 32:09
  Speaker 4: god of time. Akatosh is what the men call Ariel
• 32:17
  Speaker 4: which I who I mentioned earlier, that's the Elvin version.
• 32:20
  Speaker 4: If you're in Skyrim, you've heard Aldowin and chances are
• 32:27
  Speaker 4: you came across a book. Maybe you did, maybe you didn't.
• 32:29
  Speaker 4: Chances are you came across a book called the Aldown
• 32:31
  Speaker 4: Akotosh Dichotomy. It's one of the books which is written
• 32:37
  Speaker 4: again from the bias perspective of a priest of Akatosh
• 32:40
  Speaker 4: who insists that at Aldowin is is the is the
• 32:44
  Speaker 4: Nord's corrupted understanding of Akatosh. And they don't know what
• 32:47
  Speaker 4: they're talking about, because Akotash is a good god, you know,
• 32:51
  Speaker 4: and the idea that the idea that he's an evil
• 32:54
  Speaker 4: god called Aldowin who wants to eat the world is stupid,
• 32:56
  Speaker 4: and those nerds don't know what they're talking about. But
• 33:01
  Speaker 4: there's like another book that you can read by a
• 33:04
  Speaker 4: Nord who says, no Aldowyn and Akatosh are two separate beings.
• 33:12
  Speaker 4: If you if you do, you you can go really
• 33:17
  Speaker 4: really really deep down the rabbit hole on this one.
• 33:20
  Speaker 4: And there's some really interesting stuff because if you look
• 33:23
  Speaker 4: at the early religion of the Nords, they would acknowledge
• 33:27
  Speaker 4: Aldowin and Alcatash as the same being. But the Aldo,
• 33:30
  Speaker 4: but the Nords, the ancient Nords would take the stance
• 33:35
  Speaker 4: that you know, oh, you know, no Aldowyn is an
• 33:38
  Speaker 4: evil god. Uh. The Imperials don't know what they're talking about.
• 33:42
  Speaker 4: I can't there's actually a book that talks about this.
• 33:44
  Speaker 4: I can't remember what the name of the book is.
• 33:46
  Speaker 4: But this Nord is basically saying, it is absolutely maddening
• 33:50
  Speaker 4: to me to watch these these these Syrdyllics like praise
• 33:55
  Speaker 4: their Acotash because to us, we we we like because
• 34:00
  Speaker 4: we don't want we don't want Aldowin to wake up.
• 34:03
  Speaker 4: We don't want Acotash to wake up. We want him
• 34:05
  Speaker 4: to stay asleep so that he doesn't eat us all.
• 34:07
  Speaker 4: You know, we think it's crazy that you guys like
• 34:09
  Speaker 4: worship worship this guy with a cross pollination of the
• 34:14
  Speaker 4: Imperial culture and their religion. You seem to have like
• 34:18
  Speaker 4: this shift and understanding where modern lords would actually say
• 34:22
  Speaker 4: that Aldowin and Akotosh are two separate gods. You know, Yo,
• 34:26
  Speaker 4: there is an Acotash and he's and he's and he's good.
• 34:29
  Speaker 4: You know, there is you know, Aldowin is separate and
• 34:31
  Speaker 4: he is bad, and like kind of like the question
• 34:37
  Speaker 4: is like which is it? And that's a really really
• 34:41
  Speaker 4: hard question to answer because we have multiple We've got
• 34:46
  Speaker 4: lots of documentation across the games, across like you know,
• 34:51
  Speaker 4: various sources and cultures of all of these different aspects
• 34:56
  Speaker 4: of these gods all interacting with their peoples or like
• 35:00
  Speaker 4: you know, quests where you go to the all of
• 35:02
  Speaker 4: the various afterlifs of these different of these different versions
• 35:06
  Speaker 4: of the same god, and and it kind of and
• 35:09
  Speaker 4: it just kind of adds to the confusion like what
• 35:11
  Speaker 4: is it? Which is it? There seems to be I'm
• 35:14
  Speaker 4: trying to find it. What I have written down here
• 35:18
  Speaker 4: basically is you have you have Aldwyn, who you know,
• 35:22
  Speaker 4: the game very clearly states is the world eater. You know,
• 35:25
  Speaker 4: it is it is believed that he will basically, you know,
• 35:29
  Speaker 4: his role is basically to destroy the world. Acatosh Is
• 35:36
  Speaker 4: is a god that apparently you know, he's the dragon
• 35:39
  Speaker 4: god of time, and he apparently you know, he you know,
• 35:42
  Speaker 4: he loves the world. He loves creation. He wants to
• 35:44
  Speaker 4: see the creed, he wants to see uh, all of
• 35:48
  Speaker 4: the creatures in you know, in nature. He wants to
• 35:50
  Speaker 4: see men and merv you flourish. So what's the there.
• 35:56
  Speaker 4: There's a really interesting mirror going on here because you know,
• 35:59
  Speaker 4: you because they both are they both are kind of
• 36:02
  Speaker 4: like represent different aspects of time, you know. Uh, So
• 36:07
  Speaker 4: it kind of makes sense that a god of time
• 36:10
  Speaker 4: would be kind of like a god of the beginning
• 36:11
  Speaker 4: of time, the middle of time, and the end of time.
• 36:15
  Speaker 4: There is you know, there, there's there is an aspect
• 36:17
  Speaker 4: to this which makes sense. You know, you could interpret
• 36:21
  Speaker 4: this as ultimately the same being where it's like you know, yeah,
• 36:24
  Speaker 4: like you know, you could say, you know, aldown is
• 36:26
  Speaker 4: this beneficent or Acotash is this beneficent figure. But all
• 36:30
  Speaker 4: things ultimately must come to an end, and so when
• 36:33
  Speaker 4: that time comes, he becomes Aldowin and he kind of
• 36:35
  Speaker 4: like destroys it and he uh and he kind of
• 36:38
  Speaker 4: resets everything. This is like this is an idea that
• 36:41
  Speaker 4: you see in Ragnarok, you know, kind of like the
• 36:42
  Speaker 4: world is destroyed, the gods die, and then the world
• 36:45
  Speaker 4: is reborn. It's the exact same idea in Elder Scrolls.
• 36:48
  Speaker 4: They're also borrowing an idea from Hinduism, which is called
• 36:53
  Speaker 4: kind of like a kalpa, and a kalpa is again
• 36:55
  Speaker 4: it's just like a cycle of creation. It's a cycle
• 36:58
  Speaker 4: of the universe. You basically you have the beginning of creation,
• 37:00
  Speaker 4: the middle, and the end, and then creation basically gets
• 37:04
  Speaker 4: destroyed and it rebirths itself and becomes like a new
• 37:08
  Speaker 4: like reincarnated cycle basically of creation, and that's called a kalpa.
• 37:12
  Speaker 4: It's explicitly called kalpas in the Elder Scrolls. Parthenax, the
• 37:17
  Speaker 4: dragon that you meet on top of the throat of
• 37:18
  Speaker 4: the world, actually calls it a kalpa, and he even
• 37:22
  Speaker 4: challenges the player in that you know, you know, like
• 37:28
  Speaker 4: even though he even though he is he himself is
• 37:30
  Speaker 4: opposed to Aldown at least kind of like to what
• 37:33
  Speaker 4: Aldown is doing in the game, which is kind of
• 37:34
  Speaker 4: the oppression of the world, he's still at the same
• 37:38
  Speaker 4: time he's making the case that like all kalpas like,
• 37:42
  Speaker 4: you know, all kalpas must come to an end at
• 37:44
  Speaker 4: some point. He gets he gets very he gets very
• 37:47
  Speaker 4: very like philosophical about it. So there is kind of
• 37:50
  Speaker 4: like there is kind of like a Norse, you know,
• 37:52
  Speaker 4: a very fatalistic Norse idea. There is an interpretation that
• 37:56
  Speaker 4: these are all the that these beings are, you know,
• 37:58
  Speaker 4: Aldowyn and Akatash are want the same. That kind of
• 38:01
  Speaker 4: strains under scrutiny because there's just a lot of contradictions
• 38:05
  Speaker 4: when it comes to all of this stuff. Uh one
• 38:07
  Speaker 4: of the uh one of the one of the popular
• 38:11
  Speaker 4: theories like and again these are this is all based
• 38:13
  Speaker 4: off data and evidence in books that you can read.
• 38:16
  Speaker 4: There is this idea that seems to be that you
• 38:18
  Speaker 4: have like an oversoul basically of each of these gods.
• 38:22
  Speaker 4: And in this particular case, they call this oversoul Akka,
• 38:25
  Speaker 4: and he's got different aspects. He's got like different aspects
• 38:28
  Speaker 4: or different faces essentially depending on kind of like you know,
• 38:32
  Speaker 4: what culture he's interacting with. This will tie into another
• 38:37
  Speaker 4: point that I want to talk about that I want
• 38:39
  Speaker 4: to talk about later. But like, but there is this
• 38:44
  Speaker 4: idea that kind of like each of these gods, each
• 38:47
  Speaker 4: of the divines and the dadra have like alters, almost
• 38:50
  Speaker 4: like these split personalities. Essentially, we talked about mantling in
• 38:56
  Speaker 4: the Yagorov episode. If you don't want to know what
• 38:59
  Speaker 4: mantling is, mantling is basically one of the philosophical metaphysical
• 39:05
  Speaker 4: ways to enlightenment and apotheosis. Essentially, mantling is basically when
• 39:10
  Speaker 4: you kind of like you become you, you basically like
• 39:14
  Speaker 4: become someone, usually a god. The words that are actually
• 39:20
  Speaker 4: the words that I think vivec uses in his sermons
• 39:23
  Speaker 4: is you walk like them until they must walk like
• 39:25
  Speaker 4: you you. So it's like you walk like a god,
• 39:27
  Speaker 4: you walk like that God, you act like that God,
• 39:29
  Speaker 4: you talk like that God, you think like that God,
• 39:31
  Speaker 4: and then you become that God. So there is there
• 39:35
  Speaker 4: is like a theory, for example, that Aldowin, the dragon
• 39:39
  Speaker 4: in the game, is a dragon that mantled the aspect
• 39:44
  Speaker 4: of Aldowin. Aldowin himself doesn't call it, doesn't call himself Acotash.
• 39:49
  Speaker 4: Now there are characters in the game that will say
• 39:51
  Speaker 4: that Aldowin and ac And there's like a whole can
• 39:54
  Speaker 4: of worms that you can get into on like what
• 39:56
  Speaker 4: that means, whether that's like a literal interpretation, whether that's
• 39:59
  Speaker 4: kind of like a or like you know, metaphorical interpretation
• 40:02
  Speaker 4: of firstborn or or you know whatever. Like it's again,
• 40:08
  Speaker 4: it's it's a whole thing. It's see, I would it
• 40:13
  Speaker 4: seems to be from everything that I have seen, From
• 40:16
  Speaker 4: everything that I have seen, it seems to me to
• 40:19
  Speaker 4: be the the split personality, the the altar, the aspect,
• 40:23
  Speaker 4: whatever you want to call it, seems to be the
• 40:26
  Speaker 4: best explanation for all of this. There's there's kind of
• 40:30
  Speaker 4: a bit of like a trinitarian mystery to it. Now
• 40:33
  Speaker 4: there's more than three parts, you know, There's there's there's
• 40:36
  Speaker 4: must like you know, like if we are, if we
• 40:37
  Speaker 4: are to take this idea seriously, like you know, there's
• 40:39
  Speaker 4: multiple versions, like you know, of Akatash across you know,
• 40:43
  Speaker 4: various cultures. One of the interesting things I found like
• 40:46
  Speaker 4: in the Kajiti, like just like really quick, like in
• 40:49
  Speaker 4: Kijki mythology again for example. So so what I have
• 40:53
  Speaker 4: written down here is that if you talk to like
• 40:55
  Speaker 4: the imperials and the high elves, they would say that
• 40:57
  Speaker 4: Akatash and Ariel, which is the eleven version, they are
• 41:01
  Speaker 4: one and the same. The older Nords would say that
• 41:03
  Speaker 4: Akatosh and Aldowin are one and the same. The newer
• 41:06
  Speaker 4: Nords would say that they're two different beings, and the
• 41:09
  Speaker 4: Kagit would agree with that. The Kagite actually have three
• 41:12
  Speaker 4: different gods that kind of like map on to Akatosh.
• 41:17
  Speaker 4: They've got Aka, They've got al Kash, and they've got
• 41:21
  Speaker 4: what was the what was the third one, al Khan.
• 41:24
  Speaker 4: Al Khan is the devour of souls. That's basically like
• 41:26
  Speaker 4: you know, the the uh like you know the Aldowin version,
• 41:31
  Speaker 4: you know for the Kajik. So there is so there.
• 41:34
  Speaker 4: It's really fascinating that you kind of have like all
• 41:36
  Speaker 4: of these, you know, across the various cultures, you have
• 41:39
  Speaker 4: like the same ideas cropping up kind of like in
• 41:43
  Speaker 4: different ways, uh like for these characters. Like I don't
• 41:48
  Speaker 4: know if you like, I'm sure we're all probably like
• 41:50
  Speaker 4: familiar with the meme with like the Christian meme, which
• 41:53
  Speaker 4: is like, you know, when God uh sacrifices himself to
• 41:57
  Speaker 4: himself to save humanity from himself. This seems to be
• 42:02
  Speaker 4: going on really with Akatosh, especially across Oblivion and across
• 42:08
  Speaker 4: Oblivion and Skyrim. Akatosh seems to be a very big
• 42:10
  Speaker 4: mover and shaker in the events of these games, and
• 42:14
  Speaker 4: he's basically like he's you know, he he he he.
• 42:18
  Speaker 4: He's shed a piece of himself, you know, off to
• 42:22
  Speaker 4: Saint Alicia and made her a dragon born, you know,
• 42:25
  Speaker 4: when the First Empire was formed, he shed a piece
• 42:27
  Speaker 4: off of himself to the player character of Skyrim so
• 42:31
  Speaker 4: that the player character can fight the dragons and fight
• 42:35
  Speaker 4: all the wins. So it's like Akatosh is like sacrificing
• 42:38
  Speaker 4: a piece of himself to save the world, like, you know,
• 42:44
  Speaker 4: to to fight himself, to save the world from himself.
• 42:47
  Speaker 4: Like it's it's it's it's it's crazy. I've been talking
• 42:51
  Speaker 4: way too long.
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: No, but I would say that that's super helpful Lord
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: metaphysics and whatnot. I definitely appreciate that. And you know,
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: it is kind of interesting that you have these different
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: particulars kind of demonstrating different aspects of something like the
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: Platonic ideal. You know, you have like you have time,
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: and then you have the various ways that that manifests
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: itself in various particular ways. And you know, I kind
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: of like the idea that it is time that is
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: responsible for for building and moving forward for progress, and
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: it's also time that's responsible for destruction and for bringing
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: things to an end. And so I think that is useful.
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: And you know too, I guess bring up parth and
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: Ax's point, you know, is is the Dragonboorne really the
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: bad guy all along, like preventing what's supposed to happen.
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: That's an interesting question.
• 43:43
  Speaker 4: So I actually have an answer to you there. Actually
• 43:46
  Speaker 4: we might, we might, we might. I might actually hand
• 43:48
  Speaker 4: it off to Tyler, But like, uh, I want to
• 43:51
  Speaker 4: say really really quick, parth and Ax makes a really
• 43:55
  Speaker 4: interesting point, and I've seen some YouTubers make this observation,
• 43:59
  Speaker 4: Like in stuff parthan X makes a really really interesting
• 44:02
  Speaker 4: point that gets glossed over a lot because if you notice,
• 44:05
  Speaker 4: like in the story of Skyrim, aldowynn doesn't actually destroy
• 44:09
  Speaker 4: the world, which is like if you read the mythology,
• 44:13
  Speaker 4: that's his job, Like his job is to end the
• 44:16
  Speaker 4: world so that it can be reborn and start over.
• 44:21
  Speaker 4: So like you know, in that sense, in that sense
• 44:23
  Speaker 4: on paper, Aldowyn is technically air you know air quotes.
• 44:27
  Speaker 4: He's not doing anything wrong, he's doing his job. But
• 44:32
  Speaker 4: when you look at the when you look at the
• 44:34
  Speaker 4: dragon war he's not destroying the world, he's being a tyrant.
• 44:39
  Speaker 4: And Parthonax says as much. He act he calls Aldowyn
• 44:42
  Speaker 4: his brother. That's another interesting point, and he says that
• 44:48
  Speaker 4: one of the reasons that Parthonax betrayed his brother was
• 44:51
  Speaker 4: because he wasn't doing his job. So the story really,
• 44:56
  Speaker 4: like the story of Skyrim, seems to be we can
• 45:00
  Speaker 4: talk about this more later. The story of Skyrim. Actually
• 45:03
  Speaker 4: there's a major theme of betrayal essentially going on, where
• 45:07
  Speaker 4: it's like Aldowyn is betraying his role as the world
• 45:10
  Speaker 4: Eater for his own sense of power and personal gain.
• 45:13
  Speaker 4: He seems to have become a corrupted version of like
• 45:16
  Speaker 4: his own ideal of as the end of time. You
• 45:19
  Speaker 4: know what he's supposed to be, what he is, you know,
• 45:21
  Speaker 4: uh in that you know in the aka Oversaul in
• 45:24
  Speaker 4: that particular aspect, like so like at like they're they're
• 45:29
  Speaker 4: like and there you see this in actually multiple quests
• 45:31
  Speaker 4: and characters all throughout the game. There's betrayal in the
• 45:33
  Speaker 4: Dark Brotherhood. You know that the Dark Brotherhood have betrayed
• 45:36
  Speaker 4: their ideals, Thieves Guild has betrayed their their ideals. Aldown
• 45:39
  Speaker 4: has betrayed their ideals. The Empire has like you know,
• 45:42
  Speaker 4: the Empire has like you know, betrayed Ulfric storm Cloak,
• 45:46
  Speaker 4: and then ulf Work storm Cloak in turn betrayed them.
• 45:50
  Speaker 4: Mirak will talk about Mirak later like in the DLC,
• 45:52
  Speaker 4: but Mirak betrayed his calling as the first dragon born
• 45:55
  Speaker 4: to destroy Acotash. Uh. So the main story scene to
• 46:00
  Speaker 4: be essentially what's going on is Aldown has It's not
• 46:04
  Speaker 4: so much about like the destruction of the world, which
• 46:06
  Speaker 4: all of the can and like it's understandable that there
• 46:08
  Speaker 4: is all this confusion because that's what all the characters
• 46:10
  Speaker 4: are saying and thinking in the story. Again unreliable narrators.
• 46:14
  Speaker 4: But what seems to be going on in the metaplot
• 46:17
  Speaker 4: of Skyrim, like one of the things is that Aldown
• 46:20
  Speaker 4: has basically forsaken his duty as the end of time
• 46:24
  Speaker 4: and the over and the oversoul of Akka of Acotash
• 46:28
  Speaker 4: is basically calling Aldowin to judgment by giving a by
• 46:33
  Speaker 4: you know, by shetting off another piece of his soul
• 46:36
  Speaker 4: to put into a mortal to bring Aldowin to accountability.
• 46:39
  Speaker 4: Because when you get to the end, you know, ald
• 46:42
  Speaker 4: you don't consume Aldowin's soul as a dragon born, like
• 46:45
  Speaker 4: you know, he just kind of goes off to you know,
• 46:47
  Speaker 4: wherever to eventually be reconstituted. You know. So, so as
• 46:52
  Speaker 4: far as we know, the end of the world is
• 46:53
  Speaker 4: on track, like it's it's back on track to happen eventually.
• 46:58
  Speaker 4: But the story is I don't think it's I don't
• 47:01
  Speaker 4: think it's oh is the dragon born the bad guy.
• 47:03
  Speaker 4: I think the story is, you know, aldo Win's not
• 47:06
  Speaker 4: doing his job and Akotash is punishing him for not
• 47:09
  Speaker 4: doing his job. That's the story of Skyrim. But I
• 47:13
  Speaker 4: was gonna hand it off to Tyler to talk about
• 47:15
  Speaker 4: Parthenax and like some of that other stuff. I don't
• 47:19
  Speaker 4: know if like I stepped on Tyler's toes or not.
• 47:21
  Speaker 3: You cover it all?
• 47:23
  Speaker 4: No, I didn't.
• 47:24
  Speaker 3: No, you're gadding.
• 47:25
  Speaker 4: No, Like there's like all kinds of cool stuff that
• 47:27
  Speaker 4: Parthenax says like about.
• 47:28
  Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, well, I guess of course I didn't, you know,
• 47:33
  Speaker 2: write down all the cool things Parthenax says.
• 47:35
  Speaker 4: But.
• 47:37
  Speaker 3: Very much. I mean, yeah, I was.
• 47:39
  Speaker 2: I was working through that idea of like trying to
• 47:40
  Speaker 2: figure out, yeah, who is all doing and looking at
• 47:45
  Speaker 2: the Actash and the dragon born, but that even like
• 47:48
  Speaker 2: kind of fed into he Yeah, when we think of
• 47:52
  Speaker 2: like acotash, I mean another you know, we think of time,
• 47:55
  Speaker 2: but another word is order as well. The order is
• 47:58
  Speaker 2: a big word that's also associated with acotash. And so
• 48:02
  Speaker 2: you know, just looking at the role of dragon borns
• 48:05
  Speaker 2: over time, you know, I had the question.
• 48:07
  Speaker 3: Like what is a dragon bar? What makes a dragon born?
• 48:09
  Speaker 2: And you know, the one of the books, the dragon
• 48:15
  Speaker 2: Born Book, whatever it is, it covers like what makes
• 48:21
  Speaker 2: the dragon born is a various like is a thing,
• 48:25
  Speaker 2: but what isn't totally sure is like what is like
• 48:29
  Speaker 2: the purpose of the dragon boorn like cause it seems
• 48:32
  Speaker 2: to be different purposes and times and things. But what's
• 48:36
  Speaker 2: interesting just looking at like so you know, looking at
• 48:39
  Speaker 2: like you know, say Alicia the establishing that first empire.
• 48:44
  Speaker 2: You know, then you've got Raymond coming in establishing an
• 48:48
  Speaker 2: empire bringing order back because there was a lot of
• 48:50
  Speaker 2: chaos going in both those points and they're bringing order in.
• 48:53
  Speaker 2: And then look at the line of Tyberceptim and all
• 48:56
  Speaker 2: those all those dragon borns kind of doing except in
• 49:00
  Speaker 2: dynasty is continuing to bring order to with the empire,
• 49:05
  Speaker 2: bringing order as much as they do to the world
• 49:10
  Speaker 2: at large. And so when Martin then to make some
• 49:14
  Speaker 2: sacrifice and then dragon boards are kind of gone for
• 49:17
  Speaker 2: a bit, it's amazing how much disorder happens in that time.
• 49:21
  Speaker 2: You've got the Great War, you've got the Thalamar Rising,
• 49:23
  Speaker 2: you've got civil war, and there's also.
• 49:27
  Speaker 3: A lot more going on throughout.
• 49:29
  Speaker 2: You know, the provinces that you don't really get to
• 49:31
  Speaker 2: hear about too much are goinging and uprisings. You've got slaves,
• 49:34
  Speaker 2: you've got you just got all these things going.
• 49:36
  Speaker 3: On, like you know tomorrow and essentially just being.
• 49:41
  Speaker 2: And just complete shambles, and who knows what's going on
• 49:45
  Speaker 2: in Hammerfell. There's war going on there, like and and
• 49:49
  Speaker 2: so this and then I'll do it in a way,
• 49:52
  Speaker 2: it's like, okay, so this has to be the end, right,
• 49:54
  Speaker 2: because there's so much disorder going on, like we got
• 49:57
  Speaker 2: to wipe this clean and yeah, and then the Dragon
• 50:01
  Speaker 2: War comes in and stops that, and then it's like, okay,
• 50:05
  Speaker 2: so wait a second, where's the order coming from? Because
• 50:08
  Speaker 2: the disorder is still all there. That was kind of
• 50:10
  Speaker 2: on the questions that left to me is like where
• 50:13
  Speaker 2: like where is that? Where is that going?
• 50:15
  Speaker 3: So yeah, I don't know that pulls a different leg
• 50:19
  Speaker 3: of things. But yeah, that's trying to rab around that.
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: I think. Like so.
• 50:28
  Speaker 4: I was trying, I was trying to find a I
• 50:30
  Speaker 4: was trying to, in my own words, find a way
• 50:32
  Speaker 4: to kind of succinctly sum up a dragon born you know, uh,
• 50:39
  Speaker 4: like you know, uh, the the the uh. The historian
• 50:44
  Speaker 4: YouTuber Darrel Off who does who does like you know,
• 50:47
  Speaker 4: Elder Schools videos, He's got a neat little list my
• 50:49
  Speaker 4: own wording, what is basically, you know, to keep it
• 50:54
  Speaker 4: very very simple, a dragon you know, a dragon board
• 50:56
  Speaker 4: has the blood of Acotash basically you know, give in
• 51:00
  Speaker 4: to them by Acotash himself for one reason or another.
• 51:04
  Speaker 4: Like it's it's, it's, it's it's kind of different. It's
• 51:08
  Speaker 4: it's kind of different for everybody. And like in a
• 51:11
  Speaker 4: meta sense, you know, what a dragon born is has
• 51:13
  Speaker 4: changed over the twenty years, you know, twenty twenty ish
• 51:18
  Speaker 4: years that you know, the Elder Scrolls games have been
• 51:20
  Speaker 4: a thing, So that is part of it. But how
• 51:23
  Speaker 4: they rationalize it in the Dragonborn book is that you
• 51:27
  Speaker 4: know different, you know, like you know all you know,
• 51:30
  Speaker 4: all all dragonborns are equally dragonborn, but you know, each
• 51:34
  Speaker 4: dragon born kind of seems to be called for like
• 51:38
  Speaker 4: for like a specific purpose, you know, so like for
• 51:40
  Speaker 4: for Saint Alicia, like you know, in the words of
• 51:43
  Speaker 4: Michael Kirkbride, for Saint Alicia, like her role as dragon
• 51:46
  Speaker 4: board was to bring about freedom from oppression, right, you know,
• 51:50
  Speaker 4: in in the case of you know, in the case
• 51:52
  Speaker 4: of Skyrim, it's uh, you know, basically bringing aldowin to account,
• 51:58
  Speaker 4: bringing aldowin to judgment. But like kind of like this
• 52:03
  Speaker 4: little this little list that this little list that like
• 52:06
  Speaker 4: Darrelov made was kind of like base. You know, it
• 52:10
  Speaker 4: was basically kind of like you know, you know, you
• 52:13
  Speaker 4: know Elisi, you know, Alicia was h is like you know,
• 52:17
  Speaker 4: the first dragon born, you know emperor. We knew that
• 52:20
  Speaker 4: there were like, you know, three emperors for certain you
• 52:22
  Speaker 4: know who are dragon born. We have Alicia, you had
• 52:24
  Speaker 4: Rheman the first which you mentioned. We got Typer Septim
• 52:27
  Speaker 4: who became Tallos. All of their offspring where dragon born.
• 52:32
  Speaker 4: The dragon borne could wear the Amulet of Kings, the
• 52:34
  Speaker 4: Amulet of Kings, which is now gone. You know, being
• 52:37
  Speaker 4: a dragon borne means you're granted various powerful abilities. In
• 52:40
  Speaker 4: the case of Skyrim, it's to absorb souls. The dragon
• 52:45
  Speaker 4: born status is seemingly hereditary, but it can also but
• 52:50
  Speaker 4: it can also be granted by Acatosh again for one
• 52:55
  Speaker 4: reason or another. Because if you look at the family
• 52:56
  Speaker 4: tree line of emperors, you know, none of the like
• 53:00
  Speaker 4: you know, like, you know, you've got three different empires
• 53:02
  Speaker 4: with three different dynasties that are not connected by blood,
• 53:05
  Speaker 4: you know, so like and as you know, and as
• 53:07
  Speaker 4: we can see in the case of the Dragon Board
• 53:09
  Speaker 4: and Skyrim, you know, there's you know there, there's there's
• 53:13
  Speaker 4: no family tree to speak of. For the main character
• 53:15
  Speaker 4: in Skyrim, they just, you know, they just they just,
• 53:18
  Speaker 4: you know, wake up one day after having their head
• 53:21
  Speaker 4: almost caught off and they're shouting and eating souls.
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: Quite quite the binger I was supposed to wake up
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: to that.
• 53:28
  Speaker 4: All right. Oh man, I feel like we've gone not
• 53:31
  Speaker 4: off the rails, but I feel like we're very disorganized tonight.
• 53:35
  Speaker 3: We were going somewhere and then then it got derailed there.
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: But yeah, have we exhausted what we can say about
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: I'll do one in any kind of coherent sense. I
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: feel like you guys have I've done a great job
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: with that. But I don't know there's anything else we're
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: missing yet.
• 53:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think we're all doing themselves as an enthasy.
• 53:52
  Speaker 2: I think that's pretty well mm hmm covered there. Obviously,
• 53:56
  Speaker 2: there's still more things around surrounding I'll do. And I
• 53:58
  Speaker 2: guess looking at all theos Wa Prophecy, I definitely think
• 54:02
  Speaker 2: that would be worth.
• 54:03
  Speaker 3: Bringing that up, I agree, and just walking through.
• 54:06
  Speaker 2: That because that and that if you've got that pull
• 54:09
  Speaker 2: that pulled, that be in to.
• 54:10
  Speaker 4: Be able to I do.
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: I do.
• 54:12
  Speaker 4: I have that that was that was actually at the
• 54:14
  Speaker 4: that was actually at the top of my list. But
• 54:18
  Speaker 4: and I think I think examining the prophecy is actually
• 54:21
  Speaker 4: really cool. It's worth doing because I think it's one
• 54:23
  Speaker 4: of those things that it doesn't mean a lot to
• 54:25
  Speaker 4: a lot of players, and the Wall as well, other
• 54:29
  Speaker 4: than just kind of like oh, like you know, you
• 54:32
  Speaker 4: know Aldown's showing up, but there's a lot going on
• 54:36
  Speaker 4: with like the Secret Blade Fortress and the Wall that
• 54:39
  Speaker 4: just like is informs so much of the lore and
• 54:42
  Speaker 4: the history and Elder scrolls that a lot of players
• 54:45
  Speaker 4: just don't wouldn't necessarily know or realize. That just kind
• 54:48
  Speaker 4: of shows just like again, not only how deep the
• 54:53
  Speaker 4: world is, but how interconnected everything is, even in Skyrim
• 54:57
  Speaker 4: to all the other games in ways that aren't real
• 55:00
  Speaker 4: really obvious at all on the surface. And you can
• 55:04
  Speaker 4: so you can see the wall like you know, there's
• 55:05
  Speaker 4: a you know, there's like you know, there's a bunch
• 55:08
  Speaker 4: of images on it. Most people don't know what those
• 55:11
  Speaker 4: are like at all at all, but as but you know,
• 55:17
  Speaker 4: like the Esburn speaks the prophecy UH in the game,
• 55:21
  Speaker 4: like and it's kind of like you hear it like
• 55:23
  Speaker 4: one time if you're paying attention, and it's gone. But
• 55:26
  Speaker 4: basically basically what this prophecy says, okay is and we
• 55:31
  Speaker 4: don't know, we don't know who made this prophecy. Some
• 55:34
  Speaker 4: fans think that the prophecy comes from a from an
• 55:36
  Speaker 4: elder scroll the way Esburn talks, and the fact that
• 55:40
  Speaker 4: the wall itself was apparently carved by the kind of
• 55:44
  Speaker 4: like by the by the the the uh the Asian
• 55:48
  Speaker 4: the fantasy Asian culture that's not really present in the
• 55:50
  Speaker 4: games called the Akavier the Akavii, or that that Saichi.
• 55:55
  Speaker 4: Since they carved the wall, some people think it was
• 55:57
  Speaker 4: like a Seichi prophet. But again, we just we we
• 56:00
  Speaker 4: just don't know where it comes from. We just have
• 56:02
  Speaker 4: the wording, which is when misrule takes us place at
• 56:06
  Speaker 4: the eight corners of the world, when the Brass Tower
• 56:09
  Speaker 4: walks and time is reshaped, when the thrice blessed fail
• 56:14
  Speaker 4: and the Red Tower trembles, when the dragonborn ruler loses
• 56:19
  Speaker 4: his throne, and the White Tower falls, when the Snow
• 56:23
  Speaker 4: Tower lies sundered, kingless, bleeding, the world eater wakes, and
• 56:30
  Speaker 4: the wheel turns upon the last dragon born. So I
• 56:35
  Speaker 4: don't know, like, uh, I guess I want to ask
• 56:38
  Speaker 4: you guys a question. Were there any There's a lot
• 56:41
  Speaker 4: of there's a lot of proper nouns going on actually
• 56:44
  Speaker 4: in this prophecy? Did how many of these actually jumped
• 56:48
  Speaker 4: out to any of you guys like Andrew? How many
• 56:50
  Speaker 4: of these? Uh? Were there any proper nouns in this
• 56:53
  Speaker 4: prophecy that jumped out at you?
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: Hold and I need to pull up in front of
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: me to give it a look, Tyler, you go first.
• 57:00
  Speaker 2: Just the first time through, the only thing that like
• 57:02
  Speaker 2: of of those things that that stuck out to me
• 57:05
  Speaker 2: was was the oblivion related part, you know where the
• 57:09
  Speaker 2: that was my first run through, and so when I
• 57:13
  Speaker 2: heard it again playing through a couple of weeks ago,
• 57:16
  Speaker 2: I was like, oh my gosh.
• 57:17
  Speaker 4: I'm gonna I put the if you look in the
• 57:19
  Speaker 4: uh the the zoom chat uh Professor Snyder, I put
• 57:23
  Speaker 4: the text in there, okay, for your convenience. It occurred
• 57:27
  Speaker 4: to me. It occurred to me, Oh wait, I'm the
• 57:29
  Speaker 4: only one looking at this, like, I what a stupid question.
• 57:33
  Speaker 4: They of course they remembered everything I just said.
• 57:36
  Speaker 3: And then I just put the link in there where
• 57:38
  Speaker 3: it shares all the reference references on ill Doings Wall
• 57:42
  Speaker 3: as well.
• 57:43
  Speaker 4: So I do have the references. I did have the
• 57:45
  Speaker 4: references written down with me. We can quickly we can
• 57:48
  Speaker 4: quickly go over those. Uh. My reason for doing so
• 57:51
  Speaker 4: is I really want to show people who may not
• 57:53
  Speaker 4: necessarily be familiar with like the greater world of Elder Scrolls,
• 57:57
  Speaker 4: that that that is President Skyrim. My My goal is
• 58:00
  Speaker 4: kind of to show you some of the stuff so
• 58:02
  Speaker 4: that you can see just like how kind of like
• 58:05
  Speaker 4: how rich and deep this world is. There's actually a
• 58:08
  Speaker 4: lot of ideas going on in this prophecy. Some of
• 58:11
  Speaker 4: these are some of these are stuff that just kind
• 58:14
  Speaker 4: of like barely comes up ideas, concepts and metaphysical stuff
• 58:18
  Speaker 4: that barely kind of comes up like in the games
• 58:21
  Speaker 4: at all. And there's even ideas that like were maybe
• 58:24
  Speaker 4: only like lore, like unofficial lore out of game that
• 58:29
  Speaker 4: you know, Skyrim is now making official lore, which is
• 58:32
  Speaker 4: actually really really really cool. But yeah, so Tyler, you
• 58:37
  Speaker 4: said that you caught an you caught like an oblivion
• 58:40
  Speaker 4: reference when the dragonborn ruler loses his throne and the
• 58:44
  Speaker 4: White Tower falls. Most people, you know, most people probably
• 58:48
  Speaker 4: look at this and go huh. And I apologize if
• 58:51
  Speaker 4: people listening to this are still going huh and they
• 58:53
  Speaker 4: just want me to get to the point.
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, just go and walk us through it.
• 58:59
  Speaker 4: So when so, so a lot of what this is
• 59:02
  Speaker 4: so like the so the first the first half of
• 59:04
  Speaker 4: the Wall is I don't know if there's anything like
• 59:08
  Speaker 4: I will I will admit I did. I will admit
• 59:10
  Speaker 4: I didn't go maybe as deep as I could have,
• 59:14
  Speaker 4: Like on the first half of the Wall. The first
• 59:15
  Speaker 4: half of the Wall broadly just seems to be showing
• 59:17
  Speaker 4: the Dragon War.
• 59:19
  Speaker 2: The second half yeah, that's that's that is all it's
• 59:22
  Speaker 2: showing is just a devastation and yeah, the Dragon War.
• 59:26
  Speaker 4: And then in the middle of the Wall you have
• 59:28
  Speaker 4: the banishment of Aldo in the first time, and then
• 59:30
  Speaker 4: the last half of the Wall is Uh actually just
• 59:35
  Speaker 4: referencing all five Elder Scrolls games. Is base is basically
• 59:38
  Speaker 4: what it's doing. But when it says, it says when
• 59:41
  Speaker 4: misrule takes its place at the eight corners of the world.
• 59:45
  Speaker 4: This is a reference to the very first Elder Scrolls
• 59:48
  Speaker 4: game when the Trader battle battle Mage jager tharn A
• 59:54
  Speaker 4: ducks Emperor Urial the seventh a Urial Septum. The seventh Uh,
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 4: which is the misrule. The eight corners of the world
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 4: is actually a reference to the symbolic numerology of the
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 4: Older Scrolls world, which we don't really have time to
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 4: get into. But to keep it really simple, eight is
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 4: a sacred number in Elder Scrolls. You know, you had
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 4: you know, like you know, especially like you know, say,
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 4: like for the elves. But it comes up even it
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 4: comes up in the in the Imperial religious cult too,
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 4: because of the cross pollination of all of the various gods.
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 4: But you you know, you have you have eight divines,
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 4: you have sixteen planes of oblivion, which is eighteen times two,
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 4: which is eight times two, excuse me, and you know,
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 4: and so on and so on and so on. But
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 4: there is there's a there's a little picture of a
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 4: staff on the wall that's broken into eight pieces, which
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 4: is a reference to the Staff of Chaos, which is
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 4: basically the mcguffin you needed to fight the Big bad
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 4: in the first game. Uh, And each of those pieces
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 4: were hitted at hidden at the quote unquote eight metaphorical
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 4: corners of the world in the same way that we
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 4: kind of say, like the four corners of the World
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 4: for the Elder Scrolls, it's eight and it has to
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 4: do with like the cosmology and everything. The Brass Tower
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 4: is the Brass Tower is a reference to the Nu Medium. Now,
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 4: so you have the Dwimmer, right, we haven't talked about
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 4: we haven't talked much about the Dwmmer yet, but you've
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 4: got like the Dwimmer, who were basically like the steampunk
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 4: the steampunk elves. Basically in the setting, they're called the dwarves.
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 4: This is actually kind of like a fun like Norse reference.
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 4: If you're familiar with like the history of Old Norse
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 4: and like the linguistics of it. The word elfin dwarf
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 4: is actually very confusing and not clear cut in Old Norse,
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 4: and it's even used interchangeably, sometimes implying that at one
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 4: point elves and dwarves may have the same kind of
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 4: creature in our real world Old Norse mythology Skyrim or
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 4: Elder Scrolls, I should say, does a kind of like
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 4: a fun little play on where kind of like a
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 4: play with this idea where like again, so you don't
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 4: really have dwarves in the Elder Scrolls, but you have
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 4: you've got elves, you've got men, and then you have
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 4: like basically the beast folk, so like no traditional fantasy dwarves.
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 4: But what did happen was the giants in Skyrim. And
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 4: the word Skyrim itself is a play off the Old
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 4: Norse word for giants. But the giants in Skyrim where
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 4: basically the the some of the first mortals they met were,
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 4: in fact, you know, the Dwimmer you know, which is
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 4: to say, you know, the deep elves, the steampunk elves.
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 4: So because you know other mortals are shorter, the giants
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 4: you know just called the the Dwimmer dwarves. That's kind
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 4: of where their nickname comes from. It's just kind of
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 4: like a fun little it's a fun little play there
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 4: in a reference to the Old Norse, which I think
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 4: is really really neat. You've probably seen all of their
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 4: brass robot walking around everywhere. Well, the Dwimmer built a
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 4: giant brass mecha essentially that they were trying to build
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 4: like and this is in the history of morowind that
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 4: they were trying to uh use to h They were
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 4: basically trying to build their own like mechanical god powered
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 4: by the heart of our boy Lorcan that I mentioned
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 4: at the top of the hour, because like he you know,
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 4: it's it's the heart, because it's the heart of a
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 4: mortal of an immortal god. So they wanted to use
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 4: the heart of the god to power their machine to
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 4: make to make a god. So that's kind of that's
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 4: kind of like a reference to the that's that's a
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 4: reference to the Namidium, which typer Septum himself basically apprehended
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 4: and he used to unite the entire continent. Uh, the
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 4: time reshaped, right go ahead, go ahead, no, no, no, no,
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 4: you do it.
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 2: Well, I was just it's so it's so yeah, and
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 2: the time reshaped. That's you know, speaking the warp in
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 2: the west. So the events surrounding Daggerfall, you know, the
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 2: second Elder Scrolls installment Yeah, that's what that is referring to.
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 4: It's kind of hard to it's it's it's it's a
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 4: little it's all a little complicated. But basically, what happens
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 4: with the new medium anytime it's used, it creates something
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 4: called a dragon break. So we've talked about how Akatasha
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 4: is the dragon god of time. So a dragon break
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 4: is like literally when you break the god of time,
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 4: essentially time becomes nonlinear and kind of makes all possibilities
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 4: possible before time kind of like mends itself back into like,
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 4: you know, a linear straight out arrow from past to
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 4: present of future. So the warp in the West, that
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 4: what that tyler is talking about is basically when like
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 4: all the endings of Elder Scrolls two basically came true
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 4: all at once because the Numidium got like a little
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 4: crazy and then blew up and disappeared, and we don't
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 4: know what happened to it.
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 3: And I just want to throw in too.
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 2: I really find that as an interesting mechanic to throw
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 2: into into like a role playing game such as this,
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 2: you know, where like you're playing a specific character at
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 2: a specific time, but however, there's so many things that
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 2: could happen and being able to find a way in
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 2: game to try and like explain how that could be possible,
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 2: and then time to close again and then move on.
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 2: I just thought that was an interesting way to possibly
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 2: like use that mechanic there.
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 4: So it's a really fun way to kind of like
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 4: justify like like all like you know, all of the
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 4: different playthroughs that different people may have across the games,
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 4: and you kind of like create like a narrative justification
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 4: that matches like you know, the gameplay and all the
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 4: different all the different outcomes. Like you know, I'll pick
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 4: up the speed here. You could probably do like a
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 4: whole episode on Aldowin's Wall. The Thrice Blessed is a
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 4: reference to the living gods of Morowind basically like you know,
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 4: the the dark elves that kind of like you know,
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 4: the dark elves that kind of like use the power
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 4: of the Heart of Lurcan to kind of, you know,
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 4: to uh to give themselves god like power. The Red
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 4: Tower is a reference to the volcano in uh varden Fell.
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 4: There's this idea with towers, which you know, we can
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 4: maybe touch on a little bit later. You'll notice that
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 4: you'll notice that you'll you're seeing that a lot, Brass Tower,
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 4: Red Tower, White Tower, Snow Tower. There's a lot, there's
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 4: a lot of that going on. The Dragon Born Ruler
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 4: is a reference to Martin Septim from Oblivion. This is
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 4: basically the not only the death of Urial Septum, the
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 4: death of Martin's Septim, the death of all the dragon
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 4: born emperors, essentially when he destroyed the Amulet of Kings,
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 4: which which is the which is the stone of the
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 4: White Tower. Towers have stones. It's complicated, like, you know,
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 4: we can talk about it later, but when basically when
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 4: Martin died, that was the fall of the tower. The
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 4: Snow Tower is a reference to the throat of the world,
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 4: the throat of the world is itself, all is theat
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 4: the uh the throat of the world. Snow Tower also
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 4: known as Snow Throat. This is a reference to not
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 4: just the mountain itself, but all of the land of Skyrim,
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 4: because the Nords believe that they were born from basically
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 4: the breath of Kine or the breath of Kinnerith at
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 4: the throat of the world. You know, they were born.
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 4: You know, they have this mythology that they were born
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 4: from the land itself, like that's kind of the idea there,
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 4: so they're not so they're not just talking about the mountain,
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 4: they're talking about the land itself. Sundered, Kingless and bleeding
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 4: is a reference to the murder of the high King
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 4: in the game and the fact that Skyrim is at
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 4: civil war. This is the last sign in the prophecy
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 4: that that will bring about aldowin. The wheel is a
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 4: reference to like the cosmological map of the world if
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 4: you look at all if you look at kind of
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 4: like all the various planes, it's a picture you're gonna
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 4: have to look up. Guys, I can't like I'm sorry,
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 4: but if you look at the cosmology of Elder Scrolls,
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 4: it basically looks like a wagon wheel essentially with like
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 4: the world. You know, the world is in the middle,
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 4: like the spokes are basically you know, are basically kind
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 4: of like the structure that kind of walls off all
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 4: of the various dimensions that you have in the setting.
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 2: The Imperial City is another good representation of that. When
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 2: you look at the Imperial City top down.
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, if you look at these exactly, if you
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 4: look at the if you look at the Imperial City
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 4: like top down, and you can see that it's got
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 4: like a wheel shape that's very intentional, Like, you know,
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 4: there's a lot of there's a lot of kind of like, uh,
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 4: you know, religious and the theology symbolism that went into
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 4: the construction of the Imperial City to make it look
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 4: like a wheel with like a tower in the center.
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 4: The wheel turning is itself is also just kind of
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 4: like a reference to time, almost kind of like a clock.
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 4: So that's kind of the that's our very very messy
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 4: breakdown of the prophecy. There's a lot of other ideas
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 4: that are going on in there, which we can talk
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 4: about at some point, and.
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: That's a good breakdown. It is pretty cool how they
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 1: tie together all the games and show that they all
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: have cosmological significance and moving toward this eschatology that we're
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: getting in Skyrim. So yeah, I don't have much to
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: riff off of that. And then of course, I mean
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 1: the whole world eater idea, I mean that's straight out
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: of Norse mythology. It's like Dorman guns the world serpent
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: waking up as the sign of the beginning of the end.
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 1: So yeah, I don't know how much help stand to that.
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 4: Mm hmm. You know, you know what, the thing that
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 4: kind of makes me really mad is that I actually, like,
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 4: I actually kind of like all the stuff that I
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 4: described just now. I actually wrote these succinct lists down
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 4: so that I wouldn't on in awe and meander, and
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 4: then I didn't read any of it. You, I know,
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 4: you all come here for quality like teaching and content.
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 2: I guess one thing that also obviously like just the references,
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 2: but just hearing the walking through these different towers falling,
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 2: and just thinking too, just like on a larger metaphysical sense.
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 3: Just what is what is going on? Here?
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 2: Are we witnessing kind of the unraveling of this I'm
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 2: moving marching towards the unraveling of it all, and there's
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 2: so many instances of where it's like, this is the
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 2: time it's got to all unraveled.
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 3: But no, wait, we still have these other things.
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 2: I'm and knowing that there are other towers involved, you know,
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 2: just continue to look to the future games and what
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 2: could be happening too. It's just it just makes you
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 2: helps you appreciate just the continuity of a story that's happening,
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 2: even though it you may catch like these it's more
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 2: like easter eggs in the games that it turns into.
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 2: But I'm glad that they were able to find a
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 2: way to actually make it integral to what is happening
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 2: in this game, rather than just keeping it in the background,
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 2: even though it's still, you know, fairly obscure, but even
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 2: in a sense, it just helps iron down this idea
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 2: that hopefully they're continuing today being Bethesda continuing this this
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 2: this this narrative moving.
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 3: Forward, an established world unraveling in a way.
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 4: Mm hmmm. I think I think it's we probably need
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 4: to back up a little bit because we're kind of talking.
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 4: We're kind of talking about like towers and like the
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 4: end of the world, and it's like, I'm sure nobody
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 4: knows what we're talking about, so uh we should so
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 4: we should probably like explain what that's about a little bit.
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 4: I'm gonna try and actually read what I wrote down
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 4: and then maybe it will be like succinct and clean. So, uh,
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 4: we talk about towers a lot. We mentioned towers and
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 4: the prophecies. Tyler talks about the end of the world
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 4: and towers. What does this all mean? So basically, like
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 4: what is the tower? Uh, there isn't a lot there
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 4: isn't a lot like in the games themselves. There's a
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 4: little bit, you know, we get a little bit like
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 4: with the Prophecy. Most of what we know from the
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 4: Towers comes from the thirty six Lessons of Vivek, who
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 4: was one of the uh who was one of the
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 4: three dark elf gods that we talked about in the
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 4: Prophecy earlier. Vivek wrote like a bunch of he wrote
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 4: like thirty six sermons and where it's basically just kind
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 4: of like he's essentially mythologizing himself as well as talking
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 4: about like, you know, basically his thoughts and his teaching
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 4: on the philosophy and the metaphysics of the world and
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 4: how to basically reach ascension, and one of the ideas
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 4: that comes up and off and on in the sermons
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 4: a lot is the idea of the Towers. Most of
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 4: what we know about the Towers is not in game.
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 4: It comes from, you know, a writer who no longer
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 4: works at but does day anymore, called Michael Kirkbride, And
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 4: but it is slowly being canonized in bits and pieces
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 4: over the years, which is really really cool. So even
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 4: though a lot of his stuff is technically not unoff
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 4: is technically unofficial, it actually does help to inform us
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 4: on the ideas that he put into the games and
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 4: what exactly he was going for. So like, we like
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 4: since it's technically so since most of it is technically unofficial,
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 4: you can take it with a grain of salt. But
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 4: at the same time, they're canonizing a lot of it.
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 4: So it's safe to say that kind of what Kirkbride
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 4: is saying about these weird ideas is like pretty is
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 4: pretty on point, but but basically essentially what we have is,
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 4: you know, Vivec talks about this idea, okay, the wheel
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 4: of the Arbus, and the Arbus is like the universe, right,
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 4: so you know, and we described that the arbust is
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 4: shaped like you know, like a wheel, you know, like
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 4: you know, basically with kind of like you know, the
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 4: you know, the planet, the Solar system, you know, kind
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 4: of like you know, the the various planes of existence,
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 4: and it kind of gets like bigger and bigger and
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 4: bigger bigger. It's like it's it's a series of concentric circles, right.
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 4: So the wheel of the orbis basically when you look
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 4: when you look at it like a wheel when you
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 4: turn a wheel on its side right. You know, you
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 4: don't see a wheel anymore. You see like this, You
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 4: see like this eye shape. Okay, he calls Vivek and
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 4: I apologize, guys, this really is important, I promise. He
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 4: talks about how like the wheel on its side looks
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 4: like an eye, and he calls this eye basically the
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 4: tower you have. You know, lots of towers in uh
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 4: in Elder scrolls games from like you know, from Oblivion
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 4: to you know, to Morrow Wind to like even the
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 4: older games, even even Skyrim Sky, the throat of the
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 4: world is in fact considered a tower. Like it gets
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 4: really weird, but there's a lot of metaphysical, metaphysical and
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 4: religious significance like going on in all of these ideas.
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 4: But basically at the center of the wheel, at the
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 4: hub of the wheel, because we talked about that concentric
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 4: circle idea, right at the hub of the wheel, which
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 4: is basically you know, you know it's the Mundus. You know,
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 4: we're gonna call it the Earth or you know, Nurn.
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 4: You know, basically at the hub of the wheel, there's
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 4: basically this idea that Vivec kind of calls the secret
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 4: triangle gate. What he means by this is really weird
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 4: and we don't have time to get into it. But basically,
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 4: at the center of the gate, at the center of
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 4: the un is a secret tower called Tower Actual, and
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 4: Tower Actual has a name, and that name is I.
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 4: I don't know what the first thing that comes to
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 4: your mind is when you hear the word I. But
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 4: one of the ideas that is being expressed here is
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 4: that when they say I, they mean I am, which
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 4: is to say which is to say yahweh, which is
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 4: kind of a fun idea right there. Now, it's more
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 4: complicated than that actually, Like there's like, you know, it's
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 4: it's very like you know, like, so there are some
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 4: Christian ideas going on. Uh, it's it's very very gnostic Christian,
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 4: but it's also blended with a lot of Hinduism. There's
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 4: Hinduism ideas going on in here. Like just as Christianity
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 4: has its Godhead, Hinduism also has a Godhead.
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 2: Uh.
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 4: They're making references to all kinds of stuff. That's just
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 4: kind of how Ulder scrolls, rolls, they kind of you know,
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 4: do that. They they do that for fun. But the
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 4: I is the reference of the Godhead and basically to
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 4: achieve enlightenment in the game and basically kind of like
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 4: ascend and become your own god. Uh. When you see
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 4: basically I, it would in your meditations if you can
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 4: visualize the the wheel of the universe and the center
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 4: of the wheel and see I, that's basically how you
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 4: That's basically how you achieve a pathiosis in the setting.
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 4: That's uh, that's how like vi Vec basically achieved apotheosis.
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 4: This is how hyper Septum achieved a pathiosis and became
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 4: the god Taalos believe it or not, even though Lorcan
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 4: was already a god, this is what Lorcan was trying
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 4: to do. Uh, when he when he initially got all
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 4: the gods to try and create the universe, he himself
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 4: was trying to reach kind of like a higher level
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 4: of existence than he was already at. That was kind
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 4: of that. That's that. That was kind of like the
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 4: thing that was going on there. So what does this
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 4: have to do with towers? When Lorcan was punished for
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 4: creating the world and having all of its flaws and
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 4: limitations and complications and evil and all that stuff. Essentially,
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 4: when Lorcan was punished for doing what he did in
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 4: the creation of the world, the gods basically the gods
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 4: built their own tower on Narn that they call the
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 4: Adamantine Tower. It's actually adam Mantia. Ada is the word
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 4: for god. Mantia is basically the word for law, so
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 4: it's the law of the gods. The So the adam
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 4: Mantine Tower basically established it basically established linear time. Uh
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 4: so like there was before the tower, there was time,
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 4: it just wasn't linear. So Adamantine Tower creates linear time, okay. Uh.
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 4: It also creates judgment for Lorcan. It also is basically
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 4: a tower that is built in the image of I. I
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 4: am the Godhead, right, you know, kind of like you know,
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 4: the the Yahweh, the Hindu Godhead, the you know whatever.
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 4: So like the so that's kind of like what the
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 4: it's kind of like a physical representation of kind of
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 4: like the inner spiritualism of the setting all of the
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 4: other towers, you know, which take on various forms, you know. Again,
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 4: like you know, if you go if you go to Vardenfell,
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 4: it's a volcano. If you go to Skyrim, you know,
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 4: it's it's a it's a big, big mountain, you know.
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 4: If you go to Sira Dill, you know it's it's
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 4: a white stone tower. You know, you've got the Adaman Tower,
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 4: You've got the Racac Tower, the wood Elves. Their tower
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 4: is actually a huge mountain sized walking tree, which is
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 4: really really cool. But all of these towers are basically
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 4: in the image of the Adamantine Tower, which is made
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 4: in the image of Again, I am that's basically the idea.
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 4: What's going on there? And Vivek in his sermons calls
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 4: these towers the idols because they are basically made in
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 4: the image of the tower, which is made in the
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 4: image of God. What so, okay, Ian, You've been talking
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 4: for a really long time. So what what does this
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 4: have to do with anything? What does this have to
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 4: do with Skyrim? The towers themselves have metaphysical power. We
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 4: don't know what that power is. Nobody can actually agree
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 4: on what the power is. There is a common theory,
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 4: and this is what Tyler was talking about earlier with
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 4: the end of the world. There is a very common
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 4: theory that the towers themselves are basically what stabilize the mundus.
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 4: You know, they you know, kind of like they they
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 4: they they stabilize kind of like our plaintive stance, our
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 4: plane of reality. This is technically not true. This is
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 4: kind of like a This is kind of like a
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 4: misunderstanding because the spokes of the wheel on this cosmology
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 4: map are the earth bones, which is basically the gods.
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 4: You know, the gods are the ones that are basically
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 4: giving structure to the wheel. They are, you know, the
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 4: gods are the foundation of creation. So it's you know,
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 4: so again like the towers are made in the image
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 4: of God. The gods, they're not actually what brings stability
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 4: to the universe, uh, but they do have some kind
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 4: of power, and we're not entirely sure what that power is,
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 4: but it seems to be in the same way that
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 4: Adamantine basically kind of like gave structure to reality as
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 4: a whole. These lesser towers seem to be governing the
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 4: world itself like you know, or like the respective lands
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 4: and cultures to some degree. And this is the part
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 4: where I talk about the shouts, because the shouts are
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 4: related to the towers. The shouts, so shouting, you know,
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 4: the voice the fome. It's actually not something probably most
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 4: people probably don't know this who've played Skyrim again, Like
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 4: you know, like you know, Skyrim's weirder than you think, guys,
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 4: It's not something that Nords just do or dragons just do.
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 4: There's actually lots of cultures in the Elder Scrolls that
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 4: actually use the power of voice and speech to do
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 4: like basically incredible feats of like metaphysical magic. Right, So
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 4: like if so I get it.
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 2: The bos, I'll throw in here the boser. They have
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 2: these web spinners that are able to essentially they sing,
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 2: and well there's aspects of they're able to sing, and
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 2: that's how like they can create. They can do their
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 2: singing and they can take nature and twist it and
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 2: so like they make homes like that's because of their
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 2: the Green Pact that are able to chop down trees
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 2: to build homes. They have to sing their homes into
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 2: existence in a way.
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 4: There's yeah, which is such a cool, fun like very
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 4: elf idea, like hey we you know, we we sing
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 4: to trees and like kind of like make our homes,
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 4: you know, from the trees. But that's so that's that's
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 4: kind of like an example of like you know, elves
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 4: using their powers of voice as opposed to kind of
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 4: like what the nerds do. The Nerds use it largely,
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 4: or at least the ancient Nerds anyway used it largely
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 4: for war. The Gray Beards use it passively to glorify
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 4: the gods, the Dwimmer, which again you know, they made
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 4: the big god mecha that kind of likes to break reality.
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 4: You know, the Dwimmer actually had their own speech power.
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 4: They they had something called tonal tonal architects. Tonal architects
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 4: use their voice to literally like shape underground caverns so
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 4: that they could like build their civilization underground. They may
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 4: have used it in some kind of weaponized capacity, and
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 4: the Numidium may have done that. Like I'm not sure.
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 4: I don't know all the ins and outs of this.
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 4: The Akavii where we get like again like the Blades
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 4: from now the Blades don't do this anymore. This is
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 4: kind of like a long lost art for them. But
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 4: the Akavii have their kii, which comes from kind of
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 4: like that Japanese kind I think, kind of like a
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 4: Karate word, kind of like kiai I think is kind
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 4: of like what that is. But the Akavii have their
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 4: own kind of like voice power, which they call kii.
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 4: The there was there was somebody, there was somebody else.
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 4: I'm trying to remember.
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 1: Oh, that's right.
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 2: Have the Sword singers where they have this like nuclear
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 2: power that they can with that they can achieve that
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 2: they essentially, in a lighter version, they are able to
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 2: summon some type of like spectral weapon by just using
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 2: their you know that paper.
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 4: They Yeah, they can use the power of their voice
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 4: to create a sword from their very soul.
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and like it's and I guess, and there's either
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 2: theories or a lord that talk about how like that's
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 2: how they believe that the Yoki and continent was destroyed
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 2: possibly was by someone using this power that just completely
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 2: wrecked everything.
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 3: I think that's just a fan theory, but I can't remember.
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 4: So like yeah, so the uh for the uh for
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 4: the dragons, you know, and this is basically kind of
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 4: like you know, and this is kind of like where
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 4: the the uh, especially with like it used to be different,
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 4: but like with Skyrim, they they kind of like they've
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 4: kind of added on to it and fleshed it out,
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 4: but kind of like the uh you know, like in Skyrim,
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 4: there's kind of like some kind of like some interplay
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 4: some crossover between like you know, the voice and kind
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 4: of like the dragon language, but the dragon the dragon
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 4: language itself. Like what uh what tell me Tyler what
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 4: is it that uh? What is it that? Uh? Uh
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 4: Parthaax said about philosophy?
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 3: I don't remember now you told me on the spot.
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 4: Ah man, you were like you you've been talking about
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 4: Parthenax a lot. I thought you would ever, No, you.
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 2: Know, it's it's just one of those things that as
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 2: soon as we've fired this thing out, I'll forget everything.
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 3: So but yeah, what did I say?
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 4: I don't Uh what basically kind of like what parthen
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 4: X says is that there is nothing but philosophy to
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 4: a dova, like you know, right, you know, it is
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 4: no accident that we do battle with our fom like
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 4: you know, with our voices. So like the kind of
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 4: like what he's what he's saying there, and also what
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 4: you can get in some of the lore in the books,
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 4: like the power of the voice is actually something insanely
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 4: crazy that just doesn't come across in the games. The
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 4: dragon Borne himself only ever takes baby steps using dragon
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 4: words to kind of like generate power. But the but
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 4: what makes dragons so crazy, uh? In the Elder Scrolls
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 4: is that vice the very act of speaking shapes and
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 4: warps reality to their very wills. I think, uh, parth
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 4: and x uh Parth and X actually drops this line
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 4: will to power. The dragons have the will to power
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 4: or whatever. I think Snyder can talk about that idea
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 4: will to power.
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that's straight in Nietzsche right where he says, yeah,
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 1: what God is dead, there's no overarching authority pressing down
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 1: on you. Therefore the you know, you each have the
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 1: potential to be your own God. Right, you speak, you say,
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 1: let there be and there is, as you will your values,
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 1: as you kind of shape the world simply through an
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 1: exertion of your will. You know, this is the this
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 1: is the ultimate postmodern turn. Whereas you go to the
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 1: classical world, you go to the medieval world. And philosophy
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 1: is all about how do we find our place in
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 1: the context that already exists and into which we find ourselves?
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 1: And so how do I play my role in the
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 1: context that is? Whereas with this postmodern turn of the
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 1: will to power, it's it's not how do I discover
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 1: the context, it's how do I create the context out
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 1: of myself? And so I guess, I guess the dragon's
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 1: are all Nietzscheans.
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's interesting because your your take. You know, obviously,
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 2: with it's they're taking they're literally warping reality, right, They're
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 2: literally doing it. And I guess even tying this back
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 2: even towards like the whole I'll Dooing discussion as well,
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 2: where it's like they're out of order in a way
• 1:28:41
  Speaker 2: because and they need to be put back in order.
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 2: So so even you get some of that this they
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 2: lean into the postmodern idea of creating their own realities,
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 2: but in a sense they all have to be destroyed
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 2: because they need to stop doing that.
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 1: I appreciate that framing. It's it's a critique of modernism.
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's so this is this is actually probably this
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 4: is actually like a really really good segue actually into
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 4: the philosophy of the Products Tower, which is a which
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 4: is a again, this is like an Elder scroll philosophy thing.
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 4: You wanted to come here for philosophy, guys, I'm about
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 4: to give you some philosophy, or at least, you know,
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 4: kind of like my own grasping attempts of how it's
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 4: conveyed in the context of Elder scrolls, since we're talking
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 4: about will to power and all of that, because there
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 4: is definitely there's definitely like a lot of Nietzschean ideas
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 4: going on in Elder Scrolls in that particular regard when
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 4: it comes to, like, you know, when it comes to
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 4: like achieving Kim, when it comes to like, you know,
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 4: the powers of the voice, and kind of like all
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 4: of that, you know, KIM is kind of like the
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 4: Kim is the Elder Scrolls word basically like for enlightenment
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 4: and becoming your own God.
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 2: When you brought it up, I looked up the word
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 2: itself what it would mean, kind of looking into what's
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 2: going on here, what could be the foundation for this?
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 2: And and the meaning is tediously prolonged, and wordy is
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 2: the is the word for it.
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 4: And I guess just like my goodness, there is not
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 4: a commentary to be made there on this podcast, and
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 4: the word prolis not at all. Yeah, well maybe I
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 4: did it all on purpose.
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Well.
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 2: And what's interesting is like it's taking this idea of
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 2: like reality, like it's the idea of like the products
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 2: is going to be the final tower in a sense,
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 2: because as long as there are narratives, as long as
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 2: there is speaking, there is reality in some ways, so
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 2: and also too, if you speak long enough and tell
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 2: a story long enough, it will become reality.
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 3: And so it's.
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 4: Right uh yeah uh more or less so uh basically
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 4: one of so like and one of our sources for this. Again,
• 1:31:02
  Speaker 4: most of what we get like in game comes from
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 4: the thirty six Lessons of a VEC. The VEC talks
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 4: about this idea called the Six Walking Ways. The Six
• 1:31:10
  Speaker 4: Walking Ways themselves are founded in real life religion. I
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 4: think it's Buddhism. I think it's like I think it's
• 1:31:17
  Speaker 4: like the six paths to like enlightenment or reincarnation or like,
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 4: you know, something like that. But the Six Walking Ways,
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 4: in the context of Elder Scrolls, are basically different ways
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 4: of achieving like apotheosis, achieving divinity, achieving enlightenment. A lot
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 4: of them are kind of like different. Basically, they're all
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 4: kind of like different ways to kind of like the
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 4: same end, the same goal, kind of like. As Tyler said,
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 4: the definition of prolis is basically it's used in the
• 1:31:48
  Speaker 4: context of speech or writing using or containing too many
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 4: words pedeously lengthy. I am so sorry. The tower is
• 1:31:57
  Speaker 4: again the reference to the tower, which is which is
• 1:32:01
  Speaker 4: what we which is what we talked about, essentially kind
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 4: of like what prolos tower is within the context of
• 1:32:11
  Speaker 4: Elder scrolls. It is referring to the towers. It is
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 4: referring to the tower and Tower actual and I, which
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 4: is I am basically kind of like what it comes
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 4: down to is that knowledge and the perception of reality
• 1:32:26
  Speaker 4: shapes the arbus, which is to say, it shapes the universe,
• 1:32:29
  Speaker 4: the power to shape reality as one perceives it, but
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 4: not without first understanding creation and its laws. It is
• 1:32:37
  Speaker 4: not necessary to achieve a potheosis to use the power
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 4: of the speech. So this is another one of those
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 4: things that kind of like makes Prolix Tower really confusing.
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 4: You may be somebody may be thinking at this point, well,
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 4: if all these people are using these powers of voice,
• 1:32:53
  Speaker 4: does that mean they've all achieved like a potheosis, they've
• 1:32:55
  Speaker 4: all achieved enlightenment. No, they haven't. Again, it's really confusing,
• 1:33:01
  Speaker 4: but you can, like you can use like reality warping
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 4: speech power to some limited degree without actually achieving enlightenment.
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 4: It's just really only one of the requisites for it.
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 4: We talked about that will to power idea. So while
• 1:33:17
  Speaker 4: it is the power to shape reality. Michael Kirkbride and
• 1:33:20
  Speaker 4: these riders, they seem to be kind of trying to
• 1:33:22
  Speaker 4: have their cake and eat it too. Snyder talked about
• 1:33:25
  Speaker 4: kind of like the medieval idea of kind of like
• 1:33:28
  Speaker 4: finding your place like within the world, and Vivek is
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 4: arguing that you literally cannot shape reality unless you first
• 1:33:38
  Speaker 4: find your place within the world. They're trying to do both.
• 1:33:41
  Speaker 4: So you can't just like look at a scientific law
• 1:33:45
  Speaker 4: of the world in Elder scrolls, that is, and say
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 4: I want to change that. You need to first fundamentally
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 4: have an understanding of that law before you can even
• 1:33:54
  Speaker 4: begin to have any kind of command of that law
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 4: and bend it or shape it how whoever you want.
• 1:34:02
  Speaker 4: This may be a limiting factor on the power of
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 4: the dragons. It may also be that the reason why
• 1:34:10
  Speaker 4: reality isn't doing like, you know, crazy rubber band nonsense
• 1:34:15
  Speaker 4: all the time is because like, you know, much much
• 1:34:19
  Speaker 4: like our philosophers in our real world to kind of
• 1:34:22
  Speaker 4: like like to codify everything and come to like agreements
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 4: and standardize kind of like all of our ideas and
• 1:34:28
  Speaker 4: what we're talking about, and kind of come to these
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 4: general consensus. It could be that the world is as
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 4: stable as it is because the dragons or you know,
• 1:34:35
  Speaker 4: these other divine beings have reached consensus and they are
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 4: very very careful like in in how they speak so
• 1:34:44
  Speaker 4: as not to change anything. This is kind of what
• 1:34:47
  Speaker 4: the Graybeards do. The Graybeards almost never ever speak because
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 4: they're the power of their voices is so dangerous that
• 1:34:54
  Speaker 4: they can kill people, like, you know, you know, just
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 4: by speaking. So like you know, you go to High
• 1:34:58
  Speaker 4: roth Gar, you know, you know, they might whisper to
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 4: you and the building shakes, you know, which is which
• 1:35:04
  Speaker 4: is kind of like which is kind of like a
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 4: fun idea, but that's kind that's kind of the that's
• 1:35:09
  Speaker 4: kind of like in a nutshell, that's kind of the
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 4: idea of the products Tower. The Prolus Tower is basically
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 4: again like the power to shape reality, but only by
• 1:35:19
  Speaker 4: first understanding reality and your place within reality. And it
• 1:35:26
  Speaker 4: is the foundation for the foom. It is the foundation
• 1:35:29
  Speaker 4: for tonal architecture, for sword singing, for web spinning, for
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 4: KEYI for like all of these ideas that you see
• 1:35:36
  Speaker 4: within like the Elder Scrolls and the dragons. I don't know, Snyder,
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 4: if there is any kind of like like philosophical way
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 4: that you can kind of like justify both the idea
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 4: of knowing your place within established order as well, you know,
• 1:35:53
  Speaker 4: in order to have like power to change established order.
• 1:35:56
  Speaker 4: I don't know if you can reconcile those two ideas
• 1:35:59
  Speaker 4: at all or not. There seems to be a little
• 1:36:01
  Speaker 4: bit of having their cake and eating it too. Like
• 1:36:04
  Speaker 4: with that idea, Yeah.
• 1:36:05
  Speaker 1: I mean speaking more, I guess more directly and more
• 1:36:11
  Speaker 1: eminently and institutionally. Then obviously there's some precedent for that
• 1:36:15
  Speaker 1: in you know, in if you're going to make a change,
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 1: a meaningful change, first you need to understand why why
• 1:36:24
  Speaker 1: the fence is there before you move it, right, the
• 1:36:25
  Speaker 1: Seston says that you need to know why things are
• 1:36:29
  Speaker 1: as they are before you're going to go by the
• 1:36:30
  Speaker 1: business of shaping them. Now, as far as more metaphysically
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 1: of like we're literally changing reality, well that's a different
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 1: thing altogether, because institutional norms and yeah, those can be
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 1: changed because they are part of the process of change,
• 1:36:44
  Speaker 1: that part of the world of change. And so to
• 1:36:47
  Speaker 1: exist in the world of time is to exist in flux,
• 1:36:51
  Speaker 1: in change in time. Whereas if we're talking about the
• 1:36:55
  Speaker 1: more basic rules of reality, well, at that point we're
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 1: moving in the direction of the eternal and in that sense,
• 1:37:01
  Speaker 1: like things are what they are for a reason and
• 1:37:05
  Speaker 1: namely for like capital ar reason in the Christian tradition
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 1: or even some of the began Greeks, you have the
• 1:37:13
  Speaker 1: world is held together by the lagos by reason itself. Right,
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 1: that this is idea we find in going back to
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 1: Heraclitis in the Presocratic era, and then it's obviously made
• 1:37:23
  Speaker 1: use of in New Testament Christianity, that there is a lagos,
• 1:37:27
  Speaker 1: a reason for the way that things are, and so
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 1: there's no changing it because well, to change that would
• 1:37:33
  Speaker 1: be to take what is rational and bring it into irrationality,
• 1:37:38
  Speaker 1: as you're diverging from eternal reason. And so what Elder
• 1:37:42
  Speaker 1: Scrolls is trying to do here it kind of undermines
• 1:37:45
  Speaker 1: the very idea of like reality being inherently rational. So
• 1:37:53
  Speaker 1: I don't know exactly how that works unless we just
• 1:37:55
  Speaker 1: say that, like even the most basic level of reality
• 1:38:00
  Speaker 1: operates within the realm of flux, meaning it could be
• 1:38:04
  Speaker 1: differently than what it is, which I don't know. Maybe
• 1:38:07
  Speaker 1: that's where they're going. I don't know.
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 4: I think that's partly where they are going. This goes
• 1:38:11
  Speaker 4: back to the idea that the universe of Elder Scrolls
• 1:38:15
  Speaker 4: is the dream of the Godhead, and the idea of
• 1:38:18
  Speaker 4: divine hypnagogia, which is kind of like the lucid dreaming
• 1:38:22
  Speaker 4: of the Godhead. So basically it's it's kind of it's
• 1:38:26
  Speaker 4: kind of like this. So in a in a post
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 4: that I made in our discord chat, I tried to
• 1:38:32
  Speaker 4: recontextualize it within the context of mythopia and subcreation. So
• 1:38:37
  Speaker 4: there's kind of like this idea that like the story
• 1:38:42
  Speaker 4: itself is acknowledging, is self aware of itself, like as
• 1:38:46
  Speaker 4: as a game, as as as a subcreator, as a
• 1:38:49
  Speaker 4: as a subcreation in the form of like a video
• 1:38:52
  Speaker 4: game that we play to experience, you know, to both
• 1:38:55
  Speaker 4: kind of like for our enjoyment and then also to
• 1:38:57
  Speaker 4: experience this story. So it's kind of so it's kind
• 1:39:01
  Speaker 4: of like the idea that like, okay, so if we
• 1:39:03
  Speaker 4: were we are made, you know, kind of like we
• 1:39:05
  Speaker 4: are made in the image of God, and then we subcreate.
• 1:39:08
  Speaker 4: We subcreated the Elder Scrolls and in in in that
• 1:39:13
  Speaker 4: in that sense, like you know, the you can say
• 1:39:17
  Speaker 4: that the Elder Scrolls was almost kind of like the
• 1:39:20
  Speaker 4: twinkle in Yahweh's eye if you will, you know, kind
• 1:39:23
  Speaker 4: of you know kind of like you know, you know,
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 4: you know, you know, through us through his creatures in
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 4: our act of sub of subcreation, and we bring the
• 1:39:31
  Speaker 4: story of Elder Scrolls kind of like into that reality.
• 1:39:35
  Speaker 4: So like the story itself is kind of like the
• 1:39:38
  Speaker 4: story itself is kind of like it is kind of
• 1:39:40
  Speaker 4: self aware. It's like breaking the fourth wall, but it's
• 1:39:42
  Speaker 4: also attempting to build the wall around the player and
• 1:39:47
  Speaker 4: kind of like say, hey, you are like you are
• 1:39:50
  Speaker 4: in this world, you are in the story, you are
• 1:39:52
  Speaker 4: a part of kind of like you are you are
• 1:39:55
  Speaker 4: a part of kind of like everything and that that
• 1:39:57
  Speaker 4: is happening, and kind of like trying to almost acknowledge
• 1:40:02
  Speaker 4: the divinity in a sense of that subcreative acts kind
• 1:40:06
  Speaker 4: of like how I tried to is how I kind
• 1:40:09
  Speaker 4: of like tried to express that idea.
• 1:40:13
  Speaker 3: I guess.
• 1:40:13
  Speaker 2: Then one thing that kind of comes to mind when
• 1:40:15
  Speaker 2: looking at that too, is is modding the game because
• 1:40:19
  Speaker 2: you've been thinking about like the idea of you have
• 1:40:21
  Speaker 2: to understand the game, the structure of the game, what's
• 1:40:24
  Speaker 2: going on in the game before you mod the game,
• 1:40:26
  Speaker 2: because if you mod it with I understanding're going to
• 1:40:28
  Speaker 2: break it.
• 1:40:29
  Speaker 4: Yeah yeah that's kod Yeah you can. That's a way
• 1:40:32
  Speaker 4: you can look at it. I mean, Essentially, the so enlightenment,
• 1:40:35
  Speaker 4: Enlightenment and Elder Scrolls is basically realizing that you are
• 1:40:39
  Speaker 4: inside a divine dream. The idea is kind of like,
• 1:40:44
  Speaker 4: you know, if our dream, you know, you know, Michael
• 1:40:46
  Speaker 4: Kirkbride was essentially comparing lucid dreaming to playing a video game.
• 1:40:51
  Speaker 4: You know, we are kind of like, you know, when
• 1:40:53
  Speaker 4: we sleep and we dream and we lucid dream we
• 1:40:55
  Speaker 4: are kind of like subcreating in our heads, and when
• 1:40:57
  Speaker 4: we are lucid dreaming, we're kind of like playing with
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 4: that subcreation inside our heads while we sleep. So like,
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 4: you know, if if human dreams are on one level,
• 1:41:07
  Speaker 4: how much more real and how much more powerful are
• 1:41:11
  Speaker 4: divine dreams? Essentially, in a sense, So like, you know,
• 1:41:15
  Speaker 4: it's not saying that the world of Elder Scrolls is
• 1:41:17
  Speaker 4: like all like is an illusion. It's trying to say
• 1:41:20
  Speaker 4: something much more that it's something much more real and
• 1:41:23
  Speaker 4: something much more deeper than that. But the idea of
• 1:41:26
  Speaker 4: CAM and Enlightenment is basically essentially realizing that you are
• 1:41:29
  Speaker 4: in this divine dream, understanding your place within that divine dream,
• 1:41:34
  Speaker 4: and then only once you understand your place within the dream,
• 1:41:36
  Speaker 4: then you can exert some control over the dream and
• 1:41:40
  Speaker 4: shape that reality kind of like at least to a
• 1:41:43
  Speaker 4: limited extent, like how how you see fit. So there
• 1:41:47
  Speaker 4: is definitely, you know there, there's definitely kind of like
• 1:41:50
  Speaker 4: a will to power idea going on there. But at
• 1:41:53
  Speaker 4: the same time, it's also kind of like, in a
• 1:41:55
  Speaker 4: weird way, trying to bring yourself closer to I if
• 1:42:00
  Speaker 4: that makes any sense. I don't know.
• 1:42:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it definitely is interesting. And you know,
• 1:42:06
  Speaker 1: we talked about this before about the kind of breaking
• 1:42:09
  Speaker 1: or expanding the fourth wall. Uh, so that the the
• 1:42:14
  Speaker 1: player is kind of part of it is in some
• 1:42:17
  Speaker 1: kind of I don't guess, divine sort of way.
• 1:42:21
  Speaker 4: It's it's interesting, not necessarily, but that was kind of
• 1:42:24
  Speaker 4: like a direction I tried to take it in.
• 1:42:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's interesting. Yeah, I don't know. I'm kind
• 1:42:31
  Speaker 1: of my brain's winding down. I don't have great thoughts
• 1:42:34
  Speaker 1: at this point.
• 1:42:36
  Speaker 4: You know what. That's that's that's that's entirely fair. So
• 1:42:40
  Speaker 4: I apologize this this this whole this whole episode has
• 1:42:43
  Speaker 4: been very prolix.
• 1:42:44
  Speaker 1: Well that that seems fitting. Yeah, but I do think,
• 1:42:48
  Speaker 1: and you know, there's more to touch on this than
• 1:42:51
  Speaker 1: we can always bring in the next time. But I
• 1:42:52
  Speaker 1: do think that I need to go ahead and wrap
• 1:42:54
  Speaker 1: at this point after three am grading papers.
• 1:42:58
  Speaker 4: And I am I am so sorry.
• 1:43:01
  Speaker 1: You don't apologize. It's a great conversation. I just can't hang
• 1:43:04
  Speaker 1: so I understand, all right, any other final thoughts, anything
• 1:43:09
  Speaker 1: that's like pressing that we haven't gotten to that either
• 1:43:11
  Speaker 1: of you feel like mentioning.
• 1:43:13
  Speaker 4: I guess really quick, we talked about like we talked
• 1:43:15
  Speaker 4: about the end of the world. There's basically this idea
• 1:43:17
  Speaker 4: that when the tit when the towers are destabilized, you
• 1:43:21
  Speaker 4: know again, so like you know Red, you know, Red
• 1:43:23
  Speaker 4: Mountain blew up, you know, the Brass Tower exploded. Martin
• 1:43:27
  Speaker 4: septem destroyed the Amulet of Kings, which was connected to
• 1:43:30
  Speaker 4: the tower, so that tower is like, you know, deactivated,
• 1:43:33
  Speaker 4: you know whatever. There's basically this theory that when all
• 1:43:36
  Speaker 4: the towers go down, that's kind of like the ending
• 1:43:38
  Speaker 4: of the world. It's a theory, nothing more. Daryl Loth
• 1:43:41
  Speaker 4: has a YouTube video on the towers which is really
• 1:43:44
  Speaker 4: good and I recommend everybody. He Basically it's a very
• 1:43:47
  Speaker 4: popular theory in the Elder Scrolls community. Essentially that the
• 1:43:51
  Speaker 4: thal more, you know, so the thal more. You know,
• 1:43:53
  Speaker 4: the elves they hate lorcan you know they hate Taalos,
• 1:43:56
  Speaker 4: who is kind of like, you know, a reincarnation of
• 1:43:58
  Speaker 4: Lorcan you know they're there is this idea that they
• 1:44:03
  Speaker 4: want to deactivate the towers so that they can in
• 1:44:05
  Speaker 4: the world. The problem is is that again Darrel Lof
• 1:44:08
  Speaker 4: points out, the towers don't actually stabilize the world. It's
• 1:44:11
  Speaker 4: the earth bones that stabilize the world. So again you
• 1:44:15
  Speaker 4: can check out his argument for more on that. If
• 1:44:18
  Speaker 4: you hear the towers, you're gonna hear that idea a lot.
• 1:44:21
  Speaker 4: The towers again might but the towers themselves, they might
• 1:44:24
  Speaker 4: be part of that whole over aka oversaul idea where
• 1:44:28
  Speaker 4: we have different aspects of the gods and kind of
• 1:44:30
  Speaker 4: like how again, like perception of reality shapes how we
• 1:44:33
  Speaker 4: perceive the gods and that's why there's so many different aspects.
• 1:44:36
  Speaker 4: You know. That's kind of like a proleix idea. It's
• 1:44:38
  Speaker 4: probably how tyber Sceptim changed Syridlle from a jungle to
• 1:44:43
  Speaker 4: rolling grass plains. But I guess to But just to
• 1:44:47
  Speaker 4: wrap up kind of like what tott Wood and when
• 1:44:49
  Speaker 4: Tyler was talking about the end of the world, the
• 1:44:53
  Speaker 4: Elders Girls seems to be doing something with the Towers.
• 1:44:55
  Speaker 4: I don't know what it is. I don't think it's
• 1:44:59
  Speaker 4: necess sarially going to be the end of the world,
• 1:45:02
  Speaker 4: I guess is how I would wrap that up. And
• 1:45:04
  Speaker 4: to everybody who's mad that we didn't get to the
• 1:45:06
  Speaker 4: civil Civil War, well sorry, you could do a whole
• 1:45:11
  Speaker 4: episode on the Civil War.
• 1:45:12
  Speaker 2: I think that's my final thought in general, is that
• 1:45:15
  Speaker 2: you know, just are most of the conversation was just
• 1:45:19
  Speaker 2: sitting within just one small part of kind of what
• 1:45:23
  Speaker 2: the world has to offer. And you know, even as
• 1:45:26
  Speaker 2: I was exploring and stuff and like coming into the
• 1:45:29
  Speaker 2: Companions and like seeing the meat hall and like then
• 1:45:35
  Speaker 2: going into just primary world meat hall relating lor because
• 1:45:39
  Speaker 2: I went back to yeah, because I was like, I
• 1:45:42
  Speaker 2: remember that being in the bio of course talking about
• 1:45:46
  Speaker 2: somewhere right, And so I went back and watched the
• 1:45:48
  Speaker 2: video pull some quotes.
• 1:45:49
  Speaker 3: I was like, that's awesome.
• 1:45:50
  Speaker 2: I mean that that itself could bring a lot of
• 1:45:52
  Speaker 2: really cool because there's there's so many echoes of so
• 1:45:54
  Speaker 2: many primary world myths and stuff within the Oldestirls universe
• 1:45:58
  Speaker 2: that really allows.
• 1:46:00
  Speaker 4: For us to.
• 1:46:02
  Speaker 2: Even it once even goes back back to the idea
• 1:46:05
  Speaker 2: where we can begin sit back, wipe the fog off
• 1:46:09
  Speaker 2: of our eyes to see some of the cool things
• 1:46:11
  Speaker 2: that are going on here now or in our past,
• 1:46:14
  Speaker 2: but in how it touches us now. And yeah, because
• 1:46:17
  Speaker 2: it's a really great jumping off point. And so I
• 1:46:20
  Speaker 2: really hope at some point the conversation goes to some
• 1:46:24
  Speaker 2: of those various realms, because it kind of will lead
• 1:46:29
  Speaker 2: to this endless supply of conversation.
• 1:46:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I'm entirely in favor of returning to
• 1:46:37
  Speaker 1: this and hitting all these different avenues that we just
• 1:46:39
  Speaker 1: haven't got into. You know, this time has been very esoteric,
• 1:46:43
  Speaker 1: which I mean to which is a good thing. I mean,
• 1:46:46
  Speaker 1: I led with the question of what is out doing,
• 1:46:49
  Speaker 1: which is what God is here?
• 1:46:51
  Speaker 4: And I think you wanted elder scrolls in philosophy. You've
• 1:46:54
  Speaker 4: got Elder scrolls in philosophy.
• 1:46:56
  Speaker 1: I don't know how.
• 1:46:58
  Speaker 4: I probably made a dog's breakfast of it.
• 1:47:00
  Speaker 1: No, I appreciate what we brought to the table. But yeah,
• 1:47:02
  Speaker 1: we'll definitely have to return to this at some point,
• 1:47:05
  Speaker 1: you know, probably at some point in the new year,
• 1:47:07
  Speaker 1: and get into the things that you were talking about.
• 1:47:10
  Speaker 1: The maybe the more imminent level kind of discussions. Connections
• 1:47:14
  Speaker 1: to real world stuff, you know, the mead halls and
• 1:47:17
  Speaker 1: the Norse culture and all that stuff. There's a lot
• 1:47:19
  Speaker 1: of stuff in Civil War, a lot of stuff that
• 1:47:21
  Speaker 1: we've been touched on that we can definitely return to
• 1:47:22
  Speaker 1: at some point, hopefully not too far from now. All Right, well,
• 1:47:28
  Speaker 1: I appreciate you guys carrying this conversation. Next time we
• 1:47:31
  Speaker 1: will pick it up with Dragonborn and Don Guard and
• 1:47:36
  Speaker 1: obviously building houses. Let's to get into the SKYROOMDLC, so
• 1:47:41
  Speaker 1: do that next time. Thanks again. So then God's break