Actually, you couldn't play a beast race in Battlespire. I guess the college of the Imperial Battlemages are hella racist.

No. Cannons go boom. But it is canon.

This isnt science fiction, its fantasy.
People often divide the genres more or less by: knights and magic equals fantasy, and space and robots equals aliens, but this is a wrong way to divide the two.

Fantasy is the oldest form of human literature and historically the bulk of it.
It deals with concepts and the reification of those into entities outside of us. Take for instance the fable, where various animals take on the form of archetypical human traits. The sly fox, the wise owl.
It is by its nature mystical, fantastical and almost religious in its efforts to reach the depths of the mythical view of the world and our place in it.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BitingTheSun by Tanith Lee takes place on an Earth of the far, far future where technology is so advanced it is indistinguishable from magic, but it is a fantasy novel.

Science fiction is another beast entirely, though of course like with all human genres there is overlap.
Science fiction again primarily deals with the human mind, the human experience, but in a different format.
Instead of looking at things spiritually and mythically it takes a rational and scientific approach.
A lot of good SF is written by scientists, such as Asimov, Baxter and Clark. It takes a real or imaginably realistic scenario, that often is very outlandish compared to our reality, and anolyses what happens when you put an everyday man in that situation.
It looks for the humanity in things and explores what defines being a human.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_of_Eden by Harry Harrison takes place in the distant past of an alternate history of our species. The most advanced technology used by a human in those books is a spear.
But it is a science fiction book.


The stories debated may deal with other celestial bodies and travel off of home planet, but it is not a scientific universe.
The stars are not huge flaming balls of nuclear fusion, they are holes through the fabric of creation into the Aetherius beyond.
Similar the sun.
The planets are gods.
A new moon appeared in the heavens after the events of Daggerfall.
It was an ancient necromancer achieving apotheosis.

This is nothing like science fiction. The space it takes place in is wholly fantasical.

I'm going to say what I always say: space doesn't mean sci-fi and swords don't mean fantasy, especially since everything here is still all done by magic. This is all as fantasy as it gets, guys, even if there's space. Science fiction is often a what-if of our universe, and the Aurbis is definitely not that. Fantasy is a what if of humanity (even if they're gold-skinned and have pointy ears), which TES, even/especially Battlespire, Tiber Septim's sword-meeting and this.

It's a pet peeve of mine, see. Star Wars is fantasy, too.

Is Merry Eyesore MK?

And did MK link to a Dr Who video?

Terribly depressing if that's true. Dr Who has been a blight on modern science fiction in the UK for many years now.

Loved the rest.

I love dr. Who, but I would say its fantasy.
I also agree with TengenToppa that Star Wars is fantasy.

Dr. Who is basically a wizard with a magic door and a magic wand.
With a human sidekick to emphasize the sense of wonder the wizard uses his magic door to go places he is needed to right a wrong and/ or defeat the monster.
Its really not sf, it uses too much fantasy science, http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AppliedPhlebotinum, to be science fiction or even science fantasy.

not to mention, there was that episode with the space witches.

Points taken.

Perhaps it's more to do with the storytelling aspects. Whether or not it's scifi or scifa or simply fantasy, how a story is presented is what gives it its image. I think that Dr Who takes itself too seriously when it shouldnt, and not at all when it should.

And a tedious injection of moralizing in every other episode doesn't make for happy me.

Regardless of the semantic distinctions we choose to assign to Fantasy and Science Fiction, the world we see in TES games is of a different genre to this Imperial star-fleet time-travelling pseudo-digital comic strip. This is my point. Science Fiction and Fantasy are genres that in many cases can be blended to great effect, but I am not of the opinion that mixing plasma screens and spaceships into the Elder Scrolls is appropriate.

The point I was trying to make is that there isnt any of that.
Its a fantasy universe, not a scientific one, and why wouldnt inhabitants of a universe with sufficiently advanced magic explore the heavens?
It might be a whole lot easier than over here as I doubt the blessing of Kyne's breath ends with the borders of Nirn, it likely pervades the Mundus and emanates from Kyne.
They arent flatscreens, they are a likely biological gel held up in a bronze frame and animated by magic to function as a communication device, which again is a logical thing to do in a universe with scyring spheres.

These things are convergent evolution and they happen because they make sense.
Only in the Mundus magic is used, not science, as there really isnt anything like a hardbound natural law as in universal constant over there.

Wouldnt it be much more fun to discuss how the Aedra feel about their subgradients exploring creation beyond Nirn?
Or what effect the possible transfer of material from Secunda to Tamriel might do to mythical stability?
What would happen if someone tried to land on Dibella?

I dont understand why fantasy must be cloistered to knights plus magic, when there are far more interesting things to do with it, including their anology of space travel.

I enjoy Thaumo-punk as much as the next guy, but it doesn't fit here. If the empire has such devices, how could it possibly lose to the Dominion? How could it remain such an impossibly tight secret from everyone in the world? This stuff would be incredibly significant, yet it is only in the occasional Kirkbridean peripheral fiction that it is even mentioned. There is nothing in the games to suggest that magic or philosophy has advanced far enough to allow this sort of thing. Hell, even the Dwemer didn't achieve space travel, and they were about as advanced as you could get.

-There is Yagrum 'exploring an outer realm'.
-There is mention of mananauts and sunbirds in a PGE, though I dont remember which.
-The game Battlespire features a Battlespire. A gigantic vessel held aloft by unknown means in an artificially created and maintained pocket dimension of Oblivion. All this to house the Imperial College of Battlemages.
-The Infernal City, Umbriel.

There are also other things, but Id have to look. I dont think its all just MK.

I do love your term Thaumo-punk.
Consider it stolen and assimilated into my vocabulary

Dominion also has space stuff. Like Sunbirds.

They didn't really need space travel. If it weren't for one catastrophic [censored]-up, they could've brought space to them, most likely.

I know it's not just MK and I certainly don't wish to imply that I disrespect the man (not least for fear of his Kult), but I maintain that the space travel scene feels disconnected from the actual games. The mananauts and sunbirds of the Third Pocket Guide struck me more as idle experiments that didn't pay out because reaching Aetherius would require more magic than is possible to obtain. I can likewise accept 'space-ships' like Battlespire and Ada-Mantia by misinterpreting them to be simply vessels of space as opposed to time, Shezzar rather than Akatosh. And there are so many planes of existence in the Aurbis that Yagrum's absence during the Numidium could mean anything.

You don't hear about any of this unless you venture outside the games into the shrouded lands of questionable canon. And I simply cannot imagine someone like Jauffre being involved.

I don't know if I'm making myself clear. This is just all too big for me to believe it's going on behind the scenes of a paper-thin swords-and-magic veneer. Some of the light, at least, would surely shine through.

I understand.
I sort of feel the opposite.

If it was just the in-game lore that Ive seen for the last two games I would have moved on long ago.
Especially Skyrim is paper thin in what it offers, there has never been anything like the Sermons of Vivec or even the the Barenziah/ the Real Barenziah series.

That the White-Gold tower is a construct for harvesting creatia, that the Elder council held virtual meetings via the dreamsleeve, those things that are mostly apocryphal spice up what would otherwise be something rather lackluster to me.

I wish more of these things would shine through. Skyrim offers Septimus and Paarthunax but not even the librarian of the College can tell you anything about lore and that is a shame.

I suppose you could say that the world we experience in the games is up-close. Too close to the earth and salt of existence to notice too much of celestial events.
Just like for millions of people the fact that we live in a more or less Newtonian solar system and orbit the sun has never mattered, but that they had food on the table did.

So I think that while you and I see the same dichotomy, I happily explain it away in order to enjoy the 'lore forum' lore, while to you it is grating.

Hmm. I'm more than willing to accept and explore external lore that agrees with my perception of the game world. What bothers me is when the two don't match.

You must of hated Oblivion, then.

Thing is, there is no such thing as a single Tamriel. Numinatus (and the recent Cyrus story) are set within the Battlespire/Redguard Tamriel, which was far more whimsical and space-y. There's Arena/Daggerfall/Oblivion Tamriel, which is largely conventional fantasy. And then there's Morrowind Tamriel, which lies between the two (if you look at the concepts, I'd argue that it was originally closer to B/R, but got infused with a heavy level of grid somewhere in the execution). Skyrim is arguable - I'd place it in Morrowind's camp, other's would place it in A/D/O's. The books in the games range between them, often blending. You can say that something doesn't match your preferred vision of Tamriel (be it Numinatus, the Aludaggas, or King Edward), but you can't quite say that it doesn't match some official version of Tamriel because there is no official version.

If you're expecting this stuff to show in games... it's not going to. The most we'll get is references, unless Bethesda decides to make another spinoff featuring it. Why? Precisely for the reasons you outline. People expect swords and sorcery, mothships don't natively fit into that mix. Same reason we're not going to get complex metaphysical explanations. It's just not a good business move.

Humbug and refutations! It's good short-term, myopically speaking. But it's the crazy stuff that people ultimately remember and gets remade and/or redistributed. LIke in music, while the gooey treacle-pop may dominate the charts for a week or month, maybe even year, it eventually fades into embarrassing obscurity while the really awesome, if undersold, stuff garnering critical attention is what ultimately ascends to the great Sonic Vahalla crowning the popular consciousness for years to come.

Besides, it's not like dude-bros can't handle a good ol' fashioned Mississippi-mind[censored] now and then.

Oblivion is what got me into this mess. I accept and love it, because it was a game that showed me the more comfortable side of Tamriel before opening the door for me to explore the mad, wonderful world beyond. I do not see it as contradictory or exclusive to Morrowind, or to any of the other games. It had less depth, sure, but what it had encouraged me to go deeper, and so I found Morrowind and CHIM and eventually the Imperial Library.

I don't expect or want bland fantasy any more than the rest of you. I really don't. The books that got me into this lore were The Warp in the West and 2920. I like the stories of the Tribunal and the Dragon Breaks and the rest of it. You can see these things taking place in the world you're shown, you can believe in them. They make a fractured kind of sense. In the context of what we see, an Imperial space program does not make that sense.

I refuse to believe the business decision argument, incidentally. Morrowind was and continues to be wildly popular, and it was hardly the 'sword and sorcery' that people expected. There is room in my perception of Tamriel for zero-sum, for Lorkhan's heart, for the Elder Scrolls and all the madness that we love, but I cannot believe in spaceships that we are never shown or told about. You might be willing to take this new story and figure out how to wedge it into your understanding of the lore, but I simply can't.

So, when you think about it, this is my fault.

SeriousFace, stop making so much sense. This is the lore forum for god's sake.

I do agree with him though, I don't think this melds well at all with what we've previously been shown or told.

The Mananauts are to Cyrodiil as the Psijics are to Summerset.

After a while, they became overzealous and fled to the moons, abandonnimg the Empire and making a new spacenation. They were already a myth of sorts since then, so the PGEs mention them to make the Altmer seem equal.

In a sense, they are now an astronomy cult, and unwittingly manage most of the Dreamsleeve communications going on.

Maybe I missed the point here as tends to happen to me in the lore forum, but because they don't have any of it yet..?

I think the implication is, the Oblivion Crisis badly depleted the Empire's fleets in the Void - and then, when the Mede family took control, there was no one around who actually knew the truths of Empire Actual to bring them up to speed. The Septim line had just been brutally assassinated, after all, and the Blades got pretty banged up. The Aldmeri, by contrast, took fewer losses in their 'space' fleet, and had more people 'in the know' who survived, so they simply bided their time and rebuilt until their 'tech' advantage was nigh unbeatable.

Or in other words, It's All Jaggar Tharn's Fault.

Loranna