Ah, that's better. Coffee helps.
I agree that it seems to be from Shezarr, but if I were to venture a guess on the context, I'd say that this is a description of the ending of the middle dawn. All that talk about claiming the cosmos and making a slave god - and of course the "first of your dynasty" being "men and women of All-Marugh" makes it more than hinted. Same for the ending, the jills beginning their cleanup. Fascinating to have an insight into the center of that mess.

I'm gunna hazard a guess at it. It's either a dreamsleeve (or err, infrasleeve?) transmission from a previous Kalpa in which the Thalmor are in power, and ending the world as they wish to, or a transmission from the future that the authors of the PGE have somehow accessed to a time when the Thalmor are ending the world.

I'm more inclined towards the first, as TES VI will probably involve the Hero taking down the Thalmor, I mean, there's even rumours of the 2nd expansion pack to Skyrim being about you thwarting the attempts of the Thalmor to destroy Direnni tower or something along those lines? However, the 2nd one seems more relevant. They're probably both wrong even. I do get a strong feeling that this is based in a futuristic version of Tamriel.

I'm gunna leave it to the lorebuffs to discuss precisely the potential candidates as to who the parties in this transmitted message are, but I reckon it's a message from someone who is about to be killed by the Thalmor in this almost apocalyptic setting in which the Thalmor are attempting to destroy the world to the Emperor to try and stop this obviously huge threat.

Perhaps the Thalmor have destroyed all the towers, and this is the setting of this transmission.... the world is falling apart.

I'm probably completely wrong, just throwing some ideas out there.

I really want to understand all of this. But it's hard being in the right mindset to absorb this kind of stuff. At least I can rely on first hand interpretations

Why does this give me a weird Planet of the Apes kind of vibe?

TELL ME ELK-MAN! REVEAL YOUR SECRETS!

Is "Merry Eyesore the Elk" Michael Kirkbride's new name?

Yes.

Hmm. If the person sending this transmission is indeed Lorkhan, which makes a lot of sense, then perhaps this is the Dawn Era, and Lorkhan contacting men. But how have the Thalmor interrupted this transmission? Perhaps they have somehow accessed a past transmission in order to help them with their goal to end the world.

Okay. Yeah. Wow.

First thoughts: It's Lorkhan (The part about something being legend to the reader being fresh to him, the talk of being a "stepping stone", the warm way he speaks to man) sending a message too...mankind?


Has a new meaning if so. White Gold Tower/Empire itself is a spaceship used to travel from planet to planet. Lorkhan's Heart is powering it? Explains the slave god in the earlier part. It makes sense, the only way to avoid the kalpa cycle is to escape Nirn itself.

The only real question is WTF are the Thalmor doing at the end? Interrupting a transmission between a planet-god and an abstract race.

EDIT: The other question being why send this message sometime in the Third Era, in the form of the Pocket Guide? Like, really? Obviously this series is about the meaning of the retcon and a concept of transcendence for Cyrods (spacetravel!) to match the Thalmor's unwinding and the Star-Wounded East's CHIM.

Which raises a third question. Direnni Tower is a spaceship. White-Gold is a spaceship. Red Tower is a Star-Wound. Snow-Throat's Way of The Voice takes us closer to the sky than anything else. The Towers aren't keeping The World up, they are ways of escaping it. Ladders to the moon. Crystal-Like-Law was smashed by the Leaper-Demon, so now the Altmer need a new ride.

A Kirkbride-authored expansion to Skyrim set around a battle for Direnni Tower? All. Of. My. Money.

Would contradict rather strongly with some of the points made in the Nu-Mantia intercept....

I would propose that the Thalmor may actually approve of the destruction of the Tower more than they disapprove. The Monomyth indicates the "Meric" view of Mundus is prison, that they seek a return to the Dawn (or before). The "Mannish" view of Mundus is a vehicle for escaping the trap of Aurbis entire. The Towers act as anchors of reality, and I would propose that they generate the possibility of escape by stripping away the infinitude of possibility of the pre-Dawn era; if possibility is truly infinite, the chance of experiencing any given event (i.e., escape from Aurbis) approaches zero.

Therefore I would propose that the Towers both keep the world up and provide means of escape. The Meric (and therefore, I presume, Thalmorine) view is that this escape is false and/or undesirable.

That's half the story. Stars and Spaceships are still both extraterrestrial objects. The towers serve a dual function, as stabilising Mundus into what we experience, and as being vehicles to another possible world. Like colonial spacecraft with terraforming functionality. Just, y'know Divine terraforming.


Damn it I like your style. You have to question the merish logic though, unless their ancestors really are aedra, whereas the Nedics and the Yokudans landed here in towers.

It appears fairly well established that the ancestors of both man and mer are the aedra, and I suspect that the foundation of race was therefore expression of perspective and belief. This further indicates that the aedra are not bound to this existence, but I would suggest that the meric view may be founded in the fear that there is nothing to escape to, that to "escape" Aurbis is cessation or annihiliation.

And what exactly is a star-wound? Searching for the term in TIL brought up a surprisingly sparse number of results, the only official usage appearing in the Sermon of Numbers, which is useless for trying to ascertain a proper definition.

I'd like to think that it refers to Lorkhan, but was Lorkhan's wound not diamond-shaped, as seen in his avatar of Pelinal and the continuing motif throughout Cyrodiil?

Does star-wound perhaps refer to Tamriel, which initially wasn't a part of Nirn at all?

It would also make sense seeing as they were all built by mer, minus the Khajiit tower to the moon. But you got to wonder; since the Towers also act as anchors that balance reality, wouldn't it be easier to destroy them to break Mundus?

I so badly want to know about that Ur Tower expansion! Where was it announced by the way?

Morrowind is referred to in one of the PGEs as the Star-Wounded east. It's a reference to the Heart, or if you want something more opaque than that, a reference to the volcanic activity in the region ("It's as if a star come down and wounded the earth there")

This is getting to the edge of where I really don't understand what is going on, but I can't help but try.

My current thinking is that the origin of this is http://www.imperial-library.info/content/obscure-where-were-you-when-dragon-broke, engineered by the Murakhati Selectives, which opened up several alternative timelines, which were later closed down, but imperfectly. This is a message from one of those alternative timelines, possibly the one in which, "According to Hestra, Cyrodiil became an Empire across the stars." Somehow, this particular timeline was strong enough to persist in some way, enough to get a message back to this timeline, complaining that the colonists have been abandoned, and the purpose of the colony forgotten, as indeed it has. Mostly.

Akatosh keeps trying to fix the damage, to create a single, coherent timeline. But apparently, Akatosh's abilities to do so are limited, and it's not just the Greedy Man who can manage to set aside some extra reality.

I wonder if part of what the Marukhati Selectives did was to work out what happens when one kalpa changes into another, and thought, why wait for the end of the world to change to a new one, and why leave it to gods to make the choices?

First you need to find your own dev to act as Marukh.
The 'heart' here is more metaphorical I imagine. The White-Gold Tower, when made, was of such significance that it shifted the center of the world to Cyrodiil. Lorkhan's is the world's literal heart, but Cyrodiil is it's heart in every other manner.
Auriel shot the heart from Ada-mantia to Vvardvenfell where it fell and formed Red Mountain, like a star.

I believe the phrase refers to the hurling of Lorkan's Heart, it appearing as though a star fell from the heavens. The resulting impact structure (Red Mountain) could be said to be a wound from a star.

EDIT: Holy crap that was redundant with everyone elses' reply.

You're forgetting the context again. This data is being transmitted by Temple Zero agents via Dreamsleeve, after they retrieved the data from it's previous storage locale. The Temple Zero transmission has been detected and interrupted. Remember, a framing device is being used here.

Ah, thank you!

Ah yes, that makes far more sense. Thank-you for the clarification.

Perhaps the real question that might lend context is why Morihatha wanted this particular piece of text. Particularly if it is referring to something that occured in the Dawn.

Furthermore, why would the Thalmor want it censored?

The Thalmor are seeking closure.
All those things we see right now are the opposite of closure, they are blossoming. Made public to thwart the burning of the library.
Two lands each of the other a myth to themselves so therefore both are unreal. But one pays taxes.
A land turned into a USB stick but rebelling.
Cats climbing the Heavens.

The things that spread wide out and need to be twined together. The things that are Illegal now that (Thalmor) control how the information flows.
The things that smell of another vector leading to the hated now and need to be pruned.

Just when I think I have a good idea of Elder Scrolls metaphysics in my head, something like this comes along and mind-[censored]s me.

"But the weapon your hands wield is the chaos"

What do you expect with a name like that?

This is a brilliant piece of writing.

My thoughts on the Cyrod piece: the first part is the original paragraph, before it was intercepted by the Mystery Document. The second part with the "random" italics is a message from the Marukhati Selective to Alessia, telling her among other things that they've selected an arbitrary-but-not number of years (1008) by which to reckon the Dragon Break they wrought, The italicized words are words from the original article on Cyrodiil that have been reappropriated by the Mystery Document to describe concepts relevant to the Selectives' points. The final piece is a message from the end of one of those worlds that was born during the Dragon Break as it reaches its end -- I suspect in a way similar to the end of a kalpa -- with notable geographic and metaphysical relationships to Tamriel-as-we-know-it. The Rumare Sea, for instance, became Lake Rumare; the various gods and saints mentioned by the mysterious narrator are reconfigured or altered versions of the names of Tamrielic gods, perhaps before they were gods (or after?). The snow is the End, as Alduin (or his equivalent in Dragon Break terms) comes and the end of all things. The muddled bit at the end is the last cry of the narrator from the ending world as the Jills set things aright and our timeline recommences.

Very sad, very moving, yet deeply invested in abstract metaphysical hijinks. Fantastic.

General thoughts: Damn the Thalmor. Bloody omnicidal fascist elves. Who but the Temple can stand against them?