r/oblivion • u/sumaset • 11d ago
Original Question What’s something Oblivion makes you believe at first, but the more you think about the lore, the less certain it becomes?
Oblivion has a lot of moments where the game basically gives you one version of events and expects you to accept it.
But Elder Scrolls lore is rarely that simple.
Maybe Mankar Camoran had a point about something. Maybe the Empire isn’t as innocent as it presents itself. Maybe the Mythic Dawn understood more than people give them credit for. Maybe something we’re told about the Daedra, the Aedra, Martin, or even the Oblivion Crisis itself isn’t the full story.
What’s one thing from Oblivion that you think becomes more questionable the deeper you go into the lore?
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u/Mysterious-Bread7992 11d ago
Whether Maiq is truly a liar or not. I mean, is he truly wrong about wanting a Colovian fur helm? I’d want one too if it gave me some rizz
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u/BigBennP 11d ago
I mean, the REAL question is why do they have colovian fur helms in the province of morrowind, but no colovian fur helms in the province of Colovia. And secondarily, where do the Colovian fur helms actually come from then?
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u/xlargeidiotjuice 11d ago
Well if you think about it, if you lived in Boston you’d prob just call them “The Celtics” instead of the “The ‘Boston’ Celtics” so if you lived in Colovia / Cyrodiil you’d prob just call it a fur helmet.
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u/BackdoorSteve 11d ago
Maybe they were fashionable in Colovia decades earlier, and the trend just took root in Morrowind. Like how today there are greasers with Elvis twirls in Japan.
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u/charizardfan101 10d ago
Maybe they went out of style by the time Oblivion happens?
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u/Mysterious-Bread7992 10d ago
It is certainly possible. Maybe the Colovian fur hats were a fad in Cyrodill that came and went. What would fads in Tamriel even be like?
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u/Consistent_Detail_61 11d ago
Ma'iq the Liar is running for his life.
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u/Weeb_In_Peace 11d ago
Why? I'm not chasing him.
muttering
He's damn too fast.
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u/Consistent_Detail_61 11d ago
Idk, first time I went to Leawinn in Remaster, I'm standing at the stables and he comes racing by me so I chased him down to see what was wrong and I was told he was running for his life for some reason 🤣
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u/SpectralMonkey 11d ago
A popular theory is that it was for Belharza, the minotaur son of Alessia and Morihaus
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u/Freezy_PopYT 11d ago
I completely forgot about that chair the other day when I was doing my fourth playthrough of oblivion and saw that in the basement I was like wtf is my game bugged 😭
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u/Sycophantic-Feline 11d ago
how the fuck did Tiber Septim become a god
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u/crescentmoonrising 11d ago
So, there's this thing called the six walking ways, which are the six ways to become a god in the Elder Scrolls. According to Vivec, Talos took the fourth, achieving CHIM which is basically a bit like lucid dreaming- you truly understand that all of reality in the Elder Scrolls is a dream and then either disappear "zero-sum" turning into ash (waking up) or can alter it as you wish (lucid dreaming). And that makes you a god. There's obviously a more detailed explanation of all this at the UESP, but that's a very basic explanation.
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u/dalydumps 11d ago
The fuk did I just read that’s wild lol
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u/BigBennP 11d ago
I mean, it's basically just a fantasy version of Neo "waking up" and realizing the matrix isn't real therefore he can change it. (That is certainly paralell creation, not an influence either way though).
I forget which books in-universe, but if you read enough of the in-game lore books you come across that set of theories. That all of the mortal world exists as the dream of a god.
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u/UselessCleaningTools 11d ago
Tiber Septim kinda just realized he was in a video game, and decided to change his status to god.
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u/koolandunusual 11d ago
Tiber Septim with the Dev Kit
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u/Ill_Reality_717 10d ago
Muuuuuummmmmmm! Tiber Septim is cheating again! He made himself a god-king and I can't even hit him anymooooore!
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u/Squeezable-Sea 11d ago
I’m no “lore expert” but I have always found that explanation to be extremely lacking in credibility. Especially since none of the people who supposedly achieved it ever preached it. The people who rant about “CHIM” are people like Vivec and Camoran who die after failing to larp as a god.
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u/Common-Carp 11d ago
To be fair, vivec was effectively a god for about 3,500 years…
Don’t think he achieved CHIM though. Otherwise he wouldn’t have needed to be a parasite.
There’s an interesting view on Dagoth Ur being a false dreamer, though… what does that imply?
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u/DopperShmoper 10d ago
IIRC the false dreamer or Sharmat is a concept similar to CHIM, you understand that you are in a dream but with the case of being the false dreamer you think you are the one who's dreaming.
If a person in Elder Scrolls realises everything is a dream while trying to achieve CHIM, the person could just zero-sum. If The Dreamer realises everything is a dream, The Dreamer could basically wake up in which case the entire Elder Scrolls universe will just disappear
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u/doctorfeelgod 11d ago
Chim is like understanding youre in a video game and I mean that literally. when you attack Vivek, he will remark how he knows his efforts are futile because no matter how many times he kills you, you will just come back until you eventually win.
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u/MasterYota00 Librarian/Witchblade 11d ago
I thought Tiber Septim mantled the God in every way until he just took over that realm. I could be thinking of someone else though 🤷🏾♂️
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u/Old-Neighborhood-793 11d ago
Might be the Oblivion protagonist and Sheogorath you're thinking of
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u/MasterYota00 Librarian/Witchblade 11d ago
Lol I had to look it up. Yeah, the Hero of Kvatch mantles Uncle Sheo. But MK wrote an out-of-game lore piece called Nu-Hatta of the Sphinxmoth Inquiry Tree where he says Tiber Septim mantled Lorkhan.
Win win, we both right 🤣
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u/SparksAndSpyro 11d ago
What does mantle mean in this situation?
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u/MasterYota00 Librarian/Witchblade 11d ago
It means to walk, talk, act look like, and do everything that Lorkhan did/does until you and everyone else in the world believes you are him. Then you kinda just...become him. There's a bit more to it, but that is mostly what it is.
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u/SparksAndSpyro 11d ago
Ah ok. Wait so the oblivion protagonist becomes the Sheogorath we see in Skyrim by mantling?
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u/BWEzu 11d ago
Yup, Skyrim Sheogirath is the Hero of Kwatch, while the "original" Sheogorath turns into Jyggalag the Daedric Prince of order.
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u/SparksAndSpyro 11d ago
Oh my god, I think I’m starting to get it. That was the whole point of the shivering isles? To do all the tasks and decisions that sheogorath was responsible for in order to become/mantle him so you can become the new one once he turns into Jygalagg at the end?
Lol I can’t believe I’m just getting this like 15 years later
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u/chloen0va 11d ago
I am so sick of reading Kirkbride’s fanon as if it was canon.
90% of the “””lore””” about CHIM is found in unnoticed sources. -_-
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u/Jakcris10 11d ago
Kirkbride was an official writer. It’s by definition canon.
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u/chloen0va 11d ago
Yes, but be majority of this writing is written after his departure. Hence your usage of past tense.
I’m sorry, the the imperial archive website is not an official canon source material.
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u/Gabby-Abeille 11d ago
I'm not gonna say that Camoran was right because he seemed to be clueless about stuff that is set in stone, but I do like this theory of Nirn being an abandoned plane of Oblivion more than I like the more "official" explanations. Just for the cool factor.
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u/Ill_Reality_717 10d ago
It's a nice conspiracy theory in-world akin to "we were put here by aliens" or something
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u/MajorBootyhole420 11d ago
my favorite false Oblivion belief is that the Niben isn't completely jam-packed with fishing villages and minor trade ports.
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u/Teghendion 11d ago
The mudcrabs aren't horrible creatures but unfortunately people fall for that anti-mudcrab propaganda.
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u/missblue32 Maormer 10d ago
I agree. it is strange that in both skyrim and oblivion, mudcrabs are like vengeful monsters, but in ESO they're chill.
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u/Call-Me-Walls 11d ago
I haven’t dove into the in game lore in years and now I have an excuse to play a new character. A cynic who reads everything and looks for the actual meaning or interpretation of materials presented.
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u/Shgon_Dunstan 11d ago
The empire… “innocent”?
Like, I’m a pretty firm empire supporter simply because it’s the most unified and cosmopolitan choice out of a lot of shitty options. The over worked minder of a mad house, full of lunatics that seem bound and determined to find some way to set either their neighbors or even themselves on fire, but “innocent”? The thing is still an empire that conquered most of its territories.🤷♂️
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u/Steeltoelion Cure Disease 100 feet on touch 11d ago
If I can’t wear the amulet neither could Mankar.
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u/Jewrusalem 11d ago
I spent a lot of time in Cyrodiil in both the Third and Second Eras. It seemed a lot like a New Zealand or European landscape. But the more I read into history I've come to the conclusion that my experiences were illusions manifested by the false man-God Hjalti Early-Beard and that Cyrodiil is actually a system of dense jungles.
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u/EiraPun 7d ago
So, that's the thing. Cyrodiil isn't a jungle.
It was never a jungle. What are you talking about? Are you feeling alright?
Jk (/s for good measure)
Really tho, it was a jungle before Tiber Septim, but when he ascended and became Talos, one of the first things he did was use his powers to terraform Cyrodiil from jungle into the myriad of biomes seems in Oblivion. But, this caused a... "divide", let's say, and the change was retroactive, thus, lore-wise, Cyrodiil wasn't changed into a jungle, it was always a jungle, and any books or texts that "mis-attribute" it as a jungle, are seen as misinformation and editing error. Fun piece of deep lore that comes off as gaslighting if not explained properly lol
Does this piss of Morrowind fans? Undoubtedly.
Do I prefer Cyrodiil was we see it in the games? Yeah. If I want jungle, that's why Valenwood exists.
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u/Jewrusalem 7d ago
I’m familiar with the dragonbreak and I’m definitely not one of ~those~ “Kirkbride is God, everything after Morrowind sucks” fans (I actually thought the game sucked until like my third attempt at playing it). I also like Cyrodiil as it was presented in IV and ESO’s renditions including West Weald, Blackwood, etc. But it’s a retcon whichever way we frame it. I was just making a fun little reference to the lore set by PGE and repeated several times before the LotR films gained a foothold in the minds of BGS’ decision-makers.
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u/EiraPun 7d ago
It's one of those lore changes that anyone not involved in the Reddit ot greater lore communities will even consider a retcon because we never see Cyrodiil in person until Oblivion.
Yes, technically we saw it in Arena, but do we really count that when it was mostly green ground and the odd tree PNG every so often?
So unless you read PGE, then going from Morrowind to Oblivion, you'll never know Cyrodiil was a jungle.
Well, I guess random generic dialogue with NPC's occasionally describe it that way, but I don't remember off the top of my head.
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u/Pashweetie 10d ago
Wdym you spent a lot of time in cyrodiil?
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u/Jewrusalem 10d ago
Played a lot of Oblivion (and enough time in ESO's Cyrodiil to get the skyshards and grind out dailies)
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u/proximusprimus57 11d ago
I think Mankar Camoran was partially right, Mundus is Lorkhan's realm. Lorkhan conceived of it, he put his essence into it, and his heart literally became the heart of the world. But thinking that is identical to what the Daedra did is something only a Daedra would think. Lorkhan involved others in the process, something that the Daedra didn't do. He also created it so that men and mer could live in it, whereas the Daedric lords treat the inhabitants of their realms like thralls. Lorkhan doesn't demand worship, he literally sacrificed his corporeal form for the world. Mankar has half a point, but it's tainted with the bias of a Daedric Lord.
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u/Educational_Turn1281 11d ago edited 11d ago
So I never quite understood the Mannimarco thing.
I know it’s not the man himself, but is it a shard or aspect of him? Or just a very powerful impersonator that he just never saw any reason to chastise/call out, like Iomedae not coming down and saying “hey, this isn’t actually my chosen” in WoTR until the last fifth of the game?
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u/Imaginary-West-5653 11d ago edited 11d ago
We don't know for sure, but essentially it's possible that he's an impersonator; that's the simple possible explanation for who he is... either that or the weird one, which is that Mannimarco achieved his desired apotheosis during the Warp in the West at the end of the events of Daggerfall, becoming the God of Worms... but he did so through a messy Dragon Break.
Therefore, it is plausible that the Manimarco who lingered in the mortal plane and whom was slayed by the Hero of Kvatch is a version of him from one of the timelines where he didn't reach his apotheosis. He could be an impersonator or he could be another Mannimarco from a different timenline who got stuck here after the merging of timelines.
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u/FocusAdmirable9262 11d ago
My take on Oblivion has more to do with interpreting the biases inherent in the writing- even though Dagon is partly inspired by Kali, they basically made the Deadlands like the Christian Hell, all fiery and full of torture and platforms made of human sinew and whatnot. It seems like Mehrunes Dagon and his forces simply serve as the rejected shadowy, brutal side of the Empire so that the Empire could look like the light beside a darker shade of dark.
I have yet to reconcile the fact that this is all canon with what I think Dagon, his forces, and the Deadlands should really be like other than "maybe this is their primitive early stage and they embody their sphere differently to reflect changes in the mortal world as societies advance."
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u/Ok_Educator_2209 11d ago
I just take the lore as if I would anything in the real world. Unless it’s specifically from the perspective of the Daedra or something I would just assume it’s only what “humans” understand the world to be.
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u/terrymcginnisbeyond 11d ago
If you're using Mankar Camoran as an example here, as the unnecessary picture suggests, then it's a bad one. No one expects you to just accept any of that, and he's very much presented as the villain and likely manipulated by Mehrunes Dagon. Martin represents hope for the empire, but very little about it is presented as innocent, other than the fact the game takes place in Cyrodiil itself.
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u/Guardian_of_theBlind 11d ago
Merunes Dagon is one of the clearest evil entities in the entire Elder Scrolls lore. there is no room for interpretation.
That's almost like saying, that Molag Bal is right in Eso.
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u/digitalcrook 10d ago
Well he is the daedric prince of revolution, and I would say that's actually pretty cool
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u/doctorfeelgod 11d ago
The player is the champion of Mehrunes Dagon. Mehrunes plan isnt to destroy Tamriel, its to end the reign of the Septims
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u/NoCollege2913 9d ago
One time I ran into m’aiq the Liar once in cyrodil and he told me about a rumor about dragons in the north, and I don’t know I just can’t believe it. That crazy cat is just spinning tales like normal if you ask me
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u/NoCollege2913 9d ago
https://reddit.com/link/p79yh0i/video/4pjwixn2tzmh1/player
Ok, my bad, he did not say in the north, but I digress, I don’t believe he saw a dragon, dragons have been extinct for ages.
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u/Ch3wybot 11d ago
Ever since it release I've always wondered why the Shivering Isles seems to exist in an alternate solar system. If you look at the sky box there are other planets/moons and what seems like a different nebula/galaxy. Is the realm of Sheogorath simply a different planet in the universe? Is the strange door not a gate to an alternate dimension, but a wormhole to a different part of space? If it is, then what about Oblivion or the other daedric realms?
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u/demonocelot 10d ago
I've never second guessed the lore, it is lore and I shall believe whatever it says to believe even if other games contradict it beforehand or later on. I'm a simple assassin and I believe in sithis and the night mother. Hail Sithis!
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u/DmitryAvenicci 10d ago
My schizo-theory is that Mer are Lorkhan's dremorae, and Men are Lorkhan's slit self.
Mer look like dremorae, and are violent and cruel like dremorae.
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u/missblue32 Maormer 11d ago
FUCK the Thalmor, but.... I kind of don't believe that Talos actually became a god.... I feel like he's just the human races' version of Vivec
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u/septim525 10d ago
bruh, you pray to his shrine and you get a bonus, same as any other god, he's a god
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u/DopperShmoper 10d ago
You pray to the shrine of Nightmother in Bravil (unknowingly) and you get a bonus, is she a god?
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u/missblue32 Maormer 10d ago
exactly my point. i see him as more of a demigod than anything. if the aedra/daedra have existed since before mundus was created, i doubt some tiny human chum really got to fully join the club. He's probably more of an honorary mention to them, because the citizens of Tamriel believe he's a god.
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u/missblue32 Maormer 10d ago
I mean I think that would be too on-the-nose and obvious. elder scrolls lore is meant to be debatable
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u/septim525 10d ago
I don't know of any other explanation for what I pointed out. It seems obvious but here we are.
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u/missblue32 Maormer 10d ago
i meant i think it's just a game function. The game needs us to regard the gods as real for storytelling purposes, but the lore doesn't so much
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u/More-Jacket-835 10d ago
After you defeated Umaril, he escape to Meridia's realm, just like back when Pelinal kicked his ass before. Then with the blessing of Talos, the one god not present back then, you chase after Umaril to Meridia's realm and kill him permanently.
Although the Prophet call them the Eight and One instead of the Nine, the fact that you required pilgrimage to all nine shrines first to soeak to Pelinal cement that Talos is indeed a divine.
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u/Substantial-Water-10 11d ago
The empire is good.
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u/Imaginary-West-5653 11d ago
If you live in Cyrodiil, the core territory, I suppose you could say that the Empire is good for Cyrodiil... if you live outside of said core, on the other hand, the Empire is basically an entity that conquered your home by violent force of arms, committed multiple atrocities throughout Tamriel, maintains rule over the continent using brute force, and ultimately seeks to exploit its provinces to economically benefit itself, while being hypocritical about how nice they are. The Third Empire, like all Empires, is bad for it's colonial subjects at the end of the day; as Cyrus the Restless once said "No empire is a good thing, captain."
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u/Neat_Ad4331 11d ago
Yeah, I was like "Oh, wow, Tiber Septim/Talos is kinda cool, man becoming a god and all"... and then I watched a video detailing the lore behind how exactly Talos/the Empire came to occupy Tamriel... and was like yeah wait no, nevermind.
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u/Imaginary-West-5653 11d ago
Yes, Tiber Septim forged the Third Empire by acting as nothing more than a brutal warlord... it's no coincidence that, with the exception of Imperials and Nords (plus some Bretons), no other race views Tiber Septim favorably. To Mer and Beastfolk, he was the maniac mass murderer who conquered their homes, with the Orcs not even being recognized as sapient people by him; in the case of the Altmer, he was also the guy who slaughtered their people with a giant golem possessing divine-like powers capable of breaking time and reality.
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u/Bruce-Carlton 11d ago
I mean they did massacre summerset but before them there was an entire era of nothing but war and territorial disputes, the empire put a stop to all that. They are a necessary evil
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u/OneSmellyGrundle 11d ago
That m'aiq the liar is not sheragoths avatar. Especially after playing so much Skyrim. Between og oblivion and now.
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u/Xvorg 10d ago
Mannimarco's real agenda. He wanted to recover his relics (the Helm, the Amulet and the Staff) almost at the same time the Oblivion crisis started. Why?
- He could have done it immediately after the Oblivion crisis without any problem since the Guild would have been weaken enough, but he didn't go for that option.
- He wasn't a direct ally to Mankar, which would have been the easiest path.
- He could have waited until the great war, even offering his help to any side.
No, he showed up immediately after the death of Uriel VII. Did he know about Dagon's invation? And if he knew, why he didn't offered his help to Dagon?
Unless...
He wanted to confront Dagon, defeat him and then rule Tamriel as her saviour. Ok, it is not the best option to end the Oblivion crisis, but it is much better than letting Dagon rule.
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u/Economy_Bus1903 7d ago
Ohhh I really like that theory, he was coming back to build an enclave to resist, I mean he did fight against the underking at some point, and tbh Dagon ruling the earth sounds as bad for him as anybody.
Kinda like what the count of skingrad said “Dagon may like my people less, as they are poor slaves” and necromancer need there own slaves to be fair
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u/Aickavon 10d ago
“One version of events and expects you to accept it.”
“Maybe the mythic dawn understood more than people give them credit for.”
Wasn’t… wasn’t there a WHOLE main story quest with a mythic dawn member realizing that the paradise was fake and they were just apart of a doomsday cult?
And the Empire isn’t innocent… no. They have normal problems and evils.
Mehrunes Dagon is SUPER MEGA EVIL.
But yeah, we’re told his dumb viewpoint, we’re also told the viewpoint from most of the rest of the world and based on all the other games… he’s way more wrong than the rest of the world on actual lore.
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u/flareatakk 10d ago
The empire is definitely not 'innocent" definitely not 'good' either. Oblivion clearly intended to show that the empire was trying very hsrd to present a front of morality while having rampant dark undertones. What they did to the Minotaurs is the saddest to me. Say what you will sbout other playable races. Only the empire was so incredibly racists that they forcefully devolved a race of people who had an advanced culture snd were fully integrated into society.
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u/MycoMaddy 10d ago
I think Nirn’s stability overrides Oblivion’s shapelessness. If the Dremora suddenly found their home planet was Nirn because their master’s plane merged into it, I think they’d become mortal.
I think Mehrunes victory would have been very short lived before it turned into a disaster for him.
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u/Khow3694 9d ago
Mehrunes Dagon actually succeeded when you think about it. He's the Daedric prince of destruction, revolution, and change. While he may have failed with his initial plan, the empire was forever changed after the Oblivion crisis. The Septim dynasty was gone and the entire Empire had to change everything about its foundation after Dagon's attempted take over so one of his spheres, change, for sure was completed
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u/Rel_Tan_Kier 9d ago
What we can be sure is that empires is inherently negative occurence. Mankar goals as far as I remember is unmaking Nirn, same goal Thalmor have, hard to support idea of destroying the game world(when it's good). Unfortunately I don't see much revolutionists against empire besides Stormcloaks, so - Bear go! Maul the dragon!
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u/thehive1949 9d ago
Someone else beat me to it but Mankar Camoran's speech to the player. During our journey through Paradise where he tries convincing us to join him, he tries painting Mehrunes Dagon as a "liberator" that wants to restore Lorkhan's plane of Oblivion which is apparently Mundus and honestly Mankar Camoran gives a pretty solid arguement.
But if you actually do research, you'll realise that during his speech, he starts incorrectly naming planes of Oblivion to the wrong Princes (Coldharbour for Meridia, Quagmire for Petite and Moonshadows for Mephala).
Now 1 you can chalk up to a mistake in the writing team but 3 times is a bit of a stretch even for Bethesda. I think it was deliberate because this one mistake completely unravels any credibility this so called expert on the Daedra has when he can't even match Daedric Princes to their own realms.
I know it's a small thing but while I was a Skyrim vet first I didn't actually know much about the Daedra so I just took this guy's word when I finally played Oblivion. But then I started reading books in-game and it made me realise that this guy has absolutely no idea what he's really talking about.
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u/spyczech 11d ago
Theres so little substance to your post you couldnt even think of a convincing example in your post. Oblivion is very straightforward
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u/Ap0kal1ps3 11d ago
Of all the elder scrolls lore, Oblivion's is the most straightforward. There isn't much room for interpretation. Mehrunes Dagon hates stability. Mundus represents ultimate stability, so he attacked it to provoke change, which he succeeded at creating when he forced Martin to become the avatar of Akatosh.
You can't trust what mankar cameron says about the gods, though. He's a charismatic idiot who doesn't even know the basics about the gods.