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Apparently the ritual Mannimarco used to become a Lich in the first place made him immensely powerful and connected to the Tower in a fundamental way most mortals can't comprehend. Maybe you need to be a Master of some type to even cast the original Soul Trap. Something like a Dragon Priest or comparable being, or stronger. Such a spell literally circumvents Arkay's law, which in theory protects all Mortal souls. I imagine that the version that was popularly used in the late Second Era only worked because the Dragonfires weren't lit for an extended period of time. Several hundred years, in fact. The time between Uriel's murder and the apotheosis of Martin is canonically less than a single year, so even if Mannimarco could teach his original spell to his acolytes he didn't have a ton of time to do it. The Black Soul Gem thing is easier and faster.

Hasn't been mentioned yet, but Bleaker's Outpost is another settlement with founding story confusion. Bleaker's Way was supposedly founded a few generations before Oblivion by a guy called "Ulf the Bleaker", so it's kinda hard to reconcile the place name existing in the mid-Second Era.

Location foundations and names are one of the more common lore inconsistencies in ESO and in ES in general. There have been threads and threads about Rorikstead since Skyrim came out, on Reddit, on here, on various lore forums. Of all the mistakes that can be explained away, the location type inconsistencies are the closest to being actual cases of "they dun goofed" or they skipped over the research. As fans, we can choose to overlook it, to give it a headcanon (maybe an older name was re-used. That's the popular Rorikstead theory) or to get upset over it. My inclination is to kinda do some of the first two, especially since ESO gets so many things right. It's definitely an inconsistency, but in my opinion not really a big deal.

In my mind, and I hope in Beths mind too, TESO didn't happen. Much like Battlespire, Redguard and whatever plot The Elder Scrolls Travel games had. To me it's just an MMO. It's a theme park. It's full of screaming kids, wasps and over priced fun that you have to stand in line for over an hour to get involved in. If it's not in the elder scrolls I to V it didn't happen and if it did happen I'm calling the facts untrustworthy and/or I'm screaming "WARP IN THE WEST!" plugging my fingers in my ears and pretending that it all makes sense.

The characters who wrote the history books are not all knowing. People don't always tell the truth and even lore from in the game can be wrong.

So if Redguard never happened, why does Skyrim's loading screen contain snippets of lore from Redguard's "Pocket Guide to the Empire"? (And hell, Kurt Kuhlmann even went so far as to say the Pocket Guide description was number one influence for Skyrim's overall setting.) If the Mobile games never happened, why does Master Neloth mention Shadow Magic and Azra Nightwielder in Dragonborn? If Battlespire never happened, why do books from it appear in every game from Morrowind on up?

Do you really think that some of the better lore books from ESO aren't going to appear in subsequent games? How will you react to that? Will you plug your ears and pretend they're not there? Will you stop playing the games and denounce the series? Seems unduly negative and closed-minded to me. Almost like you're just bound and determined to not accept that some of the things you flatly denounce have been very good and continue to inspire the setting and lore.

Is that kind of hostility and blanket denial helpful or constructive to the greater community in any way? You complain about ESO lowering the bar, but doesn't this lower the bar as well? I'm a "raise the bar" kinda guy myself. My fandom and lore obsession has always been a positive, inclusive thing. Maybe that's why I'm able to see the good in all the things you pretend never happened, and that's why Bethesda sees the good in them, too. If you think ESO isn't going to influence future games, you're probably going to be sorely disappointed. Schick is one of the good guys. He's left his mark, and it's as big as Rolston's mark was.

Bumping this old topic in order to celebrate the removal of a retcon, and bemoan the introduction of another.

The good news first: it was belatedly brought to my attention that ZOS have removed all in-game mention of the Ayleidic origin theory on the people of Auridon. This retcon-of-a-retcon is assurance that, yes, the Altmer of the isle are indeed pureblooded High Elves and not some kinda mongrel race of Heartland refugees. Apparently this change was made over a year ago and no one pointed it out, but better late than never...

The bad news is that the new Dark Brotherhood DLC features Anvil Castle. This goes against two sources (one of them first-hand) which attest that the castle was built upon that island only after a cliff face collapsed on top of Torridan ap Dugal's pirate [&@%!] circa 3E 286. It simply shouldn't be in existence during the time of ESO. Old Anvil as featured in ESO is not really the pirate shanty town we were led to believe either.

That said, the town is ruled by a pirate queen called ap Dugal, so maybe they've thought hard about this retcon. It's still entirely inaccurate considering Torridan was meant to be a [&@%!] from the Skyrim town of Dunbarrow, not some sort of pirate royalty, but maybe my feelings towards the retcon will soften once I play through the DLC thoroughly.

The thing about the way Bethesda handles their location lore is that the aesthetic comes before the texts. This is almost always the case. Their number 1 design philosophy with Anvil and Kvatch was to match what was presented in Oblivion, text-based lore be damned. Or, you know, the common sense that a town wouldn't look that similar nearly a thousand years before.

Not saying it's a good or a bad way to handle town design, but that's their basic model. To evoke some sort of nostalgia or familiarity in the player. I understand why they do it, but other lore is often discarded in favor of an aesthetic, superficial look for a place or thing.

I definitely agree. The castle is very iconic and I'm happy to see it remodelled for nostalgia's sake, but it's not like they were particularly careful with the original aesthetic of places like Mournhold and Cheydinhal in ESO.

ZOS has swapped hands between then and now. The project director is a completely different guy. Schick is still their lore guy, but you can tell it changed hands. The newest expansions have had a slightly different feel and direction to them. I wouldn't be surprised if them sticking close to aesthetic things from Oblivion wasn't a hallmark of this guy's direction style.

Nothing yet to explain away the castle retcon. On the contrary, a loading screen reveals that the castle was present on the island since time immemorial, originally being a military fortification. Bit mysterious how a Third Era pirate ship ends up underneath it but whatever.

They've also seemingly retconned their own lore again. Emperor Varen was previously described as the "Duke of Chorrol", but this book among others imply that he was Count Kvatch before leaving the seat to his nephew Carolus. To be honest it makes much more sense, especially considering Varen's devotion to Akatosh. Since when does Chorrol have a duke anyway?

I believe Colovia itself has a Duke, since the title of Duke is higher than that of Count in Cyrodiil. There was an abandoned plotline in Oblivion continuing the saga of Count Brandywine of Kvatch and his signet ring that would have culminated with the Champion becoming Duke of Colovia, but it was abandoned in favor of focusing more on side quests, I believe.

That would help explain why he had the backing of all of Colovia (well, bar Anvil).

Regarding the castle, however, maybe they "just" retconned the year of Cap'n Dugal's Journal to someting pre-eso, as they have done with so many other books. That would also explain why anvil is more than a small collection of ramshackle huts by that time, as it was burned down and rebuilt after Cap'n Dugal's events.

I don't think that would make sense. The Umbranox dynasty was still around by 433; if the date of the burning of Old Anvil is moved to the early Second Era, that just opens more questions about the return of the dynasty after a Benirus/ap Dugal interregnum. Although it would explain how the son of a Skyrim prostitute just happens to have prominent relations in the region...

Edit: Also doesn't explain how a collapsing cliff face resulted in the ship being trapped under an already-extant castle/fort.

If the collapsing of the cliff happened before ESO, the castle could have been built in the meantime, and the ship is already underneath it in ESO. We don't have any info on how long that castle has been standing there in ESO, do we?

We do, yeah. I can't find the text but the loading screen for Anvil Castle says something about it.

Ok, then I will see shortly - I was going there anyways

But was the collapsing of the castle from TES:IV itself, or from the pirate DLC? If the latter, it just means the pirate DLC isn't canon (the only DLC we know to be canon is Knights of the Nine)

That's not how these things work. The name 'ap Dugal' appears in the pirate DLC and in ESO, so it's canon. Just not all of it apparently due to this retcon. I'm totally bemused by this idea that any of the official Oblivion DLC wouldn't be "canon".

Well, what about the Fall of the Space Core for Skyrim?

I'd say officially endorsed mods are a little different from official premium DLCs, but the spheriphem are part of my head-canon for sure. Nothing cooler than living Aetherial automatons, it fits in so well with the Battlespire/mananaut/voidship stuff.

Which according to Schick, they treat as firmly established lore and very much canon.

Wait, the spheriphem? Really?

Not that specifically, but space/aetherial exploration. Mananauts, Sunbirds, the Dreamsleeve. All that, even the sci-fi flavored interpretations of it, are actual Beth-canon, but they're considered extremely obscure to average Tamrielic citizens, especially by the 4th era. Know how some people on Earth have trouble believing humans ever stepped foot on the Moon, and it was less than a century ago? Imagine trying to convince some peasant from High Rock that Imperials flew giant moth ships to Secundus to mine for rare spices in the Second Era.