Lore talk:Azra Nightwielder

Second Era

The references to "shadow magic" concerning the Nightblades of the Second Era interregnum seem to be rather different from Azra's shadow magic. Azra was "the first to realize that shadows were not a mere absence of light but a reflection of possible worlds created by forces in conflict" and that "manipulating a shadow could, through contagion, manipulate the object or force which cast it". There is nothing of such ideas in the shadow magic of the Nightblades, which rather refers to shadows as "the emanation of the limen each object possesses—the depth-impression its existence makes in the local reality of the Mundus" and has nothing to do with manipulating the objects or forces which cast the shadows through the shadows themselves.

So it seems more likely that either Azra's form of shadow magic simply had nothing to do with that of the Nightblades (in other words, they use the same name to refer to different things), or that the shadow magic used by the Nightblades is a very rudimental expression of a branch of magic which would then be fully developed much later by Azra. This interpretation seems corroborated by the fact that (at least so far) ESO makes no reference to Azra in spite of him being a mage of such incredible power and acumen, there is no reference to the nature of shadow magic as he understood it, and it would also mean that we do not need to hypothesize that he was already alive in the early Second Era. — Unsigned comment by 91.179.142.156 (talk) at 02:09 on 29 June 2020‎ (UTC)

Before someone gets deletion happy, I will offer my points. Firstly, Neloth refers to Azra as the original Shadowmage "He was the original shadowmage. His advances in magic are legendary." Secondly Azra says "(Skelos) believes there are five Star Teeth. In my time, there were seven; I presume there are seven still." I will point you to this photo here which is circa 2E 252 and has only FIVE star teeth, when this journal says that SEVEN were discovered. So I highly disagree with the comment "we do not need to hypothesize that he was already alive in the early Second Era." Theres also an additional piece of evidence offered in Azra's notes. Now, if you go check out the Shadow Magic page, you will see that there is separate subsections of how different people apply shadowmagic, with nocturnal, sloads, and others. Nightblades might fall under this catagory so i recommend you to seperate them as a different take on shadow magic.Zebendal (talk) 02:31, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

I'm in agreement with Zeb on this one, it isn't speculation to place Azra in the Second Era or earlier. That said, there were two duplicate statements about Nightblades on the page, so I've removed one and moved it to the Notes section as it's not directly relevant to this character. —⁠Legoless (talk) 07:27, 29 June 2020 (UTC)