Lore talk:Shezarrine

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People or Faction?[edit]

I just want to note for future reference that my placement of this page under "People" was basically an arbitrary decision due to a lack of information, and could be subject to change if and when we know more. It could have easily gone under Factions, but I felt it would be slightly less presumptuous to treat it as a persona, like we did with the Gray Fox, instead of an association of people, which would have implied that they are actually more than one person. Which they could be, I don't know. Minor EditsThreatsEvidence 22:56, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

I agree with treating it as a persona. It's less a group of people, and more a line of reincarnations (Shezarr + Nerevarine = Shezarrine). —Legoless 23:19, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

Player may be Shezarrine[edit]

I'm definitely not the first person to think of this, but I hold the belief that all the player characters in the Elder Scrolls series are Shezarrine. If one person plays through all the Elder Scrolls games, then one might conceivably argue that all the main characters (Hero of Kvatch, Dragonborn, etc) are just reincarnations of each other and perhaps Lorkhan. — Unsigned comment by 66.203.20.175 (talk) at 16:33 on 11 March 2016 (UTC)

Agreed, but there aren't really enough references to make such a claim on this page. The concept of player characters is covered at Lore:Hero instead. —Legoless (talk) 18:26, 11 March 2016 (UTC)
I think the thematic similarity between the two articles justifies a link, maybe in the notes section. 90.32.102.45 21:29, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

Needs more sources.[edit]

"The confusion caused by many incarnations of the Shezarrine is responsible for many identity mix-ups throughout history. Some examples include the many names of Pelinal Whitestrake, who were likely separate Shezarrines thought to be a single being, which would explain the variation in the many legends of his deeds; Tiber Septim, who is officially considered to be one man by the Empire but may have been at least two separate people; and the several figures involved in the Imperial use of the Numidium, including the mysterious Underking." doesn't have a single source and it just conjecture/theory without them which doesn't belong on the wiki.Buaf (talk) 07:47, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

'Developer'[edit]

Why is a former developer referred to as a 'developer' in the notes section here? As the games progress and the lore is expanded on, the prominence of one random employee seems less relevant to the actual substance of the lore officially speaking and may be at some point just conjecture until explicitly confirmed or evidently contradicted. 81.100.92.221 10:47, 4 August 2017 (UTC)

The 'developer' in question is probably the most important person in developing Shezarrine lore, and the language should reflect his status at the time of the comments. The developer has not entirely left Bethesda either, he is frequently used to write new in-game books, some of which expand on certain lore topics, resulting in him having a continued significant effect on the development of lore. Silence is GoldenBreak the Silence 17:52, 4 August 2017 (UTC)

Existence of the Page[edit]

Something interesting came up on Discord some time ago and I thought it was a good idea to move it to this talk page. Even if nothing comes from it, at least it will make sure for future users that this is noticed and discussed. The text below was written by a user named Serithi:

Unless I'm mistaken (and I've done a decent double-checking to make sure), this page should probably not exist, or should otherwise be heavily refactored and renamed. The one single time the term "Shezarrine" is ever used, officially or unofficially, is in The Song of Pelinal v5, referring to Pelinal specifically.
It is a solid truth that Morihaus was the son of Kyne, but whether or not Pelinal was indeed the Shezarrine is best left unsaid (for once Plontinu, who favored the short sword, said it, and that night he was smothered by moths).
That's the only time the term's ever used, and examining the citations on the page, it's actually a complete presupposition that it's a term used for avatars of Lorkhan/Shor/Shezarr in any official capacity that it's then working off of. The page assumes "Shezarrines" is a thing and goes from there. Avatars of Lorkhan are ostensibly a thing, of course. But we're the ones calling them Shezarrines, not the lore. Likewise the claims it makes about the nature of Shezarrines are extremely loaded, since it's saying stuff that actually only Pelinal alone did. A study group of 1 isn't very representative of things beyond that single 1.

--Ilaro (talk) 17:22, 9 November 2019 (GMT)

After Serithi brought it up, my search came up with the same results. I did not even find UOL on it in TIL. As such, this article likely falls firmly into OR. I think it may be right to remove this page. "Shezarrine" can redirect to Pelinal's page, where the title being potentially tied to him can be mentioned. Then, a note (or similar) could be added that Shezarrine is constructed similarly to Nerevarine, potentially indicating a reincarnation of Shezarr. This could link to Lorkhan's page, and the UOL from MK about Lorkhan avatars could be addressed there. --Lost in Hyrule (talk) 22:42, 9 November 2019 (GMT)
Naturally as a partial author of the article's initial draft I am opposed to the proposed deletion. It's a shame we seemingly cannot document more speculatory topics in lorespace anymore, and I would hope that pages like Lore:The Towers do not follow suit if outright deletion is the option chosen here. I do want to point out per UESPWiki:Lore that original research is not outright banned from lorespace, but obviously that's dependent on consensus and it seems to me like consensus has shifted on this topic. In my opinion there is plenty of proof that Lorkhanic avatars are a thing, and "Shezarrine" is the only name we have ever been given that could possibly describe such a being, thus the article title.
I am hesitant to propose Deletion Review for this article. However, it definitely seems like this page would be better off renamed or rewritten than simply {{prod}}ded. If consensus remains to delete this page from lorespace, I propose that it instead be Userfied. —Legoless (talk) 01:02, 18 November 2019 (GMT)
Every page has to be evaluated individually and the fear about other pages should not play a role in how this one is treated. If they have clear references that support their existence, then that should be enough for them to have an article. While I didn't have a good look at the OL sources on the Lore:The Towers page, it actually is backed-up strongly by at least one UOL text (and I also know they are mentioned at least once in the novels and we have the tower staff in ESO). That can't even be said in the case for this page and thus comparing them with each other is not on equal footing.
Speculation is not something that should happen on the wiki (with maybe at most some speculatory notes) and thus I am not sure why this is such a controversial proposal. It's in the style guide since 2007 and Dave mentioned several times that we are not here to create lore, only to document it. That it was allowed in some capacity in the past is a problem that has to be fixed, not a quality of the wiki. Anyway, the prod was mostly to draw attention to this talk page. I like this page and wish we could at least keep some parts of it documented somewhere, but this will not make me biased on how we should treat the use of citations, presuppositions, and speculations. I see that other solutions could be preferred by either a rename, a redirect, or as you said to userfy. Still, I don't think the page can be kept in the state that it is now, unless we can find some arguments that removes the concerns laid out in the first post. --Ilaro (talk) 11:23, 18 November 2019 (GMT)
In light of this, I have rewritten the page to try to address both sides. I tried to balance a few different goals:
  1. Get rid of the extrapolations that inspired the request in the first place. Remove unverifiable claims. I did remove the 'See Also: Hero' bit as unsupportable.
  2. Cut down on details or citations that were not directly relevant. Part of the article was a history on Lorkhan, which I trimmed to only the relevant parts about 'wandering creation'. Removed two sources that only existed to support "Lorkhan is a divisive figure".
  3. Preserve much of the information. Without slashing it down to "Pelinal was called the Shezarrine"! I tried to keep the spirit of the article, being avatars of Lorkhan, and express it in a neutral way.
I'm sure some of the language could be cleaned up, but I believe this improves the article and addresses the concerns expressed here. I would appreciate feedback here if there are any major objections, before an outright revert. --Lost in Hyrule (talk) 04:01, 27 March 2020 (GMT)