#kagernac's journal

[kagrenacs]

If I’m thinking about how I’d tell a story within the confines of the ESO main quest, it has a lot to do with the idea of royalty/CHIM and nothing with it at all.

I somewhat hate that everyone’s interpretation of CHIM is a positive one. People don’t see the meaning within Morrowind and the 36 lessons, and it’s taken at face value. CHIM is domination, it’s imperialism, it’s oppression. I have no doubt it’s intended to be this, as it’s taught to Vivec by Molag Bal, in something confirmed to be assault. The two people who are said to have attained it is Vivec, who rules over Morrowind in a theocracy. And Talos, the conqueror. Morrowind has an anti-imperialist storyline, critiquing the empire for sending agents to destabilize the country, this is explicitly said in game. CHIM is looking at the whole scope of the world and still saying ‘I’, it’s sitting at the top of the tower, having no equal.

Which I think is part on MK making it out to be this cool thing on forums- part on the fact it’s written by white guys in a culture that hasn’t experienced these kinds of tragedies on a mass scale. Which is why I think ESO had the right ingredients to have a good story to me, but fell so flat. There is no challenging of the status quo. You have someone trying to legitimize their conquests by the Divine Right of Kings, through CHIM-el Abal, the Amulet of Kings. You have someone who manipulates their way into causing a cataclysm, to prop himself up to become the god of schemes. The game presents a difference, but the only one I truly see is the body count.

Coldharbour is accidentally subversive of this. You must progress through these quests, allying with all manner of people in Tamriel and Oblivion. You require the support of everyone, to collectively work towards a goal. (Of course, being an rpg, it’s your character is mostly doing all the work. The way I see media from Western countries speaking of heroism is a very rigidly individualist way of seeing societal change, which never ends up in much change at all.) It’s not as if I expect anything in these games to diverge from the safe route, We joke about Skyrim but I think it’s ESO out of all tes games that’s most focused on profit, being able to throw out as many dlc as Zenimax desires. I just like this setting in particular, and hope better of it even knowing it won’t happen.

[kagrenacs]

It never really occurred to me that the ‘observer’ within the enantiomorph of the old and wandering ehlnofey is the hist/saxheel