Redefining the Prince of Madness

[legoless]

The most recent Loremaster's Archive has just confirmed something which has been hinted at since Skyrim: Sheogorath is mantled by a mortal at the end of each Greymarch. This completely contradicts the narrative of the Shivering Isles expansion, where free will of the Hero is the deciding factor in breaking the curse. This revelation brings up a few key questions which need to be answered before the wiki even has a hope of being updated correctly:

Was Jyggalag really freed at the end of the Third Era, or was the false hope simply part of the curse?

Does the fallen Sheogorath become Haskill every time, or was his creation a one-off thing? If so, why does he say he's served from "the beginning"?

Is Dyus also a Vestige?

Was Arden-Sul a mortal who mantled Sheogorath, as the Heretics believed all along?

Mind is kinda blown...

[Dark Spark]

Where does the aspect of Jyggalag end up after being defeated? Manifesting as a new Haskill? Maybe there was a a big pileup of Haskills until Sheogorath stuffed them all into a giant pit during a previous Greymarch, and the current Haskill is simply the first replacement after that "purge".

What happens if the Champion fails and the Greymarch plows right on through and over everything? The "old" Sheogorath resets and waits for the next gullible schmuck to amble along?

[BetaB17]

As expected, this shrouded answer has brought more questions that may forever go unanswered. As DS said, what becomes of Jygg? No pun intended, but its shere madness to think every madgod follows a lineage of 'manting' mortals. I wanna brush this off as a mislead on what we know of mantling a god.

Correct me with smite, but could this refer more to Haskill being the only mortal(excluding CoC) and that this 'mantling' was nothing more than binding service, though the event is long forgotten. He makes mention of himself as a fragment, possibly so due to reoccuring encounters that ravaged the Isles with Order. He even admits to his own limits in knowledge of the greymarch or his own memory; whether this is a fault from dire fates, an intent by his lord, or as you or others suspect.. I take it this still can fall into the theory of his rebirth after each event but never so 100% as was just like Sheo mentions of him rebuilding the Isles.. it must be dreadfully taxing to remember every detail when its like the 10th time everything was ravashed, things are bound to alter

I also want to add on the confirmed status of Haskill, being a Vestige that is. This is blatant and not evassive so to speak

[Dark Spark]

Perhaps the whole imprisonment of Jyggy thing could never be made permanent— he'll always break free of the bonds the other Princes placed on him. The only way to maintain the imprisonment is to throw him into a new prison: a new body. Jyggy breaks out of the old Sheo's skin, is pounced upon and defeated by some mortal, and his essence is thus entrapped within the Champion, twisting him into the new Sheogorath.

[BetaB17]

Seems more insulting to jygg to trap him in a mortal, a being flawed and lacking order.. beats the irony of living as your difined opposite

[legoless]

Where does the aspect of Jyggalag end up after being defeated?

That's easy, Jyggalag becomes Sheogorath again. Haskill seems to just be the mortal shell left behind after the re-mantling is all said and done. The more important question is: where are all the Haskills?

Correct me with smite, but could this refer more to Haskill being the only mortal(excluding CoC) and that this 'mantling' was nothing more than binding service, though the event is long forgotten. He makes mention of himself as a fragment, possibly so due to reoccuring encounters that ravaged the Isles with Order.

Nah, it's been made pretty explicit now, especially since Haskill directly references the Greymarch. "I'm a mad god. The Mad God, actually. It's a family title. Gets passed down from me to myself every few thousand years." -Sheo in Skyrim

[Imbalance]

What has puzzled me the most has nothing to do with who becomes who - that quagmire of identities is a simple product of the insanity. I want to know why the Greymarch is specifically tied to the end of an era, a reckoning of time established or declared by the mortal rulers of the Nirn continent Tamriel. Is that the joke? Is that the real punishment levied against Jyggy? His one and only chance to escape chaos has no semblance of order to its timing, and is at the mercy of whatever schmuck sits on the ruby throne of a fleeting empire? "Hey guys, some really heavy stuff just went down so let's reset the calendar." Or did I miss something?

The notion that this is a regular and timed occurrence is only speculative based on the work of that one guy that studied the ruins on the Isles, and his anthropology is suspect, anyway. Everything else is pretty clear that the Greymarch occurs at the end of an era, and the only definition of an era is on the lore timeline, which lists Dawn, Merethic, First, Second, Third, and Fourth. Since the Fourth and most recent hasn't ended yet, I count 5 marches. Also, the span of years for each varies wildly, which, to my point, would further deepen the torment of the prince of order. But, no lore source says as much.

I dunno. I would think a prince of madness could be anyone at any time, because madness. But it's almost sane that the destruction of your realm has a catalyst among the ranks of mortals. It's just that sanity and order are not necessarily synergetic.

[legoless]

Actually, the Greymarch seems to come in cycles of 1,000 years rather than what we know as "Eras".

[Imbalance]

I think you dismissed my point too hastily.

I read you opinion on the talk page, and there is support in-game for both measurements of "era" in regards to the time between marches. Even still, what's a year? Are a thousand Shivering years equal, in some deranged way, to the decided length of a Tamrielic era? Wouldn't that just be...crazy?

[legoless]

I think you dismissed my point too hastily.

I read you opinion on the talk page, and there is support in-game for both measurements of "era" in regards to the time between marches. Even still, what's a year? Are a thousand Shivering years equal, in some deranged way, to the decided length of a Tamrielic era? Wouldn't that just be...crazy?

Who knows? That's only cause for speculation. "Let me be clear: inhabitants of the Shivering Isles are affected by Time, but we are not subject to it. We are subjects of Lord Sheogorath, who subjects us to whatever subjects he is in the mood to subjudicate. Because Time is subjective."

[Woodhouse]

Yes, Arden-Sul was the last one to mantle Sheogorath. There were ones before him, and there will be ones after him.

That is why there are ruins of different time periods remaining. I forget the title of the book, but there is one in the Shivering Isles that mentions ruins thousands of years old, with the most recent ruin being just under a thousand years old. This leads the author to conclude that some sort of apocalypse is on its way.

Its funny, I tried to include something of this sort on the Sheogorath page some time ago, but it got deleted.

[legoless]

Yes, Arden-Sul was the last one to mantle Sheogorath. There were ones before him, and there will be ones after him.

That is why there are ruins of different time periods remaining. I forget the title of the book, but there is one in the Shivering Isles that mentions ruins thousands of years old, with the most recent ruin being just under a thousand years old. This leads the author to conclude that some sort of apocalypse is on its way.

Its funny, I tried to include something of this sort on the Sheogorath page some time ago, but it got deleted.

Well, that's because this theory was pure speculation before the Haskill Q&A. In the Shivering Isles expansion, those ruins are the result of previous Greymarches, during which time Jyggalag would successfully storm the Font of Madness and reconquer the realm; Arden-Sul was the only hint of a previous successful mantling. But now, it seems Jyggalag never takes the Isles. This actually conflicts pretty majorly with that book describing the ruins: if Jyggy never does much more harm than summon a few Knights and take the Fringe, why would Sheogorath have to "pick up the pieces" and entirely recreate the realm afterwards, as if it had become entirely Ordered? Perhaps the Champion of Cyrodiil was still an exception given that he saved Sheogorath's army and retook the Fringe, potentially sparing the realm from total devastation.

[Gandalf]

Maybe different mortals take different amounts of time to mantle Sheogorath? The CoC did it fairly quickly judging from the general lack of order across the Isles, but maybe previous champions to mantle him during previous Greymarches took longer and more of the realm was destroyed prior to Jyggalag's defeat.

[legoless]

Could be. Sheogorath and co. seem to know a great deal about the "usual" sequence of things for something that never really happened.

[Pilaf The Defiler]

Honestly, I don't even trust what I saw with my own two eyes when it comes to Shivering Isles. We already had mantled Pelinal Whitestrake by that point, if we played the DLC in the order it was released. Any additional Madness on top of that is redundant.

[Rezalon]

I personally don't believe anything in the Lore Master's archives, or in ESO, are canon.

Well, they are, but if, from what I've read, if the game is set during a Dragon Break, then every piece of new "lore" introduced in ESO will be wiped from history/time. This being my lore POV.

My hatred-of-ZeniMax-Online POV says that anything they say is lore shouldn't be considered as lore. Even though they claim to work with Bethesda concerning lore, it's obvious they have no idea what they're doing. They make far too many mistakes, and poorly retcon them. They also seem to be making lore that seems very Michael Kirkbride-ish (eg: the topic of this, well, topic), and if anyone reads what MK has written recently ([cough] C0DA bollocks [cough]), then these pieces of lore are far too silly to be considered actual lore.

[legoless]

I would disagree strongly. What Schick has done with the lore is fantastic, and nowhere near as esoteric as MK's stuff. This thread might be dealing with a retcon, but it's a retcon that Bethesda themselves set in motion in Skyim, and it's actually quite clear-cut and interesting compared to the apocryphal nonsense that usually comes along with the topic of mantling. I also expect we'll see lots of ESO references in TESVI, so enjoy the ZOS-denying while you can.

[AKB]

I'm not sure ESO will come up much in ESVI, on the grounds that it was hundreds of years ago.

[legoless]

I'm not sure ESO will come up much in ESVI, on the grounds that it was hundreds of years ago.

Perhaps not the events (since we're led to believe that a lot of the history in ESO ends up being forgotten), but certainly a lot of the newly-established lore could appear. If the next game is in Valenwood, do you really think we won't see a strangler? If it's in Elsweyr, will there be no ESO-themed temples to the Dark Moon? ESO has defined our first modern look at a lot of places, and Bethesda would be remiss if they didn't build on that.

Don't forget the books either. ESO literature is an easy way for Bethesda to bump up their book count without resorting to old Morrowind stuff.

[Pilaf The Defiler]

I personally don't believe anything in the Lore Master's archives, or in ESO, are canon.

Well, they are, but if, from what I've read, if the game is set during a Dragon Break, then every piece of new "lore" introduced in ESO will be wiped from history/time. This being my lore POV.

My hatred-of-ZeniMax-Online POV says that anything they say is lore shouldn't be considered as lore. Even though they claim to work with Bethesda concerning lore, it's obvious they have no idea what they're doing. They make far too many mistakes, and poorly retcon them. They also seem to be making lore that seems very Michael Kirkbride-ish (eg: the topic of this, well, topic), and if anyone reads what MK has written recently ([cough] C0DA bollocks [cough]), then these pieces of lore are far too silly to be considered actual lore.

Let me tell you a love story, young man. I have this beautiful book in my hands right now. It's called "Tales of Tamriel: Volume 1". It's gorgeous. It kind of has a psuedo-old look about it, like something you'd pull off a shelf in Oblivion or Skyrim. It smells like a pine forest. It's filled with gorgeous art work and lore, much of which fleshes out the backgrounds and histories of the major races of TES. We have exciting tales of Wood Elves and the intricacies of the Green Pact. We have commentaries on the Lunar Lattice and how it binds the Khajiit. We have new lore that fleshes out the process of kingmaking in Skyrim, and histories of rivals between factions of nobility in High Rock. Every single one of these stories does nothing but deepen and enrich the world of Tamriel, and they have just as much a place there as any other story we've read previously. ESO added over 2,000 books to the lore, compared to maybe 40 or 50 from Skyrim (most of its lore was holdovers from Oblivion, Morrowind and Daggerfall.) Lawrence Schick adopted a wonderful philosophy of continuing Bethesda's practice of presenting new lore from an in-universe perspective. If you picked a random book he wrote for ESO and placed it in amongst books from Morrowind or Skyrim, I doubt you could tell the difference, stylistically or quality-wise. In short, there's no logical or honest reason to hate on ESO's lore.

This book makes me very happy. The associated game makes me very happy. It gives me the same sense of geeky wonder that Morrowind did back in the day. I'm exploring a new and alien world filled with wonderful, colorful places and people. That's the feeling that we as gamers strive towards, and to me there's no difference between any of the titles in this series, including ESO. They're all the same. They all build upon and enrich one another. The whole is arguably more than the sum of its parts, but the parts are rather nice, and ESO is no exception. That's my love story. I sincerely hope you re-examine your feelings and try to find something positive about ESO, because it's part of the canon now, and I'll bet many of the books from it that don't directly tie into the Planemeld storyline will definitely appear in future titles.