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Is there anything on the Warp in the West other than ~2 lore books in TES III-V, or did it really happen because of the save game corruption like I've always assumed before?

Marisa Kirisame wrote:[...] or did it really happen because of the save game corruption like I've always assumed before?

Pardon?

Well, that's the most reasonable theory.

In lore, time "broke" allowing all the alternate endings (being alternate timelines) to converge into one. "Breaks" in time also allow events to be rewritten, or be completely removed from history altogether.

After all, time isnt as simpe as we would rather believe. Different kalpas, the elder scrolls, the existence of a Time god with identity issues, and lets not forget shadow magic <_< Plus, Dragon Breaks is a writer's best friend.. n a lore reader's worst enemy

Nothing tells us why did the time break. I thought it did so due to memory overflow bugs destroying my savegame.

Out-of-game stuff, such as your odd explanation, doesn't exist in the TES universe.

It broke due to the metaphysics behind the Numidium.

And what are those?
The original question was about that, because later games have at most 2 books about the Warp in the West, and their description is rather vague and unclear on these "metaphysics". Hence are there any lore books or other sources that come in more detail, or is it just "time got broken, we're too lazy to justify everything so go play the next game already"?

Bethesda is the creator of the Elder Scrolls. We, the users, control individual Elder Scrolls and manipulate them to define the fate of one particular Hero at a time. Every time we begin writing into the Elder Scroll again, we define the fate of yet another Hero, similar or different to the previous one.

The Elder Scroll appears innocently enough as a journal that records statistics, quest logs, and inventory of the Hero. If you acquire more than one Elder Scroll, you can control the fate of more than one Hero at a particular point in time. The one concerning the Nerevarine in Vvardenfell seems rather popular, but the one concerning the Last Dragonborn is the most recent.

...I guess I'll be the one to offer a non-meta explanation.

Usually Dragon breaks are cause by mortals fiddling around with what they shouldn't. When Kagrenac tried to harness the energies of the Heart of Lorkhan, many other dwemer argued that that the side effects were "unpredictable" and potentially dangerous. It appears one of these side effects is that time can "break"[.] So when an aspect of Lorkhan's soul was placed into the Numidiam, it created to much magical pressure (or something) and broke Alkosh Theoretically, it's much like shadow magic, except on a larger scale.

Marisa Kirisame wrote:And what are those?
The original question was about that, because later games have at most 2 books about the Warp in the West, and their description is rather vague and unclear on these "metaphysics". Hence are there any lore books or other sources that come in more detail, or is it just "time got broken, we're too lazy to justify everything so go play the next game already"?

I'm not sure the word lazy is honest or fair in this situation. With Daggerfall, they offered us a game with six possible endings. Then they painted themselves into a corner because Morrowind got made, and it took place at a later date in the same timeline. So, those events happened, canonically, but they couldn't all happen. The concept of the Dragon Break is the way they chose to justify it, with lore. They even went so far as to suggest it wasn't the first Dragon Break, but that there had been several in the past for various reasons. They even used it in the lore for the Tribunal who rule in Morrowind, saying that a Dragon Break happened at Red Mountain during their apotheosis and the disappearance of the Dwemer race. To me, that's the opposite of lazy. It was a fairly clever way to explain a game discrepancy with lore, and then to create more new lore from the concept. After all, not everyone's Daggerfall character gave the Mantella to the Blades. The lazy option would have been to simply say "Well, that happened, no matter what you did. I don't care if you helped Mannimarco."

The only reason the Warp In the West exists is because of bugged saves and having written themselves into a corner with Daggerfall. But Daggerfall - Morrowind did see a reboot of the lore thus they elected to make all the endings cannon and well, Akatosh kinda loves messing around with Time. I wouldn't be surprised if he arranged for several eternal Champions to exist at the same time either to test the fabric of time as a precaution to the events of Skyrim or the Elder Scrolls happened. Regarding Skyrim, he would have known an Elder Scroll threw Alduin into the future and i suspect it would be fairly iffy for the first born of Akatosh to get tossed several eras through time thus Akatosh trying to test time via a dragon break.

He was a tester, after all. Anyway, thank you all for the answers.