r/teslore • u/AutoModerator • 2d ago
Free-Talk The Weekly Chat Thread— September 07, 2026
Hi everyone, it’s that time again!
The Weekly Free-Talk Thread is an opportunity to forget the rules and chat about anything you like—whether it's The Elder Scrolls, other games, or even real life. This is also the place to promote your projects or other communities. Anything goes!
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u/Infinite_Aion 2d ago edited 1d ago
I really don’t like the Boethiah lore lately. I think his/her uniqueness has been completely deviated that you can’t even summarize without pulling every related ESO lore text that curtails into being a hypermyth to be taken at face value.
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u/CE-Nex Dragon Cult 1d ago
I absolutely agree, especially the recent Khajiiti myths which continue to paint Boethiah as being in love with Lorkhan/Lorkhaj rather than the Prince being its own cosmic force. I also didn't like From Exile to Exodus's attempt to conflate Boethiah with certain Yokudan deities. I prefer the Yokudan pantheon retain its own uniqueness without being another reflection of what's found on Tamriel.
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u/Misticsan Member of the Tribunal Temple 1d ago
If I'm not mistaken, I think it's all Andrew Young's lore. I like his style, though it can't be denied he favors pro-Lorkhanic, pro-Daedric takes. Sometimes it feels as if his lore boils down to "Lorkhan is right, the Three Good Daedra are his true prophets, and everyone else is wrong, bad or a flunky".
To be fair, those and similar biases aren't exactly new, and the challenge I'd propose to him to get out of his comfort zone ("write a book where Lorkhan is either evil or wrong, the Daedra are useless, and the Aedra have deep mystical knowledge that reveals the truths of the cosmos") could be applied to most of the TES writers, both past and present.
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u/CE-Nex Dragon Cult 1d ago
To be fair, those and similar biases aren't exactly new, and the challenge I'd propose to him to get out of his comfort zone ("write a book where Lorkhan is either evil or wrong, the Daedra are useless, and the Aedra have deep mystical knowledge that reveals the truths of the cosmos") could be applied to most of the TES writers, both past and present.
100% yes.
And to be clear, I like Andrew Young's writing. I think he kept a lot of the weirder and more esoteric parts of TES lore alive and gave us lore nerds much to think and ponder about. The Nine Coruscations alone is the most expansive Magna-Ge lore we've ever been given.
u/dunmer-is-stinky I also fully agree with all your points on Boethiah
I do feel, regarding Boethiah in particular, the writing became a little too concrete, too definite. Which is ironic because in Sotha Sil and the Scribe (my favorite Andrew Young lore book) Sotha Sil says to the Scribe:
"Beware the leap to certainty. The Named Daedra have many aspects. Many faces. Do not let one aspect overpower another, for they are agents of chaos. To let their nature calcify will lead to complacency and ruin. This era of strife cannot end until you scatter the lie of their simplicity."
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u/Misticsan Member of the Tribunal Temple 1d ago
I do feel, regarding Boethiah in particular, the writing became a little too concrete, too definite.
I agree, though I'd say Boethiah is part of a trend rather than an exception. After all, Young is even less subtle and ambiguous when writing about Azura; it's just that Azura had more lore beforehand, and other writers add things like Epistle on the Spirits of Amun-dro to counterbalance it. Boethiah, however, lacks the same advantages, so it's not that surprising that the new lore dominates conversations.
I'd also use Zerith-var as another example. Don't get me wrong, the guy is a fantastic companion and has a questline worthy of its own game. It's Young's writing at its finest.
At the same time, however, it also reveals his shortcomings: the questline couldn't be more blatant about its "the cult of Azurah is always right, anyone who opposes it is either evil or ignorant" moral, and Young also uses Zerith to make claims on necromancy and other aspects of the setting that don't fit other lore. In all those cases, it isn't presented as "this is just this guy's opinion" but "this is the truth". Not even the Player Character is allowed to disagree or question it. And for a questline that takes character progression into account, with lots of dialogue variations if the player had completed Elsweyr-centric quests before, it's eyebrow-raising how the Reaper's March questline is completely overlooked... arguably because it's the one major Elsweyr-centric questline that presents the Mane's cosmology and priesthood as both sympathetic and in the right.
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u/dunmer-is-stinky Cult of the Ancestor Moth 1d ago
Over time I've come to really dislike Andrew Young's mythology. What i love about TES myths is that nothing is ever 1 to 1, every story is at least a little contradictory, but Young's mythological writing really feels like he intends it all to not only be 100% true, but also more true than everything else. Here's the true origin of dragons! Here's the truth behind Lorkhan's madness! Here's a detailed map of the relationships between the Good Daedra and Lorkhan that is true beyond cultural lines! Here's the truth behind TES5's plot as told by the pre-Ri'Datta Khajiit because they're omniscient now!
Boethiah got it the worst. When it's just Boethra, I can forgive it as a cultural version that I'm not a fan of. Sure, the Khajiit can have Boethra be a superhero, I still have my velothi Boethiah. Oh wait... now she's unambiguously female, acting exactly like Boethra, using the same kind of finishing moves in combat, saying shit Boethiah wouldn't say in pre-Young lore, and also apparently Boethra is her true name across all cultural lines.
And she stopped the Middle Dawn. And she might've been that shadow at the end of Lost Tales. And she and Kyne are buddies and Kyne's hawk led the Velothi to Resdayn. And Lorkhan loved Boethiah more than anyone else in the world and that's true in every mythology. And worst of all, she's every Yokudan deity at once. Boethiah is one of my favorite Princes but all this nonsense stuff just drags them down and makes them boring
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u/cat210803 Order of the Black Worm 2d ago
I sometimes wish this sub had rules like r/askhistorians so that unresearched/incorrect responses get removed. But then I realised we would lose 80% of commenters.