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Type Name Source Elder Scrolls Forum Writer Michael Kirkbride
MK
Hey folks, Feeling much better, thankee thankee. Boy, there sure are a lot of made up words in Tamriel, like “dracochrysalis” and “impossipoint” and “mananaut”..! and and and Tell you what: you guys round ‘em up and I’ll do my best to explain what they are. In-character. Or you guys can try and figure them out yourself. In any case, it should be fun. Phrases count, too, so “Empire Actual” can be listed, for example. Let’s go. Gimme your favorites. Everybody play.
Allerleirauh
Um… some of my favorites aren’t coined words, but words that are used in a special context.
Mythopoeic, enantiomorph, dreamsleeve.
MK
Ahem. Here we go. Okay, maybe this will only sorta-kinda be in-character. Or not in-character at all. I make the rules here, because I am filthy with power.
Mythopoeic: Could you show me where this was used?
Enantiomorph: I found this in a really, really weird dictionary, which chose to explain it as “a merged dichotomy”. In TES, the Enantiomorph is most commonly used to refer to the really, really weird mythic figure of Arctus-who-is-Septim. I’ll allow others to play with this until I get back to it, as there’s some good takes that certain loremasters have on the Enantiomorph.
Dreamsleeve: Stolen from a neat word Ken made up for Battlespire. The dreamsleeve is a conduit for sending special transmissions. Used by weirdo magicians and Imperial clerks, mainly. Kinda like myspace…only to reach it one must have at least part of their brain constantly meditating, because one aspect of the conduit is that it is able to carry images of concepts not yet “real”.
Nalion
If might throw in another word…
I’d love to see this word explained in ES context:
Arenotelicon
MK
Okay, another filthy with power rule: cite where the word came from in the lore if it’s really, really obscure.
Thanks!
rakushun_kun
Really? I thought enantiomorph was mirror-image, and it’s synonymous to the word “enantiomer?” Usually, mirror images are described as “chiral,” or handedness where the left hand is the mirror image of the right, yet are identical in structure? Eh, maybe it’s just the organic chemistry.
MK
FIGHT!
Allerleirauh
As in “mythopoeic enchantments” which is what Kagrenac was supposedly doing with the tools. Would appear to mean, “shaping reality by means of altering archetypes and myth.”
MK
Winner! Now: FwP assignment - give me a little example of how a mythopoeic enchanment might work on, say, “Chorus-based Changes to The Hanged Man, by Kagrenac, age 8”.
Nalion
Vivec: “Arenotelicon.”
MK
Pretty easy: “a creature that alternates between male and female.” Why not just “phase-shifting tranny”? Well, because sometimes the old words are best, as they ring with implied importance and are all long and spooky-looking. In a more ES-Nu-Hatta sense (meaning Tamrielic theosophy): “The ultimate in all the marriages between.”
Sheogorath
No big words in this one. This is just MK saying that the lore from the previous game was being ejected.
MK
WHINY BABY!
Who would like to ret-con this for me? Remember, I graciously ret-conned myself with “Witness the Red King Once Jungled.” Instead of being a Whiny Baby. FwP assignment for 8,000 points: Ret-conning the lies of a previous age with a true Aedric Arkay that will be both “alluring” and “pertinent to our current age”.
Allerleirauh
Heh, this led to a discussion of the Crux of Transcendence in the chatroom… Let’s see… it might be neat if instead of having to suffer yourself to become a god, you could borrow some other god’s suffering… by, say, putting on their skin… or ringing the past event like a bell and channeling the power with a big old TUNING FORK! If you made the tuning fork into a nifty short-blade, it would be even keener. But you would probably need to wear something to protect yourself. At least a glove.
MK
Hmmm. So you’re saying that by ringing the bell of an established archetype, and changing its tune, that you could either A) use that power and maybe B ) transform that power. In the case of The Hanged Man, what would you gain in A? What motivation for B? Or just continue. Somehow I feel like this will spiral into a True History of the Disappearance, or The Numidium Was Really a Walking Wind-Chime. Which would rule.
Sheogorath
Actually, “Arkay The Enemy” did that.
MK
Except for the being alluring part. Nyuk nyuk nyuk. Okay, snark-hat off: “Arkay the Enemy” doesn’t really posit an a priori Divine Arkay, who would’ve contributed to the world’s creation at the Convention, alongside a johnny-come-later mortal Arkay, who seems to experience a Tiber-like apotheosis during his lifetime. Meaning it doesn’t really address the paradox. Which is why the assignment is worth 8,000 freakin points.
Allerleirauh
I was mixing my metaphors, which is a dangerous thing to do in mythopoeic enchanting.
The second bit refers to what Vivec and the Trib. did with the tools. They walloped the heart with it, creating a repeat of the mythic event of Lorkhan’s heart being ripped out. Then they used Keening to turn the agony into a tone they could bathe in. Thus, Keening, wailing or suffering. The wraithguard was used to shield the user from the untransmuted… whateveryoucall raw mythic energy. You’re the word dude, make something up.
First bit refers to the Numidium, which is what Kagrenac was trying to do before the Tribunal interrupted him. We know Kagrenac made the tools to create a mantella, a Crux of Transcendence. (For those who don’t read the Tarot, the Hanged Man in Tarot symbolizes the Crux of Transcendence, suffering to gain transcendence: Jesus on the cross, Odin hanging from the tree to gain wisdom, etc.)
So, we know what the tools are like, and what the Tribunal did with them, and we know what the mantella is like, and more or less how Tiber Septim made it - he killed his best friend, reenacting the murder of Lorkhan by Akatosh, and shoved his best friend’s soul (or his own, or both, since they were tied) into a fancy rock, and then he plugged it into the Numidium, or Divine Skin.
MK
Astounding. How long did this hide in plain sight? Props. As for making up a word for raw mythic energy, didn’t I already do that? “Creatia”?
Solin
Quite awhile. (See Xal)
MK
Kagrenac was devoted to his people, and the Dwarves, despite what you may have read, were a pious lot-he would not have sacrificed so many of their golden souls to create Anumidum’s metal body if it were all in the name of grand theater. Kagrenac had even built the tools needed to construct a Mantella, the Crux of Transcendence.” Okay. So now everyone can stop posting about where the Dwarves went. I TOLD YOU EIGHTY YEARS AGO.
Filthy with it, I am.
Allerleirauh (Creatia)
Aha, thank you sir. Creatia. Is leaking Creatia what the Daedra use to build their… buildy stuff… in Oblivion? Which is otherwise Void?
MK (Creatia)
Pretty much. Leaky creatia, otherwise called “kaleidocules”. Crap. I’m not supposed to be making up new words. STRIKE THAT!
Flannigus
Here’s one you probably won’t want to answer: The Digital House and the digitals from the Loveletter from the Fifth Era. Feel free to toss in any tidbits about House Sul Progenitor House and C0DA while you’re at it. :)
MK
“Belief-engines, properly called the “Auxiliary Semi-Shockpoint Nilgularity”, provide energy for short dream-sleeve jumps in case a Vehkship’s main ego is damaged, allowing the C0DA Paravant to potentially get to the safety of a voidyard orbital.
“By creating the equivalent of an Nu-class Mnemolic, shrinking it instantaneously via a creatia tesseract array, and then projecting the resulting moth-talk well to a nil-point just outside the ego’s hull, an ASSN can slingshot the Paravant into era-streams without the needed energies of nearby aetheric bodies or shockpoint application.
“The ASSN is strictly Last Ditch technology, however. It’s often deemed as too dangerous for its own good, because it works on the rarified principles of Phynaster’s Inversion, a set of mathematics that doesn’t exist in our own dimension. Vehkships have vanished in nil-space trying to make an ASSN jump�indeed, the celestial irregularity known as the M4bV Legerity, in which the C0DA Oblivion Vanquisher appears and implodes in perpetuity, is the belief system’s most famous cautionary tale.”
S’all I got. Sorry.
Sheogorath
Doesn’t seem like it’d be hard to do. There’s a Father and a Son in the Christian mythos, who are separate but one. As an Aedra of the cycle of birth and death, he became mortal, spirit transformed to flesh, to experience it firsthand, and then took his rightful place.
MK
I like it. Here’s 4000 more points, because you’re really very lovely.
Sheogorath
Many more points that I ever expect to get in a discussion of metaphysics, which, as you know is not my forte. Can I cash out now?
MK
Add a Fish symbol and the mental agony that is the Holy Ghost, along with an elegant apologia for female principle absenteeism, file off all the Christian serial numbers… …then you can collect your money.
Sytel
Yay! Thank you thank you thank you MK… Hehehe. I love the mental image of Kagrenac already working on this stuff at age 8, an age when most Dwemer kids are just starting to build animunculi. So more broadly, “mythopoeic” things work by symbolically reenacting certain patterns of myth, thereby (hopefully) obtaining the endpoint of the myth? So what you’d have to do is find a myth about whatever it is you want to have happen, then get some good symbols and play-act the myth… probably tones come into it too, just because.
And with powerful enough symbols and manipulation, it might even be possible to change the patterns of myth, or create a new mythic structure. Which could have various interesting uses… Am I close?
MK
Very. Pretty soon you get your own Stompy Robot. And cause absorbocide to your whole frikkin’ race. Way to go, monkey.
Sytel
Woo! I’m close! What is absorbocide?
MK
Too late. You vanished. For eighty years your disappearance will be discussed in various lore threads because I hid crap in fake interviews in hard-to-find websites.
Sheogorath
You’re getting dangerously close with that feminine mystique thing to “The D’Arkay Code,” so I better pass… I’m sure there’s a graver insult than comparing MK to Dan Brown, but that’s all I dare for now …
MK
Look as I do not strike back, my friends. Filthy with mercy, too! Here’s a word: paleonumerology. Someone take a stab.
Ananke-Mormo
I don’t have a question about a word, persay. I’m just dying to know. I want to know what the Orichalc Tower was. It has been mentioned once directly in the Nu-Mantia intercepts in a list of the Towers, “White-Gold, Crystal-like-Law, Orichalc, Green-Sap, Walk-Brass, Snow Throat, and on and on.” I believe it was in Yokuda. I believe it was used to sink the continent (PGE quote about “stone magick”) What else can you tell about it? But this is probably the wrong place to ask. I’m very sorry.
MK
Good digging. Orichalc Tower was indeed in Yokuda. Whether or not it contributed to the sinking of the land isn’t for me to say, but the Yoku and the Left-Handed Elves certainly did fight a lot, so you can be sure the Tower had a part to play in their wargames. Orichalc the name comes from Plato’s description of Atlantis, the Most Famousest of Sinking Continents. It was therefore too fun not to add some orichalc into Yokuda’s background.
Plus it’s just a neat-looking, neat-sounding word.
featherbrain
Mnemolic especially I love, such a beautifully rounded word. I notice more recent variants in the communications from Planet MK. What sorcery is associated with the Blue Star? And: will we ever read that anything more about that myth?
MK
Mnemolic is mine mine mine…I will never reveal what it means because I am filthy with— Fine, I’ll answer. (And thanks, I think it’s a really pretty word, too.) Mnemolic magic is related to the “Star Orphans”, gods and heroes and demons that live between creations, which can include those reality-bending burps known as Dragon Breaks. Think of them as the all-stars between kalpas, if that helps. (That probably doesn’t help at all, really.) What’s up with the Blue Star itself? That’s a good little hidden bit that I don’t want to ruin. Someone go find it.
-Planet MK
Marlo LaCroa
I would like to know about how Dagoth Ur was “pawn of the Aggregate.”
MK
Aggregate is, of course, a real word, meaning “sum” or “total.” But you knew that already…and it seems “context in which this word is used” is more popular here than “what the **** does this mean at all”. So, the Sharmat was a pawn of some as yet undisclosed “total”: is Nu-hatta talking about the Tribunal (hmm, maybe, but pawn in far different than Enemy)? the Enantiomorph (naw, it ain’t this one)? the Gods? the Lords of Misrule?
Too bad our moth boy didn’t tell us which Aggregate. He was probably sending out a dream-sleeve somnomnibus of abnegaurbic memospheres or some sh*it.
Ananke-Mormo
The new PGE (by Tedders, no?) has two theories on how it sunk. The first is about natural disasters, which is boring and therefore wrong.
MK: Emphasis mine. This not only made me laugh, but it’s pretty much my approach to TES in each of its aspects— game, lore, and look.
EDIT: Yep, new PGE was Ted. Except for, like, 18 or so lines by me. Those lines did include the Sun Birds of Alinor and the Imperial Mananauts, though, which allow for space travel, a required component of the TES Moon Colony game that’s coming. Oh, wait, no it’s not; Kurt and I were banned from mentioning it after our first pitch. Let the letter-writing campaign begin. The colonization of Secunda awaits.
Ananke-Mormo
I would guess the Tribunate refered to when the Tribunal had complete control of Morrowind.
MK
Yes.
Tarvok Spellbinder
The Void is Outer-Space, though the fantasy nature of it makes it wierd.
MK
Why?
syronj
I don’t know Latin, but it sounds like it’s related to “abnegation” — “abneg-Aurbic” in this case. Maybe it signifies “the Aldmer creed of rejecting the Aurbis”.
MK
More or less (and more more than less) correct. To Nalion: yep. “Empire Actual” means the Emperor.
paw-prints-in-the-mud
Searching for Malbioge yields some interesting results. Some guy with a guest account posted the Mythic Dawn Commentaries on a bible forum. (there were no replies)
MK
Ha. Please please link please.
946000
The Dwemeri children’s rhyme is interesting enough to me. I wanted to know what daguerrotype means in the context in that text. Mainly cause I’m too lazy to do it on my own.
MK
No need for laziness. It means what it means.
946000
Indeed… I know I necromanced the hell outta this thread, but I did that because I’m having a hard time defining some of those words, mainly Malbioge and neonymbiosis (though I’m confident I know neonymbiosis now). I did a good bit of searching and still couldn’t find an exact definition.
MK
Neonymbiosis. And it’s our fault FOR EATING TOO MUCH TURTLE SOUP.
If I die due to the immortal jellyfish invasion, one of YOU must bioengineer the return of green sea turtles. But only if they remain eternally young. Young green sea turtles are still omnivores, and would be natural predators for the immortal jellyfish. Adult sea green turtles turn into herbivores. So your new version can’t mature. Also, you have to bioengineer them, because they’re all gone.
“I HOPE YOU LIKED YOUR SOUP, [censored]TARTS, NOW FACE THE JESUSFISH.”
It’ll be like that totally-[censored] movie, “Underworld”, only immortal jellyfish versus eternally-young green sea turtles.
…and deep underwater.
…with no hotties.
…and more convincing delivery.
MK
Okay, so this, like, totally has me going.
MK
-
It pisses me off that something else achieved immortality first. [censored] that. And jellyfish of all things. C’mon. The silliness is laughing in our collective human faces.
-
It has driven me to brilliance: immortal jellyfish gasoline. Imagine. You fill your car, right? And then when the gas runs out? It becomes gasoline again!!11!!!!
So, between revenge and saving the world, I’ve hit 5: -
We bioengineer the immortal jellyfish to only partly contribute its “magical being” into immortal gas, see. The rest of the immortal jellyfish is, like, tortured for being [censored] immortal! A perpetual motion machine that can tell Saudi Arabia to screw itself while also keeping Nature where it belongs: SUBSERVIENT.
Screw the eternally-young green sea turtles. NO ONE’S GOING IMMORTAL ON OUR DIME EXCEPT US, OCEAN.
MK
small colonies stolonal, monosiphonic (simple stem), larger ones erect, irregularly branched and increasing in diameter from base to apex, polysiphonic (compound stem); branches basally adnate to hydrocaulus or other branches, then curving away at an acute angle and becoming free; hydrocaulus and hydrocladia covered by a firm bi-layered perisarc, mostly encrusted with detritus and algae, terminating below hydranth base; hydranths terminal, naked, elongated, fusiform, with 12�38 filiform tentacles scattered over distal three quarters of column, proximal ones shorter than distal; hypostome elongated conical; medusa buds arising mostly one by one from short pedicels below hydranths, pear shaped, enclosed in perisarc.”
YESSSSFACEOFGOD.
Also, after awhile of torturing the hubris-ridden immortal cephalopods IN OUR CAMAROS we’d offer them a choice for some of them to be free, as long as they tell us their filthy secret.
“Work for us or work with us,” we will say.
And give them vocoders to answer, but only in English, with the implied understanding that refusing to answer in English is the equivalent of submitting willfully to being subjects of our TORTURE FOREVER-GAS FREE ENERGY INITIATIVE.
This can happen; we have a black President now. [censored] you, Water Jesuses.
Notes
This article uses material from the UESP article “General:Made Up Word Round Up”. It is licensed under the Creative Commons by-sa license.