"Wrothgar"

Concept art for The Elder Scrolls: Online

Art by Jeremy Fenske

Old Orsinium, P2

Graystone Quarry, Wrothgar

Found in the Wrothgar Library

nothing but Valdea gro-Eashi on the brain. gotta love trans orc women ❤️💕💕💕❤️❤️❤️✨✨

I have finally gotten around to playing through the Orsinium questline in ESO for the first time, and I think the whole thing actually makes much more sense if you headcanon that the real "villain" of the chapter is Boethiah.

Like... Ok, so the fundamental problem with revealing that Kurog plans to kill all the chiefs who won't bend the knee and seize power by force to implement his orc kingdom vision is that if he simply said that part openly then it would just be orc politics? Probably the kind that would get some orcs judging him for being too bloodthirsty / ambitious, but he openly murdered a chief in his throne room and everyone just shrugged at how emotional orc men are. The culture that does ritual challenges and death duels for leadership positions absolutely would accept a guy taking over rival clans and killing off their leaders as a valid method of (temporary) kingmaking, even if a bit gauche.

Mixing it up by adding the whole Trinimac vs Malacath religious angle doesn't really do anything, either, since his attempts to impose a new state religion help explain why diplomacy isn't working but not why force wouldn't work. Trinimac is if anything more of a warrior god than Malacath, and you would think worshippers of a champion of honor would be even less inclined to use a secret cult to frame their political enemies and scapegoat for assassinations. They'd become corrupt crusaders or something. Also they kinda suck at the subterfuge part - like a Boethiah plot being enacted by small children.

...So what if it was a Boethiah plot??? 👀

Follow my train of thought here - Boethiah is down to fuck with Malacath / the orcs for reasons ranging from "it's Tirdas" to "my inter-cult gladiatorial fights are boring recently", going all the way back to the original incident of eating Trinimac to stop his cult from interfering with the Chimer, pretending to be him for some light heresy, and then leaving him twisted into Malacath (and turning his elven followers into orcs).

Boethiah is also a Daedric Prince associated with plots, conspiracy, deceiving nations, and overthrowing governments to seize power.

I think it sounds fantastically plausible that Boethiah would notice an orc trying to restore Orsinium and all the ingredients for a truly fantastic implosion of a civil war among Malacath's children (including of all things a resurgence of Trinimac worship, which is bait if I've ever seen it) and decide to start backing a faction. For chaos. Especially since Boethiah's other main canonical thing going on in this timeframe is inspiring a Dunmer woman named Vox to start a cult to overthrow the Tribunal, while also appearing to a hero as an avatar named "Aspera" to help them kill Vox for the fuck of it.

(Boethiah is so fun 😆)

So here's the rough skeleton of how I headcanon all this connecting:

🗡️ Kurog doesn't seem to be a particularly devout Trinimac worshipper, and High Priestess Solgra mentions him being skeptical at first - implying she was invited to Orsinium by his mother before he truly converted. Solgra is definitely a true believer who converted in Summerset, while Forge-Mother Alga is definitely the driving force behind the very un-Trinimac-like Vosh Rakh.

🗡️ It seems like the Forge-Mother is the first one who got on the Trinimac train, possibly around when Kurog was first joining the Covenant and starting his Orsinium project. I'm guessing there was a small Trinimac following in Wrothgar without much clout, but they managed to catch Alga's interest. And, I'm speculating, Boethiah's.

🗡️ Alga apparently goes in hard on Trinimac. She's inviting a High Priestess to set up a giant temple, angling to convert her son, and soon declaring Trinimac worship the law of the land. She's also fully embracing a political schemer role that is not remotely in line with Trinimac's vibe and soon to establish a secret police cult that she can publicly disavow. Despite this, I think Alga's far more devout than Kurog ever is - she genuinely seems to think she's getting divine blessing.

🗡️ Theory - A little while after Alga converts, her new god bestows his favor on her and starts directly communicating / inspiring her to set up all the Vosh Rakh stuff... only it's actually Boethiah, speaking to her while impersonating Trinimac in a classic move. Explains the backstabbing, subterfuge, planned coup, all of it. She brings in Solgra to be the palatable face (and convince her son) while not noticing at all that there's some cognitive dissonance in her actions vs teachings. Ah, the hubris of a "chosen one."

🗡️ Boethiah is having a grand time making orcs unknowingly turn away from Malacath for her while thinking they serve Trinimac, and getting to whisper "kill all the chiefs loyal to Malacath and frame the (actual) Trinimac High Priestess for it" is just the icing on the cake. Would Alga and Kurog's plan have just started a civil war? Probably. And Boethiah would have been thrilled. Shame Bazrag managed to reduce casualties at the end, but it was still very worth the destabilizing. 😌

Bantum is admiring the stone art.

Ok, hear me out, I don’t think Boethiah LITERALLY ate Trinimac and shat out Malacath. I know it’s a funny way to imagine it and also symbolic and whatnot, and who doesn’t love a little bit of one-on-one divine MMA? But I think that the idea could actually be more of a symbolic phrasing or metaphor of a historical event in ancient Tamriel that went unrecorded due to scholarly negligence, cataclysm, weathering of time, or some other reason so much of Tamriel’s history is so fucking spotty and vague.

(Loooooong justification under the break)

To elaborate on that idea, we know basically nothing about the specifics of how the Aldmer made their way through Tamriel, or where the Orcs specifically originate from besides the fact that they used to be Aldmer, and tend to hail from the northwestern mountain ranges of Tamriel (dragontail, wrothgar, etc). We know ayleids were settled all across central and southern Tamriel + high rock, and are maybe even tied to the falmer of the northeast, and they can all likewise be presumed Aldmer-descended (I’m too cowardly to try to touch the topic of the Dwemer’s origins, so I’m not counting them for now). On top of that we have the Velothi, Aldmer who specifically split off from all the others to follow their prophet, Veloth.

Based on the original “Boethiah ate Trinimac” myth, we already know the Aldmer clan who became the Orcs followed Trinimac, and were likely settled in the Wrothgar mountains or the surrounding ranges, and it can be assumed countless other Aldmer clans were doing the same under the guide of other gods and getting into fights over it.

Besides that, very little else is clearly stated or can be safely assumed about how the Aldmer colonizing Tamriel went down, so now I’m going to make wild assumptions to fill in the gaps. I think it’s likely that Aldmer went in waves over to Tamriel, instead of it being one big, unexplained mass migration. Considering just how culturally divided even the ancient mer cultures were from each other, it’s hard to think they all came from one monolithic culture fully developed and ready to define the society of an entire other continent after Aldmeris. I think the Aldmeri settlers who would become the defining mer cultures of Tamriel all touched down at different times, under their own cultural leaders (like Veloth), perhaps years of not centuries apart (with how undefined the merithic and 1st eras are, it’s not impossible for timescales that dramatic)

So walking across this rickety rope-bridge of assumptions and headcanon, let’s get back to the topic at hand. Boethiah voring Trinimac and shitting out Malacath. As I said, I don’t suppose that it’s a literal description of an event of gods clashing, but rather an allegory for a culture war between different Aldmer clans vying for land across Tamriel. We already know there was a Trinimac-worshiping clan presumably in the northwest mountains (I’m just gonna call them the “Wrothgari” since they aren’t orcs yet, for brevity), but where can we find a Boethiah-worshipping clan who could have been in the same area to wage war against them?

It’s widely understood that the Ayleids were a wildly diverse people in terms of theology and how they worshiped aedra and daedra seemingly indiscriminately within certain clans, so our Boethians who conquered the Wrothgari could easily have been some unnamed clan of Ayleids. But an unnamed and irrelevant Ayleid clan being the answer to my question is, like, really boring, why not go deeper? I propose that the Aldmer we’re actually looking for are the followers of the prophet Veloth as they made their pilgrimage across Tamriel. The Velothi are the only notable Aldmeri people who come to mind who 1: worship Boethiah (alongside Azura and Mephala), and 2: would have reason to be moving across the northern part of Tamriel, as they made their way to the promised land of Resdayn.

I think as Veloth and his followers were making their way through the mountains they encountered the Wrothgari, and in an act to display their righteousness, did battle against them to prove that might and cunning holds true power over pride and honor, and thus Veloth’s Boethiah holds superiority over the Wrothgari’s Trinimac. After the dust settled, the Velothi went back on the eastward path, their faith in their prophet and their gods emboldened by victory, while the surviving Wrothgari wept in their now ruined homes, before drying their eyes and forsaking Trinimac for his deception, and going to find a god who would guide them true, and thus they were taken in by Mauloch, who blessed them with stalwart figures and powerful visages to protect them forevermore from those who would seek to debase them again.

It also serves to mention that Trinimac being turned into a whole other god doesn’t make much sense considering he’s still avidly worshiped by other cultures, and the absolute Olympic mental gymnastics routines I’ve seen people do to explain this issue from the perspective of Trinimac = Malacath makes my convoluted history retcon look like 1st grade math.

Furthermore this theory gives more of a historical backing to why Malacath would be a corner of the Dunmer house of troubles, as he’s who their enemies would turn to when beaten by the superior guidance of The Good Daedra™️

It’s also absolutely worth noting that I do not have the patience to read through all the lore for these games and to find out what’s actually canon vs. what’s the ravings of former writers on long-lost forum sites that were taken and ran with by fans, so I have no idea if anything I’ve said is actually outright stated and redundant.

sometimes i wish the eso protagonists weren’t like just implied and even outright stated in dialogue to be moving on and on to the next adventure. like maybe i wanted to take bazrag on his offer and put down roots in wrothgar to help rebuild!

that shit hurted

Honor's Rest, P4

BRO COME OOOON im going through more dungeons in Wrothgar, your already know but... WTF WHY ARE ALL THE STATUES ALL THE SAME LIKE ITS EITHER TRINIMAC OR A ORC MAGE AND NO OTHER

STREM TIME

Join us on https://www.twitch.tv/comcumfeia10 to finish the Wrothgar main quests! Depending on how tired I am, we may also continue our dungeon crawl!

FFXIV ~eternal bonding~