Gwylim notes on Skyrim: Books and magical excavations

Introduction

Books are a fundamental part of the narrative building of the Elder scrolls series, they can often bring context to the greater narratives as well as specific quests. In this essay I will discuss four different quests, two from Oblivion and two from Skyrim. The unifying themes for these quests is that, except for one, they get a lot of context from the lore books surrounding, or being part of the quest

In this way I will discuss the strengths and weaknesses of relying on a player to read a book, and when in the narrative the book becomes available to the player.

Excavations and exploration

The magic institutions of both games have large questlines tied to them, both that eventually will see the player become the leader of said organization. In Skyrim this is the college of Winterhold, while in Oblivion this is the mage guild. Both of these have quests that take place in an excavation of one form or another.

Oblivion’s quest takes place rather late in the quest chain, and is used as a simple way of showing the player a common task of the guild, as well as to give hints of the internal struggles and conflict within the guild. There are some lorebooks and journals tied to the excavation, but it does not drastically change the context or importance of the quest. The quest itself is mostly there to help the player feel more like a member of the guild.

In Skyrim the quest is the first real quest that the players are sent upon, and also ends up being the inciting incident for the entire quest chain. This is already a stark difference from the Oblivion quest, where the dog was shown to be important, but had nothing to do with the war against the worm cult that the questline later became to circle around.

The dig in Skyrim takes place in Saarthal and is presented as a rather mundane task, after all they are letting the first year students take part in this dig, and you are told you are there to “find novel uses of magic”. The player is given the task to find any form of arcane items, finding several rings, as well as a necklace that upon taking, traps the player in a corridor.

This all eventually leads the player to finding the Eye of magnus, an incredibly powerful item that seems to have been forgotten. Everyone in the college of winterhold is shocked by the discovery, and no one seems to be aware of where this item comes from. 

This is most likely how the player will react as well, as the player has been given no information about the digsite or its history at this point. This leads me to my second comparison, books, book hunting, and incentivising the player to read.

Hunting for knowledge

Both Skyrim and Oblivion have quests related to acquiring books. The two quests I like to discuss in this essay are the acquisition of the four texts of the Mythic Dawn cult, as well as the Winterhold college text to acquire some stolen books. Both collections of books are related and tied to the quests in mention, but the games take considerably different approaches to how the players acquire, and are incentivised  to interact with these books.

In Oblivion the player is tasked with acquiring all four commentaries created by the founder of the Mythic dawn. This leads the player to peruse book shops, talk to book collectors and finally meet with the cult itself to get the final book. The books are given slowly over several stages of the quest. The player needs to acquire these books in order to find the hidden base of the Mythic Dawn cult.

After the player has acquired all books they are tasked to discuss what they have found with a member of the mage guild. The woman will offer to solve the riddle of the books for the player, but will only do so after twentyfour in game hours, as she first encourages the player to try to solve the riddle by themselves. This gives the player some downtime with the books, and may peak their curiosity. While the books themselves are mostly superfluous, it does give the player some interesting insights into the philosophy and goals of the Mythic Dawn.

Compare this with the quests Hitting the books, a quest that sees the player fight a guild of differently minded mages to acquire a series of books regarding the newly found Eye of Magnus. The dungeon is in and of itself an interesting case study, and worth its own essay all on its own. What is relevant to this essay is the way that the players acquire the bespoke books. They are located at the end of the dungeon, in a strange barren room containing only three pedestals, as well as the dungeon’s boss.

The player can choose to leave a prisoner behind to acquire these books as a trade, or fight the final boss for the same reward. The books The Last King of the Ayleids, Fragment: On Artaeum and Night of Tears. The players are told at the offset of the quest that the book may contain some clues on The Eye of Magnus. The players are then directed to return these books to the library, upon which the librarian mentions that the Night of tears has some interesting implications.

The Night of Tears does indeed contain a very direct and obvious explanation that the place the Winterhold College were excavating was indeed holding some arcane item so powerful the Nord inhabitants gave their lives to keep it hidden. The other texts present the player with some more context on the Ayleids as well as the Psijic order. The player gets no further incentive on reading the texts, and as far as I am aware they are never brought up again.

What is notable about the quest Hitting the books, is that actually reading the books, drastically reframes the entire questline. The player is told in the quest dialogue that the dig at Saarthal is routine, safe and simple. Reading the Night of Tears makes it clear that this was never the case, and brings up some unintended implications of either the college’s incompetence, or duplicity. It seems like a stretch to imagine that neither the Arch mage, or one of the faculty in charge of this site did not know about the site they were excavating, especially since the book would be available to them.

Final thoughts

I have presented four quests in this text, two have involved excavations, and two have involved the procurement of books. All are related to acquiring information or performing research in one form or another. I hope to show different ways that lorebooks can be used to further a narrative, and how it can harm it. I would argue that it is vital that the player still gets the vital information they need, regardless of if they read supplementary texts or not.

The commentaries of the Mythic dawn are pushed on the player who is incentivised to carefully read and examine the texts. Even if they do not, the player still has plenty of options to acquire the same information they got from the book elsewhere. In contrast, the books in Hitting the books are never actively pointed out as important until after they are handed over to the quest giver. This is done despite the fact that the book contains vital context to the quest that the player will not find through playing through the questline.

I have also presented two ways that excavations can be used in RPGs, and what different goals their inclusion may have. While Oblivion used its excavation to present the player to mounting dissatisfaction in the Mage guild, Skyrim uses the excavation as a suspense tool to build up to the big inciting incident for the College of Winterhold questline. Both are valid approaches, but will lead to vastly different experiences, and leaves the player with different connections to what they have explored.