General:Pocket Guide to the Empire, Second Edition/Conceptualization

Book Information
Book Date:	3E 331
Writer(s):	Michael Kirkbride

Pocket Guide to the Empire, Second Edition Conceptualization

---

These are Michael Kirkbride's conceptual notes for Pocket Guide to the Empire, Second Edition originally hosted on The Imperial Library

---

Initial Prompt

For me, the idea is missing some essential ingredient to make it work.

Primarily, Morihatha's Third Era is boring. It lacks the mythic. So, of course, I have a spin. From the PGE3:

"At last, recognizing the original's multitudinous anachronisms, a second edition of the Guide was commissioned in the 331st year of the Empire by the Empress Morihatha. The Imperial Geographic Society was once again called upon to update its descriptions, remove most of the propagandistic tone of the original, and to reiterate and modernize the claim that Tamriel was in fact a unified Empire.

"Much has changed in the one hundred and twenty one years since the Second Edition, and much has remained the same."

Emphasis mine. The PGE3 implies the publication of the Morihatha edition without every really confirming it. All it really says is that it was "commissioned".

What if the PGE2 was so batfuck insane that the Elder Council immediately banned it from ever being published? Like, sure, the IGS took its initial marching orders from Morihatha's commission and then went, "Fuck it, here's what it's really all about" and wrote the craziest rendition of Tamriel ever-- meaning the most truthful rendition of Tamriel ever.

Naturally, this would have been tantamount to treason, and I'm sure they were all executed, except for those who escaped, went into hiding, only to later reform themselves as Temple Zero?

Structure Outline and Chapter Prompts

Cover Page

Inside Front Leaf - blank except for the first annotations by the Crazed Editor

First Page - title, subtitle, intent, honorifics, invocations and acceptable blaphemes , including the Empress' engraved silhouette - drawings and annotations ALL over this

Second Page - Map, but now including heretofore SECRET PROVINCES of X and Y. The latter, of course, exists on the moons of Masser and Secunda. Wut?

Third/Fourth Pages - "Welcome, Citizen (Zero)!" A summary of what shall follow, what brought this new edition about, which slowly dissolves into an encrypted message

[Section and subjects now follow]

• The Wheel Metamundic: Serpents and the Rumors of Serpents - a description of the Aurbis, Aetherius, Oblivion, Mundus, Nirn, and Tamriel. Chock full of Nu Shit and inherent contradictions. It runs as many pages as we think the reader might not headsplode.

- Sidebar: on the 19 planes of Oblivion (from Haskill interview) and the consequences that such a number would upset the generally accepted view of the Wheel

- Sidebar: on The Mad Godhead Theory

• Kalpa Akaishicorprus - three to four pages that detail all the eras of the "Diseased Unto Immortal" Akatosh in brief. However, to satisfy the "request of the Empress that all in Her Subjects of Her Realms and Dominions be represented to their myriad satisfactions" every culture chimes in, resulting in a magnificent and heretical clusterfuck.

- Sidebar: How this kalpa is different than the others

• The Totemic Return: Skyrim ('Oldest' human province)

-Sidebar: (?)

-Places of Interest: (?)

• The Something Something: Ensroniet ('Newest' human province)

- Sidebar: Uriel V

- Sidebar: the Akaviri Invasion

-Places of Interest (?)

• The Heart of Heaven and the Imperial Earth: Cyrodill

(Main body text mentions the, ahem, horse-trading involved)

-Sidebar: Amulet of Kings

-Sidebar: The Elder Council

-Sidebar: Temple of One and the Dragonfires

-Places of Interest (?)

• The Tatterdemalion: Secunda and Masser (The Split-Moon as an Imperial province)

(Main body text ends with the Provisional Governor's present orders for a "tactical abandonment of all lunar holdings".

-Sidebar: Third Moon

-Sidebar: Race X (Moonmer? Grave Ghosts?)

-Places on Interest (The Parliament of Craters, Fort Mothmoth, Port Knahaten whose spore clouds prevent further Imperial survey)

• The Northlords of the Iliac: High Rock

-Sidebar: the Convention

-Sidebar: ? (Numidium as the Loch Ness Monster, or Cthulhu, waiting, waiting?)

-Places of Interest: ?

• The (Something Cool from Something Unofficial): Hammerfall

-Sidebar: (?)

-Places of Interest: (?)

• The Tenders to the Mane: Elsweyr

-Sidebar: (?)

-Places of Interest: (?)

• The Million-Eyed Insect Dreaming: Morrowind

-Sidebar: (?)

-Places of Interest: (?)

• The Great Apes of the Graht: Valenwood

(Main body text nearly ignores the Wood Elves entirely, relegating them to a sidebar. For obvious reasons, Valenwood is instead written as if it had always been under the home and dominion of the Imga.)

-Sidebar: Bosmer

-Places of Interest: (?)

• The Abiding Eye: Argonia

-Sidebar: (?)

-Places of Interest: (?)

• The Threat of Mirrors: Alinor and the Summering Isles

(Main body text quickly establishes that 'Summerset' as a phonetic misconception of the 'fex idea that "the sum is set". Numerical nonsense Altmer-style is the watchword.)

-Sidebar: (?)

-Places of Interest: (?)

• Those Regions Largely Unwritten

(As per PGE1, brief mentions of "whoa" places outside (or, hell, within) the Empire)

-Thras

-Pyandonea

- Etc.

(It would be great if this ran six pages or so and be choked with made up places that it becomes a mini-codex of wondrous delight. One of those places is "the jellyfish-thought-space of Empress Hestra's heironach 'baby', a miniaturized version of Tamriel that fits inside of an eggshell")

Ordering for PGE2 [assages and PGE1 oral history

Regarding ordering, I really only feel strongly about Skyrim First, New Imperial Province Second, Cyrodiil Third.

The original ordering of PGE1 wasn't really decided until its final, frantic days, except that we knew Morrowind would always be last, since that was DF's sequel. One reason for its bouncing order was that, after handing out sections as written, and slowly watching it congeal into a whole, the idea of "saving the best for last" ended up being more of a hope than what really happened. People and proof-writers saw a book THIS BIG and just skimmed to their favorite section. Or the section they saw as the unlikeliest to persuade (I'm looking at you, Elsweyr).

Only Ken, Kurt, Todd, and I read the thing front to back in its near-last-draft form to see if its through-line was the best it could be. Everyone else just high-fived (say) that "sugar-crack" made it in.

It also bears reminding here that no one asked for a PGE during Redguard's pre-dev cycle. Redguard was still just "pirates in the sky boats of a barely-hidden Jupiter gas ocean" at the time. Only Todd's very wise decision to leverage the success of DF that Redguard even got a greenlight but, even then, nothing like the PGE was mentioned.

When was it mentioned? It's hard to pinpoint when, exactly, but after the RG plot of civil war and this Emperor guy coming in to profit from it all started to develop... well, someone asked, "What's the name of the Empire, again?" and no one had an answer. And that just got on everyone's nerves. A pact was made: Kurt and I would hit the books and work it all out while we were also working on Redguard. With Uncle Ken and Todd always there to steer us in the right direction.

Suddenly, "What's the name of the Empire, again?" turned into "hold up the train, wait, ALL of these disparate cultures worship the same gods? That CAN'T be right" and "This period in history doesn't make logistical sense and/or is just too muddled and unlovely in description". The former was mostly me (Varieties was written in one night), the latter was usually Kurt (one does not argue with someone that can use examples from the Peloponnesian War to explain almost anything). In hindsight, probably a lot of it was wankery, but it was the first world-building that went beyond the Iliac Bay (the progenitors of Arena were almost gone to a man, so we didn't have their notes, so forgive any bad memory or perceived "lack of documentation"), and it was impossible to stop. Except for that little thing called deadline.

(Remind me to relate the No One Wanted to Write the High Rock section later.)

This is a long way of saying, yes, the order matters, and yes, we will arrive at it, and yes, we should feel strongly about certain placements, but that a project of this scope will constantly surprise us and change our minds as we go...but we'll eventually have to talk about a deadline (groan) or it will never, ever stop. Unless it just peters out.

Kalpa Akaishicorprus

To me, Tamrielic kalpas are Extinction Events caused by three people trying to catch one another (King/Rebel/Lover) and a witness that sees the resulting eschaton. These roles are always somehow re-enacted in a holographic fractal until SNAP the three do catch one another and things splode and another kalpa begins.

Because of the holographic nature of the process, the witness is always scattered into several, some of which actually • jump• kalpas. And then they start their fool talking, which wakes up the new King/Rebel/Lover.

(This is Mankar's talk about the fall of Lyg. Part last kalpa, part this kalpa, but something a hologram of the witness saw. This is all the other manifestations of Enantiomorph.)

Okay, so that's the Creation Myth of All Creation Myths and no one wants to read all that in spooky or vague terms. The Monomyth was successful (I think) because it spoke pretty straightforward. Only when it hit the "quantum variations" did it get to be the realm of study.

That's why I suggest being matter of fact and without flourish about this section.

1) Kalpas are This. We remember them like This.

2) The last kalpa was This Thing, where the King (Who?) caught the Rebel (Who?) with the Lover (Who?) and Extinction Event resulted (Which was?). The Witness(es) to all of this was (Who?)

3) The last kalpa is the easiest to remember because of events X, Y, Z, which are those re-enactments.

4) The current kalpa is the King or Rebel (Which is which?) trying to break the rules of the game, freezing time and space so that he can have the Lover (Who?) without the explodo. He is trying not to be seen with the Lover, trying to consummate it (Which will do what?). He has made several attempts at killing or erasing potential Witnesses so that he can get that freak on. But he's stuck in this process, immortal within its masks, and doomed to live with this One Last Chance forever (hence, Corprus).

5) The next kalpa is in question. It will be an echo either of another Extinction Event or the birth of the Amaranth. Certain forces are tired of waiting, hastening the explosion and making sure they're at ground zero to jump that shit. Other forces are fighting those to make sure Amaranth happens, at the beautiful sacrifice of their own lives, since the Amaranth is the new universe that will have no witness but itself and its parents (who will be forgotten as relics of the last of the old kind of kalpas).

---

I think it would be remiss not to present the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd eras in this section. I would do them only in single paragraph form, with a dawn/mythic just before.

But the bulk of the section would be about kalpas, with the abovementioned items only touched on as a small record of the current kalpa.

(And, yeah, each era should have some whacko-that-aint-right angle to it-- the Second Era being all snakes with Reman just another snake, but with a dude's head, for example-- and intoned in the same matter of fact style as the rest of it.)

The Totemic Return: Skyrim

It's, essentially, the height of "when one of the IGS goes too far."

Section starts with a Nordic view on Skyrim's origins. Long-winded, confusing, anachronistic, full of kalpa-talk where then was now is tomorrow is always. Sack of Sarthaal mentioned, as is the Nords retreat to Old Atmora. Section ends with Ysgramor coming back.

Then begins the Phonebook of 500. Each and every one of Ysgramor's 500 Companions is listed with a deed or effed-up moniker. All of them. All 500 of them. The IGS writer is so intent on providing a comprehensive history of Skyrim that this actually sounds like good journalism to him.

After the Phonebook of 500, there's a knock at the door. The Blades are here. End.

With this in mind, the Skyrim section will look nothing like any of the rest of the PGE2 entries.

---

The names are important, of course, as are their placements. They appear to have significance in prior lore, because they are anachronisms of people and heroes and their associated historical placements that make no timeline sense. The Song of Return is the idea of Genesis as Eschaton, and the last Nord to step off the boat will step into the court of Empress Morihatha (ie, the court of her brother) in the present time.

Tatterdemalion: The Lunar Province of Secunda

Tatterdemalion is going to take the middle road to all of this. It cannot combat the beautifully sublime Elsweyr-on-the-moon with one more overtly comedic throughline of hijinx. It's going to be matter of fact, inasmuch as portraying voidmoths, Imperial moonsuits, and dead god geography can try without falling into crazed blabber. It knows it's been waiting to come out for awhile, so all excitement will have to be tempered with my best attempt at "the encyclopedic monotone" that I can muster. I suspect it will be the section that most emulates my work on the original PGE.

Those Regions Largely Unwritten

"Regions" is my favorite right now. It's the release valve of idiotic ideas high and low. It has no limitations, except for the difficulty of trying to not make these places islands all the time. I understand the difficulty, as Regions set inside the Provinces feel like they would be better served as Places of Interest, but still. Everything I've written for it so far has been a joke of some kind or another, but I'm fine with that.