Welcome back to another addition of “look at all the wackiness that happens between the Elder Scrolls games.” Before any of you give me a hard time about how this article is shorter than my last one regarding “What Happened Between Oblivion and Skyrim,” I’d like to point out that Skyrim takes place 200 years after Oblivion. Wanna’ know how soon Oblivion happens after Morrowind? Six years. Still, I managed to find a pretty big handful of events that helped shape the world of Oblivion that is either implie🎉d through conversಞation or context.

As is a theme in the Elder Scrolls world, any time something of great importance happens, usually some sort of large victory for the side of “good,” it will be incredibly short lived. A reoccurring theme is that any time darkness is pushed away, an even greater darkness pushes through and fills the vacuum. This is basically my way of saying that this article is probably going to be as much of a shame as my last one, since anything you accomplished in Morrowind simply set the stage for the events of Oblivion; the game where gates to the Daedric plane just started opening up randomly all over the world, and hordes of creatures attacked entire cities. So, let’s take a look at the events that led to that dark chap𒁃ter of Tamriel’s history, bu𝓀t remember, it is just a game, and the writer’s always intended for your adventure to have a very bad ending.

22 𒉰 Martin Septim Begins Playing With Daedric Magic

via: moddb.com

Martin Septim was the illegitimate son of Uriel Septim VII and was swept off to be kept away from the public eye. He was raised knowing nothing of his royal 🅷heritage, and therefore, was free from scrutiny to fall in with a bad crowd; however, he joined the Sanguine Cult.

By his own admission, Martin got in over his head with the dark arts, a🗹n🍃d with bad results. During an ill-fated “experiment,” something went wrong, costing some of Martin’s friends their lives. After that, he quickly turned away from all things Daedric, which seems like the best course of action.

21 ꧋ Raven Rock Is Founded

raven rock
via: elderscrolls.wikia.com

Not long after the events of Morrowind, there was a massive Ebony Vein discovered on the southwestern shore of Hirstaang Forest. This was in its glory days, which you get a glimpse of in the expansion DLC Bloodmoon. As always, things go 💞south when Dark Elves take ove𒉰r.

By the time you visit the place in the Dragonborn DLC, it is in serious disrepair (you’ll find out why further down the article what happened after Oblivion). It’s got a rough history.

20  Hannibal Traven Writes “The Black Arts 🥃On Trial” ๊

//www.ign.com/articles/2016/11/01/the-elder-scrolls-v-skyrim-special-edition-review

Afte💧r fighting countless reanimated skeletons and zombies, it is hard to imagine that the art of necromancy was ever considered for debate as a legitimate school of magic. Hannibal was a very progressive🔜 wizard, though, and wanted to clearly justify why it could never be taught in the Mages Guild.

It’s a pretty good, if not short, read, which actually addresses arguments both for and against teaching necromancy. O🐈f course, the person making the arguments for it turned out to actually be a practicing necromancy, so that didn’t help the argument.

19 A New🐬 Arch-M꧒age

via: youtube.com

Hannibal Traven wasn’t an accomplished author, and he also reached the enviable positio🅘n of Arch-Mage. He was the head of the Anvil Ma🍨ges Guild before being promoted, and spent most of his career attempting to stamp out all traces of necromancy.

He created a lot of reforms around the Mages Guild, most importantly, surrounding his own personal disgust of🤪 the Black Arts. Mages 🉐before him had been somewhat wishy-washy on the subject, but Hannibal had a no tolerance rule regarding those kinds of experiments.

18 The Ban On Necromancy ꦍ

via: elderscrollsonline.com

As disc🐎ussed before, a lot of Arch-Mages before Hannibal Traven had somewhat lenient policies towards necromancy. Some of them 💞turned a blind eye to the dabbling of their students, while others were avid practitioners themselves. It was publicly banned, but privately, it very much still being used.

However, that all changed when Traven took over as Arch-Mage. We don’t know what made Traven so adamantly opposed to necromancy, but whatever it was, he wouldn’t tolerate it both inside or outside of the Ma𓄧ges Colle🍌ge.

17 Mages Gu✱ild Starts Suspending🅺 Students

via: elderscrolls.wikia.com

As is very clear by now, Hannibal was somewhat of a stickler for his own rules, which mostly centered around the Dark Arts. To help stamp out the perceived scourge, he began enacting suspensions from the Guildও to any s🔥orcerer who is caught practicing banned magic.

Suspensions were usually temporary, with many wizards being able to rejoin if they wanted to. Of course, you couldn’t just keep coming back and getting suspended, if💯 you strike out one too many times, you face expulsion.

16 Viꦛvec Disappears

via: elderscrollsonline.com

You all remember Vivec. He’s the warrior-poet demigod who stole power from the deity Lorkhan and helped curse all the Chimer people to become Dunmer. It’s a whole melo𝐆dramatic thing, which I don’t have enough time to go into here.

When you, the p❀layer, destroy the Heart of Lorkhan, Vivec loses his 🌊powers and becomes less than divine. He then promptly disappears, abandoning the city he had spent thousands of years protecting. This sudden disappearance has some unintended consequences, such as…

15 💞 🐎 Baar Dau Begins To Fall

via: reddit.com

Baar Dau was that very cool, floating prison above Vivec City. Lore surmises that Sheogorath threw the meteor at Vivec City, and Vivec himself used his nearꦚ godlike power to keep iꦡt suspended. Then, it was hollowed out and transformed into a re-education center.

After Vivec took off to who knows where, the meteor began to slowly fall again, threatening to eliminate the Red M🃏ountain and the entire city. Seems kind of i🍃rresponsible for Vivec to leave his subjects to fend for themselves.

14 A Device Is Created To Keep Baar Dau Afloat 𒈔

via: elderscrolls.wikia.com

Obviously, the peop💟le of Vivec City had to do something about the suddenly re-crashing meteor plummeting toward their hometown, so a couple of Dunmer “scientists” inveꦺnted a device that would do the same thing that Vivec did: keeping Baar Dau afloat.

This didn’t work for too long, though, since the de🎃vice required being fed hundreds of powerful souls to be kept runnin﷽g. When the wrong soul got donated, the person who tried to rescue it broke the machine, and Baar Tau began falling again.

13 Mages Guild Create New ꧋Approval Rules ღ

via: elderscrolls.wikia.com

If you tried to join the Mages Guild and gain access to the Arcane University during your playthrough of Oblivion, you’ll remem༺ber that it took a lot of hoop jumping, and you need to get a recommendation from each of the Guild leaders.

However, this wasn’t a rule as recently as six years before the events of Oblivion. It isn’t clear what motivated the College to create these new rules, but it is probably a safe bet that Hannibal Traven was trying to k🍰eep out any necromancers.