Skyrim's Missing Villain

Hey guys, we're here and welcome back to another Elder Scrolls investigation. Today we'll explore what is definitely one of Skyrim's most well-known and talked-about mysteries, which is the question or questions of what was going on at Broomjanar's shrine. and what did the thalmor know? So if you're not familiar with what broomjinar shrine is or anything I'm talking about, don't worry in a moment, we'll go over a pretty in-depth summary that should explain it. all well enough for even non-elderly scroll players to understand easily, but for now let's say that there is a small unmarked Norse ruin that the player can visit in Skyrim that allows us to travel back in time and clearly houses a strange and ancient dragon magic. power that we are still trying to understand and apparently that the thalmor were trying to secure for themselves, chances are if you are a long time fan of the channel you already know what I am talking about as we mentioned this place in their trivia associated before in previous videos, however, we have never had time to go over everything and evaluate all the moving parts and implications of this topic and recently some commentators have pointed out some very interesting developments related to this mystery that Bethesda made in the Elder Scrolls online that further complicate the plot and that we have not discussed, so today we are finally going to address this topic with all the attention it deserves.

We will begin by going over an introduction to the mystery at hand where we will point out some very important details and then analyze some of the clues that the writers have left, as well as interesting information in the game files. Finally, we will look at some important related things that were revealed not long ago in that. By the time it's all said and done, we'll have unraveled a surprisingly twisted hidden narrative that has some major implications for the future of this universe, and while I admit I can't say that everything will be one hundred percent resolved and confirmed, I think we'll have a pretty good idea. good than the writers were suggesting and we mostly figured it all out anyway without further ado, let's go further and explore Skyrim's strangest unmarked location, starting with the introduction.

Hopefully this will serve to shake up any foggy memories and reassure us. everyone on the same page I remember when this whole concept was first explained to me I was very confused, so we'll be as thorough as possible anyway in Skyrim located within a mountain range that sits on the border between the wineries of Hullmarch and Whiterun. It is an abandoned ancient Norse city called Brahmjinar, although our map refers to it as the Labyrinth for reasons we will explain later. Despite not playing any role in the main questline of the game, this location is very impressive, it is easily the largest ruin of its kind.

With dozens of structures and its own set of walls, heck, it's larger than the nearby inhabited city of Morthal, not to mention the views we can get here are unmatched. The reason Braum Jannar is so big according to various books in the game is that it used to be the capital of

skyrim

itself, well maybe you already know what pause in story time so long ago and I mean a long time ago, like Thousands or perhaps even tens of thousands of years ago, the Nords of Skyrim were not ruled by a human king or emperor, but by dragons, yes, these winged beasts once had dominion over the people of this region and, in fact, Alduin the main antagonist of the Elder Scrolls V was the leader of Aldoba at the time, while these creatures certainly enjoyed the power they had, in reality they were not all. who were interested in running the society they controlled, they didn't want to waste time collecting taxes and creating laws or resolving disputes between citizens, no, that was beneath them, so the dragons chose a small group of the most loyal men and dedicated as they could. finding people they trusted would never betray them and put them in charge of managing everyone else.

These hand-picked Norsemen would become known as dragon priests and would be effectively free to rule the kingdom as they pleased, as long as their winged chieftains were happy with their organization of dragons and their collaborating human priests the dragon cult and Here this Bramjanara place was their capital, of course, this would not last forever as approximately 4,000 years ago the dragon cult was destroyed by their rebellious subjects, I guess the humans finally got tired of creatures that didn't even have thumbs. opposable forces told them what to do and in 139 of the first era most of the dragons and priests were dead, brahm janar was abandoned and the victorious nordic founded the new kingdom of

skyrim

that exists. somehow to this day, although it is rumored that not all dragon priests died and it is said that some secretly evaded death all this time thanks to their own magic power and harvested souls of innocents, but those are just rumors, Okay, okay, the story has passed through time.

Brahmjanar was once the province's most important metropolis and with a backstory like that, you better believe it's hiding some secrets. In the center of the city there is a small building that doesn't look very noticeable from a distance, but inside you will find a strange scene. A skeleton lies next to a wooden mask collapsed against some kind of altar with busts. What happened here? A search for the treasure gone wrong maybe a bandit attack well also on the ground here is a note titled missive from top thugs and well, I will read it to you, quote, it seemed like a fairly easy job in Graz and I did many similar things before a Chimless Breton wants a bodyguard for a trip to the mountains.

Okay, easy jingle for us, he keeps talking about this twice-abandoned mask of his throughout the entire process. Of course, he had a good laugh when Graz snatched it from him and shoved it in his face, threatened to fire us because he's not smart here alone, he realized that quickly and shut up about not paying, so we got here. some papers and mutters to himself, never mind that Graz and I had to go through 10 stink checks to get him here and without even a warning, he puts on his mask and disappears, I could have put my hands on his throat at one point .

He's nothing anymore, well, after a while we didn't know what to do and Graz picks up his gear to go back home when he poops that mask in his hand he begs us not to leave he says he needs us to wait this is what he's doing for us paying, then puts the mask back on his repentant face and is gone again. He'd seen cloaks turning invisible before, but a few blows to my fist showed he wasn't pulling that one. There's nothing there to hit, he appears again. He tells us that he needs more time he has to figure out something about other masks and he disappears again that was yesterday and I already finished playing with my thumbs and writing letters to me we will leave when the sun rises and if he appears again I promise Azora that I will do it Putting him this dagger in the chest to keep him in one place, we'll get more loot out of him dead than he could have paid alive, but not that mask, that damn thing can stay and rot with him in the trolls right here, end of quote, ah , then this.

It sort of explains it: the writer of our letter was a guard hired to help a shady Breton and his mask make the trip to this very building we're in. When they arrived, the Breton put on his mask and disappeared, which He got very angry and said. guard so much that he murdered the Breton to death when he returned, damn, talk about bad customer service. I hope he got a bad review anyway, that wooden mask is still here and when we put it on we'll be immediately teleported to an alternative. version of this room that looks new and less run down, it almost seems like we have gone back in time, when bramjanar was still populated, this is where the britons must have disappeared and unfortunately we can't leave the room and explore the past like marty mcfly or whatever, you're trapped here and the only way out is to just take off your mask, however, we can interact with that altar, though now it's okay, before we continue, let's pause here and take another minute to point something out and explain.

A very important concept: this wooden mask that may or may not have given us Delorean powers is obviously a dragon priest mask. We have already explained who the dragon priests were. They were the humans who ruled in the name of Dovah long ago. No need to repeat it. that, but something I didn't mention was that the dragons gave each of their priests a unique custom mask in exchange for their service that symbolized their status, which is honestly kind of sweet, this is one of those masks that has a unique . -a type of enchantment that gave the user some type of power, the important thing is that the priests would name their masks after him, so hypothetically I would say my name is bob, I would call my mask bob 2, can you tell where Am I going with this in Vanilla Elder Scrolls 5?

There are a total of 8 named living dragon priests still alive scattered around the world, some are in certain tombs, others will be found along the way in certain quests and each of those eight will drop their own special mask after being killed In the battle. For the dragonborn with the name attached to it, for example, the priest's crosses will always be around Shear Point Hollow and when you defeat him you can loot his krosus mask from his inventory. Enchanting him offers a 20 bonus to lockpicking, archery, and alchemy when he is equipped to defeat Otar. the madman and gets his otar mask, which grants the wearer 30 resistance to fire, frost, or shock magic.

You get the idea that this wooden mask is special because, while it clearly has a unique enchantment, time travel, it doesn't have a dragon priest name. simply known as the wooden mask, why? Well, this is one of our many million dollar questions and we'll come back to it in just a second, for now let's keep talking about what we can do while we're in this crazy time. travel dimension, frankly the only thing that matters here, as I mentioned before, is that altar because in this version of the building we can interact with it and the shrine will require us to place any dragon priest mask we have in our inventory with the Except for that wooden one, we don't need to give him that one, any of the eight we could loot from the vanilla dragon priests in the game if you have all eight, if you killed all the white priests and took all their helmets. and you place them in the shrine, a mechanism will activate and the altar will reward the player by giving you a new novena or, I guess, tenth if we count the dragon priest's wooden mask.

This bad boy is called a Canaric and features a menacing appearance that sports a unique color scheme, unique shape and fangs, plus, more importantly, it arguably offers the best enchantment of all, allowing the user to receive a boost. Massive HP every time your health bar drops below 15 percent once you pick it up, just take off the wood. mask and now you will have kenarik in the real world ready to use. Well, this is a great reward and nothing we've done to earn it is tied to any quest. Well, I mean, certain dragon priest skins can only be found in certain quests, so to get all eight we need to finish quite a few quests, but there are no specific quests telling us to go here or objective markers.

This whole time travel secret room and the canary and the wooden masks are all things. which we can only find on our own or with the help of one of these videos, the big question here is which dragon priest the Canaric mask belonged to. Remember that each mask is named after its owner and, in the same vein, who made the wooden mask. The mask complicates things further, as I suggested at the beginning of this video. The thalmor seem to have had some idea of ​​canary or wooden masks and have been pursuing them on a limited basis.

You will probably see that in the crack there is a large ancient. Nord Ruin named Pharrell Host sitting on top of some mountains when the player arrives there, we will find a high elf named Captain Valmir sitting outside alone by a fire. Velmir will pose as the captain of whichever civil war faction the player has chosen. and if you still have to choose a side in the civil war, you will simply base your faction on whether the player sided with hadvar the imperial or abandoned the storm cloak when escaping from helgen velmir will inform the player that to continue the war civilian because he needs you to run inside to get re-hosted, kill the dragon priest inside called ragat and give him back his mask once you've done so, so he promises you some coins and a promotion in any army of theMay you be part now.

Clearly this knight is being very deceptive, he is not a captain at all but a secret Falmore operative and once you have gone through the dungeon, obtained the mask and returned you will find that he is already talking to another soldier feeding them. The same lie asking them to do the same when he realizes that you have caught him red-handed, hostile filter and attack on Valmir's body. There is a letter titled Orders that says the following. Quote, you will proceed to the ruins of Pharrell Host to recover the dragon cult mask there, if you are discovered, pose as an officer, it is unlikely that anyone from Skyrim will be smart enough to see through the disguise once Once you have obtained the mask, bring it back to the end of the maze, quote, aha, to make it look like Alder Murray's domain. to have known at least something about brumjan, our sanctuary, it seems that they at least knew that they needed to bring dragon priest masks there, although it is not clear exactly how deep their knowledge was, furthermore, many have argued that perhaps that dead Breton that brought that The wooden mask to the shrine was also working on behalf of the thalmora, although I personally think that is unlikely.

Remember that the Breton hired two random private mercenaries. There's no way the Talmor would have trusted two thugs to escort one of their agents, they would have sent some of their own men, so that guy was probably also acting on his own anyway, although what could he have known? mastery over this mask and what were his plans? With that, how could he have helped further his cause? All he does for us is restore health every time he drops. I don't see why they would have given it such tremendous value. Well, canon has another power, you see, depending on the mask. description when using canaric if our health drops it has a chance to heal the user and damage nearby enemies, that doesn't seem very useful however what the mask description doesn't tell us is that when our health drops by below 15, other than newly healed, there is a three percent chance that he can summon a quote-unquote spectral dragon priest to the battlefield to aid the player for 60 seconds.

It's nothing tremendous, but Kenarik obviously has the power to summon dragon priests to the mortal realm or at least some of them. in their spectral shadows, sure we can only do it for 60 seconds, but maybe that's just a game limitation, maybe it's possible to summon more than one for a long time and the thalmor could have used that to their advantage as to how The elves might have known well about Kenarik, that question is a little harder to answer because the events of Elder Scrolls v strongly emphasize that the domain doesn't know much about dragons or dragon cults, in fact during the diplomatic mission . immunity when the player is sent to infiltrate a thalmor embassy, ​​we can read numerous internal reports from the organization and in them they admit to not really understanding why the dragons have returned and to being as clueless as everyone else, so who knows how they could have done it.

I learned about this, another very unique quality of Gennarock that I haven't mentioned yet is that unlike all the other dragon priest skins, we don't know what it's made of. You see, in the case of the other eight or maybe nine masks that we have. I can tell what material they are made of based on which of our smithing perks they interact with and what materials are needed to temper them, for example nacarin is made of ebony, otar is made of bronze, moroki mask is made of moonstone , but Kenarik is a bit weird, he interacts with our daedric smithing perk, which is really sinister, but we temper him with gold ingots, which is really strange because genaric is the only piece of real armor or armor in the entire game for which gold bars can be used.

Tempering, its only other purpose is to be sold or used in jewelry pieces such as rings, necklaces and earrings. Additionally, Kenarik's armor rating is surprisingly high, it's the highest of any skin at a whopping 24 points. Do you see where I'm going with this gold? It won't be as strong no matter what, now the good news is that there is another way to tell what the dragon priest skins were made of by looking at their publisher IDs accessible in the Skyrim creation kit or through console commands, this will literally reveal its base material, for example the editor id for the morocco mask is a quote: armor, dragon, priest, mask, moonstone helmet 0-1, so there you have it, you can see that the morocco helmet Morocco is made of moonstone.

The publisher's ID for Otar's helmet is armor, dragon, priest, mask, bronze helmet. zero one that one is bronze however canaric is weird his publisher id is just armor dragon priest mask ultra helmet zero one doesn't tell us what it's made of this is the only one that behaves that way so it seems like bethesda did this on purpose Phew, this is a lot, let's take a step back and consolidate our information. We know that the thalmor were interested in Kenarik. We suspect that whatever organization the Breton came from was also interested. We know that the dragon cult thought the mask was so special that it shouldn't. have been accessed without the consent of its eight Skyrim members and we now know that the developers are intentionally trying to hide any materials that were used to forge the tusk, although it may have been gold or daedric related, this is not close enough to to identify who. exactly kenarik belonged to, but we can start considering potential candidates, so let's do that and then we'll move on to what that has to say mirak feels like a near perfect match, the current champion of hermaeus mora and main antagonist of the dragonborn dlc, this man . he was the first dragonborn, the first human born with the soul of a dovah, and was a dragon priest for much of his life.

You probably know the story here at some point in the meretic era, he finally became so hungry for power after his ego and his daedric. The god Hermaeus Mora caught him and attempted to overthrow the dragons and take over the world for himself, but he was defeated in a close fight. He was about to die in battle when Maura intervened to remove him from the mortal realm and moved. mirak to his plane of oblivion where man has been since kenarik could have been mirak's old mask that the dragon cult somehow secured after his defeat knowing how strong the organization was he could have decided that no one would access this garment unless the The group unanimously decided that this would also serve to explain Kenarik's Daedric ties and his warlord name.

His ability to rapidly increase the user's HP whenever it gets too low could even go as far as alluding to Mirak hm's last-minute escape. This whole guy is a very, very strong candidate at the same time, although we have very good reasons to doubt Mirec's connection to the fanged helm, as if the guy already had his own mask with very different characteristics. Mirac's current mask has tentacle motifs. Enchanting him increases your magic. for 40 to 70 points and has nothing to do with healing, did he just make a totally new mask that looked nothing like the original while it was apocryphal or is it just a distorted one of the same one he's been wearing all along in the opposite end of the mask? specter veylock the jailer offers a compelling case of his own he is the dragon priest who personally defeated mirak in single combat throughout his revolt and skull historians largely credit waylock with saving the world from the tyranny of the tentacles .

We can find the grave of this priest on On the Island of Solstein in dlc4, he is very hostile to the player, so keep your distance. However, you'll notice that he is the only dragon lord in the game who doesn't wear a mask, which has to be a big clue, since there is only one mask in the world called Kenarik that we can find without a dragon priest and Veylock owner. He turns out to be the only dragon priest

missing

his mask as he was the man who led the fight against Mirak and ultimately saved the day when he would have had a high rank in The Society, if not the highest rank and a helm that translates as warlord, it would have been a good match, but if the fanged object was velox, why wasn't it buried with it like everyone else?

Why did the order decide to secure it this way? of respect if they were afraid of his power finally if you're willing to put on a tinfoil hat and I promised you the last one then we'll talk about what that reveals gamora yeast is another possibility listen to me I tell the Easter story further at least twice a month, but in case you don't know, the Nords are not true natives of Tamriel. Their original homeland is a mysterious landmass north of the continent called atmora. Tens of thousands of years ago, these Norsemen began sailing down and reaching the shores of Skyrim from there now, at this very moment, a race of elves called the snow elves were already here, but for a time the two peoples simply They coexisted.

Simply put, peace was not meant to last and a war broke out between men. and mirror and this guy named yisgrimora came from atmora to skyrim with 500 of the best warriors he could find and he and his men or companions quickly drove the snow elves to extinction in a brutal military campaign and claimed this province in the name of the Nordics. today he is honored as one of the greatest men who ever lived and a model for all positive virtues and easter more he was totally working with the dragon cults even if everyone forgot him or pretends he didn't cause in maura in the period the one he came from was already ruled by the dragon cult and when niskaramore arrived after his conquests and all, he never declared himself king, in fact he seems to have let the dragon cult start to take control almost as if he were good with that, we know.

In fact, when Euskramor passed away, DC had full control of the region, so it seems fair to say that the man was probably working with them. If you want more evidence, the tomb of Ysgramor's son Jingle contains a large number of dragons. Memories esque, there are dragon cult motifs on the walls, dragon claws everywhere and when you finally confront Yingle, he will usually appear as a spectral skeleton. If the player has a high enough rank, it will be a spectral dragon. The priest instead of Jingle is the only character this happens with. By the way, the only other spotted dragon priest in the game is the one we can summon with the mask, so if Eastgrimor wasn't a dragon priest or didn't worship dragons, his son definitely is.

Oh yeah, and there are a pair of dragon priest daggers in Yeesgremore's personal tomb, although there aren't the same dragon priest motifs everywhere, those are replaced with type and coast icons and the Norse totem gods could have been Kunark of Yeesgremore. own mask and the cult is simply preserving it due to its historical significance. Yiskamor was definitely a warlord, so well, whether or not you find any of those three candidates particularly plausible is up to you, but now let's jump to what the old man searches online. is revealed because there is some pretty important information here, starting with something small, literally, in the Elder Scrolls Online, when the player is looting various containers, treasure items with random names may appear for you to loot, many times these items They have a little importance. in relation to universe lore or fun descriptions, an item we can get randomly when looting containers is called exhausted bromgennar stone, its description says a quote, it was once able to return its bearer to the ancient capital of Skyrim, now only It serves to point towards the end of the maze.

Quote, it sells for 250 gold and you can't do anything with it, but apparently the dragon cult had access to rocks that would teleport them back to his capital. Could there have been a connection to the wooden mask that the helmet allows us to travel in? Time and these rocks would apparently have allowed us to travel in space. Additionally, another treasure potentially related to the mask is also the Eldergleam amber, as well as the Bromgener stone. We can find it randomly in chests and containers anywhere. It sells for 1500 gold and its description says quote. Shimmering golden amber that sings a soft and relaxing melody.

It could only have come from the ancient tree. Elderberry shine. The Elder Tree is one of the oldest living organisms in all of Tamriel, while today it is a proud standing structure. The priests tell us that it was but a sapling tens of thousands of years ago, when man first came to Skyrim. This thing is old and it is said thatIt has strong divine connections, just as the amber of ancient brilliance plays a melody. The description of the wooden mask says that, in quotes, it hums with an unknown energy, perhaps the wooden mask was carved from the ancient glow and that could help explain the Delorean's capabilities, regardless of the wooden masks or the sap from the trees, although the really important thing that that makes or made relevant to our discussion was introducing an item called a spirit mask.

The spirit mask is a unique helmet that looks suspiciously like that of a dragon priest. It is a dragon priest mask that we can find nowhere else. All kosh is simply the khajiity variant of Akatosh, the dragon god of time. In case it wasn't obvious enough, we and some furry members of the dragon guard will be using this helmet to subdue a recently awakened ancient dovah during the dragonbending story and, like Kenarik, this thing is super powerful , essentially allows non-dovikins to take advantage of the abilities of certain shouts and their mere function seems to terrify the dragons we're trying to defeat.

Interestingly, the item requires a friendly dragon or dragonborn to be nearby to be fully functional, which could suggest that perhaps all dragon masks require similar dovah. Connections and the only reason we were able to use them so perfectly in Skyrim was because of our pre-existing dragon nature. Now we compare the color schemes of Alka Shelm and Kenarik. By the way, I'm showing you a picture of the vanilla canary mask. Now most of the video I had actually colored it with a retexture, but if you look at the vanilla colors, these two elements seem quite similar, maybe they are made of the same mysterious substance that Bethesda was deliberately hiding, it's a mystery how exactly the khajiits here got the mask, they are great worshipers of akatosh or alkosh in the first place and even call themselves the pride of alcosh, so it is quite possible that they have the knowledge to find it in a ruin or kill a priest.

Although some of the cats refer to the mask as a direct gift from Akatosh - something he made specifically for them so they could kill evil dragons more easily - if that's true, it could also be the origin story for our Skyrim mask. with fangs. What if the reason we were never supposed to find out what Kenarik was made of was because Akatosh himself personally designed it and gave it to the priests as some kind of super weapon. Now the Norsemen of the dragon cult in this day truly believed that Akatosh and Alduin were the same.

It really would have been Alduin who made it for them, but you also get the idea given that Ulkash's mask can be used quite easily to take down dragons. It's no wonder the Dragon Order had such a strict security mechanism in Skyrim. If Konark is so deadly, dropping it into the wrong hands would have been catastrophic. This is what I think. Kenarik was created by Alduin or perhaps some other powerful high-ranking Dovah during Mirak's attempted uprising and that dragon gave the mask to Veylock in hopes that he could stop Mirak after Veylock's efforts proved successful and he passed away.

The remaining members of the faction decided that his helm was too powerful to leave buried in any random tomb, so they moved it to their capital and locked it under this failsafe so that only they could use it in case the order unanimously agree to do it somewhere. Rumors spread along the line and thousands of years later, the Aldmeri dominion discovered that some kind of ancient power was sealed here in Bramjanara that they probably didn't fully understand, but were still eager to state that, in my opinion, This is the most likely order of events. The fact that Veylock does not have a dragon priest mask is too important a fact to overlook in this context.

There's no way Bethesda didn't mean something by that, they did it on purpose and I think they were implying that he was the former possessor of kenarik, but that's just a theory, a game that's copyrighted anyway. Thank you very much for stopping by everyone after more than 30 minutes and with my thesis finally complete enough, I think this is an appropriate point to conclude, what do you do? What was happening here? Do you think Kenarik belonged to Villock the jailer or do you think someone else held on to her? What do you think about the All Kosh mask?

Leave a comment below, as always, ratings are greatly appreciated again, thanks for watching and I hope to see you all in my next video, peace to all.