Fireside Chats

Texte de développeur Commentaire : Interview originale Par Michael Kirkbride interviewé par Darya Makarava, 17/02/2012 Welcome, one and all, to Fireside Chats with Michael Kirkbride. Have you ever wondered about how lore, and the games, are made? Maybe you have an interest in the Tsaesci, Reman, or late 1st era culture. Are you looking for new materials to reference in your lore discussions? Or perhaps you'd like to know what Lady N does at 4am on a Friday morning. Read on, for this interview will contain all this and much, much more. Oh, one quick note: The interviews are NSFW. Neither Michael nor I endorse, promote, or support the opinions, views, and actions portrayed herein. We’re decent people, I promise. Fireside Chat 1 - Reman and the Shonni-etta Darya: You're on record as saying that Reman is fathered by space men - knights from beyond Twil. Michael: Space gods bagat Reman? [ed: pronounced reh-MAAN, like the Slavic name “Roman”] D: Yeah. M: So we're talking about mythic relationships. Do you remember the first mention of the Hurling Disk? Would have been in the Sermons. "Reach heaven by violence." Hold on, gonna get some reference material here. Reach heaven by violence is stolen from The Book of the Law by Crowley, I think. I don’t recommend that everybody read this - it will freak your shit. D: Freaking shit is good. M: Well, yeah, but it’s an actual magic book. Just saying, for the kids at home, magic's real, don't fuck around with it unless you’re ready, and it’s been written down. Anyway, the Hurling Disk may have been stolen, or borrowed. Twil was mentioned as far back as Redguard - Bendu Olo. D: It stands for twilight, right? M: I just like the name Twil, it’s a nice short name, it sounds magical and it’s always in the west. As far back as Redguard it was said that the throne of Cyrodiil was always captured by someone from the west. I’m talking the PGE1 here. M: The Hurling Disk is 18 less one, as far back as the Sermons. Then Oblivion came around and we had to start answering some of these questions about Reman. So I decided to write the whole fucking-the-hills thing, and so I needed to have an antiquated voice. The whole piece, it needed to sound very old. Yet it couldn't be this poetry wash that the ramblings Mankar were. It couldn't be, you know, a bunch of stuff that sounded like, you know, a madman. I can't be in that head that long. It needed to sound like an old document, something these people [Cyrodiils] would try to preserve, language and all. M: What am I trying to get at here? Tsaesci, um. Oh, here’s how you pronounce it - the [“Zay-shee”] D: Really? I don’t like that. M: [laughs] Even I'm saying it wrong. You go. D: [“Tsay-eh-see”] M: Fuck, that’s better, that’s more right. Say it again. D: [“Tsay-eh-see”] M: Yep. Keep going, I like it. [laughs] [This continues for awhile] M: Right, anyway, snakemen in Cyrodiil and I knew they would become, some of them, these Blade things, so I decided to just up and suddenly give them French names, like outta the blue. You'll notice that the Remanada and the Shonni-etta are very different, and the Chevalier Renald point is where they spilt. All of a sudden we've got this a guy fucking a hill - which is fun - he impregnates the world and the other knights, they get the fuck out of there. Except the blind dude. Some of them just go home and don't say anything. It was already in my mind at that point that these guys were immortal vampire snakemen that fed on language. I gotta admit it’s probaly really not that odd that nobody’s brought this name thing up. Because it’s just a throwaway line, really - all of a sudden one of the knights - he went by no name at first - he doesn't even have a name, but all of a sudden he's got a fucking name and it’s French. He just fucking ate language and decided “I'm a French motherfucker out of like Malory. You wanted me to be a knight and here I am and I’ma look awesome.” I'm saying it right there [in the text], he's got vampire blood, but there's [laughs] like absolutely nothing about a pig in the fragment. D: I figured it was supposed to end before we got to the pig. M: Nah. Well, no, yeah, you’re right. Suddenly no name becomes Snake Captain Versidue-Shaie becomes 'Renald.' I mean really, what the fuck is that. Oh, and the text had to have the line I AM CYRODIIL COME. That was a normal thing for- it’s an antiquated form of “yo man I’m all royally here what’s up.” Like “Caesar has come” didn’t cut it, it was “Caesar IS come, bitches”- like it’s more than like “hey I've arrived where’s my tea?” - it’s like I'm arriving right now at this very moment “I IS.” So I’m thinking that and Reman and it warped it into, like, the same thing but also “dude, I’m going to fucking come on Cyrodiil.” It’s this subtle take on Cyrodiil or ancient Cyrodiil, how I needed to see it, how I see it. Two of my favorite things: come and that way of talking. M: That pig is never going to fucking speak. Exactly like in the intro of the Shonni-etta. It’s this pig “ever ready to speak”, but then he purposely never talks. That makes me laugh. Oh, and those French dude snake knights. It was important that they're called questing knights - Arthurian legend callbacks and that shit. M: So, “space gods begat Reman”. Eh... the space gods? It’s all plural, right. Yeah. As we will come to see in the Shonni-etta, there’s this god figure - fuck it, you’ve read it - there’s Akatosh that, well, I’ve lost the plot. Space gods and time gods and old times and this need for dividing themselves through, you know, men. So now it’s Akatosh actually saying [about Reman] “no, for real, I'm going to make this motherfucker the king of the world and completely immortal.” We'll jump ahead to why he's eating his own come later. But that’s the bargain. King of the world, gotta eat come. [laughs] M: Back up. Space time shit. We're seeing more of the same fracture over and over again [in these writings]. This is why Pelinal screams out Reman's name. We're not spoiling the ending of the Shonni-etta by saying this stuff. Pelinal and Reman were totally different things that got caught up in the same fracture. They’re both cruel in their - their particular ways of that idea- and they're caught up in the same fracture, but Pelinal knows that a little bit, and they, um, meet, if you can call it that, in a different part of time. I mean, he's [Reman] not even born yet. D: So Pelinal is a real time traveler, from the future? I’ve always read him more as an answer to Alessia’s prayers. M: Timey-wimey. We're talking about the space gods. The actual space gods. Time and space are fucking fractured and they're caught in a point. Fuck, we're not going to talk the enantiomorph, are we? Eh..yeah, no, so there is a point at which there's a quantum idea of these deities and that they're jelling and they're taking on aspects at the same time. People need to ask about the blind one, I think. In another spot he's the Deaf Witness. D: That's the model for the enantiomorph that doesn't really get talked about. M: Yeah. So it’s a recurring thing. You've got Alandaro Sul, the whole Wulfharth-Zurin Arctus-Hjalti shit going down in White-Gold tower. D: Yeah, that giant clusterfuck. M: I'm just saying that no one really, except me, has the key. D: Now you're teasing. M: No, no, that [the link] was just me answering shit on a fucking forum. Not doing the whoo-hoo got the key thing here. I meant, um. Yeah, something like I barely get it and I know where to look, fuck that sounds even worse. [laughs] Suddenly anyway the witnessing shield-thane is the Deaf Witness, right. This is why I don't give this shit up... been working on it for a while. And yes, again, that pig is never going to talk. M: Here, let’s listen to this. That is space gods begat Reman. [laughs] You wanted this. You wanna talk about we ate it to become it? That [video] is that shit, all up. D: Yeah, the Tsaesci are big right now. M: Again. Fuck. [laughs] Snakes that change in name and protect a dude that was fucked from the start because he came out of a fucking hill. Sancre Tor is also one of my favorite names. [Says it in various ways] Okay: You've got one question left about them space gods and then I want to talk about why the Shonni-etta had to be written. D: Actually, let’s talk about Alessia’s role in this. M: How many years have passed? D: 2700ish M: She's a different thing now. Oh, and don't forget that we have to do all the Lucha Libre posters of her and fucking Marukh wrestling. TAM RUGH! [Impossible to transcribe, we really need a mic.] M: He's like most prophets, you know. Marukh is. Muhammad, he didn’t want the Word of God. It was heavy in him, gave him fucking headaches and he would tell his sister and his mother and they would tell him get rid of it, or they would tell him “you gotta do this.” Then he's riding in the desert on his camel at night, right, and he gets the headache again, and it gets so heavy that the camels' knees buckle and it sinks into the sand. So then he changes up and becomes a prophet. You know, I might have just all that up, I dunno. I'm not saying in any way that Muhammad is a monkey or an ape - dude’s got a cool book - I'm just saying that in this version [Tamriel] there was an ape and he didn't want to know the name of the world, but this angel, she kept wrestling him, holding him down. He's not even a fucking monkey but it’s - he's an ape being wrestled by an angel. That shit’s hot. Funny shit hot. M: Oh, and it has nothing to with the comic book the Angel and the Ape. Though when I think about apes and pretty girls in pop culture there’s a lot of it. Yeah- it’s just, like, I’ve got this- I always have this thing where like cultures [in Tamriel?] think that men are these little fucking monkeys [laughs] - and, you know, it’s like we deserve it, right - and women are always like these beautiful angels that, you know, just end up, right, wrestling us into the ground til we get our shit straight or don’t, doesn’t really matter. I mean: wrestling, right? [laughs] You know, Robert Crumb would always draw shit like that - that’s why, for me, the Bosmer? The men were always ugly and the women were always beautiful. King Kong is - whoa, King Kong is like the angry reversal of that, never thought of that - I need some water. M: Anyway, so, she's not in any way the female principle she is in the storming of the White-Gold or the Council of Skiffs. It’s 2700 years later, and she is indeed the queen of ancient times and when she appears she’s certainly not herself. She even talks here and she doesn’t sound [like she used to]. She's got remnants of how she talks in the Pelinal stories, but she's the mother of dragons here. That’s it. You have enough there. You got your question answered, I think. Actually, look up mythological references to women and mangled feet. Just saying. This is the woman that used to fly a bull. Used to fly a bull. When I think about those stories she's never ever ever -- I mean she's sometimes dirty, like as in covered in mud or some shit, but even then she doesn’t really care. Like then she’s all still angel what. But now [by the time of King Hrol] she’s walked the earth for so long her feet fucking hurt, dude, they’re mangled. The Shonni-etta expands on that a bit. Grabbin’ water. D: Good segue. You mentioned talking about why the Shonni-etta had to be written. M: And right suddenly in the Shoni-etta she's [Alessia] like "I’m out now, peace out. I'm jumping in the river." And it seems like she's vanished from the stage. Her deeds are done. “That’s it. I’m done with this. You got this chance.” And what’s gonna happen next - like fucking here he comes - I'm going to read this out loud: Then the Dragon of Heaven appeared, encircling them, King of Time, eating his lower length in symbol, speaking in the manner of the aether, which is mostly dream, "This I do command, for Reman was conceived of the imperial earth, and by his sacred measure he shall be as it should be: of an immortal fire that binds heaven to the mundane, Light made Man, and Order, fed ever by the seed of first stasis, anon Anu. And his wives will share forever in the blessing of Beauty if this should be so, their fair aspect frozen eternal, youth-radiant unto the ending of days. Aad semblio aurbex, aad semblio ae ehlnokhan, ae na-sen-ae-mantella, dracochrysalisanu." M: I mean fuck, dude, when that motherfucker shows up - by the way, she just bolted, “I’m the mother of that. I don’t always run, but I'm running now. This is going to be fucked up. I met Akatosh, and I met Lorkhan when I was on my deathbed, and we were hanging out, and I’m really tired of holding this fire. I’m out. You’re going to make this little boy eat his own come.” D: That was crossing the line. “I fucked a bull but that’s crossing the line.” M: That was different. [laughs] M: Earlier in the interview, when we agreed to this, it was like “why are you going to write a story about a conqueror who eats his own come?” and you said “why not? You wrote about Muatra and hill fucking.” Here's the reason why. M: Yes, I wrote that stuff and to be honest it wasn’t very thinly veiled. To be really honest, I wanted [in the Shonni-etta] to write porn. “You’ve danced around the subject, as many semi-clever ways you’ve wanted to, but I wanna say fucking cock.” Well, not that, but, like, I’m actually going to write porn. I think there’s a place for it in Tamriel. I mean, it’s already been in there and it wasn’t very good. Or it wasn’t to my favor. No, it’s actually never been very good. M: Of course I decide that’s not enough. I became obsessed with Alexander the Great and the clusterfuck of any attempt to capture that story in a cinematic fashion. Let’s just go to Oliver Stone, right. It’s a clusterfuck [that movie], but it’s glorious. And then I was like, oh my god, now I’m going to do this sweet Alexander story with more porn in it, like, you know, like that’s possible. I figured sure. M: But it still wasn’t enough. Okay, all those scenes that you see when they’re charging with those chariots and then oh shit a fucking elephant and that was a big fucking deal. I go to the zoo and I don’t care that the elephants are there. [laughs] That’s terrible to say. I’m from Alabama and they hanged an elephant. D: What? M: Yeah, you can look this up. Back in the 1890s - no it was even later cause they used a fucking crane. It was pretty late in the game for anyone to be hanging elephants. That takes effort. [laughs] So what happened was they had this circus, and this mother elephant freaked out and the very fine people in Alabama, where I grew up, decide that since she trampled a bunch of people - I guess some of them were kids? officials? - they knocked her out. But that wasn’t enough for people so they got a giant mechanical crane and hanged an elephant. If I was looking at a newspaper from another world it would be cool. I mean, it’s still kinda cool. Just because you can see how fucked up people are. M: Okay, back to Alexander and “oh my god a fucking elephant.” So anyway, the dust and the chariots and the sheer brazenness of this guy: he's fucking his mom, he's fucking the world, he’s like “fuck this shit I'ma take this too.” He died at 30. He’s a madman. “Hey elephant, fuck you.” And not in the way Alabama fucked the elephant. Actually, he probably would, he'd be like “build me a fucking crane and hang all the elephants.” For Alexander, he’s like a mythological figure - he can get away with that. But when you think about it, no one is ever going to look at Alabama and say “that’s rad, they hanged an elephant.” And then I decided that come would be everywhere. D: And then it was. M: [laughs] So the battlefield is covered in semen, and semen is getting all up in their chariot wheels, and what’s in the tents? More semen. And then I thought, well, what if he had to eat it? What if there was this contract. What if there were these chicks - they’re kinda like roadies and he’s a fucking rock god, and they know he’s immortal and they’re going to keep his secret. I mean, they have to - part of the contract. Then goddamn, they start to care, but at first it’s whatever. “Here, honey, he’s sleeping. You got it? It’s gotta be all of it.” [Michael tries to act it out] D: No. M: Oh come on. They’re all like this. [Keeps acting it out, laughing] M: And then like they make these come-bread crackers and he's like “fuck yeah!” and then he eats it. I wrote this before Two Girls One Cup, check the dates. I gotta step up the game, everything keeps getting taken. “This needs to get out; no more hiding behind spears.” So the method’s all - first we start with your kind of Harlequin romance - “loins”, you know, to ease you in -and a little bit more about her loins. “Okay, okay, that’s a higher-grade romance novel, still that’s fine. Oh shit he’s eating his own come. It’s still eating ‘his seed,’ we’re all good, I understand that. Oh collecting his climax, okay, we’re still fine here.” It’s really that dude from the Colovian west, shit, that’s when he just stands up, “Reman only rose to ejaculate on them all.” D: My favorite part of that is that "after years of training he can do this without hands." These clumsy knights of Colovia had no chance at all, splitting apart wetly as Shonni-Et whistled her spit like a carousel of blades, or folding like bone and paper as Sed-Yenna cracked great helms in the soft iron of her knee-hollows, and instead of asking the purpose of this betrayal from his vassals, Reman only rose to ejaculate on them as they fell, and after years of training in the Diblashuut he could do this without hands. This last gave the sisters pause and left one knight alive, though crushed and laced in red, and Reman was surprised to see them move from defending him to collecting his climax, though he thought no more of it than their desire to have him always in whole. He kneeled to the broken Colovian as his wives smeared themselves in their labors and said to him, "You have dishonored your station, me, and our dragons wise. Why did you attempt this and for whom?" He got back only a proud laughter the color of bruise and these cracked words from the restless West: "The Boy Crown Reman who lets priory girls fight his duels asks me this? That you have no idea why or wherefrom this sword issue came, this only underscores your unworthy claims of sovereignty and your misbegotten birth in dirt. You were just another rumor of snakes to us, it seemed, but after twelve years you have finally proved that here." Reman took the knight's helm off during this accusation to see the vulgar mouth more clearly, the lips and teeth that framed him to this barbaric angle, and then the Chim-el Adabal in his forehead erupted into balefire, saying, "None But Ourself". Reman then bit out the knight's teeth with his own, growling against and with this new-known power, worrying the lower jaw until it tore free, his hands held hard against the knight's flailing and now tongueless chokes, and his biting increased into a skipping blur until the knight's face exploded into his own. Reman then had two aspects himself, a red and ragged mask of the West hanging from temple to neck, and through its tears the glow of righteous Niben, and to Sed-Yenna and Shonni-Et he spoke in this manner, saying, "Tell me now what else does not believe in or belong to me." M: Yeah. [laughs] You know at that point that you probably need to stop reading. There’s blades in her [Shonni-Et’s] hair and Sed-Yenna, the older sister, is doing all this wuxia, hardass stuff, cracking plate armor with knee hollows. His head. “These fuckers!” One chick wuxia with soft style... but Sed-Yenna... you gotta ask: when they’re fucking who does what? D: And I'm sure you’ve asked yourself this. M: Fucking right I have. [laughs] We started with the romance, right, and moved to porn and I’ve gone further. Look up Bataille’s "The Eye." All right, properly frightened by now. Look at that fucking - dude [Bataille] looks like an American psycho, but he's French! I highly recommend that book. It fucked my brain up the first I read it. M: I think that’s mostly what I wanted to say. [laughs] M: This guy [the Colovian lord], he doesn’t know that he’s dead - even if he's dead it’s all very Nordic, years after they’ve become Colovian, and Reman’s like “what’s up, motherfucker that I just came on”. So he's [Reman] only had one fucking line up til now - two? - and then he says this other one, and cause he’s eating this dude - and not even nicely - and his [the Colovian’s] head is vibrating so fucking fast that it just explodes. I'm saying, right there, do you like explosions of liquid cause here comes one. They’re all like what the fuck. Everything I see in this section, it’s gone from this beautiful jungle period. It’s not even sunset anymore, everything is this ugly shade of pink, like blood spilled into milk. So what does Reman do? He’s like “fuck all y’all.” He's gloving them, fucking them in the throat from inside. He just ate a dude's face off. Suddenly, he's rubbing their throats from the inside. He must have some stretchy fractal fingers that get all through the things. We don't really get through the thing, and suddenly they’re coming and suddenly scene. And he's still fucking 13. D: 12. He is coronated at 13. M: In such a majestic way. [laughs] Now he’s Caligula. But not like weak tee-hee Caligula. He’s still got the Alexander shit going on. You can notice that in the outline. I think in the cut part of the 3rd edition Pocket Guide to the Empire, where the Daedric lords were talked about, it was mentioned that Sanguine frequented Reman’s court. Later he was like “I’m out, man.” [Attempt at a groan sound of Sanguine’s for effect] Reman out-Daedra’d the Daedra. The summer of his thirteenth saw the assembled lords of Colovia having offered their swords to the lowest step of the throne of White-Gold, Reman naked save for paint, with an idiot chorus to his godsblood left and a quartet of heavy-horned minotaur teamsters to his godsblood right, and his wives entwined around his legs, and a crown of crows in a stately arc about his brow-embedded jewel. It was unseemly hot in the chamber, with maidens and viziers and emissaries and animals asleep or even dead on its tiles or in cool corners, and risen things waved insect wings as fans, stirring the scents of moth-clouds down in a dust that clung to skins and sometimes changed them. No one had said a word since the kings and counts of the West swore out their oaths that morning. The sun broke across the glassworks and made a steam of the collected sweat. The Imperator then stirred, and Shonni-Et made move to love him, with now Sed-Yenna cleaning his feet with sponge-felts from the Pyadon. And Reman gave his acquiesce, willing his blood into brandy for his younger wife to drink, and when one of the lords of Colovia, the Kvetchi, hissed out an impatience it so unnerved the beggar-king of Bruhmaht that the latter beheaded him without rising, placing his sword back quickly on the steps, its blood now drawing sweet-flies from the tails of the the teamsters. M: Now look what he can do. It’s not water into wine anymore. He’s making brandy out of blood. So don’t tell me again "it doesn’t work that way," you’re kinda in it now. It’s really the “oven of all earth” at that point. As much as Akatosh gets a bad rep, I don’t think that’s what he meant when he said he’d [Reman] be the lord of the imperial earth. He didn’t mean that he’d be actually sitting in the oven of the earth like this. I don't think he meant that. Lorkhan is... I don't know. M: That’s the point where you’ve decided whether or not if you’re going to keep reading this. You’re either like “eerr, can this get better?” and you already know it’s not going to. Or you’ve bounced even before then. But here - there’s this human need for the hero to redeem himself, even your worst anti-hero. This is one of the founders of the Empire. He brought back the Amulet of Kings. “I know he had a son, or not, I know there’s a descendant. What does the Empire as a whole think of this shit?” They probably make this other Sancre Tor, it would actually become as it was in Oblivion. “We'll keep these books around, I like the one with the pig, that one’s good. That one where that dude was fucking a hill, that’s crazy, that’s mythological, that’s great, but this other shit? Nuuh, we're not telling anybody this shit.” M: The last thing that I wanted to say is that if we really are writing sadism porn now, what the fuck is going to happen when certain characters that we’ve known before, like the Mane, we’ve never seen Dibella - she’s never really been portrayed in any good way, I think-- and like Vivec. His Morag Tong kills Reman. You know this if you know stuff about Tamriel. And like Vivec not hiding behind the metaphors - I mean, some of that will be in there, but now you’re in this sadism porn crazed book and Vivec is going to show up. D: That sounds like it’s going to go very, very wrong. M: It’s not going to be “Michael is going to write this and it’s going to be like ‘haha it could be this thing.’” By this point it’s Michael writing porn about Vivec... it’s going to be be pretty epic in the worst way possible, I think.