Lore talk:Magnus (sorceror-king)

Merging back with Magnus

We discussed the privately but couldn't come to an agreement. I personally believe this page should be just be covered in a special section on the Magnus page as "existence as mortal" or "mortal manifestation" or "legends of mortality" or something like that. We all know the artifact associated characters were elevated to be the god characters in later games. I feel like acting like he's a manifestation seperate enough for his own article only overcomplicates things, and I don't like the potential precedent itself for other mentions of Gods existing as mortals. Magnus' page itself needs improvement. -Tarponpet (talk) 15:20, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

Agreed. The whole concept of the Aedra and the Ehlnofey being "our ancestors" is that there isn't a clear divide between mortal and divine. Besides, everything we have about "Sorceror-King Magnus" isn't preclusive of also being Divine Magnus anyway. --Enodoc (talk) 16:10, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

While I generally never like to see a lore page get deleted. I do think consolidation is appropriate in some cases. In the case of the Magnus of Arena/Daggerfall and the Magnus of every other entry since, I’m not sure we have enough to justify a page split. I would disagree with Enodoc that the Sorcerer King Magnus has no defining attributes of his own. Namely the idea of this Magnus having a death doesn’t seem consistent with our understanding of Magnus the god. On the other hand, Sorceror King Magnus is credited with the creation of the Staff of Magnus, with the staff serving as their metaphysical battery, this is identical to our understanding of Magnus the god. I think the sorcerer king of Arena is an avatar or manifestation of some sorts but unfortunately we lack a lot of info about them. My preference would be to keep all of the information on the one, single Magnus page, but if we keep this page I still think the Arena information should be covered in full on the Magnus deity page. Dcking20 (talk) 18:25, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

I do believe the information on this page can be consolidated onto the deity page, given that it is a retcon that changed Magnus from a person to a god, and the human Magnus hasn't been mentioned since. Ultimately I do not have much of a preference, and would be fine if the page remained as is as well. The Rim of the Sky (talk) 18:37, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

Tarponet and Dcking and I have debated this topic extensively in private (admittedly, I got rather grumpy with them throughout that process, but I will try to avoid that here as much as possible and just make as reasonable an argument as I can in a kindly fashion yo). I'll lay out my full logic here, and y'all feel free to voice your disagreements. It'll make our documentation better in the long run by having had a good debate over it.

I think everyone agrees this info should be documented, it's just a matter of where and how; as I understand it, the root of the disagreement is about whether or not mortal incarnations of gods should be delineated in any way from lore pages about the gods themselves. Personally, my stance is that the Sorceror-King here and the god Magnus should have separate lore pages, for a number of reasons...

While there are vast similarities and connections with the deities, mortal incarnations of deities are not the deities themselves. Even if in-world people conflate them.

Now, the Arena dialogue itself does not offer any inkling that the Sorceror-King is literally the deity that was invented for later games by Michael Kirkbride (who created gods using the names and characters behind the artifacts under the notion that gods and heroes are always conflated in religion). We know for a fact that the primordial godly Magnus was around far before Magnus the Sorceror-King (as the Blades were only founded somewhere around the later Second Era). However, the Sorceror-King is granted responsibility for creating the Staff of Magnus in Arena and Daggerfall's dialogue, and we know for a fact that the Staff is associated with the primordial Magnus. We also know from Kirkbride's commentary that Magnus the god would not have existed without Magnus the Sorceror-King, so we know for sure that these two are inherently linked figures. So why then exactly are they worth separating in terms of lore articles?

First off, while we do have Kirkbride's commentary on the artifact dudes turned into deities, we don't have any in-world evidence that these figures are actually conflated, other than that the Sorceror-King/Arch-Mage is credited with creating the Staff in Arena and Daggerfall: which coming from an in-world dialogue, would logically mean the people in the world at least conflate the creator of the staff with the Sorceror-King, but that is not conclusive evidence for them being literally the same. I also heard arguments that the content surrounding the Sorceror-King should be considered "deprecated" because of the deity's introduction, but that judgement seems rather arbitrary and not based on any creator commentary or in-world evidence, other than it "seeming" outdated, but that's not a reason to treat it as "incorrect content." There is additional creator commentary from Ted Peterson on this matter (which can be read here: https://www.imperial-library.info/content/ted-peterson-high-rock-and-summerset-legendary-edition) saying that: in his opinion the characters behind the artifacts mentioned in Arena and Daggerfall are just people that share the same names as the gods -- but that doesn't come from an in-world source, and I'm not sure if Peterson was clued in on Kirkbride's design intent with making the original characters into gods. Additionally, Varieties of Faith mentions that Magnus usually only "lends" his power to powerful mortals, not that he typically comes down as an avatar or a ghost; I think under that presented paradigm, you would have to assume that the Sorceror-King was a person before and either assumed the mantle of Magnus, or was born a mortal incarnate of Magnus. Either way, while very much linked to the god, the Sorceror-King is not the god himself. This is especially highlighted by the fact that the character dies a mortal death. There are many mortal incarnates of gods in the series which are flesh and blood, but are not the gods themselves (Tiber Septim and Lorkhan, Pelinal and Shor, and on).

I have also seen arguments that splitting the mortal from the god sets a bad precedent for other lore pages (which is wrong to start with since we handle everything on a case by case basis anyway) bearing similar mortal/immortal dichotomies and makes things "confusing." I would consider the Magnus situation at the least to be a unique case: it's not just a matter of an old folk hero from the Mythic Eras now being worshipped as an ancestor deity, it is a modern (let's say "hero") "incarnation" or "power lended" individual.

All that said, the above paragraphs provide more than enough evidence and logical reasoning to treat these as separate entities in my view. Most of the argumentation I've seen simply dislikes that this page doesn't have "enough content" to warrant its own article separate from Magnus, like say Tiber Septim and Pelinal -- but to me that makes its independence as a page even more imperative, if this lore is shuffled in with the entire Magnus the god lore page, the potential significance of the mortal Magnus becomes watered down and hidden in all the other information, and as we know from Tiber and Pelinal, the actions of the mortal are not necessarily descriptive of the actions of the god.

I agree with the solution of hosting this information both on this page, and on the Magnus page itself. --TheRockWithAMedicineCupOnHisHead (talk) 23:30, 27 December 2024 (UTC)