This week on Written in Uncertainty, we’re discussing one of the places that is at the edge of sight in Tamriel, almost there and almost not. A place that comes from a tale of razors, monkeys and fire alarms. Today we’re asking, what is Lyg?
Before we begin, my usual disclaimer: this is my own understanding of Lyg, and not necessarily the whole truth of the matter, definitely not the whole truth of it, although I’ll do my best to bring in other viewpoints as well. You may have other ideas that are just as valid.
That’s perhaps truer of Lyg than anything I’ve discussed so far on this podcast, as Lyg appears in very few places in the lore, but has had a ton of speculation made about what it could be or how it could work. It does also mean that I’ll be taking potentially questionable sources as though they are not deliberately trying to mislead, which may not be the case. However, as with my discussion of CHIM, we cannot dismiss them out of hand if we are to have anything to discuss at all.
Lyg is… strange. It’s a there-not there reality that seems to exist somewhere in Tamriel’s past and/or future, and runs alongside it. It’s only mentioned by name a mere handful of times, most notably in the Commentaries on the Mysterium Xarxes, and been called the Adjacent Place in the 36 Lessons.
Possibly the most succinct definition of Lyg comes from Michael Kirkbride (MK) in his Reddit AMA:
Lyg: it’s one of the Adjacent Places. It’s still there. I wouldn’t call it a different kalpa so much as a parallel version of Tamriel.
As well as this in another Reddit thread:
Lyg is a backwards coffee stain of Tamriel, I already told you that. One time Nirn got folded up, folded space-style ala Dune Spice Navigators. Lyg is the result.
Lyg IRL
So Lyg is a parallel version of Tamriel, one that is alongside (adjacent to) it. From what we can tell, it has quite a sophisticated and bizarre vision of its own. It has oceans, which seem to be nations, towers, and various other bits of goodness that I’ll get to in a bit. But first, I want to duck into the real-world origins of this thing.
On the Apocrypha Arcaneum Wiki, we have an account that I’ve also heard the Selectives Lorecast discuss. It’s too long to quote directly, I’d recommend reading it yourself, but the following events happened:
- The Bethesda dev team meet to discuss the future of Tamriel, and draw out an annotated map as part of the discussion.
- Someone spills their coffee on the map, which then gets scrunched up and thrown in the bin, possibly following arguments about the nature of Tamriel.
- The fire alarm goes off, going LYGALYGALYGALYG.
- Part way through the evacuation, someone remembers the map and scoops up the whole bin, taking it out. It is now wet from the sprinklers, as well as the coffee.
- They dug through the bin and retrieved the map, which was only readable now when it was held up to the light. Or, in other words, it was readable only from underneath.
So that’s how Lyg happened in the real world, a mixture of coffee, water and changed perspective on what Tamriel could be. One that was folded up, stained with coffee and is now only viewable in reverse (or from underneath).
What are Adjacent Places?
Going back to MK’s original quote, Adjacent Places are parallel version of Tamriel, which seem to exist alongside it. This is seemingly different to the way that Oblivion and Mundus interact, despite one possibly overlaying the other, and also differs from places like Vivec’s Provisional House and the slipstream in which the Battlespires resided. Quite how this connects to Tamriel I’m not sure, but there are connections to be made; Sermon 26 of the 36 Lessons notes that the Grabbers:
came into the world sideways, [from the Adjacent Place] the slave talking having disrupted the normal non-cardinal points
This suggests some sort of sideways-like movement, “walking at strange angles” maybe, to look at it from a Redguard point of view. However, that would mean that Lyg is possibly another kalpa (as the Redguards possibly are from), which is not the case if we follow MK’s quote from earlier. This is also backed up to a degree from a quote from volume 4 the Commentaries on the Mysterium Xarxes:
Deny not that these days shall come again, my novitiates! For as Mehrunes threw down Lyg and cracked his face, declaring each of the nineteen and nine and nine oceans Free, so shall he crack the serpent crown of the Cyrodiils and make federation!
This has been taken by several fans to imply that Lyg is a previous kalpa, particularly the “nineteen and nine oceans” part. This links to the parts in the Sermons that imply that the dreugh are from a previous kalpa. That passage feels like something similar, particularly in the sense of “these days shall come again”. If certain events happen again and again in particular kalpas (which we have some hints of in the Seven Fights of the Aldudagga), then Lyg as described in this passage could be a previous kalpa.
This has implications for how kalpas work. I have made an episode on kalpas, so listen to that if you want the details, but this it in brief, so that we’re on the same page:
Kalpas are cycles of beginning and destruction of Mundus. This seemingly resets to the point where the et’ada decide to make Mundus again. Texts like Shor Son of Shor make us think these are sequential, but if Lyg is another kalpa, then it is clear that kalpas can happen at the same time, and interact, if the Grabbers can come to Tamriel from the Adjacent Place.
Before we leave the idea of Adjacent Places, I’d like to consider what I think is a possibility that’s hinted at in ESO: Summerset. Alongside Elder Scrolls: Online’s general disclosure that Mundus is a multiverse, Sotha Sil’s dialogue claims that “The Crystal Tower exists on multiple planes of reality simultaneously”, an idea with a pedigree that goes right back to Arena. These planes could also include Lyg, which means that the Crystal Tower could be a way of reaching across to Lyg. But that’s purely my own speculation at this point.
Lyg and Tamriel
We could also get incredibly picky at this point (hey, it’s what I do!) and note that Lyg is compared as a parallel version of Tamriel, not of Mundus. Does that mean that it’s part of Mundus? I don’t think we have a direct answer anywhere, but it’s another small point I thought worth mentioning. This, to an extent, would tie it to Mundus, which I can see as possible, but not necessarily entirely right. We also have a note that Lyg is “the domain of the Upstart who Vanishes”, which is a clear nod to Lorkhan, the Missing God. If Lyg is part of Mundus, then it is his domain by default. I’ve seen this interpretation in a few places, but I don’t think it’s the whole story. I’ll get to that later, however.
There are various other claims that Lyg is tied to events on Tamriel. The Magna Ge are said to have made Mehrunes Dagon “in the bowels of Lyg”, if the Commentaries on the Mysterium Xarxes are accurate. That would place Lyg as a place that influences the past, and possibly happened before the current kalpa. Various fans have, however, taken the metaphor of Lyg being a screwed up version of Tamriel and run with it. In particular, the notion that Lyg is a “backwards coffee stain of Tamriel”. If Lyg impacted the past of Tamriel, and is backwards, that means that those events, or maybe the events of Tamriel, are in Lyg’s future.
To back this up, we also have this quote from u/Mojonation1487, who’s written a fair bit on Lyg that has influenced how it gets talked about. The bit most relevant to our current discussion is this:
Despair not for the failed birth of Twil. As the ships of Yokuda sailed East, so Lyg bleeds West, challenging the totems of the previous age.
The idea of Lyg bleeding west suggests that it’s potentially east of Tamriel in some sort of geographic sense, and this is definitely using the West = the past, East = the future as a reference point here. Note the term “bleeds” as well, this gets talked about to reference where Lyg overlaps with Tamriel, and the two places can interact. Exactly how bleeds work is unclear, but if we take Vivec at hir word that the Grabbers came from Lyg to Tamriel, it is possible to travel between to the two.
u/kingjoe64 did a beautiful rendition of the possible implications of Lyg being in the future and bending back in this thread. This essentially makes Mundus a mobius strip, that twists back on itself.
I think this is backed up by the way that Mankar talks about some of the symbols of Lyg elsewhere in the commentaries. Mehrunes “declared the nineteen-and-nine oceans free”, and we also have this quote from later in the Commentaries:
the Mundex Terrene was once ruled over solely by the tyrant dreugh-kings, each to their own dominion, and borderwars fought between their slave oceans
If the nations are the oceans, it’s possible that Mankar believes that “Mundus Terrene” is Lyg, further linking the two.
Lyg and the Et’ada
If this is the case, then it has some fascinating implications for the Daedra, and seems to implicate Mehrunes, the Magna Ge and Lorkhan. I’ll go through each of these in turn.
Mehrunes, as we know already, was made in Lyg, but is also implicated in some sort of revolution on Lyg. He “ declared the nineteen-and-nine oceans free”, which seems entirely in line with his sphere of revolution. Whether Mehrunes the Razor was then punished by the Ge for what he did, or it was done for some other reason isn’t clear, but the experience certainly changed him. It’s notable here that it’s “Mehrunes the Razor” that was made, not Mehrunes Dagon. I also remember references to “the devil Dagon”, as distinct from Mehrunes, but can’t find them at the moment. The Seven Fights of the Aldudagga do claim that the Leaper Demon King was turned into Dagon by Alduin, but that did not happen in Lyg. So Lyg is a part of Mehrunes Dagon’s history, but not the whole of it. Part of it, possibly, lies with another Et’ada.
Lyg, as I mentioned earlier, is the domain of the “upstart who vanishes”, who is Lorkhan. There is also a fantastic theory posted recently, penned by u/emmerson44, and it’s turned my understanding of Lyg a little upside down, which is why I’ve saved it until last.
In essence, it suggests that Lyg is the moons. Several texts, like The Lunar Lorkhan and Sithis, suggest that Lorkhan had a domain before the creation of Mundus. That domain is Lyg, fitting the description Camoran gives. In this model, Lyg is similar to Tamriel because the visionary who set Tamriel in motion already had a design in mind, which is Lyg. Lyg is therefore a prototype of Tamriel. There are many other parallels which u/emmerson44 draws, and I’m not totally sure I swallow all of them; for one thing it diminishes the role of Magnus severely, but I urge you to check that theory out. It ties together a lot of loose ends into a systematic whole, puts some interesting spins on the events of Lyg as we know them, linking them to events on Mundus in the Dawn Era, as well as portraying Kyne and Meridia and Bal and Dagon as mirror-opposites in relation to Lyg and Tamriel, which fits the nature of Lyg as a fundamentally mirror-image and flipped upside down place.
So what is Lyg actually like?
We don’t know a huge amount about what Lyg is like, although the ability to declare “the Nineteen-and-Nine oceans free” implies that many of Lyg’s inhabitants exist underwater, and we have multiple nations. Unless of course the mention of waters is entirely metaphorical, which I think may be the case.
Slight tangent – water is possibly memory in TES, and so oceans, being large repositories of memory, may simply be a metaphor for states themselves, as they store up national histories etc. However, it could be literal water, as there’s a fairly common idea that you can find Dreugh in Lyg, although this isn’t specifically mentioned anywhere. I think it’s to do with the notion of Lyg being a previous kalpa, and Dreugh tied to that.
Lyg also has towers and other constructions in the Commentaries on the Mysterium Xarxes. This is in a bit of a contrast to how the Adjacent Place gets described in the 36 Lessons, which explicitly states that “the Grabbers have never made a city of their own”. If we take this with the structures talked about in the Commentaries, then we either have a contradiction, or simply that there is more than just the Grabbers living in Lyg. Exactly what these other people are isn’t clear – we just get names mentioned, without reference to any kind of race.
We also get an idea that, for at least part of Lyg, I think it must have been a strictly hierarchical society. There are slaves and kings. However, we also have “Towers of CHIM-EL GHARJYG”. Now, we don’t have GHARJYG strictly attested anywhere with a direct translation, but if we take GHAR as a shortening of GHARTOK, meaning weapon, and JYG and a shortening of JYGGALAG, we have something like [royalty/kings] of order-weapon, or weaponised order, something like that. This is also connected to the “Templars of the Upstart”, so it’s possible that they are supporting the same society. Simply from this, I think we have a reiteration of u/emmerson’s theory – that the Upstart (Lorkhan) had templars and enforcers of his will suggests that it is his realm all the more, to me.
Lyg and Nu-Mantia
As a final part, I think I need to mention Nu-Mantia, as Lyg one of the places where the word comes up. It’s equated with liberty in the Commentaries, and so we get links to the real world Numantia – a Nubian city that the Romans tried to negotiate into becoming slaves, but instead of that the inhabitants slaughtered the diplomats and then most of the city committed suicide rather than become slaves. We can see something similar happening in Lyg – Dagon “cracked [Lyg’s] face”, and the free slaves engaged in a lot of destruction. Freedom and death being linked together. The concept of the Amaranth, which I’ve discussed previously, is called the “subgradient of mortal death” in the Loveletter from the Fifth Era.
The Loveletter also describes Nu-Mantia as “the road to Liberty”, which is telling, given that it is named after a city that literally chose to die than become slaves. In this case, the subgradient of mortal death is Liberty, the “wailing knowing free will”, which is also linked to events in Lyg in some way. I don’t think this means that the inhabitants of Lyg necessarily achieved Amaranth, but the parallels are there enough for me to think that it’s a possibility, from the little we have. Or, maybe, they’re reeling from the effects of Nu-Mantia, a way of breaking free from everything.
And that’s all that I’ve got to say on the nature of Lyg. It’s a place that’s involved in vast amounts of dimensional folding, and the past-cum-future of Mundus. And it’s been a ferment of several ideas in The Elder Scrolls lore community, that I haven’t had the time to cover here. I’d recommend checking out the work of u/mojonation1487 and u/potatosaurusrex on the subject, they add a lot of more depth to the place than we already have, giving it more context and more history.
Next time, having dipped our toes into some of the weirdness that is possibly the future of Tamriel, we’re going to take a look at the most well-known and possibly weirdest future of them all. Next time we’re asking, what is C0DA?
