Lore:Predecessors

Cylarne, the oldest ruin in the Shivering Isles

The Predecessors were the mortal inhabitants of the Shivering Isles in bygone eras, whose civilizations were wiped out by the cycle of the Greymarch. They are responsible for the many ancient ruins that dot the realm.

History

The majority of the scholarly research on the Predecessors was carried out by Yngvar the Wanderer (later called Yngvar Doom-Sayer), an itinerant madman best known for traveling the realm to warn his fellow citizens of the impending Greymarch at the end of the Third Era. By studying the realm's many ruins, Yngvar noticed a consistent pattern relating to the depth of strata covering the buried portions of the structures, the weathering of the exposed stone, and the growth of vegetation around the ruins, among many other factors. He set out these findings in his unpublished monograph Dating the Predecessor Ruins: Shocking New Evidence Comprehensively Explained, and summarized the theory in his more widely-published work The Predecessors: the ruins in the Shivering Isles are separated in age by exactly 1,000 years, suggesting a cycle of destruction similar to the legend of the Greymarch where Jyggalag invades and destroys the realm at the end of every era.

Little is known of the Predecessors aside from the blasted and tumbled stones of the mighty cities they left behind. Yngvar determined that the ruins of Ebrocca are among the youngest in the realm, dating back to the previous Greymarch. The ruins of Cylarne, rumored to be the original capital of the Shivering Isles, are the oldest ruins in the Isles, many thousands of years separated from any of the other ruins extant on the surface. Yngvar believed this suggested that the ruins from many earlier eras lie waiting to be discovered, or were lost to the ravages of time. The exception to this is Vitharn, whose mortal inhabitants were cursed by Sheogorath to relive their final moments as undead and whose history is therefore relatively well-documented. Many of the ruins possess dangerous magical and mechanical traps, as well as depictions of Lord Sheogorath and the Isle's native fauna.

Like all mortal inhabitants of the Isles, the Predecessors were not necessarily subject to the passage of time and lived according to the whims of Lord Sheogorath. There is at least one instance of a mortal surviving a previous Greymarch and living to see the next.

Notably, madness ore congeals within the subterranean depths of Predecessor Ruins. Said to be formed from the spirits of ancient souls (or the minds of heroic madmen), this supple ore has traditionally been worked by the master smiths of Crucible. Grummites have a strange attraction to madness ore, which leads them to leave their aquatic environments and take up occupation of many such ruins.

Predecessor Ruins

• Aichan
• Cann
• Cylarne
• Ebrocca
• Fain
• Gardens of Flesh and Bone
• Milchar
• Vitharn
• Xaselm
• Xavara
• Xeddefen
• Xedilian
• Xiditte
• Xirethard

Gallery

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  Xaselm, a ruin in Dementia (Shivering Isles)

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  A trap within Ebrocca's subterranean halls (Shivering Isles)

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  Madness ore within a ruin (Shivering Isles)

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  Ciirta, a mortal who survived the Greymarch (Shivering Isles)

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  A ghostly fanatic from Vitharn (Legends)

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  Madness armor (Skyrim Creation Club)

Notes

• Although superficially similar in appearance to the realm's other ruins, the Howling Halls were originally a Tamrielic structure. Similarly, the Daedric strongholds of Brellach and Pinnacle Rock are not listed here, as mortals are forbidden to enter.