Lore:Spinners

A Spinner

The Spinners are Bosmeri priests and historians, who record the story of their people—past, present, and even future. Principally associated with Y'ffre, Storyteller and chief god in the Bosmeri pantheon, Spinners may serve other gods in their quest for historical knowledge. They seek to maintain all Bosmeri history, culture, and laws, usually in the form of stories or metaphors, which can be difficult to comprehend but always ultimately correct. Thus, they serve as highly-influential advisors and bards, as well as helping to enforce Y'ffre's Green Pact. The most talented among them can utterly ensnare listeners within their story as a potent illusion, casting them as a character within the tale and thus influencing their emotions. It is said that Spinners travel nowhere except when carried by others, never moving under their own power.

Spinners believe that Y'ffre sings through them as they tell their stories. Their tales are believed to be "echoes and echoes of songs He once sang, of threads woven by his throat into tapestries ingrained in the minds of [the] faithful", and are spun in terms of "whens" rather than "whats". This "Now" of the songs that fill the Spinners considers the seas and skies of Mundus and Aetherius. Upon the death of a revered spinner, a skin drum is occasionally commissioned to celebrate the spinner's life.

Notes

• Phrastus of Elinhir claims that the Greenspeakers and Spinners are not mutually exclusive but if one wanted to become a Greenshaper, they do not need to become a Priest of Y'ffre like a spinner.
• Spinners is the local term for priests of Y'ffre in Valenwood. In High Rock, they are called Vicars of Jephre.
• Wardens are believed by some to be a group of militant Spinners, though this is thought to be an inaccuracy resulting from a lack of proper academic rigor.
• Bosmer priests known as Namespinners can perceive protonymics of other people, and unweave it slightly and then chant a new suffix into it in order to alter the physical form of a person. This ability can be used to give antlers to Bosmer who are deemed worthy of this decoration.
• The Infinite Archive's keepers held great reverence for the oral traditions of Bosmeri Spinners and Reachfolk Vateshrans, yet they refrained from storing these traditions directly. Instead, they were only documented in the archive when transcribed by external parties or presented as observational writings from scholars, or notes designed to aid performers in optimizing their acts. However, this indirect approach often led to a loss in the translation process, rendering these traditions more obscure in the eyes of Hermaeus Mora's archive.

See Also

• For game-specific information, see the Elder Scrolls Online article.

Books

• The Green Singing — The ritual incantation of a Spinner of Y'ffre