Lore talk:Imperial Battlemages

Distinctions between the Imperial Guard and The Shadow Legion

Where does it say that the Shadow Legion is Battlemages? I asked a question about the Shadow Legion and where they are on TESLore, and got an answer of "The imperial guard=the shadow legion" Reading the intro to battlespire, I am conflicted on this point. In the Battlespire intro, it is said, "How a young hero from obscure origins entered the Battlespire, proving ground and testing facility for the shadow legion, the imperial guard, and finding his test was more than he bargained for." I can't tell whether that says that it's a testing facility for the shadow legion and the guard or a testing ground for "the shadow legion, in other words, the imperial guard." So is there any other sources? Should we be renaming this page to Lore:Battlemages to make the distinction clear? Lessetti (talk) 06:31, 31 March 2018 (UTC)

It's the way the voice actor said "the shadow legion, the imperial guard" that made me think they were the same; After a reread of the Battlespire Athenaeum excerpt I've changed my mind: the Battlespire is used as a training facility for both The Shadow Legion (prospective battlemages) and the Imperial Guard.

To answer your reddit question, I have no doubt the empire has battlemages by the 4th era-- how many do they have? where are they trained? is the Shadow Legion still a thing? Without the Imperial Guard connection, I've no clue ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ -TheRockWithAMedicineCupOnHisHead (talk) 08:09, 31 March 2018 (UTC)

The way the sentence is constructed, the 'shadow legion' is just a term describing the Imperial Guard. Based on the other materials, the Battlespire both serves as a college for Battlemages to serve in the Legions, and it offers a gauntlet test for Imperial Guard candidates. (Replying purely for posterity) --Lost in Hyrule (talk) 21:34, 28 February 2020 (GMT)

I dunno what I was smoking six years ago. All sources from the Battlespire era lore indicate that the Imperial Guard / the Shadow Legion and the Imperial Battlemages are one and the same. TheRockWithAMedicineCupOnHisHead (talk) 00:05, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

Imperial Battlemages College?

A mod for Oblivion - Cutting Room Floor - restores a location called Imperial Battlemages College, which has two buildings, a guard-tower, and two or three training areas. Since CRF restores content instead of adding new one, shouldn't this at least be mentioned on the page?--87.255.89.160 00:40, 4 March 2020 (GMT)

Agreed that it should be mentioned, it's also referenced in-game in the Guide to Cheydinhal which means its canon anyways, not to mention most of the "cut" stuff is purely due to restraints of the hardware of the time. Imperialbattlespire (talk) 08:18, 4 March 2020 (GMT)

On further inspection, the Imperial Battle College is actually mentioned elsewhere too, in Assassination! and Elderscrolls.com Archive/The Elder Scrolls - 10th Anniversary, "Communications have been lost with the Battlespire, the Imperial Battle College's elite training center in a pocket realm in the vast chaotic emptiness of Oblivion. An agent, an acquaintance, is sent to investigate. She doesn't report back. So they send you." This should be mentioned on both this page and the Battlespires page. Imperialbattlespire (talk) 09:29, 4 March 2020 (GMT)

We can certainly mention these things, but cut content is generally relegated to Notes sections. We cannot be certain which pieces were cut due to time constraints or later deciding not to pursue certain ideas. Of course, as stuff is added, we can refine it, so feel free!--Lost in Hyrule (talk) 13:32, 4 March 2020 (GMT)

As an aside, the mod in question (Oblivion Uncut I'm presuming) does not simply restore existing official content. A lot of it is new and therefore does not belong in lorespace. —Legoless (talk) 21:49, 4 March 2020 (GMT)

Adding on to this, there is no indication the Battle College would have appeared in-game. The Oblivion Uncut mod invented the location and its placement in the world, inferring off its mention in the Cheydinhal guide book. —TheRockWithAMedicineCupOnHisHead (talk) 20:52, 28 July 2024 (UTC)

Merging Imperial Battlemages and Imperial Guard

So are these articles going to be merged or not? It's been quite a long time since that merge message was placed on both articles. Btw, I support the merge too. --KevinM^(talk) 05:06, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

It's been less than three months since the proposal was added from what I can see. I oppose the merge and I can't really understand the angle for merging the two to begin with. Presumably this is due to the wording of the Battlespire intro narration which refers to the "imperial guard" when describing Imperial battlemages. Aside from that conflation, I can't see the logic behind a merge. The Imperial Battlemages are a distinct faction that have appeared as recently as August 2021, and "Imperial Guard" is a term which has been bandied about quite a bit over the years. For instance, in the context of Oblivion, the Imperial Guard are the Legion's watchmen and city guards, not its battlemages. To me, such a merge would require a lot of work and would result in two distinct articles being converted into an overly long and conflated account of contradictory sources.

I think Lore:Imperial Battlemage of Tamriel is an excellent counterargument to this instinct to merge all this info onto one page. Originally, this page contained info on both the Elder Council position as well as Legion battlemages. I think that arrangement made sense, and I think "Imperial Battlemage of Tamriel" is kind of a poor choice of article title, but there's no doubt our coverage of the two topics has benefitted from the split. —⁠Legoless (talk) 13:28, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

From a cursory glance at both articles, I am leaning towards opposing the merge. The Imperial Guard article seems to differentiate it from the broader “guards” category used in Oblivion, but it still seems clear that the Guard are simply the elite defenders of the Emperor. Meanwhile, the battlemages article seems to describe the type of unit within the Legion. While there is overlap, the two don’t seem to be the same. For instance, the Imperial Battlemages were used to fight Umbriel, which has nothing to do with specifically defending the Emperor. Meanwhile, Allena Benoch was a jaqspur, and not a battlemage, despite being the leader of the Guard. The only connection outside of the abundance of notable battlemages within the Guard is the shared training at the Battlespire. But the Battlemages article specially differentiates the two by saying the Guard also trained there, and the Guard article describes many knights and guards that have nothing to do with being a battlemage. Thus, I think the two articles describe different groups and shouldn’t be merged. BananaKing5 (talk) 01:37, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

Ah darn, I dislike that this website does not have super fancy sophisticated notification system to tell me when stuff I prompt gets debated on talk pages, makes it look like I didn't bother to defend my motion like a jerk. The context of Battlespire and specifically the Battlespire Athenaeum makes a strong case for the Imperial Guard directly being the source and the formal orginzation of the Empire's battlemages -- there is no differentiation between the Imperial Guard and the Battlemages in Battlespire, and I have yet to see a newer context that actually separates them. The differentiation referred to in the articles BananaKing brought up is derived from user generated explanations (more like guesses) that have been grandfathered into lorespace over the years without all the proper sources being exhausted in research. When I get some time later in the day, I'll explain myself further with the proper quotations and sources. Cheers, —TheRockWithAMedicineCupOnHisHead (talk) 20:46, 28 July 2024 (UTC)

Merging Imperial Battlemages and Imperial Battlemage of Tamriel

Do you believe that all the information from the article 'Imperial Battlemage of Tamriel' should be merged with the article 'Imperial Battlemages'? If you want my opinion on this matter I believe the info from the latter would fit nicely within the former --KevinM^(talk) 04:23, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

I disagree with merging the two as they have little to do with each other apart from the name. Imperialbattlespire (talk) 14:02, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

I've already explained why I believe this split to have been a good idea in the discussion above. —⁠Legoless (talk) 14:16, 9 June 2024 (UTC)