Lore talk:Night Mother

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Weirdness in 2920 and Morrowind[edit]

Could it be that the Dark Brotherhood and Morag Tong were not yet split during 2920, and Severa Magia is not the Night Mother, but is the Listener, simply called the Night Mother by a Morag Tong official with little understanding of the Brotherhood? Just pointing these things out. They may be worth adding later. 32.155.60.50 19:36, 11 October 2008 (EDT)

You may want to add that in the tomb of the night mother you actually do find the bones of her "children" this may add more to the litteral translation of her station as mother. I have also hypotosized that she could have been a thievs guild member who over saw the formation of the Dark Brotherhood and sealed such a pact by offering her (or any) children as the first sacrafice to Sithis. She is obviously not Mephala unless Mephala asumes the form of a specter.(98.214.191.32 02:01, 28 January 2009 (EST))
IRRC the schism occurred as a result of the banning of the Morag Tong in response to Reman's murder, so no, the Dark Brotherhood was not in existence in the First Era.Temple-Zero 15:06, 29 January 2009 (EST)

Add Link[edit]

Should a link to the /Oblivion:The_Night_Mother page be added here? --Lilbacchant 22:38, 5 May 2009 (EDT)

?[edit]

Isn't the Morrowind game set BEFORE the Events of Oblivion? So when the night mother in morrowind is killed she might have been moved to Bravil in the Crypt, this could explain how the Oblivion Night mother now lives in there--VergilSparda 20:51, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Children in Oblivion[edit]

Okay, so I've read a couple articles and they say the only place to find children in Oblivion is in the Night Mother's tomb. Why is this so? It says for obvious reasons, but I can only come up with the fact that you could kill them easily to get into the Dark Brotherhood. Can anyone think of some more reasons? For some reason it really bugs me... :\ 68.19.180.138 18:55, 17 January 2010 (UTC)Oblivion Nerd

Not ACTUAL Children, just their skeletons, they cannot be looted so they are really just part of the decorations--VergilSparda 18:56, 17 January 2010 (UTC)
See here, the same topic is there. --S'drassa T2M 18:58, 17 January 2010 (UTC)
There are no children in the game because they would be killable, thus meaning that bethesda could be sued for glorifying child murder— Unsigned comment by 218.250.10.200 (talk) on 6 February 2010
Actually, Bethesda successfully implemented children into Fallout 3 without causing the expected controversy, so there's no reason why the next TES game won't have children in it. -Itachi 16:00, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Race[edit]

In Daggerfall, she appears to be human but in Oblivion she appears as a Night Elf. Is there any official race we should put on her page or just leave it as unknown? --Resonance Gamer (talk) 03:41, 9 June 2014 (GMT)

Just leave it as unknown. I suppose if anything she is a "God". ~ Ad intellige (talk) 03:43, 9 June 2014 (GMT)

Race again[edit]

Per these edits, I've started to wonder why we can't actually determine the Night Mother's race. The Night Mother - not any local Night Mother, but the Night Mother, the one who lived in Bravil, murdered her own children and was killed by a mob afterwards - is named a Dunmer twice in The Night Mother's Truth and she's also depicted as a Dunmer in Oblivion. The two facts together are solid enough evidence as far as I'm concerned. Any other Night Mothers that were alive outside of the "main" one's lifespan were just local leaders of the Morag Tong or the Dark Brotherhood. --Vordur Steel-Hammer (TINV1K) 17:22, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

That seems okay to me as long as we're dealing with the ghost lady, but this page seems to also cover Mephala and the Night Mother rank from earlier games. Even still, depiction as a Dunmer in Oblivion, Skyrim and ESO seems like a strong case for a retcon of the fuzzier stuff, so I wouldn't have a problem with adding it to the infobox. This whole pages needs to be rewritten in a lore-friendly format anyway. —Legoless (talk) 17:50, 25 August 2016 (UTC)
Is the Night Mother depicted personally in ESO? I haven't played much, and a lot of the stuff I could find in the datamined dialogue files seem to be from incomplete/removed content, as I couldn't find the NPCs referenced in the dialogue actually existing anywhere. I would favor rewriting the page to cover "Night Mother" as more of a title than a singular person, anyways. There definitely needs to be some work done regardless. -- Hargrimm(T) 18:21, 25 August 2016 (UTC)
No, only in that book Vordur linked. I think the title stuff has mostly been done away with, considering "Night Mother" has referred almost entirely to the ghost lady for the past few games. Still good to note of course, but not really a priority for the infobox in my opinion. —Legoless (talk) 18:40, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

Problem of perspective that is not TES-wide[edit]

This is written from the perspective of a single game, not all of TES lore; e.g. it's known exactly who the Night Mother is in Morrowind (at that time, and on Vvardenfell, which was then new territory for the Dark Brotherhood).

I would think the general lore material needs to be rewritten to make it clear that in certain eras it's not known who "Night Mother" refers to, and to suggest that over time it may have changed from a religio-philosophical concept (the feminine counterpart to Sithis) into a Guildmaster-level title (as seen in Morrowind), or perhaps serving as both in different contexts, e.g. treating the regional Dark Brotherhood Night Mother as something of an incarnation or manifestation of the eternal(?) or at least original Night Mother. — Darklocq  ¢ 22:41, 2 September 2017 (UTC)

PS: Much of this can be resolved by moving Night Mother material out of Lore:Dark Brotherhood to Lore:Night Mother where it actually belongs. — Darklocq  ¢ 22:57, 2 September 2017 (UTC)

The Night Mother Title vs Being[edit]

So I've been looking into the Night Mother and can't help but notice that the book The Night Mother's Truth is still never used as a reference for this page, specifically in separating the title of Night Mother as a leader of the Morag Tong (and in the Dark Brotherhood as well, though the book does not mention this) and the being that is worshiped in the Dark Brotherhood. I get that it's only one perspective but it does potentially clear up a lot of otherwise irreconcilable information, and its inclusion in Skyrim and ESO seems to me like the devs telling us that they've finally got coherent lore going on. Her depictions and the references to her in ESO imply that there is a being known as the Night Mother who is more or less a deity who has existed for hundreds of years and thus couldn't be the same as Severa Magia or the Night Mother in Daggerfall, whereas the book shows that "Night Mother" was also once a title in the Morag Tong leadership which (and I know this is extrapolation) probably means that it was adopted by female leaders of the Dark Brotherhood as well. This seems to be further reinforced by the fact that the quest journal entry for killing Severa Magia refers to her as "the local Night Mother," implying that multiple people can hold this title. I really think, therefore, that this distinction should be made on this page.

If others agree with me I would be willing to add this information to the page, but as an inexperienced editor I thought I might bring it to the attention of others who are more familiar with the standards and customs of Lore page writing on this website. I do think that the contents of The Night Mother's Truth should at least be included in the actual page rather than just the "see also" section.

Also just out of curiosity, where does the Daggerfall sprite and knowledge that she is a Khajiit come from if she is not actually present in the game? I haven't ever joined the DB in Daggerfall so I don't know if she is talked about or whether this info was datamined or something. Iituti (talk) 01:39, 10 August 2020 (UTC)