The Stone of Orichalc, the Walkabout and the Pankratosword

I wasn’t exactly where to start with all this (as with all things TES its all connected and wraps around anyway). SO, I’m just gonna dive right in. Feel free to ask for clarification if my manic stream of consciousness is too much and if it is very bad I will edit or even repost accordingly. As always thanks for taking the time to read and I welcome any and all input.

The Towers are a popular subject round these parts but some of them are still a complete mystery. For several of them all we know is the name of the Tower and what the Stone is in a very abstract sense. One of these is Orichalc. Built by the Left-Handed Elves…just kidding. Fuck that. Yokudans built it and here’s why. First off there were no LHE. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that the Yokudans built Orichalc. Nothing would have stopped a bunch of Aldmer or Altmer or Ayleids or any other Mer from heading over there and building a tower. But they didn’t. Yokudans wouldn’t have had any of that. Also let’s look at the Stone. It’s “a sword”. Who obsesses with swords? Those pesky Redguards. They are the only culture that we know of that obsesses over swords to that extent. Oh and they are Anuic and want to escape Mundus so they have a reason to be building a Tower. What about the Walkabout you ask? Isn’t that how they are going to escape? I’ll get there. Patience.

So we got some Yokudans building a Tower to get the hell off this rock and back to the Spirit Realm, Aetherius, the Far Shores. Cool. What’s the Stone then? Well that would be the Shehai. Or maybe the Pankratosword. Is there a difference? Kinda. The Shehai is the “Way of the Spirit Sword”, the “Shehai Shen She Ru”…Hold on. She. That was repeated a lot wasn’t it. Let’s (attempt to) translate. It obviously does not translate exactly and I will propose two translations. It doesn’t matter which you pick the point I am trying to make still stands. “Shehai” is Spirit Sword and that starts the sentence. Or is it just Sword? I propose the latter but it doesn’t really matter. Now I doubt that “of the” would be similar etymologically to sword or even way so “ru” is “of the” or just “the”. Now we have two more “she”s. If “shehai” only means sword then they are way and spirit. If not then “shen she” means way of. Either way Sword, Spirit and Way are all etymologically linked in Yokudan. You know like a Sword being the Way of the Spirit or to the Spirit Realm. The Shehai has a pretty strong case then as it is a mythical sword that is etymologically linked to way and spirit. So how is it that the Pankratosword could be the Stone? Well the whole point of a Stone is to act as some sort of catalyst. It’s supposed to DO something.

The Stones are magical and physical echoes of the Zero Stone, by which a Tower might focus its energy to mold creation.

Now we come to the Walkabout. It’s an attempt to quasi-mantle/join the Magna-ge and get to Aetherius or the Far Shores. Well, all Towers are supposed to help its people escape Mundus right? The Walkabout is the process through which Orichalc was intended to achieve apotheosis. How you might ask? Well let’s think. What did the Magna-ge do? They ran. They ran from death, their own death. Then there’s this little quote from Vivec’s Sword Meeting “There is no shame in this; we are allowed to run from disaster”. So in order to mantle them one must also run from disaster, which is totally cool in Redguard culture for that exact reason. The Tower helps them leave Mundus through the process of the Walkabout. They are related. One is involved in the other. But the Stone is the catalyst. So is it the Shehai or the Pankratosword? Well one can only do the Pankratosword using the Shehai and that’s because of what the former does and what the latter is.

The Shehai is a Spirit Sword. It is not conjuration, it is not destruction or restoration or alteration. It is a spirit. It is more closely related to the Thu’um than any school of magic as taught by Shalidor. It is made from the Spirit of a person and is closely related to the fabric of Creation. It is a manifestation of the divinity present in all mortals, a physical version of their divine will. Now the Pankratosword “cuts the uncuttable”. It cuts the atomos. Don’t let the word fool you though. The atomos is not an infinitesimally small particle like an atom is here on Earth. It is uncuttable because it is infinite. Infinitely large, infinitely dense, not really even there. It is Creatia, magic, the Wheels of Lull, the very fabric of reality, just like what the Shehai is made of. How do they cut diamonds? Well, with diamond tipped blades. How do you cut something infinitely dense and large? With something infinitely sharp. Only with a Shehai could the Pankratosword be properly performed. Trying it without one would probably end very very badly. Well a successful one does too but you know what I mean. Anyway, the Pankratosword does not cause a nuclear explosion. Ok it does but that’s just from the shock of the fabric of reality being ripped. The destruction of Yokuda was not all in one blast. It couldn’t have been, how would Divad and the other Ra’Gada, who were present at Hattu, have gotten away from Yokuda to come to Tamriel? There may have been an initial blast but the real damage came from what I could only describe as magical fallout. The land warping in and out of existence, constantly shifting and bending under the stress of the Pankratosword. It decayed in a way. Rapidly perhaps, enough that there were significant casualties, but it decayed. So that still doesn’t answer which is the Stone. They both are. After all which really opens the door, the key or the tumblers the key activates? The Pankratosword is impossible without the Shehai and so as far as the Stone of Orichalc is considered, they are inseparable.

Ok. That clears that up. So let’s tie it all together. The Walkabout is a means of quasi-mantling the Magna-ge and leaving Mundus. But you have to rip a hole in Oblivion like they did to get to Aetherius, otherwise you would just be following them, not walking like them. So the Yokudans have to run from disaster just like the Magna-ge did. And the Pankratosword is considered disaster.

witness the loss of Yokuda, where our running was blessed by windy Tava who filled our sails with escape.

So why didn’t it work? The answer is Orichalc. Towers are like concentrated Creatia, they are “more real” than other places. In order to rip into Aetherius you need this concentrated place to help focus it. I would venture to say that all of Yokuda, or even further, would have been destroyed and much more quickly if the Pankratosword were used at Orichalc instead of the foot of a mountain. By creating this disaster and running from it, the Yokudans can mantle the Magna-ge and escape. They can successfully complete the Walkabout. Orichalc is no longer active not because the Yokudans have forgotten how to perform the Pankratosword or create a Shehai, a new HoonDing could solve that one. It isn’t active because it’s stone was used improperly. This has happened at least twice before. The Heart was used improperly and so was the AoK. Both connected to now defunct Towers. One could say that White-Gold is inactive because the AoK was destroyed but the Heart was not, and never could be and yet Red Mountain is deactivated. And the Heart leaving the Tower also does not make sense. The AoK was most likely at one point in Akavir, and yet White-Gold stood until the events of Oblivion. It’s because they were used for something other than their intended purpose. The Pankratowsord/Shehai’s intended purpose then was to rip a hole in Oblivion, to rip apart creation, in order to get through to Aetherius. The Yokudans decided not to try and escape their prison like you would see in a movie, but to blow the damn walls off and walk out.