(SPOILERS) Ascending Tide- Sea Sload and robot elves
So...*Ascending Tide,* the first part of this year's *Legacy of the Bretons* storyline, is out.
Nothing of note on the Bretons yet, but there's some pretty interesting information on the Maormer, (potentially) Aldmer and (Sea) Sload to consider.
A brief recap on the conflicting cultural narratives of the Altmer and Maormer:
The Altmer maintain that the Maormer came about when the deathless Aldmeri wizard (and possible serpent god/divine avatar) Orgnum was exiled from Summerset alongside his followers, whereas the Maormer maintain that Orgnum and his followers split off on their own initiative from Aldmeris itself.
More than a simple disagreement on the timeline, the real importance of the difference between the two versions lies in the fact that each group of elves uses their account to claim the position of the closest living descendants of the original Aldmer.
Per the common Altmeri account (some variations acknowledge an attempted conquest of Aldmeris but still claim the Maormer to be aggressors and distant relations even than), the Maormer diverged from them after their exile, per the Maormer themselves they departed and remain closer to the Aldmer than the since changed Altmer.
Each side uses it's alleged link to the Aldmer to lay claim to Summerset, and each side claims the other side to be lying as proven conclusively by the tapestries of the Crystal Tower (yes, both use the same tapestries as their source but claim they depict different things).
[https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:The\_Chosen\_People\_of\_Aldmeris](https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:The_Chosen_People_of_Aldmeris)
[https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:The\_False\_Revanchism\_of\_the\_Maormer](https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:The_False_Revanchism_of_the_Maormer)
What does all this have to do with a storyline about Bretons and the Alliance War ?
Well, one of the DLC's dungeons, the Coral Aerie, has it's own story that potentially ties into all this.
The Ascendant Order has been using the ruins as a base (a gryphon training ground) and has secured all entrances but, by the time the Vestige gets there, they're already losing ground to a large horde of Yaghra that suddenly sprung up out of the waters and started besieging the Aerie for (as far as they can tell) no reason.
Unbeknownst to the Ascendant Order, however, the Coral Aerie is actually the prison of a powerful Sea Sload sorceress named Z'Baza and it is she who is mentally commanding the Yaghra to attack the ruins in an attempt to free her.
Z'Baza herself is an interesting character, she is far and away the largest Sload ever seen in the games for one thing (the size of a building, at least initially, though she is *somewhat* shrunken down in a flash of light when the glyphs to free her are used, possibly a contingency should she break free), there's some implication there's more to her than what is seen of her physical form (throughout the dungeon the Vestige can use Abyssal Pearls to summon large tentacles to aid in battle, which Z'Baza describes as either her servants or her own tendrils gradually *'slithering free'*)directly and the Vestige theorizes she might be a member of the Abyssal Cabal (from *Summerset,* like K'Tora, Z'Maja and co) which could have interesting implications about the Cabal's age, but it's the circumstances of her imprisonment that are most interesting.
Z'Baza has been sealed in the Aerie since ancient times, as we are shown by the '*Ancient Inscription'* before her prison, and the carving before the glyphs to release her makes mention of the Eleven Forces, an aspect of the Old Ways of the Psijic Order and the earliest form of Aldmeri religion before that (it's unclear whether Z'Baza herself is immortal or the seal itself is keeping her alive, her dialogue suggests the wards have somehow placed her out of phase with the rest of reality/time as she mentions things like being able to gradually *'feel the warp and weft of reality again'* and how it is *'good to...be...again'* as the seal weakens).
The wards of Z'Baza's seal take the form of auras of light surrounding three towers around her prison and, once dispelled, each ward will materialize a corresponding Guardian to ward off further intrusion. It's these guardians themselves that are noteworthy.
They are magical constructs resembling giant glowing elves and clearly operated by some sort of artificial intelligence (during battle they will speak in a robotic tone, assessing the percentage of their operating capacity remaining, activating contingency protocols and so on). Most interestingly, all Guardians use Maormer weapons/armor, and all use storm magic reminiscent of the Maormer.
The Aerie is in Summerset (so the presence of Maormer resembling Guardians wouldn't fit either group's version of events), so if they are as ancient as the inscription hints, could the presence of these Guardians hint at a greater overlap/link than either elven group is willing to admit ?
The possibility of the Psijic Order being involved is also something to consider of course, the Order is ancient, has tangled with the Abyssal Cabal before under Ritemaster Iachesis, and the strange magic of Z'Baza's prison does perhaps resemble techniques they use with their own island home of Artaeum. Even so the robotic guardians are unlike anything we've seen them use and the Maormeri elements are also unlike any style we've seen associated with them (not to mention the overlap question would apply to them as well given the point of the Order's formation in the timeline).
That's it, for the most part.
There's some other interesting stuff as well, like how the Ascendant Order is made up of people from across all three Alliances and includes at least some members that originally belonged to other groups (the Aerie's gryphon trainer is a former fleet commander of the Veiled Heritance) or, keeping with the theme of weirdly advanced ancient craft, how the All-Flags Navy allegedly made use of strange ships that were clad in hulls *'as hard as stone'* but still *'fast as a gale of wind'* and were somehow operated/navigated by arcane lodestones of some sort (this is from the other dungeon of Shipwright's Regret, the Dreadsail Maormer somehow knew of those lodestones and designs and were looking for them, the lodestones are also said to have another purpose though we don't know what that is yet).
Either way, Sload and Maormer weren't exactly what I was expecting, wonder where this will go next. Thoughts ?