The 36 Lessons of Vivec

rendered in markdown with verse numbers and rubrics

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Text Game Version Differences

During the course of this project, I discovered many discrepancies between the original version of The 36 Lessons and the version found in TES: Online,. Not only are there some interesting differences between the two, but Online’s edition is actually taken from the UESP, spelling errors and all! My textual research is especially based on the following game versions:

Game Version
TES3: Morrowind 1.6.0.1820
TES: Online 8.2.8

One and One: Two Inelegant Versions

The original text from TES3: Morrowind has a few minor mistakes and spelling errors that are largely corrected in TES: Online’s edition of the 36 Lessons, with a few exceptions such as Sermon 34’s mention of Narsis instead of Necrom.

Further, TES: Online’s version modifies a lot of punctuation including changing commas to colons, single quotes to double, and double hyphens to em dashes. It also fixes a few double spaces, removes a couple Oxford commas from Sermon 3, and adds or removes various commas here and there.

Another thing TES: Online’s version changes is the structure of a few passages in sermons 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, and 10. Some examples:

Sermon 1

TES3: Morrowind:
 …until they were like stars or the messages of stars. Ayem took a netchiman’s wife and said:

TES: Online:
 …until they were like stars or the messages of stars.

 Ayem took a netchiman’s wife and said:

Sermon 1

TES3: Morrowind:
 …or the Multiplier of Motions Known. And Fa-Nuit-Hen said:

TES: Online:
 …or the Multiplier of Motions Known.

 And Fa-Nuit-Hen said:

Sermon 2

TES3: Morrowind:
 bowing to the five corners of the world and saying: ‘Thus whoever performs this holy act shall be proud and mighty among the rest!’

TES: Online:
 bowing to the five corners of the world and saying:

 “Thus whoever performs this holy act shall be proud and mighty among the rest!”

When the prelude to a quotation is on the same line as the rest of a paragraph in the TES3 edition, it is moved down to it’s own line in the TES: Online edition. The same treatment is given to quotations themselves if they were on the same line (with the exception of a passage in Sermon 8).

In a few places among these particular chapters, longer paragraphs have been broken out into shorter ones.

Sermon 2

TES3: Morrowind:
 …when the earth still cooled, and was not blinded. It joined with the Daedroth and took its former secrets,

TES: Online:
 …when the earth still cooled, and was not blinded.

 It joined with the Daedroth and took its former secrets,

Sermon 3

TES3: Morrowind:
 The egg said: ‘Love is used not only as… and looks that linger too long. Love is also an often-used ingredient…

TES: Online:
 The egg said:

 “Love is used not only as… and looks that linger too long.

 “Love is also an often-used ingredient…

Ghartok Padhome: A New Round of Changes

TES: Online introduces it’s own set of misspellings and errors.

Sermon 5

TES3: Morrowind:
 …was broken and empty. A Chimeri warrior,

TES: Online:
 …was broken and empty. A Chimer warrior,

In the TES: Online edition, approximately seven lines below this, the word Chimeri is still used, as well as in all other chapters where the word originally occurred.

Sermon 8

TES3: Morrowind:
 Ayem said, ‘AYEM AE SEHTI AE VEHK.

TES: Online:
 Ayem said:

 “AYEM AE SEHTI AH VEHK.

Sermon 8

TES3: Morrowind:
 …gilled and blended in all the arts of the star-wounded East,

TES: Online:
 …gilled and blended in all the arts of the starwounded East,

For comparison, in TES: Online’s edition, this same phrase found in sermons 18 and 25 is still rendered star-wounded.

Sermon 10

TES3: Morrowind:
 The sword is an impatient signature. Write no contracts on the dead.

 Vivec says unto the Hortator remember the words of Boet-hi-ah:

TES: Online:
 The sword is an impatient signature. Write no contacts on the dead. Vivec says unto the Hortator remember the words of Boet-hi-ah:

Sermon 10

TES3: Morrowind:
 again like the enemy Corners of the House of Troubles,

TES: Online:
 again like the enemy Corners of the house of Troubles,

Sermon 11

TES3: Morrowind:
 The ending of the words is ALMSIVI.

TES: Online:
 The ending of the words is ALMSIVI

Sermon 13

TES3: Morrowind:
 …when Chimer and Dwemer lived under the wise and benevolent rule of the AMLSIVI

TES: Online:
 …when Chimer and Dwemer lived under the benevolent rule of the ALMSIVI

For comparison, in TES: Online’s edition, this same passage found in sermons 11, 15, 17, and 36 still contains wise and.

Sermon 24

TES3: Morrowind:
 …and make of it a conduit to the full concentrate of the ALMSIVI.'

TES: Online:
 …and make of it a conduit to the full concentrate of the ALMSIVI.

Roleplaying an Amateur Philologist

As I went through the two versions, comparing them line by line with diffing tools, I was expecting some textual restructuring. I was expecting some spelling errors. However, I was not expecting to find redactions or edits that altered the potential meaning of entire passages.

Sermon 5

TES3: Morrowind:
 But another Chimer, who was wise in the ways of prophecy, looked on the simulacrum with disquietude.

TES: Online:
 But another Chimer, who was wise in the ways of the prophecy, looked on the simulacrum with disquietude.

Sermon 6

TES3: Morrowind:
 …and they will test you until you have the proper tendencies of the hero.

TES: Online:
 …and they will test you until you have the proper tendencies of a hero.

These first two are ather minor and while it could be argued that Sermon 6’s passage is ambiguous enough to retain it’s point, Sermon 5’s update now seems to suggest that the other Chimer was wise in a particular prophecy, as opposed to the subject in general.

However, and as mentioned, the most exciting discovery in TES: Online’s version of the text was a curious redaction, and the only one of it’s kind:

Sermon 11

TES3: Morrowind:
 Do not abuse your powers or they will lead you astray. They will leave you like rebellious daughters. They will lose their virtue. They will become lost and resentful and finally become pregnant with the seed of folly.

TES: Online:
 Do not abuse your powers or they will lead you astray. They will become lost and resentful and finally become pregnant with the seed of folly.

For several months, it remained an enigma to me as to why this passage was removed. It seems easy to conclude that censorship was the reason, but why leave the following sentence mentioning pregnancy? Why only this passage and not any others? I couldn’t say for certain.

A Separate Textual Tradition

One reddit.com user, Barilla3113, proposed a theory that many of the books for TES: Online have been imported from community sources as opposed to Bethesda themselves. He may be correct after all: the source that ZeniMax Online may have been using for The 36 Lessons is quite probably the UESP’s version prior to 2019.

I was cleaning up a personal copy of Tante Lien’s Commentary when I noticed that the version the user was quoting from, all the way back in 2011, contained many of the same differences later found in TES: Online, especially the passage in Sermon 6:

Quote from Tante Lien’s Commentary:

…and they will test you until you have the proper tendencies of a hero.

I searched around and RottenDeadite posted a remarkably similar rendering of this chapter to reddit.com that is dated around 2014, close to the launch of TES: Online. While it is possible that Deadite dumped the text himself merely months after Online was released, I just couldn’t be too sure so I continued to research.

On the UESP, I believe that the main collection of chapters for the 36 Lessons is actually an aggregate of each chapter’s individual pages. Looking at the Lore Version history and the Morrowind Version history reveals several gaps in historic changes that I could not find except on archive.org.

However, when I went to the individual history page for Sermon 6, I was able to discover that the change to this passage extends all the way back to 2006. It appears that I was the one to fix it in 2021.

Here is the UESP history page for Sermon 11. The “rebellious daughters” passage is missing from 2006 until it was reinserted in 2019.

Here is the UESP history page for Sermon 13. The missing “wise and” isn’t reinserted until 2021.

Here is the UESP history page for Sermon 5. “Chimer” isn’t restored to “Chimeri” until I contributed the fix in 2021. Likewise with the erroneous, extra “the” in “the ways of the prophecy”.

Here is the UESP history page for Sermon 8. “AH VEHK” was not fixed until 2019. “Starwounded” doesn’t have it’s hyphen restored until 2021.

Here is the UESP history page for Sermon 10. “Contacts” is not corrected to “contracts” until 2021.

Barilla3113’s belief that ZeniMax Online was copying and pasting books into TES: Online appears to be correct, and the source they have been using—at least for the 36 Lessons—may not come from an internal document at all, but from the Textus Receptus of the UESP.

A Tiny New Change

The 9.0.5 update to TES:Online produced another minor change to the text, probably by way of some mass word correction.

Sermon 7, TES:O 8.2.8

there came great rumblings from the oblivion. A duke among scamps wandered into the House of Troubles.

Sermon 7, TES:O 9.0.5

there came great rumblings from the oblivion. A duke among Scamps wandered into the House of Troubles.

Dumping Your Own Data

If you would like to dump and verify this information for yourself, TES3: Morrowind’s HTML books can be extracted from the game’s Morrowind.esm data file using the included Construction Set.

TES: Online’s language data (including books) can be extracted to CSV using EsoExtractData.