Lore:Dragon Break

A Dragon Break is a phenomenon where linear time is broken, and becomes non-linear. The "Dragon" refers to Akatosh, the Dragon God of Time. A Dragon Break not only precedes significant changes in Tamriel, but challenges mortal comprehension. It is a re-alignment of time and space in response to an event which makes the normal continuity of reality impossible. The chaos which ensues is a refrain of the chaos of the  . The area that is noticeably affected, and length of the interval measured in the areas not apparently affected, varies with each Dragon Break. Historically, the cause is often attributed to mortals manipulating divine matters.

Known Breaks
The Middle Dawn
thumb|right|The Staff of Towers, used to bring about the Middle Dawn
A sect of the  , the Marukhati Selective, is said to have caused the longest known Dragon Break, known as the Middle Dawn''' (or colloquially as "the" Dragon Break), which is thought to have spanned one thousand and eight years from the 13th to the 23rd centuries in the  ,  by attempting to exorcise elements of Elven   from Imperial  .  The Psijic Loremaster Celarus claimed that misuse of the Staff of Towers played a part in bringing about the Dragon Break, although he did not specify by whom. According to Celarus, Dragon Breaks could be created by the "impossibly dense Aurbic gyre" formed by the coalescence of the Staff's power.  This is the only Dragon Break that is a universally-known event, though some civilizations claim to have been protected from it.   , a   associated with un-time events, grew bright enough during this Dragon Break to be seen in the daytime sky. 

Yet in later eras, the occurrence of this event became disputed, most notably by the scholar Fal Droon. He posited that no cosmic disruption took place at all, and that the "Dragon Break" story was concocted in the early   to explain inconsistencies in the Encyclopedia Tamrielica. He cites "scholarly inertia", obsession with "eschatology" and fanatical "Numidiumism" in order to explain the perpetuation of the error. 

Fal Droon's claim that the Dragon Break was a Third Era fabrication is apparently discredited by older sources, which are known to have described the Dragon Break as early as  .  In particular,   seems to describe the Marukhati Selective's justification for the Middle Dawn before the event itself. The Dunmer of the era were hostile towards the Empire,  yet they still acknowledge a Dragon Break occurred.  Furthermore, a member of the Elder Council claimed that the oversoul of emperors within the   confirmed that a Dragon Break took place. The Council purportedly gathered information from every province, information which never coincided except by mentioning that all the folk of the continent tracked the fall of eight stars, which they used to count their days. 

An abstruse text ascribed, like the Vindication, to Arch-Prelate Fervidius Tharn appears to describe the mechanics of the Middle Dawn in more detail as involving the detachment of a particular "sheath" from the "integument", or outer layer, of the Aurbis. This process would begin by "intercourse with the star-orphan" Mnemoli, followed by "eversion of the organ of thought" and "an employment of the Hurling Disk", "twisting the enveloping sheath into the middle dawn". 
thumb|right|Lady Edwyge, caught in a time trap
Rubble Butte
Circa  , the Breton noblewoman Lady Edwyge stole a copy of the text Vindication for the Dragon Break from the Mages Guild in Hallin's Stand. She managed to convince an Orc novice named Gahgdar to let her borrow the book, and then fled to the ruins of  , an ancient Ayleid complex located near   in southern  . She and her supporters sought to turn back time several years in order to change the course of history and ensure Edwyge became Queen of Bangkorai rather than  . The nobles managed to emulate the ritual performed by the Marukhati Selective and turned back time a few hours, but ended up creating a time trap within the ruins by trying to extend the ritual further. 

Unbeknownst to the nobles, Gahgdar had tracked Edwyge down to Rubble Butte and had entered the ruins in search of the book to avoid being kicked out of the Guild. However, he also became stuck in the time trap. The Vestige subsequently entered Rubble Butte and agreed to help Gahgdar recover the book from the nobles. The Vestige fought through the nobles before reaching Lady Edwyge and killing her, recovering the book in the process. However, upon reading Edwyge's notes, it transpired that she had anticipated her death and was stuck reliving the same few hours over and over again. The Vestige returned the book to Gahgdar, but the cycle simply began anew; Gahgdar would repeatedly request the recovery of the book, and Edwyge and her supporters would repeatedly be slain in order to recover it.  The Vestige was not caught in the time trap and was free to leave Rubble Butte, but the ultimate fate of those trapped inside is unknown.
thumb|left|A diagram of Numidium
The Brass God
The first activation of   by   at the town of   in   is said to have preceded a Dragon Break that heralded the  .   The second activation of Numidium in the   region during   brought about another Dragon Break.  ,  ,  ,  , and the Empire all gained control of the Totem of Tiber Septim, somehow at the exact same time, which allowed them to control the power of the golem. When this " " ended (the effect objectively seemed to last roughly two days), the many other kingdoms of the Iliac Bay region were conquered. Each remaining kingdom consolidated its newfound territory and swore fealty to the Empire, bringing historically unusual harmony to northwestern  . 

Because the use of Numidium has not once, but twice been associated with a Dragon Break, it is speculated that some of the events surrounding the   and the disappearance of the Dwemer around   may also be explained by a Dragon Break.  This purported Dragon Break, sometimes called the Red Moment,   involved the battle which ultimately resulted in the disappearance of the Dwemer.   The accounts of this battle often conflict with each other on various points, such as the loyalties of the parties in the battle and the events which transpired at the climax of the battle, including how the Dwemer met their fate.    
 
Notes
Vivec's "Scripture of the Numbers" begins with "The Dragon Break, or the Tower. 1".  
Fervidius Tharn associates the Middle Dawn with the number 17 and the "Hurling Disk",  a connection also drawn by Vivec. 
"Kalpas" are thought to be the overarching epochs into which the flow of time is divided, with the transition from the chaos of the Dawn Era to the Merethic marking the end of a previous kalpa.   Dragon Breaks could possibly be understood as interruptions in the new kalpa.
In  , before the Battle of Red Mountain, Ysmir Wulfharth said to the reticent Nordic troops, "Don't you see where you really are? Don't you know who Shor really is? Don't you know what this war is?" This was purportedly referring to their presence within the Dragon Break of the Red Moment. 
  contains an account that is generally accepted as referring to the use of the Numidium by Tiber Septim, as well as the Warp in the West. This text also refers to Mannimarco as the "God of Worms", a title used only after the Warp allegedly allowed his apotheosis. Yet copies of the book were discovered in the Second Era, before the Warp occurred, and have the same text as those found in the Third and Fourth Eras. 
In  , the scholar Fal Droon attempted to debunk the Middle Dawn, and thus the "doctrine of the Dragon Break" in general. The book first appeared in TES III: Morrowind, which took place in  . Droon wrote of the fall of the   in the past tense, even though it would not occur for another six years, which suggests that he did not actually write the text until after the end of the Septim Dynasty and the Third Era. Thus, the book ironically seems to corroborate that Tamriel is susceptible to distortions in time such as the Dragon Break.

See Also
Time Wound
Books







References