Enchanting, how doth et work?

[Guest Omega1084]

Is there lore on how enchanting works?

 

What I mean is, is there something that tells you how a mage puts enchantments on weapons and armor?

 

The idea I get is that, after learning an enchantment, a mage fills a soul gem and etches the enchantments onto the weapon/armor they have using the gem. Bigger soul gems with bigger souls last longer, which is why the enchantments are stronger and last a lot more.. that's my theory anyway.

Is there any actual lore that can explain that, though?

[Sarathis]

There's this book found in the College.

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Enchanter's_Primer

 

It doesn't say a lot but it's a lore-ish look at the mechanics behind Enchanting. Most of the information is pretty scattered and a lot of it has more to do with soul gems and their uses than actual Enchanting. There's more material on Black / White soul gems than normal ones but a lot of the in-game stuff just seems like game mechanics rather than actual explained-by-lore reasoning. Other lore books will refer to Enchanting a bit here and there but mostly just to say that using souls to do things is like Necromancy, therefor bad. If it's bad, though, why is it so accepted? Nobody really says.

 

More sources:

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Souls,_Black_and_White

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Lore%3aThe_Black_Arts_On_Trial

[Guest Omega1084]

 

 

Maybe it's okay to use animal's souls to enchant weapons and armor, like Troll souls since they're pretty mean fuckers, but using human souls is where Necromancy and the Black Arts are added to the mix. I guess no one cares about the defenseless foxes killed in order to enchant flimsy daggers but when some bandit butt gets killed and shoved in a tiny gem everyone and their mother loses their breakfast, lunch and dinner!

*ahem*

 

At any rate, I suppose I'll just go with my rune theory for the time being, since there's no real explanation beyond "You trap and table. Enchant is gooder wiff beeg soles." It seems plausible enough since all enchantments cause runes to cover the object being enchanted and soul gems look like they could be used to write incantations into things. Yip yip.

Thank you for the help though, I should start collecting books again.

[Irrational]

Well from what I understand. Aedras gave part of their life force to create the Mundus (the human plane). Magnus (The deity of magic) in particular was the projects architect meaning he designed the way world works. He realizes during its creation that the process of creating this world comes at the cost of the Aedra's power. Knowing that, he escapes by ripping a hole through the plane to Aetherius creating the sun. So from the allegorical sense, Magnus made the world with Magicka in mind. All souls within the plane consist of the magicka that made up the universe. Like how in our world we get our energy from the sun, the inhabitants on the mortal plane not only harnesses the energy from the sun, but their soul uses it to harness magicka as well. So I think when you kill someone and draw their soul, you are digging into the soul honey comb and extracting magic which comes from what was left behind of magnus' energy (or the magic that slips through the Aetherius plane).  I assume magic needs to use a soul as a catalyst to become a physical manifestation and that's what a soul gem mimics.

 

I may be wrong since this is my compilation of my lore knowledge. Elder scrolls lore is an ongoing evolution to patch parts of the world left untold, and this subject is one of them.