Lore Question: Losing Magic Power

[Regallag]

There are details in the spoiler, but the TL;DR version is this: Is there anything in Elder Scrolls lore that could cause a powerful wizard to lose most/all of his power?

 

 

 

I finally gave up on Oldrim and downloaded SSE. Usually when I make a new character he or she a young idiot who charges into a bandit camp/necromancer lair/etc and gets completely trounced before settling for a more cautious approach. In the spirit of doing something new I'm making my fist SSE character and old wizard who lost his power somehow. He's been set back to 100 magicka and two or three spells. He knows how weak he is and he's not going to dive head first into an ass whooping.

 

 

[Corsayr]

There are details in the spoiler, but the TL;DR version is this: Is there anything in Elder Scrolls lore that could cause a powerful wizard to lose most/all of his power?

 

 

 

I finally gave up on Oldrim and downloaded SSE. Usually when I make a new character he or she a young idiot who charges into a bandit camp/necromancer lair/etc and gets completely trounced before settling for a more cautious approach. In the spirit of doing something new I'm making my fist SSE character and old wizard who lost his power somehow. He's been set back to 100 magicka and two or three spells. He knows how weak he is and he's not going to dive head first into an ass whooping.

 

 

 

You lose skill points when you are in jail for long periods of time. So any long term captivity would have this effect. But it seems like you are looking for something a little more supernatural. 

 

Maybe something like your wizard was defeated long ago and had his soul encased in a soul stone. After a hundred years of captivity in the soul carn he manages (or maybe just a flook of luck?) to escape? That would explain a captivity long enough to generally erase almost all of his skills.  

[AWP3RATOR]

So your character background is that he is going from say a level 50 master mage to a level 1 initiate, effectively?  From a TES lore standpoint, nothing immediately jumps out - I don't know if skills loss on this scale has been explored within the games...  You could consider something like your character made a deal with Clavicus Vile, that didn't work out in his favor.  Something like he wished be his younger self again, full of vigor and life.  Clavicus granted his wish... and the mage awoke, miles away, in a Tavern, a younger version of himself... without any of his knowledge or understanding of magic or other skills.

 

Sounds like the twisted wish fulfillment of Clavicus to me!

[Regallag]

So your character background is that he is going from say a level 50 master mage to a level 1 initiate, effectively?  From a TES lore standpoint, nothing immediately jumps out - I don't know if skills loss on this scale has been explored within the games...  You could consider something like your character made a deal with Clavicus Vile, that didn't work out in his favor.  Something like he wished be his younger self again, full of vigor and life.  Clavicus granted his wish... and the mage awoke, miles away, in a Tavern, a younger version of himself... without any of his knowledge or understanding of magic or other skills.

 

Sounds like the twisted wish fulfillment of Clavicus to me!

 

Oooh, that's a good idea. It also helps explain why he can learn spells so easily (seriously, you read a book once and now you can cast the spell like a master).

[AWP3RATOR]

 

So your character background is that he is going from say a level 50 master mage to a level 1 initiate, effectively?  From a TES lore standpoint, nothing immediately jumps out - I don't know if skills loss on this scale has been explored within the games...  You could consider something like your character made a deal with Clavicus Vile, that didn't work out in his favor.  Something like he wished be his younger self again, full of vigor and life.  Clavicus granted his wish... and the mage awoke, miles away, in a Tavern, a younger version of himself... without any of his knowledge or understanding of magic or other skills.

 

Sounds like the twisted wish fulfillment of Clavicus to me!

 

Oooh, that's a good idea. It also helps explain why he can learn spells so easily (seriously, you read a book once and now you can cast the spell like a master).

 

 

Tomes tries to add spell learning immersion to Skyrim.  It requires the player to have specific aptitude in each school of magic to learn spells from that school.  So no longer can the player learn a master level when they are experience 0 in that school.

 

 

There is another mod for "immersive" spell learning.  I haven't tried this myself, but I think it's a novel idea!  From the mod's page:

 

 

 

 

Preface

Do you find that learning new spells in Skyrim doesn't feel... immersive?

I thought so, too. You just smash that book against your face and immediately know the spell inside, destroying the tome in the process! That's no way to learn!

 

 

What does it do?

Better Spell Learning tries to improve upon this flaw. No longer will the spell tome be destroyed immediately upon use. Instead, when you read it, you will learn a percentage of the spell it contains. This value scales depending on the difficulty of the spell and your level, as well as the location you're in when you read the tome. Studying in the college? Have a little boost. How about the Arcanaeum? Another little boost. Trying to learn a Master-level Destruction spell when you only have 13 Destruction? Yeah, it'll take you a while.

 

Once you've studied a spell tome, you will be unable to study that same spell for the next in-game hour (this is changeable with the book 'The Art of Study', found in most court wizards' rooms, various other locations, or the console, for the impatient). You can continue to study as many other spells as you'd like, however. Finally, once you've learned the spell completely, it'll be added to your spell list as usual. The spell tome will stay in your inventory, because it's weird that they get destroyed. Seriously, how aggressive is the Dragonborn with their book-reading?!

[SmedleyDButler]

There's another spell-learning mod which just came out a few days ago: "Spell learning and discovery" 

 

It's newness means I'd be a bit wary of possible bugs or conflicts, but it seems simple and straightforward on the surface and it seems like a more interesting (and less reliable) method of spell learning than Better Spell Learning. I guess if both mods work fine, it would come down to personal choice about which mod feels more IMMERSIVE.

 

There's also the nightmarishly complicated "Spell Research" as an alternative to both of those. This is a big mod and creates a completely new learning system with many layers and parts for spells. Seriously, there's like four layers of crafting to make one spell, requiring dozens of parts and resources, including many new ones introduced by the mod... yikes. Seems way over the top to me, but if you want learning spells to take a real commitment of resources, time, and energy, then this might be for you.

[Lodakai]

Wabbajack

[Regallag]

I came up with an idea. A powerful, evil mage was killed and soul trapped. After centuries the black soul gem made its way to Skyrim, where it came into the hands a different evil mage who, through skill or luck, managed to put the ancient soul into a new body. It does everything I want and it has the added bonus of giving a reason why this person has no gods damned idea what's happening in the modern world.

 

Now all I need is a powerful wizard from an earlier game, preferably one who was killed by the player. I like the concept of the Dragonborn having been killed by, say, the Hero of Kvatch.

[Shadowhawk827]

Let me toss out some magical theory here from various games and reading over real life theory from Wicca, ceremonial magic, etc...  There's a couple of ways to block a spellcaster's ability.

 

First would be an item that siphon's off the person's mana continually so they don't have the energy to cast. 

 

A demon (or daedra in this case) could likewise feed on their energy regularly.

 

There's also the ever popular binding ritual where a spell is cast and blocks the target's ability to use magick.  Actually it can be used to inhibit any number of things, but blocking casting ability is the most common use when Wiccans get pissy at other spellcasters.  These spells tend to fade over time, so a long term application would require some sort of an anchor/power source to keep it going long term.

 

head or primary nervous system (spinal) injury could also interfere with a caster's ability to focus, even if they're otherwise OK.  Realistically the person would probably have minor memory and attention focusing issues and or chronic pain (in the case of spinal injury) at the minimum.

 

Related to the last option and also connected to qigong theory, spiritual energy travels thru the body on a network of "meridians" similar to our nervous system.  Blockages or damage along those meridians can cause all manner of physical ailments and spiritual blockages.

 

EDIT:  As a related note, lead is supposed to be an effective insulator against magic, just like it is against radiation.

[Shadowhawk827]

57 minutes ago, Regallag said:

I came up with an idea. A powerful, evil mage was killed and soul trapped. After centuries the black soul gem made its way to Skyrim, where it came into the hands a different evil mage who, through skill or luck, managed to put the ancient soul into a new body. It does everything I want and it has the added bonus of giving a reason why this person has no gods damned idea what's happening in the modern world.

 

Now all I need is a powerful wizard from an earlier game, preferably one who was killed by the player. I like the concept of the Dragonborn having been killed by, say, the Hero of Kvatch.

 

Powerful wizard?   Manimarco, the king of worms.  Bastard pops up in TES games more often then Luthor does against Superman.