Lore:Time Magic

A time breach created by the Staff of Towers in northern Glenumbra

Time Magic also known as time travel magic, time alteration, and chronomancy, is a type of magic which involves the manipulation and perversion of time. Manipulating time is notoriously difficult, with most known successes being entirely accidental or full of unintended, and very dangerous, consequences. This could lead to various outcomes, such as the birth of individuals who did not exist in another timeline, or the lives of different people taking unexpected turns such as becoming trapped in a time loop or dying before they were even born. In truly severe cases, Time Magic has been said to threaten the fabric of time itself, with the distortions having the potential to cause the world to become one of non-linear time or to make time "fold inside out".

Saresea in multichronal state

Another potential consequence of mages attempting to contain temporal distortion is the possibility of becoming subject to multichronal existence—a state in which one experiences existence at multiple points in time simultaneously. One such individual was Saresea, a member of the Psijic Order who intervened at the settlement of Bal Sunnar in order to dispel the Time Knot that had trapped the township in a repeating Time Loop. Initially scattered across time in her attempt, Saresea was aided by Hermaeus Mora who reached out and pulled her back together, but she remained multichronal, existing across multiple moments in the past and future at once.

In some cases individuals who came into contact with time distorting magic attained greater understanding of the workings of time. One such individual who had been transported to a different time by a Dwemeri device, Raynor Vanos, claimed he could now understand the force much more clearly, describing time and space as being not "a road upon which you travel, but rather a rope, or a cable" with "many threads, all bound together with no beginning or end". Some relics such as the Staff of Towers possessed the ability to create Time Breaches that allowed for elements of those alternate worlds to cross over.

Phenomena Caused by Time Magic

The most notable and most devastating examples of time manipulation in history are known as Dragon Breaks, the most prominent of which being the Middle Dawn. This disaster was caused when the Marukhati Selective attempted to remove elven aspects from the Dragon God of Time, Akatosh, but instead wound up destroying linear time entirely for the equivalent of one thousand and eight years. Observers described it as a time of chaos and confusions, where all laws of reality were broken and causality did not matter. As such, most tried to steer away from causing such events going forward. The Psijic Order in particular took an active role in attempting to prevent future Dragon Breaks, regularly interfering when it seemed that time was fracturing.

A Time Knot

One form of temporal distortion that can be created through magic is known as a Time Knot, Time Knots are described as eddies in the stream of time that disrupt it's flow within a certain area and are capable of altering causality. If time is likened to a woven fabric with threads that cross and stitch together, than a Knot is what occurs when those threads bind together unnaturally, threads of chance and potential tangling around a single point. They can manifest for a variety of reasons, including powerful spells, the activation of arcane relics, Daedric trickery, or even naturally without external influence. Whatever the cause, creating a Time Knot requires a great deal of power. An area enveloped by the influence of a Time Knot will be trapped within a repeating time loop and, if left unattended, a Knot can also grow to encompass larger areas. The magic of a Knot can be used to summon creatures from different time periods or to conjure temporal duplicates of one's self. Interacting with a Time Knot can also cause one to be transported to a different time period, in the past or future. Artifacts of Hermaeus Mora known as Glyphics have the power to create Time Knots of great scale.

Uses

Many are unswayed by the dangers and regularly practice time manipulation, typically at a smaller scale than a Dragon Break. Some sorcerers have been able to travel through time through simple and relatively safe means, such as entering and exiting Oblivion, where causality is not always concurrent with Nirn, making it possible for phenomena such as entering an Oblivion realm at one point in time and emerging in the past relative to when one entered to occur. The downside with this tactic is the unpredictability and unreliability of when you might end up. Fargrave was one realm interaction with which was theorized to possibly lead to consequences in different frames of time. Others have relied on the power of Daedric Princes to corrupt time, such was the case with Hermaeus Mora's library of time-traveling books in Shadowfen, drawn to the location from different time periods including the future. Tonal Architecture has also been used repeatedly to send people and objects across space and time by Dwemer devices, malfunctioning devices have summoned objects and beings from across space and time to one location, threatening to tear apart local reality due to temporal collapse due to the severity of the distortion. Inscriptions in the language carved in Ebon Stadmont, theorized to predate all languages of Nirn and even the language of Oblivion, possessed the ability to transport people and objects through time. During the Dragon War, the Nords used an Elder Scroll to fling Alduin thousands of years forward in time, creating a Time Wound in the place where the event occured. Some of the masks worn by Dragon Priests possessed the ability to transport the wearer back in time.

The Psijic Order possesses considerable mastery of Time Magic, in addition to their ability to stop time, members of the Order also learn to use magic that allows them to locally accelerate it to perform actions faster, rewind it to undo harmful change that might've occured, and cast time slowing spells which can contain out of control magical energies. The Order's magic allows them to sense and locate temporal distortions such as Time Knots or Time Breaches, and they will dispatch agents to repair the disruption of time should they deem it necessary. One method the Order utilizes to fix phenomena such as Time Breaches is through the use of Psijic Seals, arcane anchors created by the ancient Aldmer who sought to bind any wayward spirits or forces in a given place during a time when the veil was thinner, which allow the wielder to stabilize the rifts and harden the walls of time that surround them through the use of "chrononymics". Order members might also use their own ability in Time Magic to manipulate and untangle phenomena such as Time Knots directly. It has been theorized that the Order has the magic to transport beings through time. The experiments the Order conducted on Change, one of the Eleven Forces, had the potential to cause one to enter a synchroseisiac state, becoming scattered across time and space and out of sync with the rest of Aurbis Psijic monks had the ability to use Time Breaches in order to springboard to a different time and place.

Two mages performing a ritual that created ripples of temporal distortion, allowing for time travel

There have been cases of mages conducting rituals that caused their surrounding area to "ripple with temporal distortion", connecting different time periods and drawing beings from one into the other. While time was distorted in this manner interacting with objects with a strong link to the different time period had the potential to transport one through time to said period, expriencing that time's events by taking the place of the one the object was tied to originally.

The Thu'um has been known to alter time. In 2E 582 the dragon Nahviintaas used his Voice in an attempt to expand the Time Wound left at Sunspire when Alkosh Shouted Pelinal away from the mountain, in the hopes of causing a Dragon Break to rewrite time and restore draconic rule. Nahviintaas would also utilize the power of the Time Wound to manipulate time in other ways, claiming his faithful had no need to fear death as he could restore them and they'd serve him eternally, and that he could make his foes relive their deaths over and over.

Some priests of Akatosh possessed the ability to stop time..

Some inhabitants of the Shivering Isles were known to practice chronomancy. They could use this ability to slow one's heart rate, breathing, movements, and even thoughts.

The Marukhati Selectives had invented rites to turn back time. However, the magic was unpredictable, and had the potential to cause users to become trapped in a repeating time loop starting from the moment they'd turned time back to.

Items that Utilize Time Magic

The Psijic Josajeh, attempting to use the Staff of Towers to rewrite time in the Time-Lost Throne Room

An Arcane Hourglass, an object capable of accelerating time (Castles)

Certain individuals throughout history have often used powerful Tower-based artifacts such as the Numidium or the Staff of Towers to, either intentionally or unintentionally, alter the current timeline.

The Imperial Throne Room at the base of the White-Gold Tower was one of the most important metaphysical foci in all of Mundus, so much so it could almost be said to exist adjacent to all time and space in Aedric creation.. The White-Gold Tower itself was said to exist on a level beyond the physical, existing apart or detached from time. The nature of the Tower and its Time-Lost Throne Room allowed it to serve as a catalyst for the use of powerful Time Magic, with the Ayleids having invented a ritual that could rewrite time through the use of the Staff of Towers in conjuction with the Tower throne room. The ritual was highly dangerous, as it had the potential to create an "impossibly dense Aurbic gyre" of power that could create a new Dragon Break, or a catastrophe even worse than that.

The Elder Scrolls are said to be capable of affecting all possible futures, being able to bind others to specific outcomes by doing so, and their power has been used to rewrite the past.

Worshippers of Alkosh are known to create hourglasses capable of time manipulation via sacred ritual, using sacred time-lost sand that causes whoever touches it to experience memories from the distant past or moments from the future yet to come. Focusing on the time-lost sands within such an hourglass causes local perception of time to shift, allowing the user to freely experience different times of the day and making it seem as if time is standing still during the chosen time. The Tribunal Temple made use of Chronometers of the Tribunal which had similar abilities.

Tamrielic kings have been known to sometimes use time altering magical items such as Arcane Hourglasses to fast forward time and undo hauntings caused by curses or eclipses, celestial phenomena that cause an increase in spirit, vampire and undead activity, with use of the hourglass accelerating time in order to dispel the eclipse or curse that caused the haunting.

The basement of the White-Gold Tower housed a relic known as the Glass of Time, use of which revealed the path to the Old Way, the Ayleid section of the Imperial City's undeground.

Innate Ability

Certain deities have been linked to the manipulation of time. In 2E 582, Hermaeus Mora trapped the Sidereal Cloisters in Apocrypha in a time loop to prevent the prophecies inside the facility from being stolen. The Glyphics Hermaeus Mora uses to catalogue fates are composed of "temporal dust" and are broken down into such dust and arcane energies by Nemesis Looms when disposed of. This temporal and magical essence is accumulated in the Heart of the Underweave, allowing it to accumulate immense amounts of magic.The power in the Heart can be tapped into to manipulate time, but doing so is highly dangerous as it can potentially cause realm-tearing temporal anomalies. The Index of the Infinite Archive possesses the ability to restore dead beings and destroyed objects linked to it by tapping into their fateline to pull them into the present from a time prior to the event. In the Infinite Archive Hermaeus Mora provided his champions with time altering blessings that increased their speed and created temporal echoes that leeched speed from surrounding foes through altering time. Should the personal recollections of Hermaeus Mora stored within the Eyes of Mora somehow be altered, the event the memory depicts itself will be rewritten. The Daedric Prince Meridia has been theorized to be capable of altering the speed at which time flows, stretching or compressing The Dragon, and has been described as the "redshift that alters time". Priests of Meridia are known to grant time altering blessings and it is said that, for them, time is relative. The Obelisk of Inevitability in the Deadlands could transport those who used it to a possible future, the one that would occur should events continue on their current course. Some sources claim Sotha Sil once used a "chrononymic death word" to make Mehrunes Dagon explode across all time. The Warrior Celestial possesses the ability to draw others into the future, having done so with his champion Titus Valerius and ancient emperor Tarish-Zi. The Mage Celestial was theorized to be capable of altering time in a manner likened to "hiding behind a broken Dragon", traveling the "line" of time and than cutting it to wrap herself "in a "context" where "none can ever follow". During the attack of the Undaunted on Sanctum Ophidia, the Serpent Celestial briefly transported the invaders to a desolate version of Tamriel in a different time.

Certain beings such as dragons or the Augur of the Obscure have an innate understanding of temporal distortions, being able to perceive and sense when such phenomena occur and, in the case of the Augur, see across time in all directions, perceiving past, present and future at once. Dragons are also said to have innate understanding of the forces which shape the "currents of time" or "vennesetiid".

Gallery

• 

  Thaddeus Cosma, a time traveler (ESO)

• 

  Titus Valerius, a time traveler from the past (ESO)

• 

  Alana Relin, a woman whose existence is a result of a time travel (ESO)

• 

  A unicorn theorized to have been transported to the future by the Psijic Order

• 

  Lady Edwyge, caught in a time loop

• 

  Time Stop, a Psijic spell (ESO)

• 

  Accelerate, a Psijic spell which bends time and space (ESO)

• 

  Temporal Speed, an example of time magic within the Infinite Archive (ESO)

• 

  Staff of Towers (ESO)

• 

  An Elder Scroll, an artifact which can alter time

• 

  The Index of the Infinite Archive, a device which can alter time

• 

  An Eye of Mora, a Daedra containing memories of Hermaeus Mora that can rewrite the event they originated from if altered

• 

  Primate Artorius Ponticus, a wielder of time magic (Legends)

• 

  A Chronometer of the Tribunal, a device which can alter local perception of time

• 

  A Sacred Hourglass of Alkosh, capable of altering local perception of time

• 

  The Glass of Time in the Imperial Palace basement

• 

  A desolate Tamriel in an unknown time

• 

  A possible future accessed through the Obelisk of Inevitability

See Also

• Time Wounds — Tears created in the fabric of space when time is shattered within a localized area