Board Thread:Lore Discussion/@comment-31479849-20170309060007/@comment-9212235-20170312002719

So the above that Ottoman Hold says isn't correct. All spin-offs are what you would call canon, or "Empire Actual" (more on that below). Just because they aren't part of the core story doesn't mean anything at all. They are all still Bethesda games.

OP: You've definitely started down the rabbit hole here. Yes, there are alternate Nirns. No, the Warp in the West did not cause them. Think of it like the modern multiverse theory, where each choice creates an alternate universe where a separate choice is what happened. The games (all of the games) exist in what we generally call Tamriel Prime or Empire Actual. Think of it like a table top RPG universe, such as Forgotten Realms. There is a core history, core events, and core story. However, when you and your group play it, these events happen differently for you, by different people, and often completely change. Think of these alternate Nirns like your personal game with your personal mods installed. There absolutely exists a Nirn where all dragons are actually Thomas the Train.

The majority of lore discussions take place in Tamriel Prime, but there's something you must understand. The core to TES lore.

It is all contradictory.

The entire series uses a writing technique called the unreliable narrator. It is meant to introduce a sense of reality where certain events and ideas are not universal. There are loads of contradictions within TES lore, and discovering different ideas that may contradict the status quo is quite common within lore groups. There's a podcast group I'm a part of that is well known in the lore community that talks about all sorts of deeper lore concepts. Here's a link to a podcast that discusses the unreliable narrator concept: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2S23yP5KjA

Here's the same group talking about alternate realities: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NaNFhjntTbY