Summary
- It has long been assumed that the decapitated head we find in Kvatch was Jiub’s, the first character we meet in Morrowind.
- In the original Oblivion, it looked vaguely Dunmer (even if it lacked the pointed elven ears), but the remake seems to have finally disproven that idea.
- In its place, we can now find a generic zombie head, which doesn’t resemble Jiub whatsoever.
Jiub is one of the most bizarre characters in The Elder Scrolls. He’s the first person you meet in Morrowind, crammed into the same hold as you on the prison ship to Vvardenfell, but even that brief introduction was enough to cement him as a series icon.
In a fairly meta joke poking fun at one of the most annoying enemies in Morrowind, it was revealed that soon after the game, he was sainted for eradicating every single Cliff Racer on the continent. But we wouldn’t meet him again until Skyrim, because he died during the Oblivion Crisis in Kvatch of all places.
The Jiub Head Mystery
That led a lot of fans down a fun rabbit hole — if he died in Kvatch, where was his corpse? For the longest time, fans thought they had an answer.
Very early on, near the church where we first meet Martin Septim, you can find a decapitated head on a stool. It looks vaguely like a dark elf, and even features similar scars to Jiub, so many assumed it to be the same Dunmer who sailed with the Nerevarine once upon a time. But there were always a couple of glaring problems with this theory: a) you can find the same model used elsewhere in the game, b) it has round, human-looking ears, rather than pointed elven ones, and c) it isn’t blind in one eye.
Regardless, fans loved the idea so much that it became near universal headcanon (geddit?). So, the first thing I did in Oblivion Remastered was make a beeline for Kvatch to find out whether Virtuos had made this noggin more obviously Jiub, bringing to life a popular theory all these years later. Nope.
Instead, it’s a generic zombie head, seemingly disproving the Jiub mystery once and for all.
Jiub Didn’t Realise He Was Dead
Undeterred, I dug around the rest of Kvatch, but I didn’t find any sign of Jiub (maybe someone else will have better luck). However, you can find him in Skyrim thanks to the Dawnguard DLC. Though, it’s a bit awkward, since he doesn’t know that he’s dead.
As it turns out, in Kvatch, he was trapped by a Dremora and sent to the Soul Cairn, so he assumed that he was just imprisoned, not killed. I imagine he’d have noticed that he was dead if he’d been decapitated (after all, there’s a headless horseman ghost you can sometimes spot roaming the roads at night).
But after talking to him, and helping him come to terms with his grizzly fate, he reveals to us what he was up to in Kvatch. He had moved to Cyrodiil after being sainted to write an autobiography, detailing his gruelling one-man war against one of the most fearsome (read: infuriating) critters in Vvardenfell, only to be among the first victims of the Oblivion Crisis. How exactly he died isn’t clear, but we know it was at the hands of a Dremora itching to fill a soul gem, not a random scamp or clanfear.
We might not get to see Jiub’s story unfold in Oblivion, even in the new remake, but at least we have another mystery to spend ten years arguing over: who did get decapitated here?