The Towers-Thalmor DLC theories

[BrettM]

We don't know when it was deactivated by mortals, only that the deactivation was a pre-requisite for Alduins return, so it has to be offline.

The prerequisite is that it be "sundered, kingless, bleeding" but does that necessarily amount to being deactivated? Bleeding and broken is not the same as dead, though it obviously isn't an indicator of health, and both conditions apparently are the result of the Dragon War -- the Time Wound and the Dragon Break that occurred when Felldir created it. I can't see the "kingless" part as having anything to do with deactivation, since the High King is not likely to be the Stone and Skyrim has been kingless before, following the death of Borgas.

 

Whether or not the Snow Tower is actually deactivated depends on what the Stone is, I would think. If it is, say, the Eye of Magnus, then the deactivation may have occurred even before Ysgrammor's time, when the Eye was removed to the location where Saarthal was later built. If it is Alduin, then perhaps the Tower was deactivated at his banishment, reactivated at his return, then deactivated again at his defeat. Or perhaps it can never be deactivated as long as he exists and will one day return to fulfill his destiny as World Eater.

[Lachdonin]

The stone could also have been something associated with the High King (or which has become associated with him) which was destroyed when Ulfric murdered him. Shouts, even basic ones, as extremely powerful magic, though of a radically different kind than what we see of the Falmer (who were, almost certianly the Aldmeri offshoot which created the Snow Tower). In the TES universe, radically different magics tend to react unpredictably when combined. We say this in the books, as members of the Synod tried to understand Umbriel and failed (often spectacularly) because the magics involved were too radically different from the 'mainstream'.

 

If we assume that something as important as the Stone of the Snow Tower passed into the care of the Nords (something which i find likely, considering the Nords diposed the Falmer, who would have been the original caretakers, in the same way the Imperials took over from the Aeleids) then it makes the most sense that it would end up with either the High King, or the Greybeards. If it was in the possession of Torygg, when he was killed, the use of a Thu'um on the stone, intentional or otherwise, could have deactivated it.

 

But i digress. We simply don't know what the stone is, or who has it. Proximity seems to be irrelivent, as the Amulet of Kings traveled accross Tamriel without a problem, so for all we know it could be sitting in the Imperial Vault, or at the bottom of a swamp in Blackmarsh.

 

Either way, though, the use of the word 'Sundered' implies that the tower is broken. Because of the Dragon Break involved, and the lack of temporal cohesion at the sight, Alduin's return could even have been the event which caused the tower to deactivate, since we can't assume an A-B-C progression with anything involving Dragon Breaks.