Assume "The Dawn Era was the End of the Previous Kalpa. The new Kalpa begins with the first day of the Merethic Era."

Then put on your lore-hats and start looking hard at the ramifications of that.

Compile, sort, think, post.

Help.

Love,

MK

I'll have to take my pants off to solve this one.

Shades, on Dec 5 2008, 02:18 PM, said:

Yes.

Quite frankly, we need some tea, too.

Lord Hyamentar, on Dec 5 2008, 08:29 PM, said:

For me without sugar please.

Challenging to think about. The Dawn Era was nonlinear time, but are the people of the Fourth Era still living in the Merethic Era? Or is their era a successor to the Merethic; the age of Man instead of elf.

I get the feeling MK could be thinking of time as the Worm Ourobouros, a snake devouring its own tail. That's more of a guess on my part than a theory, though.
http://en.wikipedia....wiki/Ouroborous

(duplicate post)

Minor rambling:

the metaphysical degeneration of Aurbis' anchor, Nirn, would congeal the Aurbis into one singular thing, wouldn't it? Theoretically, this would somehow recreate a dawn state. The way things are going in TES appears quite systematic in its dissipation; since it's been happening a while anyway, I'm sure we're going to see myth echos of relevant symbols soon again, but on a much more grandiose scale. That last bit is probably more subjective than my other assertions, and I hate that it sounds somewhat stereotypical in the sense that all crap has to end in a grand action-movie-style mega explosion fashion.

Your "parents" statement of course makes me think of the Ouroboros-esque idea that everything -- EVERYTHING -- is repetitive and cyclical; apparently, my old theory that somehow kalpas are unique appears to be incorrect. I'm guessing we -- indirectly or somehow directly -- facilitate the creation of the kalpa we already exist in.

I'll be honest: I really don't know where to start to give a more coherent answer.

946000, on Dec 5 2008, 02:51 PM, said:

You start right there.

To none and all,

The first thing that comes to my mind is the rather suggestion that the current Kalpa will likewise end in a Dawn-like state of dissolution. If I remember correctly, beings were coming onto death and discovering their mortality for the first time [in ages]. Mayhaps the end of this Kalpa will bring beings into discovering everlasting life? The Loveletter certainly paints a much more metaphysically aware picture of the 5th. A return to divinity is in logical order.

I do feel however that this observation is simplistic. There surely must be more to this than that.

I also have some ideas about connecting this all to the possibility of the Marukhati Aedra, though they are far from definite. If the theory is taken to be true then the "want to give birth to your own parents" makes a lot of sense in a metaphorical analysis. I am however only a neophyte in this school of thought.

Does "help" suggest that you yourself are not sure what the statement implies? Or is it a directive to help each other understand?

Nice to see a post from the master,
Ayaan-Si

Ps. World-Eating .: Satak .: Ouroboros...

I wonder if we're seeing not just the end of an Era, the Third, but the end of a kalpa. But how long will the end of days take? Maybe the end of the world, and its rebirth, is still centuries away.

That represents the mortal world, is the selfish illusion of individuality and freedom of choice, which results in a schizophrenic tangle of 'theoretical' possibilities.

This is really just an illusion, as all possible routes inenvitably lead back to absorbicide of one sort or other, in which gods re-congeal in approximation of the original aurbic et-ada, then spontaneously (Since convention and creation occur in a timeless moment) decay back into variable simulation.


Rather than asking if I want to give birth to my father, a better question would be to ask if I wanted to BE my own father, since I am. I just dont realize it.



[detailed explanation for the above pontification follows]

The original spirits "original" form was a dissolute aether of mixed probabilities, out of which a unifying and aggregating factor, known afterwards as time, formed. Time gave each bit of chaotic data an individual purpose, while still maintaining total system chaos; Remove time, and all the paths of the other aedra and daedra look exactly the same as they did in this chaotic aetherial state.

The Mundus is a copy-cat approximation of the same, using mortals as the surrogates for divine chaotic data. Mortals mill about in the mundus at "Random", but provide the fodder for new congealed mundus-gods to be formed-- The mythic precident for the creation of mundus will unfold again with these new 'gods', and another layer of onion-skin reality will be produced.

An egg, in an egg, in an egg, in an egg......................

Wierd, on Dec 5 2008, 03:12 PM, said:

You lazy, pedantic bastards. Here's your medicine/tea/pants-removal and a vision of how to think about this. Now get to work!

syronj,

For a while now I have had the crazy thought that the Seven Thousand Steps of High Hrothgar each correspond to a year in Nirn's history. MK has previously stated that Nirn is roughly six thousand years old, which would leave us with a approximately one thousand years remaining. Plenty for two, or more, eras to follow suit.

The world is just an endless cycle of endlessly repeated actions? Meaning that everything that is happening already has happened and will happen again?

I'm no mythology expert.

I was dancing alone when I first saw you,
A silhouette in the blur of my happy vertigo.
I waited for the world to become solid,
But could see you no longer.

I wept a stream of prisms,
And found you in the refractions.
I wiped my eyes to see you better,
Only to rediscover my solitude.

Then I went looking for you,
But you found me first, secretly.
You were dressed like a beggar,
And I gave you a pearl.

You sat your pan down at your side,
Then stood up, smiling like a child.
I found my hands caught up in yours,
And suddenly we were dancing.

Then I recognized you,
A silhouette in the blur of my happy vertigo.
But before I was leading,
And now you were.

Were my tears of saddness or of joy?

MK, on Dec 5 2008, 04:19 PM, said:

Pedantic-- HRMPH. This coming from the word-poet king himself.

I am merely responding in the way as is my nature. If you dont like the answer, that's your choice.


And for the record, i am responding from the bathtub, which totally trumps pants removal AND tea.


Now, if you wont complain about being my being even MORE pedantic:


If we are to take the statement that mythic aurbis is holographic in nature, (In the actual sense of what a hologram is, and not the scifi lightshow kind) then each person is already a universe exploding inwardly in infinity, mimicking the higher layer above in absolute perfection.

If you want something other than perpetual boringness, then you have to kill that analogy. It is not hologram-- it is brute force progression.

The purpose of the universe is to understand infinity, and variation, afterall. We are just actors. We take to the stage again and again. It is not our place to rewrite the script.

(That is to say, the FULL screenplay already has each of us doing everything that is possible, and everything that is not, and so, rewriting the script is pointless anyway.)

SkyShadowing, on Dec 5 2008, 03:27 PM, said:

No, one thing is new in every kalpa. I should probably add that. No, I won't tell you what I mean by "new".

Further clarification: perhaps look at the statement from the lens of cultures that don't normally use the term "kalpa"..?

MK, on Dec 5 2008, 03:19 PM, said:

Guilty. Sorry.

I'm probably being too literal, but here's what I got from the video: maybe the music from the heavens that no one can resist is a symbol for mystic or religious revelation? I'm also reminded of the dance of Kali. But others of you can explore these ideas better than I can.

Edit: The new thing in every era could be a subcreation, I guess, such as intelligent beings (mortals) who surpass their creators (such as Lorkhan, failing so that his creations wouldn't).

Numerological [censored] is starting to click in my head a lil. Thanks to Ayaan-Si for making me recall the Loveletter some. Once again, rambling. Behold:

I agree with Ayaan's 5th era assertion. If this is true, it's not really suprising: 5 is a number of completeness: five fingers on a hand, 2 arms, 2 legs, and the head of a body et al. Hell, the "way of the fifth" is the Enantiomorph -- Love itself (recall that the fifth Walking Way listed in the Loveletter is the Enantiomorph).

Whenever I see Vivec mention the five corners of the world, I think of the theoretical 5 dimensions of existence. The 4th of these is Time. The 5 of these (can be) all of existence.

Personally I see the number 4 as a "means to an end" type of number. Four Horsemen bring about the apocalypse. Four Noble Truths lead to enlightenment.

There is going to be quite a cataclysm in the 4th coming era. Something that will bring some form of completeness in the 5th. I'm more focused on this particular aspect.

Going on what the above said, and combining it with what I thought, and thinking even more...

The gods are just former mortals who achieved CHIM and are taking the place of the old Gods? Meaning that Akatosh=Lorkhan because Lorkhan was the 'Akatosh' of the previous 'kalpa', and when Akatosh removed his heart, he officially brought about the end of the previous kalpa and the beginning of the new kalpa?

CHIM is different from other walking paths. Not ALL of those who achieved apotheosis used CHIM. Check the Prolix Tower and Numidium.

Quote

The new kalpa begins after Lorkhan dies.

1 kalpa = from void to state-gradient Z?

Wierd, on Dec 5 2008, 03:41 PM, said:

P_I v P_Y

A_I

T_I --> ~(J & T)_Y

~(P_I)_Y --> (A --> U)_L

~(B_I)_Y --> [~(A --> U) & F_U ]

M_U(I & V) & (S & S)_W & (~R)_W

[(E & ~ E) --> (~R)_W]_W


See, I can be overly technical and miss the point too!

We need to get Albides in here. Solin also, if I had my choice.

the new things could be CHIM and/or Love, which would tie in with the Z that ada was talking about. meh, kinda too obvious though...

about the video: the opening sequence i take as a metaphor of lorkhan getting his heart ninja'd. dont take my tooth = dont take my heart.

furthermore i suspect the dance they were doing are the moves to the walkabout, and that song is the song that the mothpriests do when they 0sum. man, redguards really are the Barons of Move Like This.

the main lyrics could refer to Lorkhan's creation of the world as well as his current state... and the chorus to his remaking of it? i suppose he has to come back in some way, its impossible to get rid of the concept of space after all.


oh wait, thats not what we were suposed to analyze it?

What is the basic building block?

In RL its particular physics related to the varying speed, size and relationships of various particles.

In the Aurbis there are little magical particles - but how do they fit together - how do they work etc ...

There's pedantic for you

And your video appears to be about the painful removal of something.

Here's a passing thought. If five is the number of completion and four is the means to achieve it, wouldn't that make the TES V the final game in the series?

The people who know what their talking about can get back to rambling now.

What's a kalpa?

*gets kicked out of the lore forums*

MK, did you ever read the Everien books by Valery Leith? Particularly mind-bending-contorting fantasy, I'm sure you'd love 'em. The first book (there are three or four in the series).

World-Eating. Nom nom nom. I like the Ouroborous idea. But, maybe instead of eating its tail, it is eating its head. Yeah, try to picture that.

Alaisiagae, on Dec 5 2008, 04:59 PM, said:

http://en.wikipedia....lpa_(time_unit)

Hindus believe we're living in the "Kali Yuga" or Age of Iron, if I recall correctly. This is as opposed to a true Age of Gold. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kali_yuga

Maybe Lady Nerevar is onto something about the video; the painful removal of the tooth could be a metaphor for the deaths and chaos that a new age would mean for mortals. Something that mortals would want to avoid but would be better off for, afterward.

Quote

a kalpa is a time measure. Interestingly it also means "practicable, feasible, possible, proper, fit, able,regulated." a random sanskrit connection: Anu appears to be the name of an insanely small subdivision of a second

if the video really is to be taken as symbolic then let me extrapolate farther. lorkhan takes a trip with his brother (akatosh? would seem to contradict the established mythos but meh) around the world, influencing as he goes. the dance is the universal truth, the walkabout, the ability to survive being devoured by Satak, CHIM. his return with the golden tooth would suggest that he will come back to us in some altered, even greater state (the return of vehk comes to mind). but really i think i am inferring too much

i think the 1st flight might hold some clues

MK, on Dec 6 2008, 07:49 AM, said:

So what term do they normally use? Renaissance? Aeon? The Aztec Suns?

Peak novelty approaches! The Wayeb is immanent! I guess we're getting a new sun, eh? I'll bring the booze.

MK, on Dec 5 2008, 09:16 PM, said:

Skipped the first three...
Yo mommy. Old Mary gets to kick ass again and the Alinor Dragon is hungry.

MK, on Dec 5 2008, 01:16 & 02:49 PM, said:

Well, the Dawn Era being the 'End' of the previous Kalpa rather than the beginning of this one sorta turns my conventional idea of the Kalpa cycle on its head (as I'd normally assume that the Dawn Era entailed both the end of the previous Kalpa and the beginning of this one). So, with a completely literal interpretation of this Kalpa beginning with the Merethic Era, my first assumption is to correlate a new Kalpa with a new subgradient, where I guess the 'one new thing' would be that it is a new subgradient (since everything 'before' this is nonlinear, the beginning of the Merethic Era should technically be the 'beginning' of this subgradient). However, as I'm probably rather pedantic as well, I'd guess my first assumption would be wrong... I'll try and think more when I've got some time to kill...

Still, I guess the basic 'ramification' of a literal interpretation is that it denies the Dawn Era being creation (throwing everything we know out the window), meaning the premise of the Monomyth's events being creation is wrong (where instead I guess Letters 5 & 7 of the Intercept would be creationedit: 'the beginning' ('creation' is too loaded as a word))...

Adanorcil, on Dec 5 2008, 10:15 PM, said:

What ever Martin actually was doing wit the Amulet, he didn't let us in on it.

MK, on Dec 5 2008, 08:16 PM, said:

The world is a Dragon that eats itself, and the purpose of the world is to become the Dragon (the world, everything). So from void (after the Dragon has eaten everything) to Z (the Dragon, World, Everything) means the world is waiting for a new Dragon to come and eat the World.

Martin is that Dragon!

--

Bah. Scratch that, it's old cake. Gotta read Ramayan 3392 A.D. again.

---

Differences: Kings, regents, prophets, fashion. Yes we can...

Elderly snow sniffing flippant Nords sitting in their retirement home "Mountain view", talking about how in the last Kalpa everything was better.

The best metaphor for the nature of time is that it's like the sweetpin in a faremyle.

Lady Nerevar, on Dec 6 2008, 09:09 AM, said:

Let's turn this thing electric.
Let's turn this thing electric.
Let's turn this thing electric.
Let's turn this thing electric.
Let's turn this thing electric.
Let's turn this thing electric.
Let's turn this thing electric.
Let's turn this thing electric.

Oh my god what have I done?
Do it again
All I wanted was a little fun
Do it again
Got a brain like bubble gum
Do it again
Blowing up my cranium.
Do it again

Turn off my ro-botic brain.
All my thoughts are all the same (all insane)

Paint my face and bang my drum. Throw my bone up to the sun. Bang my drum and paint my face. Pump my cave to hyperspace.

Gez, on Dec 5 2008, 06:30 PM, said:

I thought time was an ocean in a storm.

Luagar2, on Dec 5 2008, 07:26 PM, said:

Every beginning is a logical end as well. The beginning of a banana split starts with the ending of the banana.

If you are looking for a generic term for this, I believe "Extremum" is the proper choice, even if it smacks of being overy analytical.


The concept of "beginning" is undefined in this case. "Every new day is the beginning of the rest of your life."

Luagar2, on Dec 5 2008, 06:26 PM, said:

*cough* gettin there *cough*

Alaisiagae, on Dec 5 2008, 06:31 PM, said:

"Time is the school in which we learn,
Time is the fire in which we burn."
(Delmore Schwartz)

http://en.wikipedia....s_April%27s_Day

Luagar2, on Dec 6 2008, 12:26 AM, said:

Yeah, Mankar told us:

These were not words for the common of Tamriel, whose clergy long ago feigned the very existence of the Dawn.


EDIT: Who is, of course, the leader of the Mythic Dawn, which, he could not stress it enough, is coming again.

MK, on Dec 5 2008, 06:34 PM, said:

So, the Dawn isn't the beginning. Okay. Does that mean there were other eras before the Dawn? Maybe some cataclysm that destroyed the previous inhabitants.

...

I'm totally missing this, aren't I? My brain isn't up to lore-wrangling tonight, sorry.

Or, if we fly with the Ouroborus idea, then the coming Dawn Mankar talks about is actually the first Dawn. Time loop, except not really... more like a loop-de-loop, it doesn't fully connect, it goes off on a new path.

That sounds about right. Also that perhaps the gods are, maybe, the previous era's inhabitants? That they really only did something for renascence, not creation? So gods as ancestors and gods as sacrifices into new life are views that are both true and literal?

Albides, on Dec 5 2008, 06:54 PM, said:

Does this mean there was no Dawn and no original Creation? Just an endless series of ages being destroyed and restarted?

Albides, on Dec 6 2008, 12:54 AM, said:

The gods had to live on through their children, someone had to put the idea into the minds of the people at some point in time so there will be a time when gods and offspring are together.

So who was the very first?

What will happen to the old gods? Or who does god pray too?

syronj, on Dec 5 2008, 06:57 PM, said:

Sounds like that Aztec thing (sorry, I don't know the name!).

i have been instructed to forgo sentence structure and let my incoherent ramblings flow onto the canvas (oh, so cliche...) of my keyboard. any insanity herein begs to be forgiven.

if the dawn era is not creation then what is it?

A dawn which is not creation is a dusk, an end to a process and the pathway to the next. azura comes to mind immediately, as it is her plane, but a violent end is dagon's also. they are all similar enough. if it is the towers that created the world by stabilizing and removing possibility (looking inside the proverbial box and finding the very real dead cat) then it may be assumed that it is the towers/mer who created the gods, which they believe to be their fathers. end [censored] attempt at topic linkage.

if the dawn is dusk then dusk must be dawn. the end of tamriel, brought on my the destruction of the force that created it (towers) will then bring upon true creation, evolving the world into its suggested proper state. again with the letter and return to love.

all creation is subgradient, fractal, Z = (Z^2) + C. input a number, iterate, and watch it approach infinity. a schizophrenic being, one and alone, splitting himself until he is thousands. the constant C is the news of the kalpa, the value that changes subtly (or not so subtly) the nature of the beings' existence.

i return to the letter. the inhabitants of the 5th are few but great, educated in the ways of truth. it is a society in which the norms of existence have disolved into something barely tangible. who is to say they will not be the new gods?


thats me rambling. except for the 5 pound bag of gumybears today has been bad... like usual. life is but a dream, drifting on a stream...

PS. blame proweler

Albides, on Dec 5 2008, 06:54 PM, said:

Sounds to me like great minds think alike!

Quote

gods are concepts, and, barring their dissolution, should remain. even if they (and the world) dissolve they will eventually reform; love, beauty, justice, etc. are everlasting. new mortals will mantel them and become them, and we will never know the difference.

god prays to himself, after all, its is his ego which keeps the world going.

this gets me thinking about Vehkships. once again i take it as a metaphor. Belief is enough to keep the world going when its main support is damaged. belief is love, for nothing is truer than complete trust. belief is a mini universe onto itself, self-similar and identical but in C to the main. "slingshot [...] into era-streams without the needed energies of nearby aetheric bodies" indeed.

Lady Nerevar, on Dec 5 2008, 07:19 PM, said:

So, Dunmer do ancestor worship. But why, when the soul gets reused? It's kinda like that, right? In other words, ancestor worship would be more like worshiping your future self...

(sorry, my thoughts are also a little incoherent)

i dono, but that sounds damn good in my mind.

elaborating, perhaps:

the dawn was not creation because it did not create. everything was already around but recycled, and at the beginning of the new kalpa it reformed and began to take its new shape. a ball of clay, fresh and malleable. slowly large sections are pushed and pulled into a vague form resembling structure, then modified and modified again until we receive that which is now known as nirn. certain mechanisms keep it stable. as time unfolds the clay collapses onto itself and looses form and structure, returning to the ball. what is added? different colors? any type of playdoh you mix will end up Gray. kalpas: lather, rinse, repeat.

(and you thought your thoughts were incoherent )

What began as nothing was not nothing,
but shapeless shadows cast out into dreams,
two beating hearts, the flesh that renders spirit,
and in the newly-awakened morning-dusk
became the hands of angels
building demons out of paper.
We will wage wars with wooden swords
and say that we slay dragons
though the dragons slay themselves.

Where were want and need before the world?
When gods are born, who tells their bedtime-stories
and teaches them to fear the wolf, and love the handsome prince,
and form darkness into stars, then into planets,
then collide in triumph and create mankind,
Elfkind and others, sloadkind, sea-kin and all,
and swaddle them in fields of fertile soil,
fruit trees, beasts slow and swift for hunting,
and the things that roar at night?
Who teaches gods to fight?
Who gives them greed, or love, or mercy,
and inspires them to dance?

We are children spinning wheels inside of wheels,
we are the gods who name ourselves.
The Dawn ended when the daylight came and the world lived,
little voices in the gods' own little boxes, pets, toys,
and all the Day is spent in games and riddles
until we come to dusk again, the legend-shadows creeping longer
as the gods lie down to sleep soon touch the boxes
and the little pets see nightfall
and find written in the starlight
how to build another world.

Evolution. Kalpa. CREATION is the embodiment, translation, and reembodiment
of the bedtime-stories told to us
by our gods.

Soon they will be the gods who name themselves.

The Chicken layed the egg after the egg was [un]created by Akatosh.

TOYB, on Dec 5 2008, 08:11 PM, said:

Hmm... you may be onto something there. Dragons also lay eggs...

Dragons are also serpents, if you squint your eyes.

Awesome, so the plot for TES5 will have something to do with recycling of time? Cool.
Most interesting. I like this 'snake biting its own tail' thing. More CHIMified PCs that either save the world from total desolation and destruction OR reset it back to the begining stages. Or both?

This thread just makes me salivate more over the wrest of the Aldadugga stories. Oh boy, I can't wait!

Nocturnal creatures might view Dawn as an end rather than a beginning.

TOYB, on Dec 5 2008, 08:11 PM, said:

Or something like this.

Heh, all this is way over my head.

Luagar2, on Dec 5 2008, 06:26 PM, said:

This is the first thing that came to mind, and it reminded me of some images I kick around in my head from time to time. With Enantiomorph as the blueprint of the universe, the rebel/king relationship is, like MK says, a "waveform." A sine wave of some other function from trigonometry. The function has a period, or the length of time it takes to repeat, and Wierd said something interesting a long time ago, something that I don't remember, another science post where he said that witnessing certain matter relationships can deconstruct them and put them into a compartmentalized form. Like the witness breaks the endless waveform pattern into a world, a level of subgradient that is self-contained except, for the moment when one period of the function connects to its neighbor along the x-axis. Blahdunno.

But if the dawn is just the end of the last kalpa, were our parents greater than us, and their parents greater than them? Or will we coalesce when the dragon eats us, and become a collective divinity again. Lord knows it would account for the massively tangled identities and overlapping attributes of the gods.

Or what if Lorkhan did not fail a Chim? To dwell in the tower is to be a whole world of you, and metaphysics 101 tells us that AE, that the being before Anu and Padomay cannot last. By its very nature it splits. It always seemed to me that to attain Chim is to divide like God and become an Enatiomorph in yourself, with a new set of kalpas spurting out of your chest cavity. Do it again.

Albides, on Dec 5 2008, 06:09 PM, said:

My apologies, not RL cultures. Tamrielic cultures.

Hmm, very tired, very interested, lets see how this pans out.
The repetition of ending kalpas reminds me of my daydreams i would have before i got a job.
Lying on my bed, i fantasize about some adventure i would have, usually involving me storming a castle on a giant lizard, dualwielding chiansaws or something, then finally rescuing and having sex with my spanish teacher. When i would finish this little day dream, It took time for me to come up with a new adventure to have, and during this time wierd things would pop into my mind. James Bond swinging from a flaming vine into an exploding helicopter. My grandmother dueling Richard the Lionhearted for control of the English Monarchy, my old dog Elmo floating on a sea in a raft made from pizza, that kind of thing. Then, i would eventually come up with a new adventure, only this time the lizard is a corvette, the chainsaws are Desert Eagles, the castle is a Military-Industrial Complex, and my spanish teacher is, well, my spanish teacheer (she's really hot). So maybe each Kalpa is a string of (semi)coherent thoughts, and when these thoughts play themselves out, the Godhead has to come up with a new adventure to entertain it's schitzo self, and the Dawn eras are the muddled periods between each Kalpa/Day Dream?

I'm sure i'm going to come back tomorrow and kick myself. Or maybe i'll be the hero of the Lore Forums. Oh well, i'm going to bed

A Kalpa is the time of a "hub" inside the "wheel." There was a universe, that we know nothing about other than Lorkhan saw it. Anuiel and Padomay created a universe inside that which we call the Aurbis. Lorkhan and Akatosh then created a universe inside the Aurbis which we call the Mundas.

Anuiel and Padomay are the remnants of the kalpa before the dawn kalpa, just as Akatosh and Lorkhan are the remnants from the dawn kalpa in the current one. I think the analogues for this kalpa would be Talos and someone on the elven side, Vivec? The High King of Alinor? who knows. I'll agree that the "new thing" is the next subgradient, which the new Kalpa attempts to create. The Aldudagga's always struck me as a retelling of history, but some of it appeared to be stuff that hasn't happened, perhaps they are retellings of the Dawn.

That's my take.

Looking at what MK actually posted to start and his responses to various ideas: what if it is not fundamentally a circle/cycle but rather a piston?

Circle/cycles may be attached to power other things having said that ...

Because I just keep wondering what happens to all the bits the Leaping Demon King and his accomplice added to the Mundus - do they all snap back to where they started from as if on rubber bands?

BOING! ... and there is a waveform that goes back and forwards

edit
oops - creation - sex, etc - if so it is not above your head MR TISSUE BOX - it is somewhere lower down - love is where it finds you

Wasn't this already implied? All this has happened before and all this will happen again. The end and beginning are one and the same. Mothers birth their daughters who birth their mothers who birth their daughter who birth their mothers. Its Hinduism 101. You need t get original MKULTRA, The Hinduism thing is getting old fast.

What I'm saying is not sure this is about the Wheel of REincarnation/Life Mortazo - I suspect that it has gone off on a tangent with different implications

Mortazo, on Dec 6 2008, 11:54 AM, said:

Not repetition, or not just repetition.

Mortazo, on Dec 6 2008, 11:54 AM, said:

As is your envy and inconstant harrassment. Not to mention the entry-level insight into Hinduism and Satanism wiki wiki wiki wiki. Yes, I like Buck Rogers, too, Mort.

Talk to me when you own a liqour store.

I post this with the disclaimer that I could never really comprehend the metaphysical aspects of lore and really just like to ramble on about random thoughts will trying to form a coherent picture of things:

I like the idea people have been mentioning of the shifting of relationships, with mortals becoming gods and new mortals coming onto the scene. Seems to fit with the things that we know very well.

Alaisiagae, on Dec 5 2008, 04:22 PM, said:

While, it is my opinion that this is probably not literally true, with souls actually being reused, and I don't think most Dunmer are conscious of it, I actually think this may be very true in a sort of metaphorical sense, related to how events, legends, heroes, archetypes repeat themselves and keep showing up, that circular sense of time, mantling, etc. Due to this, inadvertently, perhaps ancestor worshipers are worshiping their future and past, because they will become or have been what their ancestors are now. With CHIM, worshiping yourself seems to be half if not all of the point, and Vivec did come out of Velothi culture.

Of course, I think I am probably just connecting two unrelated aspects that seem to have a superficial relationship to each other, or I could be entirely wrong-headed.

MK, on Dec 6 2008, 04:15 PM, said:

My aunt Mae owns a liquor store in Oklahoma-- is that good enough?

Between you and me though, I suspect your personal tastes would be better satisfied with a short trip to Mexico. They sell Crown Royal in 3 liter jugs there. (Jack Daniels too, But I think you would prefer the air of sophistication of the crown.)

I could see Vivec shuffleboarding in the caribbean... Give him a little color.

The answer to this question seems like an obvious "yes" now but, can we start calling the "Twelve Worlds of Creation" the "Twelve Previous Kalpas?"

Nazz, on Dec 7 2008, 08:20 AM, said:

I think it more apt to call them the 12 folds of the last skin... But I could be mistaken.

Just like a snake that sheds its skin, each time the skins are alike, but at the same time each one is different, and unique.

Hence my 'pedantic' tirade about how the nature of ES time is neither linear, nor circular; Kalpas are not perfect reinactments, but incremental evolutions. (MK himself seems to have verified this later on in the thread. "There is exactly one new thing in each Kalpa" and all that.) Time in the ES universe seems to be more like a very convoluted corkscrew. It DOES eventually return to the same original reference state, or at least, promises to do so eventually. (It may never do so, however, as the length of the corkscrew could be infinite.)

Theoretically, one can therefor change the past, and the very mythic nature of the universe, by changing the future, and holding on to your identity long enough (Infinity). It would however, be only a grand theatre, because if you change the past by altering the future, (which causes the past to exist) you are constricted by causality to perform that act, and it is not choice at all.

Perhaps this is why gods have no free will.


This would also explain how the Selective were able to change the mythic nature of Akatosh.... They altered time's past, by altering its future, and resetting time. The new program propogated up, and through the next kalpa, resetting a new age reference in which what they wanted to accomplish was true. (The new program was ultimately futile, however, because in the long run it accomplished nothing. The very change they wanted to make was precalculated as a consequence of the aurbis's existence.)

Theoretically speaking, if you can imagine it, then it exists in some specific convolution of the ES temporal axis. The dragon broke event of the selective, in which the future and past of tamriel was radically different to each person asked, is just a side effect of time re-adjusting to the injected/infectious change.

The results of a forward temporal injection on the current ordinal's status is impossible for a mortal to calculate, and likely impossible for one of the et'ada to calculate perfectly either. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts, and subtle changes here, can have drastic effects someplace else.

More specifically, how it will cause the time axis to jump is unpredictable.




Ironically, it has implications in the real world too, if you stay up on theoretical physics involving causality.

Haven't we been here before?

http://www.imperial-...-mantia.shtml#8

There you have a wheel within the Mundus which affects the Aurbis.

The Ayleids are returning. In particular the "masters" of White Gold.



And now here we are speculating. What if the kalpas are wheels within wheels? What if mortals become et'ada in the next kalpa? As if those cogs were not already turning?

Maybe the gods have lost their free will because they have seen way too many kalpas to believe in it. And if you don't believe in free will, you don't have it.

Adragas, on Dec 7 2008, 12:52 PM, said:

They are denied free will, because they exist eternally, and recursively.

Mortals can have free will, because they are transient.

Paws said:

So we're all Lorkhan? Sweet; I find that kinky and incestuous.

I actually like rationalizing this idea of kalpas and endless rebirths from a purely metaphysical perspective. Forget, for a moment, the idea of the individual as a "body" -- a physical, corporeal being -- and instead reject physicality as an illusion (like Plato, I guess) and insist that the individual is an idea, a concept, a single self-defining meme or, to quote the Tsaesci, a Name. Perhaps the end of each kalpa is simultaneously a cataclysm and a miracle, brought about by a single individual (remembering that this means a single idea) that so imposes its existence upon everything else that it becomes existence itself through CHIM.

Imagine, if you would, a world where the presence of the metaphysical concept of Adventurous Putty is as fundamental and easily taken for granted as the presence of time or destruction in our own. Perhaps the gods, with their many interwoven names and characteristics, are the mingled thought-concepts of a previous existence that so stubbornly made the case for their existence that they thought, and by thinking, one by one, they were, ushering in a new existence. And perhaps that new existence itself was the thought of Lorkhan, who so thoroughly integrated himself that he became the new idea of becoming, is the idea of being at all.

But that was a shot in the dark.

And now, in the high-brow, constructive, and totally insightful philosophy that "CHIM is the construction set, lol": each kalpa is a game in the series. Each time the universe is destroyed and remade anew, picking up some time after where it was left, but different.

Adventurous Putty, on Dec 7 2008, 02:49 PM, said:

Sounds like the Essential Hero is required once again - so next time the Hero has to destroy the world?

Adventurous Putty, on Dec 7 2008, 02:49 PM, said:

Adventurous Putty everywhere? The continuum held together by Putty? I'm trying to imagine it not easy - a bit of an extreme example that.

What if I am the Godhead?

*gasp*

Oh shi -- [NUMINIT]

Adventurous Putty, on Dec 7 2008, 04:47 PM, said:

Ohh noes DEVS - alert - Putty in Meltdown - SOP (save our putty)

this is what she said last night:

It repeats itself because it must. Free will is the next subgradient. To love it is to kill it.

Is it possible that the one thing that is different in every kalpa is the addition of a new spoke on the wheel? In the previous kalpa, there were Eight, and in this kalpa, there are Nine?

I can't sleep, and had this idea as I laid there, trying to get to sleep.

I don't recall seeing anything about Dragon Breaks making new spokes.

I also don't recall hearing Talos being another spoke. From anywhere. He just mantled Lorkhan.

Dude, you totally lost me. I'm confusticated now.

I like what Lady Nerevar was saying, though, about a dawn that is not a dawn being dusk instead.

SkyShadowing, on Dec 8 2008, 03:26 AM, said:

I think you have landed on one of those things that has no Lore either way. So there might be one less Spoke too.

Just as Gods may be mantled so it does appear that the Towers and the Spokes correspond - but I've not come accross anything that might suggest that creating a New Tower also creates a New Spoke for example - rather Towers seem to have been created to match existing Towers. If this is incorrect you might ask if a Tower 'loses' it's heart does it cease to be a Tower and therefore does the corresponding spoke cease to be a spoke?

But whether there is a shape or progression associated with the many Kalpas is an interesting topic. Now that I look closer at your question I wonder if you are asking if Kalpas and Spokes correspond too?

Speculation based on your suggestion would then be: If you assume that Time is the Hub then each Kalpa might be a Spoke and all contained within the Mundus suffounded by the Aurbis. To see it this way may be to accept that the Wheel is multi-aspected and that there is a progression.

Then you would have to ask if growth within the Wheel is possible - considering that 'all time' is considered to be bound within the Wheell, thereby binding all within the Wheel to it.

If internal growth exists then that might be represented by the appearence of a New Spoke/Kalpa and thus although the Wheel is circular there is also change and growth.

No idea if that is a new way of looking at it so that should be enough to give the buffs something to refute or otherwise play with.


What then interests me is: what external force is the hub of the wheel powering or being powered by?

And you also have a 3 tiered progression: Tower ... Spoke ... Kalpa

An alternate structure would be if Kalpas are the Spaces Between the Spokes. And if not, what do the Spaces represent or correspond to?

I think of one consequence: the Empire of Tamriel is Aldmeris?

Adventurous Putty, on Dec 7 2008, 12:49 PM, said:

I can't say whether or not it's right or wrong, but it sounds very nifty in the least...

SkyShadowing, on Dec 8 2008, 01:26 AM, said:

But there are not nine spokes in 'this Kalpa', there are eight...

1999, on Dec 8 2008, 10:26 AM, said:

You're asking/theorizing what the spaces, spokes, and hub are, but we already know from Vehk's Teachings. Time is not the hub, we (Mundus) are the hub; the Spaces correspond to the Daedric Princes, the spokes correspond to the Aedra.

Luagar2, on Dec 8 2008, 01:03 PM, said:

If Vekh has achieved Chim has he left the Mundus? He has transcended, right?

And if he has left what new power takes his place?

And with a new power can there be a new order and arrangement of the structure of things?

edit:

Quote

What will eat the world?

1999, on Dec 8 2008, 11:08 AM, said:

I highly...highly doubt it, seeing as we haven't seen anything to suggest this.

Unless you have some sort of support.

946000, on Dec 8 2008, 01:34 PM, said:

I'm trying to make sense of the title of this thread

Quote

MK calls it World eating 101 - so I ask: What will eat the world?

I feel there has to be something new here ... new = either a diferent perspective or something added or taken away - and SkyShadowing came up with something new. Question then is does it fit? So far no one has been able to say yes or no to that so I have tried to extend it towards known territory, but I keep getting drawn back to that thread title - as in what eats the world? Well maybe time - but what else?

1999, on Dec 8 2008, 01:19 PM, said:

Alduin eats the world, making room for the next one. The elves "erase man from the mythic," reconstruct the pure Aurbis, Akatosh rejoins Lorkhan as they are eaten up by the higher level of subgradient.

1999, on Dec 8 2008, 11:08 AM, said:

No

1999, on Dec 8 2008, 12:19 PM, said:

Alduin the World-Eater, it is in his name...

1999, on Dec 8 2008, 11:08 AM, said:

Why does there have to be something else? But, if you're going to go along that line of thought it probably wouldn't be what else, but who else... I guess somebody new could take Alduin's place and eat the world...

Of course, this may just be my over-analytical side showing through, but MK said "I won't tell you what I mean by 'new'" - just by making this statement he gives us reason to assume we shouldn't use the traditional definition of 'new' (as in, something new is added)...

Edit: Clarification

For minor clarification, Alduin seems more like a combo of Anu and Padhome more than Aka, even though there are obvious elements that Alduin shares with Aka.

Try Satakal, litterally Satak and Akal.

1999, on Dec 7 2008, 03:37 PM, said:

I would LOVE that! No more of this 'saving the world' crap for me! I'm gonna eat it!

Didn't the tscae (sp?) have this whole world eating thing going on with snakes and logic and numbers and stuff?

paw-prints-in-the-mud, on Dec 8 2008, 02:48 PM, said:

That sounds like a certain Time Travelling Composite Being in the making - referrin to wassisname who came from the future - only I would imagine that he would have been a composite of myrriad smaller creatures and not just a couple of biggies.

About Alduin - now that he knows what Dagon and the Greedy Man have been up to can he undo their work? He curses Dagon to undo it, but maybe Dagon cannot ... so what happens if Alduin is unable to eat all and explodes???

Quote

If Alduin or Dagon undoes Dagon's and the Greedy Man's stuff then what happens? The mer apparently believe they will be able to restore the Aurbis - but what happens if something has changed and they cannot?

As I said earlier, new = either a different perspective or something added or taken away - what could be added or taken away from this process that is indicated by what we have experienced and read in-game and out ... or could seeing it from a different perspective in itself be enough to change events?

oops, just realised:

Quote

NO, I do not want to be my grandad or grandma and conceive my mum and dad. Grandpa and Grandma were very much in love and would not need my assistance ty

proweler, on Dec 8 2008, 03:01 PM, said:

True dat. Think "Varieties of Faith" makes that exact assertion, so I just wanted to be kinda original.

TESV = the breaking of the cycle.

Talos mantles/becomes Lorkhan.
His descendent (Uriel VII) destroyes Lorkhan's heart (through Nerevarine).
Ureil's descendent (Martin) becomes Akatosh.
Lorkhan is Akatosh is Lorkhan.

The Serpent dies. Tamriel lives.

scourgicus, on Dec 8 2008, 08:52 PM, said:

You're gonna have to clarify for me on this.

edit: Unless you were just talking about the whole "Lorkhan dies for the existence of Mundus" bit. If it's something else, I need clarification.

Feeling like someone reaching [Z] (become God and in turn the entirety of [a] existence) has something to with the ending of a Kalpa. But I'm just rambling again.

946000, on Dec 9 2008, 01:30 AM, said:

I wrote this in one of those wierd moments of clarity/obscurity that are hard to pinpoint but I'll do my best. I think what I'm saying here is that the Lorkhan/Akatosh cycle heralds/causes the end of a kalpa. Through the apotheosis of Talos and/or Martin we see the unification of Lorkhan and Akatosh into a single Being (Talos=Lorkhan, Martin/Talos=Akatosh) thus abolishing the ending of the kalpa or "shedding of the skin". By "the serpent dies, Tamriel lives" I mean there will be no other world-skins as the impetus of shedding/devouring is done away with. Indeed, in the L/A unity perhaps Martin has become the Serpent - an especially interesting concept considering his background in Daedra worship (blood of Sithis) and devotion to Akatosh (blood of Anu/Sithis), and the shedding of his blood - union of Lorkhan/Akatosh/Daedra resulting in his becoming/mantling all three. Here the defeat of Dagon becomes a symbol for the cycle of birth and redeath inherent in the shedding of world-skins, and that that paradigm is no long applicable. Martin's apotheosis changes everything. Set free from the cycle (who can guess how many times it has happened) Mundus is free to live. The hunger of the Serpent is satiated.

Edit: Regarding the blood theme - if Martin's blood is united with the blood of Aedra and Daedra, is he then the unification of Anu and Sithis? Does Martin become not Akatosh, but Anu?

This is a forum fragment, to be taken in the same vein as the posts on the long-ago WWPD? thread. Meaning this is not necessarily true...but if it were, what does it mean?

[BEGIN FRAGMENT]

"And the awful fighting ended again.

"Kyne's shout brought our tribe back to the mountaintop of Hrothgar, and even our recent dead rode in on the wind of her breathing, for there had been no time to fashion a proper retreat. Their corpses fell among us as we landed and we looked on them in confusion, shaken as we were by this latest battle in the [untranslateable]. The chieftains of the other tribes still held their grudge against our own, Shor son of Shor; more, they had united finally to destroy us and used skin-magic to trick us into disarray.

"Shor was disgusted with the defeat, and disgusted more when reminded by Jhunal that our withdrawal had been wise, for we were outnumbered eight to one. Shor took on the form of the [untranslateable] then, which he used to better shape his displeasure, rather than to shout it aloud and risk more storm-death. His shield thanes, the brothers Stuhn and Tsun, bowed their heads, collecting the spears and swords and wine-knives Shor threw about the broken pillars of the easternmost sky-temple. The rest of us looked away and to our own, not even to acknowledge the thunderclap that signaled our Queen's arrival, who stepped in from the tunnel of her own breath last.

"Kyne had taken the head of Magnar, the jarl that betrayed the weakness of our spear-lines and fled the field. Shor shook his scaled mane. "That isn't Magnar," he said, "Magnar, I fear, fell at sunrise and became replaced by mirrors. The other chieftains are using our forms to lead us astray."

"And then Shor walked away from his War-Wife to enter the cave that led to the [untranslateable]. He needed to take counsel with his father yet again. "Our chieftain loses heart," Dibella said, Bed-Wife of Shor, hefting another body onto the corpse pile some of us were making, "And so goes to the speak to one that has none anymore. Mirrors, indeed, and in that I see no logic."

"Tsun took her by the hair, for he was angered by her words and heavy with lust. He was a berserker despite his high station, and beauty followed battle to his kind. "You weren't made for that kind of thinking," Stuhn said, dragging Dibella towards a whaleskin tent, "Jhunal was. And no one should be speaking to him now." Tsun eyed the Clever Man who had heard him. "Logic is dangerous in these days, in this place. To live in Skyrim is to change your mind ten times a day lest it freeze to death. And we can have none of that now."

"Kyne could have stopped all of this but did nothing but stare at the crowd of Nords around her. Stuhn and Tsun were shifting and it was still uncouth to prevent this kind of neighboring. She looked on Jhunal and did not know if he should be spoken to or not. Rules were changing. Even her handmaiden was gone, and that lack of attendance was a transgression, but Kyne knew Mara was no doubt making treaties with one of the other chieftains, and the Pact still allowed for Tear-Wives to do that. After her husband Shor had forgotten to kiss her, a tradition among the War-Married when they returned from the field together, Kyne kept her storms to herself and knew there was no true understanding until the [untranslateable] was lifted."

[END FRAGMENT]

?

?

I rather like that at first read - it feels like these are those who became the Gods of the Temples in Daggerfall before they became Gods ... so it has returned to Daggerfall and even preceeds it.

(edit:) Or all being cyclical the Gods are the future bleeding into / returning to the past.

On that basis the Hero could be one of those men / women who came to be the Gods - or choose their fate - or could even be Lorkhan ... (end edit)

Imagine that Odin, Thor and the Aesir were 'real' men and women - then that might be how they were.

Still needs a nudge in the direction of Norse though

First thing that came to my mind:
A déjŕ vu. Just from the future and this one's not just a mind trick, but kicks you in the face.

"Holy mountain fart! They look like us, smell like us, fight like us, are like us and they're out to become us. Again."

So, Mara is out to get a better position that handmaiden of Kyne the next "instance"? Oh, wait, she already got. Now. Ehm...

Outnumbered Eight to One, Eight Phanteons of Elves against the Nords. Magnus fled or appeared to have. It's the war of the Dawn Era.

Shor son of Shor, goes to talk to his father (Shor) who lost his heart. Everything has already happened and the gods gave birth to themselves. But not just once, they did it eight times over.

Someone cracked a mirror?

proweler, on Dec 9 2008, 02:43 PM, said:

7 years bad luck? Hmm - recreation of the world 7 times in 7 days - quite biblical that

proweler, on Dec 9 2008, 01:43 PM, said:

So the wheel doesn't have a hub, it has an axle of kalpas stacked on top of each other, intermingling in sine waves, leading all the way to the center of the wheels turning in out heads to comprehend this.

proweler, on Dec 9 2008, 07:43 PM, said:

Magnus on the Nord side died. The Magnus who fled was seen in mirrors and thus a different (but same) one, his elven counterpart. And Kyne killed a third one (yokudan version?). Which could be an explanation as to why Magnus is missing in the nordic pantheon. He got killed off before he could invent magic.
"Skin-magic to trick us" - they are fighting themselves without realizing it. And they're gonna keep fighting until some big dragon tells them to stop using quickload as that gets very confusing (you're not in single player now, dimwit!).

"Honey! I'm home!"
"Lovely! How was your weekend at the convention center?"
"Oh, it was brutal... We were discussing the merger with the off-shore company."
"Pardon? You're gonna murder Shor and company? Lovely!"

Moophl, on Dec 9 2008, 04:30 PM, said:

Moophl, on Dec 9 2008, 10:30 PM, said:

Reckon she did. Nice one.

[Nirn] is a giant hologram, in the sense that information concerning the whole is contained in each of its elements.... It is a three-dimensional dream and you can enter it as you would a dream. Everything depends on the existence of the ray of light bearing the objects. If it is interrupted, all the effects are dispersed, and reality along with it. You do indeed get the impression that [Nirn] is made up of a fantastic switching between similar elements, and that everything is only held together by a thread of light, a laser beam, scanning out [Nirn's] reality before our eyes. In [Nirn] the spectral does not refer to phantoms or to dancing ghosts, but to the spectrum into which light disperses.

Apologies to JB, but it seemed appropriate, and a good nerdy referential joke only a couple are going to get without googling.

MK, on Dec 10 2008, 04:26 AM, said:

I like this. It makes the gods seem terribly human (scaley manes and billowing bodies aside), what with that thick war-weariness.

There's a reference in there, I think, to the dreaming cave mentioned in Doors of Oblivion and 2920, "where it is said one can enter into the Daedric realms and return", but what's interesting is this is also where Shor goes to find his father. Also, the political and geographic boundaries are the same, and it's unclear when exactly it's set, in the past or future. I thought past first, and still think it, but the comments above made me doubt myself. Plus, there's still a Skyrim and Nords, which one would think an anachronism in the past. But all I can really get from it other than what's already been said is that it's the drama of a war amongst protean men shaping the myths of the following age.

With a little deductive reasoning, that text (paired with the hint at the beginning of this topic) would lead us to believe that the stories and myths from the Dawn Era are not stories about the beginning of this world/kalpa, but about the end of the previous world/kalpa.

Like Albides, I kind of dig the style too.

I also liked the vigor of MK's writing.

It looks as if what Albides summarized well as the "protean" beings are demigods compared to the mortals of Nirn's current era. Does this mean mortals are a step down from these heroes?

About High Hrothgar and the Nords being in Skyrim already before they came out of Atmora: they were either driven out by their defeat in the last Kalpa, or High Hrothgar isn't so much the world, as a world of it's own from where the Gods wage war in a larger space.

About the creation myths being the endings of the last world: They also started this one, didn't they?

proweler, on Dec 10 2008, 12:26 PM, said:

That seems to be the running assumption, though it wasn't stated outright...

Wierd, on Dec 7 2008, 09:14 AM, said:

Makes sense. Read the Dark Tower series. Works kind of like Roland's quest in the respect that he does it all over again once he's comleted the journey, each time doing it a little different until he (hopefully) does it right.

Increment evolution.

Would that be like what the greedy man and dagon were doing by stealing pieces of the previous kalpas and working them into the new ones? Something gets carried over each time, so that the "new" thing in each kalpa really isn't new, it's just something that doesn't belong in this kalpa? Perhaps the identities of Lorkhan and Akatosh switch each kalpa so that it goes back and forth between mer and man? This is all very interesting even though I don't understand a thing. The implications that this forum fragment has are practically limitless.

So, even if this is all true: what, exactly, is the point? So we rename the Creation the Recreation and we realize that all existences are cyclical. How, at all, does this create a mindboggling new object of fascination and fetish for us? Especially since MK's been rambling about kalpas ever since Aldudagga, anyway.

And, no, I don't mean that to be conflictive, I just feel like I may be missing the epicness of the point here.

Adventurous Putty, on Dec 10 2008, 11:17 PM, said:

Or rather, what does it mean?

Don't think we're there yet.

Adventurous Putty, on Dec 10 2008, 04:17 PM, said:

Exactly why I don't know where to start thinking. It's something I have, yet haven't, already thought about.

Five is the number of the limits of this world. [shall we see the end which is really just a new beginning? fragments do not stay fragmented long]
The fifth song of King Wulfharth is sad. The survivors of the disaster came back under a red sky. [the first era mirrors the fourth and again we have a Year of Sun's Death]
Sermon Five is of the new god's discovery. [the Gods are we but greater, mantling the concepts from which the Wheel is built]
Sermon Five-teen tells of the Sharmat. [The opponent, the False-Dreamer, the Rebel, the mirror-vision who-is-I]
Sermon twenty-Five is of the City that is God, effortlessly trans-immortal, egg, image, man, god, city, state. [Does this indeed require explanation?]
Sermon thirty-Five is of Love. [Which certainly does not require explanation, for it is provided in the Letter]


just rambling on a perhaps hollow premise. though the sermon of Love does seem oddly applicable to the topic now.

Maybe it's like when you're programming and you accidentally screw up a loop and make it an infinite loop; although the loop goes on, theoretically, for infinity, it'll eventually eat away at the computer's memory and cause the program to crash.

MK's excerpt seems to show that earlier ages were populated with demigods and gods locked in a twilight struggle, but the current age is one of mortals -- it's as if each kalpa has weaker beings populating it, not stronger. The earlier kalpas seem to have had gods contending with each other, then later kalpas had demigod heroes and villains, and the current kalpa is one of only mortals.

Where can mortals go from here, when they're only flesh, and weak? Maybe to become immortal and non-material, I'm not sure.

Eh...I'm not really feelin' that one, sorry. I rather prefer my theory on pg. 4 about mortals becoming fundamental ideas or somesuch pseudo-allegorical nonsense.

Adventurous Putty, on Dec 11 2008, 09:17 AM, said:

Yeah.

I've wondered about kalpas for a long time, and haven't ever had answers concrete enough to do anything other than avoid any threads on the subject. I've never been entirely clear when exactly the kalpa turned, whether it's a symbolic turn of the age, in which new incarnations of the Shezzarine appears to shake up the foundations of society, reflecting some metaphysical turmoil on another plane (up where "our faces eat each other every age in amnesia" to paraphrase the Pelinal texts) or whether it's a literal eating of the age, a conflagration that changes everything. The Aldudaggas, like this new forum fragment, suggests that the places before the world-eating persist much as they do afterwards, but to what end?

So I've been biding my time, waiting for more explication on the subject, and hopefully, this looks to be it.

syronj, on Dec 10 2008, 05:49 PM, said:

To combine your thoughts with that of Adventurous Putty, perhaps reboot? If the memory (divinity) is all used up (nothing but mortals left), perhaps that is dusk (which is dawn). Reboot the system (eat the world) to start over with a clean memory (to return to the dawn). Just a thought.

Kinda' goes along with an old theory I had, but never could put into proper words, about how the whole thing is nothing more than a metaphor for the creation of a video game. I've always been far too embarassed by it to say anything about it, but this seems like the place. Arena/Mundus is the game and a dragon break is when the game (or, rather, game engine) hangs up and must be fixed. A bug in the system (a hiccup in time). It's not an awfully original theory, mind you. People have tip-toed around it forever when talking about CHIM. It kinda' makes sense in that light, though. I AM ARE ALL WE... The digital characters are extensions of the creative minds which programmed the game and are being controlled by either the AI (oblivious to their true nature) or the player (CHIM-tastic). After all, many of the devs over the years have had nicknames of the Aedra/Daedra. I dunno. It's too early to think straight. I'm gonna go get some coffee and come back.

Yes, though I kinda extend that metaphor to include the world rather then just the game being inside my head.

Dragon Breaks happen when we both start mucking about with it at the same time.

I get the sense that something is missing in this kalpa-frenzy... That is, I can not get it to fit with the first Aldudagga-fight.

The first Aldudagga basically says that the end of the current cycle can only be reached (or time going back to being cyclical) under one of three premises.
1: Dagon is gonna come back, bigger and badder than ever and actually succeed in his goals. Unlikely, as he gets his behind handed to him far more that what should be expected of a god of destruction. Kind of sad, really.
2: Dagon has already succeeded, we just don't know it yet. Also unlikely in my opinion.
3: The first Aldudagga is wrong.

If neither of these three is fulfilled, I just don't see the end coming, yet. Ah well, I suppose I have time until the fifth era at least to figure it out.

Moophl, on Dec 11 2008, 04:34 PM, said:

Three things...

1. MK said the fragment he posted on this thread wasn't really lore, but if it was what would we think about it? He nver even implied that it would ever be used for anything more than forum conversation fodder.
2. Aldudagga is also pseudo-lore.
3. Assuming one and two are proven wrong by the next game being about a return to the dawn and aldudagga finally finding its way into a game, perhaps Dagon didn't fail during Oblivion. Perhaps he was stopped before destroying the White-Gold tower, something I think would've caused the disolution of Tamriel's unity, but socially and geographically. However, it's not been expressly stated what was destroyed by the invasion, other than things in Cyrodil. Alduin said that he had to destroy (or at least put back) the stolen parts of previous kalpas. Maybe he did. Who knows? Maybe Kvatch really was the target, and everything else was more or less a "well, the door's unlocked; might as well go through and see what I can't r@pe and pillage,"-type situation.

The Dude, on Dec 12 2008, 02:51 PM, said:

Kvatch being the target? Nah, I'll have to call BATW on that one. Well, Kvatch obviously was A target, due to the Aka temple, but it was not THE target.
Besides, I don't think that a town would fulfill the "bits and bobs of the world" part, and the top of a big hill wouldn't be the "craziest of places". And Dagon didn't destroy Kvatch. It's still there. He just rearranged it.

Emh, Martin was kinda in Kvatch, you know. If you can't find the heir in the city, might as well burn the whole city.

edit:

Also not relevant to the topic.

Sorry for continuing on the diversion, but I think Kvatch was a primary target mostly because the Battlemages of the 33rd had kicked Dagon's shiny red butts at Kvatch and he had a score to settle.

I always thought that Dagon and his crew attacked Kvatch primarily for the purposes of ending the Septim line once and for all by killing Martin. Fortunately, the CoC got him out before the Daedra killed him. The fact that its Dagon getting his revenge for his prior defeat was just icing on the cake, but you know if he succeeded in breaking through (which he sorta did) he would have gotten to Kvatch sooner or later (most likely sooner).

*blop, blop*, bubbles in the Grey Maybe. There's infinite possibilities for a new kalpa so take your pick. Bit of a quick-fix cheat though, that. Personally I like the Auriel-Lorkhan bungee-cord link idea.

scourgicus, on Dec 9 2008, 11:27 AM, said:

Reminds me of the Hindu triumvirate of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. There are the same Creation-Preservation-Destruction elements present, though with different themes.

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Some of the great spirits already combined Anu and Padome. Many of the Daedra Princes, for example. Lorkhan has strong Padomaic traits, maybe the union between him and Auriel alone would be enough to kick off a new round of IS<->IS NOT spirals. Maybe their own mini slice of Gray Maybe, or maybe just making a messy situation that's easily influenced by the 'original'. Maybe not; sometimes I give first principles more attention than the nitty-gritty. At the very least you have two pretty important elements of Mundus crashing together and that's bound to shake things up.

4LOM, on Dec 12 2008, 09:40 PM, said:

I remember reading a post from a LONG time ago that made this assertion in the form of a "Akatosh-is-Lorkhan-is-Dagon" idea.

Might link the post soon.

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Perhaps you can deduce that before they became 'Gods' they were ordinary men/mer etc - and on that basis those leaders who survive and/or whose legend survives the end of the kalpa are deified ... by the perspective of the inhabitants of the following Kalpa

syronj, on Dec 10 2008, 07:49 PM, said:

Maybe the above puts a bit of perspective on this next post of yours syronj ...

I like the twiglight struggle bit - I guess that's what distance does to events - blurs them and renders them in mauves and purples.

MK, on Dec 9 2008, 12:26 PM, said:

I think this refer to an avatar of Lorkhan, maybe Wulfharth himself or a precursor. It could also mean Lorkhan 'son of' Padome but I'm going for the avatar interpretation.

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That first line could just suggest magic being used against the Nord warriors but I get the feeling it has a symbolic mythical meaning. Anyone clue me in?

Someone said that Magnar (Magnus) suggests the war of the Dawn Era, but the presence of the Nords and Nordic aspects of Aedra is from a later date. Is this Nordic myth conflating the Dawn Era with later Nordic wars against elves and other men worshipping 'elven' gods? Or is this set later in the Merithic Era, with this passage being part of the Nord myth of Magnus' departure ('sunrise' doesn't need to mean 'sunrise this morning' after all; it could be in the sense of 'when the sun first rose ever', with the Nords not being aware of the full story).

The 'scaled mane' line is notable, a draconic feature, and so another hint at a Lorkhan-Auriel link.

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This seems to support 'Shor son of Shor' as an avatar of Lorkhan. Maybe [untranslateable] could mean 'the Heart of Lorkhan' or it could refer to Skyrim's Tower - perhaps from there Shor son of Shor can convene with the Heart over in the Red Mountain tower.

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I wonder if this refers to Aedric aspects altering. The Marukhati only did by design what others do unconsciously. I remember MK commenting on Jhunal's (and others) disappearance before, suggesting some kind of past event that led to his falling out of the Nord pantheon, both in figurative and metaphysical senses.

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I don't know what this means but it seems significant.



Overall the elements of the piece that stand out to me are:

- Lorkhan struggling against the Eight
- Aedric impermanence
- Aedra having more than one simple aspect?
- The Lorkhan-Auriel link


Whether Aedric aspects are real, or the delusions of mortals, or conjurings of Lorkhan, or genuinely seperate gods rather than being aspects at all, remains to be seen. Personally I like the idea that Aedra are multifaceted, existing only in Mundus in detailed form through mortal interpretation of their basic spheres, and not limited to a single interpretation.


Maybe a kalpa has something to do with gods/aspects appearing and disappearing. Not so much that this defines a kalpa, but that the events of a kalpa will often cause it. A kalpa might be some kind of Lorkhan-Auriel cycle, one where they are either sundered or united depending on circumstance.

4LOM, on Dec 14 2008, 09:46 PM, said:

Nice analysis. Some things are becoming real.

Does anyone know what a Tear Wife is intended to be?

Also by contrast what is a War-Marriage?

1999, on Dec 15 2008, 03:14 PM, said:

I'm getting the impression that Shor has separate wives for separate tasks. A war-wife, Kyne, for going to battle with. A bed-wife, Dibella, for sharing a bed with. The tear-wife, Mara in this case, I suppose would stay at home while the husband goes to war. Taking care of the home and crying. Kind of fits Mara's image.

Moophl, on Dec 15 2008, 10:26 AM, said:

I think you are correct Moopl

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So - father and son

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I wonder what the word wife means in that culture/context? There might be strict separation of roles. Such that the chieftain never sleeps with certain wives etc.

It almost seems that the berserker is about to have his way with the bed-wife of Shor or is banishing her to her or Shor's tent? Is the father dead and so the son is going to take council with the 'ghost' of his father? That would accord with Dunmer traditions - and one might then wonder if the Dunmer copied from the Nords, or was the tradition common to both races/cultures at that time?

Then Shor walking away from his War-Wife is definitely the Son - but is Dibella another of Sor the son's wives or Shor the father's wife?

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- Kyne could have stopped what was going on, so it seems she has authority and further confirms her role as the 'Queen'
- Stuhn and Tsun appear to be 'shifting' - is that traditional shapeshifting or some kind of Et'Ada hangover?
- Mara it appears is a handmaiden and a 'wife'
- and there is The Pact - this does not seem like the Bosmer Pact with Yffre but of another kind? Is this a Pact between different peoples or within their community defining the roles of the members of the community?

Quite a tease this piece - full of detail yet also based on assumptions that the reader is party to various matters that are immediately clear in the exerpt.

Well it still has the feel of the Dawn Ages to me - there is a certain amorphousness there as well as distance in time and custom.

At the same time it sorta reminds me of a certain ancient Telvanni and his four daughter-wives

Shor son of Shor is likely a King or Chieftan of the Nords, as well as divinity, and I get the impression that his wives would be like royal wives often were - more like allies and supporters in high matters rather than subservient spouses. Given that his wives are Aedra, that would fit the mold. What's interesting though is that they help Lorkhan at all. The Aedra weren't said to be too happy about being tricked by him. Either the Nord myths have got things hopelessly wrong or the Aedra aren't as straightforwards as fantasy gods tend to be. Well we already know they aren't THAT straightforwards, lol, but I'm suggesting they're even weirder. A sphere can be said to have infinite faces, after all.

4LOM, on Dec 15 2008, 02:04 PM, said:

That's the old man/mer schism- Lorkhan as father or devil.

It's interesting that you have arrived at the idea that Shor is a 'God-being' within this scenario 4LOM - up to now I have been assuming that they are simply Nords who later rose or were uplifted into Godhood ... so is it the father or the son that is the God Shor? Note the son goes to the father for advice?

Now that you have approached the topic from that side, it occurs that maybe these may be Aedra in the form of Nords roleplaying what they want the Nords to become ( lol for irony) - just as mortals re-enact certain mythic sequences to mantle ...

The other side of the coin could be that these are not the past Shor and co, but actually future people who have come full circle?

1999, on Dec 15 2008, 03:02 PM, said:

I don't take the events and actions literally. I think of them as mythic abstracts. 'Seeking counsel with his father' to me could me connecting with Skyrim's tower to convene with his et'Ada self, maybe to get a god's-eye view of events or to draw power from it, to commune with the Heart in Morrowind's tower (for the same), or a combination thereof.

My assumption is that the 'father' is Lorkhan the et'Ada. The 'son' is his avatar, possibly Wulfharth (known to have fought the Alessians to reinstate Nordic versions of the gods), though you'd think he'd be mentioned by name if so, so there's reason to think it's a different avatar, maybe an earlier one. Not certain though. The exact identity of Shor son of Shor is still up for grabs.

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Possible, though I've always assumed the Aedra are more passive than that, and I take the tale as being abstract rather than literal - a Nordic oral tradition garbling in-world, and cryptic MK enlightened-obfuscation out-world .

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Also possible. I assumed an old tale because of the presence of Jhunal, a god known to have disappeared from the Nordic pantheon at some point before the 1st Era. That doesn't mean he couldn't have crept back into favour at some future date.

4LOM, on Dec 15 2008, 09:42 PM, said:

If so maybe Jhunal disappeared because he leap-frogged to th efuture - tough luck on the leaping demon-king who is stuck where he is

That sorta led me to wonder if MK is now intent on 'tying the circle' into a closed loop - or breaking it free.

As for the Et'Ada being passive, that would have to be a matter of style - turning yourself into an entire race is not exactly a passive action however quietly achieved. But there again passive and giving birth are certainly female characteristics.

MK asked what we could make of his RP - Thinking through your Lorkhan/Shor the father (of the race) concept could give birth to a very narsty scenario - if the creation of the 'new' race of man/Nord is accomplished by the Et'Ada through the channelling of 'star energy'/magica. We know the mer hate this and wish to wipe out mankind - consonant with MK's offering.

Failing this the mer build the towers as a stop-gap, not to access the magica/Aetherius, but to close off as much of the apertures through which the magica arrives as they can = a very different story than we are given but entirely sympathetic to the mer penchant for destroying the world to annihilate mankind and usher in a new era.

That puts the plight and actions of the Leaping Demon King/now Dagon in a very different light - you could almost wonder if Dagon is really Lorkhan - and that would explain why mer generally oppose Dagon - assuming Dagon is trying to destroy the towers.

Then you would have to wonder if Mythic Dawn are totally evil or merely misguided in their efforts.


Unless this is about Shor/Lorkhan attempting something entirely different ... but what the 'war/dispute is about would be a useful item - and is this actually an RP about the Dawn Era battles with Lorkhan etc?

It's fun when a Dev says 'not Lore' , but asks what if ... still, MK is is clearly a tease.

I'm still thinking it's a tale set in the past (before 4E) and I think it may well be featuring Wulfharth after all. There's a few tallying elements between this thread's tale and the Five Songs of King Wulfharth.


I still think the changing god-aspects are a key part, a kapla symptom, hinted at here especially with Jhunal and Tsun being prominent, but the mechanics still escape me.

Some more MK 'not-lorisms' might apply. I made a passing reference to these quotes earlier, so I decided to search for 'em and here they are. The first one is in answer to someone asking "Why just 16 Daedric Princes" and the second is from the same thread when the topic shifted to cover god natures in general.

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____

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I also remember a line from him somewhere about 'unrealized gods', shadow-gods that never made it out of the grey potential and into the light of reality. I reckon that ties in too.

Then there's a comment about Arkay that termed him "lies from a previous kalpa".

I wonder if kalpas turn when Lorkhan and Akatosh clash, the clash changing these two centrally important beings (for Mundus at any rate) and by extension allowing other things in the Aurbis to be altered (more as a 'sideways shift in perspective' than tumult and chaos). New pantheons often seem to pop up when a Lorkhan avatar is gallavanting about (Pelinial -> Alessian pantheon, Ysmir -> Nordic god reinstatement and then alteration after his death, and of course Lorkhan-as-Talos bouncing his way back into human popularity). I think it's interesting to note which gods feature in which pantheons and when. Maybe more on this later.

Again though, this assumes that the gods of the Elves and the gods of Men are really one and the same underneath - if they are genuinely distinct and seperate entities then all my speculation is wrong for sure.

4LOM, on Dec 17 2008, 07:43 AM, said:

This makes me think of the Rebel/King cycle. Possibly, it works like a pendulum. Everytime they clash (are active at the same time), shifts the power axis from man to mer and back again. This could also be used as a means to explain how the mannish and merrish gods are the same entities. Rather than gods shaping mortals, perhaps the mortals shape the gods; of course exactly who was shaping them would depend on who came out on top, of course. I dunno. That's just my early morning, just got out of bed, still drinking my Mountain Dew and trying to wake up, two cents.

It might work like this, every dawn works like the un-times of D breaks in that paradoxes are possible. Each god is represented by a mannish aspect and a merrish, both active at the same time and mirroring the battle between Aka and Lorkhan. 8 for the mer with Auriel at the lead and 8 for the men with Shor at the lead. Whoever wins shapes the next Kalpa. The losers have to go dormant and their leader goes into exile to become the "missing god" of that Kalpa. Or some crap like that. I'm rambling aren't I?

Ooooh. Numbers!!! 8+8=16! What am I getting at? I have no idea. Just thought it was weird. After all, number have signigicance. If there are 16 aedric aspects, then the equation is balanced between daedra and aedra. Oh well, back to Mountain Dew.

I'm not going to pretend to understand all these mystical, metaphysical mumblings but it is interesting and refreshing to see a universe superficially under the impression of progressive historiography while ultimately cyclical. The fact that these ideas have such a large interested audience would suggest the opening of the modern collective mind.

4LOM, on Dec 17 2008, 08:43 AM, said:

Those quotes are great 4LOM - and the telescope makes me think of the stuff we were discussing with SkyShadowing earlier:

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Luargar 2 came up with the name the name of Alduin the World Eater - that gives The Greedy Man (is this a mer view of Lorkhan?) and The Leaping Demon King who is Mehrunes Dagon ...

To put this together with The Dude's 16 Gods = 8 + 8 ? Dawn and Dusk - or the Rise of the Precursor and the waking of Yffre? So if the men ascend you have the current batch and if the mer triumph then the men's Gods go to sleep (and become the Earth Bones) and the Mer batch awake with the New Dawn

Factor in the question of what the effect of the tampering in the World-eating process by his Greedyness and Dagon will produce? As in have the effects been halted in time or will Alduin (despite his discovery of the plot) eventually be damaged - and so the mundus also? Might that result in all 16 gods awakening simultaneously for instance - and what happens then?

What exactly do the Earthbones achieve and what would be the actual effect if there were none?

No idea if this is what MK is on about or something new- but it sure sounds hectic and fun!

The Dude, on Dec 17 2008, 08:56 AM, said:

I reckon it's something like that (I suggested they had a bungee-cord link in my first post), and the power axis would tie in given that humans had traditionally aligned with Lorkhan and elves with Auriel. Gets a bit more complex post-Alessia though, what with Akatosh's appearance as chief of Cyrodiil's Nine Divines, and how the Marukhati Selective messed with him. Lorkhan's heart disappearing has probably made a fair metaphysical splash, and then there's Martin's ascension...

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Certainly been hinted at before. We know the mechanics for it are there (Marukhati again).

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Could do, though maybe it's more complex - there are more than two straight pantheons, for example there's the Redguard versions of the gods to consider. Though maybe that doesn't matter, it's worth noting that the Redguard pantheon does tally up in some places with some of the traditionally human gods (Alduin, Zenithar, Arkay, Kynareth) but none of them seem to tie up with explicitly 'elven' ones. The Bretons follow all kinds of divine detritus, a jumbled mix of the old elven and human god sets, but they're said to have elven blood anyway and so can be overlooked (same goes for the Bosmer for vice-versa reasons when it comes to the elven pantheons).

As an aside, Kynareth is kinda interesting. She features in all the human pantheons and the Khajiit one too, but not in any of the elven ones. Seems she's aided Lorkhan avatars on more than one occasion too. I wonder what's going on here?

4LOM, on Dec 17 2008, 09:02 PM, said:

The Aldmeri have no use for a goddess who represents natural forces. For them she is a goddess of dung and cholera.

paw-prints-in-the-mud, on Dec 17 2008, 09:14 PM, said:

True enough, they're none too fond of the material world, and the nature god that they do have, Y'ffre, is a god that stabilized some of the Dawn Era craziness and is a force of order.

4LOM, on Dec 17 2008, 09:33 PM, said:

Sidebar: Please tell me I'm not the only one who saw the similarity with the Daedric Lord Herma Mora?

Xarxes <-> Herma Mora is the one that's my pet conspiracy theory.

I have that one too though.

The Dude, on Dec 17 2008, 07:56 AM, said:

Yeah, I know. I quoted myself. Anyway, about the equation being balanced. You might have done the math and added it all up, but you have one extra, don't you? There are 9 aedra/divines if you count both Lorkhan and Akatosh. So, that being said, conservatively adding both pantheons together from my previous post you end up with 17 right? There ARE 17 daedric princes. Are we forgetting about Jyg?

But DUDE!!!! Jyg is Sheogorath!!!

So what? Akatosh is Lorkhan. So you still have 16 = 16 because there is one on both sides that is actually two.

And about the whole battle to see which god-aspect will be active for the next "who-knows-how-long?"...

Arena-mundus indeed.

"I wanna tell you something Mark, something you do not yet know, that we K-PAXians have been around long enough to have discovered. The universe will expand, then it will collapse back on itself, then will expand again. It will repeat this process forever. What you don't you know is that when the universe expands again, everything will be as it is now. Whatever mistakes you make this time around, you will live through on your next pass. Every mistake you make, you will live through again, & again, forever. So my advice to you is to get it right this time around. Because this time is all you have."

Recent discussion on this thread compells me to proffer the following questions.

The difference between Aedra and Daedra is traditionally understood by their respective responses to Lorkhan's initiative to create Mundus. What might we understand the difference between Aedra and Daedra to be now? Also, in what way might this relate to the belief in descent from the divine among mer, and creation by the divine among men?

Dumbkid, on Dec 18 2008, 12:01 PM, said:

Maybe the Daedra are still similar to rebel angels (too proud to participate in the Creation) but the Aedra were originally mortals?

Dumbkid, on Dec 18 2008, 11:01 AM, said:

What, pray tell, made you ask this question? What info prompted you?

946000, on Dec 18 2008, 02:20 PM, said:

Let me rephrase then. How to reinterpret the origin and meaning of Aedra and Daedra seemed an obvious question for me from the beginning. I waited for discussion of Aedra and Daedra to appear in the thread so I could post.

Now, carry on.

I like the idea of renegade time-bandits myself. I mean, hellsya.

If the Previous Kalpa was made solely of the et'Ada, and is a predecessor to current Kalpa, then one may assume that the Aurbis is in a state of entropy, with Gods becoming less powerful with each downward spiral.

Think the idea that is being postulated is that WE "were" the et'Ada in the previous dawn.

946000, on Dec 18 2008, 03:42 PM, said:

That's sort of what I was implying.

Dumbkid, on Dec 18 2008, 01:33 PM, said:

Well, of course.

I personally think this is really the true question being asked. Like I just posted, it's starting to look like we are the et'Ada. But outside of saying the traditional mumbo jumbo of myth-echos and whatnot, I don't know what else can be said.

946000, on Dec 18 2008, 02:49 PM, said:

I like what was once discussed in a lore thread, that the reason Nirn's creation myths have commonalities is that some part of mortals was a witness to the events; the core truth of the myths has been carried down subconsciously. Mortals are the fragments of the et'Ada, I guess.

946000, on Dec 18 2008, 03:42 PM, said:

Who is "We"?

"Were" or "will be"?

Previous or ___?

Why are some et'Ada this and others that?

Did Lorkhan succeed or fail, and what difference does it make?

See, now you've got me speaking more clearly than I should. Note to self: make proceeding posts sufficiently turbid.

syronj, on Dec 18 2008, 04:16 PM, said:

it may be that you turned that on its head - and that mortals are some part of something greater that bore witness ... but it rings true with the doctine that if 8 people bear witness you will get 12 different stories ...

I recon you will have to access the monomyth etc for your answers dumbkid - someone will bung you a few links any moment now if they are true to form

Someone reiterate on why rival pantheons can fight each other.

May help my thought process to hear it again.

Maybe the Daedra were the old gods. The Aedra were mortals that achieved godhood.

Dunno where I'm going with this, I just felt I should throw it out there. I mean, the daedra are ossified - they are about change, but their spheres remain the same, they are bound up in their realms... eh, I dunno...

Alaisiagae, on Dec 18 2008, 09:25 PM, said:

I'm going to go waaaaaaay out on a limb here and say maybe the daedra, if in fact there are two aspects to each aedra depending on the race that worships them, are the other part of the rebel/king relationship there. If each aedra fights itself in a rebel/king enantiomorphic relationship, with Nirn as the female principle (or even the Kalpa itself as the female princple), then maybe the daedric princes are the observers, since they, by definition, don't directly interfere with this battle (i.e. take part in creation). This would explain something I put forth earlier about 16=16. I dunno. Just musing over my own little theory and adding to it without a care as to whether I derail its credibility or not. It's more or less a brain-fart. It'd make more sense if we had a clue which daedra goes to which set of aedra, if in fact there are sets of aedra. Too many "if"s, I suppose. I guess it doesn't have to be the same et'ada everytime that is the observer. It's been speculated that Magnus was the first observer for Lork vs Aka. He's a Magna-ge, but it's totally in the aldudagga, however, that for at least one battle between Aka and Lork, Dagon was there and saw it.

Which are the elven eight then?

Human - Elves

Akatosh - Auriel
Stendarr - Stendarr
Mara - Mara
Zenithar - Xen (brief mention in the Altmeri Monomyth)
Arkay - ? (Arkay is in the hodge-podge Bosmeri pantheon, but not the Altmeri one.)
Dibella - ?
Kynareth - ? (some might equate with nature-Aedra Y'ffre, but I think this tenuous)
Julianos - ? (perhaps Xarxes, but I'm unconvinced)



Mind, that's going off the Cyrodiil pantheon. Maybe instead I should be putting the Nordic one (headed by Lorkhan as Shor) up against a mix of the Elven and Cyrodiil pantheons (headed by Dragons). It also assumes that the MW and OB literature is exhaustive and that when something isn't mentioned (i.e no Elven version of Jhunal) then it doesn't exist, which isn't necessarily true.

Perhaps the elves DID have the as-yet unmentioned counterparts to some of those Mannish gods, but just as the Nords lost Jhunal and Tsun, so the elves lost theirs. On that note, am I unfair to dismiss the Bosmeri pantheon so easily?

Also, Mara is said to be near-universal and perhaps has no seperate human and elven aspects. "Depending on the religion, she is either married to Akatosh or Lorkhan, or the concubine of both." (Varieties of Faith).

From the Monomyth: "Some Aedra were disappointed and bitter in their loss". "Some", but not all - so there we have room for Kynareth to be an ally of Lorkhan. Maybe there is as yet no elven (Aurielic) aspect.



Akatosh - originally there was just Alduin and Auriel, but I think they are the same thing from two perspectives rather than two different aspects on a divine level, a being seen as an enemy by the Nords and hero to the Altmer. But then after all that hullabaloo in the Merethic Era suddenly a human-friendly aspect appears, thanks to a little bit of editing from the Marukhati loonies.

Maybe I'm looking at it all wrong, and what it should be is Auriel - Akatosh - Lorkhan, with Auriel and Lorkhan each being an axis and the brute-forced Akatosh being a sort of piggy-in-the-middle aspect of both.



I wonder if it's more a case of Aurbic balance than of tallying numbers. Lorkhan and his allied aspects of Aedra all tend towards more unruly Padomaic characteristics while the Auriel-aligned Elven and Cyrodiilic ones have calmer, orderly Anuic ones. As that balance changes, likely driven by Auriel-Lorkhan conflict (which in turn could be driven by interactions between Anu and Padome, or perhaps be a proxy/fulcrum for it) so the aspects change with it.

4LOM, on Dec 20 2008, 06:12 PM, said:

The Anuad has it that the Aedra are a mixture of Anu and Padomay. Though I generally stick with the idea that this is a metaphor to describe how they were reborn after they died in the world creation, the premise here is that the new world is a continuation of the old.

So changing characteristics are a possibility.

I get the feeling we're overlooking the people though. The Nordic gods fight the war of creation in Skyrim because the Nords are in Skyrim. In a sense the Dawn never ended but continues to adapt to the present day. So Jhunal and Tsun weren't killed on the Battlefield in the Dawn, the Nords killed them today.


If I look down right now, I'm gonna fall.

proweler, on Dec 20 2008, 01:43 PM, said:

I somehow put that with Alaisiagae's post:

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I'm sorta thinking that it's always today when you play - so that fits. And Alaisiasgae's observation that the Daedra are ossified (that's bones, right?) makes sense too.

Could the Daedra be twinned with the Earthbones in some way? - sort of most affected by them?

For example:
To me creation is change - and the Deqadra apparently cannot create - it's almost as if the Et'Ada send their bodies to be the Earthbones and the negative images of their spirits become the Daedra. That would make a weird kinda sense of the Leaping King and the Greedy Man metaphors - that in their different ways they both became trapped in the earth ... So their 'immortal' 'dead' spirits live on as Daedra

A dead spirit is unlikely to create and is not alive - though it may appear to be - so not being alive it cannot be killed.

... but if one of the earthbones is waking up - Yffre - then which Daedra would be his? And does that mean that the current Gods then become Earthbones?

I was browsing some lore, and came across The Light and the Dark

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A kapla is a thousand years or something, maybe?

And before that, there is this (not hard to figure out who is who). Reminded me of that fragment MK posted, about a battle.

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Alaisiagae, on Dec 20 2008, 07:01 PM, said:

heh - MK bases his Lore on previous Lore eh? That's the way it should be

And ty Alaisiagae for reminding me about the Light and the Dark - must be a decade since I read that. It all sorta potentially fits up to a point. But even if it is what is behind things we can be sure it is not so straightforward ...

This was some interesting reading... now I just have to find the pieces of my brain.

Nobody has answered my question about other pantheons fighting each other.

Most of the stuff I've read is stuff I've thought of before.

Yeah same here but a lot was kind of confusing for myself at the moment.

"Creation myth? Hoo boy. First off, that whole phrase smacks of Monkey Talk-- and we thank Talos to this day for their turn at Glenumbria-- or the Wheel-Eyed Wonderment of the east devils-- who at least have the wheel part right, but that's so obvious as to offend your own navel, which is to say, wasting the time of even wasting time-- but I guess that's what you want to hear about, really: time. Our place in it now, our place in it then. Well, you've earned the truth of it then: you've taken your first tusk and been kissed by a Kyne Wife, so fine.

"The Nords you know are the Nords that were, and any formalization beyond that is southern comfort. We came from Skyrim since the end of the beginning of the last end... and so on as sung by the ysgrimskalds of the world. What's that now? We're descended from the gods? So that must mean, what, they went away at some point and then we started? Sure, that's all true, and, yes, there was a war with the gods of Old Mary where Shor died, and, yes, Old Mary's own stories of "how everything started" are just as true as ours. The untangling of it all, though, is where examining the tree nets you nothing for the basket because the fruit is all dead by the time you've reached any sensible conclusion. Which is to say, there is no conclusion, my lad, there is only the telling, and only time will tell the dead, for only by the dead can we tell the time, and so of course it all must fit together, all versions of every last telling, whereso or whensoever it comes from. Yes? Elsewise we'd never have time to tell it again.

"See now why asking the Nords for their creation myth is as unbearable to hear for them as it is for you to hear their never-really-an-answer? We'll never think that way, at least not long enough for what some would consider the "proper" amount of time-- it's just not how our brainpans were built. As a rule, we change our minds a lot, and properly so, which drives the other take on properlarity crazy. It's intrinsic to our nature; to live in the North is to live with a mind that dances near the hearth lest it slow like old Herkel's lot. (That's what happened to the Dwarves, by the way: their minds froze to death by thinking one thing over and over until poof, gone in a belch of a mountain.)

"But I can see by the droop of your shoulders that none of this has met to your satisfaction. Let me show you then, the proper way to ask the Nords their proper place in history: ask them to tell you the oldest story they know that's also the best. That will get you as close to a creation myth as anything else, even if the next telling changes it a bit, but that's beside the point of being the point.

"Just because we hate to waste time in Skyrim, we have lots of it to use with nothing else to do, and there's no better way to use up time without wasting it than by telling a good story. And the best of the oldest stories we still know is [untranslatable], which I guess you'll probably want to hear after you get me another round."

***

Another story for another time, maybe. Cyrus the Resting got tired of listening to the old man go on and on and on.

Merry X-Mas, everyone, the snows a'comin',

MK

hmmm ... (trying to sound wise to himself) ... that link is dead for me - even with intranet settings enabled

dwemer - "though love may be strong, a habit is stronger, and I'll know when I love by the way I behave" - from the Last Unicorn by Peter S Beagle - powerful things are habits


- I seem to remember this bit: "ask them to tell you the oldest story they know that's also the best. That will get you as close to a creation myth as anything else," is it a quote from an ES book?

I always knew Santa was a Nord. I wonder is I can get the one at the mall to read that aloud.

MK, on Dec 23 2008, 03:38 PM, said:

Well I'll be, your're right. Want us to punt some of it back towards California?

I'd always attributed the lack of Noridic myths in the Monomyth as caused by a lack of time, but this works too. Kinda like how the Daedra keep changing in the void, don't want to void-freeze to death.

Ecstatic that my Nord creation myth question has finally been answered.

Thank you, sir.

Merry Christmas and Joyous Kwanzaa.

*applause* Thanks for that and Merry Christmas everyone!

Merry Christmas!

TES V: Skyrim, it is, then. But it's Akavir next, right Mike m'boy!?

...

...right?

Merry Christmas to the four corners and beyond!

Adventurous Putty, on Dec 24 2008, 07:56 PM, said:

Awesome. Now to have that confirmed and we can start planning the TES5 release party . Boy, oh boy, Skyrim plus things that have to do with time, end and the begining... this should be better than Oblivion, second best TES(second only to Morrowind).

In an assault of ignorant bluntness I'm just going to postulate that perhaps it's like one of the theories about our universe. They say "big bang" started it all. But there's those who say that things "always were". There is no start point. It's an endless cycle of bangs and crunches. The law of energy rules all and there can be no creation or destruction. It's just change in the end and by this definition we are truly part of the whole.

So why not in TES as well eh?

Almindor2, on Dec 27 2008, 12:28 PM, said:

Well, no.

The Big Bang started it all, yeah, and the universe always was because time did not exist before the universe, so there can't be anything "before" the Big Bang as it is a meaningless statement. Things always were, since the Dawn of Time; it just happens that the Dawn of Time is literally the dawn of time itself. And we call it the Big Bang.

As for the Big Crunch, it won't happen. We weighed the universe, using various experiments and astronomical observations, and found out that it had not enough mass to overcome inertia from expansion (to the contrary, it seems like the expansion speed might be accelerating). So, no. No endless cycles. A beginning, but no end, a sanity-defying vastness promised to infinite loneliness as eventually all stars will be burnt out and all life will disappear in the cold.

You can think of time as the measure of the universe's size. It started at just a bit above zero, and from then on ever increased.

Gez, on Dec 27 2008, 04:22 PM, said:

Merry Christmas Gez - have you considered that movement contains energy. About the start of the RL Univers, that is mostly theory and best guesses still - there may be a lot of stuff just awaiting around the corner to change our view of things any time now

It appears there was a cataclysmic event ... we call it the Big Bang - it could be as you say, but it still might be something different from what we think.

Almidor2 - For TES take a look at the Monomyth - and note the title contains the word 'myth' = something that gets overlooked.

It seems something major happened in the TES Mundus about 7k years ago - and that's the time frame we have atm - not long enough for a big-bang event really - and the stuff in the monomyth ... ? Who knows what contradictions the next TES release will bring? I suspect that is what MK is preparing us for. A point of view that has not really been fully represented yet.

- and a Happy New Kalpa

MK, on Dec 23 2008, 03:38 PM, said:

You're a really cool and diverse writer, MK.

Happy Holidays!

Interesting about Nord Creation Myth- or, rather, the lack thereof... *ponders*

Indeed a Happy New Kalpa

Gez, on Dec 27 2008, 04:22 PM, said:

You are too sure for your own good there Neither theory is accepted and the cycle of bangs and crunches is actually one of the possible ones. Big freeze is another.

Your POV about time is also a bit odd. Depending on which theories you take into consideration time can be as little as "state change", in which case there's no "timeless point" and there's no start. People view things too linearly IMHO.

Anyways my point was that things always were and will be, time is an illusion and the point of it all is itself. But I went a bit off here

Happy New Year btw

Almindor2, on Jan 2 2009, 05:51 AM, said:

Yes - it's all down to the point of view.

So what you're saying is, the next game will be the beginning of the non-beginning; if you will, a game where the beginning will have already dusked. Perhaphs we'll see a lot of bright light at the end of a brighter tunnel?

Big Head, on Jan 17 2009, 08:54 PM, said:

That depends

200th Post, time to lock this.

Yep, post limit.