Elder Scrolls General

Well why wouldn't they? I mean, wenches, mead, and brawling, what wouldn't be to love?

Yeah, but if the Imperials had been trying to replace Nord culture with their own, Sovngarde would likely be another casualty.

The Empire is getting rid of Sovngarde?

Bring me Tullius' head on a pike.

edited 19th Nov '11 1:40:03 PM by MacDuffy

I think you exaggerate. Remember, the worship of the Divines as such is derived from Nord traditions. After all, it was ethnic Nords that founded, well, Cyrodiil.

Akatosh is a merging of the elven Auriel and the Nordic Alduin. In fact, Alduin is why he looks like a dragon, unlike Auriel. Bethesda forgot that bit for Skyrim. Or they were being meta with an Ald son of Ald situation.

Cyrodiil was founded by the Nedes. Most Nedic tribes, aside from a few taken as slaves after the Night of Tears, were native to Cyrodiil. The whole "we're Nords!" is Septim-era propaganda to get the Nords to like Cyrodiil better.

You can find more about the Nordic pantheon (and religions of Tamriel in general) here

The author of the document you linked is Imperial and he regards Alduin and Auriel as variants, reinterpretations or aspects of Akatosh. He claims Akatosh as the first or main entity of the three rather than a combination of the other two.

This text talks more about it.

Interesting... that text is from Tiber's time. Even back then the Nords were more accepting of Akatosh.

Based on some stuff Paarthunax said, Alduin seems to be an offspring of Akatosh, and not a god in his own right (which is not to say he hasn't been worshipped as one).

And Paarthunax is old enough to be a primary source, and thus at least more reliable than propaganda.

edited 19th Nov '11 8:43:18 PM by INUH

Wait... that text says that Akatosh is elven and makes no mention of Auriel. May be a bit too much to ask for an Aldmeri perspective (the Altmer probably changed quite a bit by their time) but that may be the only way to confirm things without extrapolation.

Paarthurnax's words come from the Bethesda scriptwriters. It could be a continuity error or Retcon, is what I think SC is saying.

edited 19th Nov '11 8:47:45 PM by Recon5

I'm confused as to why being written by Bethesda writers is a problem here...

Well, in a lore discussion any apparent changes to or deviations from pre-existing material are a cause for concern.

Outside that context... not so much.

edited 19th Nov '11 8:51:18 PM by Recon5

Well, do mind that most pre-existing lore is from secondary sources, and biased ones at that.

Akatosh may have been what the Ayleid's called Auriel. The nearby Khajiit call him Alkosh. None the less, the Nordic Alduin has been around longer than the Imperial Akatosh. If Bethesda thought that a god having more than one aspect was too hard for people to understand, then Akatosh should be the fake one.

However, just because Alduin is Akatosh's child doesn't mean he can't be Akatosh. Dragons just "are" and were never born, yet Alduin somehow came before the rest. Or he could become Akatosh, as some have been theorizing. Like Tiber to Lorkhan. A semi-canon text refers to Alduin and Shor as "Ald son of Ald" and "Shor son of Shor" respectively.

He still ends the kalpa, so Alduin still does his important job. So it's not that big a deal.

My biggest problem is the lack of Nords worshiping their old pantheon. That's all, really. I just like the Nordic pantheon more than the Nine Divines.

Well, I suppose it's possible that Akatosh created another aspect of himself or something.

As for whether Alduin's a god, the line between "god" and "really powerful Aedra/Daedra" is really, really blurry in TES.

The Monomyth states that there is a Dragon God of Time that predates all the other deities. How Auriel, Akatosh and Alduin are related to this D Go T seems to vary depending on who is telling the story.

'course, the D Go T could have been retconned as being Alduin himself but I don't know of any material that states that.

Right...

I don't actually know much about Auriel...

So...I've been retrying Morrowind, and this time it's actually working out pretty well. I finally figured out how to use the journal's organization system, making it actually possible to follow what I'm supposed to do.

You guys do realize that virtually *all* the lore in the entire series rests upon unreliable narrators, right? The lore has *always* been contradictory with vague areas, and these contradictions and vague areas often get pointed out in other ( also biased ) works in-game.

^Yeah, that's why I trust Paarthunax above sources that contradict him. Other sources are biased and can't really know the stuff they're talking about for sure. Paarthunax might be biased, but at least he can be guaranteed to know what he's talking about.

edited 20th Nov '11 10:57:17 AM by INUH

I don't even trust Paarthurnax, mang. His name apparently translates to "Ambitious Overlord Cruelty". Ald is the son of Ald, and dragons are, in the same sense that Darkseid is. So I would theorize that Alduin becomes Alduin, the latter Alduin being big bad god dragon dude of the last kalpa and the former the gestating Alduin from this kalpa. It's stated outright that he was a god during the dawn era, then lost his divinity to the world. Doesn't this kind of debasement remind anyone of the creation myths?

Also, apparently the journal in Morrowind gets a huge upgrade if you install Tribunal. You do that?

edited 20th Nov '11 1:57:44 PM by Canondorf

How can you not trust Paarthurnax? He's voiced by goddamn Mario! D:

edited 20th Nov '11 2:03:10 PM by MacDuffy

^^I don't trust him absolutely. I just think, compared to someone who wrote a book a couple hundred years ago, he's more qualified to talk about stuff. The more recent authors are biased and don't know what they're talking about. Paarthunax is merely biased.

And as for Morrowind, yeah, the version I got came with the expansions; I just hadn't found the journal upgrade thing. Now that I'm using it, it's going much better.

The Monomyth comes from one of the series' main writers and in its current version presents several races' own Creation Myths side by side, so I consider it somewhat authoritative unless the fictional author revised all the stories to fit the Cyrodiilic view (though that's not an unreasonable assumption either).

EDIT: Just double-checked. No authorial credit is given in the in-game versions of this document.

All bets are off on other documents.

edited 20th Nov '11 4:10:37 PM by Recon5

But paarthy was there. I trust the word of a primary source over the word of a secondary source any day.

Yes, but that's just it: it presents *each race's creation myth.* As in, it presents what each race *believes*. Not objective absolute fact. So I totally believe that the Monomyth tells me what the actual creation myths are. That doesn't mean I believe everything it says is *true*.