As we all know by now, Alduin in Skyrim refers to himself as the first-born of Akatosh. I have a question about that though- I was under the impression that Akatosh was a mutation of Auriel created by the Maruhkati Selective, and that the Dragon Wars predated the Alessian empire by a fairly substantial amount of time. How could Alduin be the progeny of Akatosh when there wasn't such a being in existance yet? Or am I just completely backward on the facts?

The dragons use the name "Akatosh" as a term of convience. After all, your an idiot mortal.

Also when the Marukhati created Akatosh, I assume they did what the Tribunal did and made it so Akatosh had always existed.

The Selective broke the dragon, which resulted not only in the separation of Akatosh from Auriel/Alduin, but also in the creation of an alternative timeline.

The timelines merged, an since then Akatosh has always existed.

No other aspect of the time dragon besides Akatosh would help men win the Dragon War.

You really need to provide that argument with more backing.

Zeroth. You're arguing time travel without an argument as to how we would be able to detect any alterations to the past.

First. There is all reason to assume this is not what the selective did. Rather they became gods for a span and much like the Aedra themselves eventually disappeared - hopefully with the health of the world in mind. http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1327350-the-aldudagga-fight-four-a-fragment/page__view__findpost__p__19972909.

There is no credible story of how dragons came to be. According to dremora that the College of Whispers have "questioned," they just were, and are. Eternal, immortal, unchanging, and unyielding. They are not born or hatched. They do not mate or breed. There are no known examples of dragon eggs or dragonlings. The Iliac Bay area has stories of such things, but so far all have proven false. The eggs turned out to be eggs of other reptiles. The small dragons were merely oversized lizards and no relation to true dragons. - http://www.imperial-library.info/content/there-be-dragons

Second. The term first born isn't really relevant in the procreation sense. Rather we're looking at something metaphysical.

Which is all the better because as you hopefully know, the same set of gods appears in different pantheons with different cultural identities. It's best illustrated in http://www.imperial-library.info/content/varieties-faith-empire. To say that this identity of god existed before the culture that venerated him came about doesn't make much sense. Not even after applying a Dragon Break. Even more so when Alduin is the Nordic equivalent of Akatosh. Rather we might suppose that for any reference of Akatosh before Alessia there must be a similar story in which an older name is used. Such as Auri-El, Tall-Papa or Alkosh.

And the third, who looked akin to a Karstaag-man, [gigantic], and adorned in storm cloud and endless, endless yellowtooth… [he] was Alduin the World-Eater, and he only said, "Ho ha ho."

“You will eat nothing here, aspect Ald,” said the Aka-Tusk, sensing trouble. “Do not forget that it was Heaven itself that shed you from me.”

“Who cares,” the World-Eater said, “You speak of the Prolix Laws, which do not bind me if you strain our kinship. You awoke me. That bell-sound has consequence. And the Dagon here, well, he’s going to tell me right now where he’s hidden all the additions to the World he has hoarded in the long aeons of salmon-leap which he calls his own survival.” - http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1327350-the-aldudagga-fight-four-a-fragment/

Though these stories are impossible to place on a timeline, it does presents an alternative. At the creation of the world, Aka-Tusk | Auri-El | Alkosh, ect shed a part of himself that would eat the world at regular intervals. Then for a Dragon it is easy to go from Aka-Tusk to Akatosh. Even though the identity did not exist, they are all referring to the same.

(And should anybody wish to argue the source, note that I'm using this hypothetically to show that the other explanation is not the only one).

At first, men died by the thousands. The ancient texts reveal that a few dragons took the side of men. Why they did this is not known. The priests of the Nine Divines claim it was Akatosh himself that intervened. From these dragons men learned magics to use against dragons. The tide began to turn and dragons began to die too.

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:The_Dragon_War

I think there should be more. Skyrim dialogue was ridden with anachronistic references to Akatosh, and not only dragon dialogue.

And how are there strikingly varying references to Anu and Padomai in different Tamriel cultures, from a time there where was no cultural identities? According to this, the accounts should not vary until Men/Mer/Beastfolk are there to "culturalize" them.

Hereby is my take. A culture creates a story, a narrative if you will. What you read from TES texts is not an objective representation of the reality but a cultural, subjective de-cypher of a larval psyche of the true objective reality, which is uninterpretable in it's bare form. Not only the "high" events are such, even the lowest of the law. In fact, all that transpires, all History is a cultural interpretation. If there is no witness, no beholder - there is no interpretation.

Now, Akatosh is an aspect - but an aspect can not be simply made up and be stuck on as a mask. An aspect is no mask, it's an interpretation of the diety as it has always been. That said, objective events do happen because -but only because- time exists, and so an aspect can't be added without a dragon break which creates an additional timeline, which erases not the original one, but adds to it the cultural interpretation and the additional interpretations of important historical events from beginning of time.

Those references are not anachronistic. Akatosh is known now. Even though the identity of Akatosh did not exist at the time the book is referring too, it did exist at the time the book was written. The book is not dated but it references the Nine Divines so we can establish it was written after Tiber Septims apotheosis which is sufficiently modern. To find a proper anachronism you'd have to find a reference to Akatosh in a source that occurs before Alessia. Or perhaps with sufficient backing, before the Allesian Order.

That's not the point. Time-Dragon-as-Auriel wouldn't help men. It's not only Akatosh by name, it's Akatosh by interpretation and action.
To the Imperial priests, in their version of history - Akatosh existed before 1E.

If some one only remembered to write that original monomyth down.


You're making a number of assertions, but you're not backing those assertions up. I'm specifically getting stuck at "and so an aspect can't be added without a dragon break". The neccesity does not seem to follow from any thing you said before. Infact, Akatosh was thought up long before the Dragon Break had ever happened.

The time dragon didn't help at all. It was Parthurnax, the secret dragon who the authors of that book, and ignorant nine diviners everywhere, don't know about.

It's Paarthurnax. He's just a regular, non-secret dragon, despite one of the oldest, while the book mentions there were multiple dragons who joined men's struggle. Why would anyone in the world confuse Paarthurnax with the time dragon?

Moreover, a claim that ingame books grossly confuse names, persons and actions will open a Pandora box that could pretty much annihilate most of TES lore.

Don't look now, but many in-game books are rickety self-contradictory suppositions and half-truths of dubious veracity.

They are, but such texts are written in such a way you, as a player, can see the claim in as being dubious or being an agenda driven outright lie.

Let's assume all books can be fakes, all claims can be dubious and all history accounts could be fabricated. How many ingame books could be taken seriously, then?

Are you saying Shor, the Dragon of the North, and god of Men, wouldn't have helped Men?
About time you realized how much [censored] was piling up in this forum. There is no more than a grain of truth in all of them.1. Not true.
2. None of them. You're a fool if you put any faith into any one book - You have to find where the numerous sources agree to get any idea of what the heck's going on. NOTHING Vivec has written or said is trustworthy.

Yes and so they believe. But believe does not appear to shape the past, only the gods. Though you could show that believe shapes the past by finding references to Akatosh in works before his formation.

So I reckon the Priest of the Nine are talking somewhat out of their ass. After all they had the following to say about the Warp in the West.

Since Your Lordship was in Black Marsh serving in the staff of Admiral Sosorius at the time, you probably know of these events only from Imperial proclamations and Chapel declarations, which identify this period as the 'Miracle of Peace'. During the 'Miracle of Peace', according to official accounts, the formerly war-wracked Iliac Bay region was transformed overnight from a patchwork of squabbling duchies and petty kingdoms into the peaceful modern counties of Hammerfell, Sentinel, Wayrest, and Orsinium. The 'Miracle of Peace', also known as the 'The Warp in the West', is celebrated as the product of the miraculous interventions of Stendarr, Mara, and Akatosh to transform this troublesome region into peaceful, well-governed Imperial counties. The catastrophic destruction of landscape and property and the large loss of life attending upon this miracle is understood to have been 'tragic, and beyond mortal comprehension.'

In as much as this account confirms and validates the current borders of these counties, and identifies the rulers and boundaries of these counties as 'ordained by the Nine', the 'Miracle of Peace' serves Imperial objectives of peaceful consolidation of ancient petty states and sovereigns into manageable Imperial jurisdictions. The other remarkable features of these events -- mass disappearances, armies mysteriously transported hundreds of miles or completely annihilated, titanic storms and celestial phenomena, apparent local discontinuities of time -- fit comfortably into the notion that these events are part of a vast, mysterious divine intervention.

However, this is only the public account of these events, and, as you may suspect, it conflicts with many other accounts. In short, while this explanation suits Imperial policy, it has little historical validity.

-- http://www.imperial-library.info/content/warp-west

This in itself does not mean that their claims are baseless. It just illustrates the possibility. Should there be myths involving Aka-Tusk going up against Alduin then we could say that the Priests of the Nine were rationalising these as myths of Akatosh. They could also base themselves on the understanding of the Thu'um as we had it before Skyrim. That it was a blessing from Kyne. This too must come from somewhere.

In other words, plenty of room to play around without invoking changes to the past and all the causality shenanigans that brings allong.

Frankly, I don't know what Aka-tusk is or whether it has been an actual separate aspect or a literary device. Do you?
I also don't know which matter of Aka nested in Pelinal, and that's why I didn't bring him as supporting evidence for anachronisms.

Dialogue and books prove that in Skyrim -and probably other Imperial lands- Akatosh is widely thought to exist before 1E. I can't disprove the claims it is all a result of Imperial propaganda, plus Paarthurnax was just translating, et cetera et cetera. But I believe I've made a strong case in conjunction with the dragon break-added timeline. Perhaps MK can resolve it, if he wishes to.

And there are books, in Skyrims too, that say that Akatosh is nothing but a political invention of Alessia.

Such as?

Shezarr the the Divines...

I think I misread your post... I thought you were saying there were books denying that Akatosh was a politcal invention.

Yay, caffeine defficiency.

Come on, Silent, I've yet to crack under Akatosh = the one true awesome god pressure. I find the religion of the Nine to be nothing more than garbage perpretrated by the Imperials to satisfy their own feelings of constant inadequacy.

For all we know, it was Auriel that helped Shor. The kalpa cycles seem disconnected to Auriel, and maybe Auriel needed more time. I mean the Thalmor might win this time (ha! They don't stand a chance) and then they get to be free.

Edit: But if true, that makes Auriel your dad.

I REFUSE TO BELIEVE THAT!

You know it's true.