So I've been gorging myself on lore the last few days, rereading the sermons, the obscure texts, and looking over years of forum arguments. And I've noticed that everybody seems subscribe to the padomaic viewpoint laid out by Vivec, that achieving chim, then getting to amaranth or Z or whatevs is the ideal course one can take. Is this just because we haven't had a anuic version of Vivec to lay out the alternative, or does the anuic view really not go any deeper then, "let's blow up the world and be a big ball of potential energy" ?

Maybe it's just because I've absorbed half a decade of forum discussions about Vivec and chim all at once, but I feel like I have an immense amount of information about one side, and nothing about the other. Or maybe I'm making a mistake by referring to them as "sides". Is there even an alternative to amaranth that would be considered desirable by anyone?

yes, the Altmer. we haven't been heavily exposed to it yet, but TES: O looks promising with thier aldmeri dominion