Do explain.

To use a modern comparison, in regards to the Ash Statues and dear old Voryn Ur, I think of Dagoth Ur as a radio control station as well as the DJ, who uses the Ash Statues as radio towers to further the area of where he can air his funky fresh beats... of craziness, suffering, and eventually corprus. :thumbsup:

Lol, I had a great imagine of Dagoth Ur DJ in Red Mountian with he crazy tentacles and Ash Ascendants and all the Ash creatures dancing to it. This gives me some inspiration for an illustration... Thanks!

Unfortunately for their holders, most of their fates were to lie bleeding from gashing headwounds as my Crusader stood over them.

Same here. I'm never going to look at Voryn in the same way again.

Just wait till I do the picture, then you really wont be able to get the image out of your head. :banghead:
I am trying to find the perfect music to listen to while I make it.

Ash statues are very egomatical, indeed. They're used to further Dagoth Ur's dream signals. The statues themselves are 'obsidian', in par with most every other piece of Sixth House attire. Think of them as three things.

1.) A focus point for Dagoth Ur's dreams.
2.) I symbol of faith (much like a cross, or rosery, or whathaveyou).
3.) A beacon.

As for the beacon, look into the fact that at many of the ash statue shrines, there are offerings of Corprus meat laid in front of them. This is akin to putting batteries in a remote. The ash statue is a symbol of House Dagoth, and the mark of House Dagoth is Corprus, the Divine Disease. To become the flesh of Flesh, woven into a Divine proclimation where strength and wisdom are at your fingertips. Now the ash statues work just like any other temporary symbol of faith to a god, by worship. The more it is enamoured, the stronger the symbol becomes. To bask an ash statue in Corprus flesh is just like visiting a shrine of the Nine. Also, is it no funny that many of the shipwrecks found around the island are carrying ash statues? Perhaps another sign of the maddness they release. Most smugglers see he gold offered to them, and agree to transport these statues in with other goods, or to hand them off to mainland dreamers wherein they can then spread them around. But it doesn't mean they're not likely to drive the smugglers mad if they're around them too long. In the case of proximity to any major Sixth House shrine, it may only take even a few hours for the signals to work their magic. I always wanted to see more Sixth House based quests in Morrowind, because there's so much more to the House than just conquest, maddness, and some ash statues. There's a certain cunning to the way they operate, and let us not forget the symbolism behind the entire house. Just like the holes in the ash staues' chests, where one could assume the Heart is meant to go. But in any case, they're a strategical device none the less.

It is clear that you are a keen observer of the game and you have made many good and new points here. I was particularly drawn to your description of "the holes in the ash statues' chests" - this reminded me of a http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=890154&st=0with a hole in the chest that proweller and others observed was likely Lorkhan - suggesting that the Dark Brotherhood, Sithis and Lorkhan are somehow connected.

We had been wondering how Dagoth Ur got his power - and your observation there is a possible clue - maybe instead of using Kagrenac's tools to distort and stimulate the Heart via tonal dissonance as the Tribunal did, Dagoth Ur used 'sympathetic' magic - Vodoo if you like - creating a model of the 'dead' god and using that to draw a stream of the power of the Heart into the heart-cavity in the chest of the model and thereby creating a little battery of God-power that could be added to, drawn upon or manipulated remotely.

Blends nicely with Dagoth Ur's mask too - very Vodoo-like and 'death-oriented' - gives overtones of necromancy and psychic vampirism.

Why, thank you. I should hope I'm a keen observer in the game, seeing as how a lot of new lore (meaning a lot of possibilites) was added, but it was done in such a way that you'd thought it had been there all along. Now, I still have no doubt that Dagoth Ur actually used the tools to first acheive godhood, but what he did AFTER that is what is astonishing. See simply how he (essentailly) mantled. Proof of this is, if he had really just fornicated the Heart like the Tribunal, would there not have been a Dragon Break just like there was for the Tribunal? His method was different, such as he used the tools to neutrally channel the power (battery power) from the Heart, and used his own body much like the ash staues. He 'swelled up to contain the glory of House Dagoth', yet there was no real ascension until a while after, as he slept. He unfolded unto the mysteries of the Heart, and made it out. I think it would be a process much like CHIM, but instead of going 'Hey, I'm everything and nothing.' and not Zero-Summing, it's more like 'Hey, I just took 15 hits of L27 to my eyes. If I don't die, I'll sure be one whacked out bastard when it's over.' I think delving ino the Heart, Dagoth Ur must have seen things akin to a pretty wild acid trip. Uniy, hope, rise, fall, deciet, cunning, woe, dispair, grief, pain, demolition, reconstruction, benevolance, lucidity, all wrapping into one giant form, the leg of a scarab. Well, if one were to be able to naviate through all six legs, it might just be like a divine ineraction, but on a scale that could be put down to terms in Mantling-with-a-side-of-HOLYHELL,I'VEGROWNATHIRDEYE.

After his awakening, he was the Dagoth Ur we know today. And if he hadn't known better, those lowly bastard mortals Vivec, Almalexia, and Sotha Sil, just stole his bride, so to say. So he sits back and waits, plans. In this time, the Tribunal are strong and say strong. But right as Dagoth Ur begins work on Akulakhan, the Blight gets stronger. He rallies up some people, even gets some left-overs from those who lined off from the Tribunal, and there he has all he really needs. It's the symbolicism that matters. Even on his Blight Crown, notice his three prongs aligned with the three eye holes. He has seven servants, him being the eighth, the Godhead of the Sixth House. Look at Yagrum, who 'emerged' from Corprus, much like from within a dream, is now living from a mock-Scarab, a mechanical device with six legs and two pincers at the front. Perhaps even more worrying, is the fact that for every follower he gains, the more of Lokhan he spreads. Perhaps he knew of Tamriel's fate all along, and simply felt a tool of Lorkhan's, using the purification route to try and create a welcoming wagon for his...Father. Or maybe he knew he was doomed to die at the hand of Nerevar-Incarnate all along. Such is the mysterious nature of all gods.

Also, I find it odd how the Heart is like a miniature realm. When Dagoth Ur is killed, when the Ash Vampires (Commanders) are killed, they are reborn at the Heart. Their connection with it is so strong, that they are like the Deadric princes of it. To be born again from the fire-nets of the Heart, it can also be seen as a symbol of CHIM. They die, loop over the Conditioned Circle, and return. It simply is more than being a god that allows it, because the Ash Vampires are not gods, but the spokes that may uphold the centrifuge of House Dagoth. Remember though, that all of those Dreamers and Sleepers and Deep Sleepers were worshipping what they though to be Dagoth Ur, but in essence they were giving more strength back to Lorkhan, the Forgotten God (not so much any more, as we can clearly fortell), because Dagoth Ur is like an extention to Lorkhan. 'Walk like them until they must walk like you.', 'Blend every motiff on the canvas on the world, and then stroke your brush.'

All stemming from, of course, these little satues.

No idea who you are, but I note that even where what you say might contradict the little idea I came up with basedon your post you weave it into a new pattern that is equally viable and reaches out further in to the web - seems you may have been looking at this for a very long time.

Looking, hearing, learning...

It's all the same sense, really. You just need to fully open your mind, and make the connections. Maybe, you know, get a job somewhere where you have to do his kind of stuff for a living.

Well, don't HAVE to, but wildly perfer to.

Well, hi guys... I?m a newbie.

My experience with ash statues was this.

Early in the gam I found one, dont remember where, and kept it on the Caius?s table, since i I often use his as my main safe house. I usually dont rest my nerevarine anywhere else.

Anyway, i?ve kept it there for a really long time (game time) and then all of the sudden, in the middle of my sleep an ash zombie attacked me inside Caius?s home. It was odd since the zombie didnt carry a message from dagoth or anything, it just jumped me.

I never put the attack and statue together until I came across this post.

So maybe the totems act as some sort of beacon for all ash creatures

The Ash Zombie thing happens regardless.

I did something very similar before on one of my early playthroughs. When it happened again, I had never even touched an Ash Statue.

From what I see, it's just scripted.

DAMN IT! I thought I was onto something....

http://www.imperial-library.info/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1215227805

Ah, I loved reading that one.

Certainly.

Read it a while ago, already knew all of it.

Though I digress, because I don't completely agree with him on some things.

So is it saying that Dagoth Ur is actually dead? If so, is it true? Or do we not know?

We dont know, but it's a possibility.

Maybe it is saying that Dagoth Ur's Death was different to a normal mortal's death.

Nice one this summation - it hit on the very point that plagues me - how do you kill something that is dead? - and that dreaming self is apparently dead. And my simplistic response might be that you can't kill it, but you can negate or alter it's potentiality to interact as itself with things.

The other thing being the question to what extent Dagoth Ur was dependant on the Heart - which was knocked from it's perch in this mundus - to the Gods know where. That 'disintegration of the Heart reminded me of the nature of the visitor from the future who shoots beams of light from his hands - a multi-natured or hive-minded being indeed.

Lols Talyn - you came up with your observation independantly and were quite correct about the effect the statues have. Because I always worried that to retain one might give Dagoth Ur further access to my mind I never kept them around so I missed that experience. But you give me a very satisfying idea: make a pile of them on the bottom of the sea

Hmmm... Never thought of that!

Drawing comparisons about What Dagoth Ur is, is connected with or might become?
Dagoth Ur's statues have holes in their chests ... The statue in the cavern where the DB meet has a hole in its chest ... The God Lorkhan to whome the Heart belongs has a hole in his chest ...

Could Dagoth Ur be an Avatar of Lorkhan? Dead avatar of a dead God - if a God can be said to be dead?

Are these all connected into one soul through the Dreamsleeve or is there a certain amount of perverted mantling happening here? Did Dagoth Ur attempt a sort of bastardised mantling using the statues or did he indeed die and was his heart cut out in the process? That would make the representation of him at Red Mountain an unborn avatar of himself ... or a dream that he is whole again and explain that when 'killed' the first time he breaks up in a shower of sparkles - just like the Heart.

But then you have to ask - is the Heart just a very powerful dream? - back to Luargar's writings