I was thinking about the possible ways Alduin could come back, and I was reading some discussions on mantling, so it made me wonder whether or not Alduin could come back by someone mantling him. Could another Dragon do it? Could a mortal?

It would be impossible. Unless one can literally start eating whole swaths of land.

Pelinal did it. Possibly so did Ysgramor. I'd be willing to bet Talos did. All those folks got mistaken for dragons, too. I would say it's a definite possibility.

Pelinal didn't eat land. It would be more accurate to say he "salted the earth." Talos changed the land. Not sure what you mean by Ysgramor though.

In order to mantle something, you have to walk it. Walking like Alduin is an oxymoron. If you do it, then that's the end, because he did it. We'd be in the Dawn era now, falling for tricks.

Alduin will come back, at the end of the Kalpa..

I am one of those believers that when we slayed Alduin we simply "banished", we did not absorb his Soul, so he still must be out there, probably given up on ruling the world and is waiting for the time he should fulfill his role at the World Eater..



As to your question about could another Dragon Mantle Alduin, I don't think so.. can other Dragons devour the entire world?

as for a Mortal mantling Alduin, I doubt it.. the phrase about Mantling is "Walk like them until they walk like you" is it not? Kinda hard to walk like the World Eater without being able to eat worlds...



EDIT: dang, ninja'd

Hmm. Could a dragonborn establishing dominion over Tamriel be seen as a mirror of what Alduin did when he initially decided to dominate the world rather than eating it this time around? Dragon-souled (in whatever capacity) individuals achieving domination and thereby defining an era seems to be the established pattern, but it isn't happening to the mythic extent necessary for mantling, and it doesn't seem likely that it could unless things eventually get to the point that even the historians have difficulty distinguishing between the various 'empires' of and deeds ascribed to Alduin/Alessia/Reman/Tiber/etc, so anyone who seems to be following the same pattern potentially ends up walking like the "Dragon Emperor".

Assuming that we're right to believe that the King of Alinor mantled Auriel, then there should not be any reason to assume that one cannot mantle Alduin. Indeed, one theory that was going around when I joined the forums was that the dragon that claimed to be Alduin in Skyrim was just another dragon that began to mantle the World-Eater himself because (let's face it) he doesn't get around to eating much of the world, now does he? Of course, whether or not he's the original Alduin or a "new" Alduin, the idea of mantling is dependent on reenacting the actions of the previous version, so there literally shouldn't be any way to differentiate the two anyway... Oh, who knows?