Why not note it? It is an account of the beginning of the universe as a tale of love, jealousy, and the conception of children. I fail to see how "simplicity" is an argument my suggestion that, to achieve CHIM, one must love.

That, by itself, is not enough. To realize that "you" are "everything" threatens to destroy any basis for an identity. The challenge is to find a way for an identity to exist in such a context.

What I am getting at, is what's a somewhat unusual claim: you can't love EVERY possibility. Love is partial. And that is the basis of identity.

It still feels like a cop out to love everything because you love yourself, and you are everything. Transcendent narcissism.

As for MK, why the amaranth? I'm guessing his meaning is more than just a flower. Is it an end result? A quick wikipedia search yielded that its root is the Greek, "Amarantos" which means unwithering. So is this what Amaranth represents in TES? A perfect, unwithering universe? His description of natural rebellion is a description of the Aurbis, so is the universe we're viewing the universe created by someone who attained CHIM? I feel like I should be smoking weed right now.

And how does the "dreaming forever" clause fit with the Loveletter which says that Vehk returned, even though Vehk achieved CHIM? Did Vehk the being reactualize into the Aurbis while Vehk the everything stay dreaming?

*addendum*

I don't care for it. It's too easy an explanation.

There once was a sentient being named Anu and a sentient being named Padomay. They made a planet, but got mad at each other and had a knife fight. Then the Daedra came. The end.

In the beginning was nothing. Then it exploded.

Yes, this. But again, note what you're doing and how brutal love is. You're murdering every possibility not chosen.

Well... if you're looking for consistency, you're missing the point of myth. The power of myth is that it can describe something which is fundamentally inconsistent, as all real things are. Truth is anolog, not digital. To reduce it to what makes sense is to lie. And it's a mistake to group the Aedra and Lorkhan together in this context.

However, you're absolutely spot on with the second half of this. CHIM is essentially selfish. It's possible to open that door and head right on out and keep going without a look back. To turn back, however, must be love, because the pay's terrible.

Yes. That's not a lotus blossom Talos is holding in that statue.

There has to be a line drawn in TES as to how powerful myth can be. If one person and only one person makes a myth is it true? What if only one other person believes it? Is it true then? How many people have to believe in something to create a god?

Why is it a mistake to group the Aedra and Lorkhan? Vehk chides the Aedra as false gods and lies. Vehk also says Lorkhan's endeavor was a failure. Does Vehk believe Lorkhan to be as detestable as the Aedra? Or is he saying that Lorkhan was on the right track?

Please explain what you meant by that.

And I strongly believe that there is truth. Is the ground you walk on not true? The ground came from the Aedra, but if the Aedra are lies, than how can their begotten labor be any less of a lie? Without truth the world evaporates.

Absolutely the ground is a lie.

I think you've answered your own question about the Aedra and Lorkhan.

As far as Tamriel is concerned, it absolutely takes no more than two. But I believe Vehk and Lorkhan would say one is sufficient. CHIM is teaching as one with authority. CHIM doesn't ask permission either.

Hence, zero sum. What you're saying is what the anonymous moth priest in Eat the Dreamer realized. What Vivec did (and what Allie/Proweler/I et al are doing) is maintaining that the world being a lie doesn't mean that it's also not true.

Then all theism is wrong. The believers are wrong just as the breath they exude to believe is wrong along with their mouths and blood and flesh. Nothing is real then. Everything is a dream. The word dream isn't real, and neither is the dreamer. The dreamer is a lie created by his nonexistent mind. Furthermore none of this discussion can be a discussion because you can't discuss something that doesn't really exist. I can argue an amateur statement that the Daedra are all evil and the Aedra are all good, and you can't tell me I'm incorrect because no truth exists in TES ever. Thank you for opening the flood gates.

Zero-Sum is the only truth then. There has to be dichotomy if nowhere else than is/is not. CHIM must be impossible because an idea I have can't jump out of my mind and stab me with a jackknife. Ex nihilo nihil fit. There has to be something! How can something be true if nothing is true. Someone attaining CHIM by saying "I AM" has just seen the dream and decided to overlook the truth thus tunneled deeper into dream. I have to go wash my mouth out and change my cloths as I feel very dirty all of a sudden.

They've been open since 2002.

http://www.imperial-library.info/content/light-and-dark should answer that one. Don't take it exact but look at the ideas it presents.


She is paraphrasing sermons.

'They are the lent bones of the Aedra, the Eight gift-limbs to SITHISIT, the wet earth of the new star our home. Outside them is the Aurbis, and not within. Like most things inexplicable, it is a circle. Circles are confused serpents, striking and striking and never given leave to bite. The Aedra would have you believe different, but they were givers before liars. Lies have turned them into biters. Their teeth are the proselytizers; to convert is to place oneself in the mouth of falsehood; even to propitiate is to be swallowed. '

The Aedra gave to the world and they became lairs. Lairs because they lie about their own existence. They're dead and gone, what remains are projections on their bones. It's not to different from what Mankar talks about in Paradise.



Okay. Breath in. Feel the air in your lungs. The thing to do now is not to Zero-Sum.

I agree with Vehk on a lot of things, but I find his views on the Aedra to still carry the same taint of the Velothi. You are saying that the Aedra killed themselves to create Nirn? Then who killed Lorkhan? Holograms of dead gods? What was broken when the Selectives danced on the Tower? An ephemeral image? Swamp gas? Aedra and Daedra says that Aedra can be killed, implying that they are still there. What of the plane(t)s? Are we looking at memories?

And Camoran? Camoran's anti-Aedra litanies are as bad as Cyrodiilic all-benevolent-Aedra propaganda. They speak truth in parts, but corrupt that truth and knowledge with the insane conclusions they make. I read Commentaries to learn about the framework of the universe not to build a case that Nirn is a Daedric realm created Lorkhan the Daedroth.

And the only thing keeping me from Zero-Sum is the 2 lit. of Dr. Pepper beside me.

As beliefs go, the one you just described isn't all that exotic. Honestly. If you were a Buddhist monk, your teacher would beat you with a stick about now.

But there's more to it than that. The sermons of Vivec outline a surprisingly exact description of the reality of Tamriel.

Saying nothing of CHIM or anything like it, seeing that Vivec was himself a false god who murdered his friend who trusted him above all others, however noble or spiritually dynamic his goals in doing so may have been, I find his credibility in this matter lacking.

First, the Aedra became mortal by giving up parts of themselves to make Mundus. Then they killed Lorkhan (because being mortal turned out to kind of blow). Then they became the bones of the earth or made children, which were the Ehlnofey, which became man and mer. The selectives broke the Tower and time - the remnant of the Aedra that still exists by virtue of their being part of Nirn and by mortal's collective memories of them. They are dead in the sense that they are not wholly sentient, powerful, exclusive beings like the Daedra, but that doesn't mean that they are completely gone and do not exist.

Truth in parts and corrupted knowledge is all we ever have. Mancar speaks with an agenda, as do the priests of the Eight divines, as does every creation myth ever, as does Vivec. Yet dispite all these disparate viewpoints we have remarkable similarities, which let us see the 'truth' beneath the veneer of opinion.

Honestly, at this point I'd advise you to step away from the computer. This stuff is not at all important. You can ignore it and get along just fine.

Heck, I've read materialist accounts of the nature of consciousness, with book reviews from people arguing that we're just now figuring out what Buddhists were saying all along.

I'm not looking for something exotic. I'm looking for something true and real. Truth and reality are the most beautiful things ever. There is nothing more powerful and beautiful than to know the complete truth of something. Mystique and suspense are only holistic spices. Rather blow them off and know something for what it truly is. Can you think of anything more wonderful than to get into an argument with someone and completely crush them with the certainty that everything you said is right and everything they said is wrong? I can't think of anything better than that.

If I had a magic 8-ball that could answer any question with 100% veracity, and I asked it, "Is there a God?" The answer would be more beautiful than all the art, music, and poetry ever and yet to be created.

And I like that explanation. I'm not a Cyrodiilic priest who thinks the Aedra are infallible and immortal, but the less you speak the less likely you are to be wrong. As far as I know, the Aedra hardly ever communicate unless you want to say that they wind blowing is Kyne speaking and other poetic vagaries like that.

And yes, we only have cutting-room floor scraps of truth, but what we have doesn't define what there is. Are the egos of the gods so fickle and fragile, that mere thoughts and words can change them? Like flashlights and whispers altering the path of campfire smoke? It's an unsettling concept.

Oh ho! If only it was that easy! I live, breath, and obsess over this stuff. A few weeks ago I deleted gamesas off my bookmarks, and I lasted a work week at most before putting it right back. The prospect of gaining an understanding over a non-mathematical finite source of knowledge is addictive. By backing away now I resign myself to ignorance, and ignorance taken willingly is stupidity. I am not stupid, and I'll understand this stuff if it completely ruins all the fun I have ever and will ever have with a TES game.

Believe it or not, you've come to the right place. But you're still looking in the wrong direction, a lot like me spinning around trying to find a dragon that just landed right behind me. (That seems to be my hobby, recently.)

There absolutely is truth, and absolute truth, in the lore of Tamriel. But not where you're looking. The Aedra aren't a thing. Lorkhan was almost a thing but he's not a thing either. Vivec is a thing, but he blew this joint 200 years ago. Wherever he is, I'm sure he's having fun. The ground is not a thing and the Earthbones are not a thing. What does that leave?

As for mysticism and suspense, they're an unavoidable side-effect, not an end in themselves.
I can. Watching someone else really, really get it.

There are distinct limits to how much we're allowed to discuss this here, and I'm already pushing them. But wouldn't it be even better to leave the 8-ball out of it and go see for yourself?

It is. It drove two-thirds of the Tribunal mad. But the thing is, there's a misplaced word in here. One word, that completely alters the truth of your first sentence. If you can guess which one, you're halfway there.

You're looking in the wrong place*. Hell, the world that we live in is the wrong place, but at least its easier to pretend here than it is in TES.

Everything you've said in the past few weeks points to the fact that it already has.


[edit] * lol contradiction ninja.

From what I've observed in my time here, I don't think anyone except for me thinks there are real answers when concerning the Godhead and the et'Ada. Oh well. Is the truth you're referring to paradoxical, in that the only thing we know for sure is that we know nothing? Are you talking about myth then? Myth is real, but the gods remain ephemeral? That is my major disconnect. How can people and the myths they tell be real if the gods aren't? Is it the nature of the gods that makes them that way, or is it the "multiple realities" of myth that makes the gods not real. To reference my "Crazy Akatosh" thread, why is it that only Akatosh is thought crazy. If all the gods are in constant flux from multitudes of myths constantly changing what the gods are, why aren't all of them insane, constantly grappling with what they are? The Aedra are infinite, as seen in the cosmology article, so does that infinitude allow for infinite versions of them? Are plane(t)s just aetheric transparency projectors, projecting any version of themselves that mortal myths place on them?

Also your "not a thing, almost a thing, and definitely a thing" ... thing seems too conjectural. What is the frame of reference here? Is the Godhead the only true thing? And is reality defined by how close you are to the Godhead, with Lorkhan almost making it and Vehk definitely making it?

Because the truth exists somewhere I can't go, like outer space or somewhere beyond the third dimension. A yes or no answer will suffice. In all seriousness though the only thing that would truly suffice is a "no". If it comes up "yes" than my next question would surely be "Who was right?" And I'd probably lose my mind from what it said next.

What? That they're mere thoughts? That thoughts are ultimately more powerful than I've hitherto believed them to be? Something worthy of further consideration.

TES and all its lore is finite because it was written by people. Theoretically it is possible to understand all of it, but that requires grilling the creators, which is something I can't do. I'm settling with trying to understand as much as I can of the written material hoping all the way that the final keystone isn't unknown and unwritten, existing only in a dev's mind. That's the fun of fiction. It's not real and finite thus understandable.

You've been keeping track of what I've been saying for the last few weeks. Geez. I haven't even been keeping track of what I've been saying for the past few weeks. But you're half way right. I was happy with Oblivion until November 3rd, 2006. That was the day that a bunch of people told me that Oblivion wasn't actually a good game, and if you enjoy it then you're wrong, so naturally I stopped enjoying it. I loved Skyrim for about 12 days until I finally gave in and looked at these forums which told me why I shouldn't like the game. I'm still arguing against myself for why I should like the game, but in another month or two, I'll marching to the same anti-Oblivion drum and be playing Morrowind again. Too bad. I really did like the combat and the new menu system too.

You can grill the creators, if you want. They may or may not answer but they are perfectly capable of being grilled.

Wrong guess on the word. The word that's misplaced is "egos." And that answers your question about why the Aedra don't go mad as well.

The truth is, to use the vernacular, real weird. But not paradoxical particularly and it is a real truth, which like all real truths in fiction offers insight into truth in non-fiction.

I use "ego" in place of "self". I meant to say, "Are the gods' personalities; their selves so fragile, that..." How is that a wrong way of looking at it?

I was about to reassure you that Skyrim is a good game worthy of enjoyment, but then you said you liked the menu system. :\

Ah damnit. Now that 2crow doesn't like the menus I can't either. Well that was a good run

What don't you like about the menus?

None of those words apply here. Only Lorkhan ever saw the Tower.