I keep hearing that Lorkhan was the closest to achieving CHIM before Vehk, but I can't think of any sources that say this.

So where does it state that Lorkhan saw the Tower?

And you're arguing that no god has a separate self? So who does have a self? Only Vehk? That's it?

Again this is saying that everyone and everything in TES save Vehk is a blended, slurry mess, and any characters or personalities we see in game are mistakes on the part of the developers because no one is really different, and there are no borders or division lines. Just a dreamy mess fresh out of the blender except or Vehk.

http://www.imperial-library.info/content/tower

You're putting the bar awfully hight btw, I personally settled for understanding what was the crazy writing was saying.

Hmm seems like I'd overlooked that section of that text. And I always set the bar high. Usually I just get lazy or something, but for some reason I've gone farther with TES lore than usual.

A lot of this seems like seems like conjecture, but I understand the root of it all, which is the Godhead and the Godhead's dream which is the Aurbis. In between all of that is this nasty philosophical stuff; the conjectural stuff. The problem is that "nothing is real" sounds like a wild theory, but it isn't. I used to be completely okay with CHIM, but after today I hate it all. How can something real come out of something that isn't real? The same applies to myths and how mortals in TES seem to be more powerful than the gods, which seem rather weak and change because of stories. And now I'm afraid to go to sleep for fear of one of my dreams eclipsing me. Thank you Elder Scrolls.

You're confusing levels here.

Actually you're the one proposing "nothing is real." I'm not aware that anyone else has suggested that. I'm certainly not suggesting it. But if you want to scare yourself, read some studies about magnetic impulses to the skull. I can make you choose left over right every time with an impulse to the right part of your brain - and you will feel that YOU CHOSE every time, completely unaware. That's one level. Is it the only level?

Rhedd gives you a koan: There was a boy with a bicycle who lived on a high hill. Further down the hill was an ice cream shop. It was a hot day and the boy desperately wanted some ice cream so he rode his bike down the hill. Riding the bike downhill was so swift and so easy that he got carried away with his speed and rode right past the ice cream shop.

It's surprisingly simple and elegant. Just stop and look around and don't ride past the ice cream shop. Who is Mara?

According to you all, nothing is real. According to every reliable source on and off these forums nothing is real except the Godhead, which dreamed up the Aurbis. If something is a dream it isn't real. And if it's not real why even talk about it?

You lost me. I assume you're telling me to slow down and not move through concepts so fast?

Elegant? Possibly. Simple? If it was simple than it wouldn't be one of the number 1 things talked about on here. I thought CHIM was simple once I digested the Godhead and Godhead's dream aspects, but then this love thing further screws with my mind, and upon really taking a step back and thinking about the contents of a dream becoming real and overpowering the dreamer things got even more complicated.

I suspect one cannot give a good answer to this question until after the second embrace. Better: that is the answer, or contains it.


Screw the godhead, drink a beer. Actually, it's easier the other way. Drink a beer: there -- godhead; there -- godhead; there -- godhead.

Or learn to paint, or create a better economic system, or solve world hunger, or take up stamp collecting. They (can) all work.

First of all, to quote C.S. Lewis for a moment, even a dream is a real dream. It's when you mistake it for something other than a dream that it becomes unreal.

Not telling you to slow down, just STOP when you get where you're going!

And yeah, the problem with the last bit is that it's almost entirely wrong. And some of those lore buffs who are most certain are confusing matters by adding in irrelevancies. Toss out what you think you know and start over.

Oh how I have missed you! Hello, dear heart.

What is wrong? The idea that the Godhead dreamed up reality, and that CHIM involves realizing you are in a dream and still retaining your self? Thus you become the Godhead instead of vanishing under the weight of the cosmic terror of not actually being real.

Implying that you become the Godhead. The Godhead was dreaming. You take its place and start to dream.

Same. I don't post here much, but I read this and that.


Why become the godhead? Do it better or go home.

Or re-write the rules. That's what Vehk did.

Oh, and that quote you give is about the Amaranth.

How did he rewrite the rules?
I thought CHIM and Amaranth were one in the same as in Vehk's new Aurbis is Amaranth.

Well, the Aurbis isn't real, it's a video game, but we talk about it anyway.

In-universe, it's "just a dream." Or is it? So what if it's a dream?

Yes, it's fictional, but if the fictional world is in fact not real, ugh... I'm getting so tired of this.

Now that is a great question.

"Then the Barons and the Demiprince joined together into a pillar of fighting styles terrible to behold and they danced before the egg and its learning image.

'Look, little Vehk, and find the face behind the splendor of my bladed carriage, for in it is delivered the unmixed conflict path, perfect in every way. What is its number?'
It is said the number is the number of birds that can nest in an ancient tibrol tree, less three grams of honest work, but Vivec in his later years found a better one and so gave this secret to his people.

'For I have crushed a world with my left hand,' he will say, 'but in my right hand is how it could have won against me. Love is under my will only.'"


"Above them all is the horizon where only one stands, though no one stands there yet. It is proof of the new. It is the promise of the wise."

Why not? The godhead (and CHIM, and the wheel) is on such a level that it is entirely beyond the games and beyond most lore. They are relevant only when we are discussing specifically them. It's kind of like saying that we shouldn't talk about Imperials because there is no single "imperial" race, or that we can't discuss Morrowind because it blew up.

*sigh* Just forget I said anything.

Again it is the end result? Vehk's new Aurbis? Or just a promise?

Hoo boy I long for the day when I don't have to ask anymore questions.

Isn't the goal of discussion to find out how stuff works and what stuff means? If everything in TES amounts to the insane dream of God, why discuss anything else? That's what the universe is, isn't it? We've encapsulated everything except the post-Vehk CHIM stuff, so why talk about anything besides the Godhead and Vehk? They're the only two real things, aren't they? It's like discussing ancient Greek philosophy as if it was real science. We've moved past that point in scientific understanding so why pretend it's important for anything besides history and the evolution of learning?

The ES dream is completely independent of the Godhead dreaming it unless someone like Vehk decides to steal the Crown and start a new, more proactive dream. I'm surprised that none of you turned into TES nihilists after figuring this dream stuff out. It makes the whole world meaningless with every game a rat race, speeding to a red light that never turns green. Why fool around in the Matrix when robots are attacking in the real world? Why discuss anything in the Aurbis when the heart of the matter is the Godhead and Vehk?

Such a pitiable locution. I'll ignore it.

Jones and Bill and playing blackjack. Jones has a queen showing, asks for a hit. Bill (the dealer) lays down a 9. Jones asks for another hit. Bill advises against this. Jones insists. Bill lays down a 5. Jones smiles and turns his other card over, it's a 6.

"Bust," Bill says.

"No," Jones replies, "We're going for 30."

"Oh, I guess you're right," Bill replies, and gives Jones the winnings.


Ick ick ick. No one discusses ancient Greek philosophy as if it's in the same building as modern natural science. But they still discuss it, and not just as part of the history of ideas.

You're circling the zero-sum drain.

Spare me your condescension. I like answers, and if I haven't gotten them in four years, I'll take them cold and boring rather than another four years of poetry.

Bob is competing in a music competition.

The judges tell him to play his song, and he plays it, making numerous mistakes all the way though. When he's finished the judges ask him if he's kidding them?

Bob smiles saying, "I played the song perfectly. Any mistakes you heard were me improvising."

"Great!" The judges say. "You still don't win."

Everything in our world boils down to subatomic strings vibrating real fast*. Should we not study history, philosophy, biology? Should we not go to the movies, enjoy nature, fall in love? If someone asks about the outcome of Skyrim's civil war you're not going to tell them "its all just a dream." Everything is compartmentalized, and everything matters on its own level. Just because its all a Godhead's dream doesn't mean that it is not real, not important, and not worth talking about from within the dream.

*inaccurate. Not a physicist.

I'm not being condescending; I'm encouraging you not to stop swimming just becomes the waves are getting higher.

Has it occured to you that the straightforward answer may not be very interesting in itself, but only the application?


In my story, Jones wasn't making a mistake.

If I was a resident of Nirn, and I realize everything was a dream and didn't Zero-Sum or achieve CHIM. If I just continued to live my life there, yes, I would care about it all, but from my perspective of a person seeing a fictional world, I don't know why I should.

And to answer your first question. No. Everything boils down to mathematics. When we as a society learn enough about the universe and physics and engineering, the first thing against the wall will be philosophy. Then religion, and history will be viewed as the "dumb era" studied along with art, history, philosophy, and religion only for a few laughs by all-knowing mathematicians, unless people have been proven obsolete by that time as well. Then all of human existence will amount to a few binary chuckles.

Pardon me for intruding in your conversation but I don't think that there will ever be such thing as learning enough (or knowing enough) about the universe. And also, I think that even mathematics will always have a philosophical background.

I had a course last semester over whether the foundational axioms of set theory (the basis of mathematics) entail the actual existence of the entities they refer to (sets) or whether those axioms are fictions.

Also, you're assuming both that we can learn enough about the universe to make any area outside of mathematical physics obsolete, and also that there's only one type of question we as human beings are legitimately concerned with. The first is questionable, the second is atrocious.

There is no "should." If you don't care about TES, then quit. But you've said that you do, so obviously there's something you like here, something that keeps you going. If its just the metaphysics that you don't care about, then ignore them. None of this is either/or. It seems to me that you more or less understand all this stuff, your problem is with accepting it. There's nothing we can do for you on that.

You can build an entire course on that? Well of course some mathematical concepts are fictitious. Is it even possible to represent a repeating number in the real world? It's all theory. The important part is when its used to describe how things work.

And what's the point of learning as a race if you don't hope that we will eventually learn how the entire universe functions? There will come a day when people are judged for their usefulness to mankind, and every single person can be quantified on how much they move the race forward or hold everyone back. It's dystopic, but it's progress in its purest form.

And math is the single most important thing anyone can learn. It's what moves everything forward, and what isn't known through math is filled in by philosophy, art, religion, and bad excuses. If humanity doesn't die on Earth before we can escape this wretched little planet before all our resources are gone, and we freely colonize the stars, our understanding of everything will increase until we have the power to create our own universes and transform ourselves into beings that transcend these inefficient fleshy sacks of bodies and digitalize our imperfect brains. Call it grim and atrocious all you want. Call me a fool and an idiot for believing it. Call me a monster for wanting it, but the more we learn about how the universe works the less we'll need those old diversions of philosophy.

I really do love TES and Tamriel and everything, but it makes me feel strange investing myself in a world that is defined as a dream.