Right, let's skip the lore foreplay ( loreplay?) and start right off with Vivec and Talos, this forum's two favorite people. It's believed both achieved CHIM, and both have used their powers with a self-described motivation of love (Many-headed Talos and countless times in the Sermons). What is the connection between love and CHIM? more interestingly, at least to me, what is the connection between Mara and CHIM? and what about the implication that love is under his will only? Is he usurping Mara? Or if CHIM and Love are connected, is he denying Talos' power?

On a tangent, a ruling king who sees in another his equal rules nothing, says Vehk. How, then are Talos and Vehk both CHIMmed?

Love, just like Change and Creation have differing definitions withing TES. While I know what CHIM is I'm not sure how Love factors into it or even what the word means in that context, although the Loveletter seems to be quite blunt in the matter:


Which taken literally means that everything is love. And here I thought God could be summed up with a different single word: Insanity. Perhaps true Love is to attain CHIM and push that insane Godhead out of the way to become a new Loving Godhead in which case God then would be Love.

As far as Vehk and Talos are concerned, I only know Vehk has attained it, and he did so quite awhile ago if we are to believe the Lessons. I've never heard any official confirmation that Talos achieved it too. The Commentaries seem to only state that Talos used CHIM instead of attaining it.


It only states that he knows the word and uses it. Furthermore, if Talos had achieved CHIM that he wouldn't be Talos in Aetherius, he would be everything with no name.

Then again From the Many-Headed Talos creates a message reminiscent of the Loveletter:


On the other hand, Talos reached Heaven through violence.

Love in the context of CHIM does not necessarily equal the love represented by Mara. She is more or less the love for your family and friends, while the love that is involved in CHIM is the unconditional love for all of creation that is required to brute force yourself into keeping existing - to not zero-sum - after you see the tower. I'd say it's the motivation to be able to say I.

The ruling king (as far as I remember, been a long time since I read the lessons), is a representation of the Morrowind player. The one who can not die permanently and who is to first be an enemy and later an ally of Vivec.

I'll try my best to answer this, even though I'm also confused about that phrase regarding the ruling king and his equal.

Both Vivec and Talos love the world enough to accept it for what it is - themselves. Yes, this might make them narcissistic, but they are also well aware that their "children", all the other souls out there, including the Daedra, have individuality. The Daedra are just too selfish for CHIM, but that's another story. Those that achieve CHIM love the others as much as they love themselves. By loving one they love the other. Now, about this love Vehk is talking about. Well, we've already seen that Vehk does not hold the hands of his people and might even punish them (maschism?), but what he does might be seen as wise. in fact, I think it is. Imo, Vehk is just as nurturing as Almalexia, but in a different way. Almalexia's the type that either cuddles or slaps you. Vehk lets you slap yourself. The latter is the more effective technique to a ruler and benefits the nation in the long term. Would the Dunmer have been as proud of their culture and achievements if Vehk hadn't led armies against invaders? This "love" Vivec has for his people is the love the Godhead has for the world. I think someone called it existential love in another thread. It's the kind of love a parent has for his child, but taken to an extreme, and I'd say it's also freedom.

Mara is kindness and love.Let's see...mortals like kindess and love. There is some of Mara in every mortal. Look at Mora as a concept. She's related to CHIM as about as much as every other mortal, but she is esentially a concept, also, she's a dead god. There's more to CHIM than love as in kindness and compassion.

Talos...well, Vivec saw himself in Talos, and not an equal, but himself. I feel like I'm contradicting myself, but tha's because I'm talking about Vivec. The Godhead is schizophrenic and suffers from multiple personality disorder and gives births to other personalities that might achieve CHIM, all mortals.

I never thought of Vivec usurping Mara. Interesting idea. So, kindness is under his will only. I've always thought that phrase had something to do with the Ministry of Truth crashing. Personally, I think it means that his people will stop loving him if he wants so only. He aided the Nerevarine because he wanted, knowing that Dagoth Ur's death would bring an end to the Tribunal.
Side note. Just got past the Cavern of the Incarnate again. The ghost of a Failed Incarnate who lived guring the golden era of the Temple (meaning before the Empire came to Morrowind) gave me one of Vivec's Lessons. It's hard to tell when he wrote them, but I think they are really old stuff. If so, he anticipated a lot of things. Perhaps he knew that Sotha Sil and Alma might die. I thought the Nerevarine was screwed around with .... Vivec takes the cake.

Talos didn't attain CHIM. He attained I-can't-believe-it's-not-CHIM, that is to say, the mannish anolog to CHIM: Dragonblooded Imperium.

Love is insanity. Haven't you ever suffered it?

Fortunately, no.

They are the same.

Love is a connection, a oneness, unity. A husband loves his wife, and the two become one. Their children are made from them, they are variations of the parent, their union made flesh, and that is love. All of creation was once once, and then it was two, and then it was many. As these connections dwindled so did power, the power of the gods divided into a million impotent mortals. To reclaim the power and become a God, you must unify others behind you, knit thousands of other souls to yours. This unity is also love: it's the same thing, just bigger.

You know, it's charming that I haven't been here in years and CHIM is still at the top of the lore page. Anyway, for what it's worth, Mara being entirely without CHIM, the question is meaningless in the form in which it was asked.

This. A thousand times this.

Some things never change.

Welcome back by the way.

The perfect way to ensure CHIM gets discussed less is to include it in a game. Then people will moan for awhile about how Todd Howard screwed it up, and it'll get talked about less and less until people get sour even thinking about it.

O... M... G...

Welcome back. Plenty of veterans coming back around since Skyrim.

On a separate note, a writer really hasn't come along to put forward anything deep enough to rival all the literature associated with CHIM. MK is continually active, as well, on the forums (New Year's the most obvious example). So yes, it still is at the top of the agenda, for good or ill.

I assume you're excluding Tedders? Mag God's Masque makes up for his lack of activity. If he writes another one of those I'd be set for the next decade.

Not necessarily equal as in one is much, much bigger than the other.

Well, I was referring to more recent times, but yes, I would take anything of the sort.

At times it seems the developers figure the metaphysics are sufficiently filled out to last them awhile. Which means CHIM will be around for awhile more.

Lorkhan gave his heart to make the world.

And because TES lore is all about symbols, heart = love.

Yet Lorkhan failed...

One Ruling King to another.

"Vivec is death. I killed him!".

"Nonsense, anything you say is irrelevant".


It is the difference between being love and knowing love.

So it's their egos, then? Their refusal to see another as their equal based on their self-skewed perception, and not the reality of their achieving equal power?

How does one maintain an identity when directly perceiving the totality of possibilities? Through love. One cannot love the totality of possibilities; one loves a possibility. And that is the beginning of creation: to love a possibility out of all possibilities, and so to create limits, so that possibility may have its identity. And in so doing, the creator achieves its own identity. Through the creation of subgradients.

That's a good way of putting it.

Okay, take a minute and read the 35th sermon, the Scripture of Love. Note the tone. Also note that apologizing is not a thing Vivec does. What could he be confessing to that's so terrible that even he feels the need to offer excuses for his behavior?

This isn't "love" in the sense of kindness or niceness. It's not cuddles, although cuddles with Vivec are certainly delightful. Dementor has something by connecting it to the love of parents for their offspring - note that Almsivi also participated in that anology - but a sentimental attitude towards parenthood is missing the point. What parents do to their offspring is brutal. They don't ask permission. Why does Vivec say the reader is in love with evil? How does he describe the love of God?

Remember always that Vivec lies when it suits him, that he usually has at least three motives for writing, which may or may not be compatible, and that when something seems obscure or nonsensical, that's usually a clue to reach deeper.

There's still too many inconsistencies. The Godhead didn't split out of love. There isn't one believable source that suggests that the Godhead went insane and split so that creation could exist. The Annotated Anuad isn't even worth noting. It's too simplistic. The only love could have come from Lorkhan and the Divines who created Nirn in the hope that something better would come out of it, that Nirn would serve as a launching platform for ascendancy, and Vehk stands in complete opposition to the Aedra and Lorkhan.

Furthermore there's nothing in the description or process of CHIM that involves any love except for that of oneself. Saying that love and CHIM are connected through what the person does after he achieves it is no different than any concept. A conqueror may love his new subjects. A spurned lover may love the outside world more after breaking off a relationship. The fact of the matter is that no where in understanding your place in the Tower and retaining your self does love factor in. I'm of the opinion that the two things are unconnected.

God outside all else but his own free consciousness, hallucinating for eternity and falling into Love: I AM AND I ARE ALL WE. There's a reason its called the Loveletter.


The whole point of CHIM is the realization that you are everything. Love for oneself is equivalent to love for your fellow man. The love of God (the Godhead, Vivec, Talos) is the love of a parent for his children, an unconditional love for them because they came from him and are of him. His love for them ("the love of god") is an opportunity to become parents themselves, to feel that same love that he feels. As has been said, it isn't the state of "being in love," which is transient. Really, love is intimately tied to the Amaranth, rather than CHIM. To quote MK:

I used to say that allot. The text is actually rather sneaky in allot of ways.