I was just thinking about what happened to Vvardenfell, you know with the Ministry of Truth. I have the feeling, now more than every, that the Daedra are uncaring for mortals. Even the ones that serve them. It seems they believe in change no matter what the cost. Now I know some of you are shaking your heads saying of course the Daedra are the embodiment of change, but I always thought there were a select few who cared about mortals. Now I'm not so sure. Let me get back to my point. The Ministry of Truth crashed into Vvardenfell because Vivec was no longer there to keep it up. And if you remember Azura wanted him dead. Which means shes had to of known what would happen if he died. Does this make her evil from a mortal's point of view?

Did I miss something? (I've been away for a long time.) I never killed Vivec so I didn't know the Ministry of Truth crashed.

Anyway. Normally I don't like to guess in this forum, but I have to admit I'm guessing now.

Azura's beef with Vivec goes beyond the few killed in such a crash.

It happened in the 40 years between the end of the Oblivion crisis and the beginning of The Infernal City (the ES novel). It was talked about in the book.

Azura is manipulative and it would come as no surprise if she did know what would happen and the Deadra in general are at best neutral and to them mer and human are probably, to most of them anyway are petty play things. Thats not to say that they are evil, afterall they represent aspects of thought and therefore react in ways men and mer would.

If you were to call a Daedra evil, it would just laugh at you. They're beyond such simplistic and confining terms.

Some Daedric Princes care about some mortals sometimes, but they are whimsical and unpredictable, and moreover are one with their spheres. None of them are universally benevolent towards mortals. They are interested in them for self-centered reasons. More like fundamental aspects of reality or forces of nature than gods, it is perhaps more useful to think of the Daedra Lords in this light and in terms of 'harmful' and 'beneficial' than 'good' and 'evil'.

"few killed?" there's boiling seas and and nearly the entire population of Vvardenfell is dead. (two people survived at least) The Dunmer in morrowind have been slaughtered.

I don't see any evidence of that.

Not that they wouldn't laugh (they're capable of mimicing thought and emotion) but how can they transcend where they can't yet sojourn.

They were called the anticipations for a reason.

That reason being Vivec's propagandist retcon used to bridge the gap between Velothi and Tribunal religion.

Good and evil are as subjective in TES as everything else is.

Being beyond descriptors such as Good and Evil does not require or even have to involve transcendence of Mundus, either in the affirmative or the negative. The motives of the principalities of Oblivion are obscured and unknown, and are arguably unknowable. Good and Evil is a judgment. Yet true judgment cannot be made until the whole of the picture has been revealed. It has not, and it is more than likely that it will never be.



Never mind that 1) such judgments are entirely subjective to who is judging, and 2) Daedra lords are et'ada and are a different gradient than mortals.

I don't know why you rush to put the Daedra 'on high'. They are not unknowable, except to themselves.

It was in the new book that came out last month

Wanna give us the all-in on the likes of Meridia, Nocturnal and Herma Mora then?

Azura didn't do much, she merely introduced a catalyst. Between Dagoth Ur and Sheogorath, all that was needed was a little push for it to all fall apart.

What's this about Dagoth Ur and Sheogorath?

This. She is certainly one of the more approachable princes, and I get the feeling, from her quest in oblivion, that she generally cares about her followers. But she is also petty, vindictive and vain. Look at how she cursed the entire chimer race forever for the crimes of the tribunal.

Anyway, what the OP has to remember is that good and evil are subjective, and they are entirely mortal terms. Daedra, especially the Princes, are utterly incomprehensible. Some of them don't have motives other than fun - look at how Mephala has played the Morag Tong and Dark Brotherhood against one another for centuries, for her own amusemant. In many ways, I like to think that the Daedra are as far above mortals as humanity is above the rest of the animal kingdom - a completely different state of awareness. Chances are, you care little when an animal is killed, unless its your own pet (which is sorta like Azura and Nerevars relationship, hence why she went bat[censored]).

Yeah I'm not sure what he meant by that either.

The threat from Dagoth Ur was what convinced Vivec that they must give up their powers. At the same time, Sheogorath not only threw the moon at Vivec City in the first place, he was also most likely responsible for Almalexia's madness. He certainly didn't take being replaced by the Tribunal very well. And in his own words, "I don't like losing. And I don't mind cheating."

if the mortals of Nirn define Destruction as "evil" and enough(or all?) believe it, i guess one can say that Dagon is "evil".

this of course is based on my understanding that Prince is reacting and undergoes reshaping and reforming accordingly to the changes in the mortal perceptions and believes that concern the said Prince. i am not sure how i came to have this understanding , so feel free to disillusion me folks .

but as far as i am concerned, no deity of TES is inherently "evil" or "good" ; such absolutes do not appear to be existent in TES(keyword APPEAR).

I don't think it was Sheogorath's fault that Almalexia turned mad. I think she just was "mad with power", and the news about the nerevarine mad her finally snap.

And Sheogorath didn't really throw the moon at the city, but tricked it. I have no idea how you make a moon mad, but I think it's just tribunal fairy tale like most of the Vivec stories.

I think ill become a vegetarian too and all those things. Damn, I like meat.

There's a line in "King Lear" that applies: "As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; / They kill us for their sport."

At best, mortals are toys to the Daedra.

(I also like the passage in the novel "The Girl in the Swing" where the narrator muses that humans in the world are like dogs in a home: "Most of what's really going on is beyond our comprehension, and the best we can hope for is to be allowed to live out our lives in peace" or words to that effect.)

Yup. Clavicus Vile also gives a nice explanation.



Watching the http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Z-HcWm99pk you can really feel how Clavicus is bored and just toying with Cyrus for the fun of it.

The Daedra cannot really be placed into "good" and "evil" alignments. Take Mehrunes Dagon for instance. His sphere of influence is destruction, change, and revolution. To mortals, his past actions may come off as "evil", but the attempted conquering of the Mundus, as well as lesser accomplishments such as the uprisings he started with his Razor, are merely part of his mantra. I would say that even Daedric princes such as Azura certainly have their own motives and are incredibly manipulative. She does seem to be fairly open-minded towards her disciples, but I would say that every Daedric prince has their own few quirks.

This is just my opinion, but I think Boethiah is one of the more honorable Daedric princes as far as his interactions with mortals are concerned.

Proweler I was wondering when you would make your way into this thread.Thanks for the vid btw.

I try not to think about the Daedra so much because it makes me want to understand them, even though I know its damn near impossible. One could ask them their true purpose and the Daedra would probably throw a riddle at you. Well actually that depends on the Daedra. Some of them might just kill you for asking the question or kill for being in their presence. but anyway....

When it comes to Daedra the only thing I can be sure of is that they are the embodiment of change, or so they claim. That fact should comfort me, but it doesn't. Not always anyway. Sometimes I think we have it all wrong. Hell maybe the Psijic Order are the ones who have it right.
Taken from Imperial Library.
"In the simplest of terms, the religion of the Psijic Order can be described as ancestor worship. Just as PSJJJJ is considered divine, so are the ancestor spirits. Dating back to the time of the original Acharyai, it is believed that superior men and women have been granted significant power upon their deaths. Unseen by many, these ancestor spirits from the phantom world command great influence over our world. According to the Psijic Order, the Daedra and gods that the common people worship are nothing more than the spirits of our ancestors. The Psijic Order calls their beliefs and customs the Old Ways." http://www.imperial-library.info/gttpo/

But then that gives me even more questions. They say "superior men and women have been granted significant power upon their deaths." That leads me to ask who granted them that power?

But all this is kinda besides the point. The discussion everyone here seems to be having is a grand academic one. When my original question was a very simple one. "Does this make her evil from a mortal's point of view? " Key word there is mortal point of view. But maybe its not possible to ask such a simple question and receive a simple answer in this topic. If it were Bethesda would not be good at what they do lol.

But then again maybe we can separate the complex academic side of it and make this simple. So I'll ask this again and phrase it a bit differently. If you hired someone to kill Vivec, and you knew what that would do to the Ministry of Truth, and in turn Vvardenfell, would that make you evil if you had the power to stop the disaster.... and didn't?