I'm not asking if he really exists but I have heard that in previous TES games he was simply a concept and not a god. OH and that in-game book Souls: Black and White, the Brotherhood is said to be formed as a splinter faction of the thieves guild. WHAT AM I TO BELIEVE?! The main question is of Sithis though. The Dread Father. How could a deity that lives in the void possibly form unholy matrimony with the Night Mother and create teh DB?! Please enlighten me. I like to think that Sithis is indeed an Ingame deity. I have indeed consulted the major Lore sites, but they yield no results to this topic of great conjecture.

P.S. Shed some light, if you please, on the in-game book Sithis, which is in one of the chapels (I can't remember which). This book claims allegiance with Dagoth Ur (Or is it Mehrunes Dagon?).

Much Appreciated.

"Sithis is the start of the House, Before him was nothing..."

"
There are three visions of Sithis and one of them isn't Sithis but yet another form of Lorkhan.

1. Sithis as in the Monomyth. Half of the interplay which creates the Aurbis and thus unable to act independently from Anuiel.

2. Sithis as seen by the Darkbrotherhood in vanilla Oblivion. The dark version of god and mother Mary with no straight description of appearance and the Night mother running the show, thus giving the impression that Sithis doesn't do squat which is fine.

3. Sithis as the statue in the Vile Lair, bearing an uncanny resemblance to Lorkhan. Which also makes sense as he returned death to the Aurbis by creating Mundus while at the same time also creating passion. Quite suitable for the degenerate descendants a group of thugs that originally thought of murder as a celebration of living.

Not that I mind it when the lore starts looking like a dictionary, but I'd rather have a bit more text and explanation on the motivations. Some sort of doctrine of the Darkbrotherhood to detail the philosophy that drives them. Right now all we have is Source of Chaos and that goes back as far as Redgaurd. It would be nice if that had been included, just to know I'm not trying to piece together stuff that was never made to be put together. Granted nothing ever was, it just magically fit because there was enough to let it make sense.

Right now the idea that the appearance of Sithis as Lorkhan is known is add odds with #2 but I prefer the latter because it is easier to think that a bunch of loons never bothered to look at what they're worshiping then to assume that the whole world never noticed that Anuiel and Sithis were gods they could worship." -Proweler

And I believe the Dark Brotherhood is a branch of the Morag Tong and not the Thieves Guild?

Yes I always believed that the DB Branched from the Morag Tong, and focused further on worshipping Sithis and the Night Mother. Your Reply pleases me, but it seems Bethesda isn't as thorough with their lore as I thought. Of course they missed a month in-game time on Morrowind. I suppose it is easy to see Sithis as a God-Character similiar to the Christian God. Not that the Christian God is pleased with murder, but in the same way that He works in mysterious ways, we never see Him, but people claim he intervenes. Oblivion is indeed vanilla. It's Baby's first RPG. But it's pleaseing to the eye and fun as hell to play. I'm not big on Role-Playing but like to think my character could derive a sense of purpose through the teachings of the Brotherhood and believe in Sithis. ARRRGH! CONFUSING!

Thou Lore can always change as seen in Oblivion (Oblivion is supposed to be mainly populated by "jungles" and so on) so it's highly possible that Sithis actually is a "God" as in Arkay, Mara, and so on.

I do remember reading that in Morrowind. Christ... It lacks imagination in comparison, With typical monsters, Minotaurs and such. And according to the PGE (third edition) Minotaurs are native to Valenwood. MEH. Oh well. I like the Monomyth theory the best. It's the least conventional, and with that, makes it more immersive and less conformist to real-world religions. Thanks a lot Aldanaril. I'll never disrespect High Elves again

Thank you but I prefer to be called Altmer... High Elf is such a... disgraceful word. lol

There we go. The Altmer Pride. Still your not touched by Sheogorath, unlike most Bosmer. Thank you for the lore help. My Character was about to turn agnostic... It was going to be TES III all over again.

A combined greater aedra or daedra maybe... The first father/mother we can call him.

I still say it's either an aspect of Lorkhan, or it's nobody, and Mephala's been secretly answering the prayers of Sithis's followers. Could be both.

I agree with you

In Morrowind, the Dark Brotherhood seemed to be allied with Mehrunes Dagon, or at least with worshippers of him. But given that the Emperor is murdered by assassins that worship Mehrunes Dagon in TES IV, Bethesda needed to put some distance between Mehrunes Dagon and the Dark Brotherhood in order to keep the guild questlines and main questline unrelated and unconnected. Hence the current religious beliefs of the Dark Brotherhood were made.

There was a quest that posed the Dark Brotherhood as merely lodging in Dagons Shrine, you killed the guy who extended the hospitality in one of the Morag Tong qeusts. There wasn't any sort of actual involvement.

Further more the Morag Tong worshipped Sithis as a God of Death in Daggerfall and Redgaurd already, although http://www.imperial-library.info/obscure_text/chaos.shtml was a bit more complicated, it's not out of place for the Darkbrotherhood to worship Sithis, they have their origins in the Morag Tong afterall.

There may have been some involvement; Hrordis both was in the DB and worshipped Mehrunes Dagon. And she wasn't even at a Daedric ruin.


I never said it wasn't out of place.

Yup, I agree, that totally sounds like something that Bethesda would do to cover themselves.

Also, I believe that Mephala is behind the whole Sithis thing. She is behind the Morag Tong, and the Dark Brotherhood is just a twisted vision of what they do. I think Mephala had magical relations with the night mother... Giving off the illusion of Sithis. She is the webspinner and likes to "mess" with mortals so why not this? I think Mephala toys with the Dark Brotherhood to pass the time.

Is it just me or does lore change a lot to suit itself and the games.
We should be stepping into an existing world, not one that changes to suit it's creators.

The way I see it: What would people think if I changed the mechanics of teleportation halfway through a series just to support another of my short stories or poems. It would offend myself, insult my world, and kill the realism.

That seems to happen a lot, in the last two games in particular (Daggerfall got off easy because Arena didn't have much established lore). Bethesda really needs a Leland Chee type person, not only to keep everything consistent, but to help establish canon.

What about Mephala? What's her connection here?

Thou the universe as we know it in the ES can be altered when the Dragon Breaks.

So it's not an impossibility that things can change to something very different.
But I agree it changes a lot.

Aren't you sorta forgetting http://www.imperial-library.info/mwbooks/monomyth.shtml? Suggest you use this link.

I have always felt that the Night Mother was messing with people's heads and Lore re Sithis and the DB - not to mention who really was Vivec's patron. But Sithis/Padomay predates the Night Mother etc by an order of Creation.

It's rather hard to see Anu without Padomay, or Auriel without Sithis. So if you accept Proweller's link to the Obscure texts I think you have to see that as a fair example of a DB view - and therefore entirely suspect as anything more. Because the alternative is to 'delete' Anu and Auriel from reckoning also.

And please note that the DB is a tiny sect ... known more for murder than scholarship - that appears to be led by a 'Mistress of Lies and Deceit' - aka the Night Mother - who I killed in passing like any other no account NPC when I was ahem, investigating a Daedric Shrine - and that was when my character had few skills and some very basic weapons ... makes me think the DB is not all it is made out to be.

Since the Night Mother's been brought up, I've always put some thought into how the Night Mother must have presented herself in the 2920 Books.
Is she alive then, or something similar, or is she still the same ghost/spirit essence that we see during our Oblivion trials? I've been curious about that for four years.

The Night Mother is probably still the haunty ghost we saw in Oblivion.

http://www.uesp.net/w/images/Shrine_of_Sithis.jpg


Obviously, assumingly, Sithis has not been seen. Regardless, the odd statue interests me.

According to UESP, of whom I don't whole-heartedly trust, but of which, for the sake of time, I will use: (In my own outline, but in their words.)



Daedric Princes have incredible power, and can take on many forms. So, for one to be the Night Mother, is not out of the question. Especially since Mephala is seen as loving executions (Morag Tong and DB) and lies (obvious). But I cannot see her creating something so elaborate, and them worshipping "someone else" and killing in someone else's name. If I am not mistaken, Mephala, being who she is, would be selfish in taking credit for what she does.

As per Sithis in specific -



Again, I cannot see Mephala letting someone else take the credit, granted it may be her, it's towards another, or false, god. Being a child of Mephala can make more sense. But, why, if he's a child of Mephala, would he be considered to pre-date all?

If Mephala has a child, I would assume, imo, he'd carry on some of the traits of his mother. Specifically - Lying and executions. And, in this, I believe it makes more sense for him to take on the role of Sithis. And, perhaps egotistically, he wants to be seen as all powerful.

Now, yes, this is all speculation. And it is not a complete, formed thought. This is on-the-fly thinking and ideas as I typed. I hadn't really thought about the whole DB/Sithis/etc thing before. I just took it as it was and considered the Sithis to be their name for Chaos, while others call him by a different name. (Basically, they gave a new/different persona to something, just like every other race/clan/village/faction/etc does.)

1. There are three books and one obscure text about the Morag Tong and the Darkbrotherhood. The two from Oblivion are kinda contradicting so keep note of that.

http://www.imperial-library.info/mwbooks/brothers_of_darkness.shtml
http://www.imperial-library.info/obbooks/sacred_witness.shtml
http://www.imperial-library.info/obbooks/fire_darkness.shtml
http://www.imperial-library.info/obscure_text/chaos.shtml

The assassination that lead to the outlawing of the Morag Tong is dramatized in 2920.
http://www.imperial-library.info/mwbooks/2920.shtml

2. Seems the UESP got it wrong again. After the Morag Tong was officially outlawed, the Darkbrotherhood came into existence. Presumably everybody just laid low as they continued under a different name. The outlawing itself doesn't seem to have made much of a difference, they were already prosecuted occasionally before. Now they only had to be more secretive.

I don't know who they got on quote for saying they started worshiping Vivec, that just doesn't make sense and doesn't seem to be based on anything. I reckon they weren't outlawed in Morrowind because they've always had an established place in society.


3.

Not touching on how wrong that statement just is, I can't help but think that someone horribly misread my suggestion that the Darkbrotherhood | Morag Tong was the lovechild of Lorkhan | Sithis and Mephala as she combined the idea of mortality (Lorkahn | Sithis) with action, making murder a celebration of living.

At any rate, sithis is not the child of Mepahala. But you can read the second post in this topic for that. Aldanaril copied my words without allot of attribution it seems.

Brothers of Darkness is also pretty contradicting.


I thought it was the Potenate's death that led to their outlawing.

So the Morag Tong worshipped Black Hands Mephala?
And in OB, the Db has a special unit of assassin's called Black Hands?
Mephala gave the Thread's of the Webspinner to the Morag Tong.
The DB steals them, angers the Morag Tong and sparks a war. Or is there an alternative reason for the war?


How odd that the Dark Brotherhood assassinates Reman and his son, and the Morag Tong assassinates Potentate Versidue Shaie?