Esteemed Loremasters,

Its widely believed that when someone dies their soul goes to the Dreamsleeve, is stripped of memory, and reborn in a new body. There are several cases there personalities persist after death (Pelinal, though he may be et'Ada, and the wife in the Revenge Served Cold quest in Oblivion [she blesses you at the end of the quest]). The priestess at the beginning of Skyrim seems to be implying that the souls of the dead go to Aetherius. My questions are:

1. Do souls go to the Dreamsleeve and thus reincarnate or to Aetherius/heaven (persistence)?
2. ^What about the soul of Nerevar?
3. ^Was the Dragonborn a slain dragon whose soul entered the Dreamsleeve and was reborn?
4. What happens to the souls of dragons not "devoured" by a Dragonborn?
5. Does personality persist and/or can it be recovered post-reincarnation?

Your humble servant,

scourgicus

Good questions, I'm watching this thread.

Good question. Unfortunately, knowledge on the afterlife is limited, especially with the recent revelation that Sovngarde isn't just a Dreamsleeve-induced delusion. There is little doubt that the Dreamsleeve exists and that reincarnation happens, but the specifics, such as what afterlives exist and how one gets to them, are unknown.

Souls only enter the Dreamsleeve if an et'Ada does not take their souls to their own realm. I.e Nordic warriors enter Sovngarde by permission of Shor and the Nightingales serve Nocturnal after death etc.

I think it might be more appropriate to say "souls enter the dreamsleeve -unless- an et'ada takes claims them;" as they seem to go for the exemplars rather than the common stock.

When a Dragonborn dies, are the souls he devoured released, or do they stay amalgamated to his soul?

When a Dragonborn is slain by another Dragonborn, is his soul devoured?

Do the devoured souls inhabit some kind of "inner realm" of the Dragonborn, the kind of inner realm which has been visited by the Dragonborn inside Azura's star?

Is there a huge "inner realm" inside geode veins? Does it already contain some souls?

Is the "soul" of a Dragon really devoured by a dragonborn, or is it just some part of the Dragon's knowledge? (After all, if the absorption was complete, one would expect that the Dragonborn would have acquired quickly a huge knowledge about the Dragon wars upon slaining his first Dragon...)

Esteemed Lord of Scourge,

While recombinant reincarnation is well established in the literature, its intricacies have been but little explored. It is clear from the spiritual manifestation phenomena common throughout Tamriel that entry into the Dreamsleeve (i.e., entropicoil shell) is neither immediate nor mandatory. The souls of the dead are clearly capable of identity retention for indeterminate periods of time post mortem; however, it is also well established that these manifestations tend to... degrade, over time. Perhaps the Dreamsleeve is a state into which most souls submerge entirely, but those with some unfinished business on Nirn restrict themselves to brief 'dips', in which personality disintegrates only slowly. Of course, to imply that these spirits do so willingly is to transgress the boundaries of our knowledge, and would seem to me to be discredited by Arkay's Law and Blessing.

Which brings me to the question of draconic souls: are they subject to the Law and subsequent entropicoil disintegration? The orthodoxy (see http://www.imperial-library.info/content/there-be-dragons) holds that dragons are both eternal and immutable, which would imply that they are not subject to Dreamsleeveish decay. And if they truly do not reproduce in the same way as we mortals, what need would they have for reincarnation? By this, I think we can say that the Dragonborn was not created as the reincarnation of a Dreamsleeved dovah. What does happen to a dragon's spirit after death is up to anyone's conjecture, at this point.

For a more detailed examination of the Dreamsleeve and theoretical methods of recombinant reincarnation, I suggest http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1350330-progress-report-in-pursuit-of-diapause-deletion/page__fromsearch__1 (A. et al., Tympanic Transcriptions v. 3 745-756, 4E 187).

Cheers,

DIIN MIIN NAHL

I think it's appropriate to note that someone can be born with the soul of a Dragon and not be aware of it.

That seems to suggest that either 1) the memories in a Dragon's soul will disintegrate between the Dragon's previous life and its new one as a Dovahkiin, or 2) the memories will be locked away or "hidden" from the Dovahkiin somehow between lives.

And where are Spriggans' souls going for the brief time between their death and resurrection?

Probably nowhere. The spriggans are most likely not "really" dead when rejuvenation occurs. Kind of like how a human isn't "really" dead until the brain shuts down and the neurons die.

Where do souls come from?

What about Cliffracers? Could there ever be a Racerborn?

How else could St. Jiub have driven them from Morrowind? In their tongue, he was skRWAeerrk.

We Should have acted, their already here. The victory of St. Jiub was merely a delay, for the time after the defeat of the dragons. no one wanted to believe, believe they even existed, and when the truth finally dawns, it dawns in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgMgUehD1Tw. But, there is the one they fear, in their language, he is screechakhiin, RACERBORN!

lolz

1. I'm pretty sure the Dreamsleeve is located within Aetherius.
2. Depends on if you trust Azura's word...... I don't. Not fully anyway.
3. Probably not.
4. I'm not sure if they're souls leave the corpse since they can always be brought back as long as you don't absorb them. They are not mortal like us so I'd imagine the rules are a bit different for them.
5. Post reincarnation? I don't think so, but whatever the Dreamsleeve does takes time. So you could bring someone back as they were if they haven't gone through the whole process. Evidenced by the Wolfqueen in Skyrim.

I always thought the Dreamsleeve was part of Aetherius.

Also note that if your soul belongs to a Daedra, you don't have to stay in his realm of Oblivion. IIRC they trade souls as "Lunar Currency", and if you are really lucky you may be traded to someone with a nice realm like Azura or Sanguine when you were previously stuck in Coldharbour or Quagmire.

Colleagues,

The Dreamsleeve is part of Mundus, but the proof is quite roundabout. A summary of sources:

Vehk's description of the Wheel; Mundus as the hub (the center)
Multiple references in the Sermons to the Sharmat sleeping at the center (Sermons 11, 13, 15)
And: "Sharmat: dream-sleeved inversion..." from Nu-Hatta

Dagoth Ur sleeps at the center (Mundus) and yet within the Dreamsleeve, so therefore, the Dreamsleeve must be part of Mundus. Which does indeed make sense, as Arkay, the Prime Entropicoil's patron, is intrinsically linked to that plane.

Cheers,

DIIN MIIN NAHL

References: http://www.imperial-library.info/content/when-dead-gods-dream

Can I steal this for my signature?

A (brief) digression: I was under the impression that dragons do not reproduce, ergo, the status of their souls post-death would not include reincarnation via a new draconic body. There also -may- not be personality degradation as (I suspect) the dragons resurrected by Alduin recognize themselves as their former selves i.e. personality has persisted despite the passage of numerous centuries. As per dinmenel's post there -should- be some form of personality degradation - unless time progresses differently after death ("soul sleep"). So then what happened to the souls of dragon's slain but not absorbed by a Dragonborn? To put it another way - from whence does Alduin summon them back?

Atheelogos rightly points out the return of Potema suggests the process takes some time, hence her ability to return from death. Perhaps the will of the soul (hmm...) has something to do with this?

I thought that Alduin was implanting the souls of Nord heroes from Sovngard into dragon bodies to do his bidding.

http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/131/351/eb6.jpg?1307463786

In document Dragon Wars it is stated that after Dragon war Dragon cult started to search and bury bodies of Dragons to (presumably) preserve them for time when they would rise. So it COULD be that souls were somehow tied to burial mounds by rituals or something. I do get impression that without Dragon Cult's effort Alduin wouldn't be able to resurrect them, or that is what they believed... Ofcourse those mounds could also just work as landmark for Alduin, so he needs to spent less time searching dragon bodies (but that is too darn mundane, wants bloody black rituals for soul binding and stuff).

http://www.imperial-library.info/content/dragon-war

My hypothesis has been, for some time, that the various godly-aligned afterlives are temporary halters on re-integration. You have 'til the kalpa ends, buddy, then you go back in the slop pot.

Also, it helps not to think of the dreamsleeve as a place or even a thing as much as a state. Since the Dunmer go right to this anyways in the Temple, it's why older ghosts are just "ancestor ghost" and newer ones are still individuated.

1. Either or both, but they're just different forms of the same thing. Soul-energy will seek out similarly aligned soul-energy.
-For souls aligned with Aedric forces, this means the soul-energy will seek out a growing fetus inside a similarly aligned mother (with some consideration for the soul of the father? Likely, but unclear), since there are no other reservoirs of this soul-energy, since the Aedra only exist as fragments in the souls of mortals. Souls closely aligned with Shor or Akatosh may follow different rules in certain circumstances (see below)
-Soul energy can shift alignment. When a daedra corrupts the soul of a mortal, some portion of his soul-energy is altered to resemble the daedra in question, and so when the mortal dies his soul-energy will seek out the largest reservoir of like energy; the Daedra itself.
-Unlike the rest of the Aedra, Shor has a large extant reservoir of soul-energy: his heart. A strongly shor-aligned soul (almost always a Nord, who are his purest descendants) who dies in battle (as Shor did) will be drawn to the Heart of Lorkhan instead of a fetus. This state what is interpreted as Sovngarde by the souls that inhabit it. At a certain point, Sovngarde accumulates enough soul-energy to become self-aware, at which point the fragmented memories of Shor himself begin to reemerge, leading him to attempt to return to Mundus. The result is what's called a Shezzarine, and while they are quite powerful, due to having much more soul-energy than a regular man, they also tend to be quite mad, because they have fractional memories of being a God.
-Though Akatosh does appear to be an ancestor of the mortal races of men and mer, he is unique in that he also subdivided into a very different race, the dragons. A mortal whose soul is strongly aligned to Akatosh is called a Dragonborn, and his soul is very similar to the soul of a dragon. Thus, when a dragon dies, his soul will seek out the largest similarly aligned mass of soul-energy nearby... so a dragon killed near a dragonborn will have his soul absorbed by the dragonborn.
-Argonians likely follow a very different process. The Hist themselves are living reservoirs of Argonian souls, and so when an Argonian dies the soul is returned to the Hist, reabsorbed into their weird collective intelligence until such time as the Hist decide to spawn a new Argonian.

2. The Nerevarine is simply a soul which happened to have the exact makeup of Nerevar's by chance (or, if Argonian, by the design of the Hist for their own purposes)

3. Not likely, since dragons are very nearly all dead at the time the main character of Skyrim would have been born. The dragonborn was probably just the chance mating of two very Akatosh-heavy souls who mated and happened to get a near-purely Akatosh aligned offspring. (or, if Argonian, by the design of the Hist for their own purposes)

4. EDIT: misread the question. It's not clear what happens to a soul with "noplace to go". I theorize that Dragonborn began to be born because of the wealth of Akatosh-aligned energy without places to go created by the death of dragons and the fact that dragons don't have the ability to reproduce, increasing the available pool of said energy. There's likely a supply/demand mechanic at play here, so the soul that makes up a fetus is based partially on the makeup of the souls of the parents, but also has some connection to the soul energy available.

5. Yes, in the sense that a personality is based on the makeup of the soul.


Souls are divisible; all souls are fragments of the Godhead via several subgradients and recombinations thereof. The energy will likely stay together in the short term, since they aren't many dragons being resurrected or dragonborn being born, and they thus have noplace else to go.


Yes, dragonborn can absorb the souls of other dragonborn. This how Martin Septim absorbed the souls of his ancestors when he shattered the Amulet of Kings. Presumably, dragons can absorb the souls of other dragons.


The souls are integrated into the soul of the Dragonborn... but really, all realms (including Mundus) are just illusions created by the souls that inhabit them... so yes, the absorbed souls may well experience the process as some kind of weird afterlife, just as the souls absorbed by the Daedra experience their new state, and the souls absorbed into Sovngarde.


If there are no souls there, there is no realm, since as I noted, all reality is simply a projection of the souls that inhabit it.


Absorbing a soul is not the same as absorbing the memories. Note that killing dragons doesn't teach you any new dragon words, it simply gives you the power to use those words.


Well at the end of the Kalpa, everything is reintegrated... or mostly everything, at any rate. That's what Alduin does, that's his function, to go around and forceably reintegrate (ie "eat") everything to reform the Godhead, which means swallowing up Mundus, all the mortals therein, all the various realms of Oblivion (and all the souls absorbed by them), as well as Magnus and the other lesser entities that swim around in Aetherius, whatever state they're in. Once everything's been swallowed up into one being, that being is the Godhead, who then starts to split up once more.