Well, Kaliah tricked the Dovakiin into it, in order to further the TG MQ. Ya know, Mercer was right! [censored] Nocturnal!

If only you had the option to say no to her and run like hell

There also is the Soul Cairn. It is said to be inhabited by undead. So... There is some way how do they get into it.

I made deals with almost every Deadra there is, in exchange for powerful artifacts, but I have no plans on dying. Lichdome here I come cause i'm skipping out on this bill!

The guys in the hall of the dead are just skeletons. Not Draugr...

I wonder if a dragon soul can go to Oblivion...

Well, the Dovahkiin has 50ish dragon souls, at least.

Actually you are let off the hook at the end of the TG quest. The deal was that you would serve Nocturnal in life and in death (guarding her pad) until your debt was repaid. Upon returning the skeleton key she explicitly tells you that you have repaid your debt in full. So you're free to sell your gullible soul to the next freak with an eerie voice and a shiny bauble just for you.

Because honestly, who isn't in this for the tsotchkes?

Which of the possible afterlives it is, then, if someone, say

- has pledged oneself to Nocturnal's eternal service (and doesn't return the Skeleton Key, i.e. pay the debt)
- is a werewolf
- pledged oneself to various other Daedric Princes in general
- gets soultrapped (and later used up) by an opposite side witch when heroically fighting in the front line for one's True Nord Friends against impossible odds?

All those happening to one person (who had one rich life, it seems ). Is there "the strongest" afterlife that beats those other alternatives? Or do the Divines just go "wtf are we supposed to do with this one?" and just randomly Dreamsleeve the soul, or something? Whatever is even causing the soul's going into somewhere? Is it a single deity (Arkay?) responsible for "delivering" the souls (like Saint Peter in Christianity, for example), or does a deity closest to a soul "claim" it, or does it just "happen automatically"? Or something completely else? I bet we cannot know this, but thought of asking anyway.


I disagree on whether they're awake or not is because the dragons are awake or not. Have you done the College of Winterhold? Remember that when Savos Aren was young, he and a few other College of Winterhold then-apprentices made a trip to Labyrinthian and finally confronted the Dragon Priest Morokai. Apparently Savos ended up conjuring his two remaining "friends" into thralls to forever seal Morokai. There certainly were no dragons around at that time, but Morokai still was apparently awake since the remaining three couldn't beat him/it in a battle...

There might be some other kind of symbiosis between the dragons and the Dragon Priests, but it's not concerning this "being awake". In fact, I fear that Beth don't know themselves what Dragon Priests are supposed to be. Just some new enemy type taken in, poof, out of nowhere, with no lorical explanation. I hope I'm wrong with this one, though, although there certainly have been signs that the company itself doesn't care/know about their lore as much as they used to.

In that situation I'd say the Prince that fights the hardest gets you, it's probably a trade off between them, and the one that wants you the most or is willing to do the most gets you.

Think about it this way. Every creature is part of a mad god's dream about other gods who mutilated themselves to create mortals and what not. The "mortal" you is just a more "real" you, just like some aspects of a dream can seem very vivid and real. When you die you return to just being a thought or figment in the dream.

At this point you might carry a strong memory of some afterlife within you and because you exist in a dream that place becomes "real" if enough figments carry the memory. Whether it is for "eternity" or not I'm not sure.

On the other hand, you might be grabbed by a Daedric Prince who of course is part of the same dream (and a god to boot therefore probably knowing a lot more about it than you) because you promised your essence to said Prince.

Or nothing special happens and you are reshaped into some other part of the dream through the dream sleeve recycling process. If you were a particulary enjoyable part of the dream you might get to make a cameo appearance by being "re-incarnated".

The purpose of it all? CHIM.

FWIW, the dragons were never completely gone. Paarthurnax, Mirmulnir, and Ahbiilok, all survived from their creation until at least Alduin's return, and there's no telling how many more could've been in hiding. There were more dragons living in the 3rd Era, and even more in the 2nd, and even more in the 1st (after the Dragon War).

The Dragon Priests were Priests of the Dragon Cults. They were people who devoted their lives to the service of the dragons, and in turn the dragons granted them some nifty powers. They also got followers who served them -- these people became Draugr. The Dragon Priests in Skyrim ruled with an iron fist, though, which is what started the Nords into rebelling against them and ultimately the dragons (though it's said that the Dragon Priests in other places weren't so maligned).

The dragon priests are liches, for one, and feed on the life-force of the Draugr who were interred with them. It's somewhat ancient Egyptian.

Archmagister Nelacayne, I'd say Hircine gets the first call, because being a werewolf seems to trump any claim.

Is that based on Kodlak or something else? Because if it's based on Kodlak I would not put so much faith in it. After all Kodlak only joined one side willingly, he was a true enough of a Nord to go to Sovngarde, but he never actually did anything to swear his undying allegiance to Shor, he did with Hicrine.

I'd say that's why Hicrine can claim him before Shor can.

It's based on....nothing, other than werewolves only belong to Hircine.

I'd be willing to side with this. It could also be a matter of no one else wanting a werewolf running around in their realms, and the only one in who (rightfully so) takes them in would be Hircine.

Gone, meaning asleep or otherwise in hiding. You're right about Paarthurnax, but what makes you think Mirmulnir and Ahbiilok were awake? I guess Mirmulnir's resting place just happened to be the nearest of whatever place did Alduin rise from (supposedly near Helgen; there might be information about this but didn't find any at quick glance). The only thing I found about living dragons is thehttp://www.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Atlas_of_Dragons, but I'd suppose those weren't awake and kickin' because there had been no recent dragon sights.

It could be that Morokei was a priest especially devoted to Paarthurnax, as he might've been the only dragon who was not hiding from any and all mortals. Because the Big P was awake, so could have been Morokei... I guess there are no Dragon Priest fighting references from the past in the game other than Aren's? Meaning the other Priests might still have been sleeping because their respective dragons were sleeping? So, what Mafio had heard from Priests being awake only if the dragons are might still hold true, after all. Silly me!


I now also believe in this, especially if it doesn't matter whether the soul is inside a gem or not, or whether the enchanted item has some juice left or not. If you ask me, the term "soul trap" that is used even by the best of mages in the games clearly is just based on false assumptions. (Or they know it's not literal, but it has just stuck in the language for good anyway. Like "yellow river" for instance.) I'd tend to believe that a soul is a humongous amount of energy, and just a tiny bit of it gets stored to the soul gems. The souls wouldn't necessarily feel a bit weakened even when trapped into the biggest gems, but still the "soul energy" in the gem is enough to create a powerful enchantment. Even enough to create a manifestation of its mortal self after you've used it up (like in Daggerfall). I'd believe they're not the trapped creatures themselves, more like their aspects.


There's a supposition about "claiming order". Is it so, or is e.g. Arkay "dividing" each soul to its rightful place like a postal distributioner, with no "claiming" happening at all? Might also be something completely else for all I know... Anyway, becoming a werewolf seems one way, if a bit costly, to get rid of your Nightingale's oath to Nocturnal, for example. :/ A werewolf spending all his life praying (and surviving) at Mehrunes Dagon's shrine though... why wouldn't Dagon want such an abomination to his arsenal once the werewolf finally dies? Questions, questions...

I'm not so sure if Mirulnir and Ahbiilok were alive and kicking, but I'd like to think that Vulthuryol survived, if only the reason is that he is so isolated from the rest of the world. Kind of like Paarthunax, only except he hid in the bowls of the earth, instead of at its highest summit.


I'm not so sure. There is another Dragon Priest (His name escapes me at the moment) who threatened to return, and was only being held back by a warrior spirit. I figure hes been trying to return as well for quite some time.

About the soul gems, during Azura's quest you encounter somebody actually in a soul gem, and he believes you, a fully functional human being were send there as extra food for him. If you go for the black gem, there is also a soul trap cast on you, with a little difference as it doesn't actually completely kill you. But it does seem to suggest, at least to me, that the thing in the soul gem is actually the persons soul and that it does actually define a person. More importantly, if that's not the case then I'm using an aweful lot of black soul gems on some awefully annoying people without good reason.

As to the servitude, that's my problem exactly. I guess it makes sense for most princes to not want a werewolf in their realm, and that might be enough reason to let the person go to Hicrine. But I have a hard time imaging that Azura would have allowed Nerevar to go to Hicrine's realm if he had turned into a werewolf just a day or two earlier, I mean you'd think that the princes would actually want their greatest most important servants to join them in their realm regardless of underlying conditions

I know the quest. It might be that, because The Azura's/Black Star has "infinite room", it can actually contain the whole soul. The same might've been with the Amulet of Kings. Anyway, they could still be just manifestations. You die in The Black Star because a manifestation or a Daedra (or one's manifestation :S) killed your manifestation in it. Nelacar, the Altmer there at the inn pretty awesomely close to my name , could erroneously speak about souls during the whole quest, although he could only be dealing with an extreme small part of one's energy. The matter of whether your body was left alive during your visit at the Star might not have been because the majority of the soul went into the gem, but because it got touched at all and thus might've fled to Dreamsleeve. They might all just think they are playing with the whole souls per se.

Or maybe "soul" in TES universe is just a minor part of the "soul in our world". Like if the following pairs told the exactly same scale:

IRL: a tiny bit of a soul -> a soul
TES: a soul -> the whole inner lifeforce with no name that we know of.

Or something like that. D:

If the energy captured is just a small portion of the soul'd energy, how do you end up in scenarios where a soul doesn't fill the entire gem? If there's energy to spare, how does it not capture its maximum capacity?

Mirmulnir was listed in the Atlas as having survived, and you never see him get resurrected before showing up. Unless something claims to the contrary, I think it should be assumed he wasn't killed.

One can also http://imperial-library.info/content/twin-secrets.
It doesn't say it's Ahbiilok specifically, but being that he was found in Vvardenfell, and Ahbiilok was last seen in Morrowind, it's a fair assumption. Either that, or it's a completely different dragon that just happens to be in the same area, but either way, it was alive and kicking.

P.S. It's also a bit interesting how the dragon so adamantly refuses to give his name, even though it doesn't act as their protonymic or give any control over them (Odahviing only comes because he takes it as a challenge and wants to test your thu'um).

Tough... Let's say that 1% of each soul always goes to the gem. If the gem's storing room is smaller than this 1%, the gem will be filled completely. If the gem would have room for more than this 1%... well, the gem won't be filled completely.

This is getting out of hand, though. I'm giving up on this soon because we have no proof of anything.