I think I'm starting to understand, I read through that link and more, but I'm not sure what you mean by the Secret Gate?

I keep wondering how much the intentions of Talos and Lorkhan coincide.

Lorkhan's initiative led to the creation of Mundus, and the sacrifice of his heart helped stabilize Mundus. It is overtly a mystery whether Lorkhan chose to sacrifice his heart, or whether the Aedra tore it from him. Someone recently suggested that Lorkhan did it, in a fit of madness, and I think that makes sense: Lorkhan is insane, and acts at cross-purposes to himself.

That is, if Lorkhan organized the creation of Mundus, and his heart is necessary to stabilize it, why would his ghost appear and lead an army to reclaim it? Wouldn't that begin the uncreation of the world? Because Lorkhan is mad, sometimes acting to undo what he has done.

Consider Pelinal Whitestrake, the Shezarrine, who mostly acted as a liberator of Men, but sometimes went mad and attacked friend and foe alike, sometimes even uncreating parts of the world. I imagine Pelinal as the most direct avatar of Lorkhan.

And I imagine Talos to be an expression of some aspects of Lorkhan, but not all; he is the hero-god, defending the consistency of the mortal world. He is enough Lorkhan to sit in Lorkhan's chair, enough his own identity to keep Lorkhan in exile.

Supposedly, each new kalpa has one new feature. I suspect Talos is it.

Akatosh is the crazy one. Who knows why Shor wants his heart back. At least according to the Five Songs of King Wulfharth, Shor was seperated from his heart by force. The Nordic response upon find out where it is shows that Nord myths have it as a bad thing. It shows that getting Shor's heart back is part of their religion. We don't know what happened to it since the Nerevarine released it, for all we know it went back to Shor.

Whenever Pelinal went insane, it was when he was more intune with Akatosh.

We have heard it said that Akatosh is insane. It doesn't follow from that that only Akatosh is insane.

At one level, it's obvious why Shor would want his heart back -- if you somehow existed with your heart torn out, wouldn't you want it back? And at one level, it's obvious why the Nords would follow Shor's ghost into battle for it: because he's their favorite deity, and they're his favorite people, and he said he wanted his heart back. But then, it gets rather mysterious. There's this bit, from The Secret Song of Wulfharth Ash-King:
And this really puzzles me. My theory doesn't explain what this is talking about -- in fact, this rather contradicts it. Our understanding, from the Nu-Mantia Intercept and elsewhere, is that the Heart of Lorkhan is important for stabilizing Mundus, and part of the general project that supposedly Lorkhan initiated, Talos sustains, and Men (as an historical force, opposed to Mer) believe in. That passage is at odds with all of it. But what does it mean?

And what do you personally think that line means? Because I'm not sure.

That's just it. I truly don't have a clue what it means. Even if I assume it's false, I haven't been able to think what it's supposed to mean.

What about Adamantine Tower?

Edit: Heck, what about White Gold Tower? Was it deactivated and replaced or was it somehow reactivated by Martin's sacrifice? The storm during the Stormcrown Interregnum suggests it still may be active again. Something is preventing Mehrunes Dagon from invading again.

The secret is CHIM, the Thief is Vehk. He stole the secret which he now gives to you.

CHIM is this, the Secret Gate:


Now thread that needle!

I would like to point out, the link explaining the wheel and all that comes from the libraries obscure text which has a warning on it that says

"Author:


Various

Librarian Comment:


Sinder Velvin's note: Unofficial lore documents gathered from forums."

Lets just take a long look at the term 'UNOFFICAL LORE" and let that sink in for a bit and remember that MK's forum writing is just fan-lore and not canon lore.

So all you are doing is arguing points of a posting that isn't lore as if it was lore. Its not lore unless Bethesda say's it is, and MK is not Bethesda.

The avatar of Akatosh was summoned by the sacrifice of Martin Septim and of the Amulet of Kings. I would guess that the Stone of White-Gold Tower was actually the combination of the Amulet of Kings and the blood of Alessia's heir, linked through Akatosh, a link reaffirmed with the ritual of the lighting of the Dragonfires. The avatar of Akatosh, having defeated Mehrunes Dagon, turned to stone -- I believe that statue represents the fusion of all those elements, making it the new Stone of White-Gold Tower. It's likely no accident that it occupies the site of the former Temple of the One, and is doubtless an object of veneration.

To be fair, the Wheel and Tower metaphysics have been mentioned in every game since Morrowind.

The Tower, Towers, the Wheel, and CHIM have been mentioned prominently in The 36 Lessons of Vivec as well as Commentaries on the Mysterium Xarxes.

Read The Book of the Dragonborn in Skyrim for further affirmation of Towers and the Wheel.

While MK's obscure texts aren't game canon, they exist as potential-canon if the devs ever wish to use it, which they have with Heimskr's speech which quotes The Many-Headed Talos.

When they choose to use it, I will agree its lore, till then its just speculation. Maybe they will decied to use my theory about Ebonarm, so then that will become lore too.. Hell anything ever written on the forums could possibly become lore, but they aren't quoted and recited to newer members of the forum as being canon. Just saying if people are going to quote non canon-lore they should slip a disclaimer in there for newer people so they know its not canon.

This comes up all the time. First, though his exact formal relationship to Bethesda has changed, MK has written significant amounts of content for each of the Elder Scrolls games, starting with Elder Scrolls: Redguard. His unofficial content has been referenced by official content. MK is clearly "in the loop" with Bethesda. Presumably they have internal writers' guides and the like, and MK knows what's in them.

Second, when I first visited this forum, while playing TES III, it was quite clear that one of the major drivers of discussion was interest in content that MK had written, particularly to do with the character of Vivec. As a bonus, some of the writers of Elder Scrolls material, including MK, collaborated in writing content that appeared on this forum. Discussion of MK's writing, both official and unofficial, has been central to the life of this message board for many years.

I thought the general stretch of Oblivion was that even though the Amulet of King was gone, things had returned to the state before the Emperor was assassinated. There seems to little else to assume that what the Amulet did is now being done by Martin.


For clarity. The text mentioned by Mortazo was provided by MK as an explanation of the sermons. http://www.imperial-library.info/content/thirty-six-lessons-vivec-sermon-twenty-one in particular, better known as the Scripture of the Wheel. The form, medium or location in which he is talking about his own creation shouldn't really matter. Had it been an interview, or developer commentary, or been told while drunk in a bar, you can treat it all the same because it does not change that which is already there. It merely clarifies that which is.

Things are starting to make sense.. In a very roundabout sort of manner.


I had assumed White-Gold Tower to be deactivated up until this point, but that post above about the statue of the avatar being the new stone does seem to make sense. As to the Adamantine Tower, I am really unsure. I haven't heard anything about it being under any sort of threat, and am unsure what exactly the stone is.

I've tried to compile everything that has been speculated about each of the towers but as I imagined there really isn't a lot to go on.

I'm not sure if the statue actually does anything. The Chim-el adabal aka, the Amulet of Kings was destroyed, so White-Gold has no power. It hasn't been destroyed, just deactivated permanently.

That was what I assumed. Do you know anything about the Adamantine at all?

We hear that the barrier against Oblivion has been reinforced, because of Martin's sacrifice. Given all that went into it, and that the statue of Akatosh is a big stone, it looks a lot to me like the statue acts as the Stone for the Tower, and its function is to hold Mundus apart from Oblivion.

Incidentally, I'm suddenly thinking of encapsulation in object oriented programming, which would make sorcerors and witches "getter" and "setter" functions.

Just a theory: The Amulet of Kings was a powerful soul gem, having the souls of lots of Emperors. When Martin shattered it, all that power went into him, and he changed into an avatar of Akatosh, defeated Dagon, then solidified into a statue. That statue, then, holds the same power to keep Oblivion back that the Amulet did. The Covenant is broken, but it was a deal between Akatosh/Lorkhan and Alessia. Akatosh then took it upon himself to hold the barriers with the power that was in the Amulet.

Probably wrong on a number of levels, but it was something that popped into mind.

What is that statue hypothesis based on, really?
It's pretty clear in the prophecy that the White-Gold is kaput. If the statue had the same properties as the amulet, the tower would be very much intact.

I remember reading somewhere (likely this forum) the theory that because some Daedric artifacts have been altered by mortals, during the events of Skyrim, this was evidence the barrier between Mundus and Oblivion is weakening, which would make sense if White-Gold Tower has been deactivated; that said I don't know enough about events before TES4 to know if the artifacts have been changed before and this is a new occurence.

Which prophecy?

I'm basing my statue hypothesis on this:
1. The motivation for most of the actions of the Champion of Cyrodiil was that the barrier to Oblivion was weakening, and needed to be restored.
2. To restore the barrier, it was necessary for the newly crowned emperor, in possession of the Amulet of Kings, to perform a ritual to relight the Dragonfires at the Temple of the One.
3. Martin Septim, just recognized as emperor, had the Amulet of Kings, and reached the Temple of the One, but was unable to perform the ritual. Instead, he did something with the Amulet, which seems to have resulted in his transformation into the avatar of Akatosh. In other words, all the steps were performed, except for the last. Instead of ending up with a living emperor, wearing the Amulet of Kings, and a burning Dragonfire, we ended up with a statue of Akatosh.
4. The Daedric invasion ceased, the Oblivion Crisis ended, and we are told, the barrier to Oblivion is restored. (Some characters in Skyrim claim it's stronger than ever.)
5. So, in sum, we have one thing, the statue of Akatosh, in place of other things, the emperor, the Amulet of Kings, and the Dragonfires, and apparently performing the same function: maintaining the barrier to Oblivion. That leads me to conclude that the statue is equivalent to emperor, Amulet, and Dragonfires, and therefore functions as the Stone of White-Gold Tower.

I believe he refers to the Book of the Dragonborn, the prophecy at the end of which I have quoted at the start of this thread.

http://www.imperial-library.info/content/book-dragonborn

The phrase "White Tower falls" obviously does not mean a literal, physical collapse of the building, so must surely mean its end as a functiong tower?

I've never thought about it much before, but it should really mean something important to become an avatar of Akatosh. We've seen plenty of Lorkhan's avatars before but not one of Akatosh's. For that matter have we even seen any Aedric avatars? Heavy stuff now that I think about it.

The Book of the Dragonborn says that White-Gold Tower has been deactivated, does it not? Martin also says that he goes to Aetherius to join his ancestors. That would imply that they've all been released.

It's kind of a grim fate to spend your afterlife in a soul gem though.

Not necessarily. The "fall" of a monument can mean a number of things. It could just as easily refer to the Great War, and the conflicts over the Imperial City, or Dagon's attack on it.