I get how CoC mantled Sheo, but how did Tiber mantle Lorkhan? He participated in some similar situations with similar outcomes, but not one confused the two. Nobody looked at Tiber Septim and went hmm is that Lorkhan???

Opinions are welcomed, but opinions+lore links are 10x better.

Confusion is not necessary. The word was used to describe what happened to Tiber Septim and the Tribunal originally, and has since gotten a lot of misunderstandings woven about it.

Making people who are alive think you are the person in question us just a symptom, and not a necessary one. What mantling is is making your energies attractive to the ambient energies of the thing you're mantling, which causes those energies to become attracted to you, join with you, and increase your power (but also make you more like the thing you're mantling). Energy calls to like energy: the Dragonborn can absorb dragon souls because he himself has a dragon soul; no mantling is required, because that's the truth. However, for one type of soul to absorb a different type of soul, like for a Dragonborn to attract and accumulate Shor-aligned souls, he has to change his own energy to do so. The fact that Shor and Akatosh are polar opposites makes it so that it's almost as easy for one to mantle the other as it is for them to absorb their own type of energy, which is why most (all?) of the Shezzarines have been dragonborn.

It's not enough to just fake it though, you also have to have enough spiritual mass to start with, the point were you can attract more of the souls than other reservoirs of similarly aligned energy. In order to become a god, Talos had to find a way to not only realign his soul from Akatosh to Shor, but also to gain extra souls: he did this, apparently, by absorbing the souls of two other heroes of his era. This made the unbound Shor-aligned energies attracted to him, which allowed his will to grow powerful enough for godhood.

Mantling is often not a conscious decision, and in fact, mortals "mantle" things all the time without realizing it, and this is how the Daedra accumulate souls. The Daedric Princes, via curses, trickery, and bargains, get mortals to unwittingly mantle them, an act which aligns the mortals' souls with that of the Daedra, so that upon the mortals' deaths, the souls will be attracted to the now similar energy of the daedra. Lycanthropy is a good example of this "reverse mantling" process.

It's worth noting, I think, that the Dragonborn of Skyrim doesn't seem to be doing any absorbing of Shor-aligned souls: he absorbs a ton of souls, of course, but they're all dragon souls. It's Alduin, interestingly, who is absorbing the souls of nord heroes as they make for Sovngarde. This means Alduin is a more likely Shezzarine than the Dovahkiin.

I don't recall mantling ever being applied to the Tribunal - care to illuminate?

The whole Anticipations thing can be interpreted as such.

Tiber son of Shezarr inherited his father's mantle.

SithisLorkhan's got it - that's the real reason the Pomegranate Banquet and the murder of Nerevar are necessary. It's all about Vivec being six and secret murder.

I know Ayem had some Boethiah like traits, but what did Sotha Sil get from Azura?

Mystery. It's a rough fit, certainly, but not the roughest fit. Pelinal and Morihaus are not much like the Underking and Tiber Septim. The story gets told in different ways. And it's a mistake to assume it's all top-down. It's also bottom-up.

As rough a fit as it is, it's not so rough that ALMSIVI couldn't base an entire culture on it.

As I understand, the one who mantles loses his indentity in the end and becomes part of an oversoul. Did I get that right? Then does that mean that say, every (insignificant in the grand scheme of things) murderer mantles Mephala? Been wondering of this for a while.

The Tribunal gloriously usurped the worship of our Anticipations...

There's something written about the Thief stealing the Anticipations' shadows, slipping into them, thus 'redirecting' their worship. http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1249697-on-boethiahs-summoning-day/page__hl__boethia Tribunal arrived from the future, foretold in the Loveletter. If so, we will see a resurgence of New Temple worship, before the Fifth.

Not exactly. The act of murder itself isn't part of mantling, what's relevant is motive. If you killed them for some secret plot, yes, you're mantling Boethiah in some small way, but if the murder was because you they disrespected your authority it's more likely you're mantling Molag Bal. If you murdered them because you are a werewolf and werewolves like to murder people, you're obviously mantling Hircine. If you killed them because the voices in your head told you they were actually Thalmor agents in disguise, and they were watching you WATCHING YOU and reading your thoughts, knowing that you hate elves HATE THEM because they all watch you WATCH YOU... well, you might belong to Sheogorath.

Mantling is the process of making your soul resonate in harmony with the thing you're mantling. For Aedric forces, which are scattered, if you can also make your soul large enough, you become a magnet for the scattered pieces of the god you're mantling. You acting like the god in question is only a side-effect of the mantling process. For Daedric forces, which are whole and huge, in almost every situation mantling them will only attract your soul to them, feeding their power, not yours.

Vivec mantled Mephala, but remained Vehk and Vehk the whole time.

Loranna

Sanguine's voice is shared with all the drunks in Skyrim. Just saying.

So if you do tasks for Daedra you align your energy with theirs and since they have a much more powerful spirit they absorb you when you die? (Assuming enough alignment happend) Doesn’t this ultimately mean that any contract with a Daedric Prince can be broken by realigning your soul?

Or through mental retardation. If you can't think about them, you can't be "aligned" with them.

Yes, definitely, but that's Vehk's case. It makes things clearer in my mind anyway.


That sentence helped a lot.

Yes, it does, but this is a difficult process, probably somewhat akin to an addict kicking his habit (In the case of Sanguine, I imagine it is exactly like an addict kicking the habit.) The end of the Companions quest in Skyrim is an example of "unmantling" a process in which you (symbolically?) kill the infected part of your soul.
He had the Heart of Lorkhan, which added to his spiritual mass. Thus, instead of being absorbed into Mephala, he was able to draw off a portion of her power. This is not typical, however, and without access to a large source of selfless spiritual mass like the Heart most mortals would find themselves absorbed into the greater power.

This hole magnet thing... Dovahkiin is gonna be an aspect of Akatosh when he's done right? Kinda like how Martin aborbed all those Dragon souls and became an avatar?

I can just imagine him killing the last dragon. "THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE!!!1!!"

And then he turns into a dragon made of fire and lightning, and goes on a Godzilla rampage across Tamriel.

That's about two-thirds accurate. The word "mantling" is getting tossed around so much that its meaning is seriously diluted. Being a servant or a slave is not mantling anything. But you're right that it does seem, in the observed instances, to require a source of power. I'm also not at all sure that it's correct to call the Heart selfless, either in the usual sense of the word or in the literal sense in which you're using it. It's still Lorkhan's heart, not somebody else's heart, and has specific tendencies which are a result of it being Lorkhan's heart, and not somebody else's heart. It's not a battery that could be used to power just any endeavor. The Tribunal did something very specific.

I don't think that's it. See, think of it like recursion (I think that's the word). Start off with Lorkhan, then up to Pelinal, then Tiber Septim, then the Dragonborn, each trying one more method of transcendence. While each shares traits with the others, they are still technically "them." Like how the Nerevarine is him or herself while also being Nerevar because his/her actions were the same. That doesn't mean their personality is the same because then it would be redundant and the new version would make the same mistakes. The Nerevarine can succeed in freeing the Heart while Nerevar couldn't because the Nerevarine learned from the previous iterations of Nerevar himself and the subsequent false Incarnates not to give their trust to Dagoth Ur, Vivec, Almalexia, Sotha Sil and the Daedra.

He already is an aspect of Akatosh but yes, he will become a "larger" aspect of Akatosh with each dragon soul he absorbs. It's entirely possible he could accumulate god-like power by the time he's done.
Justifiably, I think. I think once we understand that things like the CoC mantling Sheogorath, Talos mantling Shor, and the Tribunal mantling various daedra are just the most extreme consequences of one of the fundamental laws governing TES metaphysics, I think we'll have a better handle on how it all interconnects. You have a point though, best to figure out a way to separate higher-order uses of this principle from the more common.
It does seem to cheapen the word, but I maintain the difference is a matter of scale and little more. If mantling is the process by which one makes themselves like another thing, either in action, body, spirit, whatever, then mantling is a process with degrees. If the law "like energy seeks like energy" governs mantling, as it seems to, it follows logically that daedric "ownership" or mortal souls is achieved in the same way, whether we call this "mantling" or not.

To preserve the definition of mantling as governing higher-level examples of this phenomenon, I submit the following:
Mantling- A process in which an entity alters the nature of his soul to match that of another, and increases his spiritual mass, in order to attract and absorb the energies of another entity.

This way it's clear that the initial increase in mass is a requirement for mantling, as well as the change in natures. In this way, we disqualify werewolves and others who are absorbed by Daedra, because their spiritual mass does not increase. We disqualify the Dovahkiin's absorption of dragonsouls because while he does increase his spiritual mass, but he doesn't change the nature of his soul, which is already draconic.


True, which is why I propose that both criteria be met to be considered "mantling".


I use selfless to mean "non-sentient". The heart has no will, no ability to act on its own. It's not "untyped" energy or anything, it's still the energy of Lorkhan. The tribunal did not merge with the heart itself, they simply used it's mass to add "gravity" to their own souls, which they then used to mantle other entities, three of the Daedric princes. Dagoth-Ur, on the other hand, not only used the heart's mass as his own, but mantled Lorkhan directly, which is why his power over the heart grew stronger than the Tribunals'.

You know, I was considering telling you the same thing

What you say fits 'As above, so below' and 'The greater attracts the smaller, but the smaller attracts the greater as well.'

These being fundamental laws of human understanding I would say your text shines with the light of truth, or possibly just the gleam of it.
I dont know if its right or not, but it certainly seems plausible.
Its also a very interesting way of looking at things, and I think that is more important than being right or wrong.

Here's a half-brained theory that popped into my head at some point today: is it possible to un-mantle? Where to beings were the same and then their actions and intent diverge? It could be that Alduin un-mantled Akatosh when Akatosh's less-human-friendly traits were weeded away.

Again, not really a theory, just a random idea.