"Mehrunes' Razor claims your soul!" or something to that effect, is the message that appears when getting an insta-kill in Oblivion. Is this supposed to imply that it works by tearing the soul out of a mortal body, leaving behind a lifeless husk? If so, would the Razor be able to perma-kill anything with a soul, including dragons? Can it be used as a soul harvester, much in the same way as Umbra (minus the blood knight tendencies)? What can resist the power of the Razor and what can fall to it?

Something interesting to note in Skyrim, the Razor can insta-kill dragons, even Alduin. But that's most likely just game mechanics.

To Merhunes, everything is whiskers that must be shaved.

It's (probably) a part of Dagon himself. It works just under the premise that if something is cut by it, that something dies. Nothing more, nothing less.

He claims the soul to his Realms in Oblivion.

Mehrunes's Razor has powers from mehrunes dagon himself, lorewise it should be powerful enough to even kill alduin, let alone dragons. Don't forget Lord Dagon is 10x stronger than Alduin.

What I want to know is how it was broken without it disappearing.

Pretty sure Dagon would call it back when it broke......or perhaps call back when the Champion of Cyrodili got in the first place.

Wonder why he didn't, or couldn't.

Perhaps so his future champion could go on a killing spree to find the pieces.

Or perhaps in its breaking it coalesces all the more. It is the weapon of the Prince of Destruction, after all.

Where did you get a silly idea like that? Most of the things you post here in the Lore forum are either highly debatable or just flat-out wrong.

Just ignore him Velorien, all he does is make versus threads.

...What? Alduin periodically eats Dagon at the end of every kalpa. Hell, the only reason Dagon tries to destroy everything is because he's trying appease Alduin. Which is mostly why I believe the Razor's ability to insta-kill Alduin is gameplay reason. Lorewise, the Razor would shatter against Alduin.

What a bitter irony - the leaper demon's clumsy little fang biting deep into the world-eaters heart? Come now, do you really think this could be so? What a grand and intoxicating innocence.

Maybe it is in the mechanism of circulation of Aedra souls. Normally mortal souls circulate between dreaming sleeve and mundus, while the immortal Aedra souls, like dragon souls, have no need to or cannot go to Aetherius to fullfill a circle. Aetherius is the plane of Magne-Ge, so perhaps Magne-Ge can interfere with a mortal soul's circle, like banishing it from dreaming sleeve or directly shutting down the gate to heaven or simplely channel it to other planes, like, the one of Dagon's. And consider what our Leaper Demon King is capable of and his link to Magne-Ge, his Razor is the trigger to open this special route for those unfortunate mortal souls.

And as immortal Aedra souls do not have access to Aetherius in normal ways, the Razor perhaps has no effect on them, except for game mechanism.

My Razor is a pun; for I shaved it off me so I could make all of those tiny little cuts that I need to make. Destruction's purest expression is in cutting someone apart. When imbued with a tiny sliver of my raw destructive essence, I revel in the pure expression of my nature and my power (bound as it might be in a tiny vessel) suddenly surges and waxes and flows outward, into the cut person, cutting their silver string. Their soul, overwhelmed with my power and energy escapes, not into Aetherius, but to Oblivion, where it will fly to my hearth to use as I see fit.

Such Destructive energy too is what makes it so double-edged, for it is it's nature that causes it to be coveted by the ambitious, those desiring my kind of change. It consistently is being taken from its owners (often by force, often with the former owner's demise) by those who covet it's potential. Unless, of course, I decree it otherwise. Naturally, though, because of it's destabilizing influence, those who do not want to see change often covet it in order to hide it or destroy it from the world. It's always a bother and always a struggle to get it repaired. But the process always gives me new champions who covet it's power.

In Alduin's case, hypothetically of course, the power would wax and flow into Alduin and cut the string connecting Alduin's corporeal body with his incorporeal form. It wouldn't kill Alduin, but it would destroy his current Avatar, creating a wound in his power, allowing the Dragonborn to begin to feed on his mythic essence. Of course, did that really happen?

Could someone protect themselves? Multiple souls in one body work for a limited time, though there are no guarantees that I won't snip the soul you're most attached to. A champion of Stendarr once armored his soul with Stendarr's power which also protected him. Unfortunately, his physical armor was less potent and my Razor merely just punched through his armor and skewered his heart.

I just started to think of the battle between Chaos and Steel Brightblade and the chromatic and metallic Dragons in the Dragonlance Novels from your post lol. Mehrunes Dagon swatting dragons out of the sky and such.

As for how Mehrunes Razor works? Well I'd imagine it rips the soul out of the body and sends it too the dead lands. Mehrunes realm

I know I'm really late, but FIXED.

No, all he does is make horrible DLC ideas in the Skyrim section which can be perceived as trolling. Hell, it might even be trolling. No one in this planet can make so many idiotic ideas. And now his presence in the lore section reinforces my belief.

I have managed to avoid any of his skyrim section conduct, so I'll take your word on that, but most of his threads in the lore forum are basically versus threads.

Bite me and i'll put you down like i would any wild dog.

Watch out guy's we got a hunter here!

On topic: Besides gameplay mechanics, how could one explain the low chance to banish a soul, compared to nearly always doing it in the books? Then again, not all the books are reliable sources.

Well, in Oblivion I would say that Mehrunes Dagon reduced the power of the Razor so the CoC couldn't grow too powerful against him. In Skyrim, it was still only recently reforged, and perhaps Mehrunes Dagon's influence had weakened somewhat after the Oblivion Crisis. No idea about Daggerfall and Morrowind though.

That makes a lot of sense! Thanks!

Princes do what princes want. Remember, the razor didn't have an instant kill effect in Morrowind, and I'm not sure what it did in Daggerfall.

He does make a point though. Alduin may appear stronger than Mehrunes Dagon in the MK Seven Fights of Aldudagga.
However, latest renditions of the World-Eater from Bethesda depict him as a mere mortal dragon cutting of the time dragon.

I'd argue that while Mehrunes Dagon could not defeat Akatosh, he could well defeat one of his aspects if he so tried.

Alduin was also weak at the time. What we saw was the most pathetic form of the world eater and an utter embarrassment of his true power. The first aspect is also the most powerful.