I was also thinking the same thing about the templars.

I acknowledge this is an older thread, but I wanted to throw my idea in here anyway.

I never saw the Ordinators are a reference to a holy order of the European variety, but a reference to the Temple Guard of the Jewish Temple circa the New Testament (think the ones that found Christ in Gethsemane). Basically a separate, religious group designated specifically for the purpose of protecting the Temple (which itself seems based on the Jewish Temple) while still remaining subservient to Imperial (Roman) Law.

I truly believe the correlation can better be drawn between Temple Guard and Ordinators than a knightly order and Ordinators. Particularly since their jobs were nearly identical.

Well, that'd make Morag Tong the Zealots, wouldn't it. :dance:
Or maybe those knifing guys, forgot-their-name.

Well, the Morag Tong struck me as much closer to the myths we apply to the hashashin (far moreso than the Dark Brotherhood). But all that said though, the Zealots weren't in the traditional sense an organized coalition, but usually bands of zealots that would sometimes loosely get together (Judaen People's Front!).

So "Zealots" could be hard line orthodox Indoril and Redoran opposing Imperial rule.

I think of the Sixth House as more similar to the Zealots, attempting to terrorize and drive out the outlanders (besides attempting to kill the Nerevarine).

I wouldn't agree with that at all. Zealots were religious devotees who felt that Jerusalem belonged to a single ethnicity by divine right, and were more interested in self rule. The Sixth House, however, is traditionally secular, and towards the end of the main quest has expansionist goals. The zealots simply wanted self rule, the Sixth House wants expansion.

Secular?!? House Dagoth was the most pious of the houses, and now they have built their own faith on the back of a dead god, and in Akulakhan they were attempting to create yet another.
It's a fanatical cult entirely centered on one deity and its ranks are filled by the most traditional, xenophobic and conservative of the Dunmer. Dagoth Ur may want to rule the world, but he knows nothing of the world. He has spent three thousand years in one room, obsessed with a few royal councilors. It seems strange to want expansion when Vvardenfell is a world in and of itself. It is in fact the very heart of the world, with its own gods and the most insular culture and climate anywhere. Ken Rolston may have just added in that line of dialog to raise the stakes.


That is an excellent way to describe the Sixth House and the more conservative Dunmer. I don't know about the Zealots, though. I usually hate playing the comparison game.

Correct me if I am mistaken, but did the House Dagoth not ally with House Dwemer on the grounds of mutual secularism?

Further, I cannot buy any notion that suggests that Dagoth Ur is an actual lover of convention. Out of everything I get from him, he will say or do what he has to to expand his own power base. If that means swaying some ultra orthodox by telling them he's out to do what's best for them, then so be it.

But nothing can speak more of someone's lack of own individual spiritual beliefs than constructing a false god and deigning he be worshipped by the masses as a puppet deity for the sake of your expansion.

Dagoth was far more "New World Order" than "Zealot". Truly I believe that the closest so zealots we have are the most fundamentalist of Redoran and Indoril, those who want to maintain the orders of ALMSIVI and the House structure, but absolutely free of Imperial influence.

You can't rightly compare one to a zealot if you want to establish a new order.

House Dagoth did not ally with the Dwemer- that's one of the ways the Tribunal revised history in order to separate themselves from them. They achieved godhood from the same source and want to hide that over all other things. The war with the Sixth House seen in Poison Song would have caused Dagoth to be cast as the devil even more.

Edit: Like I said, I don't know if they are like Zealots or not, I was just disagreeing with how you characterized the Sixth House alone. And yes, there is a disparity between the beliefs and habits of an insane god and those of his far-flung followers.

Then that's something I'll have to read into even more.

I was always under the impression that House Dagoth were good allies of the Dwemer.

That being said however, the house and his minions can't truly be argued to be Dunmer conservatives, given their attempts to simply re-shape. They're really more "Dagothian" than can be described as liberal or conservative, they have, as previously stated, a "new world order" in mind, and so they've built their own god to realize that end.

It is not feasible to argue that one is devout and pious when they construct their own gods to serve as the pillars of their own worship.

It's pretty backwards, yes. But the Sixth House is the best hope of those who would see the Empire and its ways driven out. It may not be philosophically conservative (and I don't want to get into using changeable labels except as an indication of what sort of person supports who), but it still appeals to traditionalists and hardcoe isolationists. It became heretical thousands of years ago, and Akulakhan is a secret project.

House Dagoth was pious, Ur is sort of a weirdo, and hard to pin down as a character, what withs o many versions of the same event. The god seems to be a shadow of his former self. Luagar2 wrote a very intriguing piece on that.

I don't dispute that. I think its a divergent orthodoxy.

Consider it a disputation of on what end the conservative thought begins. On the one hand you have Dagoth, who represents a potential return as Chimer and a "clean slate" from which to work.

On the other end, you have Indoril, who represent vanguards of the newfound (comparatively) Dunmer orthodoxy.

Therefore you could argue its a competition of competing orthodoxes, whether it be the maintenance of a Tribunal/Dunmer culture, or the revitalization of pre-Dunmer habits with the potential for expansion.

When the orthodoxy of the Tribunal begins to crumble, the people who should have been its strictest adherents abandon it to search for necessary, drastic measures. Extremism always makes a mockery of its own ideals, and the cultists follow the Devil. That's how I see it.

It's possible, but I see some people as not as religiously devoted to ALMSIVI as they claim.

Take the Ordinators and the clergy. They don't strike me as people who are directly loyal to Vivec - if he dies, he dies, they'll find an apocryphal reason why he did so. More important is the maintenance of the order that has them. They are loyal to a life style, sometimes because it benefits them as individuals, but I suspect they do this unknowingly. They don't want to lose what they have, so they bury that thought of greed under a spectre of piety and devotion.

So Indoril would not betray the Tribunal, not on the grounds of religious devotion, but because they are sealed to a life style they would not be willing to abandon, even in the face of a crumbling power base.

I know it's not what you were talking about, but the Ordinators belong to Almalexia, who goes much further in demanding loyalty. Vivec's military order are the Buoyant Armiger, who spend most of their time writing poetry and getting their Dibella on.

I do agree that there must be large amounts of people without a strong attachment to Temple dogma, or else they wouldn't be able to swear themselves to the devil. People like Orvas Dren, who don't rely on the current status quo. I kind of expect the Ordinators to go bat[censored] insane after the Temple's collapse, trying to keep their authority and fighting with Helseth.

Is there somewhere I can read that Ordinators are exclusively in the service of Almalexia? I was under the impression they were general Temple guardians, and the hands (their official names elude me for the moment) were the ones in the employ of Almalexia.

I always think of the Ordinators as similar to the Spanish Inquisition. :ph34r:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_inquisition. Oh, look! It even has the word 'tribunal' in it...

Think about it:
censorship
repression
making sure people worship the Tribunal and Good Daedra (the Church) and not the House of Troubles and that Nerevarine nonsense (satan, witchcraft, heresy)

There are a lot of similarities. Of course, I only really realize this after I skimmed the article. To be honest, I just wanted the Monty Python reference. But, it seems like I'm not too off the mark. :mellow:

I don't remember when the consensus arose, but a number of forumites think the Ordinators at the end of the Third Era had become virtually jailors of the hermit-like Vivec, monitoring him for Almalexia; all three Tribunes had become hermits at that point. I'm not sure that Vivec was really running the Inquisition at that time, so much as going along with Almalexia's servitors.

Vivec's Buoyant Armigers were described as being friendly rivals of the Ordinators, but I wonder if the situation may have been more like the Soviet Union: rival military and political factions competing for control; KGB, GRU, etc.

I think the lore pretty clearly indicates that Vivec himself wasn't running the persecution, and that by now the Temple was behaving of its own accord (harkening back to what I'd said about their loyalty to the order before its deities). Though I'm not sure I've seen much to suggest that the ordinators were opposed to Vivec in any degree - I would say he was cuckolded by their own ultra-pious wishes, but I think that has more to do with their fierce interpretation of Dunmer tradition more than their subservience to a particular deity.

Sicarii

This one would be a good choice
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schutzstaffel

Its stated by almalexia herself I believe that the ordinators in the brown armor are rejects(they serve almalexia, but aren't as good as high ordinators), while the high ordinators and her hands are an elite force she's assembled for herself in Mournhold.

The Inquisitors.

(Mostly based off of the "Latest Rumor" about the Nerevarine, y'know, the one with them burning down the camps)

I view them as being a mix of the Inquisition and the Teutonic Knights. The former has been stated previously, and the latter is based on the Teutonic Knight's determined rooting out of pagans in the late Middle Ages, which strikes me as very similar to the Ordinators anti-Daedric violence. Ald Daedroth bring back any memories?

khmer rouge

SA/SS

KGB

Any organization that acts as a quasi military, secret police force which is religious in its dedication to the ruler.