Pelinal is an avatar of Shor/Akatosh, remember? Kyne's spouse(s). He was another divines catspaw, just somewhat of an offshore asset, perhaps. Morihaus Breath-of-Kyne was a minor ada already known to Alessia as a champion of humans.

It was an odd arrangement, as the Aedra were picking sides in a conflict between their worshipers, essentially. In my opinion, the Ayleids were decadent and blasphemous, because they were (through Daedric traficking and dracochrysalis) slowly abandoning proper Aldmeri Anuic philosophy. Umaril also wielded the power of White-Gold Tower, which boiled down to a Daeda Lord holding the reins of the mortal world and exercising influence over the et ada trapped in it.

The Divines abandoned the Ayleids just as they abandoned the Cyrodils after the War of Righteousness and the death of the Potentates. They got the Dragonpact out of the bargain, a covenant with the new rulers of White-Gold.

And all the Aedra did was manifest some of their own aspects, after all.

Well, sounds to me like they do a lot of moral judgement-making, and a lot more destruction than even Mehrunes Dagon. I mean, come on, genocide. And wouldn't the Aedra want Nirn to be uncreated, so they could be free and not trapped anymore? They got all angry that Lorkan 'tricked' them, and they went and ripped out his heart. And now they're all, "Oh noes, the Nirnians aren't paying attention to us, and the Ayleids might cause Nirn to be unraveled! I wub Nirn, don't destroy it!" Or, if Nirn is destroyed, are the Aedra also destroyed? In which case, they are just as self-serving as the Daedra, except that the Aedra actually need Nirnians to keep the status-quo, and thus they manipulate events for self-preservation, rather than actually caring about what an individual person thinks or feels.

What do you mean? The Divines gave of themselves to create a new world and give their children life! They don't want to go back to being selfish Daedra, careening around an empty Aurbis after destroying all their hard work.

...unless you're an elf who thinks that Auriel ascended back to heaven and is just waiting for you to follow him, but personally I don't think the Aedra can exist without Nirn anymore.

Edit: Various versions of the Divines are incredibly bloody-minded. Alessia spoke to Kyne, and Kyne is from the north.

Sounds more like the Aedra felt cheated by Lorkan, and the Nine, rather than admit their colossal mistake, decided to pretend "it was all part of the plan!" And so they made up complete BS to feed to gullible Nirnians. They are just like the Daedra, but instead of dabbling with this or that, the Aedra have an entire world to manipulate. It's like the difference between borrowing someone's action figure, and having your own entire collection of LEGO.

I find it difficult to believe the Aedra (who were formerly Daedra) would suddenly abandon their manipulating ways and actually give a rat's behind about mortals. There's nothing to suggest they have a particularly altruistic bend. Sure, they helped the Nedes - by totally wiping out almost all of the Ayleids (oh, and some Khajiit on the side). They went totally nuts about Umaril in KotN not because he was killing some chapel lackeys (they are a dime a dozen), but because he was trying to personally attack them and perhaps cause them harm. So, they breed a body, maybe manipulate the Dreamsleeve to put in a good soul, make some super weapons, and make someone do the dirty work because they are shackled to Nirn and can't chase Umaril when he hides in Oblivion.

At least, that's the vibe I'm getting. Do correct me if I am wrong, though! It has been a while since I've read any TES books, so maybe I'm skewing things in a negative light (given fuel by my bitter disappointment with KotN's strict moral un-ambiguity).

The view that the Aedra were tricked seems to suggest that creating a collaborative reality with a divinity and life of its own through sacrifice and cooperation wasn't their plan from the start. If not that, then what? Did they neglect to read the fine print about how limiting the requisite self-mutilation would be?

And remember that the Aedra who created the world and the ones who are venerated are drastically changed entities. Their personas have been overwritten and fractured and their bodies have been separated from whatever motives they may have originally had. I view the mind of the Divines as being more limited and inscrutable than familiar, capricious personalities of the Daedra Lords. I think they lack the capacity to be straight-up, far-seeing Machiavellian deities. Their actions are a product of mysterious quantum mechanics and the aggregate expectations and beliefs of every mortal in the Dreamsleeve.

So either they decided to live with their mistake, or had their identities pruned until only the mistake remained. Either way, they posture and dissmemble and have their worshipers believe that they are the omnipotent original spirits of the Convention, and that is why Vivec calls them liars.

'Not only are you fools to mutilate yourselves,' gloat the Daedra Lords, 'But you cannot even keep the best pieces, which prefer the glory and power of the Daedra Lords to the feeble vulgarity of the mush-minded Aedra.'
The Dunmer are not fooled.

The Divines that created Mundus are long dead. The ones that go around committing genocides and encouraging wars are just the product of Mundus's own collective mortal divinity. Why else do you think the Dwemer, Ayleids and all the other atheists of Nirn always seem to get smitted? It pays to have a god on your side, even a self-constructed one (and by the time the Dwemer learned that fact it was too late for them).

The Aedra are just collective oversouls of the mortals that worship them. They aren't formally free-floaters that are simply chained to Mundus, they're dead corpses made motile by force of will- they were born from their predecessor's deaths and given life through the Mundane experience.

That's what separates that Aedra from the Daedra. The Daedra are in fact the formally free agents bound to Mundus (which clashes with the common view that they are unrelated tot he Mundus) and are still very much dependent on Mundus for their own sustenance. The Aedra intervene with mortal affairs beacuse they are mortal affairs. The Daedra intervene beacuse it is from these affairs that they drawn their identity.

The truly seperate ones- The Magna-Ge and the Void-Dwellers- are the only ones that draw no connection to Mundus, which is why we never hear from them.

Well as far as im concerned it doesent tell enough about them. It says they were a somewhat evil race (you can tell that just by exploring their dungeons and looking at the traps and undead). to me it kindof relates to the spanish taking over mesomerica(central america) The aztecs and other tribes in there were extremely cruel and beleived in sacraficing hundreds to please gods and devine torture. Even though, the aztecs were cruel, was it right to invade their land, and destroy their civilization? Thats my opinion....

How about...
were the subjugated Tlaxcala justified in sacking the homes of their Aztec oppressors once the Spanish came to aid them?

The Tlaxcala are the Nedes, and the Spanish is Pelinal?

(see, I've been paying attention! :read: )

i woudnt say the aztecs were cruel, human sacrifice was just part of their religion (as it was in many other religions as well). they ayleids were a different sort, the cruelty ascribed to them seems to be mostly for sport (setting kids on fire to use as lion bait, etc.), though as several posters have remarked the exact extent of their mistreatment of slaves cannot be known. imo the oppressed have a right to rebel against their oppressors, making the nede's actions fully justified.

i would hardly call the ayleids atheists, afair they believe in the same sort of ancestral divinity that the altmer did (and also worshiped deadra).

wiki says that the tlaxcala were never conquered by the aztecs, and that they initially fought against the spanish. anyways....

Well, Pelinal would have be Quetzacuatl if he was on the Tlaxcalan side (the Spanish are the Nords), but I'm really not feeling very attached to this anology.

Edit: TIL says that White-Gold Tower was established as a city state the first year of the First Era. 68 years later, the last ships arrived from Atmora. 75 years after that, Ysgramor's dynasty was 13 kings old. 99 later, Alessia's revolt began.

So I think we can assume that Cyrodiil was enslaved for a very long time. The revolution was very brutal, but Alessia was merciful, given how many Aylied states survived the pogroms. It was nothing to the genocide of the Nords or the Marukhati who finished the job a century or so later.

Edit: The English executed more people for crimes each year than the Aztecs sacrificed to the gods. Given that the population of England is a fraction of that of Mexico during that time, I'd say that cruelty and barbarism were big in cultures on both sides of the Atlantic.

The Ayleids were not united in their beliefs, as I've pointed out before there were Ayleids assisting the Nedes at the Siege of White Gold Tower. This may suggest that many did not approve of Umaril's dealing with Daedra (also take note that the Ayleids also put considerable effort into preventing daedric pilgrims from visiting the Nefarivigum).

In addition, even when the Ayleids and Cyrodiils coexisted, the Ayleid city-states were not united or even got along, as was shown with Nenalata and Lindai, which both existed for quite some time after White Gold Tower fell.

As for the actual Cyrodiilic attacks on the Ayleids later on, http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Cleansing_of_the_Faneseems to suggest that there may have been some sort of Daedric summoning going on from Malada that caused trouble for the Cyrodiils, this may have led to Cyrodiil's attacks on other Ayleid settlements.

No, the spanish DID attack the aztecs. For some short period of time anyhow. i forget i know the mayans just didapeared and it looked as though their dwellings were just abandoned, not attacked. but it was SOME native american civilization in that area im 98% sure