I've been reading on the forums that our brass god friend is still "alive and kicking" at least for now? I totally missed out on where this comes from. Can someone give me a quick enlightenment on the source and what exactly it's doing right now?

"It's not the Brass God that wrecks everything so much as it is all the plane(t)s and timelines that orbit it, singing world-refusals.The Surrender of Alinor happened in one hour, but Numidium's siege lasted from the Mythic Era until long into the Fifth. Some Mirror Logicians of the Altmer fight it still in chrysalis shells that phase in and out of Tamrielic Prime, and their brethren know nothing of their purpose unless they stare too long and break their own possipoints."--MK

First of all, it fights until the Fifth Era outside time. Second, Numidium is something different, something Else, and I'd bet we don't know a sixteenth what it really is.

Yes, well... so do we know anything more...concrete?
I could conjecture wildly from that, but I doubt I understand. Is it referenced in any in-game books that give a succinct "what's up" with it, or is it MK metaTESphilosophy that we've got so far?

I wonder what kind of melody world-refusals have.....

Not really.

But the basic skinny is that Numidium spanked the Thalmor so hard that it broke time.

Indeed. Most big spanks break time in some way in TES.

For being the Uber Powerful Original Spirit, Akatosh sure does take a lot of beatings.

I wanna see what we get with a Kynareth-Break, or a Mara-Break. A day without any... um... nature? And a day without any kind of sincere love? Now those would be world-changing.

I had a thread that forwarded the same idea a while back. The general consensus of the shadowy forum clique was that linear time was subject to paradoxes that don't really crop in concepts like air or maternal love. In order to cause a mother-break, you'd somehow have to subvert the concept of compassionate love itself.

I'm sure Molag Bal and I could work something out...

Ew.

The Shade of the Revenant came about thanks to an Arkay break (facilitated by a Dragon Break).

Aren't the physical pieces of Numidium at the bottom of the Illiac?

We don't know where it's wreckage is, but the Illiac is as good a place to go looking as any other.

The Numidium warped itself out of existence when they met each other, while The Numidium still attacks the Thalmor, and is kicking Akatosh in the balls all untime long.

I think the MK quote is taken too literally, but I do have a few thoughts for once on this.


My take on this is that Numidium acts as a very serious anchor in Time, and that the Aedra, as referenced by plane(t), cause problems by trying to brush the big heavy thing in Time away. Like if you have a stream and someone drops a rock in it. The rock represents Numidium, and the stream represents the timelines. The plane(t)s in this metaphor could represent people trying to get rid of the rock. It's too heavy to lift so they might hack away at the banks of the stream to let more water pass by or try to dig under the rock in an attempt to dislodge it, which would create problems. That's my stab at it. As for what a world-refusal is, could we liken that to a trowel or shovel? Is a world-refusal saying, "This is not real" or "You are not"?


This is where I think people get too literal. Staying with my water metaphor, if you throw a pebble into a lake it ripples, but if you say, "I threw a rock into a lake, and it took me 1 minute to throw it, but the ripples lasted for five minutes," it doesn't mean that the act of throwing or my presence at the lake lasted that whole time. Basically, the Numidium's actual presence lasted one hour, but the effects of that short time defied linear time in that the effects not only effected things forward in time but in the past too.

Here's what I'm visualizing:

Beginning of Mythic era---ripple end>>First Era>>Numidium's Actions<ripple end---End of Fifth Era

Some Mirror Logicians of the Altmer fight it still in chrysalis shells that phase in and out of Tamrielic Prime, and their brethren know nothing of their purpose unless they stare too long and break their own possipoints.

Here's where the real conjecture starts for me. If someone knows what a Mirror Logician is, please fill me in. I can only assume, given the context, that it is someone who can perform actions in other realities with Mirror Logic being the school of thought concerning mutliversal science.

As for chrysalis shells, the only handhold I can think of is Dracochrysalis, which describes a mortal becoming a dragon, but I don't think that has anything to do with this quote. A chrysalis though denotes metamorphosis, but still it doesn't seem like the context implies any sort of larger change. If I were to wager a guess, I would say that a chrysalis shell is a vehicle of sorts, like a bubble that allows bits from one reality to pass into other realities. With Numidium, I'd think that the essence or just the power of Numidium cut holes in the multiverse like Swiss cheese, and from time to time chrysalis shells containing the raw power of Numidium pass in and out of those holes into Tamriel Prime, which must be the 'real world' that we perceive as opposed to Mirror Tamriels in other realities.

Concerning the last part of that quote about "brethren know nothing of their purpose unless they stare too long and break their own possipoints", I think of dreams, and that when you're in a dream things blur together, and nothing makes sense where you have no point of view nor any worldly logic to lean on; a Kafkaesque experience. In that situation a Mirror Logician would easily forget his purpose and his self, acting only on robot-like instinct. A possipoint would probably be a 'possible point in space and time that one inhabits'. "Staring too long" might symbolize singing your own (albeit subconscious) world-refusal. In terms of dreams, I'd liken it to realizing you're in a dream, thus causing the dream to end. A Mirror Logician staring too long while fighting in a dream-like atmosphere of swirling realities could break the spell so to speak and cause him to 'wake up' or at least reenter Mundus or even blink out of existence entirely, breaking their own possipoints, i.e. breaking the possible point in space and time that they are currently inhabiting.

Maybe I should rephrase my question-- what is the last known (concrete) thing we know happened involving the numidium?

Ignoring the oddities of Numidium's siege of Alinor, then it would be the ending of Daggerfall, retconned as the Warp of the West after TES III. (Known to the common people of Tamriel as the "Miracle of Peace")

I'm reminded strongly here about that bit of Altmer commentary about Talos. Numidium is powered by Lorkhan's heart, and would thus be a pan-dimensional "constant" in terms of time and probability. It is beyond reality despite being bound to it. That's why it bothers the old Altmer wizards so much, not just that it subjugated their race but it made a mockery of their own highest ambitions to boot.

So basically, Numidium is a meta-real functionary, if that makes any sense. When you tell it to stomp something, it doesn't just stomp it in that particular moment, it stomps it in all possible moments as well. This makes it a perfect empire builder, since it can ensure that your enemies have no hope of defeating you, even if they get a hold of an Elder Scroll and pull the rug out with some time-hopping shenanigans. I'm not sure what these "chrysalis" might be either, but it would seem to be some means used for combating Numidium in alternate realities. I don't know how this could be done, since it has the raw power of a god behind it.. But seeing as the Hegemony seems to be coming back these days, I wonder if maybe the logicians succeeded, maybe with the help of certain Daedra friends...

I enjoy this line the most. As if the cosmos is held together by some sort of mythopoetic godgravity. Let alone other astronomical forces I have no idea of. Lol daedric == dark energy

Suddenly, every now-and-then-and-always, Numidium powers up, realigning the planets.
Jupiter gets mad


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offtopic
And now I remember Superman, in each and every episode of Justice League.

. . . Megatron?

Dracochrysalis seems more pertinent when you consider the relationship between dragons and time.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_6ldbdWnLMmA/TPh_ME6bDxI/AAAAAAAAA2w/GilRgB6WtKc/s400/GodzillaRising.jpg

Agreed. Drachochrysalids must be the only things other than Elder Scrolls able to fight big stompy robots all the time at once (based on some stuff in Skyrim, I think an Elder scroll would be a pretty good weapon against Numidium, in the right hands- though those hands probably don't exist).

Also

I wonder if Numidium licked Jupiter's back.

It's not powered by Lorkhan's Heart though. It's powered by the Mantella which by association would be an echo of Lorkhan's heart given that Talos is Lorkhan. It's a chiral reflection of the Heart.

I'm also puzzled as to the meaning of chrysalis shell in this context. MK seems to like the word 'chrysalis', so he uses it quite a bit. A lot of those vagaries look like descriptions of Aetherius and the Dreamsleeve. Also he does the same thing with 'spore', making compound words with it in the same fashion as 'chrysalis'.

The big question in my mind is on the nature of chrysalis shells:

1. Are they naturally occurring?
2. Are they created as time vehicles?

The former would suggest that things naturally move in and out of parallel realities, and if you have the magical stones for it, you can 'hitch a ride' inside of one. The latter is self-explanatory. You metamorphose into a state where you can move freely beyond the bounds of this reality.

To call it a chrysalis shell however seems redundant since a chrysalis is a shell to begin with, but that's just splitting hairs.

*addendum*
Martin Septim's apotheosis sure seemed like Dracochrysalis to me. I mean he turned into a seething, god-fire dragon.

It must burn them to know Dwemer accomplished what they could only dream of, and Tiber Septim used them to kick their asses.

The story of the Altmer is one long tragedy.