Thank you for pointing out that Shor's not in Sovngarde - huge mistake on my part.


The point still remains - who would the Talos oversoul be mantling? Himself? It would be Lorkahn in his body mantling Lorkahn's dead soul. Hence why he achieved CHIM, not godhood. Lorkahn accomplished his goal, her didn't start back at ground zero.

We don't know the intimate details. We're looking at the events after the fact. Talos did achieve Godhood.

You point out that he wrote the Mysterium Xarxes, but just for clarification he also wrote Mankar Cameron's dialogue, among other things.

Absolutely he did. I was simply pointing out the most important works to put things into perspective. I did that for both sides.


Also, according to MK in "From the Many Headed Talos" and in-game in the "36 Lessons of Vivec" Talos achieved CHIM, not godhood.

I just wanted to make it clear for those who might not have known that he was a developer on Oblivion proper, not just the DLC.

The two are not mutually exclusive. Even the Thalmor acknowledge that he has.

If I understand you correctly, I think the worship of Talos amongst men is due to a misunderstanding of CHIM.

I always thought that the worship of Talos amongst men had more cultural and political origins. I mean the Nibenese worshiped the Emperor before him and he isn't the first object of a Nordic hero cult. That he actually became a god during the Warp in the West is besides the point, although it didn't hurt his credibility. I should think that only comparative theologians would talk about him achieving CHIM.

Right, it's not uncommon for emperors to be deified or canonized after their reigns, as is the case with Reman, the Worldly God. Where Tal[OS] is unique is that he actually achieved a level of status in more than name only, or at least that's how it appears.

Did Talos exist before the Warp? I always thought that Tiber (Early-Beard?) achieved Divine power when he attained CHIM during his mortal life, but that the combination of three entities into Talos only happened after the Warp.

Maybe, that does sound more like what I've read here, although I still think he's worshiped mostly for reasons a lot emperors and so forth are. Bear in mind that when I say Talos, I don't necessarily mean the one with the triple oversoul, I mean the Dragonborn general from Atmora.

As of now there are 13 topics on the front page that are directly about things MK wrote.

We could talk about which race is best at swords, or if vampires can have babies, but it seems better to have metaphysics, doesn't it?

Someone said some of MK's stuff was deep just for the sake of being deep. Yeah. Fleshing out the world means adding depth. There are tons of real-world religious texts that are wordy and hard to parse; Tamriel should have lots of that when there are gods who openly interfere with the world. It would be weird if the stuff didn't exist.

The Thalmor's main issue with Talos stems from still being salty about Tiber Septim bringing the pain with Ol' Stompy. Also, considering that he is now more-or-less a replacement for Lorkhan who the Altmer also hate with a fiery passion, the Thalmor aren't going to be too keen on worshiping him. The Thalmor aren't going to acknowledge him as a Divine.

Very, very few people even know the word "CHIM" even exists, let alone the concept. The human races (at least, the Nords and Imperials) worship him because of his deeds as a mortal. They believe Talos is a god, but not because they believe he achieved CHIM. They don't even know what CHIM is. And as Rosaceae said, CHIM and godhood are not mutually exclusive. In fact, they both seem to go hand-in-hand.

Yeah, Vivec calls it "the god place" in his meeting with the Nerevarine.

That is definitely true in the games, but the reason I always remember first is that the existence of Talos prevents the unbinding of Mundus. I know that there is reference in games about the Dominion being opposed to the idea of a Man becoming a Divine, but I think the Talos-Mundus connection was only ever referenced in MK writings OOG.

Undoing Mundus is definitely not mentioned in-game.

It does make Ancano make more (or any?) sense, though.

Think: barely veiled contempt and obviously shady behaviour is more justified when he just needs to get his hands on the reset button for like a few hours. "Screw traditional espionage, these idiots don't understand what the Eye is all about. Who cares if they suspect me? We'll all be vapour in a few days."

It also just feels right. Elves tried ruling over men before. Power shifted and they lost out. Why share the prison cell when you can just kill the other group of inmates? And better yet, why not bust out of jail when the opportunity is staring you in the face? If Mundus is a prison to the Altmer, and they want to be like Auriel and get away, why not just tear the walls down? That's not even punk rock, it's just good government.

Nord's worship Talos because he's the precursor to the end of the cycle of time, and the one who will survive beyond that. CHIM is different than becoming a god in a sense, but Talos is both.

Well, not really no. Though adding to Ancano's amazing power trip, Esbern does offhandedly comment that the Thalmor don't want the world to end, or that they'd rather end it on their terms. The old Grandmaster of the Blades also made it a policy to make Thalmor their number one enemy, and we all know the overlap Talos priests and the Blades have. Sure, its kind of reaching, but it does seemingly set the Thalmor up as a potential threat later on down the line, so its not a unreasonable assumption to make.

Where did that precursor to the end of time come from? I thought the Nords worshipped Talos simply because the mortal Tiber (Early-Beard?) was from the North.