I made this simple http://i489.photobucket.com/albums/rr256/ericthered1090/Random%20Stuff/TESUniverse.jpg (I think that would be the right term). Does anyone want to critique it. Specifically I would like to know if things seem to be in the wrong order or if I have left things out.

This is just out of curiosity. I may improve upon the map if it looks right.

Thanks,
-Melchior Dahrk

I may be wrong, as I am not very knowledgeable in Elder Scrolls cosmology but isn't The Mundus just another word for Nirn? Mundus is the equivalent of the word World, while Nirn is the equivalent of Earth. The Mundus is Nirn - Not a realm surrounding it.

I thought the Aedra resided in Aetherius too?

I believe I read somewhere that only the "Star Orphans" reside in Aetherius. Like Magnus, Mnemolia and previously Meridia. I think that Mundus is another word for the mortal plane, of which the aedra are now a part of having died to create it. After all can't we see their plane(t)s from Nirn (and they wouldn't reside in Oblivion would they?

I see now - Like I said, I know very little in regard to the cosmology but you learn something everyday.

I'll have to read more on the subject.

Mundas is like the solar system and Nirn is like earth.

It seems fairly correct, exept for the sides off all the At Ada plane(t)s. Although they are all infinite, the two largest ones should be Aka and Shor (Masser and Secunda put together) as they are both described as being the 'soul's of Anu and Padomay respectivley. This means they should be larger even the Magnus.

Magne Ge are Et Ada that reside in Aetherius; they are basically Aedra that gave up before it was too late to escape Mundas.

Cool thanks for the info. I wasn't trying to be proportionally correct in this draft but I will keep that in mind, I wasn't sure of those scales.

I'd never heard of the Magne Ge before, neat.

Thanks again,
-Melchior Dahrk

I've done a similar thing for my Morrowind book mod. This is the interior illustration for my book Cosmos.

http://img532.imageshack.us/img532/3672/cosmosaurbus.jpg

I took some liberties naming the unknown planets according to which of the Eight Divines I felt suited each planet. Akatosh, Arkay and Julianos should be named correctly, as I got them form the article in the http://dwemerstudies.wiwiland.net/planets.html, and as far as I know it's the only attempt to name them out there. That is, unless I'm missing something. Does anyone know for sure which are which?

I also borrowed the http://img687.imageshack.us/img687/7564/cosmosstarmap.jpg from the Academy of Dwemer Studies and turned them into book illustrations. When you look at the star map, the orrery, and the cosmology altogether, the placement of the planets and the stars suddenly come together. As you can just make out in the cosmology chart (it looks bigger in the game so it's all readable), each dominion planet, when aligned as they appear in the orrery, actually matches up with the guardian constellations. Also, Magnus has been placed so that it's near the constellation that marks Sun's Height, The Apprentice, and opposite of Evening Star, The Thief.

That's a beautifully made diagram; we don't know for sure what planets are which, though I would think Kynareth would probably take the place of Mara in your current diagram, given she's a much more promenient Aedra in Mundus (relative to Mara, whom doesn't really do much, Kynareth is all of nature, the wind/sky, etc), and likewise I'd imagine the rest of the diagram should be based on the significance of the Aedra, and the 'attendant' moons would be based on the similarites of the Aedra (like I would make Mara Julianous, and have Dibella as the moon, and then Julianous be where Stendarr is with Stendarr and Zenithar being the moons). Also 'Aka' and 'Shor' shouldn't be in Aetherius

Thanks! I was going for a medieval woodcut look for the cosmology diagram. Do you think Beth will hire me to make their book art for TESV?

Julianos is one of the planets mentioned in that article in the Dwemer Orrery. Because both it and Akatosh on the opposite side maintain constant relative positions as the orrery moves, they're assumed to be the dominion planets. Also, they match up (almost) when you look at the dominion planets and the stars, so I think those are correct. As for the others, I'll shuffle some about:



I think I'll move Mara to Zenithar's position, and Kynareth to Stendarr's position. That way, Kynareth is orbiting Nirn, and Mara is orbiting Kynareth as her "handmaiden".



Because Zenithar is associated with Kynareth, I'll keep him in the same orbital group, since I'm changing that large planet to Kynareth.



I'll move Stendarr to Mara's position, orbiting Nirn.

I'll also remove Aka and Shor from Aetherius.

Edit: Here's the updated versions in their full resolution:

http://img97.imageshack.us/img97/5725/cosmologyofnirn.jpg

http://img203.imageshack.us/img203/8227/dwemerorrery.jpg

Those are some very nice charts! I'd love to see those up in TIL's cartography section (and also if some very high-res versions were to be made I'd gladly print them off as posters for my wall! They look great ).

I'd probably have to re-do them as vector images. I'm afraid I made the originals kind of small because they were only intended for in-game resolution.

Indeed, those maps look extraordinary Stuporstar! Nice work and they do help to put everything in perspective, I especially like how your map included the constellations. I wanted to include the stars on my simple one but wasn't sure of the best way to do it.

I don't know, can we really take this as source, but in the mesh of Orrey from Oblivion we can see names of the planets. It looks like this: http://img641.imageshack.us/img641/205/orreyscrin.jpg

Maybe it just a working names, randomly given in working progres... But also maybe real names was accidentally leaved or hinted in this mesh.
So, this names are following: http://img686.imageshack.us/img686/5025/planetsj.jpg
Position of Akatosh, Julianos and Arkey are concures with such in Dwemer Studies.

I used this scheme while working on this, something yet to be finished...
http://img41.imageshack.us/img41/3310/aurbis.jpg

I think the orrery is truthful. Notice Akatosh's planet is surrounded by a dragon's head, and the orrery vaguely resembles the Imperial Dragon.

This one is really cool. :goodjob:

Being some one who never mastered anything more then paint I'm quite impressed by this graphical violence. I do have some questions about the accuracy though.





I'm curious, why did you both put the outer realms between Oblivion and Aetherius? As far as I know the term is generally used as some place not here on Nirn that is not to be name with any further specification.



Can you tell me what you've based the names of the positions on? I know that Akatosh, Arkay, Julianos have been deduced by the Dwemer Acedemy, did you base the others on the names in the Orrery Model?



Considering 3/8 are correct I reckon we can. Thank you!

edit:

Personally I think the location is a bit odd though. I would have expected it to be more like Stuporstar draw them. It makes sense for the all the femine elements such as Nature and Love and Beauty to be rotating each other. Can't have everything.



I think you made Tamriel a little too big but it's pretty close to what I http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y199/Proweler/Lore/adan_globe.jpg.

I had always just assumed that the Outer Realms were those areas of Oblivion not defined by the Daedra, hence why I placed it on the edge of Oblivion. I could very well be mistaken though.



Thank you for posting this. I'm going to adjust my diagrams accordingly. I think we can assume that the model made by Bethsada is more correct than my guesses.

http://yfrog.com/6xthethirdmoonj, it appears it's got a slot for a Third Moon, which I assume is for the various 'temporary' moons, like the Necromancer's Moon, the Bloodmoon, and the Moon created by the Ja-Kha'jay when a new Mane is born. I'd also go on to say that the slot/hole represents the way into/out of Nirn (the secret known to Azura).



I think the logic behind Zenithar being positioned there, is that he could be described as the 'husband' god, which makes sense given his description "Zenithar is the deity of wealth, labor, commerce, and communication... ....earnest work and honest profit, not through war and bloodshed.", and the further I'd look to the Redguard description of Zeht "god of agriculture" and compare along side to Morwha the fertilty godess "Morwha is always portrayed as four-armed, so that she can 'grab more husbands', and on top of that it would seem Morwha is possibly a combination of Dibella and Mara, which sort of ties it all nicely together.

I've read that the Outer Realms are based on flows (rivers) of Creatia/Magicka coming from Aetherius. While I am sure these "flows" can extend far into Oblivion I merely assumed they would be denser closer to their source.

-Arena Supermundus

So any area outside Nirn is likely counted among the 'Outer Realms.'

Here is the final version. I've renamed the planets according to the Oblivion orrery, and I've removed the reference to the Outer Realms.

http://img718.imageshack.us/img718/4708/cosmologyofnirns.jpg

One question. Is Magnus fixed in its relative position to the stars like the rest of the constellations. If I were to guess, I would say yes, because it's a hole in Oblivion just like the others, it just happens to be the largest. If this is so, it would mean the sun changes position in accordance with the seasons, probably reaching its apex at Sun's Height and its nadir at Evening Star. But does it also rise and fall according to Nirn's daily rotation on its own axis, or is day and night only because, as described on the Cosmology page in the Imperial Library:



What I get from this is that the magic emanating out of Magnus actually fluctuates.

Also, because the position of the constellations change, and Akatosh, Julianos, and Arkay all make full rotations, but remain in the same fixed relative position to the stars, does this mean the entire "sphere" of Oblivion rotates in an annual pattern?

It doesn't seem to have any solid mortal-based lore supporting it, but I feel that it's more likely that Nirn orbits Magnus than the alternative. Makes more sense for a plane to orbit a "hole" anyway.


Either that or perhaps Nirn orbits Magnus. I would guess on the latter, as it is the more cosmologically sound option and doesn't rely on mortal egocentricity.

Well the thing is, that hole is a hole in the sphere surrounding Nirn. It would be the sphere surrounding Nirn that possibly rotates, causing the positions of the holes to move. Your idea is cosmologically sound, but remember, this is not our universe. Aurbis is not defined by laws of physics. It's defined by pure magic, and physics is only the mortal perception of certain magical laws created (under much duress on the part of the Aedra) for the benefit of mortals so that they could survive on Mundis.

In fact, it would be impossible for Nirn to orbit that hole, because the hole is on the edge of Oblivion, and Nirn does not move through Oblivion, it is encompassed by it, but it can only move through Mundis.

According to the Dwemer orrery, the cosmos is Nirn centric, and it's not just mortal egocentricity. Remember that Nirn was originally supposed to be the pinnacle of creation when the et'Ada devised it as their grand experiment. Why wouldn't they have placed it in the center of their universe? On the orrery, it does not have anything to orbit. It simply rotates in place. The Dwemer were known to have traveled to the "Outer Realms" possibly meaning astral travel, so they probably had a better idea of the structure of their universe than any other mortal race.

But they're all provided to us by mortal myth, which tends to, both in reality and in TES, to give the impression of being in the center of everything, regardless of factuality. Of course mortals would assume that they're the center of everything, because that's what mortals, especially elves (who might I add are important contributors to Imperial myth), do. And the Divines would confirm this, because they say whatever the mortal followers already believe.


I don't recall any confirmation that the center body of the Orrery is actually Nirn, that's simply an assumption that's been made for some time on the forum, as far as I know. And the fact that the moons aren't there in the model orbiting the central body makes me believe that the centerpiece is NOT Nirn.

The moons are shown on the orrery in Oblivion, and they are named in the mesh, so we can assume that's the planetary naming scheme that the devs intended. See the previous page, where there's a link to it. Nirn is the central planet, and on that orrery it has the two moons. Their positions have already been discussed at full length on the first page.

Also, the Dwemer were as close to atheists as one can get in a cosmos with real gods in it. They based their science on observation and testable theories. It is from the Dwemer stuff that most of the cosmology info comes from, not the unreliable myths of other races. As I said, the Dwemer actually had the opportunity to travel outside of Nirn. Your beliefs are founded in what you see in this universe and have no basis in fantasy.