The Aedra were said to have given up parts of themselves to create Nirn. Or did they give parts of themselves to Lorkhan?

Yea, they spawn from the same stuff but then go totally different directions. "The only real difference" is a dang big difference...

And as I said in another thread, its that they "know everything" that crucially separates the immortals from the mortals. The body and soul are irrelevant, the only thing that matters for immortality is that the consciousness and memory remain (as it is the memory that makes the person everything that they are)... To quote myself "If I'm striving for immortality, it really makes no difference to me whether my body or soul stay intact, but if I lose the thing that makes me me (memories, consciousness, etc) then I'm just as far up a creek as everybody else..."

Parts of themselves, that's where we get earthbones...

Even still, the very concept of "mortality" is moot--- By having existed, they have always existed, and will always have existed. If you remove the convenience of time from the equation, mortals are just as permanent and troublesome to remove mythically as are gods.

I exist, therefor I am.


Being run-over by the metaphysical machinations of the mundus is what really causes death. If we take some of the creation myths into account, we can deduce that this same doom machinery can digest gods just as easily. However, The knowledge is not TRULY lost-- it is retained by the universe as history and myth, even if everyone forgets about it happening, or existing. In the case of mortals, Nirn itself has the "Perfect memory" required. This is hinted at several times in in-game literature, be it from the spore dreams of moth priests, to practitioners of mysticism accessing it to identify dreugh puke balls.

Immortality is just a stone's throw away on Nirn. The problem, is that everyone wants to live as a mortal 'forever'. The mortal existence itself needs to be shed to live in the immortal now. 'The temporal myth is man' as Vivec would say.


To live as an immortal, you would have to 'live' inside the dream-sleeve, and simply cause a mortal avatar to be reborn for you. You would experience through this mortal avatar-- which would die and rot-- as all mortal things do-- but "you" would continue to persist inside the perfect memory of the mortal world. Who is to say that the mortals on the mundus are not actually immortals, who purposefully withold perfect knowlege from their avatars, simply so they can experience novel things?

I remember watching a brittish space-opera sitcom called Red Dwarf-- where the ship's AI had been drifting through space for over a million years, and had read EVERY book in the ship's database, and had one of the crew members purge a portion of it's memory banks so that it could 'forget' having read them, and enjoy reading the books once again. If you think about the "Destruction" of a mortal's memory in ways like this, you start to come away with wholly new perspectives on mortality. A divine being could enjoy an otherwise tired old flavor, by revoking the past life memories of its mortal personifications, and in so doing, experience it as if it were for the first time, OVER and OVER and OVER again. This, I think, is the reason for mortals being denied memories of their past lives--

It is also kinda why many divine beings who center around "cycle of life and death" (Arkay, Meridia and friends) STRONGLY dislike necromancy, or mortals attempting to circumvent reintegration with the dream sleeve, or at least I think so. It robs the TRUE divine of being able to become 'new' again (because the 'old' never brings its memories home again.) It also seems to comply with the "schizophrenic ball of insanity" that Mundus as been described as prior.

Isn't it the reverse? Immortal, divine beings cannot enjoy old things, hence Daedric boredom at everything, Vehk's apparent nuanced joy at becoming a mortal again and Seht's attempts at whatever he was doing in his City.

By living it again as if for the first time, enforced by revoking perfect knowledge, one can discover that the experience is never the same twice-- It then becomes like riding an amusemant park ride, but being able to feel and remember the "RUSH!" of the experience as if it were for the very first time-- since for the avatar that brings that sensation "home", it WAS the very first time.

the "immortal" sleeps while the mortal is walking the mortal world. It "Wakes up" when the avatar dies. It remembers and recalls the life it experienced this way, and says "I want to ride it again!" -- and so, it does.... again, and again, and again-- and each time, it is different, new, and beautiful.


That is to say, "The immortal being" enjoys the old flavors "by proxy." Imagine if you could divide yourself in half--- One half retains all the old memories, and the new half gets the conciousness, but otherwise starts from scratch! The spawned half of yourself could lose it's virginity all over again-- Eat chocolate icecream for the very first time, have a first love---- and when it dies, it merges back with your other half, bringing with it all the memories of its experiences with it. When you wake up, you would remember BOTH the memories YOU had experienced before, and now ALSO the memories of the spawned half as it lived it's life. You could then repeat the process, and constantly sample the world "for the first time", "every time", AGAIN and AGAIN and AGAIN.

Mortals have a singular pleasure, in that they are ALWAYS new, and get the joy of trying things 'for the first time'-- That is how an immortal being could experience it, and never grow tired of existing.

It's no greater difference then driving on the left or right side of the road, or liking sweet or bitter, or being good or evil. It's something they chose to do but it doesn't change what they are.

Or perhaps the Daedra's favorite pasttime- tormenting mortals- just never gets old to them.

The Hunt is new every time. New people, different chase.

They are just getting fringe benefits of somebody else's more original idea.

They themselves dont want to become new all the time---- But that doesnt mean they cant enjoy the novel behaviors of the person who does.

Mortality and immortality are divided by flavor. Mortality is brief, fast, and juicy all the way through. Birth, death, joy, pain, love, and love lost, regained, and then lost again. In that short span so much can be fit. The thing with immortality is that it lacks that. Without limitation, without that spark and zest, existence is stale, It's like a drop of rain falling from the sky only to splatter to the ground in comparison to a stagnant pool where change comes hard.

To be honest, I think the naivety of the Daedra will do them no favors come TES V.

Edit: Yes, this is just my personal opinion on the matter.

Since I don't feel like arguing semantics at the moment, I'll suffice to say that I disagree...

I'll also add that your statement boils down to, "It's no greater difference then that they're complete opposites"...

Edit: grammar

I'm with you on this one. I don't know what prowler is reaching for.

This man is a young black liberal man, the other man is an old white conservative man. They're completely opposite man, as such they are also still man because they both eat, defecate, copulate and die.

Mortals and Daedra both have a soul, both were made from a greater et'Ada, both return to where ever they came from, both can be soul trapped, both can experience the period where they are without a body, both return to a new body after a period of time.

Both Aedra and Daedra are et'Ada. Some spirits prefer Anu, others Padomay but they're still spirits. Some spirits made the world, others didn't, they're still spirits.

Choice defines who and what we are. Choice defines what we eat, what gives us enjoyment. choices defines what and who we love and hate.

Were it only so simple.

Lets not turn this into a Philascofabl discussion.

And if one becomes a lich, are they still the same?

A resuscitated man is still a man, I don't see why a reanimated man wouldn't be.

At which point did the et'Ada change so much as to become Aedra and were no longer et'Ada?

I never said that they weren't et'Ada, but whether or not they were et'Ada or not makes no difference; just because two things start at the same spot doesn't make them the same indefinitely... the point was that the Aedra and Daedra are more different than you give them credit for, especially when the point of reference is the mortal realm (which in and of itself differentiates them)...

And for some reason I see a reanimated man as being quite different (especially if you decide to throw in the whole 'recreated by myth' thing)...

However the recreation by myth didn't happen until after they had made the mortals who would recreate them. When it comes to comparing Mortals and lesser Daedra, this is important because it shows how much alike they are.

Unless I missed something in this particular train of thought we're not comparing mortals and lesser daedra, hence all the discussion about et'Ada... and yes, those two are alike, but again they're also quite different...

I thought we were. I reckon some wires got crossed halfway through.

Yes, that was one train of discussion, which you never responded to:

And that's where that line of discussion ended.

The second train of discussion was created in your response to olny's statement:

It's this second discussion that went on to eventually bring us to where we are now, the first discussion about mortals and daedra stopped back on page 2 as far as I knew... I guess you could have been treating them as one train of thought, I'd separated them...

I can see how you can see that.

Though considering them separately, before the Aedra were recreated by myth, they were just a group of et'Ada like any other. They decided to cut parts of them self and create a new world, but a decision like that doesn't change what something is. The Daedra had the same abilities but chose to do it in another way.

Though this discussion touches on a more fundamental qeustion, what is an Aedra? If the Daedra got together and build a world, would they also be Aedra?