The Anuad... : The Elder Scrolls Series Discussion

» Fri Jan 14, 2011 1:34 am

So I've read this book before, but I don't really understand how there could've been an interplanetary war?

I mean did people in the ES universe used to be sci fi? Did they have space battles and now the survivors are the peoples of Nirn?

» Fri Jan 14, 2011 3:34 pm

The Gods are "living" on the planets, as far as I know. So if there's a fight between gods, it's sort of an interplanetary war. (Aren't the daedric realms supposed to be planets, too?)

You can imagine it with the help from "The Little Prince":
http://www.staff.uni-mainz.de/mblumers/lg/o-e/deu/Doks/KlPrinz/Elements/Prinzbild44bgro.jpg
http://www.staff.uni-mainz.de/mblumers/lg/o-e/deu/Doks/KlPrinz/Elements/koenig.jpg
http://www.staff.uni-mainz.de/mblumers/lg/o-e/deu/Doks/KlPrinz/Elements/Prinzbild46bgro.jpg
http://www.staff.uni-mainz.de/mblumers/lg/o-e/deu/Doks/KlPrinz/Elements/29gr.jpg
http://delpiano.club.fr/Image29.gif

http://www.onlinecat.de/Leseproben/klprinz2.jpg

» Fri Jan 14, 2011 3:55 am

So I've read this book before, but I don't really understand how there could've been an interplanetary war?

I mean did people in the ES universe used to be sci fi? Did they have space battles and now the survivors are the peoples of Nirn?

Yeppers. Well done. There were twelve worlds of (the first) creation. (Note the number, that also corresponds to twelve birthsigns.) A cataclysmic event - a war indeed happened. How? The war broke out because of a very classical case - two guys fighting over one woman. If you take some information from the cosmology, you'll see that there still are planets orbiting Nirn, most notable would be the three "eyes" of the Guardian constellations in the Sky, which represent the Warrior, the Mage and the Thief (Akatosh, Julianos, Arkay, in the latest interpretation). God and Planet are synonymous here, so your interplanetary war is literally also a battle of the gods.
Fragments (remains) of the battle landed on Nirn. Taking the Nu-Mantia intercept into account, I believe that one of these fragments actually is Artaeum, the "island of start", which is sometimes there and then again not. There is more of this in other sources, such as the vessel (!) of Akatosh, better known as Adamantine Tower, landing (crashing) on Nirn to signal a convention of the gods on the only remaining planet.

» Fri Jan 14, 2011 1:53 pm

So I've read this book before, but I don't really understand how there could've been an interplanetary war?

I mean did people in the ES universe used to be sci fi? Did they have space battles and now the survivors are the peoples of Nirn?

I always imagined that the Twelve Worlds were ground into biggish planetesimals that ended up forming Nirn like a huge patchwork quilt of more or less intact World of Creation landscapes, sometimes with the creatures still on them.
Hence the illogical climate zones in Tamriel.

» Fri Jan 14, 2011 1:19 am

The Anuad is allegory where not corroborated by other myths. There probably weren't elephants and mountain ranges flying through space like the tornado scene in Wizard of Oz. The whole point of creation was a collaborative world that each creator sacrificed for and bound itself to. The idea of twelve (where do the other three of four come from?) spirits with personal realms all fighting each other while Nirn is already sitting there doesn't really fit any other story.

There were twelve or however many worlds because the Aedra built them and manifested as them, same as the Daedra. And some of them worked together to create Nirn using pieces of themselves, with many becoming one. But that's really just the framework of the story the Annuad tells.

» Fri Jan 14, 2011 1:35 pm

Aren't they super powered mystic beings?...

» Fri Jan 14, 2011 6:22 am

Most of this is, fortunately, a kind of buffet-style allegory. Depending on the people we're dealing with, or your own personal interpretation, you can take the "gods as planets" thing as seriously as you want. First, by recognizing that your perception of different stellar phenomena is really all just a hallucination created by your tiny little brain trying to comprehend the infinite. Second, by understanding that cosmology and physics ain't what it is in the ES world compared to RL. So, you can represent the planets and stars as real bodies if you want to understand how they interact with Nirn and each other, like the Dwemer did to the exclusion that the planets were gods and ruled them; or you can talk about how they are holes into Aetherius, which we are to understand is how they are. However, the answer becomes, they are both.

» Fri Jan 14, 2011 10:24 am

(where do the other three of four come from?)

Well one's Nirn itself, which leaves two. Different religons have different pantheons, and we knows scores and scores of Aedra actually took part in creation. It could be Yffre or Magnus or any other god that may have been completely consumed by creation.

Aren't they super powered mystic beings?...

That manifest as their own dimensions. See: Shivering Isles

» Fri Jan 14, 2011 2:47 pm

Well one's Nirn itself, which leaves two. Different religons have different pantheons, and we knows scores and scores of Aedra actually took part in creation. It could be Yffre or Magnus or any other god that may have been completely consumed by creation.

There are enough players to make twelve, but why twelve specifically? In my opinion it's just another cue that the passage is allegorical. It makes it sound like creation resulted haphazardly from a big bang battle royale of all the gods.

» Fri Jan 14, 2011 5:00 pm

There are enough players to make twelve, but why twelve specifically? In my opinion it's just another cue that the passage is allegorical. It makes it sound like creation resulted haphazardly from a big bang battle royale of all the gods.

I postulate that the twelve birthsigns (disregarding the Serpent here, because it's special in any case) are the "afterglow" of said battle and thus would correspond with the "Twelve Worlds of creation".

» Fri Jan 14, 2011 6:10 am

What battle, though? All of the combat in the Anuad seems to be anthropomorphizing the friction between opposites, the chaotic results, and the very specific dispute of the enantiomorph, which involved Akatosh and Lorkhan's dispute over Female Nirn. An actual interplanetary battle took place in the same way the Aurbis got pregnant.

» Fri Jan 14, 2011 12:53 pm

What battle, though? All of the combat in the Anuad seems to be anthropomorphizing the friction between opposites, the chaotic results, and the very specific dispute of the enantiomorph, which involved Akatosh and Lorkhan's dispute over Female Nirn. An actual interplanetary battle took place in the same way the Aurbis got pregnant.

When the gods are the planets, then a battle between them is an interplanetary one...

It's not about "classic" space battles (tons of X-Wings or uncloaking warbirds), but an epic conflict of literally universal scale. At least in the aftermath of said battle, we have a mention of Akatosh's space vessel, Adamantine Tower. I for one count the Annuad as a valid addition to the rest of the myths and to me, it does not contradict information in the Monomyth etc. It expands and, as said, adds to them. However, I'd like to see more stuff like the amulet expanding on the Twelve Worlds.

» Fri Jan 14, 2011 9:34 am

When the gods are the planets, then a battle between them is an interplanetary one...

It's not about "classic" space battles (tons of X-Wings or uncloaking warbirds), but an epic conflict of literally universal scale. At least in the aftermath of said battle, we have a mention of Akatosh's space vessel, Adamantine Tower. I for one count the Annuad as a valid addition to the rest of the myths and to me, it does not contradict information in the Monomyth etc. It expands and, as said, adds to them. However, I'd like to see more stuff like the amulet expanding on the Twelve Worlds.

The battle as described in the Anuad never took place. It is an allegorical description of the struggle between the halves of the enantiomorph. Most of the Anuad's historical details are dubious, because it anthropmorphizes the forces of creation even further than the creation myths to, so it makes a children's story.

» Fri Jan 14, 2011 10:10 am

You can imagine it with the help from "The Little Prince":
http://www.staff.uni-mainz.de/mblumers/lg/o-e/deu/Doks/KlPrinz/Elements/Prinzbild44bgro.jpg
http://www.staff.uni-mainz.de/mblumers/lg/o-e/deu/Doks/KlPrinz/Elements/koenig.jpg
http://www.staff.uni-mainz.de/mblumers/lg/o-e/deu/Doks/KlPrinz/Elements/Prinzbild46bgro.jpg
http://www.staff.uni-mainz.de/mblumers/lg/o-e/deu/Doks/KlPrinz/Elements/29gr.jpg
http://delpiano.club.fr/Image29.gif

http://www.onlinecat.de/Leseproben/klprinz2.jpg

Nice. But I dont think that they use birds with little children attacked at the end to atttack eachother

» Fri Jan 14, 2011 3:45 am

The battle as described in the Anuad never took place. It is an allegorical description of the struggle between the halves of the enantiomorph. Most of the Anuad's historical details are dubious, because it anthropmorphizes the forces of creation even further than the creation myths to, so it makes a children's story.

I'm not so sure. First off, "A Children's Anuad" is but one of a few editions of this particular story (The Annotated Anuad is another). Perhaps it is the monomyth that is a gross oversimplification and mythification (yeah, I'm making up words here) of a very real, historical conflict, the Anuad being the only record which has survived.

I mean, come on. The story has to come from somewhere, and I doubt is is the equivalent of people in the real world's far future studying Asimov's Foundation series as if it were a history and a holy text.

» Fri Jan 14, 2011 4:27 am

I'm not so sure. First off, "A Children's Anuad" is but one of a few editions of this particular story (The Annotated Anuad is another). Perhaps it is the monomyth that is a gross oversimplification and mythification (yeah, I'm making up words here) of a very real, historical conflict, the Anuad being the only record which has survived.

I mean, come on. The story has to come from somewhere, and I doubt is is the equivalent of people in the real world's far future studying Asimov's Foundation series as if it were a history and a holy text.

The 'interplanetary war' in the Anuad and the (almost identical) paraphrased edition specifically describes Padomay returning from exile and attacking the Aurbis of Anu, causing destruction, and Nirn is created from the salvage. Everyone knows very well how the forces of Is/Is Not behave, and they know the story of the monomyth. So this is a little like saying that perhaps the rise of Communism really did involve farm animals lead by two pigs.

You can argue that certain passages should be taken in a historical sense (if you're really attached to the idea of Nirn being all land ala Warcraft), but not the clear metaphors.

» Fri Jan 14, 2011 6:01 pm

But unlike Animal Farm, of which we know the origin (and of which the English teachers of the world will likely never let us forget), the Anuad is ancient, of unknown origin, but treated as truth by tradition. There may have been some drift between editions of the story, but it is more likely, in my opinion, that the story on which it is based is a true story, than that it is a work of fiction, the origins of which, and even the fact that it is fiction, has been forgotten.

Battles of spirit manifest themselves in the material. Wars between gods manifest themselves as chaos in the lower orders. We know about the Eight, the One, and the Sixteen, and Magnus, but don't forget the hosts of lesser spirits that accompanied them. We have the big summary of the Monomyth, which itself is a synthesis of selected stories which have some parallels, not all of which are immediately apparent. But what if that overarching conflict between the two big things manifested itself in a fashion that, to the lesser spirits, looked like an interplanetary war? Or rather, that WAS an interplanetary war, the true causes existed at a higher gradient? That would explain the existence of these stories, in a manner consistent in the fashion in which they are presented. Which is better than just assuming they are a work of fiction (with neither precedent nor proof) because they do not correlated with your own presuppositions.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say with your Warcraft reference. I haven't really played a Warcraft game since Warcraft 2.

» Fri Jan 14, 2011 8:29 am

The Anuad describes the Aurbis as a young universe filled with the creations of Anuic spirits. Then Padomay returns and tries to destroy everything? Taken literally, this conflicts with all the other non-allegorical accounts of how it happened. And the Monomyth is not a single point of view. It is what all the major points of view have in common and none of it is allegorical. I assume everyone know that parts of the Anuad are allegorical, so I have to ask on what grounds you can select parts to interpret literally.

Also, the specific interplanetary war we are discussing (there is room for other cosmic confrontations in early history) took place before Nirn was created, or at least before it had its Aedric collaborators. There wasn't much to witness, which is why history in the Anuad is turned into metaphor.

» Fri Jan 14, 2011 2:57 pm

The Anuad describes the Aurbis as a young universe filled with the creations of Anuic spirits. Then Padomay returns and tries to destroy everything? Taken literally, this conflicts with all the other non-allegorical accounts of how it happened. And the Monomyth is not a single point of view. It is what all the major points of view have in common and none of it is allegorical. I assume everyone know that parts of the Anuad are allegorical, so I have to ask on what grounds you can select parts to interpret literally.

Also, the specific interplanetary war we are discussing (there is room for other cosmic confrontations in early history) took place before Nirn was created, or at least before it had its Aedric collaborators. There wasn't much to witness, which is why history in the Anuad is turned into metaphor.

So what does the metaphor of the twelve planets of creation mean, then? I'm not suggesting that the idea of an "interplanetary war" need be interpreted in a science-fictiony fashion (although repeated talk of "Akatosh's Space Ship" suggests this interpretation is not uncommon), merely that the passage between the initial creation of Nir, and the outcome of the final battle between the Two, strongly suggest events not touched upon in the Monomyth. There were twelve worlds on which there was life, the return of Padomay destabilized their relationship to each other (whether that be planetary orbits, an interplanetary society, or something else entirely), and in the end, Nirn was created. It suggests that there was more to the creation of Nirn than either the genius or the trickery of Shor/Lorkhan, as if even their actions were merely implementations of something else that was occurring at an even higher gradient. It also suggests that there was, in fact, life of a sort, prior to the creation of Nirn, more than the only two surviving groups: The Ehlnofey and the Hist. It ALSO posits that the Ehlnofey and the Hist had their origins, not on Nirn, but elsewhere.

» Fri Jan 14, 2011 6:08 pm

As the process of subcreation continued, both Anu and Padhome awakened. For to see your antithesis is to finally awaken. Each gave birth to their souls, Auriel and Sithis, and these souls regarded the Aurbis each in their own part, and from this came the etada, the original patterns. These etada eventually congealed.

Anu's firstborn, for he mostly desired order, was time, anon Akatosh. Padhome's firstborn went wandering from the start, changing as he went, and wanted no name but was branded with Lorkhan. As time allowed more and more patterns to individualize, Lorkhan watched the Aurbis shape itself and grew equally delighted and tired with each new shaping. As the gods and demons of the Aurbis erupted, the get of Padhome tried to leave it all behind for he wanted all of it and none of it all at once. It was then that he came to the border of the Aurbis.

He saw the Tower, for a circle turned sideways is an "I". This was the first word of Lorkhan and he would never, ever forget it.
What are the spokes of the Wheel?

For ages the etada grew and shaped and destroyed each other and destroyed each other's creations. Some were like Lorkhan and discovered the void outside of the Aurbis, though if some saw the Tower I do not know, but I know that, if they did, none held it in such high esteem. In any case, some of those that did see the void created its like inside the Aurbis, but each of these smaller voids sought each other out. Void shall follow void; the etada called it Oblivion. What was left of the Aurbis was solid change, otherwise known as magic. The etada called this Aetherius.

Now Lorkhan had by at this point seen everything there was to see, and could accept none of it. Here were the etada with their magic and their voids and everything in between and he yearned for the return to flux but at the same time he could not bear to lose his identity. He did not know what he wanted, but he knew how to build it. Through trickery ("We have made the Aurbis unstable with the voids") and wisdom ("We are of two minds and so should make a perfect gem of compromise") and force ("Do what I say, rude spirit"), he bound some of the strongest etada to create the World.

The spokes of the Wheel are the eight gifts of the Aedra, sons and daughters of Aetherius. The voids between each spoke number sixteen, and their masters are the sons and daughters of Oblivion. The center of the Wheel was another circle, the hub, which held everything together. The etada called this Mundus.

It refers to the chaotic Aurbis after the first brush, with the forces (not entities) of change and potential interacting in a swirl of spirits and their unstable creations. If you like, this is a universal war, or at least a conflict or a whole lot of mayhem. Then, in Vivec's account, Lorkhan returns from the rim of the wheel with his inspiration and decides to bind the powerful spirits and their worlds (which probably just means identities and characteristics, as nothing was permanent back then) into one, forever ending the era of the pure Aurbis where the forces of Anu and Padomay reacted and struggled in such uncontrolled form. So they were pulled out of time forever and subcreation began in earnest.

As to the Ehlnofey and Hist, as it is I've never given much thought to the specific origins of species, but all the wandering and fighting sounds like more allegory. The men/mer conflict is referenced in obvious terms, for example. I doubt that anything in Nirn was transplanted whole from the chaotic realms of the Aurbis, but everything in Nirn existed already within the potential of the creator spirits, and different facets of Nirn are associated with different divine beings. Mortals have been fighting over their differences since Convention, and not just in competition for resources.