To start of i'v never beem a one for lore until recently so please make allowances if my question is not clear or just plain wrong.



im a little confused as to who created nirn,most the time i hear that lorkhan tricked the nine into creating it but from my understanding Anu created nirn from the remnants of the 12 world's Padomay tried to destroy,after they grappled and both pulled out of time forever the blood of Padomay became the daedra and the blood of both mixed became the aedra,so they were created after nirn was formed?


and as i also read that lorkhan is refered to as the son of Padomay,does that make him daedra?


i hope this all makes sense and y'all can enlighten me on this subject.

Just like there are multiple stories dealing with Earth's creation, so to does Nirn have many. There are alot of conflicting stories, and non is really more right then another.

All the confilcting views of the various races meld together and create mythic ambivalence, all being true at once. You'd have to read all the various myths, some of the most important ones can be found in http://www.imperial-library.info/mwbooks/monomyth.shtml. What is universal is the Mundus was Lorkhan's plan, and the gods who became the Aedra helped him and the Daedra refused.

I tend to call Lorkhan a padomaic Aedra, insofar as the Aedra created Nirn, but not insofar as Aedra is an elven word meaning ancestor, for an Altmer would sooner choke himself than call Lorkhan an Aedra.

It also helps to keep in mind that these are stories of people who are trying to explain a concept they don't see anymore these days. Because of this each myth will be riddled with allegory trying to put that concept to words.

So don't focus on the exact details, but rather try to discern the general outline in each myth. You'll find that they are all awfully similar.

http://www.imperial-library.info/mwbooks/monomyth.shtml
http://www.imperial-library.info/mwbooks/clanmother.shtml



What we call the Aedra, yes.



Depends on who you're asking. The term Aedra is Altmer and means ancestor, but you won't find many Altmer claiming Lorkhan is their ancestors. Man in general however do refer to him as a God under one name or another.

Way to make pretty much the same post as me, proweler

Does that nordic god have his own creation myth? Something like "The All Maker", I haven't play BM in a while

The Skaal beliefs are different from traditional Nordic beliefs, but we know the Nords of Skyrim have mythology surounding their version of the pentheon, and thus they almost certaintly possess a creation myth.

First there was the stillness. Then there was change, it happened but not really...

...and then star-touched formed a half-dream from a portion of the silence. "Nirn" comes to being.

To put it bluntly,

"Lorkhan tricks the gods to help him create - , thus changing them in the process."

Those features aren't. The Anuad is just one of the more prominent examples.




Though I personally agree with that, you're selling opinions as truths.

Last time I checked, peddling ambiguities and naming them truths is lying. Lying's bad m'kay?

If you want a creation myth that is devoid of everything this crowd names as "truths", read http://www.imperial-library.info/dfbooks/b055_lightdark.shtml.

No Shezarr? No convention? Daedra used to be mortals? Nirn predates the gods? Gasp! Its a creation myth too, and just as "right" as the rest of them.

Thats quite interesting was that book in morrowind?


all your answer's have made me see this is even more ambiguous than i origianlly thought it would be,but one thing still bother's me,in all the account's that say nirn came before the god's,what would the explanation be for the heart of lorkhan(if it turn's out he did'nt create nirn and he hadnt even existed when it was)??

Well Lorkhan (loki) mudered [Insert God here] (Baulder) and Auri-EL (Odin) punished him. That is quite plausible you know.

Loki in nordic myth was imprisoned in a cave with a serpent hanging over him dripping poison into his eye for his sins, and his wife tried to protect him with a bowl.

We may have something similar going on with Lorkhan.

Who's Lorkhans wife then?

Kyne

Yes, but only beacuse it had to be. It first appeared in Daggerfall and for like...six years it was the only source of TES metaphysics. TES had better things to accomplish then create fake religions.



try Nirn

Only because the Anuad does not involve the et'Ada directly. The Yokudan myth features the same combination of worlds as the Anuad and both symbolize the et'Ada giving themselves to Mundus. The victory of Anu and the return of Padomay is anologue to the appearance of Akatosh who created stability and the Aurbis and Lorkhan who upset everything again. Anu saving the worlds in the end is the convention where he gave Mundus a divinity of his own so that it could life on.



I'd take that seriously and account for my sources, if only you weren't just pushing your own opinions about Daggerfall. It's a wasted effort on you.



They're not absolute truths. They're accounts of the creation of Nirn that has been passed on from generation to generation. Because these events are complex and not part of day to day life they use metaphor to describe what happened.

We can assume they're accurate because each myth has the same outline and the people who describe them haven't been in direct contact until much later on.



Nope, it's from Daggerfall. The other myths are somewhat inspired by it but also greatly expanded the scope of the story.



They were there, but they're not the same as what we worship now as the Aedra. Read the Monomyth. It's no fun if you get everything explained without effort.



Or Mara depending on which culture you are in.

I disagree. One thing Nirn has in common with most fantasy settings is that the metaphysics are central. It's unique in that the metaphysics of Nirn are not the sort of simplistic Manichean schema that most fantasy settings, and nearly all fantasy CRPGs, are based upon. Most CRPGs are simply games of figuring out what the designers want you to do, which is "good." Instead, in TES's Nirn, we've got a complex interplay of cultures, and conflicting and ambiguous accounts of the underlying nature of the world. The player characters have to make their own sense of things, and even if they start with a black-and-white moral code, that will be challenged by the end. Instead of an Absolute Truth at the center of everything, we keep finding that there's something that mortals or flawed gods constructed in place of an Absolute Truth, and it's having trouble holding up the weight of the world.

Honestly, I think that the Elder Scrolls saga has the most interesting backstory of any fantasy saga I've encountered, in any medium, and it's for this very interest in creating fake religions. Unlike most fantasy, this isn't some childish escape from all that we've learned since the 18th century. It doesn't ignore existentialism, but grapples with it in earnest. If "Light and Dark" was really the starting point, then TES has long since outgrown it.

These are your opinions. They have been noted and debated. They are not facts, they are interpretations, yet you treat them as fact. It is not a fact that the current Aedra are not the original ones, it is not a fact the Daedra were never mortal and it is not a fact that the gods ever participated in the creation of Nirn.



They don't have the same basic outline. The Anuad and The Dark and the Light have a basic outline entirely different then all the other myths. There are two, if not more, basic creation stories. Each is different enough to allow for every person to take away their own idea on what happened. Instead of telling people your interpretation and saying it is "right", why not link to all the creation stories and challenge them to come up with their own idea? That's the problem with all of you, when people ask you questions you them "facts" when there are none. There is no right answer to this question, yet you claim there is.


So that is the answer tot he OP's question: There is no right answer, come to your own conclusion.

Red are the passages from "The Light and the Dark", blue are those from the "Anuad", green those from the "Monomyth". Normal colour are my own remarks or other quotes.

Long, long ago, before there were any people at all; even before the gods, Tamriel was chosen as a battleground by two -- things.
I call them the Light and the Dark. Others use different names. Good and Evil, Bird and Serpent, Order and Chaos. None of these names really apply. It suffices that they are opposites, and totally antithetical.

As Anu and Padomay wandered the Void, the interplay of Light and Darkness created Nir. Both Anu and Padomay were amazed and delighted with her appearance, but she loved Anu, and Padomay retreated from them in bitterness.

All Tamrielic religions begin the same. Man or mer, things begin with the dualism of Anu and His Other. These twin forces go by many names: Anu-Padomay, Anuiel-Sithis, Ak-El, Satak-Akel, Is-Is Not. Anuiel is the Everlasting Ineffable Light, Sithis is the Corrupting Inexpressible Action. In the middle is the Gray Maybe ('Nirn' in the Ehlnofex).

The gist of the information is similar, if not identical in all three sources. There is no "Nir" yet in the "Light and the Dark", but the next passage elaborates on that.

Neither is really good or evil, as we know the words. They are immortal since they do not really live, but they do exist. Even the gods and their daedric enemies are pale reflections of the eternal conflict between them. It's as though their struggle creates energies that distort their surroundings, and those energies are so powerful that life can appear, like an eddy in a stream.

Note that their struggle - or their intermingling, creates energies. Now look at Vehk's teachings:
"Anu and Padhome, stasis and change, both vast realms sitting in the void, they created it. Not vast, infinite, as the void was infinite. Imagine an infinity enclosed by another; you come away with a bubble. Now watch as the two bubbles touch. Their intersection is a perfect circle of pattern and possibility that we shall call the Aurbis. The Aurbis is the foundation of the Wheel."

Now take a look at what those energies created: they were so powerful that life can appear. And what's a better symbol for life than a mother, which brings us to the female principle mentioned in the Anuad?

Nir became pregnant, but before she gave birth, Padomay returned, professing his love for Nir. She told him that she loved only Anu, and Padomay beat her in rage. Anu returned, fought Padomay, and cast him outside Time. Nir gave birth to Creation, but died from her injuries soon after. Anu, grieving, hid himself in the sun and slept.

The undead evils we know, and the demons that live on Oblivion tend to align with the Dark. Their natures are more akin to it. Humans and the other peoples of Tamriel, even the misunderstood Dark Elves, are more aligned with the Light. Our evils are not always of the Dark, but some are, and these are the truly dangerous ones.

Enter the alignment of some et'Ada with the Dark, from then on known as Daedra.
The blood of Padomay became the Daedra. The blood of Anu became the stars. The mingled blood of both became the Aedra (hence their capacity for good and evil, and their greater affinity for earthly affairs than the Daedra, who have no connection to Creation).

The Daedra were created at this time also, being spirits and Gods more attuned to Oblivion, or that realm closer to the Void of Padomay.
How the original spirits "aligned" isn't that important, the myths are stories and stories can be told differently in different parts of the world, but key elements will always remain the same.


No, magic power comes directly from the energies swirling about both entities. These energies are impersonal and all mixed up. Black magic is more a matter of intent than effect. The Mages' Guild holds that a fireball, say, directed against a creature intent on causing harm, is not black magic; but the same spell directed at one seeking peace is. In this, they are right. Destruction of a fire daedra strengthens the Light and weakens the Dark just a little. In the same manner, destruction of a unicorn strengthens the Dark.
This passage describes magic similar to what Vehk says in his Teachings. The rest is the "do good things with the power you are given"-lesson that is very common.

The gods have an unusual origin, if some of the oldest tales are true. The oldest inhabitants of this world -- no one seems to be sure what race they were -- had a system of myths that they believed in for a thousand years. The people of et'Ada believed for so long and so well, that their beliefs may, just may, have drawn upon the energies surrounding Tamriel to bring the gods themselves into being. If that is so, the conflict between the Light and the Dark provided the energy, and the et'Adans the structure, that created the gods of Tamriel.
Okay, the usual reduction of the text to the key statements:
Oldest inhabitants: the et'Ada. They believed myths - stories - so much that the gods that we know came into being. The struggle between Light and Dark played a major role in that, giving the energy, while the et'Ada provided the structure.

Anu awoke, and fought Padomay again. The long and furious battle ended with Anu the victor. He cast aside the body of his brother, who he believed was dead, and attempted to save Creation by forming the remnants of the 12 worlds into one -- Nirn, the world of Tamriel. As he was doing so, Padomay struck him through the chest with one last blow. Anu grappled with his brother and pulled them both outside of Time forever.
Initiated by the struggle between Anu and Padomay (Light and Dark), creation began (anew). A new world structure.

Finally, the magical beings of Mythic Aurbis told the ultimate story -- that of their own death. For some this was an artistic transfiguration into the concrete, non-magical substance of the world. For others, this was a war in which all were slain, their bodies becoming the substance of the world. For yet others, this was a romantic marriage and parenthood, with the parent spirits naturally having to die and give way to the succeeding mortal races.
The magical beings of the Aurbis (= et'Ada) told the ultimate story. That's the same statement the Light and the Dark claims: they believed their story so much that it came into being. This is pure mythopoeia. The mythic construct of the wheel became the new world's structure.

Of course, between all creation myths there are differences in storytelling, wording, in content and most of all, differences because of their intended audience or origin. No creation myth contains all of the truth. But all creation myths, from Anuad, Light and Dark, the Monomyth and even Words of Clan Mother Ahnissi show parallels and support the other myths in key points - as I have tried to outline above with just three examples.

There, I threw my stone.

bliviongate:

Thanks.

*ping*

That stuff was there long before MK and the Redguard team released their convoluted metaphysics. You probebly didn't played Daggerfall.

Morrowind removed all the intrigue, the conflict, the freeflow and the dynamics from the came. It replaced it with some bizarre story, one that was actually very run-of-the-mill. Gone was the action, gone was the exploration, gone was the ambiguity or anything that made the game anything more then Hinduism on meth.

Case-and-point: Oblivion, With MK telling them how to be crazy, the oblivion team tried to imitate the metaphysics of Morrowind. However, unlike Morrowind, Oblivion didn't have any cohesion or elegance. That's what TES has become, a series dependent on one view- one group of ideas, one man to hold it together. It isn't universal anymore, it is closed-minded and elitist.



That pretty much clinched it for me. I stand to reason that you are drawing very thin parallels, trying to create similarities when there are none.

I agree with you that if you read all thee stories, you can come away with a basic truth. However, I totally disagree that this truth is set in stone. My truth after reading all these stories will be different then your that will be different then everyone else. As I said before, there is no right answer tot his and trying to create a right answer when there shouldn't be one is wrong.

All this information has been helpful and after realizing there isnt a set truth i have come up with a few theory's of my own after taking all the different myths,particulary using the anuad,monomyth and the light and the dark as my direction.

I have one final question anu and padomay are interpreted in different ways,and i was surprised that one of padomays was sithis?
My question is,is this true in being that do the dark brotherhood believe this to be true,i only ask because of all the references to sithis in oblivion i never suspected that becuse it was never really referred to!

if this makes no sense i'l make it simpler,
is sithis an interpratation of change/padomay?

Belief is power. Just like the Et'Ada's beliefs (may have) gave rise tot he gods, so to could the DB's worship of "Sithis" actually created "sithis".

I believe what the DB worship is the perversion of the principal of Padomay (change) acting on Anu (order). The name of the principal is PJJJ or something, and this incommunicable (on purpose) name eventually devolved into he concept of Sithis.

miecznik:

The problem with mortazo's idea of "think what you like" is that it explains nothing.

If the people made their gods, who made the people? If the gods made the people, why are all the myths different? Didn't their gods tell them? So why do they share key points? Weren't the people there to witness the creation? If they were, why does everybody have a different religion with different gods? If they weren't, why do members of nine roughly the same gods make their appearance in every culture of Tamriel?

Only with the assumption that all myths describe the same story, those questions can be answered. Even the name of the Monomyth itself is a reference to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monomythand dead give away that they are the same story.

Now you might want to ignore mortazo. As you can notice he adores anything from Daggerfall and strongly dislikes everything afterwards. Which is pretty much everything written about metaphysics.

---

Sithis as described in Heart of the World is the sum of all limitation, and with Anuiel the soul of Anu they represent the two primordial forces that created the Aurbis. More exactly, their interplay is the Aurbis. As such they're nothing, because they're literally in everything.

This makes worship, not to mention actions in the side of Sithis, quite impossible because all the actions we can experience of Sithis are interactions with Anuiel. Everything that happens is the result of their interplay.

Now the Darkbrotherhood itself pulls this off this non-excistance neatly simply by giving every member it's own personalized experience of Sithis, which in a world where gods are real and experienced equally by everybody of the same cultural denomination implies there is no god. It makes them just a bit more deranged.

How Sithis relates to Padomay is best described by http://www.imperial-library.info/obscure_text/chaos.shtml, which puts it down as the Chaos Nature of Padomay