The Origin myths such as the Monomyth etc allude to Nirn as being the "Grey Maybe".

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

Was there nothing there or might it be that to the senses of the original spirits known as the et'Ada that it appeared empty because there was no 'sensible' connection between them and it.

(Please note that the nature of the et'Ada has become plastic to the belief of mortals. More on this follows)

And the same would likely be to the senses of any beings within the Grey Maybe

Also it might be that to the senses of mortal/animal beings within the Grey Maybe there was nothing outside it - at least until Magnus 'accidentally' poked a hole in the exterior shell letting the mana in.

The et'Ada would have been beings with massively long-view of time and events that was likely based on a different dimensionality to that of mortals.

However, to enter the Grey Maybe the et'Ada would have to change refine their senses to percieve 'short/fast/brief' events and once the et'Ada had entered the shell any beings already within it would then have perceived them and begun to interact ...

an early example of sauch intereactions:
And trees are normally relatively 'insensate' ... so maybe it was trees the et-Ada first came into contact with or were first perceived by because trees are very long lived and the et'Ada became aware of them first?

And where the trees were in the Swamps were reptiles. Shells are very reptilian concepts are they not?



If those spirits lacked practice in dealing with mortal concepts etc then even if there were any, they would not have really been aware of the mortals (sentient or aminal) at first ... but they might have been influenced by them - and so they perceived trees forst and were influenced unconsciously by sentients and therefore expected the trees to be sentient ... etc.

I would expect that from a mortal point of view those spirits would have been seen as 'egocentric' ... but at some point someone or something reached out consciously and at that point they began mutually brainwashing each other.

Perhaps the et'Ada gifted mortals with their own concept-blankness re many things and the mortals gifted the Great Spirits with intricacy and form - and both sides thinking the other's thoughts went mad.

Another way of looking at this is that mortals are 'fast' cycle beings where et'Ada are long cycle beings. Maybe also et'Ada (note Jyggalygg as the retard in this respect as he has to calculate everything out) see a being as their entire life where mortals normally see only a slice of time.

Previously et'Ada were looking at the long Cosmic view only ... so they saw the rushing mortals and Nirn as a blur full of energy and possibility but were unable to make out the detail ...

Hence the crazy Dawn Times ...

I'm not sure I get where you're going. What if there was no Nirn, is that it?

Et'Ada see a long view of everything.

Mortals live fast in comparison.

Et'Ada cannot focus on which beings are superior.

Therefore, they become trapped or chaos starts?


I have no idea I'm just trying to figure out what you meant, 1999. Please refrain from using abuse when correcting this awful post.

I'll be glad to help when the Cliff Notes are posted.

Honest effort is fair play bittergreen. I don't insult polite or serious posters ...


I'm trying to see between the lines to why the Grey Maybe was seen as the Grey Maybe by the et'Ada. and what there might have been about it that they could not see. One speculation being whether there was something in there that they could not see because they were used to using their senses on a macrocosmic scale.

This assumes there could have been more there than they realised and uses 'science' and future events to form a basis for these assumptions

So on the other hand - Nirn as the Grey Maybe came to be called might have been seen as a localised area of intense possibility - possibly because the 'modern' nature of Nirn was already formed and it had existed for a very long time - maybe actually predating the et' Ada's awareness of it? So I am suggesting that what was happening in the Grey Maybe/on Nirn was happening so fast by their standards that they had no way to perceive it accurately.

So I suggest that the et'Ada might have been used to seing in more than 3 or four dimensions also and that would further complicate things for them.

For example if you study the psychology of perception regarding primitive creatures like frogs you will come accross an assertion that because of the primitive nature of their brains and visual equipment frogs can only see corners and movement.

So although the et'Ada may be intelligent, vast and long-lived beings of great power it may be that their own evolution had not prepared them to perceive the Grey Maybe and its contents as they were. and most especially not gifted them to deal with it from the inside ...

So then I am postulating that might have had numerous repercussions when the et'Ada entered the Mundus for the first time.

To date we have explored the idea that the et'Ada were all-knowing by comparison with mortals and we accept the mortal take on the sayings of the et'Ada etc ... but what if they were not as all-knowing as we have assumed, but simply vast and different? And what if the et'Ada got messed up in ways that they did not understand when they entered the Grey Maybe so that they were not able to accurately assess correctly what was happening ... If that is so their account of events to mortals would be incomplete and misleading to say the least.

That's the start anyways.

Anu = Light
Padomay = Dark

Grey-Maybe = Light + Dark.

Which et'Ada?

Before they aligned to either Anu or Padomay, they were constantly shifting and dissolving into the Wheel, so I don't know if they had much time for perception.

Yes - that could be a strong argument in support of the theory I presented above. The use of faculties requires practice and most especially when their use would need to be applied to something that is outside the norm that is the usual focus.




Maybe the et'Ada could only comment on what they truly perceived and that originally they only perceived light and dark?

There is one little detail that might be added here - the place of 'substance' in this equation.

To suggest that 'spirits' have substance is sort of a contradiction in terms - yet it appears that the et'Ada interact with substance.

Yes light itself is not a substanceless quantity in that it is a waveform that requires micro-units to act upon to be perceptible to our senses - or it might be said that it is the product of something else that is light.

I suspect that what attracted Lorkhan and his naive followers was the fact that the Grey Maybe was substance-rich and so they looked forward to fascinating discoveries having perceived the intricate and powerful interaction therein - but of course although in one way they were richly rewarded, they also ran into a couple of unexpected phenomenon in that they encountered inertia - and the fact that solid matter requires vast amounts of power to be manipulated.

Also maybe there is some form of gravitic effect that prevents even spirits from rising past a certain point - possibly an Event Horizon as in a Black Hole? To a comparatively substanceless spirit the forces in solid matter would be tremendous.

I wonder what our old friend Polycarp would have to say about this?

Exactly. Light + Dark = Grey.

If you still can't see the elephant in the room, let's try round 2, shall we?

I AM + I AM NOT = I MIGHT BE (maybe)

GREY MAYBE

Where is the Lore that established that the et'Ada, the moth priests et al are infallible? Nowhere.

They make mistakes - they have limitations to their abilities - the black and light bit is accepted Dude and your addition seems potentially valuable too - but can you expand on that? The premise is that the Lore can support other contstructions built on the foundations it presents.

This thread is not presented as a role-play for one thing - it just an attempt to get past what has been written to see where it might go.

Dearest 1999,

If we are to assume that all statements are fallible we find ourselves back at the proverbial first square. who says that there are 9 provinces in Tamriel? Who says that Akatosh is indeed the Cyrodiilic deity of time? It could be they are all fallible and therefore wrong. Certain assertions must be taken as fact in order to have any lore to speak of.

The single biggest (though potentially not the only) fault in your argument is this: the Et'Ada did not name the Gray Maybe. The Gray Maybe was named so by mortals, who based this name on the intermingling of the concepts on which their deities are based. Akatosh-Lorhkan, Light-Dark, Space-Time, IAM-IAMNOT.

What was the possibility? Action, potential, life. If you are everything, as the Et'Ada were before Mundus' creation, you are also nothing for there is nothing outside you. The Et'Ada could not do anything but exist or not exist. With Mundus came various gradients of this, shades of between black and white that define mortal life. There came also variations of I AM and I AM NOT: I am happy, sad, red, blue, male, female. The Gray Maybe is possibility incarnate.

I fail to see where your are attempting to go with this. The topic is clear as crystal, at least so it seems by the responses of the people within this thread. May I suggest that you review the Loveletter and Vivec's sermons? They talk in great length of the creation and nature of the Gray Maybe.

Unto time everlasting,
Ayaan-Si

Dear Ayaan-Si - you appear to believe that this is about denying what has been written and seen. Whereas I acknowledge that limitation (be it's name Lorkhan or Jyg) is useful I believe you have cast a totally different (and not so useful) interpretation on the premise that I am attempting to explore.

And one thing I am attempting to explore here is the possibility that it was the et'Ada's belief that they were everything, but that they had their own limitations and those prevented them from seeing that there were things beyond the reach of their own perceptions.

If you look at all the interactions between the et'Ada you have to accept that they were not alll-knowing in their own terms even before they devolved/evolved from their original duality. They disagreed - and that bespeaks disagreement. So who was correct? What if they all got it right in some ways and wrong in others?

The et'Ada were collossal beings by the estimation of the 'mortals' of Nirn - but then mortals make mistakes too - what if those mortals were mistaken about the infinite nature of the et'Ada for example?


Imagine if you will a mote of dust in the middle of intergalactic space. It cannot see and so it cannot interpret the light-waves that would otherwise show it the form of distant things etc. so it believes itself to be all powerful, and the space around it to be totally empty etc ...

Until that dust mote (assuming it has intelligence) comes into contact with other matter and evolves senses with which to interpret that data ... and then it will change it's beliefs. Etc. and that poor dust mote may still get things wrong ... because it's new senses will have limitations. That is the nature of the finite confronted by the infinite.

Until all the contradictions within ES are reconciled there is always room to look beyond the envelope and postulate that there must be something more - just as much as there is room to look within the envelope and postulate that things should be interpreted differently.

Sometimes looking outside the envelope can bring new understanding of the contents of the envelope.

Well that's correct - I have set the topic perfectly clearly and other people have ignored the substance thereof and tried to side-track it into something they are familiar with and that actually goes somewhere totally different.

The people who have posted so far seem to prefer to look within the envelope and are a bit shy of looking outside it. They may be correct in their assessment of what is beig atempted in the Obscure Texts - it does not mean they are correct in their assessment of what is being attempted in this thread, nor does it mean that they are wrong about their own points of view, though they or I may have made certain grave errors of interpretation as we all might - it just means they are unable or unwilling to look at the envelope from the outside.

As it stands if no one picks up on this thread it will die - but that still does not mean that there is nothing of value that could not be made from the ideas here. Even if the ideas are too far outside the envelope to take a place in the Lore I still believe it is better that people offer their ideas as it happens.


At a certain point artificial value-systems and constructions can become too ingrown - feeding off themselves in a way that is not so healthy, and then its is a good idea to open them up or juxtapose them with new ideas - something like the Obscure Texts can make a powerful contribution - but if you only look to one source of fresh input for something so complex then that content is more likely to become samey.

ES has been built by weaving together a wide variety of different people's styles and perspectives so that the differences remain clear and are capable of being representative of different cultures etc. So I have tried here to add a different perspective that is inherent in what has already been presented as Lore rather than repeat Lore that is apparently already decided.

Anyhows - make of it what you will. This is not a development Forum and what I have put here will hardly prevent things from happening and being decided elsewhere will it?

Until the next tea break

I try not to speak for others, but I feel that I'm safe in saying that Proweler and I were merely pointing out the significance of the terminology in the name "Grey Maybe". We were not disregarding what lies beyond the confines of established lore, nor were we trying to push established lore in as a means to undermine your topic. I'm sorry if it seemed otherwise. It was a truly extraneous bit of information that I put forth, but an explanation of how the mundus is both "grey" and "maybe" actually says so little that I have no idea where you're getting the idea that either of us have an opinion on your theory one way or the other. The "elephant in the room" comment was not directed totally at you. It was directed at anyone who didn't figure out the "maybe" part on their own after reading prow's comments on the "grey". Sorry, dude. Didn't mean to step on toes. Carry on.

No probs The Dude - please take it that I was responding to the construction that the remarkably adroit and well-informed 'layman' Ayaan-Si was putting on things and that I had not planned to approach your contributions in that way.

I can't argue that the Lore says Light + Dark etc - but I sort of feel that there is room for a bit more and it is worth adding more structure because that will eventually permit more 'culturally' sensitive and in-character writing by the next generation. This thread does not have the full flavor of Lore at this stage - it's an exploration of possible ways to expand the Universal physics.

It's been said that MK has been trying to link things up through the texts that Ayaan-Si mentioned (I may have read those before Ayaan-Si joined these Forums) and I guess that the reason for linking up is that doing so gives more room for devs to create meaningful and useful new stuff ... well what is attempted here is a barer but different approach to the same thing. Simply put each Aedra and Daedra is said to represent/embody a specific quality or fundamental force - but does that mean that other Aedra and Daedra are not subject to that, and do not contain that to some degree within themselves?

Note the questions in recent thread/s about the CoC and whether he had to be insane to take Sheog's throne. Was he mad all along people have been asking? Was it all a dream? And what is true for the CoC who is 'babysitting' Sheog's throne ... what could that say of the Gods themselves?

Question is do the Gods embody or represent their 'specialities'? Well if Sheog embodies madness and the others have some of that in them too, maybe at one point were they all insane? How insane does a God have to be before he is identified as insane? The Dawn ages seem mad enough by mortal standards, eh? So where did that insanity come from that Sheog 'mastered' in creating his realm?

If once you establish that 'everyone went or was mad' as the Dawn Ages seem in certain ways to demonstrate - where is the basis to say they were ever sane? Was all the view of the Aurbis etc a dream? So I decided to take another look at that with a view to asking if there is a basis that can encompass all that without destroying the flavour of what has already been written.

Again why? Because if Es is to go far enough into 'future' times, exploring further Universal Constants and more 'technical' philosophy, and setting them into the Lore might prove useful to the mix.

Not saying what has already been written is not Lore - what is there is Lore because Characters in Es etc have written books that say there are such beliefs etc ... scary, eh?

Thanks to the nice thread started by Lycanthropic Nerevar and proweler's response http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=908457 we have another link in the chain - magica

Aetherius is said to be the realm of magica - so now can we apply the approach above to magica?

Question is what role does magica play in Aetherius? It is not enough to say that it is there etc ... question is how it behaves there?

Is magica a waveform like light, heat, sound etc?

Are there little magica particles floating around as part of an 'atomic structure'? etc ...

Did the Gods use magica alone to perceive ... or is there light, heat etc also in that realm - well all the essential forms that we perceive in the Mundus?

Those magicka particles you are looking for are called creatia. The Daedra used it to create their realms, and the towers of mundas are said to collect it. Atherius is a realm of static possibility, potential if you will.

:thumbsup: Coool

Uh - ohh - that means there is something I have not read up on yet - back to the search button - but at least now I have a word to try it on! Ty