I agree with Hellmouth that Aludin and Akatosh are pretty much one and the same.

Kinda think of it like in Christianity: You have God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. All are the same, but all are separate too, with different characteristics.

I do not want to get into a religious debate; that was just an example.

To me its like the Abrahamic religions of present. Thye are all the same, but by different names and have some different qualities deopendign upon how the religion is used adn interpreted and added to by the new people thatt recieves it.

Since its all interpretation no one can prove their different, unitl Bethesda and their people bring proof and have reasons and show us how. SO to me its like that.

You might want to remove the christianity reference, it is breaking forum rules but also I've already said before that I don't believe Alduin and Akatosh are the same being. There just isn't enough evidence to positively conclude that and it seems a bit odd that we would already know the main plot of who the enemy is before we even get close to the game. I'm sure Alduin and Akatosh are completely different beings.

I'm trying to get intothe lore more,i find it really interesting,but at the same time hard to take in,maybe i'm trying to take in too much at once.
So i will not state things from lore,just yet.
Imagine you didn't know the lore just for a minute.
Then remember the end of oblivion....then remember what you see in the skyrim trailer. Alduins wall,dragon.
If you was someone who didn't know lore....what would you think about the ending of oblivion,and the trailer for skyrim.
Me....i would say akatosh..is alduin...from that alone...i would say that is obvious.

Not really. I could say it was the dragon from Redguard I killed that came back to life as a zombie dragon, just because Alduin is a dragon and I crossed the lines.

Oh, god, not this again.

On topic: Alduin would kind of have to be big, given that he's supposed to, you know, eat the world.

Honestly you could see it as that simple,it may not be of course.
But i'm talking about the ending of oblivion and the beginning of skyrim ( trailor ).
I bet most people who know absolutely nothing about lore,would think that.
Like " hang on...thats that god/dragon from oblivion,he must be the bad guy in this one" wow,that was a turn for the books.
If you see where i'm coming from.
Like i said forget about lore,and go by what you see,in the end of oblivion to the trailer in skyrim.
Like i said,it's very simple,and obvious at the same time...IF you look at it from that aspect.
Sometimes things are better when you look at them in the simplest form.

If people can go around saying "Alduin is Akatosh and he will destroy the world" and have all this backstory that isn't established as lore to explain him I can say that I don't believe he really is Akatosh. I don't see why you guys think you have to right to say something as fact that isn't fact but me saying that I don't think he is and not stating it as fact is such a terrible thing. Also, he isn't literally "eating the world". Consuming the world is a metaphor for destroying it. You can't take TES lore completely at face value, you have to realize in what context it means.



But it doesn't make it true. You can use the same thing as I said. What if Skyrim was after Redguard and you saw the dragons burning everything. Would you think it was the dragon you thought you killed in Redguard? Probably, but it's pretty obvious it's not him.

Umm thats metaphoric for the fact that he is bringing the apocalypse.

(maybe its not metaphoric and Im confusing my words.)

Akatosh is Auriel seems to be official. If they can be two people at once maybe they can be three. Or they are seprate, like when those Maruhkati Selectives danced on the tower and split Akatosh apart, they succeeded too well and released his destructive side as Alduin. Without the other aspects to balance out his personality, he'd destroy the world permanently. Time didn't just repair itself on it's own, but it was really us that had to recombine them. It happened in the first era, but the timeline doesn't line up because... non-linear time stuff. Just some random speculation.

That's a misconception. Auriel and Akatosh weren't two separate beings, it's just Akatosh with a different name to the elves. It's not like Akatosh and Auriel walked up to each other and said "Hi" and hugged each other. The difference here is that Auriel and Akatosh are the same being and they also have the same aspects. Alduin is nothing like Auriel and Akatosh and it also adds to the effect that it took everything out of the Aedra to make Mundus, how could they destroy Nirn and rebuild it as they please. Why would Akatosh kill off the worshippers that give him and the other eight divines their power? Seems to be against his own interests. Also it goes against the very fabric of his being. He is the first spirit of Anu, the force of Stasis, meaning keeping things the same, thus is why he and the other aedra haven't directly manifested themselves on Nirn since the dawn era, the daedra are the ones that continually meddle with the world. The only evidence that Akatosh and Alduin are even related is a book that loosely associates them, otherwise they don't have anything in common and Alduin is everything that is against a spirit of Anu such as Akatosh. Also, I don't want to hear the argument that Akatosh is schizophrenic, because if gods are so omnipotent and powerful as MKs musings suggest, then a schizophrenic god of time would've already shattered time with his insanity.

Look i love the lore,i'm extremely interested in it now,thanks to cipher 8's thread ages ago...thanks mate
But if you look at it in it's simplest form...its basically saying alduin is akatosh,and it's all been planned.
It more or less slaps you in the face it's that obvious,if you look at it,they way i said in my earlier post.
No need to be complex about it from that view,but you at least know where i'm coming from right?

You know it's a problem when folks drag obscure lore into a topic and insisting the fact of it oft makes for some members feeling baited and we do warn for such.

Moving this to lore where the experts can sort it and will ring a mod if it gets out of hand.

MK did say somewhere that Alduin will literally eat the world, in addition to works written by him that have yet to be contradicted from in-game stuff. So it matters whether you'll take an ex-dev's, now freelance for Bethesda, word or not.

The thing with this universe, myths are real.

Yep, MK was kind enough to clarify world-eating in my topic a while back;

I don't get why we keep trying to compare aedra to men and mer. I guess maybe it's because they "punished" Lorkhan for "tricking" them, sounds like a very human thing to do. (I doubt that's what really happened, seeing the sources comes from the elves and not from the gods themselves).

Also, I have never heard MK writing the gods as powerful. Alduin can't even eat the world unless the previous events in the elder scrolls games have happened + the civil war.

Missing that Akatosh & Alduin are the same guy is like missing the "Big Brother is Watching You" in 1984.

It's a pattern of myth that you're meant to draw lines between, and while there are some areas where it gets hard to draw these lines, this is one area where it's really easy. This pattern of myth is the literal foundation of the world of Tamriel. If Alduin is not Akatosh then Tamriel doesn't exist.

Since you seem sorta new and unfamiliar with the lore forum and the lore in general, I'll go ahead and save you the trouble of searching around for answers:
http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1158326-how-does-one-eat-the-world/page__st__20__p__17010120__hl__alduin__fromsearch__1#entry17010120

Really the first and second lines are all you need; precisely the "it's going to be the whole of Nirn inside his mighty gullet." which is about as literal as it gets when it comes to whether it will be him literally "eating the world." http://www.imperial-library.info/content/seven-fights-aldudagga will give you the same thing as will http://www.imperial-library.info/content/morrowind-varieties-faith-empire and http://www.imperial-library.info/content/oblivion-five-songs-king-wulfharth-1 Nords aren't known for their deep thinking - if they say something eats the world, they mean it's literally gonna eat the world.

Time has many aspects, the Imperials revere one aspect of it, the Nords revere another. Both still revere Time. The Aedra don't manifest themselves often because they're good parents. And again, if you think that the gods are ever presented as omnipotent I might suggest taking a look at the pinned threads in this forum, because such is never suggested by anyone anywhere.

When you say "a book that loosely associates them," do you mean the one that says "Alduin is the Nordic variation of Akatosh..."? Or do you mean the general trend of the entire mythos that suggests the same thing? I would think the fact that they're both referred to as the god of time would be enough...

No mention of Satakal? Strange.
Anywho all this world destruction talk reminded me of:

Eh, I find Satakal to be Shor, with its stomach as Akatosh. You have Satakal, who tried to help spirits, but the hunger from its stomach forces it to eat whatever it can. It then created Mundus as an easy prison to catch spirits and eat them. The Redguards are a weird bunch, half 'n half of merrish and mannish myth, but not really at the same time.

Yeah, I'm not sure where this "ES gods are too powerful" argument comes from. It seems like they're just the opposite, but that's only if you look at the available evidence.

However, I don't think it's that Aludin can't return unless the events of the previous games happened, it's more that he won't. A prophecy doesn't cause something to happen, it just says what will happen. Of course, with this example it's a little muddy, since some of the events of the previous games do, in fact, seem to be direct causes of Alduin's return, but as a general rule a prophecy has nothing to do with causation.

It is really a shame that such ignorance taken hold in the Skyrim forum. Are "Varieties of Faith" and "The Monomyth" not canon?

A lot has happened in the game. The Staff of Chaos is gone, the Numidium was activated for a second time and went boom (which also acted as a tower, if I am correct), Red Mountain became deactivated, White Gold Tower may or may not have deactivated (but the covenant with Alessia has). The world is becoming more and more unstable, allowing what was kept locked up for centuries to break free.

Wouldn't be surprised if this had been a long and convoluted plan for Aruiel-Alduin-Akatosh to break free and resume his pattern once again, instead of being trapped in a world 2/3s of him doesn't like.

Too complex . Nah, I like those two books; one of the most simple, yet in-depth books on the nature of myths and religion in Tamriel.

On the other hand, if Uriel Septim VII hadn't been told about the prophecy of the Nerevarine through his Elder Scrolls, would he ever have sent that particular prisoner to Morrowind?

In the words of the baking wisewoman, "Ohh, what's really going to bake your noodle later on is, would you still have broken it if I hadn't said anything?"

I agree with this...but i'm very new to the lore. But i am willing to learn.
But with what you said,and my simple explanation/or example of simple to sleign.
Would suggest he wants to break free,and he indeed is akatosh,alduin,Aruiel.
Guess we'll see when skyrim comes out.
But in the mean time i'm looking forward to getting more into the lore

Stripes?


I don't like how the Staff of Chaos is suddenly part of the Conspiracy. Numidium, Red Tower, and Sons of Talos: these I get, but the Staff? Why even bother? So we look like master ploticians, or some [censored]?

Oh, please don't interpret my dislikes, personally. I know my standards are amazing, but you need to develop your own palate, too.