There's tons of gods in Morrowind lore (not sure if Oblivion mentioned the tribunal) and I wondered if all of them were really gods. Could it be possible that Vivec is a fake or some other "god" was just a mortal? I'm a bit confused on all these gods. Could someone please elaborate and explain to me which one of these are real (in Morrowind of course)?

[/spoiler] The Tribunal are sadly fakers... [spoiler]

Play the MQ and the story about the Tribunal reveals itself.

All the other gods in MW show up in OB as well.

If you'd like to read more about it, i suggest The Imperial Library site.

snowkel1
Have you completed the main quest? Then you should've received all the answers.

P.S. Someone move this to lore section please.

I've never really got to finishing the MQ and have been lately starting new characters. :ahhh:

They're all fakers. Especially the Aedra.

As I probably won't finish the MQ...What do you mean by they're all fakers? (Please put in spoilers tag)

They are all about equally real/fake. None of them can compare with for example the Christian God, but they could be somewhere in line with the Norse gods. For starters, the only ones who are actually immortal are the Daedra Princes.

and Aedra, which are the nine.

No, Aedra can be killed.


Source: http://www.imperial-library.info/mwbooks/aedra_daedra.shtml

I do not think the Tribunal are any less divine than the other gods of TES. They may not be quite as goody-goody as they are portraied by their faithful and they did use questionable means to ascend to godhood, but they still have the power of gods and therefore I count them as true gods.

People are saying things to really contradict the answer to this thread. :blink:

What answer? That the Tribunal are fakes?

I guess the answer to who is a real god depends on your definition of what a true god is. If you want true immortality (can't be killed), omnipotence, and omniscience you won't find a god like that in TES. If you are satisfied with immortality and incredible power the Daedra Princes will match your conditions. If you drop the true immortality requirement you can also include the Aedra and the Tribunal. Although the Tribunal gods did have something very close to true immortality - they could be killed but they wouldn't stay dead. However, separation from their powersource for centuries has significantly weakened them.

This of course is without regard for morality. If you expect that a god should be good that causes additional complications.

Contradictions are a mainstay of Elder Scrolls lore; even for historical events in the series, you'll not find one definitive interpretation anywhere,.

okay the short and sweet version:



Tribunal: Three followers of Saint Nerevar (You in Morrowind a couple thousand years ago) that fought beside him at the battle of Red Mountain, and arguably killed him. Used the tools of Kagrenac (Dwemer High Priest Magecrafter who studied how to make the dwemer immortal) on the heart of Lorkhan(we'll get to him in a minute) to give themselves the abilities of gods. As such, they ushered in a "Golden Age" in Morrowind.

The Nine (Aedra): These gods followed Lorkhan(explanation coming soon) in an attempt to create a realm of life by giving up their immortality and a large deal of their abilities to several parts of the world (Nirn or Mundus). I'm not 100% about what happened with Lorkhan but he turned against the Nine (or the Nine turned against him) and he eventually wound up dead. :celebration:

The Daedra: These gods didn't participate in creation of Mundus, and thus retain their immortality, and reside in their own realms and are the embodiment of change in the universe.

All of these can be seen in the constelations of the Firmanent.

Thats a good sum up I believe.

I never really liked the tribunal and their false god ways but I kinda favored Vivec.

I choice not to kill him because mostly commitment to his people in trying to protect them and such.
That might change on whether or not he did kill Nerevar.
But I believe that answer is going to remain indefinite. As really it should I suppose
lol you guys and your crazy lore lol

It's not arguable if they killed him: they killed him, and Vivec held the knife.



What???

this is the best post on these forums

Nah. They were real, Dragon Break and all. What they don't naturally have is a power level over 9k, but power has never been a suitable definition of divinity.

I never really was a big fan of the Tribunal.



The Aedra are boring IMO.

The only really interesting ones are the Daedra.

(I'm new to the universe, so there may be errors in this summary. Please correct any if you are aware of them)

The Eight Divines Aedra make up the eight plane(t)s that revolve around Nirn (the planet setting of the Elder Scrolls series). They're all infinite in size, although some are bigger than others. That they show up as spheres is just an optical (and neurological) illusion. These beings were et'Ada (original divine spirits that participated in the creation of the world) that were especially powerful and gave up that power for the creation of Mundus (the infinite general area around Nirn), and provide the eight spoke-points of the border holding back the larger infinite area of Oblivion. They are mortal, like everything else that truly resides within Mundus, but that word has an unusual meaning -- while heard about a lot of et'Ada residing in Mundus that were turned to the Earthbones (transforming or dying into the framework that keeps reality 'real' and things with a stable form), "fading away" due to the interference from reality, and one case of being eaten and then pooped out by a Daedra and becoming a Daedric being, they're not something you can run up at and attack with a sword, most of the time. It's widely agreed that most of them have faded away or transformed themselves, and some sectors believe that they all have and the only thing left are reflections and rules left in the Earthbones, modified by other types of divine beings. They're Anuic in nature (by some definitions, as a criteria).

The Ninth Divine, Talos, is a different type of divine spirit, just an Ada. Depending on how you interpret things, either one guy who was a hell of an Emperor and got ascended for being the best one, or three guys who acted very similar to an extremely powerful concept called the enantiomorph, he was normal people that "mantled", or walked the path of a god until the god began to walk they way they did (think goldwalking from Unknown Armies, but without the replacement thing). We've also seen the King of Worms ascend, albeit through a different method and a very unusual situation that might have limited his power, but the King of Worms does have his own celestial plane, a moon that sometimes eclipses Arkay's plane, so it's not unreasonable to assume Talos is somewhere in the cosmos, too. Like the Aedra, he's mortal, but it's not really something you can run at with a sword. Such ascended gods are timeless, so there's a bit of temporal oddness involved in this.

Like Talos, there are other ascended and un-ascended god-like beings. The Tribunal would be the best-known of these, and the most intentional of them. They were immortal, when Lorkhan's heart existed as a mantella; even the complete disruption of their physical bodies would only be like a quick nap to them. Their power was related to the power they could channel through Lorkhan's heart, but their nature was divine, and as soon as they had activated the Heart, they had been deities present at the http://www.imperial-library.info/characters/trial_vivec.shtml. The power they had was borrowed without permission, but their own nature became divine with this stolen divinity.

The Daedra don't (usually; the four unstars may be special cases) have plane(t)s visible from Nirn, but they do have plane(t)s, as they reside outside of Mundus. That also makes them effectively immortal; typically they only create avatars on Nirn representing themselves that can only be dispelled, but even breaking on in its home simply sends the animus into the spare space outside the plane in Oblivion, which returns with its memory (and does so pretty quickly). They can be altered or masked through cyclical change or their own whims, but they are limited in ways that mortals are not; they can create lesser beings and things as part of themselves and their plane(t)s, but the range that they produce doesn't really match up to the variety found on Nirn, hence at least part of the interest in the world. They can probably still disappear if they wander too close or too far from their origin within creation. They're mostly Padomaic in nature.

Then there are Magna-Ge, beings who helped plan or implement Mundus, but fled before it completed and completely broke them down. They don't have visible plane(t)s, but they did leave visible marks as they escaped -- the stars are the holes they ripped out from the fabric of Mundus as they escaped, through which magicka can flow in. The biggest of these holes was made by Magnus, the architect of the world, and is observed as the sun. For added fun, they're an infinite distance away, infinite-sized holes in an infinite-sized plane, and some seem different sizes. Chalk that up to mental stress.

There's also the special category of Lorkhan. He's generally considered to be Padomaic in nature, but encouraged the Aedra to create Mundus, and his heart is the heart of the world. His body is dead and decaying, as it makes up the moons, but his nature is very tied to Nirn, which makes him a lot more effective than he might be otherwise.

There are also Anu and Padomay, personifying stasis and change, respectively. Other than the knowledge that they're outside of perceivable space, verifiable information about mortality and placement not available here.

Which is a real god? Maybe none, or maybe all, depending on your definition. It's more like a system of ancestor worship, Buddhism (see CHIM, if you can), or even nature worship than it is the typical monotheistic universe, though.

The Daedra are just a bunch of chaotic little kids basically and the Tribunal are the asses who perpetuated the Dunmer worldview that they are cool.

Then I suppose I need to take care of some unfinished buisness in morrowind.
Umbra was getting thirsty anyway.

I was bored, thats why I decided to do this:


Yeah. You're basically right


The temporal oddness is the Dragon Break, more specifically the Warp of the West, when Arctus the Underking got his Mantella/Heart back.


I dont' know if you can use "mantella" regarding the Heart. But that could be me just being nitpicky about nomenclature.


The Serpent is made of unstars, as the recent Serpent thread would dictate. And Daedric Lords only have planes, not planets. Oblivion is perceived as space to mortals.

Think you're basically right.


Right, though I'm not sure about the Buddhism bit, though I haven't read too much about Buddhism in a while. How do you interpret CHIM?

The Little Rascals 2: Spanky Dagon

I think the question of what characteristics you attribute to a god are important. In the case of the Tribunal (who I deeply enjoyed during their time in Morrowind) they were mortal and divine. When they tapped the power of Lorkhan's heart they remade time and space. A new timeline existed in which they were always gods while blending right over the line in which they killed Nerevar to achieve godhood. Hence why Vivec claims he is innocent but also confesses in the Trial of Hogithum Hall that he murdered the Hortator. Vivec the God did not slay Nerevar. Vivec the Mortal did.

Now that I'm done defending my favored tribunal, let's move on. The Daedra, in terms of immortality, would fit the bill for gods. Regardless of any answer in this thread, Tamriel either has many gods (polytheism) or no gods and only super powerful beings.

But then there's CHIM and that throws a whole wrench into the concept of what a God is. Because, at least from my understanding, CHIM is a state beyond that of mortality and godhood. A state in which all is one and one is all, yet the being retains existence (as opposed to zero-sum). For this reason, gods in TES are merely very powerful beings. However, there are really no "gods" at all since at the heart of it, there's always CHIM to make one more powerful than a God.

But once again, what does power have to do with divinity?

-Hexon

(I'll apologize in advance if I have misused any of the terms. it's been quite awhile:)