Request to the Loremasters, plzkthx!

OK, so Tiber Septim rebuilt Numidium at Rimmen, and the Dragon broke. He ascended to godhood (i.e. finished the mantling process) and used it to conquer Tamriel (in that order? Simultaneously? Dragon is broken so makes no sense to ask about order?). Am I OK so far?

My question, then, is: why did the Dragon break? What temporal weirdness was going on here? Was it similar to the Warp in the West, in that he was using Numidium in more than one place - i.e. the Break was connected to the use of Numidium? Or did it break because he ascended to godhood, in the same way that it broke when the Tribunal ascended, i.e. the past was rewritten? Neither? Both?

I've been trying to read up on Tiber Septim/Talos for ages, and the sources are Not Being Helpful. Or they just break my brain too much. Help please!

K.

[quote name='Kateri' date='31 August 2010 - 09:29 PM' timestamp='1283282981' post='16343863'

My question, then, is: why did the Dragon break? What temporal weirdness was going on here? Was it similar to the Warp in the West, in that he was using Numidium in more than one place - i.e. the Break was connected to the use of Numidium? Or did it break because he ascended to godhood, in the same way that it broke when the Tribunal ascended, i.e. the past was rewritten? Neither? Both?

[/quote]
I believe my preferred answer would be "Both and either because of the other."

I was afraid of that... more detail would be much appreciated, though!

The Numidium pulls intersecting* universes together. As http://www.imperial-library.info/content/interviews-skeleton-man, it actually subverts the Dragon, robbing him of his Divine Center. The Numidium - activated - is actually its wielder, seen through the eyes of the petty mortals it has transcended. So, does that mean anything to you?

*read: interspersed, not intersecting. You can't bring things together which are already together.

Yyyyy...nnn... kinda. Rereading that bit of the SM Interview helped, but now I could do with more clarification of terms like "Prime Gestalt" and "Gray Maybe". And passages like: "This Warp is but a realization of the trap that is the Gray Maybe, and that champion of release, the Brass God, has but reminded us again what the failure of his misuse means in the Arena Mundus." (in relation to the Daggerfall warp)

The Numidium's designed for transcendence, and the Western kings "abused" it. I think it was clever of them, but whatever. The Gray Maybe is Mundus. Xal, a Marukhati, believes Mundus is wicked. Prime Gestalt is highest consciousness. That's the Tower, Numidium. Its realm, or influence, is greater than the Dragon's. It supersedes space/time. The Numidium's designed for transcendence, after all.

Ahhh, thank you!

You are welcome.

To be more specific, it was designed to transcend back to the first stroke of Padomay and Anu, not the Dawn where most elves seem to have a giant obsession over (dunmer excluded)

Same thing.

The Dawn is just the narrative.

True, but I wanted to make sure Kateri knew what the dwemer were trying to do, instead of the typical merrish day dream.

I guess. I'm weary of the racism, shtick.

We had a nice discussion about the Walking ways, a while back. At the new TIL. My opinions are there, so I won't rehash anything more.


Man started it.

I always thought that the Gray Maybe was what the Universe was before the Interplay of Padhome and Anu, and Nirn is an attempt at getting there.

Think of Anu and Padomay as this: White and Black. When you combine the two, you get gray. The Gray Maybe is the gray portion

The Gray is obvious. The Maybe part is what needs more study.

Anu-Padomay represents Is-Is Not, or the best way we can do to try to comprehend Is-Is Not. I tend to think of the issue anologously to the Tao, in the sense that the Tao cannot be referenced at all because it transcendent the categories of being and not being. The idea is that reference requires differentiating (saying that something is not something else), and at some point differentiation fails to apply. At that juncture the truth cannot be stated at all, just intuited. (That’s how I understand it, but I haven’t read the Dao De Ching in a while).

But, some other things occurred to me when thinking of Is-Is Not, and especially the notion of maybe.

First, in standard logic anything and everything at all follows from a contradiction. (This is called the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_explosion, and it’s one of the reasons logicians don’t like contradictions - if a contradiction is true, then everything is true, and also false).

To see this, presume a contradiction: P and not-P

From this it’s obvious you can infer: P

Now, the truth value of a statement is never altered by adding to that statement “or…” where “…” is anything at all. For example, if it is true that “there are tigers at the zoo,” then it is also true that “either there are tigers at the zoo or aliens are planning to invade earth,” because even if the latter assertion is false, the whole assertion is true (given that “or” only requires one side to be true). So, from P we can infer: P or Q

From our original presumed contradiction we can, in the same way we inferred P, infer: Not-P

From P or Q, and Not-P, it’s obvious we can infer: Q.

By the same process, we can infer anything (or its negation) at all. So, if Anu-Padomy as Is-Is Not is meant as a genuine contradiction, then it would seem to open the door to, well, everything. But true contradictions don’t sit well with me - Where is the hospital that both is and is not down the street?

However, you can still utilize Is and Is Not to derive different possibilities without supposing a genuine contradiction. I’m thinking of the project Wittgenstein outlined in the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tractatus_Logico-Philosophicus.

First, you identify types of basic objects in the world - for an object to be of a certain type means that it can stand in certain relations with other basic objects. The number of possible states of affairs depends on the number of basic objects which exist.

Suppose there are two objects, P and Q. Either both are true, one is true and the other false, or both are false. As in:

P  QT  TT  FF  TF  F

Now, different states of affairs can be represented by indicating the truth-values of P and Q in which that state of affairs would or would not obtain. So:

P  Q   State of AffairsT  T       TT  F       TF  T       TF  F       T

Describes a state of affairs which obtains no matter the truth values of P and Q (a tautology - actually, Wittgenstein would say a tautology is not a state of affairs, but a limit of possible states of affairs, since it lacks content). And:

P  Q   State of AffairsT  T         TT  F         TF  T         TF  F         F

Describes a state of affairs which obtains when either P is true, Q is true, or both, but not when both are false. And so on for all other possible states of affairs given the number of basic objects (with 2 objects there are 16 possible states of affairs).

Every possible state of affairs can be represented using just the names of the basic objects and the connectives “or” and “not.” A tautology, like, “P or not-P and Q or not-Q,” for example, can be restated: “It is not the case that neither P nor not-P, nor Q nor not-Q.” The upshot is that by taking a list of the kinds of basic objects which compose reality, and negating certain subsets of that list, you can generate all possible states of affairs.

So if we let Anu contain the various kinds of objects in the world, and let Padomay stand for the act of negating various subsets of those kinds, then the brush of Anu with Padomay (Is-Is Not) could generate any and all possible states of affairs.

But still, I think some sort of mythical-religious interpretation is more likely to be right.

I thought, and hologram came to mind, so I looked for this. There are instances which crumble, and the affect is in the recent jettison of several maybes.

http://www.imperial-library.info/content/etada-eight-aedra-eat-dreamer

Each Tower as an echo of I brings the fate of Lorkhan.

I reckon the principle works just fine here. When time and singular existence are just concepts to keep the the process of self examination from disintegrating by forcing that only one subset is examined at the same time, those concepts can be also be ignored.

The existence of different contradicting events is in itself not a problem, the uncertainty of what may be can only trouble a singular existence, Nirns schizophrenia should make it less troublesome.

The Gray is Nirn.

Or have I been too desensitized to cheesy metaphors? That was just a guess, then I read The Monomyth. Not too creative, but, it's whatever.

There are constantly new existences being born with existing ones being contradicted and crumbling. Most of the time, it's nothing as major as the Warp in the West, but if you observe the subtle changes in existence after they've been replaced, parts of you will be replaced too. When you've observed the non-existent, the paradoxically-impossible too long, you reach Zero-Sum.