Ancestor worship and the good daedra. Dunmer are much more literate on the differences between the daedra and I think are less likely to generalize to the others.

Like I said, the Dunmer literally believe Mephala, Boathiah and Azura to be their oldest and most powerful ancestors. One and the same reaslly.

edit: The Tribunal were only ever placeholders for these old gods in the eyes of the masses anyway. Each was said to embody the qualities of one or the other. I believe Sotha Sil was Azura, Vivec was Mephala and Alamalexia was Boethiah. Very fitting to their personalities and class archetypes really. To revert to the Anticipations would not be a dramatic shift in faith because the difference between Vivec and Mephala amounts to the difference between Jupiter and Zeus.

That quote is pretty clear that Vivec intends for the Temple to go on without the Tribunal. He has no problem telling the priests Almalexia and Sotha Sil are dead. He intends for it to go on completely without them.

And of course, if you're right that the Temple can't go on if people know the truth, then you just confirm my argument, because the Temple, according to Oblivion, does not go on, which is what you're arguing about. Vivec's plan apparently backfired.


Now obviously that's a slightly mean trap, because your original point was that with such a strong hierarchy and general embeddedness, the Temple was not going to collapse overnight, and that it apparently does is poor storytelling. And I agree with you on that point. It would have been far more interesting for the Temple to continue as Vivec had instructed. Nonetheless, the bases are pretty much covered enough to support the official (however flimsy) storyline.

Did you read my post? Its not completely without the Tribunal, its without the Tribunal as living gods, they're simply performing a different role. As I said that quote is before Alma & Seht's deaths, meaning you cannot infer from it anything regarding Vivec's actions after their deaths, when he says "without its Living Gods" he's not referring to Alma & Seht being dead - he's not stupid enough bring about the end of the Temple on a whim. My point was not that the Temple cannot go on if the people know the truth, my point was that there is no way for the people to figure out the truth, and that even if they were told they would not believe it.

So what you're saying is that, they can't revert because they don't realize they've changed?

Sorry if I misinterpreted you, man.

But that is what it looks like you said.

Regardless, you're whistling in the wind here. 'Beth-lore' is that the Temple collapses. There's even a plausible explanation. Vivec said 'I'm gonna tell the priests the game's up, and then I'll head off to some other dimension to chill'. He does this, subsequently Lexie and Sil die. He sees no point in not letting the priests know, tells them. This is basically what the game suggests happens.

And even if you don't believe it is, Oblivion follows this up by name-checking a 'collapse of the Temple'. Presumably (and again, we're presuming within the realms of Beth-lore and its justifications), as you said, reorganising the Temple is "hardly something you can accomplish by letting the people know that 2/3rds of their deities are dead." Essentially, this follows from the given interpretation of Morrowind's events, with a little bit of addition and extrapolation (i.e. 'and the Temple collapsed' rather than 'and the Temple flourished') on the part of Oblivi-Beth.


An argument suggesting that this is impossible is a rather hopeless endeavour. 'The Lore' clearly states what happened, and even justifies it. You could argue that that's not a good story, which, as I said, I agree with you on, but you can't argue that that's not the story.

Beth doesn't seem to have any problems with changing lore in future installments. Will be interesting to see if they stick with it or even mention it in the next elder scrolls.

That Vivec told the populace is the only even semi-plausible explanation, but from the 3rd PGE we can easily infer that that didn't happen (and nowhere does the game basically suggest that it happened):

"Dagoth Ur and two members of the Tribunal, Almalexia and Sotha Sil, were destroyed in the Nerevarine's fury. Vivec too may have been killed, but his fate is currently undetermined."http://www.imperial-library.info/pge3/morrowind.shtml

They don't know what Vivec's fate is or whether or not the Nerevarine even killed him, so I'm pretty sure we can say for certain that Vivec hasn't been making any public announcements - afterall, if he'd been the one to relay the news of Ayem & Seht's death then surely they know he whether he was alive.

So, what do we come away with. Vivec didn't tell them based both on the above quote along with the fact that doing so would openly contradict his goals. Helseth & the Queen Mother are the only other people that knew, and they wouldn't be believed; the people already think he killed his predecessor, he's known to be at odds with the Temple, and he's a foreigner, not exactly a good source regarding the state of the Tribunal as he's obviously biased and untrustworthy, plus if the people won't believe the Nerevarine they're not going to believe Helseth. The Nerevarine is the only person that could provide proof as he's the only one capable of accessing the Clockwork City, but it can't be waived off as the Nerevarine having done it simply due to the fact that the Nerevarine didn't canonically do anything outside the Main Quest. So basically it couldn't, wouldn't, and shouldn't have happened the way the devs say it did.

I never argued that it wasn't the story. My entire premise throughout this thread has not been that it didn't happen, but that it shouldn't/wouldn't/couldn't happen if the devs had actually thought it through.