So the stars are actually tears in Oblivion to Aetherius, the place where all magic comes from. I understand this. Magic seems to be a very important thing for life, as written in "The Magic of Aetherius":



Now, the sun itself is the star that brings most of the magic to the Mundus. BUT: Was this sun supposed to be created? It was actually created when Magnus fled to Aetherius from Mundus in the last second, leaving this big hole in Oblivion leading to Aetherius.
So I'm guessing the sun wasn't intended to be created, it was just an "accident". This means that mortals shouldn't have been able to really use magic, at least not on this huge scale.

Could this be?

Thanks in Advance.

edit: Another question build on that: Daedric Princes. Do they have access to Aetherius? Or how do they get access to magic? Through the stars and the sun like mortals?
Do Aedra live in Aetherius?

If I understand elder scrolls cosmology... The Daedra get access to magic by being *part* of the Aetherius. They don't need a connection to it the way Nirn does, because they are the same sort of beings that the Magna Ge were, and the Aetherius is an intrinsic part of their... identity, so to speak.
Fish don't need hoses to get water, because they're swimming in it?
I could be totally off.

No, the Daedra did not participate in the creation of Mundus; the Aedra (and the Magna Ge) did. They have access to magick because they'd poof out of existence if they had none. Yes, they are aligned with Padomay, but Padomay is simply undefined and therefore nothing without Anu's presence.

It should be noted that mortals' magic works exactly the same on other planes. Even planes with no sun.

Right, that's what I was trying (poorly) to say.

Just because it's not visible due to the physical conditions of the realm doesn't mean it's not there. Or are mortals unable to use magick on Mundus at night because the sun isn't visible then?

On the CS, you'll find that the sun in the Deadlands is set to be black. A dead sun.

But overall, I'm doubtful that Magnus provides Nirn with magic. I mean, magic even worked in a pocket realm.

On the CS, you'll also find a bunch of weird "test" worldspaces and cells. I guess these places must exist within lore then, too. You should also remember that Oblivion is not outside of where Magnus is.

Unlike those test cells, the Deadlands are an integral part of the game, its lore, and its universe. I only brought up the CS because it's very difficult to spot anything in the Deadlands' sky, especially something colored the same as its background.

Nowhere in the Deadlands have I seen Magnus, I'm skeptical that it's anywhere nearby. Given the Aedric Planes are some distance from Nirn, I figure that the Daedric Planes are likely further out.

Actually, and this is from Altmer superioritist lore (not all too reliable), but, apparently, the Mer are actually gods, but they'd lost thier divinity when Mundus was created, and they where sent down to Nirn. Unless I'm mistaken, I think I read somwhere (and I think that may have just been the forums) that pure men can't use magic, at all. And since pretty much everyone has Merish blood right now, anyone can use magic.

It really depends on what stories you believe.

Where'd you get the pure men can't use magic. 'Cause I seem to recall something about the Atmorans being able to use the Thu'um.

It's still probably not the best idea to base your argument on some lighting settings that only really serve artistic purposes. (Poor development choice, by the way, as it makes the normal maps a waste of memory except when there's flashes of lightning or spells are cast.) Your other statement, like a lot of what you propose about TES cosmology, has to disregard all cosmological lore that exists. If I'm not mistaken, Magnus can be seen from Camoran's Paradise, the Shivering Isles, and the pocket realm the Battlespire once existed in, to name a couple places.

Why is it implausible that there can be other suns apart from Magnus? For that matter, why is it implausible that the little cosmological texts could be wrong? Why is it that the Aedric Planes can be seen from Nirn, but the Daedric ones cannot?

Edit: Fact is, we have very little cosmological lore, a great deal of which is from a text that frankly, I find hard to believe that the mortals who wrote it really know what they're talking about. It sounded to me like an attempt to explain something that they do not understand.

Why must it be the case that the cosmological texts are wrong and your theories must be correct? The premises you've provided to try and back up your claims, here and elsewhere, have amounted to "but it doesn't work that way in the real world", "the people of Tamriel are stupid and wrong because their research would be regarded as such in real life, and some real world 'research' and theories from the medieval era are somewhat similar to the ones presented by the people of Tamriel", and a bit of hardly relevant cell lighting settings and whatnot from the CS - all inductive thinking, and very weak at that. As it stands, your argument rings hollow. You should go back and find some strong, conclusive evidence. It'll either be that, or getting a job at Bethesda. Merely being a regular in this forum does not give one the right to simply waltz in and say "oh no, this lore is actually totally wrong, it truly works like this..." and championing the claim around almost as if it was actually canon. And as I've mentioned before, simply invalidating the currently upheld lore on cosmology does not automatically validate your theories, and only disproving parts of the established lore is even weaker evidence to work with.

It's one text and I have every right to question the factuality of something that thinks that something can be infinitely far yet still visible, that something is infinite but appears limited and spherical because of "mortal mental stress". Especially when it's being written by people who haven't even explored past their own continent (although that might explain their inability to believe that the planes can actually be spherical). I question it because I believe while I can see where they're coming from, I believe what they profess ultimately doesn't add up when viewed from a perspective not limited to observations only made from Tamriel. It is unfortunate that there aren't more texts on the subject, but it's not sufficient reason to give it special treatment. And if you want some evidence, I have it. Note that they're not exactly things that the Temple-Zero Society was in a position to be able to make:

The Deadlands either has no sun or has a dead sun. Like or hate the CS, it's a pretty simple observation.

The Shivering Isles and Paradise both have suns, yet they are not visible from Nirn, not even with the Dwemer's stargazing technology (Paradise gets a pass, since it wasn't around back then, but that doesn't fly for the Shivering Isles). Furthermore, they're not even in the mortal plane, they're further out. But they still somehow have a sun. And it seems pretty silly to bunch every Plane of Oblivion with a sun simply on the other side of Magnus.

TES III gave us the chance to observe a moon close-up. It wasn't mortal mental stress that make it appear roughly spherical. Of course, it's unlikely that the Temple Zero Society had this to go by, considering they were based in Cyrodiil.

Magic and physics work the same in both Oblivion and Nirn, more or less.

My line of reasoning is this:

What explanation places the Planes of Oblivion outside of Mundus, yet within the void of Oblivion, while allowing at least some of them to have suns without leaving room for either a dead sun or no sun at all? Simple; they're too far out to be seen, and their suns are in fact stars. And given they've no concrete evidence that Nirn isn't flat, given they've never ventured beyond their on continent, the Temple-Zero Society's belief that the planes only appear spherical due to mortal limitations is understandable.


Edit: I'm not calling the Temple-Zero Society stupid. I just feel that they're not in a position to know how the universe works, but as much as I don't believe most of what they say, I can see where they're coming from, given they're restricted to their continent and its Dark Age technology level. And apparently, even in-universe skepticism of them http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:The_Seed.

http://www.imperial-library.info/content/evening-star-3e-432 The nord there gets upset when the magic theory is even suggested.

but men can use magic. Men were just Ehlnofey that left formed after the Merish Ehlnofey, and were shunned off of Tamriel/Aldmeris for it.

When elves say that they were once gods, it is because all mortals were once Et'Ada, but thes Et'ada gave their soul to the first mortals.

The Aurbis is a multiverse of coterminous worlds, around an axial god, who manifests at the center of these worlds in cognate forms.


The writer of Cosmology never claims Nirn is flat, but that Nirn "is a finite ball of matter and magic." We don't know anything about T0, much less where they've traveled. There has been travel over the horizon and to other continents. There's nothing more to say.

The last part I understand, but I don't think I fully understand the first half of this theory. Is this theory basically saying that each plane is in its own universe?


I'll give you the first part.

As for the continents, most of them are considered hostile, thus I can't imagine scholars visiting them, let alone returning alive.

Look at the Shivering Isles sky again. It doesn't have a sun, it has a bright spot. I can't remember Paradise.

Baan Dar hardly qualifies as a celestial object and it strikes me that it was a bit of a special case as it seemed to be able to circumvent the barriers of the time. Also from a general impression I got, I thought that the Shivering Isles were flat. But that's just my own opinion.

However I do agree with you that we should recognize that there's less of a difference between Nirn and Oblivion than we choose to interpret. After all, the only thing keeping Oblivion out is the power of Akatosh, while the only thing keeping (most of) Aetherius out is Oblivion.

I may be getting confused with the whole "Men can't use magic" thing with another game, there. Getting my lores confused. My bad. :bonk:

But, the magic in the Daedric realms come from the prince, I always thought. It just seems to make perfect sense to me. But, I don't know why I can use magic in Dagons realm. Perhaps it' just a gameplay thing? Or perhaps there's a structure similar to Sigil Stone towers somewhere in the realm that acts as the sun does in Nirn.

I've got a name for ya Crimson: The Imperial Mananauts. Oh, and the Sunbirds of Alinor. Its kinda hard to achieve space inter-dimensional Aetherial travel when your (t0's) theories about space are incorrect. The "petty mortals" of Tamriel used to be gods, became gods, and traveled into gods. They know what they are talking about, and even if they don't, you need more evidence than "I don't think they know what they are talking about"

No, I'm well aware of those things. But it seems you're interpolating that they must share all or even any of their knowledge with the elusive T0 society. Seems like you put a lot of faith in a very secret society that even in-universe are considered quacks by some. Especially when we've got many texts of suspect accuracy. And when there's evidence that everything they say isn't correct.

Second, while supposedly mortals were once gods, it's not the case anymore; between the loss of memory between each life and the bottoming-out of the subgradients, that time is long gone, with only poorly-recorded (by that I mean myths instead of historical accounts) stories left behind.

Third, what the portals are actually doing is up for debate, because what they actually do isn't fully proven. As I recall, the Mazed Band was originally able to both move one across large distances AND provide travel to other planes; they need not be different things.

Also, I don't see my ideas as boring, just less http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EpilepticTrees. Maybe it's because I'm a Sci-Fi (specifically Star Wars) fan and really do feel like fusion reactors in a vacuum makes things more interesting than equidistant, unreachable interdimensional portals.


It looked like a sun to me. As for paradise, it also had what appeared to be a sun, identical to the the one on Nirn.

You've only given evidence that people are of the opinion that not everything they say is correct, not that everything they ever said is false. (Even the boy who cried wolf was right the last time, yes? Or the skepticism could be unwarranted. Or only mostly unwarranted.)


This and your previous statement yet again just restates your belief that "the people of Tamriel are too dumb to know what they are talking about".


I'm sorry to tell you, but TES is not science fiction, and it is not Star Wars, either. No fusion reactors or Death Stars to be found here. You also think "bizarre" necessarily equates to bad and wrong. The bizarreness is actually for a reason. Like with Vivec and his indecisive gender and [censored]ing everyone, MK said his goal with that was to make people actually think. And it does, because the bizarre really tends to stand out and poke you. When you see something that's more or less exactly the same as you'd expect from the real world? You'll either notice that it looks familiar and then not pay any more thought to it, or you'll ignore it completely depending on how used you are to seeing it. That doesn't make you think.

You've given me the impression that everything they say must be true unless proven wrong, despite knowing next to nothing about them. I prefer to be skeptical of it until it's proven correct. And I feel I have enough evidence to justify it.


Not dumb, ignorant.


It's a matter of taste, I prefer not to assume everything to be bizarre, I don't find that kind of thing as interesting as reality. It feels silly to try to rewrite all of how reality works while taking into account all the mundane phenomena we've witnessed just to make things more bizarre. Fantasy and science fiction need not play by completely different rules.

Edit: To me, bizarre implications ultimately limit things outside of Nirn, making them less dynamic and independent. I prefer a system where Nirn is but a small part of the goings-on in the universe, and where you can't believe everything written by mortals. Especially in a world not fully explored by its inhabitants, and where the implications of the power of myth on the plane can make people overconfident in what they think.

Nothing can be proven true, only proven false. The closest to "proven to be true" is simply not proven untrue. You haven't given enough evidence to prove that their ideas on cosmology in particular are untrue. I also haven't seen much in the way of evidence that heavily supports any alternate thesis. And, again, disproving one thesis does not automatically validate another. For example, say mortals think Nirn is flat; then you disprove that using some quality evidence, and then you say Nirn is round, supporting it using only the evidence you used to disprove the "flat" theory. It could be in the shape of a cube or some strange polygon shape for all you know so long as there's no evidence to support anything. Or, even if it is round, would you be assuming round as in like planets? What if it's round but a dyson sphere?
For now, we either have T0's theorem to go on, or nothing. Not to say "T0 or bust", as I do think it is entirely possible they could be wrong about some things (to say they are wrong about each and every thing would be a lot more of a stretch), but there's really not much other information that can be used to figure out what is correct. The problem is, you seem to be ignoring that and talking about your theory as if it is correct for certain, and when asked for evidence you rely on some rather silly bits of evidence such as CS cell settings and/or attacking the Temple Zero Society.

Same difference in this context.

Bizarre implications aren't necessarily limitations, they are just "bizarre". I can look up the terms in a dictionary for you if need be. Of course, you can also have bizarre limitations. It feels silly to throw out nearly all of the lore of how a particular universe works and just say that it really works the same way as the real world. That would make the lore almost totally pointless and only serving a role as fluff, which would be a huge waste in TES due to the amount and intricacy of the lore. And as I've stated in another thread, having to keep some semblance of real world phenomena around is virtually a requirement, or else it becomes very, very hard to make sense of. Remember what I said about bizarre lore having the effect of causing people to think? If the thinking part can't go anywhere, it becomes pointless, and that would be a waste.
Whether rewriting all of the mechanics of reality is silly or not, the developers did it. If they didn't, there'd be far less lore than exists currently, and TES would be no more interesting than [insert random generic fantasy universe here].
I wouldn't say what goes on in Nirn is a small piece of the puzzle, since it's pretty much the big melting pot of the Aurbis, but I do agree that places that exist elsewhere do have a lot more going on than mortals care to give them credit for. Battlespire, for one, showed quite a bit of intrigue that exists among Daedra and Daedric Princes.