I'm not saying that the Temple is attempting a cover-up, but the Sermons are not exactly easily understood by most people. They are meant for the most religious and devout of the Dunmer, and only a few (Saryoni, for example) could really be believed to fully understand them. The Pilgrim's Path introduces all Dunmer to the divinity of Vivec and explains how they can go about being more devout followers of the Temple.

Without trying to equate it directly with real-world religions, it's kind of like the difference between going to Sunday school as a kid and learning about Christmas, and reading the Song of Solomon.

EDIT: Or you can just read Weird's answer.

I don't believe the whole "moons are rotting divine material", but I can believe that a giant rock passed through Giant Vivec's digestive tract. Why he ate a rock in the first place, I'll never know.

Play morrowind, and look up in the sky at night. You can see stars THROUGH the shadows on the moons.

From http://www.imperial-library.info/obscure_text/cosmology.shtml:

What are Masser and Secunda?

Masser and Secunda ('Jone' and 'Jode' in the Ehlnofex), the moons of Nirn, are the attendant spirits of the mortal plane. They are like the mortal plane in that they are temporal and subject to the bounds of mortality; in fact of this, the moons are dead and died long ago. The moons used to be pure white and featureless, but today their 'skin' is decaying and withering away. Their planes are likewise dying. Mortals perceive this as the moons being spheres with patches of their 'surfaces' completely eaten away; as the moons spin, they seem to become slivers or ragged crescents. These are not caused by shadows, because you can see stars through the black patches of the lunar spheres.

Its not that I don't hate obscure texts, but it is supposedly written by a "Temple Zero Society". So its more like an theory from the TES universe given to us by MK. But thats open to interpretation.

Thanks Alf.

I am at work, and cant be bothered to dig out sources.



One thing is sure though--- Should Lie Rock fall, it will cause "One REALLY big stink."


Crimson:

Do you have morrowind? seriously, just look at the moons in the sky. It is visually confirmable. That is pretty cannon right there. It was done PURPOSEFULLY.

When the alternative to a theory is just the shallow face value of a few in-game pixels with no thought put into it (read: not lore) then we go with the (only) theory.

Not exactly. Basically...

Vivec the god always existed, at least as long as all the other spirits did. The only problem was that this was in a different timeline. The mortal Vivec in our timeline (along with the other two members of the tribunal) caused an artificial dragon break to merge the two timelines so that Vivec was both a mortal (as he was in the mainstream timeline) and a god (as we was in this other timeline). It is assumed the King of Worms did the same thing using the Mantella.


Open to interpretation as this is just one of MK's personal theories, and no one is required to agree with him.

By all means, present more theories, just don't let the alternative be a 35 kb .dds file.

What if it's a 512kb .DDS file? What THEN!? (Gigglesnort)

K, Lunar Lorkhan. I think MK isn't the only guy who pushed the idea of the "dead moons." Then again, I forgot the context of that term.

Then I'll sick a compressor on it until it conforms to my awe-inspiring anologies.

I hate to just post more quotes, but...

From http://www.imperial-library.info/mwbooks/lunar_lorkhan.shtml:


While it doesn't state directly that the moons are 'mortal,' it does suggest that they are at least temporal to some degree. In this case MK's "unofficial" obscure text is consistent with "official" sources, and so because there's really no alternative "official" theory to the nature of the moons, this is what we have to go off of. The question is really irrelevant to the topic of "Landfall," however, unless you're just going to use it as another rallying point for those who distrust the obscure texts.

Yet both of the sources supposedly stem from beliefs in the TES universe.

There are no facts in a universe made out of the very substances of faith, belief, and subjective reality.

There are no facts in fiction.

remarkably apt on many levels, including the mythopoeic level in this case. A rather profound statement in regard to the TES universe.

But there IS fiction in fact.
(Im feeling snarky)

So if Vivec changed time so that he would have always been a god (Vehk etc etc), he would them be timeless I suppose.

This single event creates a paradox capable of destroying... everything. Its unthinkable... unforgivable even.

So my anology of this situation is like that of the (Ocean Palace?) in Chrono Trigger that exists in all time periods at the exact same time without being subject to time itself.... would that then be an anology for Vivec? He exists in all times... all at once?

If that is the case... what happens when he dies? Does the paradox come full circle? Would his unforgivable act of changing time then create a destructive paradox (Landfall) capable of rendering space/time into nothingness?

What a fool! I feel like loading my MW save and kicking his ass!

Why don't you ask him?

"Vivec, tell me what happens when you die?"
"When I die in the world of time, then I'm completely asleep. I'm very much aware that all I have to do is choose to wake. And I'm alive again."
"Oh, that's cool, Vivec. But where are you when you're dead?"
"That is the god place. The place out of time, where everything is always happening, all at once."

Vivec is Schrodinger's Cat?

So my anology was proper.

So by his words (Vivec), he cannot truly die since he could just wake himself again and become alive.

But as we can see from the MW main quest, Vivec is losing his immortality/godliness, for he does not have access to the Heart of Lorkhan.

When he becomes mortal once more, he will not awaken when he dies. If he does not "awaken", he no longer exists. If he no longer exists, his paradox comes true.

If his paradox comes true, the Nine help us all.

A paradox is only a conceptual thing. Paradox in reality cannot exist, as space and temporal reality would bend to adjust rather than experiencing cataclysmic failure. So the worst that could happen would be something along the lines of how a multi-decker parking garage implodes. You still have one physical layer, but [censored] is it a mess.

So at worse, a Dragon break would occur? Vivec already made one Dragon Break by changing time. I bet Akatosh isn't too happy about that...

Either a Dragon Break, or like your anology, everything becomes compressed into one layer, "Time Compression", Final Fantasy 8 style?

Certain events from certain histories would take precedence over the others, and it would all collapse into one line. Some events may merge, some may hit dead ends, others may take the path that they never happened, but it would have to make some logical sense through the line in order to maintain a stable reality. You could easily end up with something like Jyggalag being the supreme ruler of all existence due to never being stopped and absorbing the power of all other god figures. Note, I'm not keen to exactly what the discussion is on, as I'm not big into TES lore at the moment, Just throwing the bone as I crawl through Oblivion.

Note: I'm trying to get a feeling for the lore and get a general idea of everything.

Note 2: A far more canonically likely scenario would involve more temporal leaks between the realities that would end either in a convergence of the most stable version, or some intervention to restabilize the inherent system before they collide.

Mainly, I'm just saying a paradoxal collapse of all reality into the void isn't likely unless something provokes exactly that to happen.