Y'know, I hate to semi-jack the thread, but seeing as I've made 2 threads in teh past about the subject but my question was never really answered, I've decided to ask it here: what exactly were the curses Ur "cast" upoin Morrowind? The curses I speak of are:

fourth curse, Curse-of-Ghosts
fifth curse, Curse-of-Seed
sixth curse, Curse-of-Despair

It'd help tons if I could actually get an answer this time...

Fourth I don't know. The fifth I'm going to say is everyone is infertile, that is why we don't see children in MW. Sixth, I guess people are more depressed. Yes, I'm just taking stabs

Perhaps the curse of ghosts refers to the ghostfence. Before the huge one was made, dunmer used ghostfences to protect their homes from harm. Also the ghostfence only made Dagoth Ur stronger. I know he didn't directly make it, but it was because of him it was put in place.

ｈｍｍｍ　ｔｈｅ　ｇｈｏｓｔｆｅｎｃｅ　ｗａｓ　ｅｒｅｃｔｅｄ　ｔｈｅ　Ｔｒｉｂｕｎａｌ　ｔｏ　ｃｏｎｔａｉｎ　ｄ－ｕｒ　ａｎｄ　ｔｈｅ　ｄｉｅａｓｅ　ｏｎ　ｔｈｗ　ｗｉｎｄｓ．ｉ　ｄｏｎｔ　ｋｎｏｗ　ｗｈｅｔｈｅｒ　ｏｒ　ｎｏｔ　ｉｔ　ｗａｓ　ａ　ｃｏｍｐｌｅｔｅ　ｄｏｍｅ　ａｔ　ｔｈｅ　ｂｅｇｉｎｎｉｎｇ，　ｂｕｔ　ｉ　ｔｈｉｎｋ　ｓｏ．　ａｓ　ｔｈｅ　Ｔｒｉｂｕｎａｌ　ｔｅｍｐｏｒａｌ　ｐｏｗｅｒ　ｗａｎｅｄ，　ｓｏ　ｔｈｅ　ｇｈｏｓｔｆｅｎｃｅ　ｓｈｒａｎｋ．
ｓｏ，ｎｏ．　ｉｔ　ｉｓｎｔ　ｐａｒｔ　ｏｆ　ｄ－ｕｒ　ａｔ　ａｌｌ．

ｖｅｒｙ　ｓｏｒｒｙ，　ｂｕｔ　ｊａｐａｎｅｓｅ　ｋｅｙｂｏａｒｄｓ　ａｒｅ　ｓｕｃｈ　ａ　ｐａｉｎ　ｗｈｅｎ　ｙｏｕ　ａｃｃｉｄｅｎｔａｌｌｙ　ｐｕｔ　ｈｉｒａｇａｎａ　ｍｏｄｅ　ｏｎ，ａｎｄ　ｉ　ｄｏｎｔ　ｋｎｏｗ　ｈｏｗ　ｔｏ　ｐｕｔ　ｉｔ　ｂａｃｋ！

Walter:
I'm actually thoroughly surprised someone has not already mentioned this before.

Great find and revelation. It's absolutely mind-blowing, but it's very nature is mind-blowing. It's such a paradox. It's hard to wrap your mind around it.

I have pondered this myself, but not nearly to this extent. I mean, wow, I have a very new perspective on the events around Dagoth Ur.

You make him sound so much like Cthulhu though. Dead and dreaming in his home...

There goes the fourth wall again.

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtan

Hey, wow, haven't seen you in so long Xarr.

Welcome back then!

Luagar2,

I must say, my friend, that your mind has consistently produced works of the greatest interest and importance. I commend you on yet another fine achievement. :goodjob:

I have yet to absorb all of your points, but I feel that this will come in handy in the future. Please cease not in your endeavors.


Yours in the Scrolls,


___The Word Merchant of Julianos

It was erected to contain the Corprus disease, but Dagoth Ur could have come out if he really wanted to. And it kept too many people from going in and killing Corprus beasts and Ash Slaves, only Armigers and Ordinators, and every once in a while, members of the temple entered, which means that a lot of the tribunal's army was probably lost to Corprus, not to mention the fact that it could still be spread when the volcano erupts.

Also, the Seven Curses doesn't seem to exclusively refer to things from Dagoth Ur.

Through the doors of the unmourned house
Where scoffers scoff and schemers scheme
from the halls of the oath breaking house
rings seven curses of gods blasphemed.

Dagoth Ur isn't specifically mentioned.

Dagoth Ur could not have left, because he needed to be close to his precious heart.

Only when the Heart was snug and cosy in the new Giant Stompy would D-Ur be able to go walk about.

Walter:
Sounds like a reference to the Sixth House (Dagoth Ur's little "house") to me.

or House Dwemer.

But if you're so smart, then what is the curse of ghosts?

Lots of ghosts in the Dreemsleeve. This thread should put that into more perspective.

Walter:House Dagoth is more likely considered the treachery at Red Mountain. The fourth line DOES refer to House Dwemer, however.

It's easier to figure out when you have the entire riddle:

first curse, Curse-of-Fire
second curse, Curse-of-Ash
third curse, Curse-of-Flesh
fourth curse, Curse-of-Ghosts
fifth curse, Curse-of-Seed
sixth curse, Curse-of-Despair
seventh curse, Curse-of-Dreams
I'm thinking "curse of ghosts" might refer to the empty shell of a life some of the awakened dreamers have. In a certain sense of the word, they are ghosts, puppets of Dagoth Ur that appear to have no free will of their own.

Makes more sense. The ghostfence was just a guess. But um... Why are you calling me walter?

I wasn't calling you Walter; Walter is just one of my characters.

Hint: It's called roleplaying. Learn it.

Oh, okay.

I noticed a link to this thread in another thread. I assume I'm can reply in this since my question is specific to this thread and it would be rather counterproductive to start a new thread about this thread, plus, its only three pages long.

These two quotes make it sound like nothing was accomplished with the Nerevarine. The ashlander asks what the ghost of a god would be and if a dead god can dream. The wise woman says that he was dead but dreamt that he lived. So doesn't the wise woman answer the first question in the affirmative, a dead god can dream, that's how we got Dagoth Ur the first time.

But if he's dead, how can he dream? And could another person do the same thing, like if Vivec were to be dead could he "dream that he lived"?

How so? Isn't the Dreamsleeve just souls, with souls being distinct from ghosts.

Being of Vorynite would actually be a fun character in the new game: you would have to prove your self to the Nords who expected you to help them at Red Mountain.

I am so glad that this thread was bumped. The theories here are interesting, and I've always wondered what Hassour meant by that quote.
EDIT: Reading through the OP through made me think about something...In-game, does Dagoth Ur even leave a corpse when you kill him? I can't seem to recall if he does, I just assumed he fell into the lava as the platform collapsed (I'm talking about when you destroy the heart when he's still 'alive', not actually killing him)

No he doesn't. He just fades away. I did an experiment once keeping him off the bridge (since I run the Great House Dagoth mod he is passive). When I stepped off the bridge after freeing the Heart, he vanished.

I always dislike reading over my old posts and realizing how I could have worded things better...

Think of it like this. First, make a dichotomy between the literal world and the dream world, but both are real. Now when you go to sleep in the literal world your mind enters into the dream world, you manifest a body within your dream and go about as you like, easy to understand. Now, reverse the process, what happens when somebody who's primary world is the dreamworld world dreams? Just the opposite occurs, they manifest a body within the literal world and go about as they like.

Now we'll give names to those worlds, we'll call the literal world Mundus and the dream world the Dreamsleeve. The defining qualities here are that the Dreamsleeve, apart from just being that dreaming world, is also where spirits of the deceased go to be recycled (ie, slowly purged of their individuality while they experience the afterlife of their belief). This means that, upon death, the dreamworld becomes those people's primary world. Most of them dream about some afterlife in Aetherius or Oblivion and slowly fade away. Dagoth Ur however is the one that dreams from within the dreamworld, he is "the dream-sleeved inversion" - he died, and now from within the dreamsleeve he dreams that he lives and he's just powerful enough to make it happen.

I remember talking http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1076801-where-is-the-dreamsleve-and-is-it-for-daedra/page__st__20__p__15680226&#entry15680226 about the difference between a soul and a ghost. I'd be inclined to agree with you, a soul is pure spirit, while a ghost is a soul which is animating ectoplasm.

Going off Hyamentar's statement though, which brings up an idea I never though of before, perhaps some ghosts are similar in this sense to Dagoth Ur. In TES when you die you get the afterlife you believed in, ie, you dream and experience Aetherius, Sovrngarde or whatever while your soul is slowly recycled; in Dunmer religion the afterlife is one of watching over your descendants. Now what if we assume that the Dunmer afterlife is just another one of these dreams of the dead within dreamsleeve?

The Dunmer spirits are dreaming within the dreamsleeve, like everybody is doing in the dreamsleeve, the difference is that they're dreaming about the real world. What if that's what ghosts are, souls in the dreamsleeve which are dreaming their afterlife out, this would explain why they seem to slowly lose their memories and go crazy as ghosts, their souls/individuality is being wiped clean by the dreamsleeve. Unlike Dagoth Ur however, they're not powerful enough to manifest solid bodies, or even semi-solid bodies, without the aide of substances such as ectoplasm (which I don't think we've ever delved very deeply into what exactly ectoplasm is in TES). Maybe that's why Nibani Maesa didn't seem awestruck by the fact of Dagoth Ur being 'dead and dreaming', she's used to the idea, just not on Dagoth Ur's level.

In this line of thought Dagoth Ur's uniqueness is in his connection to the Heart coupled with a special understanding of the nature of the world (which I mentioned originally in terms of 'false symbolism'). Ghosts would just be souls which temporarily reconnect to Mundus to experience their afterlife. Dagoth Ur however took it a step further and made his manifestation a permanent, solid, corporeal thing, immune to the erasure/recycling; he truly 'inverted the dreamsleeve' and was working on making his dream the one dream, on exercising the power of lucidity in the literal world. For him, the dreamsleeve was reality, the 'divine dreamworld'.

As I alluded to in the OP, perhaps this is the inversion of CHIM (because ya' know, no conversation is complete without it)... hopefully I haven't contradicted anything I said before, I haven't really checked.

Yea, he just sorta dissipates in a shower of sparkles leaving no trace (its actually the same animation from the first time you kill him). Its rather odd in and of itself. The only other creatures I can think of that fail to leave a corpse are Dremora and ghosts, Dremora because their bodies proper reside in Oblivion and only create temporary vessels here (at least in Morrowind), ghosts because they are simply animated ectoplasm and so have no body to leave - but even still, both of them at least leave a trace of their existence, Dagoth Ur just disappears. The only reasonable conclusions are that he either didn't die but was rather transported away like the first time you 'kill' him, or that his body was truly incorporeal.

His body was no more real than your body is when you're dreaming. If you're killed in your dream, the dream ends and you likely wake up, but what happens to your dream body? Generally it disappears with the rest of the dream. But what if the rest of the dream didn't disappear, if the dream kept on without you? Your body dissipates into nothingness because for that dream you're no longer there to sustain its reality, that is, the realness of your body.

I can't believe I missed this thread. Thank goodness it was resurrected so I could read it. Good work, Luagar2. I had noticed Nu-Hatta referring to Dagoth Ur as the dream-sleeve inversion, which recalled to me some lines from the Sermons about Dagoth Ur being the false dreamer, and "there is a world that is sleeping and you must guard against it." But I was too lazy to work it out, so thanks for this.

I want to build on the dream topic. There's a line in the sermons which goes something like "the waking world is the amnesia of dream." I take "the waking world" to be mundus/ the "real" world. I take "the amnesia of dream" to mean that mortals forget the dream-sleeve they come from/will return to, and so only conceive of themselves as this bodily being in this world. This may be tied as well to the notion that "the temporal myth is man."

Nu-Hatta says the dream-sleeve is where the biters live, and that Dagoth brought them here. I still don't know what the significance of saying Dagoth brought the biters here is; but, sermon 21 refers to the Aedra as biters:

"They are the lent bones of the Aedra, the Eight gift-limbs to SITHISIT, the wet earth of the new star our home. Outside them is the Aurbis, and not within. Like most things inexplicable, it is a circle. Circles are confused serpents, striking and striking and never given leave to bite. The Aedra would have you believe different, but they were givers before liars. Lies have turned them into biters. Their teeth are the proselytizers; to convert is to place oneself in the mouth of falsehood; even to propitiate is to be swallowed."

Since I'm not sure why Nu-Hatta says Dagoth Ur brought the biters here, I'm going to ignore that (if anyone has an explanation, feel free to offer it!) and focus on the notion of the Aedra being the biters which come from the dream sleeve. The convention is that event at which the gods met and set the rules for Mundus, so to speak. This can be understood as certain beings within the dream world setting the rules for the "real" world. The period between kalpas can then be understood as a dissolution of the rules, and so a return to an all chaotic dream-state.

Now, Pelinal speaks to the Champion of Cyrodiil as if he has been woken from a dream (or has the CoC entered Pelinal's dream?), in which the linearity of time does not hold. According to the Song of Pelinal, Pelinal would occasionally succumb to fits of destructive madness. When asked what these fits of maddness felt like, Pelinal would answer: "like when the dream no longer needs its dreamer."

What does that mean?

I will suggest two interpretations.

First, Pelinal is the dream and something else is the dreamer. That something else no longer needs Pelinal, and so he lashes out in anger.

Second, Pelinal (and the other gods) are the dreamers, and the Mundus is their dream - treat Mundus as a sort of dream within a dream. And Mundus - from time to time - no longer needs Pelinal and the other gods.

Extremely interesting. So in a Sense, Dagoth Ur was dead all along?