Question is in the title. Any information on this deity would be appreciated.

Lorkhan is a cultural hero, a Trickster in the mythological tradition. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trickster
He's Raven, Anansi, Coyote, Prometheus stealing fire from the gods to give to humanity. Lorkhan tricked the other gods into creating the Mundus and was punished for it by being torn to pieces, his Heart thrown to the Mundus. But the developer MK wrote something to the effect that "Perhaps he failed so that we wouldn't."

"Finally, the magical beings of Mythic Aurbis told the ultimate story -- that of their own death. For some this was an artistic transfiguration into the concrete, non-magical substance of the world. For others, this was a war in which all were slain, their bodies becoming the substance of the world. For yet others, this was a romantic marriage and parenthood, with the parent spirits naturally having to die and give way to the succeeding mortal races.

The agent of this communal decision was Lorkhan, whom most early myths vilify as a trickster or deceiver. More sympathetic versions of this story point out Lorkhan as being the reason the mortal plane exists at all." (from "Monomyth", an in-game book)


See also various documents on the Imperial Library website.

http://www.imperial-library.info/content/morrowind-monomyth

http://www.imperial-library.info/content/oblivion-lunar-lorkhan

Lorkhan is also Shor, Shezzar, Lorkhaj, Sep, and is, essentially, the other half of Akatosh.

Some myths say that Lorkhan's heart was ripped out by the gods and shot with an arrow into Mundus by Trinimac, but the Nord myths, possibly others, depict Lorkhan as willingly removing his own heart for the sake of Mundus.

There are two strains of thought on the creation of the Mundus. The elven tradition, with some exceptions, is to say that mortals are a step down from godhood and the elves need to get back to divinity -- the Creation was a mistake. The human tradition, with some exceptions, is to say that Lorkhan did the right thing in bringing about mortals.

It would be quicker to figure out who Lorkhan isn't.

+1

Since I started asking questions here in the lore forum, every single person that his name popped up has some connection with Lorkhan or is Lorkhan =_=

But I think that if you don't want to go into the very complicated stuff, this information they gave you is enough, there is a no-return point really after that, there is just more and more info, but it's fun if you're curious and wanna know more

Nowhere does it say he willingly removed his heart. All myths make it clear that Lorkhan was betrayed by his fellows and his heart was forcefully removed. The Nords in particular make a great deal out of this, because the Elves robbed them of their war chief this way. (Unless they change their mind, of course.)

Certain factions in Tamriel, do interpret Lorkhan's overall role in creation as a deliberate failure, so that the inhabitants of the mortal world might know how not to fail. However, this is clearly distinct from the actual story.

Can somebody tell them to stop saying Lorkhan is Akatosh?

HE IS NOT!

Don't know why anyone would want to tell 'them' that, because it is completely correct. Not that either is necessarily aware of it, of course.

Ahh maybe you 2 should back up your claims with properly sourced evidence, there seems to be alot of confusion over this

Shor Son of Shor is basically the only place.

He is the mirror image of Akatosh, he is the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enantiomer. They are like our hands, (again, same but mirror images of each other, therefore opposites)

I answered this question before, and here I answer it again...





MK will have to severely twist his tounge to wriggle out of lore that is as blatant and clear as this.

Normally MK writes in 'confusion script' but this is one of the times when it is as clear as day and not subject to misinterpretation, what the lore is saying.

All that proves is that Akatosh comes first. They are connected by a cord and Lorkhan grew on the other end after Akatosh was created.

It's funny how every time this comes up, you just say "NO!" while everyone else offers you the massive piles of evidence that it's true. If you don't want to believe it, then don't believe it, but don't try to convince us that it's not the truth just because you don't like it.

And even there, it's not a voluntary thing:


Any of those words were enough for the treason-mark, and traitors were only met with banishment, disfigurement, or half-death. He had taken the first with pride, roaring a chieftain's gobletman into dust to underscore his willingness to leave, knowing we would follow. He had taken the second by drawing a circle on the House's adamantine floor with his tailmouth-tusk which broke with a keening sound, showing the other chieftains that it would all come around again. And he took the third by vomiting his own heart into the circle like a hammerclap, guarding his wraith in the manner of his father and roaring at the other tribes [...]

The loss of his heart is the sentence, "half-death", imposed on him by the other tribes. (Read: the entities that remove his heart in the other myths. True to the Nord tone of the story, here he just makes it into a grotesque gesture of defiance.)







Vilnii, your arguments are rather astounding to me, but I think they are primarily fueled by a misunderstanding on your behalf. You seem to be under the impression that people say Lorkhan and Akatosh (and their various names) are identical, which of course doesn't make sense, because they are consistently mentioned as distinct beings. Why would they be attributed with separate stories if they are the same thing? This is not what everybody means.

The thing with Lorkhan and Akatosh (and again, all their other names count too) is that to themselves and observers, they appear to be distinct beings, but in fact they are not. In their shared delusion, they are simply two mirrored fragments of a bigger entity (and so on) that are completely interchangeable when it comes to name or role. It does not matter whether Akatosh takes Lorkhan's heart or Lorkhan takes Akatosh' heart; you can't tell them apart. This is why they are often flipped around while the rest of the story stays the same. This is why the Elves say Auriel (Akatosh) is the good guy and men say Shezarr (Lorkhan) is.

Now let us take a look at the http://www.imperial-library.info/content/morrowind-monomyth, which you quote there. Firstly you should know you are trying to disprove a generally accepted idea by quoting a text written by the person who came up with the idea in the first place. (Having to "severely twist his tongue" is therefore rather hard.) Your entire argument in that quote hinges on a strictly chronological interpretation of two words. (And chronology in some unfathomable god-time too.) The idea, here, is that "barely formed urge" means an urge so grand and novel as to still be largely unimaginable. Even in your other quote, the duality is clear. Akatosh is what allows everything to exist, Lorkhan is his counterpart as the limit of everything: one necessitates the other.

Granted, this is a very old (before Morrowind) text in which many of the ideas we are discussing here simply did not yet exist in their current form. However, the text already abounds in dual terminology, but does not yet -explicitly-extend that duality to Lorkhan and Akatosh. (Though implicitly it does, e.g. "upsetting the status quo much like his father Padomay had introduced instability into the universe in the Beginning Place.")

Let's simply take a look at the introduction alone:

Man or mer, things begin with the dualism of Anu and His Other [...]

These twin forces go by many names

In any case, from these two beings spring the et'Ada, or Original Spirits.



Let's not stop here, though. In later writing, the seminal idea that the universe consists of mirrored entities denying each other was developed further, with particular regard to Akatosh and Lorkhan. As per request, I'll make an attempt to quote all passages where Lorkhan and Akatosh's shared identity is made explicit. Virtually all of these are plainly interpretable and without exception all were meant to inform, not confuse. There are undoubtedly more, but these are the ones that come to mind immediately (emphasis all mine):



http://www.imperial-library.info/content/morrowind-annotated-anuad
The Anuad is one of the oldest in this list, being roughly contemporary with the Monomoyth. Notice how the narrative of Lorkhan and Akatosh (disagreement over the mortal world, with an eventual violent death of one of the two) is presented on a different level, with Anu and Padomay. Pay special attention to how it is Padomay (associated with Lorkhan) who stabs Anu's (associated with Akatosh) chest. The location of the wound is a clear anologue of the removal of the heart. We can conclude that even in this ancient text, the roles of the two players can be inverted.


http://www.imperial-library.info/content/morrowind-thirty-six-lessons-vivec
This text contains numerous references to the same idea, but in different incarnations. I will not be quoting from it now, since the explanation would lead us too far.


http://www.imperial-library.info/content/etada-eight-aedra-eat-dreamer
The duality Lorkhan-Akatosh is virtually the only topic of this text:

[...] is it any wonder that the Time God would hate the same-twin on the other end of the aurbrilical cord, the Space God?

along its two-headed fighting rays, each refusing their origin point

massive map-god (holding a compass, holding a timepiece)


http://www.imperial-library.info/content/oblivion-song-pelinal
There are some explicit references in this text. Pelinal, who is said to have a gaping wound where his heart should be and is explicitly described as Padomaic (Lorkhan symbolism) says the following:

""O Aka, for our shared madness I do this! I watch you watching me watching back!"

In the final song, Pelinal miraculously appears at Alessia's deathbed and comforts her:

[Let us] now take you Up. We will [show] our true faces... [which eat] one another in amnesia each Age."

Compare this to the version presented in Oblivion, where it is Akatosh who appears at Alessia's deathbed.


http://www.imperial-library.info/content/shor-son-shor-full
I cannot quote particular passages from this text. All across the text, characters shift places and die to inexplicably live again. Notice how Shor and Ald, his counterpart speak the exact same lines.




I am certain I have forgotten some. Feel free to contribute, anyone.

The final volume in the Song of Pelinal also has Pelinal saying "... and left you to gather sinew with my other half,".

Also, http://www.imperial-library.info/content/tower says "Anu’s firstborn, for he mostly desired order, was time, anon Akatosh. Padhome’s firstborn went wandering from the start, changing as he went, and wanted no name but was branded with Lorkhan."

That doesn't state anything about Akatosh and Lorkhan's duality, but it at least establishes them as equals, which somewhat refutes the foundation of vilnii's interpretation of the Monomyth.

It's been speculated in the Lore forum that Lorkhan is trying to reassemble himself (by destroying the Towers especially) and that this will mean a kind of Ragnarok for the mortal world. I can accept the first part of this, but I don't understand why a reborn Lorkhan would be necessarily apocalyptic? Maybe one of the lore veterans can explain.

That (syronj's post) doesn't make a lot of sense to me (who is not an expert but in the loosest sense qualifies as veteran), since generally by the elven peoples the apocalypse is a good thing, since it frees them, and to humans it's bad because... well, it's a bloody apocalypse, dammit! In either case, Auriel/Alduin is responsible for the end and Lorkhan/Shor is generally against him, again with the morality of their actions decided by the cultures that viewed the events. Then Akatosh got created and BOY were they surprised...

EDIT PS: Damn good run-down, Adanorcil.

That is why I tend to agree with the hypothesis put forward by the http://www.imperial-library.info/content/nu-mantia-intercept. This particular post, unlike a lot of the stuff that has questionable status as canon, doesn't really put forward new information but just aids us in connecting the dots.

Excellent.

Just as in our universe space is merely time seen from a different perspective, or angle, so must Akatosh be Lorkhan.

It is incorrect to see space and time as seperate entities. They are two halves of the same coin.

Ill simplify the universe for understanding. Assume the universe is static, its dimensions dont change, and that there is only one finite speed that is possible in it.
Zero or one, on or off. This speed is 1 measurement of distance per measurement of time. Now, point A and B are 10 measurements of distance from each other. This means that to get from A to B one must travel for ten measurements of time, and ten measurements of distance.
Wich amounts to the same thing. One could say A and B are ten intervals of space away, or ten intervals of time, it doesnt matter.
They are in effect the same entity, called spacetime.

Or, lets say you look at the night sky. As you watch a star you are looking at light that originated a long way away.
But, you are also looking at a long time ago, as it takes time to travel that space, and what you see is how the star looked way back when it emitted that light.


This I gather must also be true of Akatosh/ Lorkhan. Two wholly different ways to describe what is in essence the same concept.

I don't think vilnii's problem is in the conceptualization.

what i don't think anybody has said yet:

Lorkhan isn't a new god to you, oblivion-lover. Talos is a rip off of Reman who himself was a rip off of Shezzar, and Shezzar is Shor without all the elf killing. Shor and Lorkhan are merely different names for the same concept; the hero of the the men that fights against Alduin/Auriel against the elves.

Brilliant post. It untwisted my tongue and all, thank heavens.

I guess the earliest clue was Lorkhan's sobriquet, the "Doom Drum". http://www.imperial-library.info/content/lament-pelinal