Why does Alduin claim he HAS to eat the world?

Post » Tue May 10, 2011 5:49 pm

After reading The Seven Fights of The Aldudagga and reading up on what we know about the main quest in Skyrim, some questions started popping up..
Why does Alduin have to eat the world each time? What's so bad about having the current Kalpa keep on running? And what's going to happen if we defeat him in Skyrim? He seemed very pissed off when he discovered the Leaper King was hiding pieces of the Kalpa. So I have this theory, in which Alduin has to keep reseting the Kalpa because if he doesn't it'll cause the godhead to wake up thus ending existence completely. I'm most likely totally wrong on this but I'm curious as to what you all think.
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Lew.p
 
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Post » Tue May 10, 2011 2:35 pm

He eats the world to be free. The Mundus is like a cage to him and he wants to eat it to be free of it. Unfortunately, Lorkhan just tricks him and the other Aedra into creating it all over again. It's a vicious cycle.
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Monika Fiolek
 
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Post » Tue May 10, 2011 7:33 pm

He eats the world to be free. The Mundus is like a cage to him and he wants to eat it to be free of it. Unfortunately, Lorkhan just tricks him and the other Aedra into creating it all over again. It's a vicious cycle.


Yes, but he talks in a way as if something will happen if he doesn't:

"do you even know what would HAPPEN if that happened, my dying and being unable to eat and the kalpa left to run forever?
http://www.imperial-library.info/content/fight-one-eating-birth-dagon
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Cat Haines
 
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Post » Tue May 10, 2011 2:53 pm

Yes, but he talks in a way as if something will happen if he doesn't:

http://www.imperial-library.info/content/fight-one-eating-birth-dagon

Well, any form of comprehensible time would cease to exist if he died, and I assume everything that is would as well, since he's the direct son of Anu.
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KiiSsez jdgaf Benzler
 
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Post » Tue May 10, 2011 11:50 pm

Well, any form of comprehensible time would cease to exist if he died, and I assume everything that is would as well, since he's the direct son of Anu.


The kalpa running forever seems to be his biggest concern, rather than time being destroyed.

@OP: I'd say Alduin fearing the dream ending is possible.
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FITTAS
 
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Post » Tue May 10, 2011 8:51 pm

The TES Godhead, the Nous of the Aurbis, is a sort of classical Gnostic-pattern cretin-deity. It's the totality of existence, but it's also off. Malformed, even. If it were a child born in the Victorian-era, it'd be deformed sort kept chained in a special "disappointment room" in the attic, away from the world, with only idiot fantasies to keep itself company.

As such, it constantly tells stories, weaves narratives.

Stories about Gods and Daedra,

about Emperors and Madmen,

of Heroes and Slop-Drudges.

But just like the original franchise of Batman movies, the overarching fabula of these stories will eventually metastasize into something hideously contrived and corny if left to run too long. Eventually somebody has to come along and put a stop to it before it gets out of hand and the creative wellspring runs dry, dooming the whole cosmic psychoscape to creative drought and narrative famine.

So yeah, think of Alduin as Christopher Nolan, the Dawn Era as Batman Begins, and the World-Eating as Batman & Robin.
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Phillip Hamilton
 
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Post » Tue May 10, 2011 10:10 am

If Azathoth stops dreaming, he will wake up. Azathoth dreams into being.

Wow, TES, Lovecraft, and Hinduism have similar Weltanschauungs. Whodathunkit.
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Eduardo Rosas
 
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Post » Tue May 10, 2011 8:32 pm

The TES Godhead, the Nous of the Aurbis, is a sort of classical Gnostic-pattern cretin-deity. It's the totality of existence, but it's also off. Malformed, even. If it were a child born in the Victorian-era, it'd be deformed sort kept chained in a special "disappointment room" in the attic, away from the world, with only idiot fantasies to keep itself company.

As such, it constantly tells stories, weaves narratives.

Stories about Gods and Daedra,

about Emperors and Madmen,

of Heroes and Slop-Drudges.

But just like the original franchise of Batman movies, the overarching fabula of these stories will eventually metastasize into something hideously contrived and corny if left to run too long. Eventually somebody has to come along and put a stop to it before it gets out of hand and the creative wellspring runs dry, dooming the whole cosmic psychoscape to creative drought and narrative famine.

So yeah, think of Alduin as Christopher Nolan, the Dawn Era as Batman Begins, and the World-Eating as Batman & Robin.


Interesting take on it, but I'm not sure I agree. A _plot_ may die, but I do not think the TES _fabula_ is identical with 'narrative' as you describe it. The open, intricate naturalism of TES does not recommend itself to such an approach: the _fabula_ is endlessly, brilliantly fecund- it keeps making itself, and each iteration contains countless details, each of which is potentially the seed of something else. It could, concievably, continue to play itself out indefinately. As I've intimated elsewhere: the TES universe may technically be an idealistic one, but it is a dialectic. Even: an idealism reaching toward materialism. Perhaps we will even have a rebel (Lorkhan? Camoran? The Dwemer?) who will cross out 'the false is a moment of the true' and write 'the true is a moment of the false'.

In any case, Nirn has never stuck me as the product of a malformed Demiurge. In fact, I have always felt that the roles of Sophia and Demiurgos were curiously confused and inverted in TES: the crippled Lorkhan portrayed as saviour, the infinite Dragon as a fool.


[edit to reply to poor Vancrux: it sounds plausible. One objection I would raise is: it seems to be the wrong, for want of a better word, _direction_ for Alduin. The beast's Elven aspect _wants_ to escape the world and return to the infinite. Would the end of the dream be a bad thing as far as Alduin is concerned? Personally, I doubt that the dream can even end, but that is not something I can prove.

Your explanation makes sense, but we might ask: what do the Nords who tell this myth think would happen if time went on endlessly? Also: what motivates Alduin, if anything?- because I don't think it's safe to assume that he cares about the fate of the universe. I cannot answer these questions.]
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Sarah Knight
 
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Post » Tue May 10, 2011 10:07 pm

After reading The Seven Fights of The Aldudagga and reading up on what we know about the main quest in Skyrim, some questions started popping up..
Why does Alduin have to eat the world each time? What's so bad about having the current Kalpa keep on running? And what's going to happen if we defeat him in Skyrim? He seemed very pissed off when he discovered the Leaper King was hiding pieces of the Kalpa. So I have this theory, in which Alduin has to keep reseting the Kalpa because if he doesn't it'll cause the godhead to wake up thus ending existence completely. I'm most likely totally wrong on this but I'm curious as to what you all think.


Perhaps what is created is never as perfect as the creator desires it to be. So he scratches everything and begins again
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Angus Poole
 
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Post » Tue May 10, 2011 2:01 pm

Interesting take on it, but I'm not sure I agree. A _plot_ may die, but I do not think the TES _fabula_ is identical with 'narrative' as you describe it. The open, intricate naturalism of TES does not recommend itself to such an approach: the _fabula_ is endlessly, brilliantly fecund- it keeps making itself, and each iteration contains countless details, each of which is potentially the seed of something else. It could, concievably, continue to play itself out indefinately. As I've intimated elsewhere: the TES universe may technically be an idealistic one, but it is a dialectic. Even: an idealism reaching toward materialism. Perhaps we will even have a rebel (Lorkhan? Camoran? The Dwemer?) who will cross out 'the false is a moment of the true' and write 'the true is a moment of the false'.


Does Alduin consume the whole Aurbis, though? It was my understanding that he only eat Nirn, the Mundus at most. In any case. narrative can be subdivided into fabula and syuzhet. It's essentially the difference between story and plot, content and form, what-is-told vs. how-it-is-told. My feeling is that the Aurbis is the fabula, because strictly speaking, the overall story never begins or ends, thus do we impose syuzhet - plot - to make sense of it, give it structure, or at least parts of it. Thus do we have plots concerning Shor, Aka, Pelinal, Reman, The Eternal Champion, The Nerevarine, The Champion of Cyrodiil, and so on. But these plots have to end if they're to be considered complete and give any sense of completeness of closure to the Godhead.

Though I was perhaps at little harsh on the Aurbis. I think it's less a deformed child, as it is a disadvantaged one. With each cycle of time it learns a bit more about itself. It grows, becomes more fully realized and the plot threads it weaves reflect that. Perfection is, after all, a process.
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Nadia Nad
 
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Post » Tue May 10, 2011 9:27 pm

With regard to the distinction between Aurbis and Mundus- do you mean this with regard to the OP, or are you suggesting that the _fabula_ dwells within Aurbis? If the former, I take your point, but I can't think of anything to suggest the Dragon has any attachment to Aurbis or itself. Otherwise, I disagree: I find formalism unhelpful, because each category seems to generate the other. I'm not at all convinced that one can say the story is 'over here' and the plot 'over there'- particularly with TES, which sometimes seems a bit reluctant to provide neat plots with narrative closure (I find this to be one of the series' charms). Where is the _syuzhet_, and where the _fabula_, in the story of Red Mountain? Morrowind provides so many contradictory readings (each made up of smaller stories) that each plot is obliterated by a meta-thing, which can itself be read as a kind of mythical record or archaeology as well as a _syuzhet_ in its own right. My apologies if I've misunderstood.
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Sheeva
 
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Post » Tue May 10, 2011 5:31 pm

Snip.


Well, my comparison was perhaps deceptive, if not hastily made. I meant to say that the Aurbis is the Fabula in as far as the Aurbis it the totality of the universe just as the fabula is the totality of the narrative. All the syuzhet is in the fabula, by logical necessity, but not all the fabula is in the syuzhet. It's tricky, because these terms originate in classical narratology/formalism, which never had to deal with the tricky issue of spectatorial agency, i.e. player actions. But you're right in saying that each category feeds into the other. They simply can't exist without each other, but that doesn't mean we can't demarcate them for ease of reference, so long as we recognize that no distinction is absolute, especially when Godheads are involved.

This is where things get categorically messy though, since the "mythical archaeology" in Morrowind is technically part of the fabula, the backstory, because we the player don't experience it first-hand. It happened on Nirn, which is part of the Aurbis, which seemingly disproves my Nirn=Plot/Aurbis=Story scheme, but remember, the distinction actually cannot be absolute in order for any of this to make sense. All that noise about Lorkhan, Nerevar, Resdayn, the Dwemer, Profane Tools, etc. is all past tense and thus has receding into history, existing now only in the totality of all things, ever, i.e the Aurbis.

But whatever, this is getting too abstract to be useful. Simply put, I feel that Alduin feels he need to eat the world for fear that the Godhead will get bored.
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Harry Hearing
 
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Post » Tue May 10, 2011 9:02 am

What if the world needs to be eaten to be fuel for the new world?
I mean, maybe if the world would just be left to go on, the life or magic or whatever of it would run out eventually, and things would forever wither and die.
Sort of like the cyclical universe theory versus the universe theory that says it will all just keep expanding and eventually die.

Am I being too uncomplicated?
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Mr. Ray
 
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Post » Tue May 10, 2011 5:34 pm

What if the world needs to be eaten to be fuel for the new world?
I mean, maybe if the world would just be left to go on, the life or magic or whatever of it would run out eventually, and things would forever wither and die.
Sort of like the cyclical universe theory versus the universe theory that says it will all just keep expanding and eventually die.

Am I being too uncomplicated?

So Alduin is Galactus?
Awesome.
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JUan Martinez
 
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Post » Tue May 10, 2011 12:17 pm

So Alduin is Galactus?
Awesome.
Yes, Alduin is, indeed, Galactus. And not that crappy cloud in the movie, the real Galactus.
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Unstoppable Judge
 
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Post » Wed May 11, 2011 1:11 am

Yes, Alduin is, indeed, Galactus. And not that crappy cloud in the movie, the real Galactus.


Name the Heralds.
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Kat Stewart
 
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Post » Tue May 10, 2011 10:38 pm

Because, imagine all the bacon he gets to devour along with the world. And time resets, so no cholesterol!
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Marquis T
 
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Post » Tue May 10, 2011 1:19 pm

Note that I do not have sources linked for any of the [Nummit] I am prepared to spout, I'm simply rephrasing things I have heard and read.

So when a spirit dies on Nirn it is (generally) recycled in the dreamsleeve. Using the Six Walking Ways, one is "The New Man becomes God becomes Amaranth." It is suggested that Lorkhan created the mortal world so that others could become closer to the Godhead, the Dreamer, Amaranth. "Late is the lover who comes to this by any other walking way than the fifth" suggests that this transformation into the New Man requires a long amount of time. This should be obvious since asking a whole world's population to achieve transcendence through love is a tall order. The rub is that Alduin is hanging over your head with a hungry look in his eye. So here is my quick synopsis;

1) You have the entire population of Nirn. Lorkhan wanted them to achieve transcendence through love. Even though his message pops up from time to time, his marketing plan is horrible. You're going to need a lot of time for everyone to achieve the walking way and change (chim) to the New Man. This is even harder with the mer seeing Lorkhan as the Doom Drum and an enemy.

2) Lorkhan was killed by the other Aedra and he is most likely trying to either a ) reform himself or b ) use what power he retained to continue to teach mortals the importance of love.

3) Alduin has a real hunger to eat the world and, as previously stated, fears what his failure would entail. Given his relationship with Akatosh and Auriel, we can assume it endangers the ability for the Aedra and other et-ada to return to their previous, fully divine state.

So what we have is a series of figures (all related to Akatosh and Lorkhan) who desire the end of various states. And given Akatosh and Lorkhan's constant rivalry and tendency to switch sides in conflict, I see them as the following;

1) Lorkhan has seen The Tower created by the interaction of IS and IS NOT, the relationship between chaos and stasis. He wants all other spirits to also see this and therefore "tricks" them unto a path where they can achieve a closer relationship with Amaranth, the dreams becoming one with the dreamer.

2) Akatosh/Auriel/Alduin want to see the end of Nirn, but through different means. Akatosh was co-opted by man, and is their defender. He is most similar to Lorkhan, but without the message of transcendence. Auriel wants to be unhindered by the creation of Nirn and become fully divine again. Alduin wants to eat the world and prevent...

3) Mortals from achieving transcendence. By doing so, the reaction between IS and IS NOT will no longer be the universe of the Elder Scrolls, but the waking of the Godhead. Akatosh does not want this as his end game is Stasis and the end of the universe is anything but IS. No universe means no more divinity. Lorkhan is the spirit of chaos and saw that all of creation was a dream, and therefore wants to achieve IS NOT.

So in a nutshell, Alduin must continue eating the world, because if a kalpa runs for too long he runs the risk of Lorkhan succeeding in waking the Godhead through the transcendence of mortals into the New Man.
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Cool Man Sam
 
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Post » Tue May 10, 2011 4:28 pm

Quick post to say: I somehow managed to forget my own sig. Duh. So, yeah, according to whoever wrote _Sithis_, the dragon god is indeed selfish and determined to remain. Go unto the world-eater as a friend!
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Minako
 
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Post » Tue May 10, 2011 9:05 pm

So in a nutshell, Alduin must continue eating the world, because if a kalpa runs for too long he runs the risk of Lorkhan succeeding in waking the Godhead through the transcendence of mortals into the New Man.


What's to stop Alduin from just continuously eating the world consecutively, if his true goal is to prevent the waking?
Why does he allow for mortals to survive for any length of time?
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Sylvia Luciani
 
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Post » Wed May 11, 2011 1:55 am

Because it tastes better when it's allowed to age, like a steak or fruit?
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Big Homie
 
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Post » Wed May 11, 2011 12:39 am

Because it tastes better when it's allowed to age, like a steak or fruit?

fine wine
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Rachell Katherine
 
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Post » Tue May 10, 2011 9:34 am

Maybe because he has to digest (is that the right word?) the world before eating it again? Just a thought...
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Soraya Davy
 
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Post » Wed May 11, 2011 12:31 am

So, Alduin is a cow AND Galactus? That's too much of a stretch :P
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Elena Alina
 
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Post » Tue May 10, 2011 11:31 pm

What's to stop Alduin from just continuously eating the world consecutively, if his true goal is to prevent the waking?
Why does he allow for mortals to survive for any length of time?


Alduin, according to http://www.imperial-library.info/content/fight-one-eating-birth-dagon, eats the world when the next kalpa begins. Which seems to be indicated by two bells going off.
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lillian luna
 
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