I reckon it's something like that (I suggested they had a bungee-cord link in my first post), and the power axis would tie in given that humans had traditionally aligned with Lorkhan and elves with Auriel. Gets a bit more complex post-Alessia though, what with Akatosh's appearance as chief of Cyrodiil's Nine Divines, and how the Marukhati Selective messed with him. Lorkhan's heart disappearing has probably made a fair metaphysical splash, and then there's Martin's ascension...



Certainly been hinted at before. We know the mechanics for it are there (Marukhati again).



Could do, though maybe it's more complex - there are more than two straight pantheons, for example there's the Redguard versions of the gods to consider. Though maybe that doesn't matter, it's worth noting that the Redguard pantheon does tally up in some places with some of the traditionally human gods (Alduin, Zenithar, Arkay, Kynareth) but none of them seem to tie up with explicitly 'elven' ones. The Bretons follow all kinds of divine detritus, a jumbled mix of the old elven and human god sets, but they're said to have elven blood anyway and so can be overlooked (same goes for the Bosmer for vice-versa reasons when it comes to the elven pantheons).

As an aside, Kynareth is kinda interesting. She features in all the human pantheons and the Khajiit one too, but not in any of the elven ones. Seems she's aided Lorkhan avatars on more than one occasion too. I wonder what's going on here?

The Aldmeri have no use for a goddess who represents natural forces. For them she is a goddess of dung and cholera.

True enough, they're none too fond of the material world, and the nature god that they do have, Y'ffre, is a god that stabilized some of the Dawn Era craziness and is a force of order.

Sidebar: Please tell me I'm not the only one who saw the similarity with the Daedric Lord Herma Mora?

Xarxes <-> Herma Mora is the one that's my pet conspiracy theory.

I have that one too though.

Yeah, I know. I quoted myself. Anyway, about the equation being balanced. You might have done the math and added it all up, but you have one extra, don't you? There are 9 aedra/divines if you count both Lorkhan and Akatosh. So, that being said, conservatively adding both pantheons together from my previous post you end up with 17 right? There ARE 17 daedric princes. Are we forgetting about Jyg?

But DUDE!!!! Jyg is Sheogorath!!!

So what? Akatosh is Lorkhan. So you still have 16 = 16 because there is one on both sides that is actually two.

And about the whole battle to see which god-aspect will be active for the next "who-knows-how-long?"...

Arena-mundus indeed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2XnMUeRkEc

Recent discussion on this thread compells me to proffer the following questions.

The difference between Aedra and Daedra is traditionally understood by their respective responses to Lorkhan's initiative to create Mundus. What might we understand the difference between Aedra and Daedra to be now? Also, in what way might this relate to the belief in descent from the divine among mer, and creation by the divine among men?

Maybe the Daedra are still similar to rebel angels (too proud to participate in the Creation) but the Aedra were originally mortals?

What, pray tell, made you ask this question? What info prompted you?

Let me rephrase then. How to reinterpret the origin and meaning of Aedra and Daedra seemed an obvious question for me from the beginning. I waited for discussion of Aedra and Daedra to appear in the thread so I could post.

Now, carry on. B)

I like the idea of renegade time-bandits myself. I mean, hellsya.

If the Previous Kalpa was made solely of the et'Ada, and is a predecessor to current Kalpa, then one may assume that the Aurbis is in a state of entropy, with Gods becoming less powerful with each downward spiral.

Think the idea that is being postulated is that WE "were" the et'Ada in the previous dawn.

That's sort of what I was implying.

Well, of course.

I personally think this is really the true question being asked. Like I just posted, it's starting to look like we are the et'Ada. But outside of saying the traditional mumbo jumbo of myth-echos and whatnot, I don't know what else can be said.

I like what was once discussed in a lore thread, that the reason Nirn's creation myths have commonalities is that some part of mortals was a witness to the events; the core truth of the myths has been carried down subconsciously. Mortals are the fragments of the et'Ada, I guess.

Who is "We"?

"Were" or "will be"?

Previous or ___?

Why are some et'Ada this and others that?

Did Lorkhan succeed or fail, and what difference does it make?

See, now you've got me speaking more clearly than I should. Note to self: make proceeding posts sufficiently turbid.

it may be that you turned that on its head - and that mortals are some part of something greater that bore witness ... but it rings true with the doctine that if 8 people bear witness you will get 12 different stories ...

I recon you will have to access the monomyth etc for your answers dumbkid - someone will bung you a few links any moment now if they are true to form

Someone reiterate on why rival pantheons can fight each other.

May help my thought process to hear it again.

Maybe the Daedra were the old gods. The Aedra were mortals that achieved godhood.

Dunno where I'm going with this, I just felt I should throw it out there. I mean, the daedra are ossified - they are about change, but their spheres remain the same, they are bound up in their realms... eh, I dunno...

I'm going to go waaaaaaay out on a limb here and say maybe the daedra, if in fact there are two aspects to each aedra depending on the race that worships them, are the other part of the rebel/king relationship there. If each aedra fights itself in a rebel/king enantiomorphic relationship, with Nirn as the female principle (or even the Kalpa itself as the female princple), then maybe the daedric princes are the observers, since they, by definition, don't directly interfere with this battle (i.e. take part in creation). This would explain something I put forth earlier about 16=16. I dunno. Just musing over my own little theory and adding to it without a care as to whether I derail its credibility or not. It's more or less a brain-fart. It'd make more sense if we had a clue which daedra goes to which set of aedra, if in fact there are sets of aedra. Too many "if"s, I suppose. I guess it doesn't have to be the same et'ada everytime that is the observer. It's been speculated that Magnus was the first observer for Lork vs Aka. He's a Magna-ge, but it's totally in the aldudagga, however, that for at least one battle between Aka and Lork, Dagon was there and saw it. :shrug:

Which are the elven eight then?

Human - Elves

Akatosh - Auriel
Stendarr - Stendarr
Mara - Mara
Zenithar - Xen (brief mention in the Altmeri Monomyth)
Arkay - ? (Arkay is in the hodge-podge Bosmeri pantheon, but not the Altmeri one.)
Dibella - ?
Kynareth - ? (some might equate with nature-Aedra Y'ffre, but I think this tenuous)
Julianos - ? (perhaps Xarxes, but I'm unconvinced)



Mind, that's going off the Cyrodiil pantheon. Maybe instead I should be putting the Nordic one (headed by Lorkhan as Shor) up against a mix of the Elven and Cyrodiil pantheons (headed by Dragons). It also assumes that the MW and OB literature is exhaustive and that when something isn't mentioned (i.e no Elven version of Jhunal) then it doesn't exist, which isn't necessarily true.

Perhaps the elves DID have the as-yet unmentioned counterparts to some of those Mannish gods, but just as the Nords lost Jhunal and Tsun, so the elves lost theirs. On that note, am I unfair to dismiss the Bosmeri pantheon so easily?

Also, Mara is said to be near-universal and perhaps has no seperate human and elven aspects. "Depending on the religion, she is either married to Akatosh or Lorkhan, or the concubine of both." (Varieties of Faith).

From the Monomyth: "Some Aedra were disappointed and bitter in their loss". "Some", but not all - so there we have room for Kynareth to be an ally of Lorkhan. Maybe there is as yet no elven (Aurielic) aspect.



Akatosh - originally there was just Alduin and Auriel, but I think they are the same thing from two perspectives rather than two different aspects on a divine level, a being seen as an enemy by the Nords and hero to the Altmer. But then after all that hullabaloo in the Merethic Era suddenly a human-friendly aspect appears, thanks to a little bit of editing from the Marukhati loonies.

Maybe I'm looking at it all wrong, and what it should be is Auriel - Akatosh - Lorkhan, with Auriel and Lorkhan each being an axis and the brute-forced Akatosh being a sort of piggy-in-the-middle aspect of both.



I wonder if it's more a case of Aurbic balance than of tallying numbers. Lorkhan and his allied aspects of Aedra all tend towards more unruly Padomaic characteristics while the Auriel-aligned Elven and Cyrodiilic ones have calmer, orderly Anuic ones. As that balance changes, likely driven by Auriel-Lorkhan conflict (which in turn could be driven by interactions between Anu and Padome, or perhaps be a proxy/fulcrum for it) so the aspects change with it.

The Anuad has it that the Aedra are a mixture of Anu and Padomay. Though I generally stick with the idea that this is a metaphor to describe how they were reborn after they died in the world creation, the premise here is that the new world is a continuation of the old.

So changing characteristics are a possibility.

I get the feeling we're overlooking the people though. The Nordic gods fight the war of creation in Skyrim because the Nords are in Skyrim. In a sense the Dawn never ended but continues to adapt to the present day. So Jhunal and Tsun weren't killed on the Battlefield in the Dawn, the Nords killed them today.


If I look down right now, I'm gonna fall.

I somehow put that with Alaisiagae's post:


I'm sorta thinking that it's always today when you play - so that fits. And Alaisiasgae's observation that the Daedra are ossified (that's bones, right?) makes sense too.

Could the Daedra be twinned with the Earthbones in some way? - sort of most affected by them?

For example:
To me creation is change - and the Deqadra apparently cannot create - it's almost as if the Et'Ada send their bodies to be the Earthbones and the negative images of their spirits become the Daedra. That would make a weird kinda sense of the Leaping King and the Greedy Man metaphors - that in their different ways they both became trapped in the earth ... So their 'immortal' 'dead' spirits live on as Daedra

A dead spirit is unlikely to create and is not alive - though it may appear to be - so not being alive it cannot be killed.

... but if one of the earthbones is waking up - Yffre - then which Daedra would be his? And does that mean that the current Gods then become Earthbones?