Did You Know: “The Sky Spirits” describes Magrus as being blinded before leaving for the heavens? Interestingly, when you travel to Aetherius in Daggerfall, you encounter “The Blind God”, with Sheogorath standing in one of his eye sockets.
on auri-el’s TRUE sphere
i don’t think auri-el is really The Time God. he’s most associated with time, but that’s not really what he does.
everybody makes their own time, their own timeline, their own sequence of events. some are better at ordering the pieces of their existence into cohesive narratives than others.
the anuic principle, the fundament of what anu represents and is, has nothing to do with time, really. anu IS existence, but as soon as he became fragmented into the various et’ada, that became diluted. but the anuic principle, the anuic force, seeks to order, maintain, and consolidate anu’s singularity to its original state.
there are two chief parts to the anuic principle: order and control. to create/restore order, you require control over the things you’re ordering. to control something is to force it in line with your preferred order.
It’s midnight and this thought just hit me, but Aka created the dragons as his children. If control is his true sphere, which contributes to the power orientated nature of dragons, ie; strongest and smartest is the leader, this also explains why Peryite is a dragon. Disease and natural order is the way to keep control over various populations, and Peryite is the taskmaster and controls the lesser Daedric ranks.
peryite is interesting because he’s a MOCKERY of a dragon– he looks very different from the actual dragons and it’s said he chose his form specifically to insult akatosh
his role as taskmaster and his sphere of natural order are a reflection of akatosh’ power-madness, but while akatosh dominates absolutely, peryite just wants to keep people in line. he doesn’t want to prevent anyone from doing anything or control what they are doing, he just wants them doing what they should be doing. that’s what sets him apart from jyggalag’s absolute perfect order (which is honestly just stasis). peryite organises according to how the world is and should be, not what he demands it to be.
ok so allow me to elaborate on “anuiel = jyggalag.” note: this is basically pure speculation built entirely on circumstantial evidence. i just like it bc it makes sense and fits nicely. a lot of these ideas came from discussions w/ @boethiah, so shout out to her. and i will be referencing my callout post on auri-el, so you may want to keep that handy.
here’s the thing with jyggalag: his whole Thing is Pure Order. like, really Pure Order, to the point its basically just Pure Stasis. make everything Stop Happening. that’s pretty…..Elemental, very Primordial, if you catch my drift.
i’ve attempted to reckon several times a sort of “genealogy” of the et’ada, from a conceptual standpoint. by that i mean, et’ada exist first and foremost to represent specific ideas and concepts, right? Jyggalag Is Order. Malacath Is Outcasts. Hircine Is Hunting. etc.
when it comes to the “Canon” order of events, we know there’s Anu and Padomay, then Anuiel and Sithis, then Auri-el and Lorkhan, and then…..everything breaks down, and we lose track. so i’ve attempted to put together “bloodlines” of et’ada, with a gradient of “most primordial and general” to “most recent and specific”.
in all of these reckonings i have always placed jyggalag VERY near the top. like, in auri-el’s, or even anuiel’s generation.
i think a lot of people see malacath as like, “I love the strongest more, so my children should always fight to win dominance” - which couldn’t be much further from the truth. that kind of mindset is much more boethian.
malacath encourages his children to become stronger, but he does not hold the weak in lower regard. if anything, he favors the weak and demands they be protected by the strong. he sees the strength and value in everyone.
he rejects the boethian “dog-eat-dog” philosophy, but he also rejects the namiran philosophy of wallowing in your weakness and despair. be as strong as you can; your god knows exactly how strong you can be, and does not expect any more from you - and he shall protect you from those who seek to abuse your weakness.
i’ve spoken on this before, but malacath is defined primarily by the three most influential princes in his path to becoming god of the orcs: he derives his wrath from mehrunes dagon, his independence from boethiah, and his mercy from namira. this trinity molded trinimac into malacath, adding upon his anuic qualities with the padomaic traits his master auriel had him forsake.
but just because he derives these qualities from those princes, does not mean he is like those princes. in all of these cases, he adds upon them and flips them around. he takes the wrath of dagon and makes it his vengeance. he takes the “dog-eat-dog” mentality of boethiah and makes it his strength. he takes the wallowing-in-darkness of namira and makes it his mercy.
god, i really should write my trinimalacath “coming-of-godhood” fic some day.
vivec’s feet
so let me get this out of the way before i talk about vivec’s feet. there is a common belief (whether it is true or not, i have no idea - it could go either way imo) that in certain middle eastern cultures/languages, “feet” can be a euphemism for the genitals. while i would not put it past kirkbride to have meant it in this context, i am not going to evaluate it that way. i am going to approach this topic from a different metaphorical lens.
so i think that the crushing, removal, and eventual restoration of vivec’s feet during the pomegranate banquet section of the lessons is a sort of metaphor for the evolution of vivec’s confidence - or “footing” if you will - before, during, and after hir sexual assault.
are all argonians vestiges?
ok, here’s a post to talk about the idea in the title, which may sound a bit wacky, but hear me out.
let’s define what a vestige is, first. a vestige is sorta like a soul, the latter of which i reckon most every man, mer, and beast race possesses. a soul is an anuic property, ultimately subdivided and spread out from the very first thing to exist, anu. it’s basically a means to organize consciousness and existence in general.
a vestige, on the other hand, isn’t really anuic. now, i use that phrasing b/c it’s how the canon addresses it, but i don’t think you could say a vestige is “padomaic” and a soul “anuic.” they’re both just different ways of handling the way a being’s consciousness and identity work.
ok so you know how, despite being in aetherius, sovngarde has stars in the sky? even though, since stars are holes between aetherius and mundus, there shouldn’t be any?
i have two possible ideas why. one i actually made this post for, and another i just thought about while typing that first paragraph.
1.) what if the moons of nirn serve as trans-aetherial planes which are represented as sovngarde?
sapropel asked:
Hiiiiii *twirls hair* so could you explain how the anticipations of the tribunal work
ayem answered:
so before the rise of the tribunal the chimer recognized three “good daedra” who were chiefly responsible for creating chimeri society. these daedra are boethiah, mephala, and azura
when the tribunal first ascended and were still new to being gods, they needed a way to legitimize their positions as gods. they did this by claiming that the three ancestor daedra were actually placeholders, awaiting the ascension of the tribunal, who are the “real” gods of the chimer-now-dunmer.
so the temple back-synthesized a lot of lore about how each of the Good Daedra correspond to one of the tribunal and then they just ran with it
@sapropel
headcanon wise! each of the tribunal had a strong personal relation to their anticipations before godhood was even on their mind, and said relationship influenced the people they are:
sotha sil: belonged to a devoutly azura-worshiping house– ald sotha is located on azura’s coast, near the statue of azura and not far from azura’s sacred shrine of holamayan. the destruction of ald sotha was taken by sotha sil as proof of azura’s indifference and, by extension, the unworthiness of Daedra to govern mortal races, a conclusion that would drive him to unlock the secrets of godhood when given the opportunity
almalexia: the last member of the royal lineage of mournhold, who were boethiah worshipers by tradition. her war-mask is a family heirloom, said to be the flayed face of trinimac taken by boethiah and passed down by her champions. almalexia herself had a vision of boethiah as a youth and afterwards actively sought to emulate her– in some way, she sees herself as the direct heir of boethiah, and that governs a lot of her actions
vivec: vivec grew up an orphan and at a young age was forced to resort to sex-work, a decision that was influenced by a pimp ze came to think of as “mephala”. ze was heavily involved with the morag tong at times, and outside of that just. strongly related to mephala’s spheres of sneaking and scheming and general trickery
While I’m back on my Skyrim bullshit: I love Delphine. Like…a lot. Not enough to kill Paarthurnax for her, and not enough to refrain from making fun of her tradecraft (yeah, sure, she’s a badass who evaded capture for close to 30 years, but also: the moment she told me her “plan” for Diplomatic Immunity I thought “OK, so this is why Dominion Intelligence handed the Blades their asses then”). But still a lot. Sharp-edged and self-preserving and snappish and unsentimental. A little bit paranoid. Impatient. Impatient because she’s paranoid - a woman who leaps to conclusions as a survival skill, because assuming the worst, seeing enemies or ominous patterns where none exist, has almost certainly kept her alive all these years. Uncompromising; softer than she lets on, but never enough to let it stop her. Clumsy with expressing concern, but concerned nonetheless. And awfully sympathetic, if not always terribly likable. I mean…she’s spent the better half of her life being hunted, after folks who literally think they’re Tamriel’s master race wiped out the entire rest of her organization; I find it 300% unsurprising that she (a) believes in striking first and striking hard and (b) takes a dim view of dragons, who have some distinct you-puny-mortals-are-a-lesser-class-of-beings tendencies.
Seriously. How often do we get tiny 50-year-old blonde women kicking ass and being ambiguous greymoral spymasters?!?? How often do we get them playing on expectations by pretending to be harmless innkeepers? For that matter, how often do we get female spies whose trickery doesn’t hinge on sex appeal? I’m not saying she’s a lovable and generous person but characterization-wise she’s easily one of the more intriguing NPCs in the game, and the fact that everyone hates her makes me sad.
your magicka reserve consists of all the aetherial energy that your body can accumulate. (some wizards insist that sunbathing can help expand your magicka reserve or regenerate it faster but studies have found little evidence to support this). this reserve is housed in your soul—your metaphysical body—rather than in your physical body, but depleting your reserve too quickly can still have dangerous adverse effects that manifest in the form of physical warning signs and pain. for example if you're a skilled mage with a large magicka reserve getting hit with the staff of magnus feels like getting hit by a truck. (conversely if you're not a mage and you have almost no magicka for it to drain you won't even blink at it.) mages are taught never to completely deplenish their magicka reserves by casting a spell beyond their means unless they or someone else are in dire peril, because doing so can result in depletion sickness (nausea, weakness, muscle cramps, dizziness, dissociation—some people pass out) that can potentially distract from the spell you're casting (which can kill you). frequently deplenishing your magicka completely can cause your soul to "leak"—which harms its magicka-accreting capacity and can carry psychosomatic symptoms (such as pain while casting) over to the physical body. also makes you much more susceptible to illusion spells since a damaged metaphysical body is less fortified to repel them. scary
souls are used in enchanting because a soul is a natural receptacle for magicka; binding a soul to an artifact allows that artifact to accrete aetherial energy in the same way that a living organism accretes aetherial energy. this energy fuels the enchantment on the artifact