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of concepts that existed after them?


1.-god of burials and funeral rites? (arkay)

If death is a concept exclusive to mundus and mortals existed after arkay did how his "sphere" works?. What exactly was Arkay doing before the existance of mortals? how was he a god of burials before the creation of mundus?

and how Azura could be the daedric prince of "dusk and dawn" if the sun/hole (magnus) was created after Azura? and the concepts of dusk and dawn existed only after Lorkhan's proyect? .

I am no expert in lore by any means... Just curious.

Nothing says a spirit cannot adopt a purpose. Both Arkay directly, and some if not all of his cultural aspects, such as Tu'whacca, are thought to have taken on their mantle(s) after the mortal realm was created.

Azura is very mysterious. Her sphere seems to be more about prophecy than anything else. I think of "dawn and dusk" as a metaphor for that. There are those few minutes everyday where dawn and dusk are indistinguishable from each other, if you had no idea what time it is. What some would see as dawn, she would see as dusk, and vice versa, because she apparently operates a few steps ahead of everyone else. And in those magical moments in between realms of twilight, when the stars align just so, what she sees and what Mundus will experience are the same - Mundus just hasn't caught up yet. Hence her prophecies. If that makes any sense whatsoever.

surely all gods are created before anything else so it's only when the mortals start crawling around do they receive their roles

that's the great thing about pantheons, they are all hungry for work and glad to get a job

The above statement is false. Also Arkay was mortal once. As in after creation.

There are lots and lots of gods who began as mortals or demigods, not like Arkay.

I find it curious the Thalmor objects to Talos' deification on the grounds he was once mortal when they have temples to Syrabane and Phynaster. Typical Aldmeri hypocrisy if you ask me.

i agree



I think Talos was potentially the single strongest rallying cry to Imperial and Nord men so they are imposing their rite as victors of the War and eradicating him from the culture.

There's also the possibility that the true reason for their fear and hatred of Talos is as yet unrevealed and threatens a part of their master plan, whatever that is

Tho i am not entirely sure the reasons they give for anything are truthful, propaganda is what they are about

Well, if we can trust Obscure Texts (and Skyrim is evidence we often can), the Thalmor mainly feel threatened by Talos because he fortifies Convention and thus is a major obstacle to their goals to unmake the world in its current form. Whether that entails a complete dissolution back to a pre-Mundus state or a return to the Merethic Era of (literally) Aldmeri Dominion of the entire world is unknown. At the very least he embodies aspects of Lorkhan they would find unappealing, and of course the far more mundane but equally likely reason is that Numidium humiliated Alinor late in the Second Era, which is an intolerable blasphemy.

So is atkay not an aedra? Because vivec often refers to the 8 divines as the 8 givers. And doesn't arkay have her own planet in mundus? I thought only the aedra could have planets within mundus, hence none of the other once mortal gods having one.

Aedra are mortal.

But they were once immortal. And the reason they became "mortal" is much different than how manninarco or the tribunalstarted out mortal and then acquired divinity

For those confused on the subject of Arkay, Malak the Orc on the official forums has some great insight into Arkay's connection with Trinimac/Malacath.

Sorry for the curtness; I was on my phone. Point is, yes, Arkay is an Aedra. Currently on the wiki, he's classified as "Other", but that may change, as his lore page, I think, makes it clear that the story describing Arkay as an "ordinary" shopkeeper is allegorical. Though relatively old, he was also relatively disinterested. He played some nebulous role in creation (which may have involved in the planet named after him), inhabited Mundus, and went on to have many dealings with other Aedra. From their perspective at the time, he may well have seemed "ordinary", but "ordinary" for any given Aedra in the early days of creations would still translate to "amazingly powerful" by the standards of the mortal races which emerged. He seemed to have earned himself a reputation for fairness, and eventually seized the opportunity to become the enforcer of Mundus' central facet: mortality.

I suspect that he took up this mantle after the shattering of Lorkhan, and that his ascension to this position was related to this event. It seems logical that the role he assumed wouldn't be filled until after they had finally concluded that mortality and the mortal realm were worthwhile, salvageable endeavors, and the stories suggest some period of activity passed before Arkay stepped up. His assumption of the role of the god of birth and death may have been a result of the deliberations during Convention; they may have been preparing to scrap the whole project before Arkay agreed to do the dirty work necessary to keep the mortal realm viable. Anyways, I like the idea of Mara ducking out of the meeting at Convention to ask Arkay if he would mind being their metaphysical custodian for all eternity. It adds a little wrinkle to the Convention, about which we know very little, and thus makes it more compelling. And, obviously, it has the benefit of reconciling apparent contradictions in the source material.

Anyways, I'm not sure it's stated definitively anywhere that only the Aedra can have planets. Even if it does, there are very few sources in the TES-verse which could make such an assertion with authority. Ultimately, our understanding of the TES cosmology is very limited.

I wouldn't write off Arkay-as-mortal just yet. Skyrim regurgitates it a time or two, notably the Priest of Arkay in Falkreath mentions it. It's a persistent myth. MK's take on gods like Arkay and Tuwaccha was that they always existed as ideas but before mortals their powers didn't make any sense. Perhaps we can combine the two - Arkay was always a principle, but didn't have a mind or personality since before Creation there was no life or death, so he manifested through a mortal.

Dusk and Dawn are states of transition, but they are not immediate. They are those phases between the absolutes of night and day where one does not have total influence over the other. At that point everythng can be correct, or everything is wrong.

Azura uses the Dusk and the Dawn to symbolize transition between the absolutes.

Speaking of absolutes, perhaps this line from an obscure text is applicable:

Even gods dislike the absolute, for it stinks of something larger than themselves.

And doesn't that apply many times in TES? Even the gods fear Prophecy, or the Hero it entails. The gods can rarely interfere with anything at all, but mortals have the power to reshape the world. This was a gift to them, and their means of surpassing their creators. But there can never be absolutes when Choice is involved. That's why mortals were given free will - even to become gods themselves, as Talos and others did.

Thanks for the clarification minor edits. Ive always been confused about whether arkay was around at convention and offered part of herself to the world and therefore an aedra or a true mortal that ascended.

Maybe both are true and the shopkeeper arkay replaced the original arkay. Kind of like what arden-sul did to sheogorath or what our character did to pelinial.

Arkay is, at least personified as, male. Why do you keep calling him female?

So I have a question about Talos real quick... if the thalmor are trying to defame him and pretty much destroy "man" is he able to come down in all his Godliness like Akatosh did to fight Mehrunes Dagon? I'd love to se their faces as he ravages their armies

Anything's possible. It's possible the events of Skyrim were just the beginning of what you're describing.

Mannimarco became a moon after the Warp in the West. Celestial bodies aren't eternal objects.

Martin was not directly descended from Talos. Check out that family tree.

Yeah. He wasn't even descended from Talos' brother. The main bloodline broke several times, especially if you start with Alessia. There were time periods of hundreds of years where no known Dragonborn existed, and in Alessia's dynasty we don't know for a fact any of the dozen or so Emperors were related at all. (Presumably some would have been but we have insufficient lore, and The Book of the Dragonborn strongly suggesting otherwise.)

If there wasn't a line of legitimate succession during the First Era, it leaves open speculation about how the Council of Skiffs at Rumare actually sought out Dragonborn to place on the throne. I have a personal headcanon that there was a process similar to how the Dalai Lama is picked out, but that's far from official.

Yes but I don't think Mannimarco's planet is within Mundus like the aedra's are, but I could be wrong

Sure it is, the Imperial orrery was used to locate it.