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Finally, the first bit of official Lore figuring in the Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim has been unfolded. The main antagonist will be Alduin, a Nordic variation of Akatosh. He's the "world eater", the one who swallowed the last world in a flame tempest and created the new one. Therefore, he is a God of Time, of the Beginnings and the Endings.

You can find information on Alduin on the UESP at this link : http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Alduin#Alduin

This information is found when you translate the stanzas on the back cover of the Game Informer February edition.

The complete english translation goes as follows :

Dovahkiin, Dovahkiin
By his honor is sworn
To keep evil forever at bay
And the fiercest foes rout
When they hear triumph's shout
Dovahkiin, for your blessing we pray

And the Scrolls have foretold
Of black wings in the cold
That when brothers wage war come unfurled
Alduin Bane of Kings
Ancient Shadow unbound
With a hunger to swallow the world

Edit:So, what do you think about that foe ? Does he sound fiercer than Mehrunes Dagon ? How would you like to see him figured in Skyrim ?

Well, the line 'To keep evil forever at bay sounds like he is an ally. It sounds like he would make a good enemy to fight though.

I'd like a big, BIG build-up from the moment you find out about him in-game to the moment you're about to meet him, and it turns out he looks just like a guy.
And then in the final battle, Alduin being the final boss, and dragons (maybe) being shapeshifters, he first fights as a man at first, and then a dragon (making it a multi-stage boss fight, which i love!)
It could also be a female dragon, which would be a nice change, considering how all big baddies in TES are (almost) always male.

He'll be a big black dragon, like in the riddle.

did anyone else pick up that the vocals at the end of the teaser trailer are actually the first stanza from the GI cover???

how awesome is that?!

I said that ages ago:

viewtopic.php?f=35&t=19947

And everyone ignored me or thought I was wrong. Now that it is confirmed, I can laugh at the the ones that didn't believed me.

There is no reason why Alduin shoudn't be anything less than terrifying. I mean he does eat worlds... and he's hungry

I dunno Alduin sounds like a pretty stand up guy

That line is from the first stanza, which is about the "Dragonborn". The second stanza is about "Alduin, Bane of Kings", who's gonna swallow the world. There's no reason to think that Dragonborn and Alduin are the same character, especially since "Dragonborn" is a reference to the line of Septims, presumably the "Kings" that Alduin is Bane of.

No they're not not....

Cover
Dovahkiin, Dovahkiin
By his honor is sworn
To keep evil forever at bay
And the fiercest foes rout
When they hear triumph's shout
Dovahkiin, for your blessing we pray

Teaser
For the King, Dovakiin
For the sake of Skyrim
For life, for hope
For Hrogthoar's blood
For the Nords and For the Gos
For the sole single son
Dovakiin, our king
Who will dawn with fire

I will agree that there is a connection between the two, and that they are singing about the same thing. But they aren't the same

Actually the guy you quoted is right. The untranslated version IS what's sung in the teaser.

Dovahkiin, Dovahkiin
Naal ok zin los vahriin
Wah dein vokul mahfaeraak ahst vaal
Ahrk fin norok paal graan
Fod nust hon zindro zaan
Dovahkiin, fah hin kogaan mu draal

What bakes my noodle is this - when we say Alduin, are we actually talking about Akatosh?

The lore article on Alduin seems to make a distinction between the two, but the Imperial pantheon has its roots in the Skyrim pantheon. With both Alduin and Akatosh being depicted as dragon-gods of Time, I'd put my money on them being one and the same.

Getting a little imaginative, I thought of a theory:

We know that Akatosh forged a covenant with Alessia and, subsequently, the Empire. We don't know the god's motives, but there you have it. The Amulet of Kings was a sign of that covenant, and together with a ruling Emperor to wear it, it kept up the barrier between Nirn and the realms of Oblivion.

But then the sh*t hit the fan. 3e433 (the year of Akatosh, by the way!) the Septims were wiped out, and all manner of Daedra skipped and hopped around Tamriel before Martin put an end to it. By smashing the Amulet of Kings, he sealed Oblivion away from Mundus permanently.

In a way, the original covenant was broken, though the world still enjoys the benefit of not having Oblivion Gates popping up everywhere. Akatosh had been playing nice since the covenant, but now he has nobody to keep a covenant with. Then the god could've thought "OK, time's up. Good job, world, you had a good run, but now it's Apocalypse-time."

And there we have him - Alduin, bringer of the end so another world can perhaps be created. And even if there won't be a Mundus 2.0, getting rid of the current world would conveniently put an end to the [&@%!] that Keyes put forth in the Infernal City .

Unfortunately, the End of the World would kill the franchise, so we'll just have to see how the player will stop Armageddon itself.

PS. The Department of Supernatural Omnipresent Beings has certainly gone through some personnel changes recently - a new Madgod, permaban for Mehrunes Dagon, Jyggalag made a comeback and all that goodness. Plus if Akatosh goes Postal, then we might just be short a god of Time sometime soon .

ive actually made a thread quite similar to this ^.-

I just hope that we'll actually fight this villain, and not just dodge his spells (Morrowind) or escort some dude and watch some half-assed gods fight (Oblivion).
More of DA:O and GoW boss fights and less of Oblivion and Fable 2 "boss fights".

I believe that that part is referring to the Dovakhiin, not to Alduin.

I'm just confused as to who Alduin is. How does it relate to Akatosh?

I'm pretty sure alduin is akatosh..

I don't think it's as simple as Akatosh=Alduin. Maybe they are brothers or Akatosh has schizophrenia.

I would say that Sheogorath probably has a monopoly on godly insanity. Alduin is probably just a facet of Akatosh (Akatosh is the god of time, time destroys, therefore Akatosh destroys).

Alduin is akatosh... the god akatosh is called by the name og alduin in the nordic culture. kinda like jehova and allah being the same god but perceived differently to each independent religion.

But Al and Tosh (as I choose to call them) have completely different personalities. Tosh is a nice guy, and saves us from Mehrunes Dagon, but Al seems to be a jerk, who tries to kill us all.

I bet this angry, mean Akatosh has something to do with the fact that the Amulet of Kings was destroyed.
It's also noteworthy that the Septims were refered to as "dragon born" too(the only "source" i can remember is when the Blades salute Martin as soon as you get him to Cloud Ruler Temple), much like the player character in Skyrim, so that's probably all related somehow.

True.

Maybe Akatosh is furioius with Martin for calling the pact null and void in the last game. "Foolish mortals! I've freed you from the Alyeid slave-masters and kept you safe for thousands of years and this is how you thank me?? By <expletive>ing on my Holy Pact and borrowing my powers!? DIE!!"

Still, you'd think he'd realize that Martin had no other choice. It wasn't like we were attending his coronation ceremony and he decided "Aw heck, I'll just shatter the thing for the lulz."

That's my wild theory.

Alduin and Akatosh being the same entity is something Tiber Septim cooked up to unite his fledgling empire. It may actually be true, but like so much of Elder Scrolls lore we're working with biased primary sources, so we honestly don't know the truth of it. One god worshiped under different names by different cultures? Two disparate gods whose worship were cynically united by an ambitious empire-builder? Both? Neither?

No doubt at least part of Skyrim's plot will involve discovering the true nature of Alduin.

Something that just came to my mind. I thought the gods (as in "not the Daedra") were somehow bound to Mundus due to their part in it's creation (even if they were tricked by Lorkhan in the first place). It sounds kind of odd that a god would be limited to working inside their creation, and even be killable (in contrast to Daedra, who can only be banished), and still be able to undo all creation.

Maybe there's more to Akatosh/Alduin, or even all the Aedra, than we know. We shall see.