Are the Aedra good /benevolent?

[Fallenlegend]

No question about the Daedra, but what about the Aedra?. They have arguably done good stuff for mundus. Akatosh sealed the barriers between worlds and even the whole Alduin trouble can be explained as the gods wanting their creations to change (unlike the daedra) and arguably for their benefit..

Talos is a pretty cool guy isn't he?. The nords were even willing to die for the right to praise him.No to mention the fact that becuase they sacrifised themselves, they do have a reason to protect the mortals don't they?. So what do you think?

[Br3admax]

Talos isn't an Aedra, and even then he's not a "good guy." As for the rest of them, they act in whatever is favorable to them and their needs, which for right now is continuing convention. It has nothing to do with being good. They need worship to continue function, they being dead god-plane[t]s in Mundas. Without worshipers, they will die all together.

[Fallenlegend]

...even then he's not a "good guy.".

They need worship to continue function, they being dead god-plane[t]s in Mundas. Without worshipers, they will die all together....

Please elaborate.

[Minor Edits]

The person known as Tiber Septim likely had a darker side, although frankly, no one can know the truth behind him and his rise to power/godhood. We lack any definitive knowledge of the circumstances surrounding his purported acts, most vitally the person's motivations and reasoning for various actions which would determine "good" or "bad". So asserting one or the other is essentially a matter of perspective.

Which all fits in to the correlations with Lorkhan, in that whether he's the good or bad guy is left up to the beholder for lore and roleplay reasons. No matter what race or background you're playing, there's generally a ready-made, righteous ideology for your character to adhere to, reject, or ignore. So Talos was a good guy. Or a bad guy. Your choice, for the time being. Which is the beauty of the paradigm, really. The lore behind TES is sometimes best understood when you keep in mind what purpose it is serving.

When and if we finally bear witness to some discernible truth about it all in a future game, I imagine this will still hold true. It will all boil down to the invariant juxtapositions of life which bring us into inevitable conflict as we all determine which principles we value more. Justice or peace, rebirth or survival, ownership or need, truth or well-being, love and hate.

[Pilaf The Defiler]

Talos can't be an Aedra because Aedra are the eight most powerful spirits who were present at Convention. Different cultures have different names for the eight main Spirits. The Imperial pantheon, based on a combination of Nordic and Aldmeri tradition, names Zenithar, Dibella, Stendarr, Akatosh, Mara, Kynareth, Julianos and Arkay. These beings sacrificed the majority of their life force and divine strength to bind themselves around Mundus, keeping it solid. Weaker spirits called the Ehlnofey completely sacrificed their lives, and act as the Earthbones.

Talos became a Divine much later. He was deified after death by his followers. He seemingly takes the place of Shezarr, the "missing sibling" of the Eight. He is definitely a Divine being and has all the powers associated with a Divine, but the term "Aedra" can't accurately apply to him as he's not an Ancestor spirit. He was not one of the Eight spokes of the Wheel at Convention.

As for whether the Aedra are good or bad, they have the mingled blood of Padomay and Anu. Some people interpret this to mean they have the capacity for either good or evil, or at least neglect. It's true that they do offer aid to those who pray to them sometimes, but many other times prayers seem to do nothing at all, and many innocent men and women have died on their knees praying. Whether this has more to do with the presence of Sithis in their blood, or their inability to act whenever people suffer due to their depleted powers, is a matter of debate.

[Woodhouse]

Well St. Alessia and Morihaus were good right? And St. Alessia seemed to have the favor of the gods that she helped forge, and Morihaus was an 'ada' supposedly sent by Kyne. So I know that Morihaus doesn't count as an aedra, but he is of the gods, and pretty much the only demigod I can think of thats pretty definitively good

[Pilaf The Defiler]

Sure, I guess Alessia was good.

Unless you believe she told Maruhk to murder every Elf and burn every Elven writing, of course.

[Woodhouse]

Sure, I guess Alessia was good.

Two people agreeing to a normative statement on an elder scrolls character!?
This is a landmark forum topic

[Minor Edits]

Sure, I guess Alessia was good.

Unless you believe she told Maruhk to murder every Elf and burn every Elven writing, of course.

I, for one, don't. Tl;dr. The Illusion of Death just reinforces, in my view, that Marukh was a crazy monkey hermit who became delirious and began hallucinating and cutting himself. Unfortunately, some others people took him too seriously due to political reasons and/or their own mental failings (****ing Tharns, do doubt), and it all snowballed from there into a fantastically misguided dark age. The real-world parallels I could make are both numerous and probably highly offensive.

What we know of Alessia doesn't suggest she would've actually supported the genocidal, book-burning policies of the order which so arrogantly took her name. The Song of Pelinal said she had to make sacrifice to the gods so their cause did not lose their favor after Pelinal's indiscriminate killing sprees. Trials of St. Alessia claims that Akatosh said she would "stand witness for all Mortal Flesh", not just human flesh. She had Ayleid vassals, and she presumably played a big role in forming the amalgamation of human and mer beliefs that is the Eight Divines. Her purported actions in life bear little resemblance to the wrathful spirit which Marukh claimed to have witnessed.

Everything suggests she was a proponent of peaceful compromise, not someone seeking to annihilate elven existence and all traces of it, except the words of Marukh and those who adhered to them. And even in TES, sometimes a nut is just a nut. If people want to attach some more interesting, supernatural story to the whole thing, then perhaps Marukh was duped by some Daedra. It wouldn't be the first time a daedra has taken on the visage of a powerful mortal in order to take advantage of that person's influence.

/boring tangent

[Pilaf The Defiler]

Falchou from ESO is another good example of the insane hypocrisy of the Alessians. In his eyes, becoming tainted by lyncanthropy and spreading the curse around High Rock was an acceptable method for combating "the Elven Taint." He did this all as a holy crusader for the One, not in the name of the Daedra. He thought he was on God's side.

Personally, I'm with Minor Edits. I don't think the woman who was the slave girl Periff would have ever approved of the things the Alessians did. She was a practical but fair minded person. I have no idea what delusions the Monkey Prophet and his overzealous followers had. I would hesitate to call them Daedric in nature, though, so clearly some spiteful Divine influence was at work. Perhaps Pelinal himself?

[thegooseking]

It's fun to overthink it, but in this case I don't think it's necessary. The book Aedra and Daedra states that the Aedra represent stasis, while the Daedra represent change. While I'd be the first to caution against taking an in-game text at face value (either because of bias or because of the author being misinformed), I would tend to think that this is one of the few things we can accept as a fundamental law of the TES universe.

Stasis and change can be either good or evil, but they're more often both good and evil. It depends on your point of view.

[Dark Spark]

The universe exists under the tension between positive and negative forces. Movement comes from imbalance, stasis is the effect of differing forces meeting each other at equal strength. They oppose each other, and by doing this— one is influenced by the other in a sort of dance.

Creation and Destruction comes in the dance, not from the dancers. There's another element necessary to understand the events that occur, then: Time.