Just how powerful is the DragonBorn?

[FegelTemplar]

You are drastically oversimplifying things. Lorkhan 'died', but at the same time did not. He continued through Shor, through his Shezzarines, through Sheogorath, and through Mundus. He cannot he killed in the sense that he ceases to be, only divided into smaller components.

 

Sithis, also, isn't a god or an active force. He is the omnipresent soul of misanthropy and limitation. In many ways, he IS death, the absolute limit of existence, but unlike the Et'ad a he bas no conciousness, no self upon which to reflect to express his own identity. Her really isn't even a he, but an it.

 

When Dealing with the actual interaction in the Temple of the One, you have to remember a few things. First, because if Mundus, Akatosh is bound to the time-line of Nirn. That is a price the Aka-tusk paid for its part in creating the mortal world. It was fragmented, splintered, into aspects of time, past-Auriel, present-Akatosh, future-Tosh'Raka and End-Allduin. These different aspects are sorely diminished, and bound by their own fragmented nature. Akatosh can erase nothing, because he IS the present, and has no power over the past. Even then, as Daedra, Mehrunes Dagon exists outside of the Mundus Time, and is not affected by it at all. However, time it's self serves as a part of the barrier which protects Mundus and seperates it from the timelessness of Oblivion and Aetherius, and that allows Akatosh to basically throw Dagon out... Provided he makes it to Nirn. Being so diminished, the Aedra have great difficulty leaving their own planes.

 

We also know that Aka is more than a simple chrono-mancer, because any attempt to change, interfere or remove him breaks time. His very being is so intrinsically woven into the fabric of Mundus that pulling at threads causes you to give birth to your own grandfather. His depiction as a Dragon is something related to the internal imagery of TES, and shouldn't be confused with external concepts. Even the Dovah are just fragments of time, the weakest shards of the Aka-tusk, representing static moments.

 

And I assert that they cannot be killed, because intimately stronger entities have tried. Not even Talos or Vivec have managed to remove a Daedra. Rough up, beat down, and dick-slap, sure, but the Et'ada are intrinsic reflections of IDEAS within the dream, and while new ideas can be born, it is extremely difficult to destroy an idea.

 

Aedra, Daedra and the Magne'ge aren't even really people. They are self-actualized concepts and ideas whose influence is based on their expression within the Aubris. In order to get rid of any of then, you have to totally eradicate their idea. Look at Jyggalag, not even the collective might of all the other Daedra could erase him.

But what source do you have to make all these claims? So far what we actually see in the game is contradictory to most of what you are saying. Instead of Akatosh being time itself, we see him as a spirit of its own which can be summoned with the right spell. Akatosh, whose other name is Auriel among others, even has a bow, proving that at some point he had a humanoid shape and used it in combat. He is said to have fought Lorkhan alongside with Trinimac and shot his heart with the bow. We get to see Lorkhan's heart in game, and we also get to see the bow. Heck we get to see most other legendary artifacts they supposedly used at some point. I would go as far as saying that the Elder Scrolls could have been their scrolls, the tools they used in battle, much like regular mages use regular scrolls. We get to see a bit of their culture in game, what they left behind. Instead of dragons being fragments of time and shards of Aka-tush like you say, we see them being living beings of their own, made of flesh and bones, they have the ability to eat, breathe, speak and use magicka, and enough intelligence to have rational debates. They don't seem to be on extreme levels of fantasy.

 

The evidence we see and experience in game seems to be far more compelling to me than the epic tales you see in the books you can find, many of which contradict each other, some which make claims that Lorkhan is the two moons and that Akatosh is the fabric of time. I don't see what use a planet would have of an organic heart, or even less, a bow. Now I know you can say, "but they just take human/beast forms to fight each other on Nirn and in reality they're the fabric of the Universe" etc. But we have no direct evidence of that, do we? That's just a story you're making up in order to accomodate all the different accounts of all different, unreliable and contradicting books you find in game.

 

To what extent is Lorkhan still Lorkhan if his predecessors no longer have the same memories, no longer have the same opinions or experience? It's no longer the same mind, thus no longer the same person. His power was recycled into smaller beings, but that doesn't mean that they are him or that he is them.

 

Your argument that Daedra cannot be killed is "Talos and Vivec couldn't do it", well, there's argument over whether Talos really is that powerful or not, so it doesn't really hold up. Also, the idea that the Et'Ada and other spirits in general are "ideas" and not people, is highly hypothetical, as in, very unlikely. You're making an unfalsifiable hypothesis there, it would be the same as claiming that we, in the real world, are actually living in the Matrix. There is absolutely no way to know such a thing, therefore it's best to take the 99.9% chance that this is simply reality. Same concept applies to TES unless Bethesda openly confirms that your idea is true. So far what they do is they have different NPCs express different views and opinions, and leave us some clues in game about what the truth is, and it's up to us to figure out how it really went down.

Edited January 19, 2015 by FegelTemplar

[Lachdonin]

In the Age of C0DA, your free to believe what you will. It directly contradicts both in-game sources and developer statements though. We have been TOLD that the Aubris is a dream. We have been TOLD about the nature of the Et'ada and Mundus, and we have been very explicitly told that TES does not follow the same rules as out universe.

 

http://www.imperial-library.info/content/interviews

 

Many of these developer interviews explicitly refer to the Et'ada as fact, refer to the expression of IDEAS, mythopodea, Talos etc.

Edited January 19, 2015 by Lachdonin

[FegelTemplar]

In the Age of C0DA, your free to believe what you will. It directly contradicts both in-game sources and developer statements though. We have been TOLD that the Aubris is a dream. We have been TOLD about the nature of the Et'ada and Mundus, and we have been very explicitly told that TES does not follow the same rules as out universe.

Again, source?

 

It certainly doesn't follow the same rules as our Universe, because there is magicka, but where does a developper ever state that your previous examples are what really went down in TES, and not just the opinion of some NPC observer?

 

You do realize that most in-game sources are contradictory, right? And that the clues you find in game also contradict those sources many times?

[Deleted19391624User]

 

 

:smile:

is knowledge gained by another's tutelage still not knowledge?

That's not the point; the Dragonborn wouldn't be able to defeat Miraak without it.

 

 

So the Dragonborn can only be powerful if he came by knowledge in an original fashion? If so, the idea of Word Walls should also be an example of the Dragonborn not actually being powerful: that's not him, he's just copying, in essence.

 

Your standpoint is that the Dragonborn needs to stand on his own two feet 100%, he cannot stand on the shoulders of those that came before. That describes an Ultimate Deity, not a Hero, wouldn't you agree? And in Skyrim, we are not playing the role of an Ultimate Deity. It's also a classic element of character development when a protagonist discovers lost knowledge, and in part, that plays directly to the concept of 'The Hero's Journey'.

 

The Word Walls is just a mechanism to set the protagonist out in search for knowledge; either set on by the Greybeards, discovered on accident, or found on his own behalf, to become more powerful. Most likely the first and the latter, and the Dragonborn still has to go through great lengths to gain it─which is undeniably part of being a Hero.

 

Of course not. A Hero is someone with great lines, wondrous speeches; an individual who overcomes obstacles, struggles, and learns from the mistakes of his/her predecessors to achieve goals thought impossible for mortals. Not someone who gets power, albeit plenty, handed on a silver platter to achieve a certain goal. I didn't say the Dragonborn is an Ultimate Deity, nor did I imply that. The Dragonborn is a Hero, no argument there. Though I didn't know we were discussing my standpoint on the definition of a Hero.

[FegelTemplar]

http://www.imperial-library.info/content/interviews

 

Many of these developer interviews explicitly refer to the Et'ada as fact, refer to the expression of IDEAS, mythopodea, Talos etc.

Yet in game is it really what you see?

 

If each Et'Ada (by Et'Ada I'm referring to the gods as a whole) is merely an idea and an idea alone, it's contradictory to who they are. It's clear in game that, at least for the Daedric princes, they're beings/people with their own consciousness, their own thoughts and opinions, their ambitions and even physical shapes. They can express fear, anger, happiness, pride, and other feelings.

 

Take Dagon, Boethiah and Molag. If your idea was true and they were only the incarnation of ideas, then one would only represent destruction, and the other only represent betrayal. But that's not what we see. All three of them are capable of destruction. All three of them are capable of betrayal (think of Dagon when he asks you to betray the museum guy, and notice that his artifact is best used as a deceptive weapon), all three of them are capable of domination. It's clear that when they want to, they can set aside their original "purpose" and to whatever they want to, they have a mind of their own. Clavicus Vile rewards you at the end of his quest without you getting scammed, and yet he's supposed to always betray the deals he makes. You can chose to betray Azura during her quest, and yet she's supposed to know in advance what's going to happen; she says she knows you're her champion and all when you start the quest. Heck Nocturnal gets her cloak stolen in one of the in game stories, when she's the goddess of thieves, the irony is thick.

 

It doesn't stop them from being the heralds of ideas, much like a paladin is the herald of heroism or a thief the incarnation of greed. But asserting that the Daedra are merely a pure thought and nothing more is ludicrous. If a developer actually asserts that, then there's some serious plot holes in TES, because it's possible to present an argument against it.

Edited January 19, 2015 by FegelTemplar

[TheVampireDante]

Just dropping this in, case anyone wants to reference it:

 

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Daedric_Princes

[Lachdonin]

Yet in game is it really what you see?

In-game is highly scaled and broken down into very simplistic executions for mechanical purposes. Do you really think Skyrim encompasses 30 square kilometers and has only a few hundred inhabitants? The games do not equate to the world.

 

You are also misunderstanding exactly what the Et'ada are. They are individuals, yes, bit they are also concepts. They are self actualized thoughts and ideas, given consciousness through introspection. They are LIVING and THINKING ideas, fully capable of rational thought but at the same time constrained by their fundimental nature.

 

Just because the Aka-Tusk is Time doesn't mean he is not conscious and rational. He is fully capable of recognising his own existence and his place in the greater cosmos, along with his relationships with other concept-beings. He can make decisions, pass judgement and interact with the intimate cosmos which is the Aubris, but he will always be constrained by his nature.

 

Part of the fundimental component of the Elder Scrolls universe is the very real, very tangible existence of gods and divine beings. They ACT like people, because people are just parts of gods.

 

I really do honk your dwelling too much on the 'thought' part of all this... Thoughts and ideas in TES are far more tangible, far more real than in the real world. The Et'ada represent ideas and concepts and thoughts that arise out of the cosmic interplay of Is and Is Not. We are not talking about the literal idea that pops into your head, but rather the fundimental existence of that idea. Molag Bal IS Oppression and Rape, and so long as those concepts exist within the Aubris, the fabric of creation sustains and renews Molag Bal. You can stab, dismember or bite off his dick as much as you want, the persistence of the idea he represents ensures he will always come back.

 

Trying to kill an Et'ada is like trying to kill gravity. Of gravity were a fat jackass always trying to hold you down. It can't be done unless you eradicate all sources of gravity. You can break them into smaller concepts, or sub-gradients though, and that's how you inevitably get Mortals.

Edited January 19, 2015 by Lachdonin

[FegelTemplar]

 

Yet in game is it really what you see?

In-game is highly scaled and broken down into very simplistic executions for mechanical purposes. Do you really think Skyrim encompasses 30 square kilometers and has only a few hundred inhabitants? The games do not equate to the world.

 

You are also misunderstanding exactly what the Et'ada are. They are individuals, yes, bit they are also concepts. They are self actualized thoughts and ideas, given consciousness through introspection. They are LIVING and THINKING ideas, fully capable of rational thought but at the same time constrained by their fundimental nature.

 

Just because the Aka-Tusk is Time doesn't mean he is not conscious and rational. He is fully capable of recognising his own existence and his place in the greater cosmos, along with his relationships with other concept-beings. He can make decisions, pass judgement and interact with the intimate cosmos which is the Aubris, but he will always be constrained by his nature.

 

Part of the fundimental component of the Elder Scrolls universe is the very real, very tangible existence of gods and divine beings. They ACT like people, because people are just parts of gods.

 

I really do honk your dwelling too much on the 'thought' part of all this... Thoughts and ideas in TES are far more tangible, far more real than in the real world. The Et'ada represent ideas and concepts and thoughts that arise out of the cosmic interplay of Is and Is Not. We are not talking about the literal idea that pops into your head, but rather the fundimental existence of that idea. Molag Bal IS Oppression and Rape, and so long as those concepts exist within the Aubris, the fabric of creation sustains and renews Molag Bal. You can stab, dismember or bite off his dick as much as you want, the persistence of the idea he represents ensures he will always come back.

 

Trying to kill an Et'ada is like trying to kill gravity. Of gravity were a fat jackass always trying to hold you down. It can't be done unless you eradicate all sources of gravity. You can break them into smaller concepts, or sub-gradients though, and that's how you inevitably get Mortals.

 

Oh ok let's bring in the technological argument now. You know, whether or not Bethesda has enough resources isn't going to change anything to the debate on whether Alduin is a form of Akatosh or not, or on whether Lorkhan is a moon or not, or whether the Princes are actually their Oblivion territory or not. Alduin isn't Akatosh, by the way, since he himself claims to be "the first born of Akatosh", a separate being. You can doubt his word but I really can't see why he would need to lie about that.

 

They incarnate concepts, sure, but they're still incarnate. They exist as independent entities. They're not constrained, see my argument about Clavicus, Dagon and the others doing whatever they please (or failing to do so) in spite of them being supposed to be a certain way.

 

The next part of your argument... well, again, you're just reciting whatever you interpreted from the books as fact, but it's still just your opinion. First you say Akatosh is the fabric of time, then you say he's Auriel / Akatosh / Alduin, then you say he's also a conscious living entity... see, there's no consistency to what you're saying. If what you say is what the developers say (is it, though?) then it still holds no consistency, it seems the gods are whatever is convenient for them to be at any time. Above all, you're not providing any evidence to back up your claims.

 

I do appreciate there being a poetic side to TES and some high fantasy. But you have to weigh out what seems more believable. In one hand you have an account from some unreliable book, which is in contradiction with another account from another book, saying that Molag Bal is an idea, a concept. On the other hand, you actually get to see Molag Bal in ESO, you get his weapon in Skyrim and previous games, you get vampires who were literaly raped by him, so on and so forth. What are you going to believe - the hypothesis from a book, or the factual experience, thousands of testimonies and physical evidence of who Molag Bal is? The Et'Ada have been presented as humanoids since the first TES. Alduin himself says he's been created by Akatosh, he's not a fragment of him. Vyrthur has a personal vendetta with Auriel/Akatosh. Miraak has one with Hermaeus Mora. It's clear as day that these Et'Ada aren't just "concept's, they're present entities like very powerful mages/spirits. This is in the game, not in some NPC's book.

 

 

Comparing an Et'Ada to gravity, and without any evidence, lol ok this is getting ridiculous, I'm not even going to dignify this with a response.

Edited January 19, 2015 by FegelTemplar

[Riprock]

 

 

 

:smile:

is knowledge gained by another's tutelage still not knowledge?

That's not the point; the Dragonborn wouldn't be able to defeat Miraak without it.

 

 

So the Dragonborn can only be powerful if he came by knowledge in an original fashion? If so, the idea of Word Walls should also be an example of the Dragonborn not actually being powerful: that's not him, he's just copying, in essence.

 

Your standpoint is that the Dragonborn needs to stand on his own two feet 100%, he cannot stand on the shoulders of those that came before. That describes an Ultimate Deity, not a Hero, wouldn't you agree? And in Skyrim, we are not playing the role of an Ultimate Deity. It's also a classic element of character development when a protagonist discovers lost knowledge, and in part, that plays directly to the concept of 'The Hero's Journey'.

 

The Word Walls is just a mechanism to set the protagonist out in search for knowledge; either set on by the Greybeards, discovered on accident, or found on his own behalf, to become more powerful. Most likely the first and the latter, and the Dragonborn still has to go through great lengths to gain it─which is undeniably part of being a Hero.

 

Of course not. A Hero is someone with great lines, wondrous speeches; an individual who overcomes obstacles, struggles, and learns from the mistakes of his/her predecessors to achieve goals thought impossible for mortals. Not someone who gets power, albeit plenty, handed on a silver platter to achieve a certain goal. I didn't say the Dragonborn is an Ultimate Deity, nor did I imply that. The Dragonborn is a Hero, no argument there. Though I didn't know we were discussing my standpoint on the definition of a Hero.

 

 

...so how can you stand by the premise of "the Dragonborn could not defeat Miirak" without something? That standpoint illustrates a deficiency in the terms of "power" because the Dragonborn had aid. But at the same time, without the aid of people and creatures and even Things teaching the Dragonborn Shouts...the Dragonborn cannot acheive his or her goals.

 

I'm not going into "your" description of Hero. I am going into THE description of Hero, by the way. Only an Ultimate Deity creates from nothing. The Dragonborn cannot create from nothing, but your outlook seems to be that he should.

[FegelTemplar]

 

 

 

 

:smile:

is knowledge gained by another's tutelage still not knowledge?

That's not the point; the Dragonborn wouldn't be able to defeat Miraak without it.

 

 

So the Dragonborn can only be powerful if he came by knowledge in an original fashion? If so, the idea of Word Walls should also be an example of the Dragonborn not actually being powerful: that's not him, he's just copying, in essence.

 

Your standpoint is that the Dragonborn needs to stand on his own two feet 100%, he cannot stand on the shoulders of those that came before. That describes an Ultimate Deity, not a Hero, wouldn't you agree? And in Skyrim, we are not playing the role of an Ultimate Deity. It's also a classic element of character development when a protagonist discovers lost knowledge, and in part, that plays directly to the concept of 'The Hero's Journey'.

 

The Word Walls is just a mechanism to set the protagonist out in search for knowledge; either set on by the Greybeards, discovered on accident, or found on his own behalf, to become more powerful. Most likely the first and the latter, and the Dragonborn still has to go through great lengths to gain it─which is undeniably part of being a Hero.

 

Of course not. A Hero is someone with great lines, wondrous speeches; an individual who overcomes obstacles, struggles, and learns from the mistakes of his/her predecessors to achieve goals thought impossible for mortals. Not someone who gets power, albeit plenty, handed on a silver platter to achieve a certain goal. I didn't say the Dragonborn is an Ultimate Deity, nor did I imply that. The Dragonborn is a Hero, no argument there. Though I didn't know we were discussing my standpoint on the definition of a Hero.

 

 

...so how can you stand by the premise of "the Dragonborn could not defeat Miirak" without something? That standpoint illustrates a deficiency in the terms of "power" because the Dragonborn had aid. But at the same time, without the aid of people and creatures and even Things teaching the Dragonborn Shouts...the Dragonborn cannot acheive his or her goals.

 

I'm not going into "your" description of Hero. I am going into THE description of Hero, by the way. Only an Ultimate Deity creates from nothing. The Dragonborn cannot create from nothing, but your outlook seems to be that he should.

 

Because his description of hero is "opinion" and your description of hero is "fact". Sure, do you really expect anyone to take your word for the one and only truth?

 

Still don't agree with either of the hero definitions. I'd say a hero is someone who puts his life on the line for a cause or for other people and who serves as a role model. The Dragonborn isn't necessarily a Hero since you can make whatever choice you want to. You can be an asshole to everyone in game and you can also be the archetypical paladin.

 

Regardless on whether he's a Hero or not, that doesn't matter, it's just a title. Could the Dragonborn win a battle with a Daedra? Given the achievements of Talos and some other people in TES Lore, I'd say that not only the Dragonborn, but anyone with enough talent, luck and the right tools is capable of attaining godhood and defeating other gods, it just takes the right events to happen at the right time.