Meridia’s House of Troubles

The Astronomical definition of a meridian according to Wikipedia is:

A meridian is the great circle passing through the celestial poles and the zenith of a particular location.

The Wayward Solar Daughter.

Banned from Aetherius for "consorting with illicit spirits".

This piece will present some linkages between Meridia and some unsavory types, and how her imprisonment is tragic and sad, both in the callousness of her Father, and in its probable inevitability across Kalpas.

What are the celestial poles in this case? One is obvious: the Magnus-shaped hole her father made at the moment of creation when he changed his mind and fled. (The Sun).

What is the other pole?

Perhaps, since her Father was decidedly Anuic, it would be a similar Padomaic hole?

Like the Sithis-shaped hole that was created when Lorkhan was killed? Sheogorath.

She is the Infinite Light/Energy trapped between the Architect and the Madman. And in the typical manner of the unfair parent, her father never forgave her for her nature.

Next, let me ask you, what is an echo without sound? Nothing. What is a reflection without light? Also nothing.

The Adjacent Places, reflections of the world of the Mundus. Not true creations, more like reflections of creation. And importantly, like an reflection can be burned onto a retina after a prolonged exposure to a light image, The Adjacent Places can be even after the World-Eater has consumed the original creation that gave rise to their reflection. And while they may not necessarily be the domain of Meridia, they are the result of Meridia’s existence.

CONJECTURE TIME: There is a connection between Grabbers and Leaper Demons at the very least. I am starting to think they are the same.

The Leaper Demon King and the Greedy Man would ferret away pieces of previous Kalpas in the Adjacent Places, where Alduin/Aka could not find them.

Did she help the Leaper Demon King/Mehrunes Dagon? Or did he and Lorkhan take advantage of what was already there? It’s not important, for in the manner typical of unfair parents, her Father never forgave her for this, either.

Now let us discuss her most famous/infamous enigma, and my longest walk with Meridia: her Champion, Umaril the Unfeathered, half-elven, of a divine father “from a previous Kalpa’s World-River”.

Now where would we find a Divine Father from a previous Kalpa’s World-River? Didn’t Alduin eat everything before the most recent Convention?

Well, not really, because LDK hid a bunch of pieces, remember?

Oh and we have precedent in terms of Divine things that surface in other Kalpas, as demonstrated by The Ruddy Man, an aspect of another corner of Meridia’s House of Troubles, Molag Bal.

Fret not, fellow scolars, for I have a better idea for the Father of Umaril than Bal. However, The Ruddy Man’s memories, like LDK’s, may have helped Meridia in her quest for a Champion.

But Molag Bal would not share such precious information for free. Surely the Prince of domination would demand a price. The Designs for Coldharbour perhaps? Who better to assist in modeling a plane of Oblivion after Nirn than the daughter of the Architect? Maybe Mankar Camoran was simply over-generalising, not not totally incorrect.

Now before we talk about the Paternity of her Champion, let us discuss Meridia’s anger. So we have well established that she grieves her father’s absence and was not totally in control of the reasons that made him angry, but that his initial overreaction to her original sin drove her deeper into sin.

Shunned by the Aedra, she was left only with those in Oblivion to conspire. Being her father’s daughter, she would also have some capacity for spiteful anger, and grew bitter in her sorrow. Like father like daughter, she also, on a separate note, detests “false life”.

Let’s talk Pelinal, Champion of Man and the Divines. Decidedly not undead, and we have evidence he is from the 9th era, the distant future of this much-too-long Kalpa.

A Myth-echo. Some people say robot. I say Mirror. He is some kind of time-travelling meta-mirror zapped back through Time and aimed at Aka(tosh).

“O Aka, for our shared madness I do this! I watch you watching me back! Umaril Dares call us out, for that is how we made him!”

Pelinal also “erased those lands from the maps of elves and men”. Who else can do such things? Alduin, aspect of Aka(tosh).

Who would better recognise a reflection of Time, an imitation of Aka(tosh)/Alduin than the light that is the origin of all reflections?

Perhaps it is Pelinal she hates for being a false Time God. Perhaps it is the paradox he creates she despises. Or maybe it’s the fact that he hails from the 9th era of a Kalpa that goes on much too long. He is a shard of a Kalpa on life support.

Perhaps her contact with the Sithis-hole (Sheogorath) also makes her slightly irrational at times, and gives her an arbitrary idea of legitimate life.

“Umaril dares call us out, for that is how we made him!" ‘We’ being Akatosh/Pelinal, and perhaps all the Divines that blessed him as their Champion. Umaril is proud and vengeful, hateful of the Divines, and calls out their Champion, knowing how to provoke their madness.

Who else would have a terrible beef about the Divines? Who would the Divines have made into a prideful tool of vengeance? Who would be one spirit in all the Aurbis who would know the grief and anger of Meridia, the wayward solar daughter? Who would be offended by this echo of Aka, the Champion of the Divines and Man? And who would have such an intimate knowledge of Pelina’s nature as to know how to provoke him to madness?

Malacath/Trinimac, the old Champion, of course. I propose to you that Malacath/Trinimac is the progenitor of Umaril the Unfeathered, or at least a memory of Trinimalacath from another Kalpa, retrieved with the help of Mehrunes Dagon, Molag Bal and maybe just a touch of Sheogorath.

Now Malacath, already having lost a son to betrayal by Sheogorath, only agreed to the use of his issue if he could be made immortal. No problem, says Meridia, and binds Umaril to her plane of Oblivion.

Sheogorath, Mehrunes Dagon, Molag Bal and Malacath.