A Model of the Godhead and its Contents - Wherein a Mess is Hopefully Made Sense Of
What the hell is the Godhead, and what does it contain?
At the very top, encompassing all else, I place the Godhead, the blank dreamscape, that which all else distinguishes itself within. It has no inherent concepts except the rules that enable Dreams.
Within the Godhead, an infinite array of Dreams, each an Amaranth unto itself, paradoxically both branching off of each other and depending on nothing else but themselves and the Godhead's rules. Amaranths determine everything within themselves except for the Godhead's rules. This is how it's possible to learn about the Godhead and form a new Amaranth from within the rules and concepts of another.
An Amaranth tends to carry concepts from its progenitor Amaranth into itself, tends to remember things. But memory is sometimes flawed, or deliberately altered. Either way, all cosmology is locally contained within an Amaranth, and can differ from one Amaranth to another.
Within an Amaranth, the rules of the Godhead can make themselves known through CHIM. CHIM/Amaranth is always metaphysically possible, throughout the Godhead. But the internal structure of a given Amaranth may or may not lend itself to the actual achievement of CHIM/Amaranth. That is, it might be nomologically impossible, within the physics of some Dreams, to realize that they are Dreams. Those would be dead-end Amaranths, which cannot produce further Amaranths.
On the other end of that spectrum, we can have a Dream that is structured particularly well for the revelation of the Godhead's rules. I would argue that Anu's Dream, containing Tamriel, fits this bill.
Within the rules of Anu's Dream, we have c0das. These are infinite variations of its own history, which tend to center around a particular pattern of events, but nevertheless contain versions which do not. Think of it like prime numbers. Most integers are not prime (most c0das don't diverge much from the general pattern), but, within the infinite set of integers is an infinite set of primes (within the infinite set of c0das, an infinite amount of them do diverge from the general pattern).
C0das in Anu's Dream appear to have something to do with the absence of Memory. Anu's Dream is amnesiac. It can't remember the difference between the hypothetical and the real, between the fiction and the non-fiction. Stories exist in Anu's Dream, stories are reality, to the point that even if something once wasn't "just a story," it definitely is now and, paradoxically, always was. So the c0da depicted in C0DA, then, probably was the "original" timeline from which all other c0das diverge, but its own events render that distinction meaningless.
Further, it's possible for c0das to converge and diverge and interact freely, just like cross-over fiction and spin-offs and so on. Of course, that also implies the existence of corresponding c0das which do not interact with each other.
(There could be, and probably are given the infinite nature of the Godhead, other Dreams with phenomena like or identical to c0das.)
Between the omnipresent laws of the Godhead, the infinite variation of c0das, and the general structure of the Aurbis and its subgradients within most of those c0das, I think Anu's Dream is an incredibly prolific one. Not only does every single entity get infinite chances at discovering the Godhead, but every single entity actually succeeds in an infinite number of those attempts (which is contained within the greater infinite set of c0das in which they do not). From the perspective of any given single c0da and its denizens, there are very few entities who achieved CHIM, let alone Amaranth (the infinite variations of Vivec, Talos, possibly Jubal among them, because they were present in the original from which most are patterned). But, if you regard the whole, you've got infinite Amaranths, Amaranths for days.
So where do kalpas fit in this?
I think they're subject to the infinite variation of c0das. Each c0da has its own set of kalpas, and whether Tamriel's kalpa is the last (or even occurs at all) depends on the c0da.
What about CHIM?
I'll just point you to this thread for the mechanics of CHIM under my model, which were inspired by the thoughts of Jaridase_Zasmyocl, RottenDeadite, and Mdnthrvst. For now, though, you just need to know that CHIM is the stepping stone to Amaranth. It's knowledge of the Godhead's workings through unity with your progenitor Amaranth, and that knowledge allows you to step outside of that progenitor and become your own Amaranth.
How does the subgradient structure of the Aurbis contribute to CHIM and new Amaranths?
It reveals the Wheel by repeating it, over and over again, smaller and smaller, with more and more focused depictions. The Wheel is the fundamental unity of an Amaranth with everything within it. Turn it on its side and see the I. That gets you to CHIM.
The jump to Amaranth, then, is the realization that if there's an I, that means there's something that isn't I, something from which I distinguishes itself. That something has to be the Godhead, the blankness. I'd wager this is symbolized within the context of the Wheel first by the Void, then by Oblivion, then by the oceans. What's across the Godhead from Anu? Other Amaranths. What's across Oblivion from Mundus? Other realms, the Princes. What's across the oceans from Tamriel? Other continents. This brings us to:
Akavir as the Future, and the Continents in General
A lot of hubbub surrounding this lately! Essentially, MK put forth the idea that Akavir is the Nu-Amaranth. If taken literally, this has... Problems. Problems the solutions to which cause even more problems.
So I'm not taking it literally (though the exploration of it was fun).
Rather, I'm adopting this view:
> * dream A = Yokuda of myth + unknown Tamriel + unknown Akavir
> * dream B = remembered Yokuda + Tamriel we know + Akavir we know
> * dream C = remembered Yokuda + Remembered Tamriel + Unknown Akavir.
Where A is Anu's progenitor, B is Anu, and C is (at least one of) Anu's progeny. In this model, MK's statements about Akavir being the Amaranth and the future can be read as a description of C, not of B. The imagery of east/west time is a carryover from the procession of the Sun: New days always start in the east. A new Dream might carry that concept forward, and set itself in a version of an eastern continent from its progenitor Dream. Likewise, Anu might remember its progenitor Amaranth by placing Yokuda, a blasted world (remember Nir's murder?) as a symbol of it, to the west, which is the symbolic past.
This fits especially well if you consider the above about the structure of the Aurbis and its subgradients. Why wouldn't a Nu-Amaranth from that structure center its dream on another continent, if the continents were always symbols hinting at the possibility of Amaranth?
And it also explains why travel to Yokuda is apparently fine, but travel to Akavir is weird. The memories of the past are clear, because Anu was from the Amaranth that Yokuda symbolizes. But the Amaranth that Akavir symbolizes is alien to Anu. Anu doesn't get it. It's hypothetical to Anu, a land symbolizing what might be. And sometimes it's scary, and confusing, and not what we expect, and sometimes it seems like it's already here and changing the world we thought we knew, the people we thought we were. Thence the Akaviri invasions, the Potentates, the Dragonguard. Thence the failure of Uriel V's invasion, because you can't live in the future, you can only live in the present.
Atmora, the continent, too, would be a symbol of the conceptual space from which humans hail, just as Aldmeris is for the mer. Maybe the reason Aldmeris seems not to have a physical continent is because of the merish cultural rejection of the physical, of the constraints of Mundus, whereas humans embrace it. But Atmora is frozen over, motionless, and inhospitable, which is how humans' predecessors might characterize existence outside of Mundus.
Nagging Question:
Where the hell did Memory go, if not literally into Akavir? Did it just die? Was its leaving/death yet another symbol of the possibility of Amaranth, to provoke the question of where it could have gone? In that sense, is it an inverse of an Earthbone? Earthbones died to nail down limits, but Memory died to free Anu from its constraints?