The Forbidden Theory: The Definitive Dwarf-Orc Argument Part III - Divergence and Convergence
The Forbidden Theory: The Definitive Dwarf-Orc Argument
Part III Part I can be found here. Part II
The central thesis of the Dwarf-Orc Theory is that the story of Boethiah eating Trinimac - the Orcish origin story - is in fact the story of Red Mountain. Boethiah represents the Chimer, and Trinimac the Dwemer. Whatever happened to the Dwemer is multi-fold, that is it includes multiple outcomes as befitting a dragon break. Malacath, also known as Mauloch, is Dumac Dwarf-King transformed along with some portion of his people. Any other details are irrelevant to the thesis. For example, some Dwarves might not have become Orcs. Also, just because this event was the focus of the dragon break doesn’t mean that there weren’t Orcs prior to the event according to some calendars.
This theory is not simply a reaction to the phrase “Dumalacath Dwarf-Orc” with some intent to craft an outlandish idea for the sake of weirdness. The exegesis of the theory lies in a critical examination of the overall meaning of the Trinimac transformation myth according to various clear textual hints left in plain sight in the Red Mountain accounts.
Part III: Divergence and Convergence
In part II, we discussed the nature of the spiritual beings who existed prior to Nirn’s creation and who also played a part in it. The most important aspect of these beings is their multi-faceted nature. They are stories and story tellers. They represent broad categories that can be divided up into specific concretes. They are essences. They are planes, spheres of influence that are best described as themes that would be common to any number of stories told. They are the themes out of which stories can be constructed. Presumably, there is an endless host of Aetherial beings which transcribe infinite planes and themes. For example, the Divines of Mundus describe the main themes relevant to Mundus.
Not only are the Gods themes, but they can be described as forms resolved from those themes. The only rule for this is that the form must be appropriate for the context. This is why Auriel is time itself, a dragon spirit, a willful oversoul, and also an immortal Mereth giant. But Shor too is a dragon, depending.
One of the best depictions of beings is seen in the two Nordic Apocryphae Shor Son of Shor and Ysgramor and His 500 Companions. Mythic characters are described as having different forms at different times. A better way of putting this is that they are described as having different forms depending on how the story is being told. The narrator decides the form, the Gods themselves being multifaceted. The multifaceted nature of the divines must be understood properly.
>The first of Ysgramor’s Five Hundred Mighty Companions was actually two, the ashen-amalgamation of his sons that had survived Sarthaal only to die in the freeze-rains of the returning, named Tsunaltir and Stuhnalmir when alive and now called the Grit-Prince Tstunal, whose Tear-Wives were Vramali, Jarli-al, Alleir, and Tusk Widow Who Foreswore Her Name, whose Wine-Wives were Elja Hate-Basket and Ingridal who lost her casket at the burning, and Mjarili-al Half-Casket, whose Hearth-Wives were none survived, and whose Kyne-Wives were none survived, and whose Shield-Wives were Shanjenen the Echo-Eaten and Jahnsdotter Whose-Name-Stays-in-its-Cradle.
So begins the tale of Ysgramor and his Five Hundred Mighty Companions. What’s significant is how this tale ends:
>It was the World-Eater’s-Waking that broke shore first, Shouting our victory and doom, whose Boat-Thane was Ysmaalithax the Northerly Dragon, his first-clutch-sons Tsuunalinfaxtir and St’unuhaslifafnal, whose Tear-Jills were Vorramaalix, Jarliallisuh, Alleirisughus, and the Dewclaw Widow Who Foreswore Her Name, whose Void-Jills were Eljaalithathisalif Hate-Fire and Ingridaaligu who lost her minutes in the mending, and Mjaariliaalunax Half-Fire, whose Earth-Jills were none awoke, and whose Aether-Jills were none survived, and whose Magne-Jills were Shanu’ujeneen the Star-Woven and Jaalhngithaax Whose-Name-Stays-in-its-Egg.
Here the structure of introducing characters is paralleled, but in the place of Nordic champions are powerful and eternal dragon beings. Note also the names of these characters: Ysmir, Tsun, Stuhn, etc. Ysgramor and his host are being conflated with the divines. While this might be an example of ‘weird’ storytelling, the truth is that it reveals the multi-fold nature of the eternal narrative.
This phenomenon of characters having different forms isn’t restricted to how a story is told, but can be seen occurring within as story.
>Kyne had taken the head of Magnar, the jarl that betrayed the weakness of our spear-lines and fled the field. Shor shook his scaled mane. "That isn't Magnar," he said, "Magnar, I fear, fell at sunrise and became replaced by mirrors. The other chieftains are using our forms to lead us astray.
>Shor found the alcove at the core of the world and spoke to his dead father. He said a prayer to remove any trickery of mirrors and the ghost of Shor father of Shor appeared...
And after Tsun takes Dibella to bed, but leaves as Trinimac:
>Trinimac left Dibella in his tent as we assembled, and he had not touched her, frozen in the manner of the Nords when we are unsure of our true place...
>Stuhn was confused for a moment, thinking this an odd shift, but Mara was returned and had made great headway into treaty with the other tribes, telling him that such Totems here in the twilight could now be trusted.
-Shor Son of Shor
Clearly, during the time, the “twilight”, between Kalpas, the precise forms of these multifaceted beings ceases to matter as much. The multi-fold nature of these beings is explicit in this story. We know that the spiritual beings of before-Nirn were multifold, composed of stories and storytelling. Can we conclude that this nature would extend to these beings’ creation? We should. There is every reason to believe that the events of Ysgramor’s return can be described in infinite variety. Each tale as valid and real as any other, by the reckoning of the gods. Nevertheless, by the time of Uriel VII - at least - we have a coherent reality that appears to have only one timeline, or something close to it. Our goal is to discover how such a timeline could emerge from beings whose very nature eschews the very idea of singularity.
>As he entered every aspect of Anuiel, Lorkhan would plant an idea that was almost wholly based on limitation. He outlined a plan to create a soul for the Aurbis, a place where the aspects of aspects might even be allowed to self-reflect. He gained many followers; even Auriel, when told he would become the king of the new world, agreed to help Lorkhan. So they created the Mundus, where their own aspects might live, and became the et'Ada.
According to Altmeri tradition, et’Ada are the limitation of powerful beings. We see these multi-faceted forms being limited into more concrete aspects. This is foundational to the tale of Mundus. Although the High Elves have a specific interpretation of this truth, it remains as is.
How is it then, that the world became concrete? The simplest and most concrete account of creation comes from Before the Ages of Man:
>The Cosmos formed from the Aurbis [chaos, or totality] by Anu and Padomay. Akatosh (Auriel) formed and Time began. The Gods (et'Ada) formed. Lorkhan convinced -- or tricked -- the Gods into creating the mortal plane, Nirn. The mortal plane was at this point highly magical and dangerous. As the Gods walked, the physical make-up of the mortal plane and even the timeless continuity of existence itself became unstable. When Magic (Magnus), architect of the plans for the mortal world, decided to terminate the project, the Gods convened at the Adamantine Tower [Direnni Tower, the oldest known structure in Tamriel] and decided what to do. Most left when Magic did. Others sacrificed themselves into other forms so that they might Stay (the Ehlnofey). Lorkhan was condemned by the Gods to exile in the mortal realms, and his heart was torn out and cast from the Tower. Where it landed, a Volcano formed. With Magic (in the Mythic Sense) gone, the Cosmos stabilized. Elven history, finally linear, began (ME2500).
Even this highly conventional account admits that history had to become linear, and was originally chaotic. This fits with the idea of highly variable beings.
>According to King Harald's bards, ME2500 was the date of construction of the Adamantine Tower on Balfiera Island in High Rock, the oldest known structure of Tamriel. (This corresponds roughly to the earliest historical dates given in various unpublished Elvish chronicles.) During the early Merethic Era, the aboriginal beastpeoples of Tamriel -- the ancestors of the Khajiit, Argonian, Orcish, and other beastfolk -- lived in preliterate communities throughout Tamriel. In the Middle Merethic Era, the Aldmeri (mortals of Elven origin) refugees left their doomed and now-lost continent of Aldmeris (also known as 'Old Ehlnofey') and settled in southwestern Tamriel. The first colonies were distributed at wide intervals on islands along the entire coast of Tamriel. Later inland settlements were founded primarily in fertile lowlands in southwest and central Tamriel. Wherever the beastfolk encountered the Elves, the sophisticated, literate, technologically advanced Aldmeri cultures displaced the primitive beastfolk into the jungles, marshes, mountains, and wastelands. The Adamantine Tower was rediscovered and captured by the Direnni, a prominent and powerful Aldmeri clan. The Crystal Tower was built on Summerset Isle and, later, White Gold Tower in Cyrodiil.
-Before the Ages of Man
It’s important to point out that this account is constructed from the point of view of scholars within history, during the ages of history, in Tamriel. Their point of view is based entirely on what textual evidence survived history to arrive to their present day. There is a heavy reliance on the Altmeri point of view (the knowledge of early Tamriel very likely derived from Father of the Niben which is interestingly the lone account of Topal the Pilot’s journey).
These scholars must be assuming a single timeline, since their present possesses a single timeline. Imagine, though, if they are compiling accounts from different pasts from different timelines that all somehow ‘washed ashore’ in the same present.
Let us examine what seems to be the bridge between the highly variable Dawn and the static present: the Towers.
A good introduction to the Mythic Tower concept comes from The Nu-Mantia Intercept:.
>Aldmeris split during the Dawn, but as in all things then, these fractures enjoyed quasi-temporal amendments. Sometimes the Island of Start was with us, othertimes not or not of a whole, close as it was to spirit actual. The Jills did not have their full powers; rather, I should say, all the mundex spirits had every power at every time amendment at every ordering, which is to say none of them could ever fully express; our world was young and so were its architect gods.The next is known to all of us in different ways, and the impossibility of the Dawn lends all of these memories credence. I speak of the Ur-Tower, Adamantine, anon Direnni, and of its creation and purpose.Auriel-that-is-Akatosh returned to Mundex Arena from his dominion planet, signaling all Aedra to convene at a static meeting that would last outside of aurbic time. His sleek and silver vessel became a spike into the changing earth and the glimmerwinds of its impact warned any spirit that entered aura with it would become recorded-- that by consent of presence their actions here would last of a period unassailable, and would be so whatever might come later to these spirits, even if they rejoined the aether or succumbed willingly or by treachery to a sithite erasure. Thus could the Aedra and their cohorts truly covene in realness.Our forebears saw the erection of Ada-mantia, Ur-Tower, and the Zero Stone. Let the Elders acknowledge this truth: every Tower bears its Stone. The impossipoint of the Convention was the first, though another bears the true title of First Stone.
>The outcome of the Convention was to leave the terrestrial sphere in their excess, for its own good, but that it should last after their departure as in the semblance of the Ada-mantia. Mundus was given its second Tower, the Red, whose First Stone was the Heart of the World, "as in the image." Time began to last in stepped-fashion. Those spirits that remained, lesser and greater, involuntary or eventual earthbone, surrendered all definite hold on divinity. Aldmeris bore witness and built the remaining towers during the Merethic: White-Gold, Crystal-like-Law, Orichalc, Green-Sap, Walk-Brass, Snow Throat, and on and on, "aad semblio imp era."
>What are the Towers? They are magical and physical echoes of the Ur-Tower, Ada-mantia. Ada-mantia was the first spike of unassailable reality in the Dawn, otherwise called the Zero Stone. The powers at Ada-mantia were able to determine through this Stone the spread of creation and their parts in it. The powers also created Red Tower and the First Stone. This allowed the Mundus to exist without the full presence of the divine. In this way, the powers of Ada-mantia granted the Mundus a special kind of divinity, which is called NIRN, the consequence of variable fate. After these two acts, which is commonly called the Convention, the gods left the earth. As they were the most powerful of lesser spirits in the ages after the Convention and eager to emulate what they saw, the Aldmer began construction of their own towers. That they built more than one shows you that they were not of one mind. The Aldmer began to split along cultural lines, on how best to spread creation and their parts in it. Each Tower that was built exemplified a separate accordance. This sundering of purpose is the myth of the "destruction of Aldmeris." Outside of the Dawn, and even then only in the dreamtime of its landscape, there was never a terrestrial homeland of the Elves. "Old Ehlnofey" is a magical ideal of mixed memories of the Dawn. Do not believe the written histories. All mortal life started on the starry heart of Dawn's beauty, Tamriel.
>Every dawnmaker Tower takes a myth-form. Red Tower is a volcano and its surrounds. Snow Throat a mountain whose apex is only half here. Walk-Brass is appropriately ambulatory, and (most of the time) anthropomorphic. The Aldmeri polydoxes were cosminachs, and the White-Gold project was and is no different. Though the Ayleids gave theirs a central Spire as the imago of Ada-mantia, the whole of the polydox resembled the Wheel, with eight lesser towers forming a ring around their primus. To dismiss this mythitecture as being a mockery of the Aurbis is to ignore an important point: this same "jest" gave White-Gold Tower a power over creatia unalike any on this plane(t). It was a triumph of sympathetic megafetish, and the Start of the [Threat! To! Empire!] that brings me to this Council. If the Ayleids made their own Wheel within the Wheel, were-web aad semblio, what would happen if they plucked its strings?
This discussion of towers is understandably confusing. Thankfully, Lady Cinnabar of Taneth has engaged in a couple of powerful discussions which give greater sense to the concept. Before we read these, however, let us note something: Aldmeris, the place of origin of the elves on Nirn, and the place from whence mankind was driven, is said to not have existed. It is described as a state of society, a state of existence even. Consider the chaos of the Gods walking on the earth spouting off multiple realities. Could this state of being - mutiple realities coexisting, with beings that simultaneously exist in these multiple realities - be what is called Aldmeris?
>Tamriel is the center of Nirn; Cyrodiil is the center of Tamriel; and at the center of Cyrodiil stands that greatest of mortal-made structures, the White-Gold Tower of the Imperial City—which was patterned in open emulation of the Adamantine (or Direnni) Tower, the oldest structure in Tamriel, said to have been erected by the Aedra themselves. This was no mere homage, whim, or coincidence: White-Gold was built in the semblance of Adamantine in order to echo the first Tower's undeniable mystical properties. And not just to echo them, but, due to its central location, to amplify them. What are these mystical properties? This leads us to the domain of Tower Lore, a realm fraught with scholarly conflict, but I will try to give a simple, and uncontroversial, summary. When the Aedra were persuaded—or hoodwinked—by Lorkhan into creation of the Mundus, the physical flesh of Nirn was hung on a skeleton of joints, each of which radiated a palpable reality—the bones of the world, as it were. At one of these mystical joint-points the Aedra erected a great structure, the Adamantine Tower, where they held a conclave to decide the fate of Lorkhan and the Mundus. In later times mortal mages discovered the Tower, and deduced its reality-affirming properties. The Merethic Elves then imitated it, erecting the White-Gold and Crystal Towers at other joint-points. In doing this, what did the Ur-Elves hope to achieve? I would posit that, through their collective "possession" of such Towers in their realms, over time the Elves actually amended their local reality to conform to their desires. Thus the Summerset archipelago, in the sphere of the Crystal Tower, is a warm and paradisiacal domain perfectly adapted to the Altmer. And Cyrodiil, in the sphere of the even-more-powerful White-Gold Tower, became a warm and subtropical jungle—which suited the ease-loving Ayleids. But then the slaves of the Heartland High Elves rose up against their masters, conquered the valley of the Nibenay, and the Ayleids ruled no more. Thereafter, White-Gold Tower was the center of a human empire, peopled by Nedes and Cyro-Nords who originated in cooler, northern climes. And so the Tower of Cyrodiil responded to the desires of its new masters. -Subtropical Cyrodiil: A Speculation
Although Lady Cinnabar is speculating about Cyrodiil’s climate, she espouses a view of Tower Lore that is extremely interesting. According to her understanding, towers generate their own realities. If the Dawn was so chaotic, could these towers have created habitable bubbles of tangibility in which the mortal elves could survive?
>A large fragment of the Ehlnofey world landed on Nirn relatively intact, and the Ehlnofey living there were the ancestors of the Mer. These Ehlnofey fortified their borders from the chaos outside, hid their pocket of calm, and attempted to live on as before. -The Annotated Anuad
Again, evidence of elves creating pockets of reality out in a realm of variable chaos.
>The spike of Ada-Mantia, and its Zero Stone, dictated the structure of reality in its Aurbic vicinity, defining for the Earth Bones their story or nature within the unfolding of the Dragon's (timebound) Tale. The Aldmeri or Merethic Elves were singular of purpose only so long as it took them to realize that other Towers, with their own Stones, could tell different stories, each following rules inscribed by Variorum Architects. And so the Mer self-refracted, each to their own creation, the Chimer following Red-Heart, the Bosmer burgeoning Green-Sap, the Altmer erecting Crystal-Like-Law, et alia.But of all the Prismatic Mer, none were more presumptuous than the Ayleids of the Heartland. They built their tower in open emulation of Ada-Mantia, using as Founding-Stone the great red diamond they had uncovered: Chim-el-Adabal, said to be crystallized blood from the Heart of Lorkhan itself. (For the Heart on its arrow passed over the Heartlands, birthing one of that postnymic's quaternary meanings.) Thus did White-Gold become Tower One. As all know. As foretold by the moth-eyed, Ayleid hubris was to bear bitter fruit. With their vision on high to behold the overworlds, they failed to note the seething Nedelings at their feet, until the thralls rose up and took their Tower away from them. Chim-el-Adabal they took as well, but not before the arch-mage Anumaril fangled an eightfold Staff of Towers, each segment a semblance of a tower in its Dance. And then seven of these segments were borne by White-Gold Knights to distant Fold-Places, where they were hidden. (This was all unknown to Pelin-al-Essia, be certain, or there might have been a different Eight Divines!) -Aurbic Enigma 4: The Elden Tree
So, these towers, starting with Ada-Mantia resonate a song through the Earth Bones, dictating reality and tangibility. The Aldmeri are described as ‘self-refracting’. This implies that multi-form elves began building towers or using towers to select desired singular forms.
This text also discusses ‘fold-places’. This undoubtedly refers to the provinces of Tamriel. Although it might only mean that each province’s reality is influenced by their towers, there is a strong implication that the provinces represent separate realities. This is admittedly in the realm of speculation. However, it’s semantical in the end.
Does one traverse reality by physically crossing a mountain range, or does one have to use fold-magic to enter a new province? If the latter is true, it implies that the separate realities were forced together into one reality at some point. Perhaps this relates to the Eternal Champion and the Staff of Chaos? Perhaps not. Regardless, Annotated Anuad has this to say:
>The wandering Ehlnofey expected to be welcomed into the peaceful realm, but the Old Ehlnofey looked on them as degenerates, fallen from their former glory. For whatever reason, war broke out, and raged across the whole of Nirn. The Old Ehlnofey retained their ancient power and knowledge, but the Wanderers were more numerous, and toughened by their long struggle to survive on Nirn. This war reshaped the face of Nirn, sinking much of the land beneath new oceans, and leaving the lands as we know them (Tamriel, Akavir, Atmora, and Yokuda). The Old Ehlnofey realm, although ruined, became Tamriel.
Whatever the point of convergence, the variable realities of Mundus were - in war - shaped then united to become Tamriel. The towers define each province and would be focal points of struggle, whether we consider White-Gold and Alessia or the Battle of Red Mountain and Numidium.
Here we see that reality on Nirn began as variable and multi-fold only to later converge into a tangible, singular timeline.
Because this process had to occur once over time, it undoubtedly could reoccur. Multiple realities converging and diverging. To understand the nature of mythic power in Tamriel, one must understand this phenomenon. It is so fundamental to Mundus that it requires the explicit existence of the Jills to repair history when these "breaks" occur. We'll discuss dragon breaks more in Part IV.
Let us now examine the what the nature of life might have been before mortality. Take an average elf-form follower of Auriel. This ‘prototype’ Ehlnofey, or Aldmer, might not have had a specific single form like a mortal. Instead, it might be multifaceted, but along a gradient. So, in one ‘higher’ kalpa this being might appear as a prismatic dragon. In the ‘lower’ kalpa it is a prismatic elf. It has many faces, depending on which angle you view it from, but they share a similar ‘race-form’.
It would not be surprising if many of the Aldmeri ancestors that are reckoned by the Altmer are merely these multifaceted being which never were lone mortals, but rather in one vessel contained the entirety of that family tree which would later follow. Only further into the Dawn Era of Nirn would these beings begin expressing their other forms in the bodies of their children, rather than them being possessed directly in their bodies. Let’s consider the nature of these multi-fold beings.
Altmeri creation myth discusses the children of the mixed blood of Anu and Padomay. To a pure Anuaic or Daedric being Aetherius or Oblivion would be ordinary realms consistent with their temperment. Aetherial magic is said to induce change. Oblivion seems to be the realm of the dead - the static. And yet, Anu is the agent of stasis, Padomay of change. How can this be?
Simple. To mixed beings, stasis represents potential. These beings are prismatic, they have multiple forms. Stasis forces the forms to resolve into one thing or another. This represents an act of becoming, which to a being in the middle would appear as change.
Change, on the other hand, forces a prismatic form to become more and more diverse more quickly. This represents a dissolution of form, an expunging of stasis, and therefore an embrace of the void: death.
Change causes a mixed being to focus on stasis, to be desperate for it. Stasis forces a mixed being to focus on change, for it is what is noticed. It is not the nature of Aetherius that causes change in the mixed being, it is the nature of the mixed being itself.
Not all gradients would be pure splits, many would intermingle. The tangled web of relationships between gradients high and low creates a multitude of diverse beings with harmonious or disharmonious interests. Indeed, the Warrior and Thief are natural adversaries, and their struggle is the impulse which propels time along its course.
These mixed blood beings cannot survive time nor Alduin’s fury. During the Kalpic cycle, they travel to Aetherius for safety. This can only be survived if one’s form is not dependent on singularity. Aetherius will expose the final outcome of a being, freezing it in stasis. Only prismatic beings, revealed in Aetherius to possess all possibilities of their form, can survive this light. For mortals, one assumes that only the soul - that essence of potential - can survive.
At Ada-Mantia, reality proceeded from the divines, who are said to have provided tangibility to the world. These prismatic beings were capable of existing in multiple forms, in multiple realities at once. Weaker spirits who were less essential, less mythic, more specific, required the eyesight of the divines to regard them in one or any subset of realities at once. That is, if a being doesn’t know which reality to reside within, it will simply dissolve. The divines were able to say “You! You exist with me in these 10 realities”.
Nirn failed as a project. Why? Because “too much skin was balled up”. Recall that the skin metaphor of Yokudan myth begins by saying that the scales of Satak were at first indistinguishable. This is the light of stasis tickling the unknowable void-form of change. The product of this union are like sparkles or glimmering glints of tangibility. Like the myth says, only after many cycles of this did broad differentiated patterns emerge, and these became the divines. Nirn represents the conclusion of this process, many unknowable Kalpas later.
If Anu is the dreamer, and if his waking would destroy the world by plunging it into stasis which would last for an infinitesimal moment before being consumed by nothingness, then Nirn’s creation represents too much tangibility at once. It’s a risk of Anu seeing too much of the unknown. Too many competing and common realities for anything that’s not broad and pure and essential enough to survive. At once a vanilla yet purely chaotic outcome.
To save this world, the higher beings had to sacrifice themselves. What was this sacrifice? They began to tell specific stories. As prismatic pure essences, their stories were infinite. Imagine a father, master storyteller, reading to his child. Imagine she’s dying. He has so many worlds in his mind, and yet if he stops the current story she might slip away forever, and then who would hear it? Thus, he keeps the current story going, limiting himself. This is the death of the divines. An intentional self-limitation so that enough tangibility could exist in which mortal kind could persist. It is the willful choice to tell only one story.
One of the more notable examples of this is in Y’ffre. He is known as the Storyteller.
>Y'ffre (God of the Forest): Most important deity of the Bosmeri pantheon. While Auri-El Time Dragon might be the king of the gods, the Bosmer revere Y'ffre as the spirit of 'the now'. According to the Wood Elves, after the creation of the mortal plane everything was in chaos. The first mortals were turning into plants and animals and back again. Then Y'ffre transformed himself into the first of the Ehlnofey, or 'Earth Bones'. After these laws of nature were established, mortals had a semblance of safety in the new world, because they could finally understand it. Y'ffre is sometimes called the Storyteller, for the lessons he taught the first Bosmer. Some Bosmer still possess the knowledge of the chaos times, which they can use to great effect (the Wild Hunt).
-Varieties of Faith in the Empire
Here again is a clear distinction between chaos times and present tangibility. The Wild Hunt reflects these times, hearkening to them. In the Wild Hunt, the very forms of the Bosmer change, and they become all manner of beasts. A similar phenomenon is described in the Khajiiti creation myth, and appears to have affected man, beast, elf, and even plant. It is the telling of a singular story by this God (or a singular set of common stories) that pushes away the chaos.
This phenomenon isn’t just a matter of divine power, but the careful balance between reality and chaos is part of everyday life. This is revealed in the nature of the Bosmeri Spinners.
>Though they are our allies in the Aldmeri Dominion, I have had only a little time to study the Bosmer. Their culture is strange and seems insular, and they do not write much down. Asking questions can be dangerous, as the Bosmer are wary of strangers. That is, with one exception. Their priests, shamans, or "Spinners" as they call them, are quite loquacious. Indeed, gettting [sic] a Spinner to talk is not at all difficult ... understanding what they're talking about is. The Bosmer Spinners are, essentially, priests of Y'ffre, but unlike other priests, who seem most concerned with leading their people in worship, Spinners are more like bards or historians for the Bosmer. They live their lives as if they're narrating a story, and speak in much the same way. But these aren't just gaffers and gammers speaking of the good old days. Spinners weave tales about future events. Their [sic] divine and prophesy the same way other people remember the past, and the older the Spinner, the more powerful his or her prescience seems to be. When I arrived in Silvenar, the youngest of the city's three Spinners, Einrel, greeted me at the bridge. There, in the shadow of the Guardian, the young Spinner related to me the tale of my travels right up to the gates and then continued as if the next few days had already happened! I won't even attempt to relate what happened when I met the two elder Spinners of Silvenar, at least not until I understand it better. All three Spinners seem upset about something. I hope to learn—and, of course, document—more.
According to the events of Elder Scrolls Online, the Spinners can be magically manipulated into telling different stories about the future, and this actually changes the future. The Spinners don’t merely know the future, their story affects it.
If the power of the forest, through Y’ffre, gives the Bosmer this power over reality, imagine what the Ayleids, Altmer, Dwemer, et al. could accomplish with their towers. It begins to become clear what they were trying to accomplish.
Going back to Ada-Mantia, we think of it as Auriel’s space ship (due to Nu-Hatta’s words). Michael Kirkbride had this to say about it:
>Start here: "A recent archaelogical study [of Direnni Tower], using the latest techniques of divination and sorcery, has pushed the Tower's construction date back to around ME2500, making it by far the oldest known structure in Tamriel. Although it has been much modified and added on to over the years, its core is a smooth cylinder of shining metal; the Tower is believed to extend at least as far beneath the surface as is now visible above, although its deepest bowels have never been systematically explored." Sounds like a scroll case. A big one, mind you, but maybe that's because a spaceship, too.
If Ada-Mantia was Auri-El’s means of travel between Kalpas, in and out of Mundus, whose scroll would it be?
Xarxes, the scribe of the gods, might just have played a role in constructing or maintaining a vessel that is in essence a giant Elder Scroll. Think about it.
Ada-Mantia was portable tangibility, capable of preserving its form in and out of Aetherius. It was the first tower, capable of imprinting reality and tangibility upon the Earth Bone nodes of Nirn. How would it do this? The same way the gods have always done it
By telling a story.
In Shor Son of Shor, the ‘other chieftans’ defeat Shor’s host by use of mirror-tricks. The vessel of Auri-El is made of stories, might not also his armor be made of stories. Might a complex and powerful mythic narrative form the basis of Divine concretization?
The Mundus is described as a song, the Elder Scrolls its sheet music. Y’ffre’s storytelling is described as song.
There’s a concept that describes this craft of using sound to create. It’s called tonal architecture. This is the use of the world-song to create specific tangible outcomes systematically.
Thus, Xarxes the scribe is also Zen the craftsman. Xarxes the keeper of records would also be the crafter of armor, the shield-thane to Auri-El.
Who then is Trinimac? If Xarxes is the Aurielic Tsun, where in history did the name Trinimac take hold?
It is in Part IV that we answer this question. Finally, the relationship between “To’Xarkay” and “Trinimalacath” is reconciled, the mystery of Orkey revealed. Cast aside is idle speculation about tonal architecture. Instead, we will examine the story of Red Mountain, and consider the true meaning of the tale of Trinimac and Boethiah’s confrontation.
We will answer why the Dwemer and Orcs, in the shared orbit of the Velothi mountains, each possess such a deep connection to the Red Moment, and are both so troubled by Boethiah. (hint, it’s because the latter were created out of the former)