An Apology for Voryn Dagoth: The Sharmat made me do it

There are many ways to apologize for Voryn Dagoth, but this hypothesis, more or less, is that first Kagrenac, and subsequently Voryn Dagoth, became possessed/corrupted by a demonic entity associated with the Heart of Lorkhan, and that this entity is the Sharmat, the False Dreamer. The latter part is very much a guess; "Sharmat" is basically a convenient label for the strand of evil involved here.

Judging by conversations like this and this, the standing assumption seems to be that Sharmat=Dagoth Ur. It's just a title, likely with Aldmeri origins, which connotes some sort of devil. But it easily could be more literal than that. And all terms have an origin story.

The suggestion that Dagoth Ur and the Sharmat can be understood as distinct things has been lingering at the back of my mind for a long time, and I got to pondering it again when /u/CupOfCanada described the Sharmat as "a manifestation of Satakal's hunger". I realized that I'd more or less bought into the idea somewhere along the line that the Sharmat is more than just Dagoth.

I don't know anymore if this is a reasonable interpretation, or if I've just been thinking about it on-and-off so long that I'm taking it too seriously. It might be like a mediocre song which you sing along to simply because you've heard it thousands of times. I was hoping you folks could tell me if I should break out the Reynolds Wrap and make a hat. Here's the key points:

Possession happens in TES

Persons being commandeered by a spirit is an occurrence Tamriel is familiar with. This is seen early on in Daggerfall quests like The Obsessed Child (sometimes), all the way up to the modern games. Nelkir in Skyrim comes to mind; ESO examples are probably out there. Possession also comes up a little bit in Lord of Souls.

Some real-world traditions have developed all sorts of classifications and buzz words regarding demonic possession. It seems Catholic exorcists distinguish obsession and possession, for example; the obsessed person is tormented by a spirit, but hasn't given the final surrender required for possession (and children are incapable of giving this surrender, hence they can only be "obsessed"). It's generally splitting hairs for our purposes here.

But one interesting little thing I heard once: they also consider Satan and Lucifer distinct entities. There are legions of other malevolent spirits, each with different names and personalities. We know this particular real-world myth is made manifest in TES, as are many others. What I'm positing here is that the Sharmat is one such spirit, a very powerful one, though perhaps less corporeal than what we're used to in TES.

The Sharmat Kagrenac

Kagrenac studied the Heart, and became possessed by its corrupting influence. This is unstated, but it stands to reason based on what we do know. I think this corrupting influence was, as CupOfCanada put it, the "manifestation of Satakal's hunger", and this is the Sharmat. But I think, before there was the Sharmat Dagoth Ur, there was the Sharmat Kagrenac. "The Blighter".

Nerevar at Red Mountain: >House Dagoth had discovered the source of the profane and secret power of the Dwemer: the legendary Heart of Lorkhan, which Dumac's people had used to make themselves immortal and beyond the measure of the gods. In fact, one of the their high priests, Kagrenac, was building a New God so that the Dwemer could claim Resdayn for their own.

And The Battle of Red Mountain: >[W]hen Dagoth Ur, Lord of House Dagoth, and trusted as a friend by both Nerevar and the Dwemer, brought us proof that High Engineer Kagrenac of the Dwemer had discovered the Heart of Lorkhan, and that he had learned how to tap its powers, and was building a new god, a mockery of Chimer faith and a fearsome weapon, we all urged Nerevar to make war on the Dwarves and to destroy this threat to Chimer beliefs and security. Nerevar was troubled. He went to Dumac and asked if what Dagoth Ur said was true. But Kagrenac took great offense, and asked whom Nerevar thought he was, that he might presume to judge the affairs of the Dwemer.

So, before they began building Anumidium, Kagrenac had apparently begun sharing the divinity of the Heart with his people. And [who does that remind you of](http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Dagoth_Ur_(god\)#Dialogue)?

>I [Dagoth Ur] will continue to draw divine power from the Heart and distribute it to my kin and followers. I will continue to broadcast divine power upon the blight winds, so that it will touch each soul in Vvardenfell, and then more broadly, across the waters to the rest of Morrowind and Tamriel. In time, every mortal in Tamriel shall feel the liberating contact with the divine."

And you know that the Sermons have to factor into all this:

>Out of their fortresses they came with golden ballistae that walked and mighty atronachs and things that spat flame and things that made killing songs. Their king was Dumac Dwarf-Orc, but their high priest was Kagrenac the Blighter.

So, we have Kagrenac exhibiting all the same behavior that Dagoth Ur would later exhibit. Unleashing the blight, sharing the "gift" of divinity, trying to create his own god, and possibly other correlations.

This passage also highlights another important point: Dumac may have been the king, but Kagrenac apparently wielded a great amount of authority in Dwemeri culture. We can only guess at Dwemer politics, for the most part, but the suggestion in Nerevar at Red Mountain is that Kagrenac was operating behind Dumac's back, and The Battle of Red Mountain speaks to the idea that Dumac was beholden to Kagrenac to a significant degree. That he was, to some effect, a figurehead leader sharing power with Kagrenac, and by the time he learned of Kagrenac's plans, there was nothing he could do.

Nerevar questioned Dumac. It was Kagrenac who answered him, and Kagrenac who got his way.

Consider that the Dwemer at least partially relied on automatons for their military, and he was their High Craftlord. In other words, great influence with the military likely would have been interwoven with his authority as a spiritual/philosophical leader.

So, was Dagoth Ur really effected by his handling of Kagrenac's Tools in the Heart Chamber? That has evidently always been nothing more than a guess from the start; whether it was the true cause is not clear. What if the true cause was not his proximity to Kagrenac's Tools, but his proximity to Kagrenac himself?

The most significant piece of evidence, the one that has kept me thinking about this for so long, is in Dagoth Ur's Plans:

>Note: Dagoth Ur has apparently adopted the views and motivations of the Dwemer High Craftlord Kagrenac. In effect, he recapitulates the ancient blasphemous folly of the Dwemer.

But were Kagrenac's views and motivations really his own? Was the "blasphemous folly of the Dwemer" really their own, or had they been co-opted at their highest levels by a malevolent force?

Distinguishing the Sharmat

As I said, it's more a convenience label than anything else. When you get right down to it, we don't know much about the Sharmat. Here is the grand sum of explicit Sharmat references in Morrowind, allowing for some possible errant bits of dialogue. The vast majority of times, it appears as "the Sharmat Dagoth Ur". But there's one line in particular from Nibani Maesa I want to point out:

>These dreams are the black lies of the Sharmat Dagoth Ur. Dagoth Ur himself is mad. He is dead, but he dreams he lives. He hears laughter and love, but he makes monsters and ghouls. He woos as a lover, but he reeks with fear and disgust. Do not listen. Do not go to him.

The likely intention here is that Nibani is merely distinguishing the lies of Dagoth Ur from "Dagoth Ur himself". But even assuming that's the case, let's kill the author for a moment. Nibani could be construed here as distinguishing between the corporeal foe that is Dagoth Ur, and the larger metaphysical enemy that is the Sharmat Dagoth Ur.

The Sharmat Comes?

As I stated here, I don't like the idea of a "zombie Dagoth". I read enough comics as a kid to really appreciate the idea of the bad guy dying and never, ever coming back.

But the user Zaarin stated, "the return of Dagoth Ur could potentially be done brilliantly or horribly, but I don't have confidence in Bethesda's ability to do it brilliantly and there's really no in between."

I'm really not offering all this as a future plot mechanism, I just think it's a way of understanding Morrowind's story which has merit. But as we all know here (and as many TES fans seem to misunderstand), the Heart of Lorkhan was not destroyed. It was set free. Maybe the Sharmat was set free, as well? Maybe, one day, the reemergence of the Sharmat could be the "in between"?