Dreamsleeve Transcript: Black Silence and How to Fill it

This is an in-game book for a Skyrim mod I am writing. Right now I am calling it "#ThalMod," but that name is subject to change.

Dreamsleeve Transcript: Black Silence and How to Fill it

by d-Ostanya

All right everyone, the rambling session for today is dedicated to d-DullCHIM, who asked me if I am an atheist. That made me think for a good while, so I decided it deserves a memo. Here goes.

What is atheism? One might call it an intellectual movement born at the end of the Great War, still rising in popularity among the gentry of both the Summerset Isle and Cyrodiil. Atheism promotes a worldview where all that is Divine is dead, and Man and Mer rely entirely on logic, empathy and basic instinct to make decisions. With a world previously so dependent on faith, this ‘new’ idea struck Tamriel as revolutionary. I argue that this impression is wrong. I believe is important to understand how atheism is rooted in past ideology. In fact, it is rooted deep in the earth, in the cities of a silenced race: the Dwemer.

The Dwemer described the world through metaphysical concepts that are almost entirely lost. One of the popular parables of Convention, however, has been handed down through spoken accounts. This is a rough summary which I have translated to Altmeris:

“Convention did not come to pass as tidy Law-making. There was nothing organised or diplomatic about Convention. The Silence that once made up Infinity suddenly Convened, compressing and solidifying its Existence until it was called Finity and akin to a glass Orbis. It grew brittle and Shattered. The impact created Sound, and also Light which reflected off the glass and taunted Infinity.

“Different Shards of glass caught the Light differently: the Man-shards wanted their own sound and mimicked Convention again and again until they became like Dust, losing their luster. Mer-Shards felt the Light on their broken edges and sought to sweep the Dust into Not-Existence, then re-Assemble each other to make a perfect glass Orbis again. The Deep-Shards, which were Mer-Shards, caught no Light. Their broken edges would only re-Assemble into Black Silence, an Infinity which would never Convene again.”

The “Light” is the word I chose for a Dwemeris word that can be translated a great number of ways, one of these being “Divinity,” another “Faith,” and a third “Love.” The Dwemer perceived no divinity. They were atheists. This in turn rendered faith obsolete. The third translation, Love, represents what I consider the only force that can stand against the Dwemer, and I shall return to this concept later.

At this point it is crucial to mention that the Dwemer were not only atheists. Atheism is incidental, a mere side-effect of the extremist philosophy that truly characterised the Dwemer: nihilism. “Black Silence,” as I translated it, is the embodiment thereof. An infectious tonal quieting that the dormant earth lacks the will to resist. My hypothesis is that the Dwemer already succeeded in the Black Silence. They became their ideology, their slogan, which is “NO.” Both Anu-aligned and Padomay-aligned entities have reason to fear this Black Silence.

I will explain what this hypothesis entails from a different angle, with a slightly desultory focus that will eventually tie into the concepts previously mentioned. First, I will explain my idea of divinity and its place in Tamrielic society. I admit that my viewpoint is rather typical of Altmer: I believe that people are fallen gods. Anything mortal and vulgar is merely a shard of the divine. Anything banal is secretly holy, and can maintain the secret, or converge with other shards into a higher part of the divine subgradient. The Thalmor, whose history I have also studied extensively, aim to unify the ideology of the Aldmer into a divine spirit again: the “glass Orbis,” as translated. Even the Thalmor, who have some collectively nihilistic tendencies, are not atheist. In my opinion, the atheism and total nihilism we observe in the legacy of the Dwemer are one and the same. To reject religion is to reject one’s senses. The human body is religion. Color is religion. Math is religion. Sound is religion. What is atheism then, what is pure logic, but the word “NO?”

In this way, the atheism celebrated in the higher echelons of the Empire and Dominion is not true atheism. Contemporary atheists still have faith in divinity; the difference is that their societal focus has shifted towards the divinity in humans rather than the divinity higher on the subgradient, in the Daedra or the dormant Divines. They do see Light, and they see Light in their brothers and sisters, which I personally think is admirable. It is Love, after all.

This brings me to the meaning of Love. As I mentioned previously, Love is the secret to defeating the Black Silence. Put shortly, Love was the first impossipoint consolidated at Convention. Love is what makes us perceive sounds as melodies. Where there seems to be no reason, Love is the reason. When lost among nihilists, Love is all we can be sure of.

And the Dwemer know Love too. Even if that Love only inspired them to reject it again, it is still there. Tamriel is an Arena, and the Dwemer only want to win like anybody else. When the Black Silence ravages the earth with “NO,” we must cover our ears and scream “YES” until the silence is filled and the Dwemer recognise their own Love. Then they will win against themselves; we will all win. This is my hypothesis. This is how the story of the Arena will end. This is how another story will begin.

Edit: Ostanya is an NPC you meet - some of the sentences here were actually planned dialogue that got a bit out of control. In case you were wondering if I just whipped up a name and context to disguise my voice or something. :)