Incarnation for Dummies

A letter sent anonymously to the Tribunal Temple. Reports state that several copies have been sent to various high-ranking members of the Imperial Cult in Morrowind. The letter is in a strange, almost unreadable hand.

So you’ve just become Nerevarine and saved all of Tamriel from a nasty guy in a mask, right? Well, congrats!

By now you must be wondering about your new condition. No, not the corprus.

Well, fret not! Because this guide’s got everything you need to know about how you became Nerevarine, in a process we call Incarnation!

So you’re wondering – how’d I get to become Nerevarine? Regardless of how egotistical you might have been before coming here to Morrowind, you never thought that you’d become its messiah. Or maybe you did! Well, none of that matters, because you are now!

But here’s the thing: you might not always have been.

Rule 1: The Universe is Stupid

This might surprise you a bit. You likely never thought of the universe that way before, have you? Maybe you believe that everything goes according to the whims of the Aedra and Daedra and whatnot, or maybe you think that it’s all up to chance. But as it turns out, it’s actually really easy to trick the universe!

See, you and I – well, I’ll keep mum about myself – live in a universe that’s really just one big Dream. Some people know this, most people don’t. Some people that know this try and do something about it, which leads to…a variety of effects. Ask Mister Half-and-Half about that next time you see him.

But what’s important is that it’s a Dream being dreamt up by a Dreamer. And this Dreamer, like all dreamers, can be tricked into thinking that anything is reality.

Which leads to our next part…

Rule 2: You Are What You Act

This is where it gets a bit complex, see.

See, if you walk and talk like a guy enough, eventually the Dreamer will mistake you for the genuine article, and the Dream will rearrange itself so that you are the genuine article. And since time is immaterial to the Dreamer, you’ve always been the genuine article. This is a lot more complex than just playing make-believe: I like shoving pastries up my rectum and pretending I’m an Imga, but that doesn’t make me Uriel Septim VII, does it?

Sadly, you aren’t the first to pull something like this. Your old pal (or not-pal, whatever) Tiber Septim tried it too…or was it a “they”? Gets confusing along the line. He had a taller order, though – you just had to pretend to be a prophet, but he had to do it with the God of Creation!

But hey, enough of that old fart. The point is that you’ve acted enough like him that you’ve become him.

And get this: you’ve always been him now.

Rule 3: You’ve Always Been What You Acted As

Remember “time is immaterial to the Dreamer”?

You might be familiar with “dragon breaks”, but screaming lizard-gods don’t matter to the Dreamer at all! All of history is retroactively rewritten so that you have always been what you’ve pretended to be and thus became. Make sense?

So it doesn’t matter if you weren’t the Nerevarine, once upon a (now lost) time. You’ve always been, and you’ll always be for your very, very, very long life.

Have fun!