A Vekh Egg Scramble Part I: An Egg Bearing Preamble

I’m hoping this to be the first part of a serial for me to work on interpreting different aspects of Thirty-Six Lessons of Vivec and C0da, through examining Vivec’s role as a world egg. There will be speculation on my part.

Vehk was not always a God. In some world that was reshaped he was born a mortal. After the Tribunal drew from Lorkhan’s divine spark and achieved a form of living godhood, Vehk’s history was rewritten. The events of the Thirty-Six Lessons of Vivec are his account he’d like us to believe became his history. Even if a lie, Vivec claims to only have lies with purpose, and we can extract truths from within it.

>What is the Vehk Egg?

We all know that in c0da that the Amaranth is the love child born of the union of Vivec and Jubal. The narrative of c0da is about how Jubal-Lun-Sul reaches the desired state of awareness of self enabling his offspring in the marriage to Vivec to be free of the dream themes of Anu (strife, conflict, betrayal). Vivec (in his female form) is the womb that the Amaranth is conceived in and is sustained by. This capacity and ability to create, contain, grow, and birth a new world (dream free and separate of the dream it was born in) within Vivec is what I refer to as the “Vehk Egg”. Vivec is the Vehk Egg, and also contains the Vehk Egg.

>Why isn’t the Vehk Egg already Amaranth?

Simple, just like any other egg, Vivec has to be acted upon to give birth to the new world by an outside force his equal. This is the crux of his Psijic Endeavor. Vivec seeks an entity who can combine love under will to act upon him (as Padhome did upon Anu) and create the type of world he desires. Until then he’s only the Vehk Egg, the half template for the Nu-Man. In Sermon Twenty Five, "This is the promise of the PSJJJ: egg, image, man, god, city, state." All things that can be the basis for a new culture.

>How did the Vivec become the egg?

Sermon One gives us an account of Vivec’s mother, the so called “netchman’s wife”, is implanted with an image by Almalexia’s aspect who throws her into the ocean, where she is taken in by the dreugh. Here “they gifted her with gills and milk fingers, changed her sex so that she might give birth to the image as an egg.” The secret origin of the Vehk Egg’s form lies with the Dreugh.

>Why the Dreugh?

u/Lorkhaj gave me a very good theory on what the dreugh actually are. The short of it is that they could actually be, or be the closest beings left to, Elhnofey. The dreugh, as primordial shape-shifting echos and their culture could still hold the secrets a body would need to achieve becoming a world egg. See link to Lorkhaj’s theory, its in the comments.

>Why then a Vehk Egg, and not a Dreugh Egg?

In sermon 28 we see that the Dreugh can be liars, when "Vivec took the shell of The Ruddy Man to the dreughs that had modified his mother. The Queen of Dreughs, whose name is not easy to spell, was in a period of self-incubation. Her wardens took the gift from Vivec and promised to guard it from the surface world...In ten years, The Ruddy Man appeared again." We see then that “ he no longer trusted the Altmer of the sea”, they lost the truth in how heaven should be reached. For this truth, Vivec had to acquire elsewhere than the dreugh, just like the Chimer had to separate from the High Elves. The Dreugh limited themselves in attachment to their Ruddy Man (Molag Bal), just like the Altmer's attachment to Auriel. In sermon Six, Vivec states "Below me is the savage, which we needed to remove ourselves from the Altmer" and in their deceit, the dreugh proved their way savage just like the Altmer and their Aedra liars. And so they are below Vivec, as Vivec will be an egg of the whole truth.

>How is he still the egg?

Sermon 8 we see Vivec’s birth, “Vivec then reached out from the egg all his limbs and features, merging with the simulacrum of his mother… he became the union of male and female.” Noticed how as an egg he never hatched? Instead of emerging by cracking the shell and breaking free from the egg, Vivec’s form is projected from the egg form within. Not only this, but in merging with the simulacrum, Vivec becomes his own mother, and keeps the ability to carry and protect other egg forms. As duel-sexed, he is already 2 parts of the Enantiomorph.

>Why an Egg anyway?

A womb is a life sharing nurturer vessel for creating and bringing life. An egg serves the same function, but is self contained. An egg after it’s conceived and fertilized, shares no connection with the mother, it receives nothing and gives nothing. In the way an immaculate conception is free of their mother’s sin, an image born from an egg is free from her influence. In a world where offspring bears the race and cultural identity of the mother, this means a lot.

>Why does all that horribleness have to happen to the netchman’s wife, what does it say about mortal Vehk’s life? What follows is pure speculation.

Why did Vivec not only mostly write out his own mother in the story of his birth, but subjected her memory to such disturbing things? Beyond just enabling his story to be the great mystical origin myth of the new god, Vivec could have been leaving hints about his true conception pre-apotheosis. Vivec tells of these things that happen to his mother, only for her to die and a machine to take her place birthing him. She is thrown around, blinded, experimented on, and finally killed and replaced with a robotic birthing visage. From this we can extrapolate a narrative that mortal Vehk never knew his mother, and she had lost her humanity during pregnancy. Suppose Vehk’s mother was raped or abused horribly and impregnated with him or while she was pregnant, to the point she had a psychological break. Broken she lost her self (became catatonic, ie zero-sum) never recovering and then possibly died in childbirth. Before Vivec, his mother was a netchman's wife, after Vivec she was broken. Vivec appreciated what his mother went through and though he may have grown up free of her influence, he wanted to make what she went through worth it and not forgotten. So much so, he left echoes of her story in his lessons where he offered these words of encouragement in Sermon Three, “'The fire is mine: let it consume thee, And make a secret door, At the altar of Padhome, In the House of Boet-hi-Ah, Where we become safe, And looked after.” Although she was consumed, she was the door through which Vehk can make things right. After all, he would go on and experience her pain for himself. Unlike her, he would come back from the brink with greater self, and newfound secrets.

>What of the Male influence in his life?

The echoes of his father figure will be featured in... A Vehk Egg Scramble Part II: The Pomegranate Disorder: Building the Provisional House of Depersonalization

Scramble series sequels are up. Links to follow

Part II:The Pomegranate Disorder: Building the Provisional House of Depersonalization

Part III: An Egg With Four Corners

ParIV: Children of Egg Trauma, the First Four

Part V: The Remaining Beaten Egg-Children

A Vehk Egg Scramble Part VI: Psjjjj, The Endeavor And A Side (Psijic) Order