The Dreamer's Song
I'd like to discuss two concepts and how they relate to each other.
The Dream and the Music of the Universe.
I believe everything started with a single tone. A single frequency ever-present in the first nothing. This is background noise, static. The stage for which the Music will be played upon. The beginning of the dream.
The first concepts birthed themselves from that original frequency. It allowed them to exist, albeit in only an intangible way.
Each concept was pure in its form, fore it represented but a single note. A solitary instrument singing alone. Long before the great orchestra would be formed.
Eventually more complicated notes would form, spirits of higher awareness. They would begin to realize themselves and sing new songs of their own creation.
When Lorkhan decided to start his plans on Mundus, the song began to really take shape. Now there was a rigid foundation for which new music, new versions of old songs can be sung.
At this point its worth going over these fantastic threads made by /u/myrrlyn .
[Aurbis: The Musical] (https://www.reddit.com/r/teslore/comments/1oybze/aurbis_the_musical/) and Aurbis 2: Colorful Boogaloo.
So this is the structure of the Aurbis.
And like a Dream, it can be manipulated.
Have you ever been in such a deep sleep that your alarm clock could not wake you? Your sleeping brain still recognizes it but it isn't enough to stir you from your slumber.
Take a look at this article on Sensory Incorporation in Dreams.
>In a study conducted by Nielsen (1993), participants wore a pressure cuff on their leg while sleeping in the laboratory. During REM sleep, experimenters inflated the cuff to produce pressure on the leg and subsequently awoke participants for dream reports. The authors found several examples of leg pressure incorporated into dreams, sometimes in a subtle yet direct fashion (ie, tingling in the leg), and sometimes in a more elaborate fashion (ie, a dream sequence that involved paralysis of the leg, attempts to move the leg resulting in intense discomfort). Thus the physical sensation of pressure on the leg was incorporated in idiosyncratic ways, perhaps depending on the prior narrative of the dream or the quality of sleep.
So it get's rationalized into the dream itself. An alarm clock might manifest itself in your dream. Or something similar, perhaps a fire truck with its screaming siren will race by.
Either way your subconscious mind will attempt to make sense of the sensory input instinctively and make it a reality within your dream.
The Thu'um would be a brute force way of altering the sound of reality. You are shouting at the Godhead and forcing it into Submission. You are saying Yol and the Godhead responds with fire.
This also speaks to the nature of Dragons. They are conquerors. It is intrinsic to their nature to dominate, whether it is an enemy or reality itself.
Also, the Thu'um doesn't require Magicka. Why would it? You are not tapping into the power of Magnus to cause change.
You are speaking directly to the Godhead and commanding it to obey.
The Dwemer understood all of this. And they perfected it.
They developed Tonal Architecture and Kagrenacs tools.
A more elegant way of writing your own music. These are finely tuned instruments designed to allow you to tap into the Heart of a God and use its power for yourself.
Lorkhan's heart is the Doom Drum. Forever pulsating the underlying beat of the Orchestra. Kagrenac's tools are the Mallets used to beat the drum and form new music.
Sunder, defined as "split apart", is used to break away the initial tone.
Keening, something similar to a tuning fork, refines the tone from Sunder and allows you to manipulate it.
Wraithguard is just that, something to guard your spirit from non-creation.
This knowledge would permeate Dwemer society. Their culture would even begin to revolve around it. Possibly even worship it, if worship is the right word.
They used this knowledge create a form of metal that seems to defy the laws of time fore it does not rust or age. And no one has been able to re-create it all the thousands of years since the Dwemer disappeared.
A quote from Calcelmo: >"No other race has replicated whatever process was used to create dwarven metal. Although it can be easily mistaken for bronze - and in fact many forgers of dwarven materials use bronze to create their fake replicas - it is most definitely a distinct type of metal of its own."
Some believe it was also how they dug such massive underground cities. Buildings carved in shapes that were so mathematically perfect that it appeared to have been constructed by God.
But their greatest experiment would also be their last.
Forged from the Heart of Lorkhan itself, this colossal machine was the pinnacle of their science and mathematics.
This Brass God was NO. It was the opposite wave length.
It looked at "Is" and "Is Not" and said Neither.
Numidium can be compared to Noise Cancellation.
>Sound is a pressure wave, which consists of alternating periods of compression and rarefaction. A noise-cancellation speaker emits a sound wave with the same amplitude but with inverted phase (also known as antiphase) to the original sound. The waves combine to form a new wave, in a process called interference, and effectively cancel each other out – an effect which is called destructive interference.
It broadcasts the same tone as the Aurbis and inverts the direction of the wave-length. Thus nullifying it and erasing existence.
It is "NO" made real.
There are other examples of this in the lore but I'll leave it here for now.