月落ち烏啼いて霜天に満つ

this is the result of looking at the 'songs of bilitis' by george barbier and kirkbride's foul murder drawing during the same day (listed below)

Imagine how good the Elder Scrolls could be if the writers stopped throwing darts at the Daedric Princes whenever they needed a new villain of the week, or at least remembered that the fundmental distinction between the Daedra and their counterparts is that the Daedra chose not to give of themselves to make Mundus and that as much as they are fascinated by mortals they are, being inextricably tied to their nature, fundamentally alien to mortality.

I personally find them more satisfying as being dangerous because they act in accordance with their sphere without reservation rather than just being slightly reskinned Evil Demon Gods.

Like you kiiiiiind of get that with Hircine but explain to me why the servants of the goddess of night and darkness and luck, for example, are universally malicious and cruel and tormented just because? By all means let them be dangerous and scary but the cartoonish evil-for-its-own-sake is so much more boring than the alternative idea of "The royalty of Oblivion is capricious and considers mortals fun to watch or fuck around with or occasionally use as tools/pawns/champions while they're all busy playing 16 way, 5 dimensional chess with each other for some purpose we do not and likely cannot understand."

The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim | Tower of Mzark

On the path to the Elder Scroll.

tried to clean her head anatomy

God sending his silliest soldier:

When you're like 5 and your parents tell you to quit being shy and say hello to your extended family

some Nerevar sketches

a blushing meme,

the Queen Yzralys Rhzomuard Agangnthumz Nromaratzch-Nchumaratzch of Fal'Zhardum Din, you have to say the whole thing.

I'm obsessed with characters we only hear about second or third hand, especially when those accounts are conflicting. No, you don't get to see them, but here's a warped mirror of what other people thought they were. Enjoy your contemplation of how being known is an act of translation and communicates only aspects of the self.

i always imagine the heart of lorkhan had a sort of irresistible pull to everyone around it. once you find it and see it, you want to use it. you need to find some way of using it. you will stop at nothing to discover its secrets. it is a pull no mortal can resist. its the literal heart of the world. it wants to be used.

which is why its fun to imagine why the fuck nerevar seemed immune to it. he is the most power hungry dude around at that time. he went from a caravan guard to king. you dont just do that by accident. even if it didnt have an irresistible pull its weird to go "huh. why is that"

> nerevar > power hungry are we talking about the same nerevar?? the "we can be friends with the dwemer!" nerevar??? the "I won't be there without my friends" nerevar????? the "hold on. hold on. I need to ask azura" nerevar??????

indoril nerevar got this power because he was the only chimer who was ready to cooperate and build alliances, while everyone was fighting each other. he was a gigachad who was 100% happy with what he had. he was NICE. he wanted to live in peace. he didn't need the heart of lorkhan to achieve it!

"he went from a caravan guard to king. you dont just do that by accident". wrong.

Nerevar is also called the son of boethiah. Boethiah being the god of deceit, torture, assassination, and overthrow of authority. Not exactly a nice god. I know everyone says he’s Azura’s son but that title actually belongs to Alandro Sul, not Nerevar. Nerevar just worships Azura and became her champion it seems.

He doesn’t really say anything in canon about friendship like a shonen protagonist as far as I’ve seen abt when he does ask Azura for guidance it’s to confirm things with the (semi)omnipotence only a god can possess, or to decide things when his advisors are in disagreement (like with the tools of kagrenac, ALMSIVI wanted to keep them as they seemed useful abd could be better understood to prevent the same mishap that led to the Dwemer vanishing, and Voryn wanted to destroy them because they were far too dangerous—but ended up using them to mess around with the heart for whatever reason)

“He was NICE” he was a chimer??? Statistically the chimer were assholes. Potentially bigger assholes than the Dunmer. “What makes a chimer great? Making sure the other dies before you”. He was also, regardless of initial intentions, a warlord. The warlord of all six houses of Morrowind in fact. We don’t know what he did to become that in the first era but the Nerevarine becomes hortator and has to do a lot to get it including lying, stealing, begging, killing (both assassination or honorable duels tbh), and even going along with slavery. It is impossible to complete the Nerevarine’s quest and be a morally good, nice person, regardless of what you personally want to do. Because stopping evil is more important than being good and nice. And I’m sure that was intentionally done to also give us insight in what Nerevar went through.

Also there’s a source about him ripping Dumac’s heart out and eating it. So. No I don’t thing the son of boethiah who ripped out his friend’s heart and ate it after being betrayed and went from a caravan guard to warlord and king of the chimer was a nice morally upstanding gigachad. I think he had to have a few things wrong with him, regardless of the fact he was a hero and drove the nord empire out of Morrowind.

only nords call nerevar "son of boethiah", specifically the author of the Five Songs of King Wulfharth. literally no one else believes that. it's like "we respect you, you devil spawn".

"He doesn’t really say anything in canon about friendship" he does, in sotha sil' own memories. "Statistically the chimer were assholes" nerevar is the exception, and that's why he was killed. "here’s a source about him ripping Dumac’s heart out and eating it" imperial source. "see, chimers have always been bloodthirsty savages" also come ON. we have two (2) sources on the battle of red mountain official & ashlander. no one else mentions this bs.

tbh if we're gonna discredit sources as inherently biased we have 0 sources for nerevar at all.

the source of nerevar being called the son of boethiah is apart of the five songs of wulfharth that is not widespread. the typical version of it is that voryn dagoth lied about the location of the heart of lorkhan and everyone left really pissed off at having been played. the song about the actual battle of red mountain does have a lot of credibility and gets very esoteric discussing dragon breaks and lorkhan even alludes to things covered in shor son of shor. i dont even have time to get into all of it because its about as dense as the 36 sermons of vivec

the battle of red mountain was an absolute clusterfuck no one can agree on likely because using the heart of lorkhan created a dragon break. linear time was established specifically to keep lorkhan dead and fucking around with him or akatosh too much breaks linear time. it broke when the numidum, originally designed to be powered by lorkhan's heart was activated and it also broke when a bunch of assholes tried to purge the elven influences from akatosh by a weird monotheistic cult. it is not unreasonable to conclude it likely broke then too, and given lorkhan/shor is pretty in line with other deep lore texts, it has some merit. it is not "nords just being biased against the chimer" when most nords do not know that song nor would they believe it.

sotha sil's memories are cut off and disjointed, and someone's mortal memories might not be entirely without bias. they are also, by and large, colored by sotha sil's sense of guilt and inadequacy. he has ruined his relationships by being too distant and cold and its likely a speech nerevar gave to try and hype him up was given immense importance because he betrayed nerevar on some level. either by literally murdering him or breaking the oath he made to nerevar and azura to never use the tools

the ashlander story was told to them by alandro sul who was literally blinded by wulfharth and might not have actually seen what happened and the "official" source was told to a dissent priest supposedly by vivec. and it starts with "Who can clearly recall the events of the distant past" But you have asked me to tell you, in my own words, the events surrounding the Battle of Red Mountain, the birth of the Tribunal, and the prophecies of a Nerevar reborn. Here is what I can tell you." and it also does not even really mention how nerevar died outright, but it is implied voryn killed him and then escaped given nerevar never comes up again

theres also the khajiiti account of the battle of red mountain but i have been struggling to make sense of it if im being honest. they also showed up. because why not

""Statistically the chimer were assholes" nerevar is the exception, and that's why he was killed." i dont think so. there are a lot of other reasons nerevar would be killed. for one thing he didnt want people to use the tools. for another he was the one who proposed allying with the dwemer and the dwemer proceeded to build a giant world ending robot 200 years later. im sure that wouldnt have gone over well with the chimer people, and the tribunal could have seen it as a mercy kill to end his life and make him a martyr rather than have his reputation go in disgrace. or the accounts that he died in the battle of red mountain could very well be true.

but we do still have the player character's experience becoming hortator and i don't think you can become hortator and be an objectively good person or particularly nice. the only source that is 100% objective truth in TES lore is what we see the player character do. and the player character lies, cheats, and steals in their mission to prove themself to be nerevar reborn. which was an intentional choice

im not gonna say the chimer/dunmer are not unfairly categorized as bloodthirsty savages but that is less that they arent and imperials/nords are unfairly biased but more so the fact that the dunmer are very obviously based on north african and middle eastern peoples and the game came out right after 9/11 and was written by americans. almost everyone in explicit canon we the players can see who opposes imperial occupation is either powerless or is portrayed as insane and bloodthirsty because there is an implicit expectation in the writing that the empire is, despite its horrific faults, "good". which means yeah the writers' intentions was def that nerevar is a blood thirsty warlord and kind of an asshole

idk how nords being correct about dragon breaks proves that nerevar is the son of boethiah. nerevar is azura's "baby" through and through. like, the entire game is about it. but the dragon break itself is a good reminder that we can actually say that some info is more correct - if people who don't have any reason to agree with each other say the same thing, then it's probably true. ayleyds mention the break, nords, dunmers, khajiit, you name it.

my problem with the varieties of faith & five songs is that they claim things no one else ever mentioned. the official & ashlander source have no reason to agree with each other, but they sometimes do and both "skip" the nerevar-ate-dumac's-heart story. also nerevarine's actions don't really prove that nerevar was "the most power hungry dude around at that time". the pc isn't a saint, sure, but they aren't a cruel warlord either. they don't even rule, they fuck off to akavir.

even almalexia has always been more power hungry than nerevar. she supported the war with the dwemer + the foul murder + literally went insane when the power was taken from her. etc. etc. my point is that you can't really build an empire if you're a power-hungry freak. you have to make alliances. you have to plan for the future. yes, nerevar wasn't the nicest person ever, but still he was the only chimeri ruler who wanted to make peace with the dwemer. he also knew how to make allies (it bit him in the ass, eventually). btw did you know that sotha sil got a personal laboratory as a "gift" when the alliance with the dwemer was formed? so yeah, nerevar literally died because he was too friendly. he got a nice lab for his BFF, and then this bff figured out how to use the heart of lorkhan and killed nerevar because of it. :(

azura never explicitly calls nerevar her child. her champion yes, but not her child.

also the songs of wulfharth include other things other sources do. nerevar uses keening during the battle of red mountain by both it (no i dont know how nerevar would have gotten that but its notable), and the even more esoteric 36 sermons of vivec (its called the ethos knife in the 36 sermons but its been confirmed to be keening). also in it its mentioned house dagoth through voryn called the nords to the battle of red mountain to join in the clusterfuck war between the chimer and dwemer. in it nerevar kills lorkhan which is how he earned the title of "godkiller".

the war with the dwemer was supported by multiple other people and not just almalexia, and was probably necessary as if the numidium is allowed to run rampant it can literally make nirn uninhabitable. voryn argued they needed to go to war immediately and idk if he was super power hungry at the time. deciphering his motivations is really fucking difficult im ngl because dagoth ur is literally mad and will also lie.

nerevar was also not as close to vivec, almalexia or sotha sil as described by vivec so i wouldnt call sil nerevar's bff. ALMSIVI were significantly younger than nerevar, but nerevar and voryn were close because they were from the same generation. unless you wanna say vivec was just lying about it but that seems a little weird to lie about to the nerevarine. following that, old extra canon material has sotha sil claim almalexia was the closest to nerevar and would be able to tell what "really" happened at the battle of red mountain since she was his wife, lover, and advisor who loved him the most.

i'm not saying nerevar is entirely a power hungry maniac who wanted to conquer all of tamriel or something but he showed intention to unite all of resdayn by force if needed in order to destroy a much larger threat. his big power is persuasion, not overwhelming violence, and there is more to persuasion than just being a great guy everyone wants to be friends with. it means toeing the line of alliances and agreements, twisting the truth, lying by omission, outright lying, and more.

vivec describes nerevar in what my beloved taught me "And I see this idea behind that mask of yours already. You aim to take the land anew. You aim to wake the old sleeper. You aim to make the sky red. You have a name for it already." nerevar wears a mask, that is, hides his full intentions and grand ideas of uniting the chimer behind a false facade. he can lie.

also in what my beloved taught me vivec says "It has the ghartoki on it. Hold now, they both do. Who are you, sandal man?" ghartoki means "weapon hand of change", more specifically a hand that is a weapon. something that is useful for destruction, but destruction is sacred to the chimer as through destruction comes innovation. so he is persuasive, destructive, hides his true intentions, and is prepared to remake the land according to his own will.

these are not descriptions of a guy i think of as great and kind and nice. it is a man who is prepared to do many things in the quest for power, albeit he does have good intentions of what he will do with that power. he wants their people to become strong and independent and throw off the shackles of the nord empire that has kept the chimer under nord rule for centuries. he wants a people united, and you cannot unite the chimer by just being a nice guy. you gotta be prepared to lie, cheat, steal, and kill to get it done. otherwise the other chimer will not listen to you. the entire chimer culture is built upon the worships of lies, sex, murder, assassination, manipulation, fate, and secrets.

i don't think nerevar was the exception to chimer tradition, i think he did fully embody it and the tenants of their gods in full. even if you wanna say he was good and nice and that's why he was killed, it is more believable he would be killed before uniting resdayn, or sometime afterwards during the time of relative peace as there are many reasons for people to want him dead.

the heart arguably has the potential to be used for the betterment of the chimer people. ALMSIVI thought so, either because the dwemer might return eventually, or through other means. it's impossible to know outright. but from what we see he doesn't really want to entertain the idea. even voryn, who was originally the most outspoken against the tools and using the heart eventually gave in to use it. it's possible nerevar would have in time if he lived. its possible he's just built different. its possible he was never tempted because he's a shezzarine. its possible azura blessed him to resist the temptation. who knows

but i think the idea he was a nice, great guy and gigachad who just loved his friends and never wanted power is really doing a disservice to most of the lore we have of him. there is a lot we can't know for certain of him but he was likely a complex figure who embodied a lot of cultural values of the chimer. he's a man who did many good things, but that does not make him inherently a good person.

also he has a ring thats enchanted to kill anyone else besides him who wore it which is. a choice.

"azura never explicitly calls nerevar her child". well, neither does boethiah. yes, some data from the 5 songs can be cross-confirmed, but guess what can't be? the claim about nerevar being boethia's son. they made it up. the general answer to "who wanted to go to war with the dwemer" is "literally everyone else, except for nerevar". that's the point. the info about sotha sil & nerevar being close friends is from divayth, who is old enough to remember it and has no obvious reason to lie. sil is as old as nerevar & voryn. I'm aware of sotha sil' last words and I can totally see why he would say that almalexia knows nerevar better than anyone else. I think the order is like that 1) almalexia 2) voryn 3)sotha sil vivec is... very poetic about nerevar and his intentions which is partly because he's hiding that he murdered him, partly because nerevar almost literally picked him up from the trash and vivec is "in love". he describes nerevar as a coming storm because from vivec's street-view it literally how it was like. of course, nerevar wouldn't become the leader of the chimer tribes without murder-lies-general-ruler-stuff... but then he actually gets the power and just stops. he becomes the leader and immediately starts acting like a normal king. he always ask people around him & the gods for their judgement. and then he dies, because you can't just be normal and stay in power. like, we have ysgramor right there. he is the prime example of how a truly power-hungry warlord looks like: genocidal, cruel, kicks the shit out of everyone. nords compared him to a dragon. that's how power-hungry he was.

if literally anyone else also called nerevar a child of azura i would be willing to believe it. but lorkhan calls him a child of boethiah (and this is honestly pretty important not really as literally boethiah gave birth to him/sired him but instead of how padomaic he is and that his nature is what makes him the biggest threat to lorkhan and the nords) which i think is credible.

also divayth says sotha sil's only peer was nerevar. peers can be friends i cant deny that but mainly it means someone is of the same rank. sotha sil was brilliant and the only person who could really match his intelligence was nerevar. he also doesn't say sotha sil was as old as nerevar and voryn. even then he's been described as always kind of a self obsessed asshole

vivec is also weirdly poetic about nerevar and it is partially because he was in love with nerevar and partially because he was a poet. kind of his job. hes poetic about everyone in his life and speaks kind of layered in metaphor. but he is saying things that have something of credibility and meaning even if they aren't always literal. vivec is a complex individual and he's trying his best to tell "the truth" as he knows it

i also don't think he got into power and just stopped. we don't hear a lot about his rule for one reason or another but i doubt its because he's just a normal dude now. its more than likely we didnt hear much about his rule because the tribunal wanted to mythologize their new martyr saint and talking on and on about the nitty gritty of his rule would make that a lot harder.

even ysgramor is a complex figure in the lore. i like him a lot less than i do most figures from lore but there are arguments to be made that he tried to keep peace between two groups of people who hated each other only to come back to see what looked to be the falmer killing his people and children indiscriminately for a crime they didn't do. or maybe he was just genocidal and cruel and made up a reason to go on a killing spree. or maybe other nords made it up and told him a fake reason because they already were killing falmer. many figures at the time can recount the horrific acts the falmer subjected the nords to and its possible its all made up and its possible its not. the writers do however love justifying the genocide of elves and to say they were always responsible for every bad thing ever though smh.

also i feel the need to say in case its misunderstood: i love nerevar. im obsessed with nerevar. i like him being morally complex and nuanced and kind of an asshole because i think it makes him more interesting. im not doing this because im on some crusade to explain why i dislike him so much or why he deserved to die or whatever. i have poured over the lore of him so much because i fucking love this dude. the idea of him just being a normal dude doesnt appear to be backed up by any lore or makes much sense given the circumstances

... lorkhan couldn't call nerevar the son of boethiah because lorkhan is dead. there's a difference between "character A said that" and "book B claims that character A said that".

I'm not calling vivec a liar but he went from being a street kid to being right in the center of major things. nerevar is someone with the actual power to Change Things. of course, nerevar "hides himself" from vivec because they're not actually that close. it doesn't mean that nerevar is a liar (it's not a major character trait, I don't claim that he never ever lied) or that he is power-hungry or whatever.

we know that the nords were actually like that because they went to war with literally everyone: falmer, dwemer, chimer, reachmen. the dwemer-chimer alliance was created specifically to kick their asses out of morrowind. so, yeah. I tend to believe those stories about ysgramor.

on the other hand, nerevar is famous because he united resdayn and tried to make peace with the dwemer. they lived in peace for 282 years. + we have no evidence of the other chimeri wars/conquests during this period. things were literally fine, until they found The Heart.

so idk. for me, "nerevar the good guy" is interesting enough, specifically because it makes him unique. we have enough morally questionable conquerors: ysgramor, tiber septum, pelinal. so, nah, nerevar was good. he was so good, that the foul murder fucked up almalexia & sotha sil & vivec beyond recognition. they just couldn't forgive themselves for killing this cutie. and I totally get why azura cursed the entire race for his murder, I'd do that too.

im gonna be honest "nerevar didnt make an empire or commit genocide therefore he had to have been a good guy warlord" is not a compelling argument. the bar is literally underground 😭

anyways lorkhan said that because he had been reunited with his heart briefly and came back in this account and yknow what. sure why not. lorkhan's ghost fucks around with reality every now and then and he has avatars. wulfharth WAS one of his named avatars and something clearly got fucked up with linear time. if you wanna say it's not possible and this source shouldnt be taken as fact, like i said we can say this about every source. we know nothing abt nerevar in facts, but the three secret songs of wulfharth seem credible enough

*points at the real life history* the bar is not underground, it's in hell. 💀 I don't know a single real life ruler who "united the lands" and didn't went to war with the neighbors right after that.

the "secret" song also claims that a) dumac and nerevar fought together against lorkhan b) lorkhan killed nerevar and not the tribunal. there's no reason to trust it 100%. yes, maybe the nords were right about lorkhan and his avatars. but it doesn't make them right about everything else.

if there was actually a dragon break, why does no one acknowledge it? when the warp in the west happened, people noticed that something weird was going on. but all the existing accounts of battle of red mountain don't mention anything strange at all and we have 5 different sources (ashlander, tribunal, telvanni, imperial, nordic).

they have acknowledged the dragonbreak to a degree it just got literally so fucked up and confusing it's really difficult for most people to comprehend it, but vivec hypothesizes the dwemer might be outside of linear time, which would make sense if a dragon break happened and kind of erased them from the timeline (this is slightly extralore but is archived by kirkbride and has citations to in lore documents)

as for nerevar being on the side of the dwemer in the songs of wulfharth that is what's really getting me because it both makes sense and doesn't. in the 36 sermons of vivec, nerevar goes to war against the dwemer for making numidium and the tools--yet inexplicably is said to be carrying keening. i can dismiss this as vivec being metaphorical and not literal and i did initially when reading the sermons. dumac has sunder, but that honestly makes more sense because he's dwemer.

but in the songs of wulfharth, nerevar still has keening and he's sighting alongside dumac and alandro. the tribunal and voryn have decided to double cross nerevar because they believe allying with the dwemer like this will be the chimer race's undoing just as much as it will be the undoing of the dwemer. voryn seems a bit off put about betraying nerevar, but his hatred of the dwemer seems to outweigh his loyalty. but it would make much more sense why nerevar would have keening if dumac gave it to him for battle.

"well that doesn't make any sense given most sources say nerevar opposed the dwemer"

I thought so too. Hell it was so confusing to me that when I first read the songs of wulfharth i misread it and thought nerevar couldnt possibly be on the side of the dwemer. but the source above that discusses the dragonbreak also touches a bit on something interesting--at the red moment (the moment the tribunal used the tools and became gods) it was a sort of hard reset of the universe and reality itself. when you become a god you sort of have to always be a god. the tribunal became a sort of ever existing constant, something that has always existed, though i think other gods (like the good daedra) can try and fight that influence and thus we have the continued accounts of the worship of the good three by the ashlanders.

i say this because we know the tribunal at least have always opposed the dwemer in this endeavor. there is no single source that says otherwise, so it can safely be labeled a constant across timelines/realities. but the tribunal also had a vested interest in taking nerevar, their king, and make him their vassal and champion. it is possible the previous universe/reality/original timeline/whatever was a lot more messy in regards to nerevar's loyalties, motivations, and what happened with the dwemer. the remnants of such being recorded in the songs of wulfharth that tell the truth of what they saw at the battle of red mountain, even if it made little sense in the larger context here.

sorry that's a long tangent but thats because this thing is actually a massive clusterfuck. anyways.

i dont know if the nords are entirely right. i dont know if i entirely believe lorkhan did unite with his heart at red mountain during the dragon break. i dont know if nerevar really was on the side of the dwemer. its kind of unknowable at this point, but what we do know is the tribunal had a vested interest in not just revising history but remaking nerevar entirely. they can change his status, his motivations, his rise to power, all of it, because nerevar in a way legitimizes their rule and will become their undoing. and as such i think it is relevant to the discussion in that we might not even be entirely certain of nerevar's personality at the end of the day.

but i think based on what little we do have about him he was very clever and very ambitious. to you, those things might not be synonymous with being power hungry. i disagree in that i can't think of many morally righteous people who are very ambitious, clever, and quickly rise into massive positions of power. its possible though in many timelines he's just a great, nice guy, and in others he's a complete dick. i can't make sense of his motivations but i guess in the end we don't have to because they don't entirely matter.

Godryn Dagoth, a Head of Reborn Great House Dagoth

the funniest thing abt hannibal fans on this site is the way ppl will post screenshots from the show and be like "HIS SLIME 😍😍😍" and the picture is mads mikkelsen looking like this

that is supposed to say smile.

im glad chinese dramas and webnovels are getting some official releases in the west with proper translations but its also rly annoying that many feel the need to replace the names with western names. either bc they think westerners cant relate to chinese ppl if they see chinese names or bc theyre afraid ppl will just go look up the original and unofficial translations