Board Thread:Lore Discussion/@comment-2.100.92.38-20130821124429/@comment-16047389-20140117193828

1) Perhaps I need to clarify this. SOME gods are the same. Obviously Alduin and Akatosh are two seperate beings entirely, and even Nords recognize that Akatosh is different, since they have shrines dedicated to Akatosh and not Alduin.

2) Aka, along with Auri-El, is likely just another name for Akatosh. Even Knight-Paladin Gelebor confirms that Akatosh had many names. That's part of the problem as to why there can't be one god for each name, as that would mean there was a Auriel, Auri-El, Alkosh, and Akatosh. I've never played Knights of the Nine, so I'm not an authority on Pelinal, but apparently enough of the community also agreed that he was refering to Akatosh and Shor, as they are widely used on his page, with the word "Aka" only being used in direct lines.

3) If Lorkhan and Shor are the same person, then that means Talos DID mantle Shezzar/Shor/Sheor.

4) All religions and beliefs are going to be different, both in and out of TES, and thus will have different origin stories. But in both the Altmeri and Nordic stories, there are several common elements. They were both seen as the hero of mankind, they were both killed by the other divines, and they both are hated by the elves.

There are too many problems that come up if you accept that each name is infact a seperate god. The first being that there would be far too many variations of Akatosh who all share the same purpose. The second is that it would mean instead of 8/9 Divines, there would be closer to 70 gods who govern Mundus. Third, assuming that every god is seperate and real, where does that leave the All-Maker who the Skaal believe is the one and only god who made and is everything?

Here are my thoughts on this: Akatosh, Alkosh, Auriel, Auri-EL, and Aka are all the same being (whom I will always refer to as Akatosh, since I started TES in Oblivion). Lorkhan, Shor, and Shezarr are all the same since they have all been credited for the creation/undertaking of human kind, hated by the elves, and all supposedly dead (probably Sheor too, but he doesn't have enough lore to really make a solid guess on). Alduin is seperate from Akatosh, as even the Greybeards recognize that the Dragonborn was Akatosh's solution to Alduin.

So instead of assuming that there are 5-6 gods of time, 3-4 gods of man, 2 goddess of air, and so on and so forth, I'm leaning to the idea that while there are some gods that are entirely different, that SOME gods (Akatosh, Lorkhan, Kynareth, etc) just have multiple names by which they are known by.