Board Thread:Lore Discussion/@comment-121.217.164.118-20130929050443/@comment-24902649-20141216195814

SajuukKhar wrote: Ghosts are strong emotions of living creatues left behind when they die, not the souls of said person.

As Olaf One-eye in Skyrim showed, his hatred of the bard Svaknir remained in his body, while he himself went to Sovengarde.

So I know this is a comment made long time ago, but it got me thinking.

What about Katria?

I mean, she's clearly dead, but I would think that the specter you talk to is more than a bundle of leftover anger. I think it's more like she anchored herself to Mundus, because she had work she was very emotionally attached to that was left unfinished. So emotions don't make up the entirety of her being, they're just what anchor her until she is finished.

So maybe the Dwemer did become one with the Numidium, but not in the way everyone thinks. Maybe they anchored themselves to it, because their work with it was not yet finished. Whatever remains of their souls is still attached to their greatest creation, because they didn't have time to complete it. Those emotions combined with the surge of Aedric power from the Heart, and they were imprisoned in their own god. They've been there all this time in what remains of the Numidium, and emotional "tendrils", for lack of a better word, extend out into the world on occasion. That's why the shades are only present in Morrowind: they simply don't have the power left to appear like that in the fourth era.

That's what I think, anyway.