Board Thread:Lore Discussion/@comment-62.31.43.199-20131118141224/@comment-13446185-20140313203920

Smoking.Chimp wrote: That "the Dwemer refused to worship the gods because they were arrogant and could not accept the fact that they were lesser beings" is a sentiment I recall being expressed by one of the NPC authors within TES - but is this sentiment fact or interpretation? Let us look at it another way. What can possibly make one entity possessed of volition superior to another entity possessed of volition? How is it that volition can remain in one when the freedom of choice, by which that volition is defined, is denied by the superiority of the other? How can the endurance of volition in spite of its denial not prove that the supremacy of the denier is false? I think that this comes back to the distinction between might and right. Perhaps I am wrong, but bravely copying and pasting an excerpt from the article on Numidium:

"The Numidium was constructed by Dwemer artisans during the First Era and was intended to serve as a god of sorts for the Dwemer people. There are many accompanying theories that it was built to allow for Mortal Plane transcendence."

I vaguely recall seeing both theories expressed by books within TES. The first theory suffers from the slight difficulty that the Dwemer had an atheistic perspective and did not recognise godhood in any form (which, funnily enough, was particularly offensive to daedra if what is stated in Azura and the Box is more than theological confabulation). The second theory communicates the idea that the Dwemer constructed the device as a gateway to somewhere else - only, as seen above, expressed in words more appropriate to the period. The second theory seems to fit more closely to the underground abodes of the Dwemer who did not seem to show as much interest, as the other cultural groups, in conquering vast surface areas.

And, while it is true that the use of the Heart of Lorkhan as a machine part is not expressed in exactly those words, is it not the case that anything used to make a machine function is being treated as a machine part in the course of that use? "It was unfashionable among the Dwemer to view their spirits as synthetic constructs three, four, or forty creational gradients below the divine. During the Dawn Era they researched the death of the Earth Bones, what we call now the laws of nature, dissecting the process of the sacred willing itself into the profane. I believe their mechanists and tonal architects discovered systematic regression techniques to perform the reverse -- that is, to create the sacred from the deaths of the profane."

-Baladas Demnevanni

This quote explains that the Dwemer hated the idea that they were insuperior to the gods.

Mortals are the product of Lorkhan's limitations + multiple self-reflection gradients of gods; which is basically splitting gods into many pieces (this is creation).

Now think; if mortals are merely pieces of gods, what happens when you put them back togethor?

Numidium's purpose was to do this very thing, to anti-create and bring the Dwemer into a state before the Dawn, before Lorkhan's limits and self-reflection.

"Kagrenac was devoted to his people, and the Dwarves, despite what you may have read, were a pious lot-he would not have sacrificed so many of their golden souls to create Anumidum's metal body if it were all in the name of grand theater."

-Skeleton Man

Numidium was made from the Dwemer themselves, for this reason Numidium is no machine but in fact a god.