Board Thread:Lore Discussion/@comment-6685058-20130223165123/@comment-11747578-20130708143254

Demystifying the Dwemer

[1] - “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.

As the Dwemer left no corpses or traces of conflict behind, I believe that generations of ritualistic 'anti-creations' resulted in their immediate, but foreseen removal from the Mundus. They retreated behind math, behind color, behind the active principle itself. That the Dwemer vanished during a conflict with Nerevar and the Tribunal is merely coincidence.

In their denial of both phenomena and noumena, the Dwemer found comfort in the creation of Animunculi, which in their operation, combined two incompatible principles, thus denying both.” -- Baladas Demnevanni

[2] - "We begin to see the first inkling of emergence, which by its nature requires the merging of two-fold powers. Inevitably, this leads to another gradient, but this time by forceful process: the Trap of the Lunar God. The Aedra are Named at this time, having lent their hands to what was to be the arena of the eternally impossible: Mundus, or Exactness.

[...]

You in the Fourth Era have already witnessed many of the attempts at reaching the final subgradient of all AE, that state that exists beyond mortal death. The Numidium. The Endeavor. The Prolix Tower. CHIM. The Enantiomorph. The Scarab that Transforms into the New Man.

Simply put, as the Gods cannot know joy as mortals, their creation, so mortals may only understand the joy of Liberty by becoming the progenitors of the models that can make the jump past mortal death." -- Loveletter from the Fifth Era

[3] - "It's not the Brass God that wrecks everything so much as it is all the plane(t)s and timelines that orbit it, singing world-refusals." -- Michael Kirkbride

[4] - "Dwarves knew that phenomena (that which can be perceived by the senses) and noumena (that which is the thing-itself) were both illusions, with the second one just being more clever." -- Michael Kirkbride.

[5] - "Xal, a Human Maruhkati, Port Telvanis:  Ah. I will tell you the truth, because you will believe none of it. The Brass God is Anumidum, the Prime Gestalt. He is also called the divine skin. He was meant to be used many times by our kind to transcend the Gray Maybe.  The first to see him was the Shop Foremer, Kagrenac of Vvardenfell, the wisest of the tonal architects [Mechanists - MN] Do not think as others do that Kagrenac created the Anumidum for petty motivations, such as a refutation of the gods. 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. Kagrenac had even built the tools needed to construct a Mantella, the Crux of Transcendence. But, by then, and for a long time coming, the Doom of the Dwarves marched upon the Mountain and they were removed from this world." -- Skeleton Man's Interview

What is anti-creation?

Anti-creation is the annealing of souls back into a state of less subgradience (take two or more souls and make them into one bigger one). If you are familiar with the nature of creation (the merging of two-fold powers, [2]) and the pattern of fracturing Godhead, I think you will see that this merging is likely to be extremely unstable ("Inevitably, this leads to another gradient," [2]). It is my opinion that Dwemeri anti-creations were only transiently existent; they decayed almost immediately into even smaller soul-fragments in a micro-echo of schizophrenic Godhead. This is how Animunculi were created.

What are Animunculi?

Animunculus: 'anima,' meaning soul, and 'cule,' a suffix meaning small; together, 'little soul.' As I see it, this is the product of decayed anti-creation; soul-fragments even smaller than mortal souls produced from the fragmentation of annealed mortal souls. Something just as different from mortals as mortals are from the gods. Their creation is a micro-echo of Godhead and its fragmentation. The participants of each subgradient creation are centered upon the crux of their convening, whatever that may be. Mundus, for example: centerpoint, and focus of both Aedric remnants (in orbit, note) and the other gods. By pattern, then, each anti-creation and subsequent sundering event results in a series of soul-fragment remnants orbiting the crux of their convergence; Animunculi, orbiting the center of anti-creation their Dwemer creators utilized.

How do Dwemer automata function?

Dwemer centurions contain soul gems as control crystals, but are not powered by them; their motive force comes from other sources. Possible sources include steam, dynamos, and a centralized source broadcast from Dwemer ruins. Regardless of steam or dynamo power, however, centurions deactivate when removed from proximity to Dwemer ruins, and thus I think that while it is possible that the signal broadcast from Dwemer ruins provides some measure of power to centurions, it acts primarily as a control signal. Noting that Antecedants of Dwemer Lawrefers to an individual automaton as 'an Animunculi' and not 'an Animunculus' (plural, not singular), I postulate that in fact each automaton is merely a machine driven by many Animunculic soul-fragments. Broadcast from (or, rather, orbiting around) the site of their anti-creation and fragmentation within Dwemer ruins, these soul-fragments are received as a stream by the morpholiths (soul gems) seated in the automaton, channeled into purposeful function, and released back into orbit around the crux of their anti-creation. The impetus of Animunculic orbit composes the broadcasted portion of energy that allows the action of the automata, and likely the whole of the power for their quasi-mental abilities.

How did the creation of Animunculi comfort the Dwemer?

"In their denial of both phenomena and noumena, the Dwemer found comfort in the creation of Animunculi, which in their operation, combined two incompatible principles, thus denying both.” -- Baladas Demnevanni

<span style="color:rgb(168,168,168);font-family:'lucidagrande','lucidasansunicode',arial,verdana,tahoma,sans-serif;font-size:14px;">"Dwarves knew that phenomena (that which can be perceived by the senses) and noumena (that which is the thing-itself) were both illusions, with the second one just being more clever." -- Michael Kirkbride

<span style="color:rgb(168,168,168);font-family:'lucidagrande','lucidasansunicode',arial,verdana,tahoma,sans-serif;font-size:14px;">As I see it, Dwemer denial of phenomena and noumena both stems from their acknowledgement of the reality that everything in existence is but the dream of a schizophrenic God, and that differences in subgradience were thus ultimately irrelevant. The creation of Animunculi-automata, then, as approximations of beings created from the interaction of different levels of subgradience, might seem comforting to the Dwemer because they function as beings independently of subgradience. All existence might be a God decaying into smaller and smaller pieces, but the Dwemer were able to create approximations of beings that existed independently of that degradation.

What is Numidium?

<span style="color:rgb(168,168,168);font-family:'lucidagrande','lucidasansunicode',arial,verdana,tahoma,sans-serif;font-size:14px;">Numidium is the Prime Gestalt, or Indivisible Form. The Divine Skin. Nu-M(usical) I(nstrument) D(evice) I(nterface)-um. Nu-midi(middle, central, centerpoint)-um: new-Mundus. Numidium is a balloon, built to be filled with the souls of mortals, therein to be anti-created back to divinity in the shape of the Brass God [5]. When filled, it is the third-tier echo of Godhead. It is in two senses the triumph of Animunculic technology; firstly because the use of the Heart allowed the prevention of immediate disintegration; and secondly because the removal of the Heart precipitated a perfection of such disintegration. The Heart, as the essence of a god (a being of less subgradience) was the keystone of the Brass God, allowing the anti-created oversoul to be maintained long-term - and, with the shock of its removal, allowing the precipitation of extremely finely fragmented soul-shards. The Numidium, according to the Loveletter, was an attempt at attainment of the final subgradient - but anti-creation is not such an attempt. Therefore, for the the Loveletter's claim to be accurate, there must be some other element to the Brass God's functioning. In contrast to anti-creation alone, the shattering of an anti-created being would result in fragments of a greater subgradience: in Animunculi. Thusly, I postulate that Numidium was a tool created to facilitate multiple echoes of Godhead and its sundering; to inflate with mortal souls, anti-create them into a god, and then sunder that god into Animunculi as an attempt to attain the final subgradient.

<span style="color:rgb(168,168,168);font-family:'lucidagrande','lucidasansunicode',arial,verdana,tahoma,sans-serif;font-size:14px;">Considering the basis postulated above for the reason Dwemer found Animunculi comforting, and that Numidium is a grand-scale extrapolation of Animunculic technology, it seems that the final result of Numidium, if it was used again and again by mortals (as implied by Xal the Marukhati) would be the creation of a god-scale automata fueled by the orbit of its Animunculic soul-fragments. This being, like its small-scale predecessors, would exist independently or in spite of subgradience. I think this fits the Loveletter's 'Eternal I.' However, since no one has followed in the Dwemer's footsteps, it seems unlikely that this goal was attained.

What happened to the Dwemer?

<span style="color:rgb(168,168,168);font-family:'lucidagrande','lucidasansunicode',arial,verdana,tahoma,sans-serif;font-size:14px;">The Dwemer shattered into Animunculi upon the manifold application of Kagrenac's tools to the Heart. It is unimportant whether or not Kagrenac, Nerevar, Azura, or the Tribunal disconnected the Dwemer from the Heart (in fact it is probably all four; see Where Were you When the Dragon Broke); the effect - immediate disintegration of their anti-created god-soul into Animunculic fragmentia and consequent deletion of Mundane identity - is the same, because the intent was the same. If Kagrenac was devoted to his people as Xal the human Marukhati claims, then to ignore the dissent postulated by Bthuand Mzanch in The Egg of Time (the claim that, while the Heart could indeed be used to maintain their peoples' annealed divinity, its disalignment would result in their utter destruction) would be disgustingly idiotic negligence, which does not fit at all with our image of Kagrenac as the most skilled of the Tonal Architects.

<span style="color:rgb(168,168,168);font-family:'lucidagrande','lucidasansunicode',arial,verdana,tahoma,sans-serif;font-size:14px;">Unless, of course, Kagrenac did not share the entirety of his plans with his people. Unless he presented them only with the idea of racial anti-creation, but intended all along that the Brass God filled with his people's souls should be shattered into Animunculic fragmentia in an attempt to reach en masse the state beyond mortal death outlined in the Loveletter. This holds with the Loveletter's claim that the Numidium was an attempt at this state, whereas the idea that Kagrenac intended only racial anti-creation does not ("by becoming the progenitors that can make the jump past mortal death," refers to anti-creation and its sundering). Thusly, I think it is clear that the Dwemer shattered into miniscule soul-fragments, or Animunculi, in an echo of schizophrenic Godhead.

Where are the Dwemer now?

<span style="color:rgb(168,168,168);font-family:'lucidagrande','lucidasansunicode',arial,verdana,tahoma,sans-serif;font-size:14px;">The Dwemer share the fate of their smaller-scale anti-creations and of all subgradient echoes of Godhead: orbit around the crux of their conjugation and combined identity within its shattered remnants. The Dwemer no longer exist as such (excepting Yagrum), but the Animunculi produced from the shattering of the god their race's souls created within Numidium still orbit the Divine Skin as remnant micro -plane(t)s and -timelines; "It's not the Brass God that wrecks everything so much as it is all the plane(t)s and timelines that orbit it, singing world-refusals." [3] (Note that 'world-refusal' was a characteristic of the Dwemer people.) Subgradient Dwemeri earthbones may also exist in the remnants of their race-god, as earthbones exist within the remnants of Mundus-individual, but there is no support for this as far as I am aware. If the Dwemer did indeed shatter their race-god's soul to the level of final subgradience or something approaching it, it may be that there was no measurable remnant centerpoint as there was with Mundus. <span style="color:rgb(168,168,168);font-family:'lucidagrande','lucidasansunicode',arial,verdana,tahoma,sans-serif;line-height:20px;">