Board Thread:Lore Discussion/@comment-62.31.43.199-20131118141224/@comment-24590102-20140314021335

Dovahsebrom wrote: 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.

Yes, but this is meagrely a variation on some pantheistic interpretation of Dwemer motives when it is highly unlikely that the Dwemer shared this perspective given that:

'''It was unknown what religion the Dwemer had, or if they worshipped any gods or not, but it was known that they scorned the Daedra,[33] the Nine Divines and essentially all of the gods, and attempted to defy them with their values of "reason and logic". The Dwemer people believed that they were more powerful than the gods and could acquire powers that could equal or even rival them.[33] [34]' ''

More powerful - not superior. And why strive to become something scorned or despised such as the gods? The idea of becoming god is a meagre theological projection which interprets motives in the wrong worldview (i.e in a worldview not shared by the people whose motives are being analysed). So, it seems obvious that the Dwemer were building something other than a 'god' which a superstitious people could only describe using the elements of their own superstition. Moreover, we have this, which actually makes sense given everything they left behind:

'''The Dwemer were a free-thinking and reclusive Elven clan who lived in Tamriel; mostly in Morrowind during the Merethic Era and the First Era. The Dwemer, in general, were a very advanced and powerful civilization. Dwemer society did not force the use of technology over magic, but the general view of their society was that magic was unimportant and pointless, so much so, that most people were not of the Dwemer civilization believed they were "mockers and profaners of the divine."[45]' ''

The issue they would have had with the gods could have had nothing to do with being "insuperior" as the whole freethinking principle is based on the idea that there is no superior and there is no inferior in the context of entities possessing volition - in that nobody possesses the superiority necessary to have the right over another's thoughts, ergo title to one's own mind is an inalienable right of the individual. The issue that freethinkers would take with powerful beings who confuse might and right is that of inequality. Moreover, righting the wrongs of inequality may well necessitate the quest for sufficient power to overcome the evil whence that inequality comes.

As to Numidium:

"The original power source was the Heart of Lorkhan, whose power the Dwemer had accessed using Kagrenac's Tools: Keening, Sunder, and Wraithguard."

Evididently, the Heart of Lorkhan was little more than a glorified battery for whatever they were building.

Now, the Skeleton Man quote is actually attributed to "Xal, a Human Maruhkati, Port Telvanis" who, based on the text of the quote, is pitching a pretty obvious speculation which is rooted, once again, in the perspective of an ancient pantheistic culture who, for example, might mistake a man in armour for a metal golem (I forget the name of the book, but it's a trick the Dwemer are alleged to have played on the one of the Chimer tribes - possibly to discover whether the Chimer tribe in question would honour a treaty).

The punchline is, don't accept any information as true in any context unless it is underpinned by probative facts which can be verified. :)