Board Thread:Lore Discussion/@comment-62.31.43.199-20131118141224/@comment-24590102-20140314053628

More powerful - not superior.

"Not sure what your trying to say here. Anyways, more powerful and superior are basically synonymous. "

No they're not. An armed and set-up machinegunner is more powerful than his pistol-carrying superior officer - which draws the distinction between the two. The power to make a choice is real but superiority is, by comparison, an illusion butressed by totems and insignia of rank - which is how the wearing of a crown elevates a highwayman to a king and why police and soildiers wear uniforms, judges wear funny wigs and theocrats wear strange robes. At the end of the reign, all of this means nothing practical in the face of revolution but, until that time, these various insignia of rank prop up the illusion of superiority.

Now, the Skeleton Man quote is actually attributed to "Xal, a Human Maruhkati, Port Telvanis" 

"The fact that this dude is of the Marukhati Selective is itself enough to prove his credibility."

Credibility of the person does not exist but, rather, is an illusion like superiority. It is a fact that knowledgeable and renowned persons err and lie just as often as those who are unknown or lack recognised expertise. The difference is that, because of the credibility illusion, errors and lies propagated by the former endure longer than those propagated by the latter. This is closely related to the lesson imparted by the rather extreme literary contrast between The Alduin/Akatosh Dichotomy and Alduin is Real. The extremity of this contrast, by the way, seems suggestive of the possibility that this is not Zenimax/Bethesda's (or developers' thereof) first attempt to draw attention to this theme.

is pitching a pretty obvious speculation

"Obvious speculation, where did you get that?"

The fact the statement is made in the absence of supporting facts makes it a speculation, period.

As for anti-creation, this is a metaphysical matter which cannot be more than a body of culturally biased interpretation. The idea that the Dwemer had something to prove about themselves is another interpretation which imposes foreign cultural elements (e.g. competitionism) which do not necessarily apply to the Dwemer (who could have owned all of Nirn if they'd cared enough about proving themselves to go out conquering). The same problem of cultural and religious modes of insular interpretation divides the conclusions drawn in The Alduin/Akatosh Dichotomy and Alduin is Real. One is interpreted on the assumption that all gods have both good and evil sides whereas the other is interpreted on the assumption that powerful entities can either be good or bad but cannot be any mixture of the two.