This post is the product of some internal musings. Actually, I feel like Septimus Signus. :D Be warned: what follows is the ravings of a man who has been plague with insomnia over the last few days. Feel free to ignore, engage, correct, or call me an idiot. lol

 

At first the Aurbis was turbulent and confusing, as Anuiel's ruminations went on without design. Aspects of the Aurbis then asked for a schedule to follow or procedures whereby they might enjoy themselves a little longer outside of perfect knowledge. So that he might know himself this way, too, Anu created Auriel, the soul of his soul. Auriel bled through the Aurbis as a new force, called time. With time, various aspects of the Aurbis began to understand their natures and limitations. 

A Dragon Break is a phenomenon where linear time is broken, and becomes non-linear. The "Dragon" refers to Akatosh, the Dragon God of Time. A Dragon Break not only precedes significant changes in Tamriel, but challenges mortal comprehension. It is a re-alignment of time and space in response to an event which makes the normal continuity of reality impossible. The chaos which ensues is a refrain of the chaos of the Dawn Era. The area that is noticeably affected, and length of the interval measured in the areas not apparently affected, varies with each Dragon Break. Historically, the cause is often attributed to mortals manipulating divine matters.

This. BE. Good! :D

Interesting point of view, Patriarch. So if I´m getting it right, do you think that every subsequent Dragon Break creates a new dragon? 

And Alduin is actually an interesting thing. In Nordic Lore there is no Auriel, no Akatosh, their chief deity is Shor and so they must have someone to be on the wrong side of the neighborhood. Thus Alduin. Which is kind of interesting. Other races have this God of Time, but the question is...why Nords have a God of the End of Time? Because that´s what in my opinion Alduin is. If Akatosh is Time, Alduin is the End of Time. 

But that raises even more questions I think. If Alduin is Akatosh, why he doesn´t seem like a God? And how is it that Akatosh is trying to stop Alduin who is Akatosh? It´s not like you got Auriel kicking Akatosh´s arse right? 

But maybe it is as you say. Alduin is just an offspring. Alternate timeline, maybe a timeline where Dragons rule? Where the world has ended? 

Interesting topic, Pat. :)

Thanks, Karver!

I'm not sure I thought through whether a dragon break actually creates another dragon. Interesting thing to ponder.

I love your point about the ancient Nord pantheon's lack of an Akatosh figure.  First, let me say that I don't think Alduin is a god, in the classic sense, any more than we can call Paarthurnax a god. Back to the point, I'm not sure if the Nords have a concept of time, at least like the elven races. Other than believing that Kyne "breathed out" the race on the Throat of the World (which sounds suspiciously like how the original spirits "spun off" from Anuiel), do they speak about time? I couldn't find anything concrete. If you think about it, this makes sense. Nords didn't have a written language until Ysgramor. Ysgramor is credited as the first Nord to develop a method of transcribing knowledge via runes, which occured not long after his arrival in Skyrim. Remember, Ysgramor came from Atmora where the Nords finally settled. OOG sources indicate that Atmora is not only literally frozen, but also frozen in time. Therefore, if true, ancient Nords would not have much of a conception of time at all. Although I am sure that time exists in Atmora in some fashion, Nords don't seem to obsess over it. Therefore, an Akatosh character wouldn't be much use to them.

Further, Nords call Alduin the World Eater brings the end of the world, not the end of time.  That's an important distinction. As mentioned, ancient Nords may not have much a conception of time (at least like the elves).  But, regardless of whether they have a conception of time, the fact remains that Auriel/Akatosh was created to bring order to the universe, which we know as time. Dragons are the spun-off alternate expressions of time. Alduin rallies these alternate expressions of time to bring the end. Because the Nord may not have a robust conception of time, the ancient Nord believes that Alduin brings the end of the world when in actuality, he's bringing the end of time. 

So in that regard, I do not think that Alduin was an alternate timeline. I just think he was "spun off" from Akatosh to bring order to the competitive nature of the alternate timelines which would naturally "spin off" from Akatosh.

The more I type, the less sense this makes. :D 

Patriarch said:

I love your point about the ancient Nord pantheon's lack of an Akatosh figure.  

Well, that´s the thing. It´s not anceint Nord pantheon. It is quite recent pantheon. 3E. Varieties of Faith: The Nords

Good point about end of the world. Varieties of Faith says that Alduin destroyed the previous world or kalpa so that the new one could begin. Now think about Parthy´s dialogue, about kalpa and all that. Does Kalpa just mean world? Or Time-World? Timeline? Period of time?

I hate to quote UESP here, because I don´t really know how reliable it is in this case but...

A kalpa is an epoch of time comprised of the birth, life and death of that specific period.^[1] For example, the Dawn Era and its chaos was the end of a previous kalpa, and the beginning of another.

And here is direct quote from Kirkbride:

Assume "The Dawn Era was the End of the Previous Kalpa. The new Kalpa begins with the first day of the Merethic Era."

Then put on your lore-hats and start looking hard at the ramifications of that.

It is implied that Alduin might destroyed the kalpa that was Dawn Era. So what he ended there? Did he ended time and Akatosh started it anew?

We could probably polemize about the meaning "end of the world" and "end of the time", but what do the Nords call Alduin in Skyrim? Bringer of Endtimes or something like that? 

But I´m talking about what Nords believe in, not what really Alduin is, and that is difference. Though I wouldn´t completely disregard the fact that in TES what people believe in can become reality. 

And I think we got little bit off the track here... :D

All very good points, Karver. Like Septimus, I'll have to retreat to my ice cave and ruminate further. lol

Patriarch said:

All very good points, Karver. Like Septimus, I'll have to retreat to my ice cave and ruminate further. lol

Just don´t go around collecting souls and opening the Box! You know where that got ol´poor Septimus. :D

The point here is...truth is subjective. I think you are onto something here, definitely, because I always wondered what exactly dragons are, and I do like this theory. Just looking for an angle, you know. :)

Lots of interesting things here Patriarch! Almost too many :D Timey-whimey after a long shift isn't good for the thought organ :P

Okay, okay, I'll get to the point. Thanks for hanging in with me so far. Here's the point: Is is possible that the dragons are the metaphorical represention of the multiple streams of time? Remember, dragons are the various expressions of Akatosh, who is the Dragon God of Time. If "Time" were to create various expressions of itself, wouldn't those expressions represent alternate possibilities or realities--what time would look like if different choices were made or different situations were present?

About that, have you seen Kurt Kuhlmann's and Michael Kirkbride's concept of dragons?

K&K's shorthand for dragons very early on were 'biological time machines powered by ideologies'.

Factor that in and I'd say you are hitting pretty close to the bullseye.

On this:

I like to think of it as Akatosh suffering from Disassociative Identity Disorder (split personalties) Once someone or something administers his meds (an event that brings the Dragon Break to an end), Akatosh is back to one personality and the timeline is restored, fixed, or whatever (we can't really know if the original timeline is restored or if an alternate timeline takes over).

You've read Eat the Dreamer?

The Aedroth Aka, who goes by so many names as to perhaps already suggest what I'm about to commit to memospore, is completely insane. His mind broke when his "perch from Eternity allowed the day" and we of all the Aurbis live on through its fragments, ensnared in the temporal writings and erasures of the acausal whim that he begat by saying "I AM". In the aetheric thunder of self-applause that followed (nay, rippled until convention, that is, amnesia), is it any wonder that the Time God would hate the same-twin on the other end of the aurbrilical cord, the Space God? That any Creation would become so utterly dangerous because of that singular fear of a singular word's addition: "I AM NOT"?

That all the Interplay is one flea of assertion on a wolf of naught, and that every experience (that is, everything) born from that primal wail would cascade unto the echo-need of hologram, each slice the same except for scale, and all the magic that would need to spring forth just to hold it together at living, divine cross-purpose, support struts made from the need to exist (axial, along its two-headed fighting rays, each refusing their origin point, that is, Tower), terrestons versus chronocules, and in the end (an end that ever refuses to hold) it all becomes a lobotomized (for what is not lobal if not the dracochoreography made flesh?), reptilian (coiled), and massive map-god (holding a compass, holding a timepiece), drooling (the water from which we dragged ourselves out of to say, mirror-like, autochthonic, automatic, "WE ARE, TOO") on his countless knees, dementia given dimension, dimension dementia...

So what we have is, in essence, a metaphor for the big bang as you pretty much summarise, which is where my obsession with the-gods-and-demons-are-just-Aka's-personalty-fragments schtick comes from :D

we learn that the dragons existed from the beginning of time as children of Akatosh. We should take the word "children" very losely, however. If you remember, the original spirits (Auriel included) are not "born" in the conventional sense, but rather "spun off" from the principal spirit. In the case of dragons, it might be more proper to say that dragons "spun off" from Akatosh/Auriel himself. As Akatosh, and the other original spirits, are various expressions of Anuiel, so the dragons are the various expressions of Akatosh.

So to take this one stage further, if the metaphores and stories told by the various cultures become true ('coz this is Tamiel), how does the idea that these metaphore-dragons play out? I mean, the story is a cycle for the Nords, much like Ragnarok. Alduin will eat the world and the world will be reborn... rinse and repeat. Could these metaphor-dragons ever get their day, or is Alduin fated to forever do this?

To take that thought further, we have seen the quantum nature of the aurbis fairly often. Is a Dragon Break a new reality in a quantum suicide way?

Metaphorically, then, Alduin is meant to be the stop-gap, keeping reality in check. However, instead of fulfilling his purpose, he brings chaos to the world by rallying the various possibilities of time against the orderly world. The Dovakiin, then, was given a unique power to stop Alduin and to absorb the souls, the essence, of the alternative realities from asserting its dominance over the Aurbis.

Ok, I love this interpretation of Alduin rallying the the other shards of time. To make things more complicated in regards to the Dovahkiin and an opportunity to quote the Pelin-El, what does it mean for both Aka and Lorkhan if their shared spirit is "eating" all these shards of time?

"O Aka, for our shared madness I do this! I watch you watching me watching back"

I agree with your first two points, but I'm going to add my own commentary on a few things. Overall this was a nice read.

Patriarch said:

THIRD, let's talk about dragons. From Paarthurnax's dialog and Shalidor's Insights, we learn that the dragons existed from the beginning of time as children of Akatosh. We should take the word "children" very losely, however. If you remember, the original spirits (Auriel included) are not "born" in the conventional sense, but rather "spun off" from the principal spirit. In the case of dragons, it might be more proper to say that dragons "spun off" from Akatosh/Auriel himself. As Akatosh, and the other original spirits, are various expressions of Anuiel, so the dragons are the various expressions of Akatosh. Chief of these expressions is Alduin. Paarthurnax and Shalidor's Insights again teach us is that Alduin is the "Firstborn of Akatosh" and the creator of dragon civilization.