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So, a few years ago, I kind of abandoned TES' profiles to the wolves. I've come to rectify that mistake, and fix up lots, and lots, and lots of issues that carried over from the first revisions. As you can probably already gather, this thread is pretty large, so, if you want a TL;DR of the proposals, scroll down to the end.
Jagar Tharn and the Eternal Champion
First things I need to address in this thread are the current ratings for both Jagar Tharn and The Eternal Champion. To be more specific, as it currently stands, they are both rated at High 4-C due to Tharn creating his own plane of oblivion, which, as shown by the intro of Arena, contained a star and multiple planets within itself.
The first issue that arises with this feat is the fact that it comes from this book, where a random historian off-handedly mentions that the aforementioned plane of oblivion was Tharn's own creation, with no real way of having possibly known or learned about that, as the book itself was written after the events of Arena, after which Jagar was long dead. Note, also, that this a verse where the Unreliable Narrator is one of the central pillars of the setting, and where regular people are frequently shown to be wrong and misinformed regarding several things about the cosmology. Given that, the feat is flimsy as is.
Furthermore, the current profile scales Tharn's general magical abilities to the Staff of Chaos as well, under the assumption that he absorbed its energy into himself. While it's true that he did drain the staff of all its magical power, it is explicitly noted that he suffused it into the Jewel of Fire, a completely separate artifact, and not into his own magical reserves:
In the interim between the start and end of Arena, where he no longer held the power of the Staff of Chaos, it's made blatantly clear that Jagar wasn't any more powerful than other Imperial Battlemages, either. For instance, we have this detail from the strategy guide for Battlespire, where he is said to have made a deal with Mehrunes Dagon to eliminate five powerful Battlemages in charge of administering a pocket reality of the same name. By the guide's own words, Tharn did so to eliminate competition, which implies they were at least capable of threatening him:
The Battlemages in charge of the Battlespire admitedly don't have enough feats for we to make an accurate comparision in scale to Tharn's, but purely for reference's sake, we can use Abnur Tharn as a benchmark. The reason being the fact Abnur is a Battlemage of the Second Era, a time period which far predates the decadent times of the main Elder Scrolls games, and where magic is far more powerful and abundant, meaning the Battlemages from back then are far stronger than those of the Third and Fourth Eras.
Abnur has plenty of good feats in the Elsweyr expansion of Elder Scrolls Online, but all of them demonstrate a strict cap to his power and likewise are far below the feats which Jagar and the Battlemages that threatened him would be capable of achieving, by the logic of the current profiles. For instance, he treats the power contained within an Aeonstone (An artifact utilized by the antagonists of the expansion, whose purpose is to amplify any magical energy introduced to it) being able to move a mountain as extremely impressive, and after he absorbs all of this energy and is amped far beyond his current level, he remarks that he feels like his old self again:
At the end of the story, a weakened Abnur, with the help of the dragon Nahfahlaar, then proceeds to contain the enegies of an exploding Aeonstone, which are stated multiple times to be capable of wiping Tamriel off the face of Nirn:
While the last feat does contradict the notion that an Aeonstone's power being able to move a mountain is a big deal, it still gives us a good idea of the scale in which Abnur and comparable beings are supposed to operate, which certainly goes against Tharn's currently-accepted feats regardless.
So, I obviously propose we take out the High 4-C rating in Tharn's profile, which should be straightforward enough, since it only scales to one other character. As for his new tier: Given that him and the Eternal Champion are treated as peers in both power and intellect by the end of the game, they should just scale above Passwall, which was already calced at 8-B, but given that the Staff of Chaos is itself treated as an incredibly powerful artifact within the setting, I believe it's fair for Jagar to have a "likely far higher" rating when using it.
The Vestige's Justifications
Another problem to tackle here is a few descriptions present in The Vestige's profile, which at present are supposed to hold up their Low 2-C rating. To quote from the page itself:
Fought and defeated Mannimarco, who could damage the barriers between Mundus and Oblivion by breaking the Dragonfires and corrupting the Amulet of Kings with his Magic, leading to the Soulburst, an event where waves of mystical energies were released across all of Nirn, affecting even the Constellations of the Firmament.
This feat is worded in a way that misses some very important context behind what the Soulburst is, in the first place. To summarize it, I'll have to give it a brief outline of the setting of TES: Basically, Mundus, the multiverse where mortals live, is encompassed by Oblivion, an infinite blackness full of chaotic, often-hostile creatures known as "Daedra," which are prevented from entering the mortal plane and wrecking havoc by a barrier established between the two.
And this barrier, in turn, was created by a covenant between Akatosh, Dragon God of Time and Alessia, first ruler of the Cyrodiilic Empire, which is maintained by ritually lighting up the Dragonfires, something that can only be done by a Dragonborn Emperor in possession of the Amulet of Kings, a relic of Akatosh himself.
On account of all this, the Soulburst happened because Mannimarco tricked Varen Aquilarios, then emperor of Cyrodiil, into breaking Alessia's covenant with Akatosh and lighting the Dragonfires without being Dragonborn himself. It wasn't really a product of Mannimarco's power so much as of the botched ritual.
The only thing that might feasibly scale Mannimarco to the Soulburst itself is this lorebook, where it is stated that he used his magic to corrupt the power of the Amulet of Kings to accomplish it, but we really have no idea of what exactly that entails, and given how The Prophet directly says that the event itself was caused by his trickery of Varen, it's very obvious that the effects themselves were just part of a chain reaction.
Moving on:
Can defeat the Celestial Constellations of the Mage and the Warrior, who were both far more powerful than the Celestial Serpent's manifestation, which was going to destroy the very Laws of Reality and return Nirn to the non-linearity of the Dawn Era.
and defeated the Avatars of the Celestial Constellations in single combat, with the second weakest among them, the Serpent, being able to devour Nirn and destroy the laws of reality themselves, returning the Mortal Plane to the timeless and non-linear Dawn Era
Quoting the game proper on that one:
These sound largely fine on paper, but are missing some key details as to how, exactly, the Serpent was going to fulfill its plans. For context, the Celestial Constellations mentioned above are entities that live within Oblivion, as the embodiments of, well, constellations that exist as living, cosmic sources of magic, and since they live beyond Mundus they can only manifest within it using artifacts known as "Apex Stones," which regulate their power and allow them to exist in the multiverse without destroying it entirely:
However, due to the Serpent's malevolent nature, his Apex Stone acts not only as a controller for his power, but also as a seal, which prevents him from influencing the world to any significant degree:
So, it's pretty obvious that the Serpent was intending to "undermine the very nature of reality" and bring back Nirn's primordial days by breaking free from the seal of his Apex Stone and then destroying it, allowing his full power to manifest upon the mortal plane and bring it back to a state of chaos. As such, the feat is not Low 2-C to begin with, and neither does it scale to his manifestation which The Vestige defeats. So that justification should obviously be removed from their profile too.
And then we have the last two justifications, which pretty much hinge on the same thing:
In his Prime, Mannimarco was also far superior to Vanus Galerion, who in turn had enough magicaly power to be used as a battery to accelerate the Planemeld that was unraveling the fabric of reality and merging Nirn with Coldharbour, destroying it entirely.
Killed Angof the Gravesinger, who could seal the Ehlnofey who embody and define the very Laws of Reality across Nirn as a whole.
So, to summarize it: Nirn as a plane is very, very weird, and not at all like a normal planet in its entirety. As is known, its continents, for instance, are literally displaced throughout different points in the timeline: Yokuda being in the past, Tamriel in the present and Akavir in the future, and by sailing across the ocean, you are actually sailing across time:
Note that, although Hammerfell is what's stated to be in the past here, the context of the post as a whole is entirely about the continents, and Lord Vivec's Sword-Meeting with Cyrus the Restless in turn pretty much confirms that Yokuda is what's supposed to exist in the past:
And surprisingly, Elder Scrolls Online supports this, with the Augur of the Obscure commenting that the oceans of Nirn have extensions in higher-dimensional space:
And then there's Michael Kirkbride saying that Lyg, an alternate Tamriel that resides in a parallel dimension, is still on Nirn:
According to the 36 Lessons of Vivec, traveling between "Adjacent Places" also involves crossing "non-cardinal points," which, given the context where the term is used, is a pretty obvious reference to higher spatial dimensions, lending further credence to the idea that Nirn is actually a higher-dimensional construct:
But, regardless of all that, Nirn is also finite. Indeed, it's the only thing in the entire Aurbis that's finite and material by nature.
Of course, in principle, affecting Nirn would still be a Low 2-C feat, but I believe we've never rated pocket dimensions that have their own flow of time as such in the past, for precedent's sake. So, as it stands, I can't really discard the possibility that a downgrade is in order here, though the tidbits regarding Lyg and the Adjacent Places up there might change this.
If the Vestige gets downgraded from Low 2-C, then their new rating would be 4-A, since they can defeat the Celestial Mage's manifestation, who warped the Aetherean Archive into a pocket dimension containing a starry sky (And whose staff contained a similarly large pocket realm), and Arum-Khal, a dro-m'Athra who created his own plane of existence that, likewise, also had starry skies in it, and which collapsed upon his death.
The Dovahkiin's High 6-A rating
This is the feat
These are the statements:
To address that feat, I'll just reiterate what I said above: Nirn is ******* weird, and its full extension is not like the Real World Earth in any way, shape or form, from the fact that its oceans exist in higher-dimensional space and bridge different points in time to parallel dimensions like Lyg being a part of it, added up to C0DA showing that its interior is also comprised entirely of clockwork and abstract equations. Putting it simply, equating it to our planet at all is impossible, which, in my eyes, already makes the above calculation unusable due to the assumptions it makes.
Keep in mind, also, that the feat originally comes from the Pocket Guide to the Empire, which is an in-universe document written by someone who most certainly wouldn't be able to verify if the whole world was indeed shaken by the Voice of the Greybeards, considering Tamriel is very isolated and rarely ever interacts with other continents, like Akavir (Nevermind the fact that Yokuda is gone.) This is important here because, again, The Elder Scrolls is a verse that places heavy emphasis on the existence of unreliable narrators, and the developers have stated multiple times that even they refrain from forming authoritative stances on it for the sake of keeping things open:
As a matter of fact, we also have something which directly contradicts the Pocket Guide, and by extension Todd Howard's statements: This is Ivarstead, a village which, as you can see, is located at the very basis of the Snow-Throat mountain, and directly below High Hrothgar, where the Greybeards live. Obviously, the village itself remains accessible throughout the entire game, even after the Greybeards unleash the full power of their Voice on you, which puts a heavy dent on the whole thing about all villages in the span of miles being damaged and/or destroyed by their Thu'um.
Given that, I think this is a golden example of a case where Death of the Author is to be applied, in regards to Todd's statements.
The other cornerstone of the High 6-A key is this calculation for Storm Call. Frankly, I don't have much to say on that one: Given that it's specifically as a Shout that calls forth storms, I see no reason to treat it as anything other than a summon, which is pretty obviously the intent here. Thus, tiering it based on the KE of the gathering clouds is not at all valid.
The Barbas-Hircine scaling
Another pillar of the current Low 2-C scaling in the profiles is, of course, Alduin. To be more specific, we currently scale The Dovahkiin's Low 2-C key to the restricted, Mundus-bound manifestation of Barbas, the hound and avatar of the Daedric Prince Clavicus Vile, because of the following statement done in the latter's quest:
And since Barbas, at the time, was weakened both due to being separated from Clavicus Vile and due to manifesting within Mundus during a time where the barriers between it and Oblivion were stronger than ever, we in turn scale him to Hircine, or more precisely, his aspects of Strength, Speed and Guile, which are manifested at the end of Morrowind's Bloodmoon expansion in order to battle the Nerevarine. And the Nerevarine, in turn, is used to scale Vivec and Dagoth Ur.
Needless to say, this has issues. Namely the fact that we're using the above statement to say that Barbas' manifestation is as powerful as the endgame Dovahkiin that defeated Alduin, which is plain wrong, considering that the questline in which this is stated is unlocked for completion very early into the game, more specifically at Level 10, which is obviously way before you grow powerful enough to be a match for Alduin.
So, what can Barbas and the rest scale to, then? Well, in Elder Scrolls Online, Barbas' complete manifestation can fight and, though ultimately defeated, put up a fight against the Vestige, meaning that they are to be the new lynchpin of the scaling chain. Of course, the Dovahkiin scales to a manifestation of Barbas that, as mentioned before, was very weakened and at only half of his normal power due to being separated from Clavicus Vile, so they're significantly below the incarnation that the Vestige fights against, but not to the degree they don't scale.
Furthermore, Vivec is directly stated to be above Divayth Fyr, who by the time of the Third Era was powerful enough to overpower Sheogorath's manifestation and banish him from the Mundus, to the point that Vivec himself states thay Fyr is the only mage he knows that can "send the jackanape-god into tears," which means he'd likely scale above Barbas, regardless.
The Jills
Capable of manipulating the very fabric of time, weaving, cutting and stitching it into new forms and patterns. Responsible for mending Dragon Breaks, events wherein the linearity of Nirn's timeline shatters and the world momentarily returns to a state of non-linear untime, by weaving the broken tapestry of time back together, correcting any and all contradictions and paradoxes that occurred during it.
This shouldn't be Low 2-C: Dragonbreaks are, by and large, localized events. The prime example of that is the Warp in the West, which had its effects restricted to the region of Iliac Bay, and is the one named Dragonbreak which was pieced together by the Jills' handiwork.
This means that the Jills aren't really affecting the fabric of time on an universal scale, so their abilities should just be considered hax, and not AP. Since they have no feats other than this, they should go to Unknown.
Vivec's Justifications
Completely transcendent over the concept of linear time, existing both outside and beyond it.
Yeah, even at a glance, you can tell this isn't the strongest of justifications. And it's wrong, too: Vivec is explicitly not completely beyond time, and at least in his weakened state, his physical aspect does exist within it, as well, with only his divine consciousness being a part of the timeless world of the gods. In fact, he makes a direct distinction between him, who exists within and outside of time simultaneously, and other, completely immortal Gods, who are fully beyond time:
So, that tidbit of his AP section should be removed. Same with his Immeasurable Speed, for the above reasons.
The High 8-C ratings
So, currently the crux of the High 8-C ratings of the verse lie on the Giants, which are rated where they are due to this calc. Straightforward enough. No issues here, as far as I can discern.
The real problem, however, is in how they are being used to scale the rest of the verse's low-tiers. For instance, these three characters are rated at the same level as them based pretty much entirely on speculation that they can, in fact, battle and kill a Giant, with basically no real feats of doing so. Worst is the one in the middle, which literally has "May have fought a Giant in his journeys" as justification, which obviously shouldn't fly by any means.
And then, we have characters like Aela and Cicero, the former of which actually does have a feat of fighting and killing a Giant alongside her Companions, as seen here. Should be fine, yes? No. As you can see in the video linked, the battle in question as portrayed in the game is... visually extremely vague, which is important here, since The Elder Scrolls is a verse where the developers and writers make it exceedingly clear that the games are just a representation of the world as described in the lore, which doesn't always match up with how things actually are. For instance:
Moreover, even in this representation, you can see the Companions are using sharp weaponry like swords and arrows, which is noteworthy since Giants are demonstrably not impervious to them, as shown in this lorebook, where a Nord warrior manages to kill one in spite of the large difference in physical strength between them by dodging his attacks and stabbing him with a bunch of daggers:
So, due to that, I'd say it's quite a stretch to assume that the Companions are physically matching the Giant in a strength contest as opposed to just outsmarting him and taking advantage of their greater speed and far smaller builds.
As such, relevant characters should just be rated at 9-B, on account of the large numbers of feats in this range listed in this blog.
On Aetherius
This part should be relatively straightforward, so, alright. As already established on the current profiles, Oblivion as a whole is an infinite-dimensional space:
And Aetherius, in turn, encompasses Oblivion as a larger infinity, much like Oblivion encompasses Mundus and Mundus itself encompasses the Plane(t)s of the Gods:
And not only is it a larger infinite space, but also referred to as "the real world" in comparison to Mundus, and since Oblivion is contained within it as well, it's only natural that the same relationship exists between them too:
As such, Aetherius should just be Low 1-A instead of High 1-B, and this should scale to some of the stronger Et'Ada of the Aurbis, like Aka, Lorkhan and Magnus, as well as the primordial forms of some of the Divines, who helped shape the realm of Aetherius into existence to begin with.
Alduin and the Kalpic Cycle
Alduin is the World-Eater who brings about the End of Time by completely devouring the current Kalpa, destroying the very laws of reality as defined by the Ehlnofey and resetting Nirn back to the Dawn Era, whose end marks the beginning of a new Kalpa.
So, the idea that Alduin eats Nirn alone to bring about the end of the Kalpa is something I find very disagreeable. For one, here is a statement from Divayth Fyr, one of the most powerful and knowledgeable mages in the Aurbis, that strongly implies Mundus as a whole goes through this cycle:
And this is not the only thing showcasing as much. Here is another statement, by Michael Kirkbride this time:
So, basically a reiteration of what we already acknowledge on his profile: Once Alduin devours the Kalpa, existence is returned to the Dawn Era, where the Convention between the Et'Ada at the Tower of Ada-Mantia occurs and reality is stabilized "once again," but in a slightly different form this time around.
This entire process being limited to Nirn alone is pretty absurd, considering that the concept of linear time as established by the laws of Akatosh is very obviously something that permeates throughout the whole of the Mundus, hence why he is one of the eight aedric gods whose influence sustains the whole realm, and who exists as a fundamental part of it. In essence, Mundus is the only part of the Aurbis that is inherently bound by linearity and exactness, and everything outside of it eternally partakes in the untime of the Dawn Era.
Thus, it logically follows that Alduin in fact devours the entire Mundus, and by extension the Eight Aedra that sustain it, meaning he ought to scale to them. And this, in turn, opens up the doors for quite a few interesting things. One of them being this statement:
Mind you, this doesn't really contradict Skyrim treating Alduin as a child of Akatosh and as someone who is subject to the latter's authority to judge and punish. To explain why, I'll have to talk a bit about the new details about the Khajiiti religion which Elder Scrolls Online's Elsweyr expansion introduced, which shed some new light on the Dragon Gods:
As you can see, Alkhan, the Khajiit's equivalent of Alduin, is established as being not the firstborn of Alkosh (Their version of Akatosh), but of another deity called "Akha," who precedes Alkosh and is in fact considered to be first of all gods. Akha, in turn, has several overlaps with the entity known as "Aka," which in some texts is heavily implied to be the original form of the Dragon God that fragmented itself to create the most basic and primordial concept of time that spilled all over the Aurbis, which was non-linear, multi-faceted and simply allowed the previously ineffable Et'Ada to define themselves and form proper identities:
Furthermore, in-universe, Alduin is in fact attested to have predated Akatosh as a mythological/religious figure, with the entire Imperial religion being acknowledged as a fabrication that came about after Alessia syncretized the religion of the Nords with that of the Altmer, while the actual existence of these deities is presumably a result of the faith and belief of mortals shaping reality, as well as the non-linear nature of the Dawn Era making it so every possible version of the setting is simultaneously true.
And even Michael Kirkbride talks about aspects of the Dragon God that are particularly ancient and important, such as the Aka-Tusk (As in, a tusk of Aka), which he explains is a facet dating back to the days of the Ehlnofey, when Humans and Elves were the same race, and which the Aldudagga states is the being from which Alduin was created:
Obviously, if Alduin ends up scaling to High 1-B, then so does the Dovahkiin. Same with Miraak.
CHIM and its Ruling Kings
For this one, I'll have to comment a bit on the current logic used by the profiles, for summary's sake:
Despite the several allusions to the cosmology of the Aurbis being comprised of the three usual realms, Mundus – Oblivion – Aetherius, as of recently, TES has been frequently talking about there being things that lie even further beyond these worlds. The majority of the statements making reference to that coming from Elder Scrolls Online and its expansions, as seen below:
Those are all very recent, but the idea that the true extent of existence extends beyond even Aetherius actually dates back to the times of Morrowind, where a NPC brings up the possibility of there being up to 40 creational gradients separating mortals from the divine.
Lawrence Schick, former Loremaster of the series, also comments on the concept of the universe being a structure comprised of worlds within worlds (Or wheels within wheels) in a podcast, and says that Sotha Sil's Clockwork City is basically this very concept made manifest and emulated/recapitulated in a concrete form, with the end result being that it has multiple layers that may or may not have an end to them, according to him.
And all of this, in turn, was talked about by Michael Kirkbride since a long while ago. In fact, one of his in-character comments actually establishes that there is an infinite number of wheels that stretch all the way back to the most primordial levels of existence:
Thus, the full extent of the regression of worlds beyond Aetherius is considered 1-A+, with the Ruling Kings who attained CHIM, like Vivec and Talos, in turn being rated at "possibly 1-A+" by scaling from it. And, personally, I think the rating itself more solid than this, specifically because, according to Vivec, attaining CHIM is, in fact, a return to the very first interaction between Anu and Padomay:
And as some of you may already know, CHIM itself is obtained once an individual perceives the true nature of reality as a part and byproduct of God by looking at the "Wheel" of the Aurbis sideways, perceiving the "O" as an "I" and thereby catching a glimpse of the oneness of the universal self:
And this is important because the realms beyond Aetherius are explicitly still structured like Wheels, which means that the ideal of the Tower extends into them as well. This is exemplified by the fact that, as Vivec states, Mundus is a smaller wheel within a wheel, and thus it also reflects the Tower in its structure just as the Aurbis as a whole does, and can allow an individual to attain CHIM that way, with the only difference here being that its border is much easier to reach and visualize:
Thus, CHIM as a state of being definitely reaches beyond the regression of Wheels as a whole, and not just the World-Egg comprised by Mundus, Oblivion and Aetherius, and so it should be High 1-A, if anything, and not "possibly 1-A+."
The Nerevarine's attainment of CHIM
On the Nerevarine's profile, we consider them to have achieved CHIM and become a Ruling King. This is not unsupported by the verse, of course, and in fact the 36 Lessons as a whole are essentially just Vivec's own instructions to becoming a Ruling King, directed specifically at the Nerevarine:
The issue with this, however, is that there is simply nothing which concretely indicates that the Nerevarine that we control in Morrowind in fact attained CHIM after the events of the game, as their whereabouts are intentionally left open to the player's discretion and imagination, and Vivec himself highlights this in Sermon 15: Go unarmed into his den with these words of power: AE GHARTOK PADHOME [CHIM] AE ALTADOON. Or do not.
For the matter, in the context of Michael Kirkbride's narrative for Morrowind that's concluded in C0DA, Nerevar finally attains CHIM not in the form of the player character of Morrowind, but of Jubal-lun-Sul (As in, Luna-Sol, or Moon-and-Star, the title given to Nerevar in life), who is the one to ultimately become a Ruling King and form the New Amaranth alongside Vivec through a symbolic marriage.
So, that key ought to be removed.
TL;DR
Jagar Tharn and the Eternal Champion
First things I need to address in this thread are the current ratings for both Jagar Tharn and The Eternal Champion. To be more specific, as it currently stands, they are both rated at High 4-C due to Tharn creating his own plane of oblivion, which, as shown by the intro of Arena, contained a star and multiple planets within itself.
The first issue that arises with this feat is the fact that it comes from this book, where a random historian off-handedly mentions that the aforementioned plane of oblivion was Tharn's own creation, with no real way of having possibly known or learned about that, as the book itself was written after the events of Arena, after which Jagar was long dead. Note, also, that this a verse where the Unreliable Narrator is one of the central pillars of the setting, and where regular people are frequently shown to be wrong and misinformed regarding several things about the cosmology. Given that, the feat is flimsy as is.
Furthermore, the current profile scales Tharn's general magical abilities to the Staff of Chaos as well, under the assumption that he absorbed its energy into himself. While it's true that he did drain the staff of all its magical power, it is explicitly noted that he suffused it into the Jewel of Fire, a completely separate artifact, and not into his own magical reserves:
I had expected that with all eight pieces together, the Staff of Chaos would activate and free the Emperor. None of this has occurred, and I finally know why. Held by Tharn is a gem of the rarest qualities. Legend has that it is a star fallen from the sky, for it glows with an inner flame. This is the Jewel of Fire, and the crucible of Tharn's life force. It is also the thing in which Tharn has suffused all of the energy of the Staff. If you can touch the Staff to this Jewel, the release of that combined energy may be enough to destroy the Staff of Chaos and open the gate between worlds. If you are successful, Tharn will no doubt be destroyed as well.
In the interim between the start and end of Arena, where he no longer held the power of the Staff of Chaos, it's made blatantly clear that Jagar wasn't any more powerful than other Imperial Battlemages, either. For instance, we have this detail from the strategy guide for Battlespire, where he is said to have made a deal with Mehrunes Dagon to eliminate five powerful Battlemages in charge of administering a pocket reality of the same name. By the guide's own words, Tharn did so to eliminate competition, which implies they were at least capable of threatening him:
Unknown to you, the Imperial Battlemage, Jagar Tharn, (whose audacity in whisking the Emperor away is related above) secretly offered Mehrunes Dagon, the Daedric Prince of Darkness and Destruction, a deal on the Battlespire. One condition was attached — Dagon and his heinous followers had to kill all 5 battlemages to eliminate competition for Jagar Tharn's lofty position as the Imperial Battlemage. The carnage began, as the Battlespire was overrun with Dagon's minions. The governing battlemages were being popped like grapes.
The Battlemages in charge of the Battlespire admitedly don't have enough feats for we to make an accurate comparision in scale to Tharn's, but purely for reference's sake, we can use Abnur Tharn as a benchmark. The reason being the fact Abnur is a Battlemage of the Second Era, a time period which far predates the decadent times of the main Elder Scrolls games, and where magic is far more powerful and abundant, meaning the Battlemages from back then are far stronger than those of the Third and Fourth Eras.
Abnur has plenty of good feats in the Elsweyr expansion of Elder Scrolls Online, but all of them demonstrate a strict cap to his power and likewise are far below the feats which Jagar and the Battlemages that threatened him would be capable of achieving, by the logic of the current profiles. For instance, he treats the power contained within an Aeonstone (An artifact utilized by the antagonists of the expansion, whose purpose is to amplify any magical energy introduced to it) being able to move a mountain as extremely impressive, and after he absorbs all of this energy and is amped far beyond his current level, he remarks that he feels like his old self again:
Abnur Tharn: "Interesting. Let me try something."
Abnur Tharn: "The power coursing through these stones … it could move a mountain!"
"So much for … feeling like my old self again. It took every iota of energy I absorbed from the aeonstone, and all I accomplished was to wound the Dragon and drive it off.
And now … I'm as used up and worthless … as an empty water skin."
We need to find the source of the aegis that protects this island.
"The injured Dragon. There's nothing more dangerous, but also totally predictable.
It will head to a secure location to mend its wounds. What could be more secure than the source of Dragonhold's defenses?"
Using that energy seems to have made you weaker.
"Your observational skills never cease to amaze me.
The energy gave me a boost, but it also wreaked havoc with my body. A mortal vessel was never meant to contain such power. Now that it's gone, I'm nearly spent."
At the end of the story, a weakened Abnur, with the help of the dragon Nahfahlaar, then proceeds to contain the enegies of an exploding Aeonstone, which are stated multiple times to be capable of wiping Tamriel off the face of Nirn:
Tharn, you don't look so good.
"Ever the voice of … support and tact. Considering the circumstances, I could be worse.
Unfortunately, I believe we … solved one problem … and created another."
What do you mean?
"To safely absorb all that energy … Kaalgrontiid needed the focal points. As close as he is to his ascension … safety will be the furthest thing from his mind.
If he proceeds with his ascension and makes even the slightest mistake …."
Tharn, what happens if Kaalgrontiid makes a mistake?
"If Kaalgrontiid tries to ascend without the focal points … he could unleash all that pent-up energy. The resulting blast would destroy Elsweyr … perhaps all of Tamriel …"
Khamira: "We … we actually did it. We killed Kaalgrontiid!"
Sai Sahan: "The island. It's shaking apart. What's happening?"
Abnur Tharn: "The energy in the aeonstone … we need to contain it before it explodes!"
"Even in death, that damn Dragon haunts me! If that aeonstone shatters, Tamriel is doomed!"
Tell me how to stop this, Tharn.
"No, my friend. This task requires a Dragon … and a battlemage.
Take Khamira and Sai Sahan. Find a way out of here. Nahfahlaar and I will contain the explosion."
While the last feat does contradict the notion that an Aeonstone's power being able to move a mountain is a big deal, it still gives us a good idea of the scale in which Abnur and comparable beings are supposed to operate, which certainly goes against Tharn's currently-accepted feats regardless.
So, I obviously propose we take out the High 4-C rating in Tharn's profile, which should be straightforward enough, since it only scales to one other character. As for his new tier: Given that him and the Eternal Champion are treated as peers in both power and intellect by the end of the game, they should just scale above Passwall, which was already calced at 8-B, but given that the Staff of Chaos is itself treated as an incredibly powerful artifact within the setting, I believe it's fair for Jagar to have a "likely far higher" rating when using it.
The Vestige's Justifications
Another problem to tackle here is a few descriptions present in The Vestige's profile, which at present are supposed to hold up their Low 2-C rating. To quote from the page itself:
Fought and defeated Mannimarco, who could damage the barriers between Mundus and Oblivion by breaking the Dragonfires and corrupting the Amulet of Kings with his Magic, leading to the Soulburst, an event where waves of mystical energies were released across all of Nirn, affecting even the Constellations of the Firmament.
This feat is worded in a way that misses some very important context behind what the Soulburst is, in the first place. To summarize it, I'll have to give it a brief outline of the setting of TES: Basically, Mundus, the multiverse where mortals live, is encompassed by Oblivion, an infinite blackness full of chaotic, often-hostile creatures known as "Daedra," which are prevented from entering the mortal plane and wrecking havoc by a barrier established between the two.
And this barrier, in turn, was created by a covenant between Akatosh, Dragon God of Time and Alessia, first ruler of the Cyrodiilic Empire, which is maintained by ritually lighting up the Dragonfires, something that can only be done by a Dragonborn Emperor in possession of the Amulet of Kings, a relic of Akatosh himself.
On account of all this, the Soulburst happened because Mannimarco tricked Varen Aquilarios, then emperor of Cyrodiil, into breaking Alessia's covenant with Akatosh and lighting the Dragonfires without being Dragonborn himself. It wasn't really a product of Mannimarco's power so much as of the botched ritual.
"The ritual tore the veil between Nirn and Oblivion, allowing Mannimarco to begin stealing the souls his master needed to power the Dark Anchors and initiate the Planemeld."
What went wrong?
"Akatosh gave Alessia the Amulet of Kings as a symbol of his covenant with Nirn. So long as the Amulet remained in the care of Alessia's heirs, and the Dragonfires remained lit, Tamriel would be protected from the Daedra."
What happened next?
"Mannimarco tricked Varen into breaking the covenant, and the veil between Oblivion and Nirn was torn. The Elder Scrolls named this event the Soulburst. It gave Molag Bal the opportunity to disconnect the souls of Nirn from their hosts."
The only thing that might feasibly scale Mannimarco to the Soulburst itself is this lorebook, where it is stated that he used his magic to corrupt the power of the Amulet of Kings to accomplish it, but we really have no idea of what exactly that entails, and given how The Prophet directly says that the event itself was caused by his trickery of Varen, it's very obvious that the effects themselves were just part of a chain reaction.
In years past, Mannimarco served as chief advisor to the court of Emperor Varen Aquilarios. Originally a Duke of Chorrol, Varen became Emperor of Tamriel by right of conquest. With Mannimarco's counsel, Varen led a revolt against the previous dynasty, the savage regime of Reachmen known as the Longhouse Emperors. Yet, despite his conquest and victory, Varen was not to be a true emperor. Like the former Emperor Leovic, the blood of the Dragon didn't flow through Varen's veins. He was unable to light the Dragonfires in the Temple of the One, as a true Emperor must, by tradition.
The Dragonfires have remained unlit for generations. This is because the Amulet of Kings—a relic of the Divines gifted unto Saint Alessia by Akatosh—was lost in the centuries following the fall of the Reman Dynasty. Only this relic, traditionally worn by Imperial Emperors of the First Era, would allow a true-blooded ruler to spark the Dragonfires anew.
At Mannimarco's urging, Varen formed a group of companions to join him on an epic quest to locate this relic. These companions included myself, the Redguard swordmaster Sai Sahan, Grand Chancellor Abnur Tharn, and Mannimarco himself. For years we scoured the face of Tamriel, following countless leads, until we finally managed to locate it.
When we returned to the Imperial City, Mannimarco played upon Varen's insecurities and convinced him that the coronation ritual, properly modified, could not only light the Dragonfires, but persuade Akatosh to invest him with Divine agency and gift him with the blood of the Dragon. It was only after the coronation ritual was attempted that we learned the extent of Mannimarco's deception.
The King of Worms used his magic to corrupt the power of the Amulet, causing the calamity which came to be known as the Soulburst. I remember very little of the actual event, only that the chaos that followed was immediate and devastating.
"The ritual we performed with the Amulet of Kings caused the Soulburst and damaged the veil between worlds. If the damage is to be repaired, I must attempt the ritual again, this time with you."
Won't that just cause another Soulburst?
"Only if we use it here on Nirn. But if we were to travel to Coldharbour, we might be able to harness its power. Imbue you with divine agency enough to challenge the Daedric Prince.
But there is a price …."
Moving on:
Can defeat the Celestial Constellations of the Mage and the Warrior, who were both far more powerful than the Celestial Serpent's manifestation, which was going to destroy the very Laws of Reality and return Nirn to the non-linearity of the Dawn Era.
and defeated the Avatars of the Celestial Constellations in single combat, with the second weakest among them, the Serpent, being able to devour Nirn and destroy the laws of reality themselves, returning the Mortal Plane to the timeless and non-linear Dawn Era
Quoting the game proper on that one:
Are you saying the Serpent is controlling the other guardians?
"Yes. They attack Craglorn against their will.
Listen. The Serpent's nature is chaos. He wants to undermine the very nature of reality. He will not stop with Craglorn."
These sound largely fine on paper, but are missing some key details as to how, exactly, the Serpent was going to fulfill its plans. For context, the Celestial Constellations mentioned above are entities that live within Oblivion, as the embodiments of, well, constellations that exist as living, cosmic sources of magic, and since they live beyond Mundus they can only manifest within it using artifacts known as "Apex Stones," which regulate their power and allow them to exist in the multiverse without destroying it entirely:
How can you join with the Lost One?
"It will not be easy. The Lost One is powerful. You will need to engage her in battle and distract her. Unfortunately, she has anticipated this course and fled to a place of strength—our Apex Stone."
Apex Stone?
"The Apex Stones are what allow the Celstials to manifest in this plane. By corrupting our Apex Stone, the Serpent sought to submit our consciousness to his will and corrupt us. This is what happened to the Lost One."
Can't we just destroy the Apex Stone?
"If you did, our full power would be released. Mundus could not withstand such force. Our Apex Stone rests in a hidden place beneath the city of Elinhir. Use the Seeker's Sight to locate it and the Lost One. We will join you when the time is right."
However, due to the Serpent's malevolent nature, his Apex Stone acts not only as a controller for his power, but also as a seal, which prevents him from influencing the world to any significant degree:
The Mage: "Finally. My mind is my own."
The Thief: "It has been too long."
The Warrior: "You mean not long enough."
The Mage: "I forget how quaint you are, Warrior. I have a fiery gift for the snake. Where is he?"
The Thief: "He remains out in the world, wreaking havoc in this region."
The Mage: "What do you propose we do?"
The Warrior: "Let us slay him."
The Thief: "The natural order must be restored. We contain the Serpent, not end him."
The Mage: "Then we should return him to his Apex Stone."
The Thief: "Agreed. Let us convene at the Stone."
"That Stone has held me for too long. I will never go back!"
So, it's pretty obvious that the Serpent was intending to "undermine the very nature of reality" and bring back Nirn's primordial days by breaking free from the seal of his Apex Stone and then destroying it, allowing his full power to manifest upon the mortal plane and bring it back to a state of chaos. As such, the feat is not Low 2-C to begin with, and neither does it scale to his manifestation which The Vestige defeats. So that justification should obviously be removed from their profile too.
And then we have the last two justifications, which pretty much hinge on the same thing:
In his Prime, Mannimarco was also far superior to Vanus Galerion, who in turn had enough magicaly power to be used as a battery to accelerate the Planemeld that was unraveling the fabric of reality and merging Nirn with Coldharbour, destroying it entirely.
Killed Angof the Gravesinger, who could seal the Ehlnofey who embody and define the very Laws of Reality across Nirn as a whole.
So, to summarize it: Nirn as a plane is very, very weird, and not at all like a normal planet in its entirety. As is known, its continents, for instance, are literally displaced throughout different points in the timeline: Yokuda being in the past, Tamriel in the present and Akavir in the future, and by sailing across the ocean, you are actually sailing across time:
Tamriel is the present. It is literally the center of time.
Akavir is the East and it is in the future.
Hammerfell is to the West and is in the past.
Traveling from west to east means more than taking time to sail, it means sailing across time.
Atmora to the North is frozen in time. As such, it didn't really exist at all.
Aldmeris to the South is** outside of time**. As such, it didn't really exist at all.
The moons? Now they're really weird when it comes to time.
It's linear. It follows a line.
The Line, if you get me
Note that, although Hammerfell is what's stated to be in the past here, the context of the post as a whole is entirely about the continents, and Lord Vivec's Sword-Meeting with Cyrus the Restless in turn pretty much confirms that Yokuda is what's supposed to exist in the past:
The captain set their course south-southwest, slanting across the spring trades into the Sea of Pearls to the puzzlement of the crew. Some of the older among them muttered darkly of the guardians of the western approaches, but nothing was sighted during the long weeks of smooth sailing. At twilight on the 12th day out of Jabbur, Coyle, long-learned in the navigations, took sighting of the non-constellation of Sep and abruptly Cyrus changed course to the north. The old hands explained to the new that they had crossed the Line that day and it was now safe to bear up for Old Yokuda. The winds, which had been fair, now turned into the north and gusted with growing ferocity, often threatening to lay the Carrick on her beam if not for the skill of her crew. After weary days of this, they finally made landfall on the 17th day.
And surprisingly, Elder Scrolls Online supports this, with the Augur of the Obscure commenting that the oceans of Nirn have extensions in higher-dimensional space:
"A breach near the sea! I do love the ocean. It's a shame you can only see in three dimensions. All the quasi-tones and inverse number-forms .... Actually, I take it back—your meat-brain would explode if you saw this."
And then there's Michael Kirkbride saying that Lyg, an alternate Tamriel that resides in a parallel dimension, is still on Nirn:
Lyg: it's one of the Adjacent Places. It's still there. I wouldn't call it a different kalpa so much as a parallel version of Tamriel.
XAYAH: So Lyg. Does it exist in the same "worldspace" or however you want to call it as Tamriel?
Michael Kirkbride: "Try not to imagine a Lyg." That's all I'm going to say. It's Tamriel in a parallel dimension. I never said it wasn't on Nirn. SNAP.
According to the 36 Lessons of Vivec, traveling between "Adjacent Places" also involves crossing "non-cardinal points," which, given the context where the term is used, is a pretty obvious reference to higher spatial dimensions, lending further credence to the idea that Nirn is actually a higher-dimensional construct:
Vivec then watched as the slaves erupted into babble and breaking magic. They rattled their cages and sung out half-hymns that formed into forbidden and arcane knowledge. Litany fiends appeared and drank from the excess. Grabbers from the Adjacent Place came into the world sideways, the slave talking having disrupted the normal non-cardinal points.
But, regardless of all that, Nirn is also finite. Indeed, it's the only thing in the entire Aurbis that's finite and material by nature.
Cosmology — The Imperial Library
How space works in the Elder Scrolls universe
www.imperial-library.info
Nirn (Ehnofex for 'Arena') is a finite ball of matter and magic made from all of the god planets at the beginning of time, when Lorkhan tricked/convinced/forced the gods to create the mortal plane. Nirn is the mortal plane and the mortal planet, which is the same thing. Its creation upset the cosmic balance; now all souls (especially the Aedra-Daedra/Gods-Demons) have a vested interest in Nirn (especially its starry heart, Tamriel).
Of course, in principle, affecting Nirn would still be a Low 2-C feat, but I believe we've never rated pocket dimensions that have their own flow of time as such in the past, for precedent's sake. So, as it stands, I can't really discard the possibility that a downgrade is in order here, though the tidbits regarding Lyg and the Adjacent Places up there might change this.
If the Vestige gets downgraded from Low 2-C, then their new rating would be 4-A, since they can defeat the Celestial Mage's manifestation, who warped the Aetherean Archive into a pocket dimension containing a starry sky (And whose staff contained a similarly large pocket realm), and Arum-Khal, a dro-m'Athra who created his own plane of existence that, likewise, also had starry skies in it, and which collapsed upon his death.
The Dovahkiin's High 6-A rating
This is the feat
These are the statements:
From the Odes:
"He was born in Atmora as Talos, 'Stormcrown' in the language of the ancient Ehlnofey, and it was from that shore he sailed. He spent his youth in Skyrim among the Nords. There he learned much from the Tongues and their chieftains and their ways of war. At twenty he led the invasion of Old Hrol'dan, taking it back from the Witchmen of High Rock and their kinsmen.
"Soon the Greybeards made known that they were restless. Already the storms had begun from their murmurs. The Greybeards were going to Speak. The surrounding villages were abandoned as the people fled the coming blast.
"The villagers warned Talos to turn back, for he was marching to the mountain where the Greybeards dwelt.
"Inside he went, and on seeing him they removed their gags. When they spoke his name the World shook.
"The Tongues of Skyrim told the son of Atmora that he had come to rule Tamriel and that he must travel south to do so.
"And it is true that Talos did come to Cyrodiil shortly after the Battle of Old Hrol'dan.
"And it is true that a great storm preceded his arrival."
In the lore, Tiber Septim was the first main emperor. He could shout. His way of the Voice was unmatched,” Howard explains. “He is the original guy who walks the seven thousand steps and talks to the Greybeards. And the idea is, at that time, that they were so powerful they had to have all the villages flee for miles. This little kid is walking up this snowy mountain, and all these people are packed up and they’re walking down and away. Because they know the kid is going up to talk to these guys, and when they talk there’s going to be avalanches.”
To address that feat, I'll just reiterate what I said above: Nirn is ******* weird, and its full extension is not like the Real World Earth in any way, shape or form, from the fact that its oceans exist in higher-dimensional space and bridge different points in time to parallel dimensions like Lyg being a part of it, added up to C0DA showing that its interior is also comprised entirely of clockwork and abstract equations. Putting it simply, equating it to our planet at all is impossible, which, in my eyes, already makes the above calculation unusable due to the assumptions it makes.
Keep in mind, also, that the feat originally comes from the Pocket Guide to the Empire, which is an in-universe document written by someone who most certainly wouldn't be able to verify if the whole world was indeed shaken by the Voice of the Greybeards, considering Tamriel is very isolated and rarely ever interacts with other continents, like Akavir (Nevermind the fact that Yokuda is gone.) This is important here because, again, The Elder Scrolls is a verse that places heavy emphasis on the existence of unreliable narrators, and the developers have stated multiple times that even they refrain from forming authoritative stances on it for the sake of keeping things open:
In his farewell letter, Lawrence Schick mentioned how "the lore is yours." Do you have anything you'd like to add or amend to that sentiment?
"I think it's spot-on. Even as the Loremaster, my personal interpretations of the lore are not authoritative. It's our job to provide multiple, conflicting perspectives and encourage people in the community to draw their own conclusions. How you choose to connect those dots (or not connect them) is entirely up to you.
"All creative enterprises—books, movies, games, etc—should ideally serve as jumping off points for the next great idea. When you lock an idea in amber and insist that it remain exactly the same, and that it conform to your personal preferences, you're basically strangling it to death. The Elder Scrolls belong to everyone, and as long as we provide inspiration for your creative expression and fan-debates, I'd say we're doing the job well.
As a matter of fact, we also have something which directly contradicts the Pocket Guide, and by extension Todd Howard's statements: This is Ivarstead, a village which, as you can see, is located at the very basis of the Snow-Throat mountain, and directly below High Hrothgar, where the Greybeards live. Obviously, the village itself remains accessible throughout the entire game, even after the Greybeards unleash the full power of their Voice on you, which puts a heavy dent on the whole thing about all villages in the span of miles being damaged and/or destroyed by their Thu'um.
Given that, I think this is a golden example of a case where Death of the Author is to be applied, in regards to Todd's statements.
The other cornerstone of the High 6-A key is this calculation for Storm Call. Frankly, I don't have much to say on that one: Given that it's specifically as a Shout that calls forth storms, I see no reason to treat it as anything other than a summon, which is pretty obviously the intent here. Thus, tiering it based on the KE of the gathering clouds is not at all valid.
The Barbas-Hircine scaling
Another pillar of the current Low 2-C scaling in the profiles is, of course, Alduin. To be more specific, we currently scale The Dovahkiin's Low 2-C key to the restricted, Mundus-bound manifestation of Barbas, the hound and avatar of the Daedric Prince Clavicus Vile, because of the following statement done in the latter's quest:
As much as I hate to say it, you're almost as powerful as I am right now. But that's just because half of my power resides in that mutt, Barbas. Come to think of it, I know of a win-win situation for both of us.
And since Barbas, at the time, was weakened both due to being separated from Clavicus Vile and due to manifesting within Mundus during a time where the barriers between it and Oblivion were stronger than ever, we in turn scale him to Hircine, or more precisely, his aspects of Strength, Speed and Guile, which are manifested at the end of Morrowind's Bloodmoon expansion in order to battle the Nerevarine. And the Nerevarine, in turn, is used to scale Vivec and Dagoth Ur.
Needless to say, this has issues. Namely the fact that we're using the above statement to say that Barbas' manifestation is as powerful as the endgame Dovahkiin that defeated Alduin, which is plain wrong, considering that the questline in which this is stated is unlocked for completion very early into the game, more specifically at Level 10, which is obviously way before you grow powerful enough to be a match for Alduin.
So, what can Barbas and the rest scale to, then? Well, in Elder Scrolls Online, Barbas' complete manifestation can fight and, though ultimately defeated, put up a fight against the Vestige, meaning that they are to be the new lynchpin of the scaling chain. Of course, the Dovahkiin scales to a manifestation of Barbas that, as mentioned before, was very weakened and at only half of his normal power due to being separated from Clavicus Vile, so they're significantly below the incarnation that the Vestige fights against, but not to the degree they don't scale.
Furthermore, Vivec is directly stated to be above Divayth Fyr, who by the time of the Third Era was powerful enough to overpower Sheogorath's manifestation and banish him from the Mundus, to the point that Vivec himself states thay Fyr is the only mage he knows that can "send the jackanape-god into tears," which means he'd likely scale above Barbas, regardless.
Uupse Fyr (Morrowind)
For other uses, see Uupse Fyr. Uupse Fyr is a Dunmer who resides in Tel Fyr, Morrowind. One of the four "daughters" of Divayth Fyr, she was created by him, as a "side benefit of the researches into corprus disease."[1] She now exists solely to serve her master, Divayth Fyr, and looks after the...
elderscrolls.fandom.com
"As you know, he's probably the oldest and most powerful wizard alive. Not counting liches, or divine sorcerers like Vivec, of course. And there may be some older in the West, on Summerset Isles, perhaps. And I don't think there's a kinder, more generous wizard alive. Not that there's much competition in the kind-and-generous-wizard department, I'll grant you."
Page not found — The Imperial Library
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www.imperial-library.info
Master, I sense that the Mad One has left for the moment. It may have had something to do with the presence of Lord Fyr, who is one of the few adepts I know that can send the jackanape-god into tears. May I suggest that your question be answered by none other than your fellow Tribune, Hasphat Antabolis, on the morrow? If any here could speak with authority about my stewardship of the people of Vvardenfell, I admit that it is the Hlaalu bedhandler asleep at your side...
The Jills
Jills
The Jills, also called the Minute-Menders, are the matronly attendants of the Dragon God Akatosh. Though they are often referred to as "female dragons", the Jills are in fact cosmic entities tasked with maintaining the stability and linear order of time, fixing all paradoxes and branching...
vsbattles.fandom.com
Capable of manipulating the very fabric of time, weaving, cutting and stitching it into new forms and patterns. Responsible for mending Dragon Breaks, events wherein the linearity of Nirn's timeline shatters and the world momentarily returns to a state of non-linear untime, by weaving the broken tapestry of time back together, correcting any and all contradictions and paradoxes that occurred during it.
This shouldn't be Low 2-C: Dragonbreaks are, by and large, localized events. The prime example of that is the Warp in the West, which had its effects restricted to the region of Iliac Bay, and is the one named Dragonbreak which was pieced together by the Jills' handiwork.
King Eadwyre and his queen Barenziah were celebrating their great victories when I arrived. By then, I had gathered the barest facts of the matter, that simultaneously there were seven great battles in the Iliac Bay, and no one could describe them at all, only their bloodsoaked aftermath.
This means that the Jills aren't really affecting the fabric of time on an universal scale, so their abilities should just be considered hax, and not AP. Since they have no feats other than this, they should go to Unknown.
Vivec's Justifications
Completely transcendent over the concept of linear time, existing both outside and beyond it.
Yeah, even at a glance, you can tell this isn't the strongest of justifications. And it's wrong, too: Vivec is explicitly not completely beyond time, and at least in his weakened state, his physical aspect does exist within it, as well, with only his divine consciousness being a part of the timeless world of the gods. In fact, he makes a direct distinction between him, who exists within and outside of time simultaneously, and other, completely immortal Gods, who are fully beyond time:
to be a god:
"It is like being a juggler. Things are always moving, and you learn to know where they are without even thinking about it. Only there are many, many things moving. And sometimes, like any juggler, you drop something. I'm afraid it has become a lot more a matter of dropping things lately. There's too much to do, and not enough time, and I'm losing my touch. Perhaps I'm growing old.
Continue
It is a bit like being at once awake and asleep. Awake, I am here with you, thinking and talking. Asleep, I am very, very busy. Perhaps for other gods, the completely immortal ones, it is only like that being asleep. Out of time. Me, I exist at once inside of time and outside of it.
Continue
It's nice never being dead, too. When I die in the world of time, then I'm completely asleep. I'm very much aware that all I have to do is choose to wake. And I'm alive again. Many times I have very deliberately tried to wait patiently, a very long, long time before choosing to wake up. And no matter how long it feels like I wait, it always appears, when I wake up, that no time has passed at all. That is the god place. The place out of time, where everything is always happening, all at once."
So, that tidbit of his AP section should be removed. Same with his Immeasurable Speed, for the above reasons.
The High 8-C ratings
So, currently the crux of the High 8-C ratings of the verse lie on the Giants, which are rated where they are due to this calc. Straightforward enough. No issues here, as far as I can discern.
The real problem, however, is in how they are being used to scale the rest of the verse's low-tiers. For instance, these three characters are rated at the same level as them based pretty much entirely on speculation that they can, in fact, battle and kill a Giant, with basically no real feats of doing so. Worst is the one in the middle, which literally has "May have fought a Giant in his journeys" as justification, which obviously shouldn't fly by any means.
And then, we have characters like Aela and Cicero, the former of which actually does have a feat of fighting and killing a Giant alongside her Companions, as seen here. Should be fine, yes? No. As you can see in the video linked, the battle in question as portrayed in the game is... visually extremely vague, which is important here, since The Elder Scrolls is a verse where the developers and writers make it exceedingly clear that the games are just a representation of the world as described in the lore, which doesn't always match up with how things actually are. For instance:
Things were pretty wide open, in terms of the story I could tell. I was given a preliminary outline of history after Oblivion, but I was also told that some of it was negotiable. I wrote a number of different short proposals, which were reviewed by my editor and the guys at Bethesda. Once the basic idea was settled on, I wrote a longer, more detailed outline, which then went through a few changes. All through this process I had access to Bruce Nesmith and Kurt Kuhlman at Bethesda, so I could bounce ideas off of them, ask whether I could or couldn't do something. Of course, it had to be a TES story, so I was constrained by lore -- although not, interestingly, by game mechanics. I was told specifically that no one wanted to "hear the dice rolling" so to speak. We are to imagine the world of TES to be a real place, of which the games are merely representations. My book represents that world in another way. Geographical distances, for instance, are contracted in the game -- in my books they aren't, so it takes days or weeks rather than hours to run from one city to another. - Greg Keyes
Moreover, even in this representation, you can see the Companions are using sharp weaponry like swords and arrows, which is noteworthy since Giants are demonstrably not impervious to them, as shown in this lorebook, where a Nord warrior manages to kill one in spite of the large difference in physical strength between them by dodging his attacks and stabbing him with a bunch of daggers:
As Ingjard bettered her prey, Fenrig faced a foe four times his size, with only our ranged arrows (and encouraging shouts from the Orc) for help. The giant’s gangly frame worked to Fenrig’s advantage, as it attempted a huge kick which would have surely cracked a rib or two. But the giant struck air and grass as it slipped over, allowing Fenrig in with a swift pair of stabs. The giant pushed Fenrig back as it rose up to its feet, cleaving the area with a sweep of its club. This time Fenrig was on his back, but he sprang up, ran through the giant’s feet, and thrust a dagger through the bridge of his foe’s foot. Literally hopping mad, the giant struggled to remove Fenrig’s embedded toothpick while taking swift cuts to the legs. Unhappy in the extreme, it lifted its colossal club, then dropped it into the heather, hitting the ground with such force I half expected Fenrig to be launched tumbling upwards, through the low clouds to a distant doom. But Fenrig was on the giant’s back, puncturing the pale side flesh and scrambling to the head. A final dagger unsheathed, Fenrig plunged it through the giant’s ear, and it fell forwards, dead before it struck the soil.
So, due to that, I'd say it's quite a stretch to assume that the Companions are physically matching the Giant in a strength contest as opposed to just outsmarting him and taking advantage of their greater speed and far smaller builds.
As such, relevant characters should just be rated at 9-B, on account of the large numbers of feats in this range listed in this blog.
On Aetherius
This part should be relatively straightforward, so, alright. As already established on the current profiles, Oblivion as a whole is an infinite-dimensional space:
Know that there are places beyond Tamriel where the cunning and the wary can go to learn forgotten spells. I speak of the planes of Oblivion. The sea of limitless dimensions contains an endless series of islands. Some are controlled by the mighty Daedric Princes; others are loosely connected to one minor Daedra Lord or another. On these islands, creatures dwell who possess secrets out of time. Some are there of their own volition, but others are banished there for crimes either heinous or imagined.
And Aetherius, in turn, encompasses Oblivion as a larger infinity, much like Oblivion encompasses Mundus and Mundus itself encompasses the Plane(t)s of the Gods:
What is space?
Space is the interpretation of Oblivion, which is black and empty and surrounds the mortal plane. Space is infinite, but it acts just like a planet, in that Oblivion is 'surrounded' by Aetherius. You can see Aetherius by the stars.
And not only is it a larger infinite space, but also referred to as "the real world" in comparison to Mundus, and since Oblivion is contained within it as well, it's only natural that the same relationship exists between them too:
Monomyth: Yokudan, "Satakal the Worldskin" | The Imperial Library
www.imperial-library.info
Sep had much of the Hungry Stomach still left in him, multiple hungers from multiple skins. He was so hungry he could not think straight. Sometimes he would just eat the spirits he was supposed to help, but Tall Papa would always reach in and take them back out. Finally, tired of helping Tall Papa, Sep went and gathered the rest of the old skins and balled them up, tricking spirits to help him, promising them this was how you reached the new world, by making one out of the old. These spirits loved this way of living, as it was easier. No more jumping from place to place. Many spirits joined in, believing this was good thinking. Tall Papa just shook his head.
"Pretty soon the spirits on the skin-ball started to die, because they were very far from the real world of Satakal. And they found that it was too far to jump into the Far Shores now. The spirits that were left pleaded with Tall Papa to take them back. But grim Ruptga would not, and he told the spirits that they must learn new ways to follow the stars to the Far Shores now. If they could not, then they must live on through their children, which was not the same as before. Sep, however, needed more punishment, and so Tall Papa squashed the Snake with a big stick. The hunger fell out of Sep's dead mouth and was the only thing left of the Second Serpent. While the rest of the new world was allowed to strive back to godhood, Sep could only slink around in a dead skin, or swim about in the sky, a hungry void that jealously tried to eat the stars."
As such, Aetherius should just be Low 1-A instead of High 1-B, and this should scale to some of the stronger Et'Ada of the Aurbis, like Aka, Lorkhan and Magnus, as well as the primordial forms of some of the Divines, who helped shape the realm of Aetherius into existence to begin with.
Alduin and the Kalpic Cycle
Alduin
Alduin (Meaning Destroyer-Devour-Master in Dovahzul) is the oldest and mightiest of the Dragons, and the Nordic Aspect of the Dragon God of Time, Aka. He is known as the World-Eater, for his role in devouring the old world so that the new world can be born. However, Alduin doesn't literally eat...
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Alduin is the World-Eater who brings about the End of Time by completely devouring the current Kalpa, destroying the very laws of reality as defined by the Ehlnofey and resetting Nirn back to the Dawn Era, whose end marks the beginning of a new Kalpa.
So, the idea that Alduin eats Nirn alone to bring about the end of the Kalpa is something I find very disagreeable. For one, here is a statement from Divayth Fyr, one of the most powerful and knowledgeable mages in the Aurbis, that strongly implies Mundus as a whole goes through this cycle:
Divayth says: "Ah, the transmundane entity who jocularly styles himself 'Mister Flippers' deigns to grace us with a question. And a good one—as any question I cannot definitively answer is, by definition, a good question. Boethiah and Mephala are certainly among the Princes whose existence antedates the creation of the (current) Mundus, and given their natures it is beyond conjecture that they couldn't resist meddling with said creation in some way, shape, or form. But could they 'trick' Lorkhan, whose very essence was chicanery? Consider: Ebony is a substance whose acquisition and use tempts mortals into acts of achievement that transcend their usual limitations. Did Lorkhan 'intend' this? Alas, the concept is self-referential, and therefore nugatory."
And this is not the only thing showcasing as much. Here is another statement, by Michael Kirkbride this time:
World-Eating 101 — The Imperial Library
Two texts exploring the idea that the end of each Kalpha is the Dawn era of the next one
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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.
So, basically a reiteration of what we already acknowledge on his profile: Once Alduin devours the Kalpa, existence is returned to the Dawn Era, where the Convention between the Et'Ada at the Tower of Ada-Mantia occurs and reality is stabilized "once again," but in a slightly different form this time around.
This entire process being limited to Nirn alone is pretty absurd, considering that the concept of linear time as established by the laws of Akatosh is very obviously something that permeates throughout the whole of the Mundus, hence why he is one of the eight aedric gods whose influence sustains the whole realm, and who exists as a fundamental part of it. In essence, Mundus is the only part of the Aurbis that is inherently bound by linearity and exactness, and everything outside of it eternally partakes in the untime of the Dawn Era.
Lawrence Schick: The nature of reality is fundamentaly different in the world of Nirn, because it's based all the natural laws come from the sacrifices that the Aedra made when they made the world. So Akatosh, when he put himself into the world, he made time happen, right, and so forth and so on with all the different gods.
Loveletter From the Fifth Era, The True Purpose of Tamriel — The Imperial Library
Instructions for avoiding the apocalypse
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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.
The Scripture of the Wheel, First:
'The Spokes are the eight components of chaos, as yet solidified by the law of time: static change, if you will, something the lizard gods refer to as the Striking. That is the reptile wheel, coiled potential, ever-preamble to the never-action.'
Second:
'They are the lent bones of the Aedra, the Eight gift-limbs to SITHISIT, the wet earth of the new star our home. Outside them is the Aurbis, and not within. Like most things inexplicable, it is a circle. Circles are confused serpents, striking and striking and never given leave to bite. The Aedra would have you believe different, but they were givers before liars. Lies have turned them into biters. Their teeth are the proselytizers; to convert is to place oneself in the mouth of falsehood; even to propitiate is to be swallowed.'
Thus, it logically follows that Alduin in fact devours the entire Mundus, and by extension the Eight Aedra that sustain it, meaning he ought to scale to them. And this, in turn, opens up the doors for quite a few interesting things. One of them being this statement:
The Seven Fights of The Aldudagga — The Imperial Library
A series of humorous, semi-historical tales from Skyrim
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And by turns the snow whale and the dirtbird told the story, and its details, and in his magnificence did Molag Bal know that this was indeed the dream-work of Mehrunes Dagon, his brother of razors, the only Prince who dared trouble the sleep of the dragon-eater, Alduin. But while loyalty between the rulers of [the oblivion] is tenuous, Bal saw no profit in upsetting the ways of his brother, and told his visitors so, adding a threat of terrible censure on them if they did not turn back immediately and without further insult. The dirtbird remained unsatisfied and (remember that birds make no sense) began to peck furiously at the Prince’s head, rebuking him and all his kind and the mischief they wrought.
Mind you, this doesn't really contradict Skyrim treating Alduin as a child of Akatosh and as someone who is subject to the latter's authority to judge and punish. To explain why, I'll have to talk a bit about the new details about the Khajiiti religion which Elder Scrolls Online's Elsweyr expansion introduced, which shed some new light on the Dragon Gods:
Akha. The First Cat, whom we know as the Pathfinder and the One Unmourned. In the earliest days, when Ahnurr and Fadomai were still in love, he explored the heavens and his trails became the Many Paths. He was Ahnurr's Favored Son, and his father told him to find love like Ahnurr found with Fadomai. Akha mated with the Winged Serpent of the East, the Dune Queen of the West, and the Mother Mammoth of the North. He then went to the South and never returned. Instead, Alkosh appeared speaking warnings of the things Akha had made along the Many Paths. Since then, Alkosh and his faithful watch over the many children of Akha, for they are both terrible and kind.
Alkosh. The Dragon King. The Highmane. He was granted rule over the myriad kingdoms of Akha along the Many Paths. In time, the children of Akha overthrew him and scattered his body on the West Wind. It is said that when Khenarthi learned this, she flew across the Many Paths and put Alkosh back together. In doing so, she saw all the things Akha had wrought, including those that should not be. Now, Alkosh and Khenarthi safeguard the Many Paths from the wayward children of Akha. Pray to Alkosh not for his strength or his mighty roar, but for his sense of duty and purpose.
Alkhan. The Scaled Prince. Firstborn of Akha, who bred with a demon of fire and shadow. He can devour the souls of those he kills to grow to an immense size. The songs tell us Alkhan was slain by Lorkhaj and his companions, but as an immortal Son of Akha he will return from the Many Paths in time. He is the enemy of Alkosh, Khenarthi, and Lorkhaj, and ever hungers for his crown.
As you can see, Alkhan, the Khajiit's equivalent of Alduin, is established as being not the firstborn of Alkosh (Their version of Akatosh), but of another deity called "Akha," who precedes Alkosh and is in fact considered to be first of all gods. Akha, in turn, has several overlaps with the entity known as "Aka," which in some texts is heavily implied to be the original form of the Dragon God that fragmented itself to create the most basic and primordial concept of time that spilled all over the Aurbis, which was non-linear, multi-faceted and simply allowed the previously ineffable Et'Ada to define themselves and form proper identities:
Et'Ada, Eight Aedra, Eat the Dreamer — The Imperial Library
Transcribed from a spore-dream of an unidentified, evaporating Moth Priest that reached zero sum
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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"?
Furthermore, in-universe, Alduin is in fact attested to have predated Akatosh as a mythological/religious figure, with the entire Imperial religion being acknowledged as a fabrication that came about after Alessia syncretized the religion of the Nords with that of the Altmer, while the actual existence of these deities is presumably a result of the faith and belief of mortals shaping reality, as well as the non-linear nature of the Dawn Era making it so every possible version of the setting is simultaneously true.
Shezarr and the Eight Divines — The Imperial Library
Examination of the role of Lorkhan in Cyrodiilic worship
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In 1E242, the Cyrodilic humans, under the leadership of Alessia and her demigod lover, Morihaus-Breath-of-Kyne, revolt. When Skyrim lends its armies to the Slave-Queen of the South, the revolution succeeds. The Ayleid Hegemonies are quickly overthrown. Shortly thereafter, White Gold Tower is captured by Alessia’s forces, and she promptly declares herself the first Empress of Cyrodiil. Part of the package meant that she had to become the High Priestess of Akatosh, as well.
Akatosh was an Aldmeri god, and Alessia’s subjects were as-yet unwilling to renounce their worship of the Elven pantheon. She found herself in a very sensitive political situation. She needed to keep the Nords as her allies, but they were (at that time) fiercely opposed to any adoration of Elven deities. On the other hand, she could not force her subjects to revert back to the Nordic pantheon, for fear of another revolution. Therefore, concessions were made and Empress Alessia instituted a new religion: the Eight Divines, an elegant, well-researched synthesis of both pantheons, Nordic and Aldmeri.
And even Michael Kirkbride talks about aspects of the Dragon God that are particularly ancient and important, such as the Aka-Tusk (As in, a tusk of Aka), which he explains is a facet dating back to the days of the Ehlnofey, when Humans and Elves were the same race, and which the Aldudagga states is the being from which Alduin was created:
All of the akaspirits, like all of the etada, are quantum figures that shed their skin as each aspect of them becomes more and more self-aware.
The Aka-Tusk is a particularly old and needed version of the Time Dragon from the days of the Ehlnofey.
The Seven Fights of The Aldudagga: Fight Four, "The Tenpenny Winter...Again” — The Imperial Library
These were the days of Rebec the Red, she-captain of the longboat Nail-Knock, whose Reaver-Husbands were by High King Ysgrim and all the Sons and Daughters of
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And the third, who looked akin to a Karstaag-man, [gigantic], and adorned in storm cloud and endless, endless yellowtooth… [he] was Alduin the World-Eater, and he only said, "Ho ha ho."
“You will eat nothing here, aspect Ald,” said the Aka-Tusk, sensing trouble. “Do not forget that it was Heaven itself that shed you from me.”
“Who cares,” the World-Eater said, “You speak of the Prolix Laws, which do not bind me if you strain our kinship. You awoke me. That bell-sound has consequence. And the Dagon here, well, he’s going to tell me right now where he’s hidden all the additions to the World he has hoarded in the long aeons of salmon-leap which he calls his own survival.”
Obviously, if Alduin ends up scaling to High 1-B, then so does the Dovahkiin. Same with Miraak.
CHIM and its Ruling Kings
For this one, I'll have to comment a bit on the current logic used by the profiles, for summary's sake:
Despite the several allusions to the cosmology of the Aurbis being comprised of the three usual realms, Mundus – Oblivion – Aetherius, as of recently, TES has been frequently talking about there being things that lie even further beyond these worlds. The majority of the statements making reference to that coming from Elder Scrolls Online and its expansions, as seen below:
Could I meet him?
"Someday, perhaps. The Psijic Order's isle of Artaeum is no longer here. It may return in time, but for now you'd probably have an easier time reaching Aetherius or realms beyond.
The order values solitude, much like Sotha Sil."
ESO: Alternative Alinor and Ayarynne — The Imperial Library
"Day and night the Maormer bombard our Blessed Isle with their mundane machinery. For munitions, they use diseased corpses - a tactic most foul! I ask you to
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"The Aetherius is simply the first layer. I have seen outside the Aetherius."
When Alkosh frowns, they rise. When Elsweyr cries, they fight. And with their dying breath, Khenarthi will be there to guide them to a place beyond the Sands Behind the Stars.
He was falling, then flying. The world rushed up to meet him, all fire and glory and madness. He felt a current on wings he did not remember having and he soared. He flew over cities of gold and cities of black stone. They were endless, like the Hist that cradled them. The sky was aflame and the sun was a pit. Still he flew, for he had not the strength to do more than let the current carry him.
He came upon a tower. It was tall and vast and many trees grew from its many layers of marsh. Creatures lived and died without ever knowing of a world outside the tower. At its top was a tree that bled fire. Other winged things that looked like him circled it. They cried out in words he understood but didn't know. He felt a deep sadness as the tower fell away.
He looked up and saw other worlds and other towers. They were spinning wheels and they crashed into each other, and their spokes got tangled up and they broke each other. And he saw that his world was breaking, too, but quick as a snake a shadow came and swallowed up the roots of the tower so they would not break.
Still he flew. There was only fire and darkness then, and so much noise, but he was too tired to be afraid. And so Matius slept, and drifted away into a black sun.
Those are all very recent, but the idea that the true extent of existence extends beyond even Aetherius actually dates back to the times of Morrowind, where a NPC brings up the possibility of there being up to 40 creational gradients separating mortals from the divine.
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.
Lawrence Schick, former Loremaster of the series, also comments on the concept of the universe being a structure comprised of worlds within worlds (Or wheels within wheels) in a podcast, and says that Sotha Sil's Clockwork City is basically this very concept made manifest and emulated/recapitulated in a concrete form, with the end result being that it has multiple layers that may or may not have an end to them, according to him.
Gina Bruno: Somebody was asking if...if the Clockwork City is some sort of parallel universe and if it's endless.
Lawrence Schick: Kind of. Both those questions is kind of. In fact it's a deliberate parallel universe, in that it deliberately parallels Tamriel above. And...what was the second part?
Gina Bruno & Leamon Tuttle: Is it endless?
Lawrence Schick: Is it endless? You don't see nearly all of it from what you can see of it in the game. It has layers, and only Sotha Sil knows the full extent of those layers and what the functions of some of the other areas are...Samantha, could you please just lean back and look up at the sky for a moment there? Look up there, look at those whirling rings spinning around the world of the Clockwork City. That is the outside of the Clockwork City...or maybe not. That's just what you can see from the Brass Fortress, and you can see that Sotha Sil has taken the concept of wheels within wheels and worlds within worlds and has made it manifest right over your head. So you're constantly contemplating the fact that the world is a built thing and therefore it can be reverse engineered, reengineered and improved! Look, there's the proof right above your head!
And all of this, in turn, was talked about by Michael Kirkbride since a long while ago. In fact, one of his in-character comments actually establishes that there is an infinite number of wheels that stretch all the way back to the most primordial levels of existence:
Michael Kirkbride's Posts | The Imperial Library
www.imperial-library.info
A single Wheel? More like a Telescope that stretches all the way back to the Eye of the Anui-El, with Padomaics innumerable along its infinite walls.
Thus, the full extent of the regression of worlds beyond Aetherius is considered 1-A+, with the Ruling Kings who attained CHIM, like Vivec and Talos, in turn being rated at "possibly 1-A+" by scaling from it. And, personally, I think the rating itself more solid than this, specifically because, according to Vivec, attaining CHIM is, in fact, a return to the very first interaction between Anu and Padomay:
Vehk's Teaching: More on the Psijic Endeavor — The Imperial Library
What is the Psijic Endeavor?
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What is the purpose of the Psijic Endeavor?
To transcend mortal boundaries set in place by immortal rulers. At its simplest, the state of chim provides an escape from all known laws of the divine worlds and the corruptions of the black sea of Oblivion. It is a return to the first brush of Anu-Padomay, where stasis and change created possibility. Moreso, it the essence needed to hold that 'dawning' together without disaster. One that knows CHIM observes the Tower without fear. Moreso: he resides within.
And as some of you may already know, CHIM itself is obtained once an individual perceives the true nature of reality as a part and byproduct of God by looking at the "Wheel" of the Aurbis sideways, perceiving the "O" as an "I" and thereby catching a glimpse of the oneness of the universal self:
What is the Tower?
The Tower is an ideal, which, in our world of myth and magic, means that it is so real that it becomes dangerous. It is the existence of the True Self within the Universal Self, and is embodied by the fourth constellation, and is guarded by the Thief, the third. The Thief is another metaphorical absolute; in this case, he represents the “taking of the Tower” or, and sometimes more importantly, the “taking” of the Tower’s secret.
What is the Tower’s secret?
How to permanently exist beyond duplexity, antithesis, or trouble. This is not an easy concept, I know. Imagine being able to feel with all of your senses the relentless alien terror that is God and your place in it, which is everywhere and therefore nowhere, and realizing that it means the total dissolution of your individuality into boundless being. Imagine that and then still being able to say “I”. The “I” is the Tower.
And this is important because the realms beyond Aetherius are explicitly still structured like Wheels, which means that the ideal of the Tower extends into them as well. This is exemplified by the fact that, as Vivec states, Mundus is a smaller wheel within a wheel, and thus it also reflects the Tower in its structure just as the Aurbis as a whole does, and can allow an individual to attain CHIM that way, with the only difference here being that its border is much easier to reach and visualize:
What is the hub of the Wheel?
We are the hub, the Mundus that goes by many names. We are the heart of all creation. What does this mean? Why should we care? Lorkhan created it so that we could find what he did. In fact, and here is the secret: the hub is the reflection of its creators, the circle within the circle, only the border to ours is so much easier to see. Stand in its flux and remain whole of mind. Look at it sideways and see the “I”.
This is the Tower.
Fifth:
'Look at the majesty sideways and all you see is the Tower, which our ancestors made idols from. Look at its center and all you see is the begotten hole, second serpent, womb-ready for the Right Reaching, exact and without enchantment.'
Sixth:
'The heart of the second serpent holds the secret triangular gate.'
Seventh:
'Look at the secret triangular gate sideways and you see the secret Tower.'
Eighth:
'The secret Tower within the Tower is the shape of the only name of God, I.'
The ending of the words is ALMSIVI.
Thus, CHIM as a state of being definitely reaches beyond the regression of Wheels as a whole, and not just the World-Egg comprised by Mundus, Oblivion and Aetherius, and so it should be High 1-A, if anything, and not "possibly 1-A+."
The Nerevarine's attainment of CHIM
On the Nerevarine's profile, we consider them to have achieved CHIM and become a Ruling King. This is not unsupported by the verse, of course, and in fact the 36 Lessons as a whole are essentially just Vivec's own instructions to becoming a Ruling King, directed specifically at the Nerevarine:
The Thirty-Six Lessons of Vivec: Sermon Thirteen — The Imperial Library
These were the days of Resdaynia, when Chimer and Dwemer lived under the wise and benevolent rule of the AMLSIVI and their champion the Hortator. When the
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'This is why I say the secret to swords is the mercy seat. It is my throne. I am become the voice of ALMSIVI. The world will know me more than my sister and brother. I am the psychopomp. I am the killer of the weeds of Veloth. Veloth is the center that cannot hold. Ayem is the plot. Seht is the ending. I am the enigma that must be removed. These are why my words are armed to the teeth.
'The ruling king is to stand against me and then before me. He is to learn from my punishment. I will mark him to know. He is to come as male or female. I am the form he must acquire.
'Because a ruling king that sees in another his equivalent rules nothing.'
This is what was said to the Hortator when Vivec was not whole.
The ending of the words is ALMSIVI.
The Thirty-Six Lessons of Vivec: Sermon Fifteen — The Imperial Library
These were the days of Resdaynia, when Chimer and Dwemer lived under the wise and benevolent rule of the AMLSIVI and their champion the Hortator. When the
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'You alone, though you come again and again, can unmake him. Whether I allow it is within my wisdom. Go unarmed into his den with these words of power: AE GHARTOK PADHOME [CHIM] AE ALTADOON. Or do not. The temporal myth is man. Reach heaven by violence. This magic I give to you: the world you will rule is only an intermittent hope and you must be the letter written in uncertainty.'
The ending of the words is ALMSIVI.
The Thirty-Six Lessons of Vivec: Sermon Sixteen — The Imperial Library
The Hortator wandered through the Mourning Hold, wrestling with the lessons he had learned. They were slippery in his mind. He could not always keep the words
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Nerevar said, 'I am afraid to become slipshod in my thinking.'
Vivec said, 'Reach heaven by violence then.'
So to quiet his mind the Hortator chose from the Fight Racks an axe. He named it and moved on to the first moon.
There, Nerevar was greeted by the Parliament of Craters, who knew him by title and resented his presence, for he was to be a ruling king of earth and this was the lunar realm. They shifted around him in a pattern of entrapment.
The issue with this, however, is that there is simply nothing which concretely indicates that the Nerevarine that we control in Morrowind in fact attained CHIM after the events of the game, as their whereabouts are intentionally left open to the player's discretion and imagination, and Vivec himself highlights this in Sermon 15: Go unarmed into his den with these words of power: AE GHARTOK PADHOME [CHIM] AE ALTADOON. Or do not.
For the matter, in the context of Michael Kirkbride's narrative for Morrowind that's concluded in C0DA, Nerevar finally attains CHIM not in the form of the player character of Morrowind, but of Jubal-lun-Sul (As in, Luna-Sol, or Moon-and-Star, the title given to Nerevar in life), who is the one to ultimately become a Ruling King and form the New Amaranth alongside Vivec through a symbolic marriage.
The light bent, and Vivec awoke and grew fangs, unwilling to make of herself a folding thing. This was a new and lunar promise. And in her Biting she tunneled up and then downward, while her brother and sister smeared across heaven, thin ruptures of dissent, food for scarabs and the Worm. She took her people and made them safe, and sat with Azura drawing her own husband's likeness in the dirt.
"For I have removed my left hand and my right, he will say," she said, "for that is how I shall win against them. Love alone and you shall know only mistakes of salt."
The worlding of the words is AMARANTH.
So, that key ought to be removed.
TL;DR
- Jagar Tharn and the Eternal Champion go from High 4-C to 8-B
- The Vestige's justifications involving the Soulburst and scaling off of the Celestial Constellations should be removed from their profile. Their tier is otherwise up to discussion. If a downgrade is in order, then they'll go down to 4-A.
- The Dovahkiin's High 6-A tier should be removed, after which, that key will just scale off of the Vestige.
- All justifications in the current Low 2-C profiles that involve Barbas' manifestation scaling from the Dovahkiin should be removed. They'll instead scale off of the Vestige, and thus their exact tiers are up in the air as well.
- The Jills should be knocked down to Unknown.
- Vivec's justification involving his transcendence over linear time should be removed, same with his Immeasurable speed.
- All characters who are currently High 8-C scaling off of Aela and the Companions being able to kill a Giant should be downgraded to the 9-B range.
- Aka, Lorkhan, Magnus and the other Et'Ada should be upgraded to Low 1-A
- Alduin, The Dovahkiin and Miraak should be High 1-B scaling to the Eight Divines and the Princes.
- CHIM users like Vivec and Talos should be upgraded to High 1-A
- The Nerevarine's CHIM key should be removed.
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