Oh yea, good point (misread The Dragon War). They might have, but then those scholars should have also known Talos is Shor :S

Also, from pantheon to pantheon the gods change and sometimes even their roles, and in most pantheons the gods are the same, or very similar, but have different names - so yes those animal gods can be directly compared to the Nine (/Eight + One) but just like Shor and Lorkhan and Shezar are the same gods from different pantheon (where Shor is loved in one and Lorkhan is hated in another because of different opinions/stories etc. etc.), Orkey can be Arkay and Alduin can be Akatosh etc.

The thing is, those comparisons make me think that those pantheon comparisons are not correct :S Lorkhan and Orkey and Tu'whacca are more similar, and Alduin and Arkay are more similar, yet Orkey is Arkay and Lorkhan is Shor and Alduin, Auriel and Akatosh are more similar :/


EDIT:
Sorry if I did not make sense, hopefully you got me... It is 3:45am and I cannot sleep and blegh..

Something tying the Fox to Lorkhan: Pelinal Whitestrake. Also known to some as Hans the Fox.

And I get what you're saying, Magico.

Going off the last couple of posts, It seems like all the gods in question come from the same connected spirit that's just completely bat[censored] and has developed severe MPD within MPD. The spirit takes various, but similar forms depending on cultures pantheon and roll needed within it (and belief shapes reality so where Lorshorzzar is a villain for elves, he's a hero for men, except the Redguards, who are somewhere in the middle).

So Tu'whacca is Arkay is Orkey is Alduin is Akatosh is Lorkhan is Shor is Shezzar is Sep is Trickster is Dragon is Fox is King is Rebel. I are he and he are we and we are all each other. MPDception.


That or my mind's just snapped from thinking about it too much. Though I'm pretty sure I'm just a broken record on an idea that's already accepted as true. Lorkhan and Akatosh being joined at the hip is just fine and dandy, it's adding Arkay/Orkey to the mix and having him possibly be the same with them in some pantheon and not in others that's confusing me. Ah well.

Here's my guess for the totems:


Bear - ?
Dragon - Akatosh/Auriel/Alduin
Fox - Orkey or Shor?
Hawk - Kynareth
Moth - Julianos
Owl - ?
Snake- Alduin/Shor?
Whale - Tsun
Wolf - ?

This only makes sense.

Then again, Tsun is guarding the bridge. Still guarding Shor?

The skin tent sounds like the skin ball Sep made from previous world-skins.

I know I'm very late, but the so-called "whale" could be Leviathan the sea serpent, and then the connection to Shor makes sense, because then the Missing God/Dragon God duality matches the winged talon/limbless reptile duality present in all Indo-European mythology.

Well, technically, all the gods are either dead or gone. Hence was the outcome of the Convention that ended the Dawn Era.

So, if the animals and stone carvings pertain to the Nordic pantheon, I am wondering: Isn't Hermaeus Mora (Herma-Mora, the woodland man who catches unwary travelers) part of the Nordic pantheon? Or are we only counting the good ones?

We're counting the Eight and their missing friend. The fact that there is Nine animal gods shows we should look at them, IMO.

I think you make a really strong case there.
And I think we should stick to the nine divines as candidates for those animals - otherwise it would be a huge coincidence that there are 9.

Wolf: While Mara makes the logical choice, I can't think of a reason for the moons above her. However, depicting the mother-goddess as a wolf reminds me heavily of Moro from Princess Mononoke.
Whale: Probably Tsun/Zenithar as mentioned above
Owl: Julianos
Hawk: Kynareth
Moth: Dibella
Dragon: Aka
Snake: My first guess was Arkay, but it could easily be Shor himself.
Fox: Stendarr/Arkay/Shor
Bear: Stendarr/Shor

The last three make my head spin. The snake and fox look rather sinister, so I'd think one of them is Arkay. But otherwise, I have no idea.

/e
I just read Shor, son of Shor again, and noticed one line: "Shor shook his scaled mane."
That's shortly after he turned into his totem. I think that makes a good case for him being the snake, after all.
/e2
"He had taken the second by drawing a circle on the House's adamantine floor with his tailmouth-tusk which broke with a keening sound, showing the other chieftains that it would all come around again."
A snake is pretty much a tail with a mouth, isn't it?

Considering that his Yokudan (Hammerfell) aspect is Sep, the snake.

Whoa, Jhunal was a dead giveaway. He's the moth. If we can speak with confidence, the dragon and the moth must be resolved.

In the Ysgramor legend, it's said of his two sons, one possessed awesome strength and the other was a cunning strategist. These are the brothers Tsun and Stuhn. If Tsun is the powerful whale who died, then the cunning fox is Stuhn.

Ah, good one with Stuhn!

Well, the Moth-as-Dibella thought came about because there are nine totem animals, and three of them are depicted as women, and three of the nine divines are women. While Dibella is a good guess, I still think the Moth might actually be referring to Mara, like Lady Nerevar suggested. What with the Mother Niben, and Alessia being a mother-figure. The Owl as Jhunal is really just rooted in the owl's symbolic connection to wisdom, and, I think, the physical connection of the feather imagery with quills. Plus, well... J hooo nal.... :spotted owl:

How the hell did I miss this? :shakehead:

The first of Ysgramor’s Five Hundred Mighty Companions was actually two, the ashen-amalgamation of his sons that had survived Sarthaal only to die in the freeze-rains of the returning, named Tsunaltir and Stuhnalmir when alive and now called the Grit-Prince Tstunal

Anyway, yea, I agree with that conclusion.

Heh, its like Vilkas and Farkas. Vilkas "has the brains of Ysgramor, and I (Farkas) have his strength".

One is brutally cunning and the other cunningly brutal? :disco: :rofl: :clap:

So we figured everyone out

Except of the dragon, which aspect is it? Auriel or Alduin?

Probably doesn't matter. Shor woops both.


And my main argument against Jhunal as owl: Where, anywhere, in TES literature is the owl linked to wisdom? Real-world, sure, it's everywhere. In TES, it's the MOTH priests who guard the Elder Scrolls, it's the MOTH priests who zero-sum, and it's the MOTH priests who go blind from wisdom.

Hahaha the first line was a Warhammer 40k joke (The Orc race has two gods, and the only difference between them is that one is cunningly brutal and the other brutally cunning, so they obviously never know which god is which

About your main argument against Jhunal, the moth is depicted as a lady :S So he cannot be the Moth :/

Except that "Songs of the Return" and "Yngol and the Sea-Ghots" named Ysgramor's sons Yngol and Ynglar. And those two books appeared in-game as opposed to MK's "500 Companions" post...


Bah, I'm just being pedantic. :tongue: I like Ysgramor's sons as Tsun and Stuhn. It ties into the mythology nicely. It's like a reverse of how some RL god pantheons are probably just famous figures and clans from long ago, that went from celebrated heroes to divine beings through centuries of retelling.

Except that the whole Moth Priest thing is an Imperial belief. And the Imperials are in no way related to the Nords. You might as well say that Shor is a scarab, just because Lorkhan is one according to some people.

And the moth-god is a woman.

Yea, that's the point. They're Yngol and Ynglar in the pseudohistorical myth, but play the metaphysical roles of Tsun and Stun. One is cleaver, the other strong. Both texts agree that one (Yngol/Tsun) is dead, which lines up with Tsun being an "extinct Nordic god," as in Varieties of Faith. Hence my surprise at not seeing the connection before.

MK's 500 shouldn't be seen as contradicting SJML's 500, because despite using the same name and general framework they're telling the story on wholly different levels. MK's 500 are a collection of myth personages who transcend ages and kalpas. SJML's are historical people with chartable actions, however distorted by recollection. There are overlaps, and there are parts that don't match up at all, but neither refutes the other.

Concerning the Fox and the Snake...

In a certain barrow in the game (forgot the name of it) I found a puzzle with glyphs where you have to activate the glyphs in right order to open the door. The key is a cryptic text which says:

"The first one fears all, the second fears none, the third eats what it can, but mostly number one, the fourth fears the second, but only when alone."

The correct ordering of the glyphs (gave me quite a headache) was: 1) serpent, 2) bear, 3) fox 4) wolf. So, go and figure out if the snake who "fears all" and the fox who mostly "eats the snake" could have mythical significance. Because I doubt the ordering of those glyphs was only due to a food chain.