To hell (or Oblivion) with gods. All it does is create annoying mortals and their little personal jihads. That's the only power I ever get to see.

edit: Actually, I like Dibella. She and her followers tend to be pretty hot.

Join the Thalmor then, they want to unmake the world. Right up your alley I'd say.

The "powers that be", are powers that are not here, more or less. The Daedra have a presence sure, but in all honesty I would rather get rid of all of them. Let mortals rule themselves instead of constantly being strung along by interlopers from outside the world.

And unlike Aedra, the Daedra are immortal badasses who can invade Tamriel

Not anymore they can't. Akatosh closed the gates for good. They can't invade anymore. The best they can hope for is small periods of time walking around smacking things up after being summoned, or walking around as an aspect of themselves.

Hmm.. I just might.

I need a cool pseudo Italian-Elven name now, like Calcelmo or Ancano.

Talos is a divine.
Talos is a conglomerate entity of Wulfharth, Arctus, Septim and a few others.
Their life story mirrored the events of creation and in doing so affirmated creation.
The ascension of Talos is a big giant 'yes', it strenghtens the world. Talos is the enentiomer, the mirror-brother, of Lorkhan.

The Aedra are relatively powerless. They are dead, after all.
They can speak to people in dreams and visions, they can send avatars and in special circumstances they can sometimes interfere in events directly, when summoned to do so.
But Nirn is their realm, they in a sense are the world and therefore exert a measure of control over it.

svcks that we're told what to believe. Like there's no room for questioning the nature of gods. Everything written about them is apparently true, and there's no alternatives.

our dovakiin cant light the dragonfires, the septims did not have souls of dragons they had the blood of dragons (which is really just tiber's blood, a relation of somekind with tiber would do)

exactly, Talo's WAS a human, who ascended and became the Ninth Divinity.

Nobody can light the dragonfires, they no longer exist... However they have been lit dozens of times, like during Alessia or Reman their days by people that were not related to Tiber Septim. Tiber his blood has nothing to do with the dragonfires.


Really then please answer the following questions:

Is Tiber Septim Talos, or are Tiber Setpim Zurin Articus and Wulfharth Talos?
Did Lorkhan trick the Aedra into creating the world, or did they do so willingly?
Is Akatosh an aspect of Auri-el or is he Auri-El?
Is Mehrunes Dagon, Magnus? And does he as such actually have a claim to Tamriel?
How did Arkay come to be?
What side are the Eight/Nine on?
Is CHIM possible for all, does Shor want that?

And these are the first few questions I could come up. TES has almost nothing set in stone.

9 in Skyrim. You can even preach in public all days and all nights. Talos is a Divine anywhere in Tamriel and there are shrines everywhere.

Well, that's nice to know then.

I'm getting overwhelmed by people who can go on about various lore "facts" though. If that's the case, then I think it svcks out the mystery of religions (even fictional ones). It's not very interesting if everything is known about these gods and what we're supposed to believe (or not to believe). Part of the "charm" of religion is that it's based on faith. In this case, you can't even roleplay anything except a fanatic, who knows all the "facts".

But these aren't ordinary religions, its in a fantasy world where basically nearly anything is possible

there are not many facts in TES and even less facts that cant be seen in many different ways by different people

It actually is very interesting.
TES lore is very deep with many nuances.
Try these ones for more insight:

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:The_Monomyth
http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:The_Annotated_Anuad
http://www.imperial-library.info/content/vehks-teaching

That's true enough, but it still isn't fun if you can't roleplay genuine confusion and conflict. For example, with Talos. Some people are convinced it's a lore "fact" that he's a divine.

That may be so, but it also makes it boring. It'd be cooler if we truly don't know, and just have to make a choice.

But that's the problem in previous games we met him. So we know he's a god. You can always RP that we never actually met Talos but that Akatosh was helping out. Or perhaps your character just doesn't know Talos is real, most people don't. They just assume.

The Gods are real in the TES universe, just as for so much fantasy writing. It's their nature that's the contention, in this thread and everywhere else. The mortals of Nirn don't need faith to know they exist, but they need to of a particular mindset, or raised in a specific culture with it's set of beliefs, for the gods to exist in a specific way for them, Auri'el the first ancestor or Alduin the world eater, Lorkhan the betrayer or Shor the protector. The fact the gods are real is a hard fact for the world, whether they are even alive, dead or dreaming is up for debate. Very few hard and fast rules here.
I don't understand why you would have to be a fanatic, when although very few on Nirn would argue they aren't incontrovertibly real, they are such a common, everyday thing. The Yokudan beliefs even refer to their version of Anu as 'the Hum', so everywhere and part of everything you never notice it exists.

I can do that, but I still lay some blame on the writers. If they want this to be a controversy, then it should it be more confusing and up in the air. There shouldn't be too many facts about Talos.

Dragon Age does this well, with it's religions. I don't know if you've played it, but you don't ever get a firm grasp of the chantry's claims. There's so much more to question about them and their origins. And what "Andraste", it's Jesus figure, really said or did. There's various offshoots of the same religions, much like real world religions have a thousand offshoots. There are few known facts about any of it.

Here, instead, you're forced to just accept divinity of certain figures. And if you want to question it, they just flip out a wikiquote. Lame.

1# The Septims were recognized as Dragonborn, seeing as there time was inbetween the dragons. We have no way of knowing if they could absorb dragonsouls.
2# The first dragonborn was Saint Alessia who made the covenant with Akatosh to seal the gates of Oblivion back in the first era.
3# The Temple that contained the dragon fires was destroyed and Martin's sacrafice rendered them obsolete. So the question can never be answered.



No one doubted Talo's divinity until Skyrim. People claiming he isn't one of the divines is new.

And you can find controversy.

The Eight Divine religion begain as a compromise between the Nordic and Elven deities After Alessia overthrew the Ayleids and conquered Cyrodiil. The Nord allies rejected the Elven religion and the human slaves of Cyrodiil had been worshiping the Aldmer pantheon for generations.

There are many unknowns in TES lore. Read about the life of Tiber Septim, there are several conflicting accounts about him, it is unknown which of any of them is 'true'.
What is known however is that the gods are real.

Yet you know Andraste's ashes have magical powers... So obviously part of that religion is true.

And again, you know Talos is divine. Yes, but there might be a difference between Tiber Septim and Talos...

It's like knowing God exists but knowing what religious believes he has, so you still have dozens of different believes and systems who can still argue about who is right, who is wrong what is real and what isn't.

If you truly want a world without any certainty at all, then yes TES does not comply but no other game that I've ever come across does either.

1+2: since dovakiin is not a hereditory thing it is safe to assume that not every septims was dovakiin, which means it is also safe to assume that you did not need to be dovakiin to light the fires.
3: hypothetical situation, the dovakiin could not light the dragonfires, that would make him the true emperor which means he cant just fade away, which is what bethesda wants us to do.

Dragon Age was a game portraying a fantasised version of medieval times, where Heresy against the church was commonplace (for the record I think Dragon Age is neck in neck for lore with TES in terms of quality)
TES is a fantasised version of Ancient times (so, Ancient Rome, Greece etc.) when almost everyone believed in the Parthenon of Gods despite no real evidence. Maybe now that the world is moving into it's dark ages we will see less black and white information on the Gods .