#also less coherent than any of them and that list includes fucking Duns Scotus: the origin of the word 'dunce'

[vokriid]

for yall who wanted an explanation on the Cyrodiilic religion

this post may be disjointed and repetitive bc I’m tired af but if your first TES game was Skyrim, then 1) same here, 2) 90% of TES lore is really confusing, complicated, ridiculous, and mostly boring, especially because a lot of lore comes from stuff that got retconned as the franchise went on, but that either fans or devs wanted to make sense in the world-building.

okay, so there are multiple religions worshipped on Tamriel during any and every era, but in most games, the biggest is the Cyrodiilic. the state religion of Cyrodiil is the, uh, Cyrodiilic Pantheon, or the worship of the Divines. the overall religion was codified (founded) by St. Alessia, who basically combined a bunch of local religious traditions together, made them as similar as she could, and decided official names and such. the main deities are: Akatosh (the most prominent deity and chief of the other deities), Arkay, Mara, Kynareth, Dibella, Julianos, Stendarr, Zenithar, and, after a certain point in time, Talos. the religion (especially once it has Talos) is often called the ‘imperial cult,’ and just keep in mind that it is the state religion of the Empire, not the only religion of the Empire. so while there are other religions in Tamriel, they’re mostly local, and the Cyrodiiic cult is present outside Cyrodiil bc, again, state religion. 

so, just so we’re clear: the whole religion of the Divines is not native to Skyrim, it is native to mid- and southern Tamriel. eg: Christianity is not native to the Americas, but the largest Christian populations are the US and Brazil. also Islam isn’t native to the Middle East outside the Arabian peninsula*, but you can find it from the ME all the way to the Philippines. 

so there are still a bunch of other religions in Tamriel. usually (not always!) religions are, uh, unrealistically consistent with race/culture/province. the Aldmer worshiped their pantheon, and that religion eventually split and separated into the various elven religions which we will not cover here bc they’re not relevant. what is relevant is that by the time of Skyrim, several of the provinces that were part of the Empire and had to at least give some official recognition to the Divines (though they probably weren’t forced to worship them, from what we can tell? though uh, still very much state sanctioned and protected), now have independence and no longer recognize the Divine pantheon. and, in fact, a lot of them are kinda bitter about being forced to recognize the conqueror who used the TES-equivalent of an atomic bomb against them as a god.

addendum: I FORGOT TO ACTUALLY INCLUDE SKYRIM. .............. later, then.

(end note: also, don’t read or listen to Michael Kirkbride. his writing - specifically how he does theology and philosophy - honestly just fucking sucks. it’s pretty much just really, really, really fucking bad esotericism wrapped in layers of what the average high school-age redditor thinks Nietzsche’s philosophy is. there, I’ve just saved you so much time and effort.)