Traveling through The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim

According to the setting of the game plot, the dragon Alduin is the eldest son of the time dragon god Akatosh. He has many titles in the mythology of the Nords, such as: Scourge of Kings, World Devourer, Time Devourer, Soul Devourer, etc. He also has many incredible and powerful abilities. He can resurrect dragons, enter Sovngarde to devour the souls of the dead. It is said that he once devoured the age of the Nords, turning them all into six-year-old children. The most outrageous thing is of course that he cannot be ended and is an eternal and immortal existence. It is said that Alduin's priesthood is to destroy the previous life before the time dragon god recreates the world, so his appearance is regarded by the Nords as the end of time.

In the ancient elf era, the Nords living on the continent of Atmora believed in an ancient religion that worshipped animal spirits. Their pantheon included nine main gods: snakes, eagles, whales, bears, wolves, butterflies, owls, foxes, and dragons. This primitive belief system was later absorbed by the Eight Holy Spirits pantheon established by Queen Alessia, but it still has a certain influence among the Nords. Today's scholars can only barely explore its original appearance from some fragmentary clues.

Generally speaking, it is believed that:

The snake corresponds to Shul, who is the main god and spiritual pillar of the Nords. His domain, Sovngarde, or Hall of Valor, is the soul destination of most Nords. Only those who died bravely in battle or proved their bravery in other ways are qualified to be accepted into Sovngarde. This is why there is a classic saying: "To judge a Nord, do not look at how he lives, but how he dies." But in the Eight Holy Spirits, Shul corresponds to Lorkhan, a super liar who deceived the Eight Holy Spirits into creating the world. After his death, his body shattered into two moons.

The eagle corresponds to Gine, the wife of the holy warrior, the widow of Shul, the mother of humans and beasts, the goddess of storms. The mission of Floki, the "sharp sword", is the sacred trial of Gine. Gine corresponds to Ginalais in the Eight Holy Spirits, the goddess of the sky. According to legend, she taught the ancient Nord hero the dragon roar to fight against Alduin.

Whale corresponds to Sun, the Nordic god of trials. In the game, he guards the Whalebone Bridge in Sovngarde. Only after passing his test can the souls of the Nords enter the Hall of Valor. Sun is Zenithar, the god of craftsmen and commerce among the Eight Holy Spirits.

The bear corresponds to Stuhn, who is Sun's brother. Both of them are shield bearers of Shul. Danger's family is said to be his direct descendant. Of course, considering the status of this family in Skyrim and the behavior style of the current members of the family, I am extremely skeptical about this. Stuhn corresponds to Stendarr in the Eight Holy Spirits, the god of justice and mercy.

The wolf corresponds to Mara, the maid of Genet, also called Mara in the pantheon of the Eight Holy Spirits, the goddess of love and the patron saint of marriage. Ilandur is her priest.

Butterfly corresponds to Dibella, the goddess of beauty, who is in charge of performance art in private spaces and is probably the most beloved god among humans.

The Owl corresponds to Yunar, that is, Julianos among the Eight Holy Spirits, the God of Runes, the God of Wisdom and Logic. His presence continues to decline, and the Nords, who originally produced many wizards, have now degenerated into barbarians who are hostile to magic.

The fox corresponds to Okai, the hostile god in Nord mythology. It is this bad guy who summoned Alduin to devour the age of the Nords. He has no corresponding holy spirit.

The dragon corresponds to Alduin, the Devourer of Worlds and the Ender of Time.

The ancient Nords were closer to Shul, the snake, and disliked Alduin, the dragon. However, humans, whose lives were short and whose bodies were fragile, could not help but feel envious of the eternal and powerful dragons, which then turned into loss and despair. In the end, a small group of anti-human elements actually began to worship Alduin and the dragons. With the help of the dragons, this group of heretics quickly seized power.

This is the Dragon Worship Cult.

This name is a title given to this primitive religion by later scholars. Its actual name is no longer traceable, and there are almost no religious scriptures or documents left. The lifestyle of believers and the religious rituals of priests are even more oblivious. However, the Dragon Tongue Wall and other buildings that still stand in various parts of Skyrim are undoubtedly proof of its existence. It once participated in, and most likely even led, the confrontation between the ancient Nords and the Snow Elves.

Historians and archaeologists generally speculate that these dragon worshippers are fanatically pursuing power and even indifferent to life and death, because they firmly believe that their dragon masters will grant them eternal life in the afterlife. Over a long period of time, they gradually established an oligarchic regime headed by the eight dragon priests, combining politics and religion, and built large buildings such as dragon walls, mausoleums, and temples in various places, the most famous of which is Labrinthian. This behavior gradually got out of control, and the dragon priests frantically exploited the Nords, which eventually triggered a human rebellion.

Whether it was because he had tasted the wonderful power of faith, or simply out of the dragon race's greed for power, or the result of the two together, Alduin gave up his duty to destroy the old world and instead indulged in ruling the secular world, thus losing his divinity.

As for the nature of Alduin, there are all kinds of strange speculations or inferences. For example, some people think that he is the first creation of Akatosh, the eldest son of the Time Dragon God, as he claims; some people claim that Akatosh and Alduin are one and the same, but humans are too shallow to understand the full picture of the Time Dragon God, and the cognition of the world-destroying part is projected onto Alduin; some even claim that Alduin is simply a beast without divinity, and humans are afraid of its powerful power, so they imagine that it has the godhood of devouring the world.

Whatever the truth is, according to ancient legends, Alduin led the dragon army and used the Dragon Cult to carry out a cruel and tyrannical rule over the Nords. The degree of his outrage was so outrageous that mortals could not bear it and would rather rebel against the powerful dragons. The Dragon War broke out. At first, thousands of humans died, but the Holy Spirits began to intervene, and a few dragons also turned against them. Humans were able to learn magic and dragon roars to fight against the dragons.

However, as a fragment of time, the dragon can be said to exist with time. From this perspective, humans have no ability to really kill it, and they cannot understand what death is. In the end, the warriors among the Nords invented the roar of "Dragon Soul Tearing", which is equivalent to letting the dragon understand the meaning of death in dragon language, thereby torturing its soul and making it unable to concentrate. Such a powerful trick can only temporarily suppress Alduin's power. The human hero sacrificed the Elder Scrolls and barely exiled Alduin to a certain time in the future.

The Elder Scrolls also predicted the signs of Alduin's return:

When tyranny is everywhere in the world;

When the brass tower moves and time is reshaped;

When the three great blessings fail, the Red Tower is in turmoil;

When the Dragonborn fell and the White Tower collapsed;

When the snow towers shattered, there was no king and rivers of blood flowed;

When the Devourer of Worlds awakens, the wheel of time will turn to the last Dragonborn.

The first five sentences correspond to the plots of the Elder Scrolls series from the first to the fifth generation. The Snow Tower is the highest peak of Tamriel in Skyrim, the Throat of the World. The river of blood flows without a king, which refers to the assassination of High King Torygg and the civil war that plunged Skyrim into. The main plot of the fifth generation game is that the player plays the role of the last Dragonborn, defeats Alduin the World Devourer, and saves the world.

But there's a small problem: Alduin had already fallen from godhood before the Dragon War.

In other words, the big black dragon had no intention of destroying the world at all. What it wanted to do was to revive the dragon army and rebuild the Dragon Cult in order to conquer and enslave humans. Alduin wanted eternal rule in this world.

If the Dragonborn defeats Alduin in Sovngarde, it is very likely that He will return to divinity and take on the responsibility of destroying the world again. In other words, the main storyline of the game is not about saving the world, but about pushing the world towards inevitable destruction. Of course, if we stand in the perspective of God, put aside our nostalgia and cherishment for life, give up our love and nostalgia for our homeland, and look at the problem with inhumane calmness: destruction is the beginning of rebirth, and it may not be a purely bad thing.

It’s just that the good thing about this matter has nothing to do with everyone in this world.

Heaven and earth are not benevolent, and all things are dogs.

And there was another small surprise in the alien world I was in: the last dragonborn did not appear.

The Dragonborn is known as the ultimate dragon slayer because of its terrifying ability to absorb the soul of a dragon. If the little cat who died in Helgen is the last Dragonborn, doesn't that mean we can never really kill a dragon? Alduin will surely be able to resurrect them over and over again, and humans will be caught in an endless war against dragons.

An unkillable opponent...

Of course, all of this is based on the myths of the Nords and the Empire, and the legends of the Reachmen that I learned from Helgi do not include dragons. If the Reachmen have really lived in Skyrim since the First Age, there is no reason for them not to know about dragons. Even if according to the legend, the Dragon Cult was wiped out in the early First Age, the Dragon Wall and the ruins of the ancient city, as well as the dragon tombs in the wilderness, and the battle between Olaf One-Eyed and the dragon Numinex, can undoubtedly prove the existence of this terrifying monster. I plan to visit Annis and Helgi after I go back and ask the Reachmen if they have any legends about dragons, and see if I can understand this powerful monster from another perspective.

Lake Jokilin, where the dragon appeared this time, is the source of the Jokilin River, which flows eastward and merges into the White River under Windhelm. Since this location is very close to the Stormcloak base camp, this incident will definitely be taken seriously by Ulfric. What I am worried about now is that Balgruuf will conclude that the Stormcloak camp is unable to threaten the security of Whiterun, and thus take a negative attitude towards the alliance.

After chatting with Donna for a while, I left Yuevaska on the pretext of going to work. In early spring, the Snowman Territory was shrouded in a layer of light mist, and the new buds of the grass and trees dyed the mist with a faint fresh green. Under the withered golden trees, children were playing, noble women were reading quietly, and the hustle and bustle of the market in the plains was heard. The war did not seem to affect this paradise. But I knew very well that this prosperity was like the morning mist, and it would soon be swept away. The dragon and the civil war were nightmares that no one in the nine territories of Skyrim could escape. Closing your eyes and pretending not to see would only bring greater disasters.

I don't know if I'm thinking too much, but I always feel that the timing of Alduin's appearances is a bit strange.

The first time, it destroyed the town of Helgen, severely damaged the territory of Falkreath, which was still in the Imperial camp at the time, wiped out Tullius's battle mage regiment, rescued Ulfric, made the rebellion mission fail, and gave the Stormcloaks a chance to catch their breath.

The second time, it attacked the relatively neutral Whiterun, causing Lord Balgruuf to lose control of the western territories and further weakening the power to check Ulfric.

This time, Falkreath was destined to leave the Empire, and was actively trying to win over Whiterun and form an alliance. If the Empire lost two territories, Ulfric would likely gain an advantage in the civil war for the first time. At such a critical moment, it suddenly caused trouble in the heart of the Stormcloaks.

Could it be that Alduin really has the ability to devour the souls of the dead? Does he want the civil war to drag on as long as possible, with as many deaths as possible? If that's the case, then if we create a third faction in the civil war, wouldn't that be exactly what he wants? What exactly is this guy planning?

I didn't actually have anything to do, I just wanted to sort out the information I knew so far, so I just wandered around in Whiterun. The environment in the windy area is obviously much better than that in the plains area. There are no busy shops, the streets are clean, and there are few pedestrians. The houses of the big families are all villas with their own doors and courtyards, occupying a block alone, with a courtyard in front and a garden in the back, which are grand and bright. The only oddity is the one opposite the Temple of Ginalais. The house is well built and the yard is quite large, but you are a big family in the city, and you raise two cows in your backyard. What kind of operation is this?

"Hello, stranger, you are not from here, right? I have never seen you before."

The woman feeding the cows was a tall, plump young woman with a strange gray hair that made her look a little old. Seeing that I was interested in her two cows, she took the initiative to talk to me.

"Hello, I was brought here from Falkreath."

"Oh, great, stranger, can you do me a favor and deliver this letter to Joe from the Zhan Kuang family? He should be at the door of Bellator's grocery store now. Please tell him that I... um... something happened suddenly at home and I can't go over..."

"Ophelia! Who is this?"

An old woman suddenly came into the yard and startled the woman who was talking to me.

"Ah! Mother! This... this is a merchant from the south. He wants to buy a cow. I told him that we raise these cows for our own consumption. Sir, we cannot sell our cows to you. Please leave."

Ao Feina winked at me and signaled me to deliver the letter quickly.