Infobox
Book Information
Type Name Writer Unknown ID az_bk_natureoftheetada
Foreword to the Fragment
The last known work of the mage Aranarkus of Balfiera, the Ruminations were written in the latter years of the Second Era in response to Elidor Direnni’s controversial Nature of the Et’Ada; the Ruminations proved largely unpopular due both to the enduring clout of the Direnni Clan among the Altmer and, more importantly, to the author’s tendency to excessive tangentiality. As a result, by the end of the turn of the Second Era, only one known copy was preserved in its entirety; the manuscript-scrolls lay neglected, and only partially intact, in their cases in the Crystal Tower, where I first stumbled across them. Of the surviving scrolls, the author’s discussion of Azura is the least damaged, and which I commit to paper anew, if only to save one of our people’s voices from oblivion.
- Estalenya Moracaen of Cloudrest
By Aranarkus of Balfiera
On the Lady Azura
Of the Et’Ada we call Daedra, a distinction which I continue to argue is not necessarily appropriate, few prove as enigmatic as the Prince of Dusk and Dawn. With the potential exception of Mehrunes Dagon, none of the Lords of Oblivion are truly straightforward in their nature, being largely beyond our ken, and to presume otherwise often proves fatally ill-advised; and yet the Lady Azura occupies a unique position in that she is often loved and rarely hated. She was, before the rise of the Tribunes, a Mother to our eastern kin, and while she is no longer popularly worshipped in their land, cults devoted to her across the span of Tamriel prove the most palatable to the Aedra-worshipping masses. Yet, for all that she is idolized, she proves as fickle as Boethiah and as harsh in punishment as Mephala, if only slightly less prone to do so. This, however, is common knowledge, and my colleague Elidor devotes well over three hundred pages to her role in the old Chimer religion and contemporary cults; as such, I will eschew such expansive discourse in favor of my critique.
In his Nature of the Et’Ada, my esteemed colleague makes the monomythic mistake of adhering to the spheres of the great spirits as a child might understand them, and while I may not have the highest respect for my fellows’ views on the matter, in the face of increasingly banal scholarship on this subject, I feel the need to offer a dissenting view, and the Lady Azura stands as the greatest example, though I hesitate to label any of the Lords of Oblivion as exemplary.
It is commonly understood, at least by any students of comparative theology and mythocosmogony, that the Et’Ada are associated with certain spheres, some of which became the foundations of our world, while others, for reasons likely unknowable, came to occupy the ‘voids’ between the ‘spokes of the wheel’ to use a simple metaphor; our lord Auri-El is the dragon of Time, where the Doom-Drum is the serpent of Space, Sheogorath is Prince of Madness, the many-armed buffoon Mehrunes Dagon is the lord of Destruction, and Azura is Prince of Dusk and Dawn. The aforementioned common student understands these powers to be figureheads, symbols, or personifications of primordial forces which define our reality, yet I hold that there is infinitely more to the matter.
Taking again the Daedra Prince of Dusk and Dawn, let us again consider the associated sphere. Most simply, her servants and devotees give offerings at specific hours near Dawn and Dusk, with the belief that these times represent her domain temporally. Yet, what is this domain? Those of us lucky enough to have traversed the planes of Oblivion and returned to tell the tale see her realm as a place of nigh unimaginable beauty, of vibrant color and life the likes of which could not exist in our darkening world, but even then, what is it truly? It was a stray comment amidst my esteemed colleague’s bumbling efforts to explain the question of the Kalpa which sparked my own revelation, though given the nature of inspiration, I must likely give some cautious thanks to the Prince of Madness as well. Echoing one of the brighter sages of our earlier years, Elidor posits that the Dawn Era, before Convention and the raising of the Towers, represents a primordial, almost non-temporal state to which our world returns as the Dragon god of Time breaks free. Indeed, if accounts of the efforts of the Marukhati Selectives are to be believed, then our world descended ‘for a time’ into a Middle Dawn of sorts. The point, however, is that in the violation of Convention, the stability of Mundex Terrene dissolves into the primordial Twilight; I am not alone in my belief that this state consists of the blending of infinite and infinitely-extratemporal possibility, a cacophony of mythopoeia.
We call it the Dawn because it marks our beginning, and in the beliefs of the Aldmer from which we descend, our Fall; perhaps because of this, our understanding of what comes After is colored. It is at once what we fear and crave, to be freed from the shackles of mundane reality and return to the existence of original spirit, and the annihilation of everything that we Are. It is the Dusk because it marks our ending. It is both beauty beyond belief and terror without end. It is in this light that I cast the Lady Azura, prince of the twilight-which-is-glimpsed-through-Dusk-and-Dawn. She, perhaps above all the other Et’Ada in their ways, represents this state, and her realm is only a pale shadow of that reality. While I am certain the esteemed Direnni retainer will scoff at my suggestion, I feel that it bears consideration, all the same.
Afterword: Astounding that Estelenya thought this was worth preserving; baseless, inane drivel. Elidor’s Nature of the Et’Ada was little more than a windy children’s book for those short-lived dregs he doted on, but this borders on incoherence. I recommend that the remaining Fragments be discarded on the basis of heretical asininity.
- Justiciar Ondolemar