User:IceFireWarden/Death and Other Arguments
In my latest sojourn into the deeper concepts of Echmeri mythohistory, I return to a topic of most interest to me: The Bat Elven view of the world that lies beyond the material, beyond physical life. Every civilized culture on Nirn views the afterlife differently from one another, even if there are certain similarities between their practices due to cultural exchange or methodological happenstance. For example, the official faith of the Empire―the Divine Doctrine―was birthed from a combination of Atmoran-Nordic beliefs married to Ayleid practices the ancient Nedes refused to abandon. While this type of intermingling isn’t exactly uncommon, the Echmeri view is still incredibly unique (and often confusing to this man of the moth) due to the interwoven threads of polytheism and monotheism in their cultural thinking.
Therefore, it must be discussed. To pass up on an opportunity to explore such foreign concepts and narratives would be insulting to the scholastic spirit, don’t you think my readers? Let us begin with the starting platform of the majority of post-mortem thinking: the energizing, mysterious substance we all refer to as the ‘soul’.
ON SOULS
Echmeri consideration of the soul and its relationship to mundane reality is often viewed as controversial in comparison to the Western Perspective. This reasoning stems from several angles, but persists in large part due to their society’s foundation on a contradictory mixture of cultural influences (Dwarven, Akaviri, and Hyu-Ketic being the primaries, and the secondaries being the result of Tamrielic teachings the hero-goddess, Hrahndeyl, learned during her century abroad).
From my understanding, the Bat Elves view the material self and physical reality as nothing more than a temporarily imitation of the immaterial self and divine reality in a manner similar to western-merish thinking. Just as an outer plane is separated into three distinctive categories―the realm itself (the body), its ruling deity/deities (its mind), and its chaotic/pneumatic creatia (its ‘soul’)―so too do the Echmer maintain separations within the mortal form. These are classified as Flesh (Body), Memory (Mind), and Spirit (Soul), and while these classifications can also be applied to truly immortal beings, a clear distinction must be made: an ada’s body and vestige (its soul) are normally inseparable outside of abnormal feats, which is why real gods and other extracelestial spirits are unable to die as their vestiges will continuously sustain themselves until either a new form is created or the old form is regenerated.
Meanwhile, a mortal's body is not permanently linked to its soul; a situation Echmeri sages view as poetic, since mortals are temporary constructs and everything related to our continued existence in the Aurbis is just as temporary. A mortal soul is nothing but energy that sustains one's body, so when the body dies so too does the soul. But like how the womb of a mother mimics the Waters of Oblivion and Aetherius―ergo the Wheels of Heaven―and symbolizes birth and rebirth, it goes without saying that the mortallic spirit fights and will always fight to persist beyond its unfortunate temporal nature.
The idea of a place where souls are cleansed and recycled is not a foreign one to the shores of Tamriel (even if the belief in one has fallen into disuse and disfavor in several cultures and cultural practices). As you may have also surmised, it is a belief not foreign to the shores of Yneslea as well…although their strange perspective on it does border on the odd, to say the least.
ON THE RECYCLING OF SOULS
One of the many things I have noticed regarding the Bat Elves of Yneslea is their acknowledgement of a realm of souls, a strange facet of religious thought that they oddly share with the Cult’s early practitioners. Most traditionalists remember our belief that when we die our souls will be freed from our physical bodies in order to live eternal alongside the souls of our ancestors in the infinite realms of Aetherius, where the Nine Divines shall shepherd us lovingly as we feast and reminiscence with the minor gods and champions that serve them. This heaven is available to all who pledge themselves to the aedra wholeheartedly and of their own accord, for the Divines are forgiving of mortal mistakes and wish to see us live a life fulfilled.
But before we attain this paradise we must first be cleansed of our mortal possessions, so as to not corrupt Aetherius with our inherent malice. Thus, is the essence of who we are (our individuality) given amnesty within the Light, while everything else is stripped away to be purified so that new souls can form and walk the Mundus. It is believed that the realm where this stripping process occurs is called the Dreamsleeve, although many theologians are unsure as to the how and why of it. It no longer matters if this belief stemmed from ancient exposure to Ayleid, Akaviri, Aedric, or Daedric experiences, as it became one of the many spiritual principles of the Imperial Faith. It’s a shame that poor teachings and obtuse language has rendered knowledge of the Dreamsleeve absent in continuous generations.
But on to more relevant matters. As stated earlier in this writing, the Echmer also believe in a concept quite similar to the Dreamsleeve (if you have read my previous works in the Lost Spirits series of theological reexaminations, as well as the native works Spirits of the House, A House Divided, and Realms Beyond the Veil that speak about their quote-unquote religion, you will notice this topic is briefly touched upon in each of them). This realm-concept is called Ienathin’falin in their native tongue, which means ‘Lullaboros’ or ‘the Lulling Wheels’ when translated. From my limited understanding the Lullaboros is a great machine―the last Wheel of Heaven, so to speak―created by Axar’k (the Echmeri god of death) and Reimeloi (the Echmeri goddess of memory) shortly after the formation of the Mundus and their divine marriage.
Realizing that without death the denizens of the mortal plane and its adjacent places would soon be overwhelmed with entities that would know no end, but also being unable to replicate their godly vestiges in full to give to the first mortals, they settled on creating flawed but sustainable imitations of divine energy instead. The couple (with the aid of other gods) artificed the metaphorical pistons and cogs of empathy beneath the layered crusts of Nirn, creating a simulacrum-realm designed to function as an eternal womb for mortallic spirituality; a place where souls would be processed, ‘built’, and manufactured for the newborn babes above and where souls would return to after death in order to be cleansed of every corruption, of every taint, and of every speck of individuality so that they may be recycled for future use.
Despite its description sounding grim and almost callous in its opinion of the mortal spirit, I must agree with the Echmer that the creation of the soul recycling process is an incredibly necessary invention of the gods. For as their suffragans and diocesans say it, it is the temporal nature of souls that allows mortals to be unique individuals in comparison to the ada and retain their individualism when traversing the outer realms that exist beyond our limited three-dimensional bearings, as those realities fluctuate in their permanency and do not have to conform to the primordial laws of the Mundus.
But the common, new-generational thinker might find themselves thinking: “What about ghosts, poltergeists, and revenants that persist after death? What about the afterlives and those that dwell within them? If souls are wiped of all personality, how do these entities exist?”
Well, to that the Echmeri sages simply say: “Memory.”
ON MORTAL MEMORY AND THE EXISTENCE OF SALT
Memory is the most powerful of the three metaphysical jigsaw pieces that comprise the grand puzzle that is the mortal form, being the substance that houses the personality, individuality, and experiences of each and every one of us. It is represented by water in both the metaphorical and literal sense, which interestingly ties into the eternal waters of the et'ada and the amniotic fluid the fetus gestates in within a womb. From the Yneslean perspective, post-death spiritual phenomena are actually caused by Remnants of Memory, which is pumped out of the infinite pipes of the Lullaboros into the great seas of Mundus. For me, at least, this line of thinking thoroughly explains why the Eastern World's focus on aquatic matters is so poignant, as it through mnemonic magic and hydromancy that they are able to see and grasp the realm of spirits in a manner completely foreign to the West.
And it is through water, laden with such mnemonic energies, that new alchemicals are born. While the Ienathin’falin is a great machine constructed by the gods themselves, it is not perfect, for nothing in the Mundus is. Limitations create more limitations, after all, and the existence of paranormal activity is an evidential testament to that. There are three types of Undead as the Bat Elves view it: Corporeal (zombies, vampires, liches, revenants), Incorporeal (ghosts, wraiths, apparitions, poltergeists, wisps), and Colloius (sch’aarde). Corporeal Undead are generally brought about through nefarious mortal sorcery and obsession with death, Incorporeal Undead exist through strong emotional attachments, and Colloius Undead manifest through no true will of their own and at random. While corporeal entities can easily be explained away as acts of necromancy or possession or daedric contagion, it is hard to see how the Western way of thinking aligns with the Yneslean thought process concerning soul recycling in relation with the latter two.
But as several Echmeri witch-hunters and exorcists (these professions are of the utmost importance in In’eslae, due to their unique relationship with the paranormal) have told me, these creatures are not wayward souls denied entry into their chosen afterlives. I can’t bring myself to believe in their strange perspectives personally, but apparently, all three of these undead categories are nothing more than the product of mnemonic residue trapped in and sometimes corrupted by the energies of the mortal plane.
Let me try to explain this, as it surely seems confusing. Since memories and water are often conflated in the East, think of the mortal soul as a harmonious elemental state as the Echmer do in this common prayer: “Let fire be the magic inside me. Let darkness be the shadow beside me. Let light be the soul within me. Let earth be the flesh around me. Let air be the mind about me. Let water be the memories that guide me. Let silence be the death that tries me. And let blood be the symphony of them all in life that binds me. In the name of my ancestors and of my descendants, spirits protect.”
Note: I am still incredibly intrigued by the Echmeri idea that not only is silence an element, but that blood is the most sacred element of all since it is synonymous with the metaphysical ideal of Music, which represents Life in their philosophy of the Eight Existential Truths (see quoted prayer) and is the culmination of the other Seven Elemental Pillars in that same school of monastic-thinking. At the very least, it makes vampires and blood magic much more interesting to me! Um, as research topics; nothing more of course.
Since the soul is nothing more than raw energy according to the bat elves, they view memory as part of the most important aspect of the mortal existence. When a person dies, it is their memories that crossover from the Mundus into their post-mortem destination. But memory is still tied to the soul, just like how the soul is tied to the body, resulting in a strong connection that not even the Lullaboros can completely sever or erase. For incorporeal undead like ghosts, strong emotions usually anchor a person’s memories to the material world, preventing them from moving on. For corporeal undead like revenants, their connection is usually ascribed to blood due to its strange nature as a conduit of the three mortal aspects in Nemeric (re: early Echmer) and Echmeri teachings; a revenant’s corpse essentially contains enough soul-energy and mnemonic residue to finish some form of task thanks to the blood coagulating in its veins.
Unfortunately, I still do not fully understand how colloius undead fits into this (mainly due to my own unfamiliarity with them). If I remember correctly, undead like the Sch’aarde―disturbingly gelatinous creatures of water that periodically emerge from the Padomaic Ocean―are believed to be entities that form when large deposits of ‘mnemonic waste’ coalesces together after being spat out of the Lullaboros, forming into vaguely humanoid creatures possessing the memories of Aetherius knows how many mortal beings. The word sch’aarde itself is an Echmeri term that either means "thought spirit" or "malicious remembrance" depending on the context, due to their unfortunate habit of walking ashore in the Yneslean Lanes and wreaking havoc due to their existential confusion.
(I suppose you could say that the matter of their continued reality is a mixture of the earlier examples.)
Echmeri exorcists in particular were very zealous in my conversations with them, referring to all undead except for civilized vampires (the more behaved spawn of Molag Bal are treated as any other citizen in the archipelago, as are house-trained lycanthropes) as pitiable abominations that needed to be released from the material world as quickly and as respectfully as possible. And while tools made from silver or solarite are well-equipped for the job due to how potent those materials are to spiritual and daedric entities, they were also quick to lecture me on how important using materials left behind by undead entities was as well.
As you may know dear reader, the undead have a tendency to leave behind traces of their presence when killed or banished from the mortal realm. Incorporeal entities leave behind ectoplasm, revenants collapse into shards of blood, vampires dissolve into ash, and so on and so forth. But according to the teachers at Mustikos’acere where the exorcists and witch-hunters train—who were instructed by the diocesans and suffragans who uphold Echmeri spiritual practices—these alchemic ingredients are in fact the last remnants of what little mnemonic presence they maintained in the Mundus. Because of this they are valued when attained, as their correct usage can lead to easier engagements with other creatures. But the most powerful substance used to fight off the undead, and the only one that occurs naturally in both the material and immaterial realm, is salt.
I had heard rumors that the people of Yneslea had secret methods of transforming table salt into a powerful substance capable of destroying even the lowliest spirit before traveling to the archipelago myself, but it wasn’t until I began writing this book that I realized how this power was conducted. According to the sages, all salt is a byproduct of water and all water is a byproduct of memory. Salt runs in the veins of every mortal and of every ada, no matter the soul or vestige, as it is a metaphorical and literal representation of hardened memory; of memories so set in stone that they have become brittle, bitter, and unwavering in their defiant stand against the forgetting sands of time.
This is why the blood salts found in the corpses of humans, the various elemental salts found in the corpses of atronachs, and naturally occurring sea salt is so powerful against spirits when placed into the hands of exorcists and witch-hunters. “The only way to combat a strong memory is to fight it with an even stronger, more permanent memory,” as one said to me a few months ago. And when mixed with other alchemic ingredients, the ensuring combinations of salts can prove to be quite powerful indeed.
ON THE PECULIARITY OF ECHMER SOULS
With this discussion on the various parts of the mortal spirit approaching its unfortunate conclusion, I must bring to attention the peculiar nature of the Bat Elven soul. The Echmer do not exactly hide (in fact, I’d say they embrace it) their evolutional origins as normal subterranean bats changed through Dwemeri experimentation thousands of years ago. The Dwarves in general were a rather odd and disdainful folk full of logical creativity, but the Noraken Clan that sailed to In’eslae were even stranger than their Tamrielic cousins, and the fact they were able to figure out a way to elevate an animal’s natural ‘white soul’ (or a ‘slumbering soul’; one considered to be devoid of true conscious thinking) to a ‘black soul’ (or an ‘awakened soul’; one considered to think truly consciously) is a subject of much debate amongst the Imperial Cult, the Psijic Order, the United Explorers of Scholarly Pursuits, the Scenarist Guild, and many other scholastic organizations.
While one can argue that other races like the minotaurs or the lamia have undergone a ‘devolution’ of sorts, the Echmer (and perhaps their native neighbors) are unique in the fact they truly possess that spark of mortallic energy we all of the civilized world inherited at the Dawn, despite not being directly descended from either the Old Ehlnofey or the Wandering Ehlnofey. And ever since Uriel V’s conquest of the Yneslean archipelago, many immoral necromancers and Imperial-sanctioned Epitomic Practitioners have long sought to study the Echmeri soul in great detail, as it exemplifies many different qualities compared to other Tamrielic species (aside from the Argonians, who share the Bat Elves’ classification of ‘transitional’ souls due to their strange relationship with the Hist). Unfortunately, there is a glaring issue with that.
As you see, modern Echmer souls do not typically linger in the Mundus and nor are they as ‘malleable’ as the souls of other species. While Bat Elven culture promotes daily cleansing of the mind and spirit, they no longer fret or have much concern over the where of it, as despite their considerations of foreign afterlives the Echmer truly have none of their own. Shortly after the brief interregnum brought about at the end of the Cakaphon Gerentate in the Yneslean second era, Hrahanti Della’I returned to her homeland after decades of traveling abroad. In those days the Echmer had worshiped hundreds of gods, a practice that had done far more harm than good, and had brought them countless centuries of despair.
Like the true elven races, the Echmer longed for escapement from the shackles of mortality and had made countless deals with deities to do so. While the Dwemer passed down to them a vague and hard-to-understand recollection of Aldmeris (or Ourihan’il-El, the Dreaming City, in archaic High Ek’hi), the echo elves splintered from traditional merish thinking by focusing on the cessation of the soul from the material realm and its removal from the Lullaboros, allowing for true peace. The Nemer believed this peace could only be achieved through the Void―the Silence In between Worlds. And Hrahanti, with the wisdom granted to her through her travels, granted this peace.
As she ascended into godhood before the Omali and the Exul, Hrahanti gave the Nemer a gift beyond imagining―she placed a sliver of void into the hearts of their souls, tying their race forevermore to its vast nothingness and removing their connection to the Lulling Wheels in its near-entirety. No longer would Echmeri souls be recycled, allowing a true final rest for the soul and body while allowing the memory of who they were to persist in a beautiful showing of ancestral respect. And as Hrahndeyl, the new eternal goddess of sound, she bound the memories of all deceased Echmer to the legendary Rhetoric Throne so that future monarchs could perceive the knowledge of their entire racial history in order to make beneficial decisions.
This gift came with several prices, however. The Rhetoric Throne, already feared due to its incredible power to reshape the inner workings of Yneslea and the immense pain/strain it caused to its current sitter, became even more temperamental and abnormal with its behavior and eventually stopped allowing anyone to sit upon it without being killed or worse (note: I suggest reading Hasphat Antabolis’ fabulous work entitled “The Tragedy of the Rhetoric Throne: Why the Echmer have no True King” whenever possible); some Echmer are born with the rare trait of being unable to use or be perceived by magic due to the nugget of void in their soul giving them sort of ‘spirit sickness’; undead from every corner of Nirn often have a tendency to come to Yneslea, as if able to sniff out some sort of discrepancy with their metaphysical nature; and its unfortunately common for necromancers to value echo elf corpses, due to the complete lack of spiritual presence making them great host bodies for foul entities, as they are easier to control.
It is important however to realize that the Void (or Black-Welkin, A’zast-Omae) does not immediately claim an Echmer’s soul. Or at the least, not as you would commonly perceive it. When Hrahndeyl gave this great boon to her people, the other gods in the ancient Echmeri pantheon were outraged that an entire race of people’s souls were no longer available to them and demanded fair sport lest they started another great war in the cosmos. Hrahndeyl was forced to receive the aid of Lyednharh―the Demon-God of Silence―in order to sate the wrath of the other gods, and so the Eternal Tester of Yneslea created the realm of Y’orgunei (‘Tribulation’). At the moment of their death, every Echmer in that incredibly finite for us but startling infinite moment for them must brave the Nineteen Trials to prove they are worthy of the Void. If they fail, their soul and the memories are forfeit and are bartered to be claimed by one of the Testing Gods or sent to the ‘Nether Realms’ (whatever those are).
For this author and man of staunch faith, such a grisly affair just to attain eternal peace is terrifying. But for the Echmer, who are constantly trying to improve themselves mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually, such a practice makes an unfortunate amount of sense. It is probably the closest and furthest example of true Aldmeri ‘aurbic escapism’ I have ever heard. But it is also quite possibly the saddest.
CONCLUSION
Even if I don’t fully agree with their methodologies, I unable to say nor prove that the Echmeri beliefs are wrong. In all honesty, I have borne witnessed to enough of their cultural practices and literature over the years that I can admit that some of their ways of thinking might even be more beneficial and integrable than some of the outdated ideas in the Imperial Cult. Of course, this would never persuade me to abandon my faith in the Divines or myself. But it is fun to think about, isn’t it?
A person dies and their soul is recycled. Their personality moves on, but some of their memories remain as salt in the ocean. And in some cases, those memories begin to take on a life of their own. Fascinating, truly fascinating! When you take everything into account, one could argue that the Echmer have strongly embedded themes of atonement, absolution, and death sprinkled throughout their cultural psyche upon further examinations of their way of life. Perhaps I should concentrate less on their theogony and more on their history to better understand why these themes are there in the first place. Is there some great sin the Echmer feel they must pay penance for?
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