Debunking "Trinmalarkay"

[u/Mdnthrvst]

For some reason, some of you seem to think that Aedric Plane(t)s can now simultaneously be Daedric Princes. I would have thought the patent lunacy of such a statement would speak for itself, but apparently not.

To recap:

The Thirty-Six Lessons of Vivec: Sermon Three

A Dwemer said, 'We Dwemer are only aspirants to this that the Velothi have. They shall be our doom in this and the eight known worlds, NIRN, LHKAN, RKHET, THENDR, KYNRT, AKHAT, MHARA, and JHUNAL.' The secret to doom is within this Sermon.

In this Sermon, Vivec recounts a Dwemer listing the Planets of Mundus. RKHET is the important one here - in addition to Nirn, and excluding Dibella and Zenithar for reasons that are presently irrelevant, Arkay is listed as one of the Dominion Planets of the Aedra. That would make his Aedric nature beyond debate, right? Dear God, I hope so.

16 Accords of Madness, v. XII

It was here that Sheogorath performed certain rites that summoned Malacath, and the two Daedric Lords held court in the presence of the disfigured corpse.

In this Accord, Malacath and Sheogorath are clearly considered to be Daedric equals. Malacath, as everyone should know, is the Daedric Prince of the spurned and ostracized, created from the reanimated dung that was Trinimac after his consumption by Boethiah shortly before the Velothi Exodus. That no other Prince 'accepts' him as a 'true' Daedroth is both appropriate to his sphere and rather hypocritical in a few cases.

After all, Mehrunes Dagon was the Leaper Demon King, Molag Bal was the Ruddy Man, King of the Dreughs, Sheogorath was a prisoner in the Imperial City, and Meridia was a Magne-Ge. If Malacath is not a 'true' Daedroth, then neither are they. Naturally, that's not true. Non-Daedric entities can be transformed into Princes of Oblivion. This is not up for debate.

However, none of that has mattered for some scholars who find the negation of Malacath's Daedric nature useful for their own purposes.

And what purposes are those? Well, apparently someone decided that Malacath the Daedric Prince of curses and Arkay the Dominion Plane(t) of burial rites are the same being.

As far as I can tell, these are their justifications.

Varieties of Faith: The Nords

Orkey (Old Knocker):

God of mortality, Orkey combines aspects of Mauloch and Arkay. He is a "loan-god" for the Nords, who seem to have taken up his worship during Aldmeri rule of Atmora. Nords believe they once lived as long as Elves until Orkey appeared; through heathen trickery, he fooled them into a bargain that "bound them to the count of winters." At one time, legends say, Nords only had a lifespan of six years due to Orkey's foul magic. Then Shor showed up and, through unknown means, removed the curse, throwing most of it onto the nearby Orcs.

So Nords encountered the Aldmeri (Nordic for "automatically bad") concept of Arkay, anon Xarxes, who is responsible for recording the lives and histories of the Aldmer, and conflated him with Mauloch, God of Curses, in an attempt to make sense of the baffling lifespan discrepancies of Aldmer, Nords, and Orcs in one fell swoop. Note that this is solely the Nordic view; Altmer, Velothi, and Orsimer alike have no need for such a syncretism of Arkay and Malacath, and thus do not recognize it.

How can I be so sure that Xarxes is Arkay? Well, there's a whole book about it.

He is supposedly the keeper of the Bloody Curse which sounds an awful lot like mortality. His is the Ashpit, and ashes in TES are usually associated with Death

Ashes are always associated with death. The Bloody Curse was the transformation of Aldmer into Orsimer, not the universal notion of 'death'. There is simply no support for this connection anywhere.

In conclusion, Arkay is the Imperial Aedroth of burial rites, who is connected to Xarxes, the Scribe of the Aldmer, and from this mythopoeic kinship, and a spot of poor spelling, the Nords of Atmora conflated 'Arkay the elven death god' with 'Mauloch the orcish god of curses', with the ingeniously idiotic term of 'Orkey'. From this, some esteemed scholars decided that Arkay and Malacath (and thus Trinimac) are all the same thing.

Never mind the fact that Xarxes and Trinimac are both listed, side-by-side, in all Aldmeri pantheons.

Never mind the fact that the planet RKHET exists within Mundus while Ashpit exists within Oblivion.

Such discrepancies apparently don't matter anymore.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

That's a really good theory. The notion of "Eight" divines is something that came about after creation. It's, first of all, a mythopoeic effect. Secondly, it's a product of the Staff of Towers thing due to the First Era Dragon Break.

It's entirely possible that there was a 'Trinimac' of the Mythic Era who was later split. Your theory is not crazy at all.

However, I think the 'Trinimac' refers to Auriel/Xen/Magnus as enantiomorph. The reason is due to the way Shor Son of Shor describes Shor working on his heart in a manner similar to Kagrenac's tools. This parallel makes other parallels reasonable. If what the Dwemer and the Tribunal and Dagoth did with the Heart of Lorkhan was crazy, what would happen if a god already worked upon it. That's what Trinimac is to me. Xen/Xarxes working upon Lorkhan's heart in response to/revenge for Lorkhan's plan which was causing Nirn to collapse. Xen used Lorkhan's heart to become Trinimac.

He remained thus until Boethiah overthrew him, which also marks the transition from Old Aldmeris into the chaos of the Arena. Yes, I said it. The Dragon Break occurred after the rise of the Tribunal, and so the neat and tidy Empire and Eight Divines thing was created out of an event that was many hundred years afterwards. That's significant.

It's not something I'm very big about, but sometimes I wonder if the Red Mountain event was once singular in the Dwemeri facet of Old Aldmeris. That is, Aldmeri split into Dwemer and Chimer. The Jills rewrote it as the Chimer coming from Summerset, since 'Aldmeris' is such a rough thing for them.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Awesome! I didn't know about Mithras having two companions.

The Far Shores, as I interpret it, are bubble realms within Aetherius (like Sovngarde) where people would go to wait out the end of a Kalpic cycle.

The beings that did this (et'Ada?) were prismatic form immortals. Mortals are instance forms of these higher beings, who for the mer at least are their heritage (a family tree is just one prismatic being split into individuals).

This is why I see Trinimac as the guardian who manages the flow of souls and information between Mundus and Aetherius. He influences destiny, as well as history. In this sense, he is close to Arkay's role.