Recorded by Divayth Fyr, High-Sorcerer of House Telvanni
The Aedra are the original spirits most cultures identify as the makers—or at least the spent ingredients—of the Mundus. They are called the Dead Gods, Mortal Gods, and Outer Gods, depending on whether the speaker wishes to sound reverent, fearful, or clever. The common mind insists they are the “opposites” of the Daedra, but that is an argument made for comfort. The only distinction that survives translation is the Aldmeri one: Aedra means ancestors; Daedra means not our ancestors. This is genealogy turned into theology, and theology turned into law.
In common Cyrodiilic habit, “Aedra” is reserved for the Eight Divines, Akatosh, Stendaar, Mara, Dibella, Julianos, Arkay, Kynareth, and Zenithar. Vivec—who is irritatingly correct more often than he deserves—observes that this is folly: several spirits become “great” because they create the world, not because they begin as the greatest of the Aetherial host. The title follows the deed, then pretends it always preceded it.
Every culture that bothers to explain itself offers a creation account, and they are mutually incompatible in the usual way: each is metaphysically plausible and historically unhelpful.
The Altmeri “Heart of the World” begins with Anu, Anuiel, and Sithis, with time stabilized by Auri-El. Lorkhan convinces the spirits to make a soul for the Aurbis, and the result is Nirn—dense with limitation, costly to its makers. Magnus departs; many follow as the Magna Ge. Those who remain either give themselves fully as Earthbones (laws of nature) or persist as Ehlnofey, populating the world through diminishing generations until mortals arise: Aldmer from one slope of the descent, Men from the “weakest souls” pressed into shape by Lorkhan. War follows. Convention follows. Roles are fixed. The Aedra withdraw, because their presence threatens stability, and linear history begins when mythic flexibility finally bleeds out.
The Psijic account (explained to an Emperor who thinks listening is governance) frames the Aurbis as a gray center between Anu and Padomay. Spirits live, reform, and multiply until—at Lorkhan’s instigation—they tell the story of their own deaths: transfiguration into matter, or war, or a fatal parenthood. Mortals emerge as images or residue of those spirits. The Psijics then make the bold claim that Aedra and Daedra are, in a sense, “superior mortals” of mythic ages—ancestors whose passions cast long shadows into the afterworld. Whether this is wisdom or poetic overreach depends on how badly one needs everything to be relatable.
The Cyrodiilic “Shezarr’s Song” is sentimental in the way of empires: Shezarr persuades the gods to become parents; they sacrifice themselves to birth the world; elves regret, men rejoice, and both teach their children to endure the consequences with different stories about honor.
The Yokudan myth makes the cosmos into a devouring serpent, Satakal, and survival into a trick of geometry—walking between worldskins. Sep persuades spirits to inhabit a new world made of balled skins, and predictably hunger follows; spirits die, but their children remain. It is less “creation” than “escape gone wrong,” which is close enough to be useful.
The Khajiiti accounts arrange divinity into litters and family tragedy: spirits are born as siblings, Nirni wishes for children, Lorkhaj makes a place, betrayal and the tearing-out of the Heart follow, and even Y’ffer’s fate becomes a caution about corruption by the Great Darkness. Their stories retain the important feature most others pretend not to notice: the world is made by violence, even when called love.
The Reachfolk are blunt: Lorkh makes Nirn as a teaching tool through suffering, with Namira’s void as the workspace, and sacrifice as covenant.
The Clockwork Apostles are blunter still in their own metallic way: the world is a lie of separateness, and Daedra/Oblivion are symptoms of flawed construction—void seeping into cracks. This is elegant, and therefore suspicious.
Other myths—the Anuad, Bretonic tales of Light and Dark, Mythic Dawn heresies—either make the Aedra and Daedra form from spilled divine blood as distinct categories from the outset, or insist the “gods” are stories made solid by belief. Daedra themselves disagree: some call Mundus the Aedra’s cemetery and admire their coercion of chaos into order; others dismiss the Aedra as bedtime fiction mortals tell to reduce trembling.
As for character, the Aedra are generally described as bound by their participation in creation. They anchor stasis, law, and the Earthbones; they are constrained by the contract that makes Mundus behave like a place rather than a fever dream. Thus they are “dead” in the sense that they are spent—their power invested into the world’s continued functioning. Where Daedra are banished and return, Aedra are said to be killable, or already sacrificed, or absent by necessity. Yet they retain something the Daedra struggle to counterfeit: creation. Daedra change, mimic, corrupt, and rearrange. Aedra make.
Their legacy is felt more than their presence. The sun is treated as a conduit to Aetherius; the liminal barriers are credited to Akatosh; and scattered tales attribute interventions to Kyne, Y’ffre, Mara, Alkosh, and others—revivals, reversals of curses, the granting of final goodbyes, the restoration of boundaries when Oblivion presses too hard. Whether these are direct acts, sympathetic echoes, or mortal interpretations imposed on coincidence is the sort of question priests answer with certainty and scholars answer with headaches.
Their realms, when described at all, are usually mistaken for astronomy. Planets are presented as planes, and planes as gods, and the mortal mind interprets infinities as spheres so it can keep breathing. Sovngarde is said to be Shor’s; the Far Shores are tended by Tu’whacca; Alkosh is associated with paradoxical places like the Spilled Sand, which is not so much a location as a repeating story wearing scenery.
Culturally, the Aedra are nearly universal in some form, though never unanimously agreed upon. Imperial influence standardized the eight as the Eight Divines. Across Tamriel, Akatosh (or Auri-El, or Alkosh) and Lorkhan (or Shezarr, Shor, Lorkhaj) recur with obsessive consistency, because time and absence are the two nails that hold the world together.
Finally, the Ehlnofey remain the bridge-concept that mortals keep mistaking for a single species rather than a bundle of related claims. In elven thought, they are the ancestor spirits who remained, who became Earthbones or begot mortals through gradual diminishment; in other accounts they were offspring, survivors, or even a separate origin entirely. Their language became Ehlnofex, their homeland became Old Ehlnofey, and the laws they became can, inconveniently, be manipulated—proof that even “earthbones” are not as rigid as they pretend.
This is the practical conclusion: the Aedra are not “alive” in any sense that helps you bargain with them, but they are not absent in any sense that allows you to ignore them. You live inside their expenditure. Every law of nature is either their gift, their wound, or their leash.