Of Anu and Padomay: creation of the Aurbis

'Sithis is the start of the house. Before him was nothing, but the foolish Altmer have names for and revere pseudodeities they call the Aedra.' — Sithis, author unknown

Table of Contents

The Primordial Forces

Before all of existence, there was only Anu and Padomay: two opposing forces, eternal and boundless. Anu embodied stasis, order, and permanence, while Padomay embodied change, chaos, and possibility. Their interplay gave birth to the Aurbis, the totality of all that exists. The Aurbis is not a phisycal place, it is the possibility of concretization of all things, the statistical fluctuations that govern over every object, every action, every thought and idea.

Neither force is truly good or evil. Anu and Padomay are simply the raw principles from which everything emerged. Without Anu, nothing could hold form. Without Padomay, nothing could ever change. It is from their eternal conflict that creation first stirred. The creation of the physical planes of existence is object of constant research and speculation, but almost all civilizations represent in some way the beginning of existence as the union of these two concepts, even though they might call them under different names. The beastfolk called Kajiit call them Ahnuur and Fadomai, the dark-skinned Yokudans call them Satak and Akel, while the simple Skaal have a single name for both: the All-Makers.

Anui-El and Sithis

The most commonly accepted doctrine, written by the wise Aldmer, teaches that from Anu arose his soul, Anui-El, the essence of all order and light. And from Padomay arose Sithis, the great void, the spirit of chaos and limitation. Where Anui-El sought to preserve and define, Sithis sought to undo and return all things to nothing.

Anui-El, in turn, gave rise to Auri-El, the soul of the soul of Anu, and the chief of the et'Ada who would come to shape the world.

The Et'Ada: Original Spirits

From the swirling energies of the Aurbis, countless spirits formed. These were the et'Ada, meaning "original spirits" in the language of the Aldmer. They were beings of immense power, born from the conflict between Anu and Padomay's forces.

The et'Ada took many forms and had many desires. Some aligned more closely with Anu, others with Padomay, and many fell somewhere between. Among them were figures whose names would echo through all of history:

Auri-El, the dragon god of time, father of the elves, known to humans as Akatosh. Auri-El is his elven name, the one used by the Aldmer and their descendants.
Magnus, the architect of Mundus, who later departed the mortal plane and became the sun. It is through the sun that magic flows into the world; Magnus is thus regarded as the origin of all arcane power.
Lorkhan, the trickster, the missing god and father of all humans.
Hircine, the hunter of monstrous beasts, and future patron of the wood elves, also called Bosmer.
Mehrunes Dagon, prince of destruction and ambition, who will serve as patron of the deep elves, called Dwemer, through much of the Merethic Era.
Azura, the prince of dusk and dawn, of moonshadow and the in-between. She will become patron of the Altmer, the high elves, revered as a keeper of fate and beauty, and one of the few Daedric Princes the elves have historically regarded with genuine devotion.

The Great Division: Aedra and Daedra

One of the most fundamental concept shared among most religions is the classification of the et'Ada in two families. After the creation of the Aurbis, some et'Ada sacrificed much of their power to bring this world into being. These became the Aedra, an elven word meaning "our ancestors." They gave of themselves so completely that they became bound to the world they created, diminished but ever-present. The seven most powerful Aedra are worshipped as the Divines in the modern age.

Others refused to relinquish their power. They kept their full essence and retreated to their own realms of Oblivion. These became the Daedra, also an elven term, meaning "not our ancestors": powerful, unchanging, and forever separate from the mortal world. The seventeen most powerful Daedra created the planets that orbit around Nirn, the planets of the mortals, and are called Daedric Princes.

The different myths of creation of the planes of existence, called Mundus collectively, are the topic of the next entry in the timeline.

Auridon: the Cerulean Pilgrimage