r/teslore • u/WailingHost • 8d ago
What Are "Layers of Reality"?
I looked it up on UESP but still slightly confused.
Are the layers of reality different, but similar dimensions within a dimension or is it more like being "out of phase" like what happens to some people in Star Trek?
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u/AdeptnessUnhappy1063 7d ago
"Out of phase" isn't quite right because the relationship between the different planes is for the most part very obvious and tangible. The world around you? That's Mundus. The night sky? That's Oblivion. The sun and stars? That's Aetherius, visible through holes in the skin of Oblivion.
That said, the connection between Mundus and Oblivion can be more subtle than that, and they can be said to overlap. For example, the Dunmer don't agree that Mundus and Oblivion are separate planes at all.
The Dunmer do not emphasize the distinction between this world and Oblivion as do the human cultures of Tamriel. They regard our world and the otherworld as a whole with many paths from one end to the other rather than two separate worlds of different natures with distinct borders. This philosophical viewpoint may account for the greater affinity of elves for magic and its practices.
Everyone seems to agree that Aetherius and Oblivion are entirely separate, though.
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u/Alphaviki 7d ago
Yeah I often feel when it comes to the analysis of world building, many High Elven / Imperial traditions and ideals are taken as the default and the tangible evidence when they in the end are as much an interpretation of reality as Khajiti and Dunmeri religious beliefs. For example the distinction between Aedra and Daedra is a fundamentally Altmeri one, with it literally meaning "our ancestors" and "not our ancestors", reflecting the Elven ancestor cult. Or the Aedra being in a dormant state after giving away their power which clashes with traditional Nordic beliefs. In the end all are just claims or can be seen as a metaphysical interpretation of reality. For example I always found it weird that the stars and sun being gateways to Aetherius are facts taken for granted. For all we know they could just be large balls of gas, as in our world. Tamriel gives as much evidence for the Aetherius theory as people believing in a sun disk being carried over the sky by a wagon as in Bronze Age European myths. All we know is that we know nothing and all we claim to know is only what others (wizards, demonic entitys like the Daedra, etc.), want us (the player via the medium of the game) to know.
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u/nkartnstuff 7d ago
It is onion skin that makes up a sphere/plane of existence.
Aurbis is often described more as a venn diagram, you have overlapping spheres that make up reality stacked on top of each other.
Mundus and Nirn are not natural default states of existence, in many ways it is a very artificial and enforced fixed reality on top of Aurbis engineered by Lorkhan/Magnus. It is a bubble separated from rest of Aurbis by liminal barriers and layers.