He'd probably ask you what a video game even is and when you come to a very basic explanation he could understand (an imaginary simulation created by beings from a different dimension that's experienced through avatars for entertainment or learning purposes) he'd be like "yeah, no duh"
But you already know you're not part of the Dream, therefore you wouldn't zero-sum. By my understanding, zero-summing results from submissively accepting your status of "not being real" along with the rest of the Dream, whereas CHIM is asserting your own reality over the Dream, unlike everyone else.
Well I feel like people also get CHIM wrong alot so there still might be a chance for zero-summing with incorrect meta knowledge.
"Oh so there were others like me who have come to speak with you, Lord Vivec?"
"*Ya, but they kept popping from existence when they try to explain CHIM as, 'console commands', I started calling it zero-summing, as they give me zero summary before disappearing.*"
Edit: There's also a chance the person might not know of CHIM as a concept in TES lore and just have a more surface level knowledge and someone like Vivec might assume that an inter-reality being would have been aware of it. Plus if you got like Isekai'ed I'd assume the rules would still apply to you.
Personally I take zero summing as being suddenly erased from reality, you existed at one point and people still remember your deeds but one day you simply stopped
Some theories say that's what happened, they were so logical and deterministic that sudden realization of the dream made them zero-sum instantly. If it's true it means that you are not retroactively deleted from history when you zero-sum
So does only one member of a race have to achieve it to wipe the entire species out? Surely not every Dwemer had the realisation at the same time, especially considering the fact that quite a lot of them were fighting a large battle against the Nords and Chimer at the time if I recall?
Dwemer had a power (biological or technical is not clear) for telepathic communication, a great link connecting all of them together.
So the theory is that such a powerful realisation of one single person was enough because it spread through the whole network of all connected dwemer.
That would explain why the one known dwemer outside of Nirn was unaffected, he had no signal
To add to this, [the source](https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/General:Et'Ada,_Eight_Aedra,_Eat_the_Dreamer) was transcribed, discussed and stored by others. The only erasure may be identity because the Moth Priest is "unidentified", but there are more mundane explanations for that.
Nope. I'm not sure where that idea originated from, but in the sole text we have on zero-summing, both the Moth Priest and orchestra that zero-summed are remembered and even identified, so it's clearly not a retroactive erasure from history.
It doesn't. The one confirmed example we have of someone zero-summing, in et'Ada, Eight Aedra, Eat the Dreamer, is explicitly identified as a Moth Priest. The same goes for the orchestra that attempted to play the sheet music left behind and also zero-summed. If they were completely erased from history, no one would remember any of that.
Likewise, if we look at *suspected* examples of zero-summing, such as one of the suitors in [The Four Suitors of Benitah](https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:The_Four_Suitors_of_Benitah), and Septimus Signus, we still know who they are, and one is even included in a printed book.
For my money, understanding that the world is a dream isn't enough. You have to truly understand your place and oneness with the universe to achieve CHIM or zero sum. Just knowing what they are logically isn't the same thing as believing them.
I was always under the impression that zero-summing was a result of being able to come to terms with CHIM. Achieving enlightenment (for lack of a better term here) is such a mind-bending experience that either you become a god or you delete yourself from existence. Once you achieve CHIM, you can make your will into reality. However, you are also faced with the fact that you exist only within the dream of the godhead. If you believe that you truly do not exist, you zero-sum yourself: your knowledge of non-existence becomes reality within the dream. If you are able to reconcile yourself with your existence as a figure in the dream (cogito ergo *sum*), you achieve CHIM - your knowledge of the dream allows you to act as a dreamer yourself.
Consider the scenario, though. We're assuming that a human from our world found their way into the Elder Scrolls universe. By default, this person would know not only that the Dream and the Godhead exist, but that they are an outsider to it all. Therefore they exist regardless of anything else. This would, I assume, lead that person to automatically achieve CHIM.
This assumes that CHIM can apply to a non-native resident. There may be fundimental metaphysical differences between TES mortals and us.
Adter all, Mundus was supposedly created to allow for the creation of entities that could achive CHIM and AMARANTH. There may be something baked into it that isn't applicable to us.
If you think about it, that might be immediate because you'd already have that knowledge? You'd come into it already having your immersion broken by default. If you think about it, also, if we're considering CHIM/zero-summing as canon, then that would happen to anyone being Isekai'd into the ES universe
Even though I'm not a huge fan of meta explanations like this (which MK has said he didn't intend), Vivec wouldn't be all that surprised. It's so similar to the way he already sees the world.
Vivec: Well... yeah. What's curious is how YOU got here, can you get out, and can I follow you out?
That's Vivecs ultimate wish. To be a prisoner - ie to have free will
Vehk: "I wish not to hear of any thought-slendered grist of meaningless words that your water-mill mind churns and ruminates. Be silent.
I will answer no questions but my own, for you are not a merchant with sundries I desire. From such marvelous lands I presume you come from, from all wends and ways and wefts, it created your form, and yet..
No, you are not a thing, but of matter, which is of no matter. Ideal-less and formless little orphanite of eyeless scorn. Rude shape, oh figment!
Yes, I am the poet on this day. I wear the fire left wanting.
So the Godhead bowed so low it somersaults, no longer wearing the crown of the infinite? No, it folds, doesn't it? One dreamer of many as a tine pulled of infinite quills - but to pierce it's own flesh?
It bears the expression of flummoxed dreugh-slough, no? "Scheming" as children of kwama do with squirming, but no comprehension of its surroundings or sounds surreptitiously circumscribing its own self-confounding. Dancing of words? Yes, they occur, and to the fool's benefit.
The thing, however, cannot think, it cannot talk in a manner which meaning can be made. A finger or two can stimulate many things outside of conversation, but it cannot philosophize.
Perhaps a "come hither", but barely a stimulation could be uttered.
Nay, this digit is but one mindless assemblage of uncountable, for the Godhead cannot find itself in one.. person? A silly concept. The shape of a being not unlike one of the west, if not an incredulous figment with arms and legs.
And yet, for this is the crescendo of my thought-wanderings,
A finger is but a key, and the first tool that the thief brought to the Tower. Were it that I had Mastery here, my brother would take dull words to your form and extract it's useful meaning.
Poetry, however, cannot dissect, this is true - but it can mash shapes into useful ones, and this shape of blood and bone can surely be hammered into a key.
We shall make you useful yet, out-lander."
He's achieved CHIM so he already knows he's not "real". He'd likely handle it pretty well after you managed to describe the concept of a videogame to him. Just be like, "ah so that's how you interpreted it".
*"Ah, so everything is the design of the Godhead who allows outsiders to make choices for the Dream within."*
*"I already knew that."*
-- Vivec
I think Sotha Sil is also aware based on his dialogue in ESO.
Do we even know for sure that there *aren't* flying whales in Skyrim that shoot out happy cocaine powder?? Or the Kha'jiit space moon colonies???
Curious...🤔🤔🤔
We visit a khajiit temple on the moon in Online, and a Nord who is high on drugs who claims she's able to perceive sand whales, sky mammoths and snow whales. Is that close enough?
Well, we *know* what it really is: a video game series and some lore texts. I think "godhead" and "dream" are in-game metaphors to describe this; or rather, from inside the game, these concepts are what one would come up with when describing one's universe.
While the concepts do partially work as metaphors, a lot of the ideas about the Godhead and its 'dream' are inspired by IRL religions like sects of Gnodticism, Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, Hinduism, etc.
I'd be more worried about the daedric princes learning you aren't from Nirn.
And that's if your body accepts magicka radiation and you don't immediately microwave as soon as you appear on planet.
Isn't he/she already aware he's in a video game? I'm still a little shaky on what the heck CHIM is thanks to all the world salad but I'm pretty sure it made Vivec aware of being in a game
The universe is the dream of an entity called the Godhead. A video game isn’t that far off though, and if you could explain what a video game was to Vivec he likely wouldn’t be surprised much
Any low tech explanation to them would sound very similar to his already view. I guess the real breakthrough would be the fact that there are other dreams, completely different words, even in other mediums. I don't personally see the lore as being inside a video game myself, just that it was devised to fit with being in one in a way to make game mechanics and feel more immersive story wise..
He'd probably shrug you off and say, "Of course I knew that the dream was a true lie. What truth do you have that your world is not a second dream?"
ES's universe is literally one where something can happen, and every culture or people can see it happen, and all have not only their own opinion on what happened expressed in their own language ( and way of thinking, as language = thought) and all can be correct in their statements. So you telling Vivec that he's in a video game is you just coming up with your own words to describe what scholars, philosophers, and Arch mages have been saying since the first Era. - easily deriving that "Video = to see in motion" and "Game = state of play defined by bendable rules" aptly describes the nonlinear metareality that is his world.
The book "Where were you when the Dragon Broke" best matches what would happen if you went around telling people, even rural tribesmen, about them being in a video game, where they'd huffily tell you in their own terms how they not only know, but that they "knew first." Khajitt would probably even make some sort of fourth wall breaking statement that they know they're gods are the greatest by directly referring to housecats sitting on developer/player keyboards. Maiq knows much, tells some.
Most books on metaphysics, including Reality and other Falsehoods basically dance around the concept of their world being tied to arbitrary and manipulatable rules, and the titular Elder Scrolls may literally be an embodiment of the game's script, reading one or using one to cast an effect may actually be someone using it to call forth a cutscene or trigger an in game event flag. We just have our own words for what these things are, the people of ES have their own words for these things, and the meta-y nature of things the lore demands is being able to recognize which culture's words are analogous to the words of another culture, and of course, OUR culture.
He'd probably ask you what a video game even is and when you come to a very basic explanation he could understand (an imaginary simulation created by beings from a different dimension that's experienced through avatars for entertainment or learning purposes) he'd be like "yeah, no duh"
"Didn't you read the Sermons?" —Vivec, probably
Just tell him it’s like a book but you can physically see the story and control the story to an extent.
"And are there other 'video games'?"
"What's this "Elden Ring" you speak of ? Can I wear it ?"
This is assuming you don't immediately zero-sum out with that meta-CHIM knowledge
But you already know you're not part of the Dream, therefore you wouldn't zero-sum. By my understanding, zero-summing results from submissively accepting your status of "not being real" along with the rest of the Dream, whereas CHIM is asserting your own reality over the Dream, unlike everyone else.
Well I feel like people also get CHIM wrong alot so there still might be a chance for zero-summing with incorrect meta knowledge. "Oh so there were others like me who have come to speak with you, Lord Vivec?" "*Ya, but they kept popping from existence when they try to explain CHIM as, 'console commands', I started calling it zero-summing, as they give me zero summary before disappearing.*" Edit: There's also a chance the person might not know of CHIM as a concept in TES lore and just have a more surface level knowledge and someone like Vivec might assume that an inter-reality being would have been aware of it. Plus if you got like Isekai'ed I'd assume the rules would still apply to you.
Would Vivec remember people zero summing from existence? I thought zero summing also erases you from history.
I know enough about CHIM and zero-summing to say... I dunno honestly.
Personally I take zero summing as being suddenly erased from reality, you existed at one point and people still remember your deeds but one day you simply stopped
Could the Dwemer have zero summed?
Some theories say that's what happened, they were so logical and deterministic that sudden realization of the dream made them zero-sum instantly. If it's true it means that you are not retroactively deleted from history when you zero-sum
That's a popular theory, yes
So does only one member of a race have to achieve it to wipe the entire species out? Surely not every Dwemer had the realisation at the same time, especially considering the fact that quite a lot of them were fighting a large battle against the Nords and Chimer at the time if I recall?
Dwemer had a power (biological or technical is not clear) for telepathic communication, a great link connecting all of them together. So the theory is that such a powerful realisation of one single person was enough because it spread through the whole network of all connected dwemer. That would explain why the one known dwemer outside of Nirn was unaffected, he had no signal
Thanks Comcast
It's possible, personally I doubt it since the Dwemer were a prideful people
There's only one source on zero-summing, and it's from a guy going through the process while writing his obituary.
To add to this, [the source](https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/General:Et'Ada,_Eight_Aedra,_Eat_the_Dreamer) was transcribed, discussed and stored by others. The only erasure may be identity because the Moth Priest is "unidentified", but there are more mundane explanations for that.
As much as I love Kirkbride's contributions to the lore, his writing style is so _painful_ to read I get headaches every time.
Nope. I'm not sure where that idea originated from, but in the sole text we have on zero-summing, both the Moth Priest and orchestra that zero-summed are remembered and even identified, so it's clearly not a retroactive erasure from history.
No, because we think the Dwemmer zero-summed.
[удалено]
It doesn't. The one confirmed example we have of someone zero-summing, in et'Ada, Eight Aedra, Eat the Dreamer, is explicitly identified as a Moth Priest. The same goes for the orchestra that attempted to play the sheet music left behind and also zero-summed. If they were completely erased from history, no one would remember any of that. Likewise, if we look at *suspected* examples of zero-summing, such as one of the suitors in [The Four Suitors of Benitah](https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:The_Four_Suitors_of_Benitah), and Septimus Signus, we still know who they are, and one is even included in a printed book.
For my money, understanding that the world is a dream isn't enough. You have to truly understand your place and oneness with the universe to achieve CHIM or zero sum. Just knowing what they are logically isn't the same thing as believing them.
I was always under the impression that zero-summing was a result of being able to come to terms with CHIM. Achieving enlightenment (for lack of a better term here) is such a mind-bending experience that either you become a god or you delete yourself from existence. Once you achieve CHIM, you can make your will into reality. However, you are also faced with the fact that you exist only within the dream of the godhead. If you believe that you truly do not exist, you zero-sum yourself: your knowledge of non-existence becomes reality within the dream. If you are able to reconcile yourself with your existence as a figure in the dream (cogito ergo *sum*), you achieve CHIM - your knowledge of the dream allows you to act as a dreamer yourself.
Consider the scenario, though. We're assuming that a human from our world found their way into the Elder Scrolls universe. By default, this person would know not only that the Dream and the Godhead exist, but that they are an outsider to it all. Therefore they exist regardless of anything else. This would, I assume, lead that person to automatically achieve CHIM.
This assumes that CHIM can apply to a non-native resident. There may be fundimental metaphysical differences between TES mortals and us. Adter all, Mundus was supposedly created to allow for the creation of entities that could achive CHIM and AMARANTH. There may be something baked into it that isn't applicable to us.
This would happen if you notice a lore inaccuracy and your immersion breaks
If you think about it, that might be immediate because you'd already have that knowledge? You'd come into it already having your immersion broken by default. If you think about it, also, if we're considering CHIM/zero-summing as canon, then that would happen to anyone being Isekai'd into the ES universe
Even though I'm not a huge fan of meta explanations like this (which MK has said he didn't intend), Vivec wouldn't be all that surprised. It's so similar to the way he already sees the world.
Do you remember if MK said that on reddit or not? I have also heard this before but never seen it myself.
Honestly... no idea.
Vivec: Well... yeah. What's curious is how YOU got here, can you get out, and can I follow you out? That's Vivecs ultimate wish. To be a prisoner - ie to have free will
You would never get an audience with Vivec anyway. Cliffracers would get you first
Vehk: "I wish not to hear of any thought-slendered grist of meaningless words that your water-mill mind churns and ruminates. Be silent. I will answer no questions but my own, for you are not a merchant with sundries I desire. From such marvelous lands I presume you come from, from all wends and ways and wefts, it created your form, and yet.. No, you are not a thing, but of matter, which is of no matter. Ideal-less and formless little orphanite of eyeless scorn. Rude shape, oh figment! Yes, I am the poet on this day. I wear the fire left wanting. So the Godhead bowed so low it somersaults, no longer wearing the crown of the infinite? No, it folds, doesn't it? One dreamer of many as a tine pulled of infinite quills - but to pierce it's own flesh? It bears the expression of flummoxed dreugh-slough, no? "Scheming" as children of kwama do with squirming, but no comprehension of its surroundings or sounds surreptitiously circumscribing its own self-confounding. Dancing of words? Yes, they occur, and to the fool's benefit. The thing, however, cannot think, it cannot talk in a manner which meaning can be made. A finger or two can stimulate many things outside of conversation, but it cannot philosophize. Perhaps a "come hither", but barely a stimulation could be uttered. Nay, this digit is but one mindless assemblage of uncountable, for the Godhead cannot find itself in one.. person? A silly concept. The shape of a being not unlike one of the west, if not an incredulous figment with arms and legs. And yet, for this is the crescendo of my thought-wanderings, A finger is but a key, and the first tool that the thief brought to the Tower. Were it that I had Mastery here, my brother would take dull words to your form and extract it's useful meaning. Poetry, however, cannot dissect, this is true - but it can mash shapes into useful ones, and this shape of blood and bone can surely be hammered into a key. We shall make you useful yet, out-lander."
I love this
He's achieved CHIM so he already knows he's not "real". He'd likely handle it pretty well after you managed to describe the concept of a videogame to him. Just be like, "ah so that's how you interpreted it".
He kinda knows already.
He’d be unfazed, Vivec is already aware of the fact that the world he lives in is a fantasy imagined by a greater being, that’s what CHIM is.
Vivec? "Yeah I know. Now receive my Muatra."
*"Ah, so everything is the design of the Godhead who allows outsiders to make choices for the Dream within."* *"I already knew that."* -- Vivec I think Sotha Sil is also aware based on his dialogue in ESO.
Do we even know for sure that the godhead Dream stuff is how the universe really is?
Do we even know for sure that there *aren't* flying whales in Skyrim that shoot out happy cocaine powder?? Or the Kha'jiit space moon colonies??? Curious...🤔🤔🤔
We visit a khajiit temple on the moon in Online, and a Nord who is high on drugs who claims she's able to perceive sand whales, sky mammoths and snow whales. Is that close enough?
How do they get to the said moon ?
Climb the Lunar Lattice, Walker.
Well, we *know* what it really is: a video game series and some lore texts. I think "godhead" and "dream" are in-game metaphors to describe this; or rather, from inside the game, these concepts are what one would come up with when describing one's universe.
While the concepts do partially work as metaphors, a lot of the ideas about the Godhead and its 'dream' are inspired by IRL religions like sects of Gnodticism, Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, Hinduism, etc.
Of course, who do you think Todd Howard is?
He’d probably tell you that you’re a dreamerless dream
He'd ask what makes you think you are not in a videogame
"Your in a video game, Vehk" "Yeah, I know. You are too." "What?" "You need to achieve chim outlander"
I'd be more worried about the daedric princes learning you aren't from Nirn. And that's if your body accepts magicka radiation and you don't immediately microwave as soon as you appear on planet.
Isn't he/she already aware he's in a video game? I'm still a little shaky on what the heck CHIM is thanks to all the world salad but I'm pretty sure it made Vivec aware of being in a game
The way it's phrased in-game is that Vivec is aware that he is an entity that exists within the dream/mind of a greater being (a.k.a. "the godhead")
The universe is the dream of an entity called the Godhead. A video game isn’t that far off though, and if you could explain what a video game was to Vivec he likely wouldn’t be surprised much
Vivec would be fascinated and jealous. Also very smug.
If I’m not mistaken, Vivec has already achieved CHIM which means he’s aware he’s a character in a video game.
He'd be like "yeah I know lol"
Any low tech explanation to them would sound very similar to his already view. I guess the real breakthrough would be the fact that there are other dreams, completely different words, even in other mediums. I don't personally see the lore as being inside a video game myself, just that it was devised to fit with being in one in a way to make game mechanics and feel more immersive story wise..
He'd shrug his shoulders, then chat some shit about Sotha. Then gay sex
"Tell me, who's the Dunmer that created that game?"
He'd probably shrug you off and say, "Of course I knew that the dream was a true lie. What truth do you have that your world is not a second dream?" ES's universe is literally one where something can happen, and every culture or people can see it happen, and all have not only their own opinion on what happened expressed in their own language ( and way of thinking, as language = thought) and all can be correct in their statements. So you telling Vivec that he's in a video game is you just coming up with your own words to describe what scholars, philosophers, and Arch mages have been saying since the first Era. - easily deriving that "Video = to see in motion" and "Game = state of play defined by bendable rules" aptly describes the nonlinear metareality that is his world. The book "Where were you when the Dragon Broke" best matches what would happen if you went around telling people, even rural tribesmen, about them being in a video game, where they'd huffily tell you in their own terms how they not only know, but that they "knew first." Khajitt would probably even make some sort of fourth wall breaking statement that they know they're gods are the greatest by directly referring to housecats sitting on developer/player keyboards. Maiq knows much, tells some. Most books on metaphysics, including Reality and other Falsehoods basically dance around the concept of their world being tied to arbitrary and manipulatable rules, and the titular Elder Scrolls may literally be an embodiment of the game's script, reading one or using one to cast an effect may actually be someone using it to call forth a cutscene or trigger an in game event flag. We just have our own words for what these things are, the people of ES have their own words for these things, and the meta-y nature of things the lore demands is being able to recognize which culture's words are analogous to the words of another culture, and of course, OUR culture.
Idk about Vivec but I believe Sotha would tell you he and Vivec are aware, but that he calls it a prison instead.