I wonder how these Altmer priests manage to ignore something as obvious as planets in the sky. There's these big huge planet-things that Imperials call 'Stendarr', and 'Arkay' and 'Dibella'. Altmer astrologists just gotta call them somehow? Even if priests conveniently forget about them in their Sundas services

Sjestenka wrote: »

I wonder how these Altmer priests manage to ignore something as obvious as planets in the sky. There's these big huge planet-things that Imperials call 'Stendarr', and 'Arkay' and 'Dibella'. Altmer astrologists just gotta call them somehow? Even if priests conveniently forget about them in their Sundas services

As Athan1 says one same heavenly body can have different names. Jupiter is Brhaspati in indian RL astronomy.

(I guess it would mind-blow people who believe the planets of Mundus are the actual dead bodies of the gods themselves in-unvierse but that's not how it works technically, it's all in-universe symbolism Nevertheless one can still interpret that the divine souls mantled/fused in those planets somewhat)

_

Athan1 wrote: »

There's a lot of lore and Altmer phrases on all divines except Stendarr. I presume this is because he was supporting all beings, including the lesser humans. However, although he's most popular with Redguards and Bretons, he seems to have originated from Summerset as well, potentially a god-ancestor like the other divines. Do you guys know anything else about how the Altmer see Stendarr? It's a shame he's forgotten in Altmer lore.

This is the only lorebook I could find, which confirms he isn't as popular with Altmer. More importantly, it confirms the Altmer of Lillandril developed the Templar techniques (either at the college or the academy) and then spread them to mainland Tamriel.

It's an Auridon lore book IIRC? Regarding Summerset lore I guess it's still true, we don't hear about Stendarr much (at all).


Beware then, there are slight differences or discrepancies between the religious lore of the auridian altmer and the summerset mainland altmer...
(OK here, the author is mainland (Lillandril) herself here but don't forget the unreliable narrator trope hahaha)

The main difference I found was the holy chants in that ruin (Torinaan) https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Online:Coils_of_the_Father that clearly identified Auri-El's symbolism with Akatosh's, with coils, scales, fangs and fire - just like your regular dragon-god or yokudan-lava-serpent-god (perfectly fit for a Dragon-Knight class type of powers).

Yet, Summerset lore and more recent pieces (like the statuette furniture) clearly depicts him/it with elven eagle features - feathered wings and so on (which fits more with Templar class type of powers).

Maybe the behind-the-scene reason is that high-elven lore was still blurry and sketchy for ZoS when they wrote Auridon zone texts.

For me, in-universe, it is merely a mark of the altmer / imperial cultural divergences.
Continental Tamriel cultures are heavily influenced by imperial lore - and most generally human lore, where the god's king is a Dragon. We can find this back in Nordic culture where and when dragons ruled humans.
However the high-elven Ascendants of their own pantheon are different (minus Mara and Stendarr that the early imperials borrowed to their ayleid elven rulers) and Auri-El's true symbolism is Eagle-like.
So most probably the lore of Auridon is mixed-up of Summerset dogma (=> the aedra gods' king is called Auri-El, not Akatosh) with insidious continental influences (=> the Aedra main god has a heavy draconic depiction).