#iris says things

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You know, considering how eerie and alien Elder Scrolls designs used to get, I wonder if anyone's done something with that when it comes to depicting the Divines.

Something I think about is how the Aedra are depicted as human and the Daedra have a little more variation but it's usually either "vaguely human" or "pretty generic looking monster". It's not bad, I just think it could be more interesting.

Take Mara for example. She's the goddess of marriage, love, and fertility yes, but she's also steeped beliefs that she is the mother of creation itself. So yes, a human depiction of her makes a lot of sense, especially wrt the people of Tamriel who probably want to see themselves a little in the gods.

But just imagine for a second:

As the goddess of something as human as love and companionship, I'm sure she'd look pretty human yeah. But as the mother of creation - something so distant, so all encompassing - she could also look much more alien and primal.

I imagine she could be bound by knots of visceral rope, to represent her connection to marriage and also her apparent refusal to exercise her immense power, or more simply her being bound to the world itself as an Aedroth.

Perhaps as well her very hands are permanently clasped to her forearms, only leaving that position if she ever had to intervene for any reason.

She's this titanic woman, who you can see yourself in because of her closeness to mortalkind. Yet also - because she birthed creation - you cannot help but see entire universes reflected in her eyes.

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Next on Iris's Divine Design Concepts: Kynareth.

Kynareth is a goddess of the wind, nature, animals, and the one who supposedly created the races of Man gave them the Voice.

Her sacrifice is one I've had a little trouble pinpointing, so I'm going to lead with my visual notes:

- I see Kynareth's body being very disjointed, even down to her skeleton, which if you could look at it would be made of essentially assorted scrap animal bones that have been tied together to try and form something approximating a humanoid skeleton.

- Nothing is complete; I see the surface of her skin as this patchwork of skin interchanged with fur, interchanged with scales, interchanged with carapaces, interchanged with gills, interchanged with tree bark, and it's always changing. No patch of her body will remain the same for long.

- Plants are burgeoning out of her body too, but they can never reach maturity. Just before a mountain flower on her shoulder is set to bloom, it begins to rot.

- I think that there is a scar on her neck, and a depression that shows something has been removed from it. If you were to ask her a question, she would answer in signs. Her vocal cords are gone, as giving mankind their Voices came at the cost of her own.

- There's a certain beauty to how she's constantly changing. No plant can mature on her, but everything that possibly counts as alive has had the honour of sprouting from her body.

- Her hair isn't all one colour, or one length for that matter. Every natural hair colour that has ever existed grows out of her scalp, as every fur colour can form a patch of her skin. Similarly, every possible hair texture can grow.

- Every possible anatomical feature has grown on her body at least once: wings, antennae, claws, you name it.

In this way, she is a visual representation of all the natural life she protects and watches over, constantly changing like the wind she wields. I think the tragedy of her form is that none of it gets to reach maturation.

It's a bit abstract, but I think it makes the most sense for this to represent her sacrifice as the loss of wholeness. I think the ability to mature and persist is what Kynareth has given to Nirn and its creatures.

And so, like the winds, she is forever changing.

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remember when the oblivion remaster's UE5 marmalade filter pissed people off so bad that a mod changing the colour grading to match classic oblivion was released within the first week lol

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Iris's Divine Design Concepts: Stendarr

[EDIT: Big thank you to @fated-weapon for helping me with the raw brainstorming on this one!!]

Stendarr is the god of mercy, rightful rule, justice and the patron god of the Imperial Legion. He is also the god of charity, which will be somewhat relevant for my visual notes.

Stendarr's sacrifice is another one that I feel has to be a bit more meta (shocker), but thanks to some discussions with a friend I've settled on his sacrifice being his heart. In a symbolic sense, the heart is often associated with compassion, which is strongly related to mercy. Stendarr is kind of the god of both anyway, so you can see what I mean here.

[CONTENT WARNING: There is no "less gorey" idea I have for Stendarr's appearance, so from here down there will be some possibly graphic descriptions of chest stuff.]

Visually speaking, I imagine there being a hole in his chest that you can peer through, with his heart clearly not there obviously. Another idea is that the skin and muscles of his torso are peeled away from the middle to show his ribs, lungs, and the cavity where his heart would once have been.

Getting a bit more orthodox, I can absolutely imagine Stendarr wearing a blindfold as an allusion to justice being blind.

Stendarr is also the apologist of man, so I also imagine that his bodily form would be unmistakably human. You could also invert this if you wanted, making him look more distinctly elven to juxtapose against his domain. I like both equally.

As Stendarr is also the god of charity, I also imagine that he would have his right hand held downard in the position of the Varadamudra, a mudra most often seen in Hindu or Buddhist statues that is typically associated with granting boons/wishes, and thus could also represent dispensing charity. To drive this home I'd also personally put a coin in this hand, but I'm not sure if that would cheapen the significance of the mudra? If it does, then I'd suggest going for either the varadamudra or a slightly different position that still shows the coin being freely given.

Similarly, I could imagine his left hand held up in the Abhayamudra, which often seems to represent reassurance or peace.

Given that I am not personally Hindu or Buddhist, I'm not sure if I'm stepping on any toes with this use of mudras, so I'd appreciate input from anyone who's more acquainted with them about the validity of my ideas there. If they're best left out, I think my other notes stand just fine on their own :)

Stendarr does have some warlike connotations to him as well, given that his Vigilants are ostensibly sanctioned by him to hunt daedra and their worshippers. To further compliment his domain over justice, this could be represented by wielding a hammer, perhaps.

Aaaand that's all I've got. Next up will be decided by poll. We're going to run out of Divines pretty soon, but I'd like to continue writing these longform design abstracts. Maybe I'll do a secondary poll about where to look next!

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So the next Divine I started thinking about was Dibella, and I think I've come up with something... lackluster in terms of drawability, but interesting to ponder:

I don't think Dibella would have a body at all. She's very much a goddess centred around beauty, both physical and spiritual. The most outward and "obvious" signal of beauty is one's body and how they adorn it.

So what if Dibella's sacrifice was her own body, to perhaps serve as the blueprint of mortal bodies?

I understand that as a design concept it's a bit lacking, sooo here are some other ideas:

- She's blind (I think I saw someone's take on this not too long ago, and I liked it!)

- She has a body, but no face or hair (faces are, after all, what we spend the most time looking at wrt beauty)

- She's invisible, and all you can see of her are the jewels and clothing she adorns herself in

I think these are all fun concepts that an artist could play with (I might even do so myself!), but ultimately I think when it comes to how I'd imagine her, the "no body at all" idea wins.

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it is once again time for me to play disco elysium. wish me luck.

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Iris's Divine Design Concepts: Julianos

Julianos is the god of learning, spellcraft, mathematics and all that intellectual goodness. He's most significant to mages and teachers, with a lot of schools dedicated to him offering education to the peoples of Tamriel.

What I imagine his sacrifice to be is, rather ironically, the one I had the easiest time coming up with. I believe that in giving mortals the gift of intellectualism, he sacrificed either his own ability to gain knowledge for himself or the more nebulous concept of 'higher cognition'.

I think a devotee meeting Julianos would perhaps be the most jarred by his appearance. I imagine him as this ragged, almost bestial old man. I imagine him to have empty eye sockets, no ears, and a mouth either glued or sewn shut so that he could never speak.

Since knowledge is most readily accumulated through observation, I imagine all of his senses completely eradicated.

All he really has left is base instinct, and barely that. I could even see him as decerebrate, I think the word is, or even totally brain-dead.

Sometimes, the Aedra are described as "dead" as a result of creation. That's often questionable given the nature of divine blessings, the Sybil of Dibella, Akatosh's constant meddling, and Talos's... existence. Julianos, though? I think he's about as close to truly dead as a god can be.

Visual notes are hard to pinpoint beyond things like empty eye sockets and a lack of sensory appendages like ears and perhaps even the lack of a nose. I do think he'd look a lot like an archetypal "hermit" otherwise, perhaps?

Next up: Stendarr. Since he got enough votes to tie with Julianos, I won't be doing a poll until after I flesh him out.

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Iris's Divine Design Concepts: Arkay

Arkay is the god of life and death, burials, etc. He's a bit of a difficult one to quantify in terms of "what was his sacrifice", so once again I'm leading with visual notes:

Arkay, I would say, is essentially a microcosm of the entire cycle of life and death. By that I mean that he visibly embodies all stages of the mortal lifespan, all at once. There are some fun directions you could take this in, but here's my favourite first:

He's constantly and rapidly going through every stage of life. You could begin a conversation with him looking like a child, and when you finish he will be elderly. He "dies" over and over, rots over and over, and restarts as an embryo. You could watch him fully gestate in the course of a few minute.

As the lord of all life, he could even go through cycles as other animals and creatures, and most certainly as other genders.

If you're into a more... disturbing depiction, I have one below the cut [Content Warning for possibly graphic descriptions. Notes on what I think his sacrifice would be are also down there, so I've marked the graphic stuff in red]

I could also picture him in a similar way to Kynareth; an amalgam of all kinds of body parts (I'd say, mostly humanoid (including Khajiit, Argonians etc.)) just kind of fused together, all at different stages of life. He could have baby limbs growing out of his shoulders, or even along more developed limbs like some kind of fleshy fractal. Perhaps it's even that the fingers on each hand could be at different stages; some newborn, others decrepit.

This idea's cool to me, I feel like it has the vibe of "oh here we go with yet another horror reimagining of gods" but at the end of the day they're gods I think making them more disturbing is an interesting design philosophy.

His sacrifice is difficult to imagine or describe, but thinking about how Orkey (his ancient Nordic aspect) supposedly stole years from the Nords got me thinking about lifespans. I think he could have sacrificed a kind of metaphysical lifespan of his, similar in some ways to how I imagine Kynareth's. Because he's an et'Ada and can't "truly" die, it manifests as rapidly living through the cycle of life and death ad infinitum.

Anyway, that's all the thoughts I have on Arkay. Next up will probably be Julianos, or Zenithar maybe...