I wrote this for a personal project, but I really don't mind sharing it with you guys. Feedback is more than appreciated, and in fact most names are just placeholders (the project stagnated in the documentation phase sadly).
Notes about the practice of daedric worship in certain primitive tribes of argonians in the Black marsh:
Very deep within the dark swamps of inhospitable Argonia, many obscure and reclusive tribes of the lizard folk engage in depraved forms of daedric worship. These violent groups, often disdained by even the other reclusive and marginal argonian tribes for being excessively wild, cruel and animalistic, are in constant strife with everyone else in the region, both foreign invaders and the neighbor tribes, very often even calling for war amongst themselves too, as their daedric princes seem very pleased by brutality and bloodshed no matter to whom it's done. However, in no way this does mean that they have rejected their veneration for the hist, they still hold them as the central point of their religion; they choose to serve daedric lords first in order to achieve power to protect and defend their hist trees, which to them is synonymous of their territory and homeland (their territories are in fact defined by their hist trees; for instance, for them, conquering another tribe's hist is to take over their land, since often tribes build their camps around them). The fact that they don't see any contradiction between respecting nature and following daedric principles may still sound very odd to some, but one must remember that they don't exactly share the traditional views of daedric spirits commonly seen in the rest of the empire, they don't even refer to them as "daedra", the tribesman sees the daedric powers as manifestations of nature and its laws; after all, nature indeed is in a way, savage, cruel and wild, just like daedra they worship. As such, they are highly violent and ritualistic, being caught by them is probably one of the worst fates an adventurer may possibly suffer while traversing the Black marsh. The main princes they venerate are:
- Peryite : (In their tongue "Peritee", or in its cyrodiilic translation: "he-rots-the-land") He is the lord of disease, rot, and the hungry king of the swamp, Peritee is considered as the mayor entity of their daedric pantheon. They regularly feed him with the corpses of their enemies, all these offerings dedicated to him must rot for weeks above the marsh, the more spread the better, this way his hunger is satiated and he can keep spreading the plague that has kept Argonia free of outsiders for millennia. Due to this, their territories are often decorated with grotesque effigies and altars with rotten bodies on them. The plant that symbolizes him is a moss with small purple flowers that grows in most corpses which rot within the Black marsh, and which usually covers the offerings given to him (only if the rituals are performed correctly; that is, if the guts are twisted in the correct way).
- Malacath: ("Mala-Jar" or "one- hundred -spears") The mayor chieftain of war and strife. Mala-Jar taught the argonians to hate other civilizations, human and elven alike, for they are evil, impure, and false to one's true instincts and self, these do not respect the way of the mother hist and will therefore damage it. He is the protector spirit of the swamp who calls argonians into battle to defend their homeland from outsider forces. He incentives raiding colonist settlements and other argonian camps. The plant that represents him is a sharp as a claw and long as a sword leaved fan whose sap is of a blood red color, its leaves are often used as decoration in clothing by warriors and shamans, and are generally considered a symbol of strength.
- Molag bal: ("Mohla-Jal" or "screams-of-terror") The spirit of murder. He shows that violence and depravity are high virtues on themselves, and the correct way of preserving the hist, the best path to victory. He encourages cannibalism as a way of showing dominance, and rites dedicated to him are often orgies of unspeakable acts of cruelty. His plant symbol is a poisonous flower with the form of a cup, if eaten, it is said to give the most tortuous and agonizing death of all the poisons, it's so strong that it could even kill an argonian. This flower is often given as a declaration of war among tribes or as a simple threat.
- Hiricine: ("Hishlin-Ah" or "the-great-lurker") Hiricine represents the primal instincts within every argonian, hunger and thirst, the insatiable blooddrive and bestial sexdrive. He is, of course, the spirit of the hunt, and teaches argonians the importance of always being predator, and never prey. The big lizard eats the small one, this is how it's always has been. A kind of considerably large carnivorous plant is strongly associated with him, being believed by these tribes to be the plant form of Hishlin-Ah. These plants are so strong and dangerous they could seriously injure any careless traveler passing by. Tribesman feed them with their recent prey as a way of offering him tribute. Shrines dedicated to him are often build around these big plants.
- Mehrunes Dagon: ("Mawahro" or "alligator-father") He is the main protector of the swamp and the naturalistic ways of it, but he is as cruel as nature can get, often representing the conflict against nature itself. He is indomitable, uncontrollable, ungovernable, just like a giant alligator. He is a role model that inspires feelings of strength and willpower, specially representing the strife against slavery that most argonians suffer. Once one of these argonians has been captured and taken into slavery, this is probably the deity whom that argonian will be closer to. Mawahro worshippers make very rebellious slaves, often preferring torture and death rather than complacency. His natural symbol is a small tear-shaped red mushroom that also grows in southern Morrowind. It is said that many times, entire rebellions have occurred in Dren plantations because of the growth of a single of these mushrooms (others say that the mushrooms were only the augury of the outbreaks).
Author's notes:
- The name of this argonian tribe who worships daedra is still undecided, just as the term they would use to refer to this group of 5 daedra, or the daedric princes' names in their original language (i'm not good at speaking jel, sorry), what I wrote for the latter is just a placeholder.
- I am fully aware that the topics/main ideas that daedric princes represent tend to overlap a lot between each other. Further structuration and definition is more than welcome. I also suggest the idea of creating sub-tribes and divide the pantheon among them, some tribes venerating one part of the pantheon, while others focusing in the others gods. I'm not convinced by this idea because I think tribes of daedric worshippers would be enough of a rarity to have more than one kind.
- I wrote this mainly because I thought Peryite doesn't get enough love in the main games, and that probably if he was to have any kind of established cult, it would probably be in Argonia. Peryite has the potential to be a total badass, he is a god of poison, rot, and blight, but sadly he is rarely mentioned. I also like the idea that diseases are all of his making, or that they even are all aspects of him in some way, given that they are his domain.
- Maybe only one type of argonian engages in this type of religion? Assuming of course Tamriel rebuilt accepts the existence of different kinds of argonians, which I mean, there probably are.
- Say what you want, but you can't deny this tribe makes for perfect random encounters in the depths of the Black marsh. They are actually scary.
- I like the idea of these deities not having any gender and just representing aspects of nature and life, but if they had to have one, I would prefer if they were all male, these are all manly attributes (if you were to give them feminine attitudes, you would get an Amazons kind of tribe I think, which is not what i'm going for, though the idea could be used for something else), and also I like the contrast between these deities and the more motherly and peaceful hist.
- I'm not discarding the idea that these argonians are being manipulated or fooled by the daedric princes by making them believe that this way of living is helpful or beneficial to anyone, especially for the hist; it's a possibility that I would prefer remains unclear, but still possible, as most of elder scrolls lore.
2021-01-16 23:32
16 hours 36 min ago
There exist people with more investment in the various concepts this touches upon who may answer more fully as to why this proposal is untenable in those departments, but for my part, I would like to add that Peryite is not the Daedra of disease according to any reliable source pre-TES5.
"Peryite, whose sphere is the ordering of the lowest orders of Oblivion, known as the Taskmaster."
The Book of Daedra
"Peryite’s pits have always been inaccessible to mortals. Our only real knowledge of them comes from reports of the other diabolical Princes. It is said that Peryite guards the lowest orders of Oblivion and that his summoners are to regard his likeness to Akatosh as some primordial and curious jest."
Imperial Census of Daedra Lords
Neither TES2 nor TES4's Peryite quests involve pestilence or disease. The only source we have on this matter is On Oblivion:
"Mehrunes Dagon, Molag Bal, Peryite, Boethiah, and Vaernima are among the most consistently "demonic" of the Daedra, in the sense that their spheres seem to be destructive in nature. The other Daedra can, of course, be equally dangerous, but seldom purely for the sake of destruction as these five can. Nor are these previous five identical in their destructiveness. Mehrunes Dagon seems to prefer natural disasters -- earthquakes and volcanoes -- for venting his anger. Molag Bal elects the employment of other daedra, and Boethiah inspires the arms of mortal warriors. Peryite's sphere seems to be pestilence, and Vaernima's torture."
However, this project takes the stance that this passage was deliberately intended to be incorrect; Vaermina's sphere is not torture according to any other source, Mehrunes Dagon is very much known to employ Daedra to serve his purposes (Battlespire and TES4 both attest to this), and so on. Peryite is the Taskmaster who orders Oblivion, not a Nurglesque disease god.
2022-05-03 01:34
2 years 6 months ago
Firstly, I never intended my post to be a proposal, not even a suggestion. It was just some ideas I thought were cool and wanted to share them, mainly because they might interest someone else and inspire future projects. Maybe I should have been more clear, i'll give you that.
Secondly, saying that my "proposal" is untenable is yet to be proved; just don't bring in oblivion texts because frankly I haven't read a single one, and I know are irrelevant for TR anyways since AFAIK TR build it's cannon from lore before the oblivion lore wreck.
Third, regarding Peryite: it's very funny to me that you invalidate On Oblivion's insight about Peryite, which is a pre morrowind official source of information, bringing out post morrowind non-official sources (the Imperial Census of Daedra Lords) while also ignoring official information on Peryite from TES5, a post morrowind official source. Actually very incoherent, embarrassing even. Additionally, saying that everything on "On Oblivion" is wrong just because it gets some things wrong, not only is a fallacy in itself, it's actually factually incorrect: we know that Mehrunes Dagon is responsible for many natural disasters for example.
Also, you are absolutely wrong saying that "On Oblivion" is the only pre-skyrim source that states Peryite it's the daedric prince of pestilence, daggerfall generic dialogue (https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Daggerfall:Peryite%27s_Quest) also explicitly states that:
Which means it's not only an author who thinks so, but an entire country's natives too.
So really your whole argumentation falls apart: you deny 2 official sources of information previous to morrowind, hide behind a 1 unofficial MK source that was written many years after morrowind, and you want to ignore everything that we know about him in skyrim, a subsequent official game (I point out this not because I want to say that we should take into consideration skyrim, i'm just amazed that you want to invalidate the point with post-morrowind content, on behalf some other post-morrowind content). What is this nonsense?
Not to mention that, first, there's no reason why it couldn't be both, and second, even if that was the case, it's not like I ever stated that Peryite was a god of disease, I only stated that some argonian tribes worship him and that's it. I wouldn't have to change anything about him in the document really. Just my notes.
2022-04-15 23:32
1 month 3 weeks ago
I would like to put my two cents in on the question of Peryite. Peryite is the lord of tasks, order and pestilence. That really is an interesting combination. If we look at the other Princes' spheres of influence, they are related in some way. The same is with Peryite. It is not just a Prince of disease, but he maintains the order of the world. He removes the weak ones from the herd. He brings not just disease, but powerful plagues into the world to reduce the surplus population. He is about the natural order. Disease is not his focus but a means to an end.