Gnomey

Not sure if I understand you; Dram went through 63 incarnations before CE612. His 64^th incarnation may have been killed in CE800 and subsequently cloned or whatever, but that doesn’t explain the 64 incarnations as of CE612.

Aside from that, the Dram who appears in Redguard – set in CE864 – is stated to be 252 years old, in other words he materialized in CE612, not CE800. The part of his background that mentions his secret assassination describes rumours about Dram, and may well be false, which would explain how – as per the next rumour that’s mentioned and is proven right in Redguard – he is serving Tiber Septim in apparant perfect health and advanced age.

More to the point, we know reincarnation isn’t just Dram as there’s the Nerevarine as well. Two clear references is not a lot, especially as the Nerevarine is so exceptional, but as Dram’s background doesn’t in any way draw attention to the fact that he reincarnates, the impression given is that it is not seen as noteworthy or unexpected.

I took it as meaning the age of his current incarnation is 64. I mean, there’s 64 years between the time of Redguard and his rumored assasination. 

I’m willing to bet Dram’s reincarnation would be more of a Morag Tong thing than a mainstream Dunmer thing. Perhaps, as worshippers of Mephala, their souls go to her upon death. Since Mephala is more interested in having agents on Nirn than hoarding souls in Oblivion, she has them reincarnated and destined to rejoin the Tong. Perhaps the initiates see this as a sort of sacrifice, since they cannot stick around to guide their descendants.

I’m not sure. It’s a pretty big twist; we could probably pull it off with careful writing, but I don’t think the precedent is really there for being a widespread belief.

The ash slaves comment I interpretted as incarnations between Ash Zombie, Ash Slave, Ascended Sleeper, etc. You might be able to get away with these being literal incarnations, but I just saw it as arbitrary stages as Dagoth Ur twists the body to his liking.

http://www.imperial-library.info/content/monomyth-yokudan-satakal-worldskin There’s this as another possible precendent, the Redguard creation myth. It describes the world reincarnating (sort of), but the spirits themselves don’t seem to. Though I suppose you could interpret them being eaten and brought back out as a kind of reincarnation, as well as them moving from coil to coil. None of that dynamic is mentioned in the rest of the Monomyth’s collection though, so I don’t think we can assume that’s world lore so much as how that particular culture believes the world works. http://www.imperial-library.info/content/monomyth

In the long run, I suppose the line would have to be drawn between in-world belief and world lore. While characters can believe whatever they want, we don’t know if the world’s cosmos actually works this way. There’s room for interpretation either way--sometimes I get the impression the Nerevarine may not truly be imbued with Nerevar’s soul, but is more a Daedra’s trick and/or the prophecy was meant to be a guide for A hero, not necessarily a foretelling for THE hero. If the soul is the same, how can the spirits of so many different people appear in the Cavern of the Incarnate? You’d think they’d just all be Nerevar, telling of his past lives. There’s also the fact you don’t get any sort of recollections from your past lives besides that one window, which IMO I see as a missed story opportunity if the Nerevarine is truly a reincarnation.

Anyway, possible uses for reincarnation...

Dunmer beliefs in general have an inroad, in that the mortal life is supposed to be a test or lesson on the way to ascendancy to some other state of being. This belief usually underpins reincarnation beliefs in the real world, too. But then why so many ancestor spirits if they’re not being put back in bodies...

Dres—I could see your idea working. I’m a little uncertain though, because they’re supposed to represent Dunmer’s ancient beliefs, and I don’t think there’s enough evidence to show that the early Dunmer, the Chimer, or the even the Altmer before them ever believed in reincarnation.

Indoril, maybe. You could tie it in with the differences between Ayem, Seht, and Vehk and Almalexia, Sotha Sil, and Vivec. Perhaps they see these as incarnations of the other, particularly as Vivec claims Vehk and the person who killed Nerevar is “dead”. But this also suggests the Temple believes this, and the Living Gods back this with their greater understanding of the cosmos, and is there enough precedent for THAT?

Ashlanders, maybe? Like the Dres, no real precedent for what’s supposed to be the truest form of Dunmer beliefs, but maybe there’s a splinter tribe that believes this.

Some other group, like a Redguard embassy? Morag Tong, Camona Tong?

Templar Tribe

I would assume that reincarnation could be reserved for particularly STRONG spirits. In TES we have a very complex mixture of afterlife and apocalyptic beliefs; the main difference from the real world being that there are multiple examples of these afterlives and possible endings of time actively exercised in-game, but in the real world there is no definitive example of what is true. So there must be a slight mix of possibilities. I believe that the King of Worms is another example of reincarnation in TES. The Dragonborn in Skyrim is said to have a dragon’s soul in a human body, which is reincarnation. There are certain souls that transcend the limits of perceived afterlife that any one particular culture in TES universe believes in; after all, remember that THE ELDER SCROLLS themselves, and the franchise namesake, is about prophecy and fate; being unable to fully dodge this fate. These souls are different, and even then we have the entire Tribunal; the least of which we can assume Vivec at the least can reincarnate and Dagoth Ur as well; at best we can say that Almalexia and Sotha Sil can reincarnate as well; though Sotha Sil being murdered by Almalexia may be proof that it is perhaps a CHIM-specific power to be able to bypass the Dreamsleeve; which in itself is a missive of possible reincarnation anyway. But for the sake of keeping it simple-yet-interesting I would toe on the side of saying only particular souls have the ability to be reincarnated because they are meant to serve a greater purpose in the telling of the Elder Scrolls.

I agree with the basis of this, that reincarnations would have to come from a soul that is special, whether chosen by a god or is particularly strong and has a reason for not moving on. And I think we have enough references in the games to make a case for that, easily. 

st.Veloth

actually kevaar, the dunmer had an extensive ancestor worshiping system. they believe that after death, the dunmer spirits stay on nirn to guide their descendents, and that infact the daedra were the first of these ancestors. they have multiple practices, such as keeping a small shrine in every home devoted to familial ancestors, sometimes they even set out plates of food for them. they even go so far as to bind themselves to their homes after death to work as defenders and to watch over their kin. 

 That’s what I mean. :) Assuming this is a common practice, why would so many spirits choose not to reincarnate? Loyalty and love (or coercion) yes, but why not seek out the incarnate’s new form and ask them to protect the house in the flesh, rather than as a spirit? Why is the world’s balance of lifeforms not falling apart with all these spirits not re-entering the stream? (Before we even get into soul-trapping!) Why do they care about their dead body (a ‘la necromatic heresy) if they get a brand new one every go-around?

Also, and might be a bit far flung for reasoning, but when asked to manifest, spirits typically show up as an image of their living selves. You’d think this image would get muddled or mixed up if they had multiple lives to sort through! :) (I sometimes wonder if that’s the reason that Nerevar’s shrine painting is so vague. The others have faces and his is more symbolic.) Nor do we have people randomly blacking out so their soul can go talk to a mystic (unless that happens in dreams? haha).

And so on. Just a lot of little logistical problems that I think don’t add up to reincarnation being typical, outside of a few special souls.

what I was trying to get at is that Mundus is a realm actively shaped by belief. In Skyrim you travel to the Nordic afterlife, and you can see the spirits of the dead there. Then in Morrowind we see spirits in the waking world. Then in Oblivion we see ghosts in ruins. So depending on the beliefs of the particular culture in question, that is the effect we see. Yet in all of those cultures, there are examples of reincarnation. Because some souls are just destined to reincarnate.

Don’t know of any lore references, but here’s my reasoning on it:

Currency either started out through a barter system that then had uniform measures of worth assigned to them (one reason bucks are called such: used to be one male deer hide was the equivalent of a dollar), or was a valuable commodity by itself, like the precious metals.

Copper, silver, and gold were all common precious metals to be used. They would often be stamped with the current ruler’s identification in the form of his face, a motto, a coat of arms, a number (year), etc.

For systems that came out of barter, some of the stranger ones were wood chits, seashells, and carved bone sticks. And of course there’s all those peculiar societies today that use slips of paper and plastic cards...

So I think we could go with pretty much whatever was either common in Morrowind society or was a precious metal. Maybe bits of glass or obsidian? Bits of bug shells? Though I think gold stamped with Morrowind insignia rather than the Empire’s would be most probable. They still had to have a system to trade with other nations, like the Sload, and while glass or ebony would probably be of some value to those other societies, more natural objects like bits of bug probably wouldn’t be.

I would think motifs representing the Tribunal (perhaps their Daedric letters?) would make the most sense. I’m not sure the Dunmer (Chimer) societies had advanced enough to trade with outside nations much before Nerevar and the Tribunal came through and unified them all, so coins would be more of a Tribunal introduction. For obvious reasons the Tribunal probably wouldn’t want to adopt Azura’s star at that time.

Though there may be some older coins floating around that have motifs for the three Good Daedra on them. Interesting tidbit of IRL currencies: sometimes a ruler will decree all currencies used by their predescessor are defunct and worthless. Paper money becomes so much trash and coins get melted down and restamped. Wouldn’t that be interesting for a smuggling operation of some sort? Finding and trying to figure out what to do with a batch of old coins without being caught by Ordinators.

The other thing with coins is people will sometimes take shavings off of them . Something for some law enforcement group somewhere to raise a fuss about as part of a quest, maybe.

Hm, is it actually established when the lessons were written? It might as well have been after the invasion and the awakening of Dagoth Ur. Would neatly explain away some anachronisms.

That said, TR has had some ideas previously on barter (which the Velothi would mostly still rely on) and the contrast with the Empire and coin-loving Hlaalu who are trying to create dual loyality in the Velothi under the rule of Indoril and redoran, something that would fall flat on its face if the Dunmer had actual, widespread coin and the mercantilistic system that would come with it, in use before.

I believe the Aztecs always used a barter system, even when their capital city had a population of 200,000 – 300,000 people. So it’s not too farfetched.