The Dawn Era in Elder Scrolls: A Guide to the Beginning Times

The Dawn Era was the chaotic period before time existed in The Elder Scrolls universe. In this mythic age, gods created the mortal world of Mundus through sacrifice and betrayal.

During this incomprehensible time, events happened out of order. Contradictions were simply true. The laws of reality were still being written.

The era ended when Lorkhan—the trickster who orchestrated creation—was destroyed at the Convention, allowing linear time to finally begin. Everything you know from Skyrim, Oblivion, and Morrowind originates here.

Here’s what you’ll learn in this article:

• How the Dawn Era defied normal time
• The creation story across different cultures
• Lorkhan’s scheme to build the mortal world
• Why Magnus and the gods abandoned Mundus
• How the Convention ended the Dawn
• The origins of elves, humans, and Khajiit

What Was the Dawn Era?

The Chaos Times: Non-Linear Time

Time didn’t work during the Dawn Era. At all.

Think of it this way: In normal history, event A leads to event B, then C. During the Dawn, all three could happen at once, in reverse, or not at all.

Scholars call this the “Beginning Times” because linear progression hadn’t been established. Fixed dates were impossible.

The laws of nature themselves remained unset—reality was still being written.

This creates a major problem for historians. How do you document an era where cause and effect are optional?

You can’t. That’s why everything we know about the Dawn comes from religious texts and creation myths rather than historical records.

Different cultures remember events differently, and they’re all technically correct because contradictions could exist side by side.

A War of Manifest Metaphors

Scholars describe the conflicts of the Dawn Era as a “War of Manifest Metaphors.”

This phrase captures something bizarre: During the Dawn, an ideological disagreement and an actual physical war were the same thing. If two gods had different opinions about how reality should work, that philosophical debate was also a bloody battle with armies and casualties.

This is why the Dawn Era “mostly incapable of supporting a narrative,” according to texts like The Lunar Lorkhan. You can’t write a coherent story when metaphor and reality are identical.

Was Lorkhan’s heart ripped out? Was it a symbolic loss of power? Both? Neither?

The answer is yes.

Later eras occasionally experience echoes of this chaos through Dragon Breaks—temporary periods where time fractures and multiple contradictory timelines exist at once. These give scholars a taste of what the entire Dawn Era was like.

Cultural Interpretations of Creation

Every culture in Tamriel remembers the Dawn Era differently, but the core story remains similar.

The Altmer and most elves view it as a tragedy. The gods built the mortal world and got trapped, losing their divine power in the process. Lorkhan tricked them into this sacrifice.

The Nords see it as a cycle of destruction and rebirth. Alduin the World-Eater destroyed the previous world in fire to make room for this one. Shor (their name for Lorkhan) led the armies of men in battle against the elven gods.

The Redguards describe it through Satakal, a god who constantly eats itself and creates new worlds from its own body. The strongest spirits learned to escape this cycle by “walking at strange angles” between the worldskins.

The Khajiit have their own version where Lorkhaj (Lorkhan) was born at the request of Khenarthi to make a place for children—then promptly trapped his siblings there.

These aren’t different stories. They’re different perspectives on the same impossible-to-describe events.

The Story of the Dawn Era

The Beginning in the Void

Before anything existed, there was the Void.

From this primordial nothingness emerged two forces: Anu and Padomay. Different cultures call them different names, but they represent the same fundamental dichotomy.

Anu is stasis, order, and light. Padomay is change, chaos, and darkness.

These two forces birthed their own souls—Anuiel from Anu, and Sithis from Padomay. The constant struggle between these paired opposites created the Aurbis, which is the entire universe: Mundus (the mortal world), Oblivion (the Daedric realms), and Aetherius (the realm of magic).

The Yokudan version describes this differently. They speak of Satak, the Snake who came Before, merging with Akel (its “Hungry Stomach”) to create Satakal, the God of Everything.

Same concept, different names.

The Khajiiti creation myth introduces a third element: Nir, a female principle who gave birth to the cosmos before dying. This maternal death at creation becomes a recurring theme in their religion.

What matters is this: From nothing came two opposed forces, and from their conflict came everything else.

The Crystallization of the et’Ada

As the Aurbis stabilized, individual spirits began to form.

These are the et’Ada, meaning “Original Spirits.” Think of them as proto-gods—beings of pure divine energy without fixed forms or identities yet.

When Akatosh (or Auri-El to the elves) formed and created time, these spirits could finally recognize themselves as distinct entities with past and future.

The strongest spirits crystallized into recognizable forms: Magnus, Y’ffre, Mephala, Arkay, Ruptga, and others. Some remained as loose concepts or emotions, their personalities slowly developing over countless cycles.

This process created hundreds of divine beings. Some would become the Aedra (the gods who built the mortal world). Others became the Daedric Princes (who refused to participate and built their own realms).

Many more became lesser spirits, nature spirits, or eventually faded away entirely.

According to Nordic belief, twelve worlds existed during this period where life flourished. Then these worlds were shattered and recombined into one: Nirn.

Only the Ehlnofey (ancestors of elves and humans) and the Hist (the sentient trees of Black Marsh) survived this combination.

Lorkhan’s Plan for a Mortal Realm

One particular spirit had a radical idea: Lorkhan.

Known by many names across cultures (Shor to Nords, Sep to Redguards, Lorkhaj to Khajiit), Lorkhan proposed creating a new kind of realm. Not a divine plane like the Daedric Princes were making, but something different—a mortal plane called Mundus.

His pitch was convincing. This new world would be the “soul of the Aurbis,” a place where pieces of the divine could self-reflect and potentially achieve immortality equal to or greater than their creators.

It would be the hub of the Wheel, the center of everything.

Kynareth (or Khenarthi to the Khajiit) agreed first, providing the space in the Void where this creation could happen. Auri-El joined after being told he’d be king of this new realm.

Magnus, the god of magic, signed on as the architect.

The Redguard version tells it differently: Ruptga created Sep from leftover scraps of Satakal’s shed skins to help save lesser spirits. Sep went crazy from hunger and isolation, then tricked other spirits into pursuing a shortcut to the Far Shores (their afterlife).

Either way, Lorkhan gathered support for his plan. Many et’Ada agreed to help.

But not all.

The Great Construction of Mundus

The willing et’Ada—now called Aedra (meaning “our ancestors” in Old Aldmeris)—began building.

Magnus served as chief architect, designing how this mortal realm would function. The gods poured their own divine essence into the project, using themselves as the building blocks for creation.

Mountains, oceans, the sky—all of it formed from sacrificed divine power.

The Daedric Princes refused to participate. Princes like Azura, Molag Bal, and Mehrunes Dagon decided to create their own worlds within themselves, maintaining total control.

This fundamental choice split the et’Ada into two groups that would remain divided forever.

As construction progressed, the Aedra began to realize something terrible: They were dying.

The mortal plane was consuming them. Anu and Padomay might be infinite, but the et’Ada were not.

Every piece of Mundus they created drained more of their power. They were becoming shadows of their former selves, trapped in this increasingly physical realm.

According to elven tradition, Lorkhan knew this would happen all along. That’s why they call him the Trickster.

He’d deliberately trapped the other gods in mortality, dooming them to eventual death or transformation into something lesser.

The Khajiit agree—Lorkhaj tricked his siblings into entering the place he’d made for Nirni’s children, then trapped them there.

The Departure of Magnus

Magnus figured it out first.

The architect of Mundus realized the project was killing them. The other Aedra were too committed or too weakened to escape, but Magnus still had enough power to leave.

He tore a hole through the fabric of reality and fled back to Aetherius, the realm of magic.

That hole became the sun.

The Magna Ge—hundreds of other spirits who followed Magnus—also escaped. The holes they left became the stars.

These aren’t decorative lights in the sky. They’re actual tears in the barrier between Mundus and Aetherius, allowing magic to flood into the mortal world.

Without these holes, magic wouldn’t exist in Mundus at all.

The gods who remained faced a choice: Finish the project and sacrifice everything, or abandon it and let Mundus collapse. Some fully surrendered their divinity and became the Ehlnofey—the first mortal beings.

Others, like the Eight Divines (Akatosh, Arkay, Dibella, Julianos, Kynareth, Mara, Stendarr, and Zenithar), bound themselves to Mundus but retreated to their own planes.

These remaining gods appear from Nirn as planets in the night sky. Just like the sun and stars, what you see in the sky in Elder Scrolls games has deep cosmological meaning.

The Shattering of Lorkhan

The Aedra were furious with Lorkhan for getting them into this mess.

The specific details vary by culture, but the outcome is the same: Lorkhan was destroyed.

Auri-El (the elven aspect of time) couldn’t convince Anu to let them return to their original state—Anu had already filled their places with something else. So Auri-El took vengeance on Lorkhan instead.

Trinimac, the greatest champion of Auri-El, confronted Lorkhan in front of his army. Trinimac “reached in with more than hands” and ripped out Lorkhan’s Heart, separating him from his divine center.

This act undid the God of Mortals, destroying him.

But Lorkhan’s Heart couldn’t be destroyed. It was a piece of creation itself.

The gods shot it from an arrow or cast it from the Adamantine Tower (sources differ). The Heart landed in what would become Vvardenfell in Morrowind, creating Red Mountain—an active volcano that plays a major role in later history.

The Heart remained there for thousands of years until the events of Morrowind.

The Redguard version has Ruptga squashing Sep with a big stick, causing his hunger to fall out. The Khajiit describe Alkhan (their version of Alduin) being slain by Lorkhaj and his companions, though being immortal, he’ll return eventually.

According to some legends, when Lorkhan’s divine spark was removed, rain fell for the first time and Sheogorath was born—the Daedric Prince of Madness emerging from the god’s destruction.

The War of the Ehlnofey

While the gods fought, their mortal descendants went to war.

The Ehlnofey were former et’Ada who had completely given up divinity to become mortal. They split into two groups: Old Ehlnofey (who kept their ancient memories and traditions) and the Wanderers (who lost much of their divine knowledge and adapted to mortality).

Old Ehlnofey settled in Aldmeris and tried to preserve what they remembered of divine existence. The Wanderers scattered across Nirn, changing as they adapted to different environments.

Eventually, these two groups went to war. The exact reasons are lost, but some sources claim Lorkhan (or Shor) led the Wanderers in rebellion against Auri-El and the Old Ehlnofey.

The war shattered the geography of Nirn itself.

Before the war, Nirn was one large continent with interconnected seas. After the war, it was broken into separate landmasses:

• Tamriel (where the games take place)
• Atmora (the frozen northern continent)
• Yokuda (which later sank)
• Akavir (the mysterious eastern continent)

Most of the Hist lands were destroyed, with only Black Marsh remaining. The Old Ehlnofey homeland was ruined.

The descendants of both groups would eventually become the various races of Tamriel—the Old Ehlnofey becoming the mer (elves), and the Wanderers becoming the races of men.

Convention: The End of the Dawn

After Magnus departed and reality began to congeal, the surviving gods met at the Adamantine Tower.

This meeting is called Convention, and it marks the single most important moment in the Dawn Era. The gods gathered at this Ur-Tower—the first permanent structure in reality, an “unassailable spike” that would serve as one of the axes of creation itself—to decide what to do about Lorkhan and how to proceed with Mundus.

At Convention, they set the physical, temporal, spiritual, and magical laws that would govern Nirn. Time would flow linearly from this point forward.

The laws of nature would remain fixed. Cause would precede effect.

Lorkhan was condemned. Whether he died in battle, was executed, or accepted exile voluntarily depends on which tradition you follow.

His Heart was cast from the Tower (as described earlier). Some say his body was split in two, creating Nirn’s moons, Masser and Secunda.

With the laws of reality established and Lorkhan dealt with, the Dawn Era ended. Time began flowing in a comprehensible, linear fashion.

The Merethic Era—the age of mortal history—could begin.

The Adamantine Tower still exists. You can visit it in Daggerfall—it’s on the Isle of Balfiera in the Iliac Bay, though the game calls it the Direnni Tower.

It remains the oldest structure in Tamriel, predating mortal civilization by incomprehensible spans of non-time.

The Birth of New Races and Cultures

The Sundering of Aldmeris and the Ehlnofey

After Convention, the descendants of the Old Ehlnofey began to diverge.

Aldmeris—whether it was a physical place or a cultural memory—represented the unified elven culture that remembered the Dawn and mourned the loss of divinity. But mortal life creates change, and the elves began to disagree about fundamental questions.

Some Aldmer remained orthodox, trying to preserve ancient traditions. These became the Altmer (High Elves) of the Summerset Isles, who still consider themselves the most direct descendants of the Aedra.

Others adapted or rebelled:

• The Chimer (Changed Ones) followed prophets who taught that loss and struggle had value
• The Bosmer (Green or Forest Ones) made a pact with Y’ffre and adapted to the forests of Valenwood
• The Dwemer (Deep Ones) rejected divine authority entirely and pursued logic and reason

Meanwhile, the Wanderers scattered across northern lands like Atmora and eventually migrated to Tamriel, becoming the Nords and other human groups.

These migrations and cultural splits are called the Sundering of Aldmeris—the breaking of the original elven unity.

The Sundering happened gradually over the late Dawn Era and into the Merethic Era. Some sources place certain events in one era, some in another, because the timeline is fuzzy near the Dawn’s end.

The First Secret and the Khajiit

The Khajiit origin story is unique among Tamriel’s races.

According to their legends, Azurah (their version of the Daedric Prince Azura) took pity on the “forest people” who were suffering.

She spoke the First Secret to Nirn’s moons, Masser and Secunda, causing them to part.

In the space between the moons, Azurah transformed these forest people into Khajiit. The First Secret bound them to the Lunar Lattice—the pattern of the moons determines what form of Khajiit is born.

This is why there are over a dozen different Khajiit body types, from housecat-sized Alfiq to mammoth-sized Senche-raht.

But Y’ffer (the Khajiiti aspect of Y’ffre, the god of nature) overheard the First Secret. Angry at Azurah’s interference, he used it to transform his own group of forest people into the Bosmer.

This creates tension in the lore. If both Khajiit and Bosmer descended from the same “forest people,” and both transformations happened during or near the Dawn Era, which race is older?

The answer depends on who you ask. The Khajiit and Bosmer have been arguing about this for thousands of years.

What’s clear is that the Khajiit see their relationship to the moons as fundamental to their existence. When the moons disappeared for two years during the Void Nights (4E 98-100), it caused a massive crisis for all Khajiit.

The Velothi Schism and the Birth of the Orcs

One of the last events of the Dawn Era was the Velothi dissident movement—though some sources place it in the early Merethic Era instead.

Veloth was a prophet who rejected what he saw as the corrupt, decadent culture of the Summerset Isles. He taught that the Daedra—specifically Boethiah, Azura, and Mephala—offered a better path than the Aedra.

He preached that struggle, change, and transformation had value. Hardship wasn’t something to avoid; it was the path to enlightenment.

Thousands of Aldmer followed Veloth, becoming the Chimer (the Changed Ones). They left Summerset and began migrating east toward what would eventually be called Morrowind.

Trinimac, the greatest Aedric champion, tried to stop this exodus. He confronted the Velothi and attempted to convince them to return.

Then Boethiah intervened.

Boethiah, the Daedric Prince of plots and deceit, consumed Trinimac. The god was eaten, broken down, and transformed.

When he emerged, he was no longer Trinimac—he had become Malacath, the Daedric Prince of the spurned and ostracized.

Trinimac’s followers were also transformed. They became the Orsimer—the Orcs.

Rejected by Aldmeri society and twisted in form, they left Summerset for the mountains of Wrothgar, where the original 13 Orc clans established their strongholds.

This story explains why Orcs in Elder Scrolls are technically elves (mer) and why Malacath is worshipped as their patron deity.

Was Trinimac eaten by Boethiah? Was it a metaphorical consumption of his essence? Did he choose transformation or was it forced?

All of these happened at once because contradictions could coexist during the Dawn.

What we know for certain:

• Trinimac was the strongest warrior of the Aedra and champion of Auri-El
• He opposed the Velothi exodus and Daedra worship
• Boethiah confronted him and “consumed” him
• He emerged as Malacath, fundamentally changed
• His followers became the Orsimer (Orcs)

Some versions say Boethiah wore Trinimac like a suit, speaking with his voice to trick his followers. Others say Boethiah ate him and excreted what remained.

Still others suggest Trinimac chose transformation as penance or enlightenment.

The Orcs themselves have complex feelings about this origin. They know they were “cursed” to their current form, yet they also take pride in Malacath’s strength and the path of hardship he represents.

They’re both victims of transformation and proud inheritors of a powerful legacy.

This happened during the final days of the Dawn Era, making it one of the last impossible-to-fully-comprehend events before linear time took hold.

Other Defining Events of the Dawn

The Birth of Madness

Sheogorath, the Daedric Prince of Madness, has at least two origin stories from the Dawn Era.

The first claims that when Lorkhan’s Heart was removed, rain fell on Nirn for the first time. From this moment—the birth of loss and separation—Sheogorath came into being.

Madness was born from the fundamental breaking of creation’s architect.

The second origin is darker. The other Daedric Princes grew afraid of Jyggalag, the Prince of Order.

He was too powerful, his realm too perfect, his logic too absolute. In a rare moment of cooperation, the Princes cursed Jyggalag, transforming him into his own opposite: Sheogorath, Prince of Madness.

These stories can both be true in Dawn Era logic. Sheogorath may have always existed as a concept (madness arising from Lorkhan’s destruction) while also being created through the curse (Jyggalag’s transformation).

Time didn’t work right. Contradictions were fine.

The curse on Jyggalag included a cycle: At the end of every era, he could briefly return to his true form, only to be forced back into Sheogorath. This cycle finally broke during the events of the Shivering Isles expansion for Oblivion.

Creation of Divine and Daedric Artifacts

Several legendary items trace their creation to the Dawn Era:

• Cyrodiil runestones are believed by some scholars to be Lorkhan’s birthing gifts to mortals—magical markers left behind as he shaped Mundus. Their exact purpose remains debated.
• Sigil stones—those red crystals you collect from Oblivion gates in the fourth game—are actually “pre-Mythic quasi-crystalline morpholiths” formed during the Dawn. The raw morpholiths existed before Mundus did. Daedric Princes later learned to inscribe them with sigils, transforming them into the extra-dimensional artifacts we see in-game.
• Auri-El’s Bow and Shield were created when Anuiel granted them to Auri-El after Anu refused to take the Aedra back. These weapons helped Auri-El defend the Aldmer from “Lorkhan’s hordes of men” during the Dawn’s final conflicts.
• The Skyforge in Whiterun was created during the Dawn Era as part of “some divine effort to render a paradise on Mundus.” It remains one of the oldest and most powerful forges in Tamriel, capable of creating superior weapons even in the Fourth Era.
• Aldmeri waystones were developed late in the Dawn—magical devices that always point in specific directions (northwest, northeast, or south). These were later used during the Merethic Era to help expeditions search for the lost homeland of Aldmeris.

The Dwemer Begin Their Studies

The Dwemer (Deep Elves or Dwarves) took a unique path during the Dawn Era’s final days.

While other elves worshipped the Aedra or turned to the Daedra, the Dwemer pursued what they called tonal architecture—the study of reality’s fundamental frequencies. They began examining how the sacred becomes profane and vice versa.

Specifically, they studied the Ehlnofey themselves. How did divine beings become mortal? What was the process?

More importantly, could it be reversed?

This research would continue for thousands of years, eventually leading the Dwemer to discover Lorkhan’s Heart beneath Red Mountain. Their attempts to harness its power to achieve divinity resulted in the entire Dwemer race disappearing in an instant during the First Era—one of Tamriel’s greatest unsolved mysteries.

But it all started during the Dawn, when the Dwemer rejected worship in favor of understanding. They saw the gods not as beings to serve but as phenomena to study and potentially replicate through technology and logic.

Primordial Trolls and Ammonites

Not all Dawn Era creation was grand and divine. Lesser life forms also emerged during this period.

Ancient trolls roamed Nirn since the dawn of time, according to legends. These primordial trolls were far more powerful than the regenerating brutes you fight in Skyrim.

What happened to these ancient versions—whether they died out, diminished, or evolved into modern trolls—remains unknown.

Ammonites swam in the Eltheric Ocean before the Merethic Era even began. Naturalists know them only from their magical shells, which predate even the oldest elven ruins.

These spiral shells occasionally wash up on shores and are prized by collectors for their residual magical properties.

These creatures represent the baseline fauna of Nirn—life that emerged naturally from the formation of Mundus rather than being directly created by gods or descending from the Ehlnofey. They’re reminders that while divine drama shaped the Dawn Era’s major events, normal biological processes were also beginning.

The fossil record in Elder Scrolls supports this. Some of the creatures you encounter in Tamriel trace their lineages back to these primordial forms, unchanged except through natural adaptation over millions of years.

---

The Dawn Era set everything in motion. The conflicts between Anu and Padomay created the gods. The gods created Mundus. That creation trapped and transformed them.

Their mortal descendants became the races of Tamriel. The choices made during this impossible time—Lorkhan’s trick, Magnus’s departure, the Convention at Adamantine Tower—still affect events in the Fourth Era.

When you play Skyrim and find Lorkhan’s Heart at Red Mountain, you’re dealing with Dawn Era consequences. When you encounter Daedric Princes in Oblivion, you’re meeting beings who chose not to create Mundus.

When you see the sun and stars, you’re looking at the holes Magnus and the Magna Ge tore in reality as they fled.

The Dawn Era didn’t just create the world. It created the fundamental conflict at the heart of Elder Scrolls lore: Was Lorkhan’s trick a curse that trapped divine beings in mortality, or a gift that gave them the chance to transcend their original limitations?

Elves generally say curse. Humans generally say gift.

The answer shapes how every culture views their place in creation.