Daedra Worship: The Ayleids

***Daedra Worship: The Ayleids*** is a scholarly book written by Phrastus, an Imperial scholar of the Second Era. The book describes the emergence of daedric worship among the Ayleid race of Cyrodiil, forming their religion of Alvarlism, detailing what shape it took in the centuries before the race's eventual fall in the Alessian Slave Rebellion.

The accuracy of the claims made in the book of the Ayleids' cruelty are questionable given the heavy historical revisionism of the Alessian Empire after their victory in the Alessian Slave Rebellion. Much of the Ayleids' genuine culture was distorted or destroyed so as to justify their usurpation of the Ayleid peoples' homeland.

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he reasons why the daedra are reviled and their worship forbidden among all the civilised races of Tamriel are well understood, and as this series of papers will show, are grounded in historical events. The opinions of the so-called academic who styles herself "Lady Cinnabar" notwithstanding, the evidence supporting my assertions is incontrovertible and generally accepted by all accredited scholars of antiquity.

The Aldmer, who'd been first to begin organised worship of the aedra, were also the first to venerate the Daedra Lords. This probably began on a small scale among the Ayleids, those elves who left the Summerset Archipelago to create splinter cultures in central and southwest Tamriel—in some cases specifically to evade the strictures of Aldmeri regulation, which forbade (among many other things) the worship of daedra.

As Ayleid culture flourished, drawing ever further from the the archipelago, in the last millennium of the Merethic Era daedric worship took hold and spread among the Heartland high elves, developing the Ayleids' new religion: Alvarlism. In their new faith, aedra were still widely revered, with probably a majority of the Ayleids continuing to pay them homage, but sects devoted to the various Daedric Princes sprang up across Cyrodiil, tolerated and eventually celebrated. Unlike the Chimer, the Ayleids made no distinction between "good and bad" daedra—indeed, even some of the more heinous Princes received mass veneration, especially when their worship was adopted and endorsed by Ayleid kings and aristocrats.

Widespread daedra worship among the Heartland elves was particularly ill news for the tribes of Nedic humans who were then arriving in Tamriel. The Ayleids enslaved the immigrant tribes of Men, at first occasionally but then systematically, and the Nedic people found themselves subject to masters who, in many cases, worshipped the Princes—including those who encouraged slavery, domination, and cruelty. Under the Ayleids, the human thralls found themselves the subjects of such daedra-inspired "arts" as flesh-sculpture and gut-gardening. In fact, the revulsion for daedra-worship that pervades most human cultures in Tamriel probably originated in this period.

The Alessian slave revolt of the early First Era was largely fuelled by desperate rage against the Ayleids' daedra-inspired cruelty. The Ayleid kings who aligned themselves with the rebellion were largely aedra-worshipers, which in part explains why, once the Ayleids were overthrown, Empress Alessia incorporated the leading elven aedra into the First Empire's worship of the Eight Divines. Her new Empire of Cyrodiil outlawed the worship of the Daedric Princes, and daedra-worshipping Ayleids were exterminated wherever they were found.

Thus, by the middle of the First Era, large-scale daedra-worship was extinct in central Tamriel, surviving only among the Chimer in the northeast of the continent, and among the orcs (ever a pariah people) who worshiped Malacath (or Mauloch) as their god-ancestor. Elsewhere, among Men, Mer, and Beast-Peoples, daedra-worship survived only at the level of cults which were more-or-less forbidden. Lady Cinnabar's assertions to the contrary are so much horsewash.