The PantheonThe Imperial Pantheon of the Nine Divines consists of the most important religious order in Tamriel. The religion combines the eight other Aedra with the apotheosized form of the founder of the third empire, Tiber Septim (Talos), the ninth Divine. There are six gods and three goddesses. In Cyrodiil, there is a chapel in each major city venerating the divines. There are also wayshrines along the roads that are devoted to the Nine Divines. These Aedra also appear in various combinations in the pantheons of other cultures.
Akatosh - The Dragon God of time and chief God of the pantheon
Arkay - The God of the cycle of life, death and all mortals
Dibella - The Goddess of beauty
Julianos - The God of wisdom and logic
Kynareth - The Goddess of air
Mara - The Goddess of love
Stendarr - The God of mercy and justice
Talos - The hero God of Mankind and God of might and honour
Zenithar - The God of work and commerce
HistoryThe origins of the Aedra are the subject of many, often conflicting, creation myths across the entire planet. Most scholars, however, accept a variation of the Altmer creation myth as likely being the closest to the truth, after compensating for the inherent prejudice against Lorkhan and mortality in general. According to the prevalent view, the creation of the Aedra, and thus Nirn, progresses as follows:
Before the universe existed there was Anu, the unchanging stasis. Into this stasis came Padomay (Commonly called Sithis), the agent of change, and thus the universe was created. From the chaos of creation came the et'Ada, formless spiritual beings, to populate the universe.
All creation myths across Tamriel include the chief Aedra Akatosh in some form, as the first of the et'Ada to form an identity, bringing with him the concept of time. The existence of time aided other et'Ada in forming their own identities, and soon there were hundreds of separate, individual beings. The other common element in all creation myths is the presence of the "trickster", usually called Lorkhan. After some indeterminate amount of time, Lorkhan approached his peers with a plan to create a new plane of existence, and to create and populate it with lesser beings of their own design, which he described as being the "soul of the universe". He was able to convince a group of his fellow spirits to help with his plan, while others suspected a trick or were simply uninterested and were kept out.
Lorkhan's plan was executed, resulting in the creation of the mortal planet of Nirn. During this process, it became clear to the Aedra that their own divine energy was being drained to help infuse life into the world. Some of the Aedra managed to escape the mortal world, most notably Magnus, who was initially the chief architect of Lorkhan's plan, but quickly became disgusted with his creation and fled. Since Magnus is not bound by the rules of Nirn, neither is the magic which flows from him, allowing it to violate the natural laws and reach across the planes of existence.
Other Aedra drew back from creation in time to maintain some degree of their divinity, leaving them bound to Nirn, but still powerful relative to the mortals. A few Aedra continued to sacrifice their divinity to finish the creation of the planet, leaving them weakened and unable to interact directly with the world. The last of these was Lorkhan himself, who is usually said to have died, with his body becoming the physical mass of Nirn.
One last group of Aedra continued to weaken, even after they had determined what was happening. These beings realized that, in order to maintain their existence, it would be necessary to procreate and bring forth future generations. Each generation lost more and more of the divinity of their ancestors until finally, they had weakened to the point of being mortal beings. These beings were called the Ehlnofey, the "bones of the earth", and were the first inhabitants of Nirn.
Eventually, the Ehlnofey would diverge into the various races of Man and Mer, who would evolve quite different interpretations of the creation myth. Men believed that they were created from nothing by the et'Ada responsible for Nirn, and thus considered their existence a gift and Lorkhan a hero. The Mer believed themselves to be the literal descendants of those beings, robbed of their immortality by Lorkhan, whom they reviled as a trickster. Since the Mer believed these beings to be their true ancestors, they collectively named them Aedra, and any spirit that remained uninvolved in the mortal creation was termed Daedra. Despite this core difference of opinion, both men and Mer, for the most part, worship the Aedra as divine beings, and consider the Daedra to be evil, demonic creatures.
Subject: The Nine Divines 
