The lore is definitely my favorite part of Morrowind. It's never clear who's telling the truth or what the truth is, and the same event - like Nerevar's murder - has something like four different accounts.
In addition, the in-game lore you can read is anything but traditional fantasy fare. To explain the thread title:
[...]So Vivec, who had a grain of Ayem's mercy, set about to teach Molag Bal in the ways of belly-magic. They took their spears out and compared them. Vivec bit new words onto the King of Rape's so that it might give more than ruin to the uninitiated. This has since become a forbidden ritual, though people still practice it in secret.
Here is why: The Velothi and demons and monsters that were watching all took out their own spears. There was much biting and the earth became wet. And this was the last laugh of Molag Bal:
'Watch as the earth shall crack, heavy with so much power, that should have been forever unalike!'
Then that stretch of badlands that had been the site of the marriage fragmented and threw fire. And a race that is no more but that was terrible at the time to behold came forth. Born of the biters, that is all they did, and they ran amok across the lands of Veloth and even to the shores of Red Mountain.
But Vivec made of his spear a more terrible thing, from a secret he had bitten off from the King of Rape. And so he sent Molag Bal tumbling into the crack of the biters and swore forever that he would not deem the King beautiful ever again.
Vivec wept as he slew all those around him with his terrible new spear. He named it MUATRA, which is Milk Taker, and even the Chimeri mystics knew his fury. Anyone struck by Vivec at this time turned barren and withered into bone shapes. The path of bones became a sentence for the stars to read, and the heavens have never known children since. Vivec hunted down the biters one by one, and all their progeny, and he killed them all by means of the Nine Apertures, and the wise still hide theirs from Muatra.
I realize now that this explanation makes even less sense than the title.
EDIT: here's another great one. Be warned: this is a little Dan Brown-y.
In the
29th sermon of the 36 Lessons of Vivec, there is a list of each sermon, its title, and a number:
The Scripture of the Numbers:
1. The Dragon Break, or the Tower. 1
2. The Enantiomorph. 68
3. The Invisible Gate, ALMSIVI. 112
4. The Corners of House of Troubles. 242
5. The Corners of the World. 100
This goes on for all 36 lessons. Now, if you find the word that corresponds to each number in each sermon, i.e. the first word in Sermon 1, the 68th in Sermon 2, the 112th in Sermon 3, etc., and string them together into one phrase, you get this:
"He was not born a god. His destiny did not lead him to this crime. He chose this path of his own free will. He stole the godhood and murdered the Hortator. Vivec wrote this."
In addition, the first letter of each paragraph in
Sermon 36 spells "FOUL MURDER".
