Traditionally, the word "Ruddy" can be used to describe a complexion with a healthy reddish glow, but it is also sometimes used as a euphemism for the word "bloody." In this case, I'd suggest it's a bit of both, as you'll see later.
We've covered the concept of Kalpas in previous Sermons, and since there are no other legends that describe the domination of Nirn by the Dreughs in the earliest years, it's likely that this is also a reference to one of the previous Kalpas.
Was Tamriel all water? Water (at least in this Kalpa) was created during the Ehlnofey wars, when lots of death created the oceans, as water = memory. But that may not have been the case for Lyg, Tamriel's Kalpic predecessor.
The Mysterium Xarxes talks about Lyg's nineteen and nine oceans, so it's possible that the Dreughs ruled those oceans during the Lyg Kalpa.
Very similar to Sep, who sheds his World Skin, which is the myth behind the Redguard association of Memory. It's been established by a Daedra worshipper in Elder Scrolls Online (and a lot of corroborating evidence) that Memory and Water are at least related.
The original concept for Daedric Armor, back in the pre-production stages of Morrowind, was that parts of gigantic dead Daedra would be worn by Dunmer into battle, like armor - big chunks of bodies like bug shells that would eventually drive the wearer insane. This is a little piece of that idea left over.
There is a difference between pointless, self-indulgent violence, and violence with purpose and meaning. Almalexia may be a Warrior, but she kills to protect those she loves. A mindless brute will kill for any reason, or no reason at all. But a true warrior fights according to his Dharma, his destiny, and acts without ego or or desire. Part of the philosophy of violence that is suggested to Arjuna by Krishna, his divine charioteer and spiritual counselor (to say the least) in the Bhagavad Gita.
Being described as the "least complex" does not mean the least powerful, however. With simplicity often comes focus, and incredible power.
Many Gods are only powerful because of the land in which they are worshipped. A God of the Forest would have little to no use in the desert. Similarly, the Ruddy Man is only powerful because of the Geography in which he was born. Because there are people to fight, wars to be waged, fear to be wrought, the Ruddy Man has relevance. A violent mindless killer is only relevant if he is in the same room as you. Otherwise, he is not a threat.
Of course, the "child" here is the Ruddy Man, but can you imagine what the child that put the armor on is going through? That poor kid, getting smashed to smithereens by Gods.
As a result, she was not available to greet Vivec personally. It's possible that "Self-Incubation" might mean that the Queen was incubating new children within herself.
Molting is one of the few ways for creatures that possess exoskeletons to grow in size. They shed the outer hard layer of their shell and replace it with a new layer that expands and hardens again.
From Sermon 23, the Sword Not Held is also called the Symbolic Collage because it slices up things into a collage of symbols that no longer retain their original meaning. It has also been suggested that it is related to the Jungian concept of Active Imagination, and the interaction between the conscious and the subconscious.
This is the Dreughs. Either because of their dominance of previous Kalpas, or because Dreughs, like Altmer, are lying little shits.
The Number Room isn't mentioned anywhere else, I think, so there's very little to go on. I strongly suspect it's a place where "loyal mystics" contemplate the mathematics of the universe, something that has also been considered heavily by other cultures in the Elder Scrolls universe. As we'll see in Sermon 29, numbers can carry a great deal of meaning to these mystics.
Why would a philosopher require armor? Honestly there's a lot of ways to think about this, the imagination strains under the load of ideas. But in Sermon 11 we learned that though the Ruling King may be armored from head to toe in the brilliance of holy flame, it will be of no use when meeting God. Philosophers often consider the existence of higher powers, and I suggest that their armor is just as useless, in the end.
On the other hand, let's consider what the Philosopher's Armor looks like. It's a hard resin case that completely covers the mystic inside, cutting them off from sight, sound, taste, and feeling. This level of sensory deprivation has been used in alternative medicine and psychology experiments because it often causes the brain to hallucinate in order to restore sensation. Proponents of this technique sometimes claim that it can produce illuminating visions that can contain great wisdom, similar to what is sometimes experienced by shamans through the use of hallucinogenics.
So the mystics of the Number Room have isolated one of their own in a sensory deprivation chamber made from the carcass of a Daedra which historically drives people insane. Surely this is done to invoke some kind of altered view on reality, but why? To what end?
Apparently this manipulation of numbers is what they do in the Number Room. Are they useless for everyone? Or just these Mystics? Hard to say, I'm afraid. But is it possible that the numbers between 12 and 13 were made useless by this magical praxis? Sermon 29 tells us that the number 12 and 13 represent The Heavens and The Serpent, respectively, but I can't find any truly firm connections to any other corroborating evidence. So I'm just left to wild speculation, which I won't subject you to. But I do encourage you to speculate yourself.
Most noteworthy in this Sermon is the brief but informative meditation on the nature of the Ruddy Man, and how it fails to be anything other than uselessly brutish. The Bhagavad Gita is my personal reference for this kind of philosophy, mostly because of the granularity with which it approaches the subject. In terms that are strikingly similar to Crowley's definition of Love under Will, it is explained via Lord Krishna to Arjuna (a relationship conspicuously similar to Vivec and Nerevar's) that a true warrior understands their duty in respect to their "role" as a warrior in society, and acts without any attachment to the results of their actions. They fight because it is their duty and their destiny, not for the desire of victory, empire, glory, or revenge. Nor should they shrink from the fear of death or defeat. The "Detached Action" is performed simply because it is the right thing to do. We can infer, therefore, that the Ruddy Man fights out of a lust for violence and glory, personal gain, or fear of punishment. This is the opposite of Detached Action, or "Attached Action."
This does make a lot of sense when we consider that the Ruddy Man was spawned from an interaction with Molag Bal. The King of Rape's considerable history of sexual assault shows a clear pattern of violence that aligns well with Attached Action, since it is connected so strongly with the Ego. Molag Bal likely feels that his desires, power, and needs are the most important things in the universe.
Since the person performing Attached Action willingly degrades their own spirituality, sexual assault can be considered the ultimate destruction of empathy, both through the objectification of the victim, and the willing destruction of the actor. So why would Vivec willingly subject hirself to this treatment?
Lesson Twenty-eight
Synopsis | Narration
Then Vivec left Seht to look after the dome-head demon and went back to the space that was not a space. From the Provisional House he looked into the middle world to find the fifth monster, called The Ruddy Man.
When the dreughs ruled the world, the Daedroth Prince Molag Bal had been their chief. He took a different shape then, spiny and armored and made for the sea. Vivec, in giving birth to the many spawn of his marriage, had dropped an old image of Molag Bal into the world: a dead carapace of memory. It would not have been a monster if a Velothi child had not wanted to impress his village by wearing it.
The Ruddy Man, of the eight monsters, was the least complicated. He made those who wore him into mighty killers and nothing more. He existed in the physical. Only geography makes him special.
When Vivec found him near the boy's village, anon Gnisis, there was a violent clash of arms and an upheaval of the earth. Their battle created the West Gash. Wanderers that still go there hear still the sounds of it: sword across the crust, the grunt of God, the snapping of his monster child's splintered legs.
After his victory, Vivec took the shell of The Ruddy Man to the dreughs that had modified his mother. The Queen of Dreughs, whose name is not easy to spell, was in a period of self-incubation. Her wardens took the gift from Vivec and promised to guard it from the surface world. This is the first account of dreughs being liars.
In ten years, The Ruddy Man appeared again, this time near Tear, worn by a wayward shaman who followed the House of Troubles. Instead of guarding it, the dreughs had imbued the living armor with mythic inflexibility. It molted soon after skill-draping the shaman and stretched his bones to the five corners.
When Vivec met the monster in battle again he saw the remains of three villages dripping from its feet. He took on his giant form and slew The Ruddy Man by way of the Symbolic Collage. Since he no longer trusted the Altmer of the sea, Vivec gave the carapace of the monster to the devout and loyal mystics of the Number Room. He told them:
'You may make of The Ruddy Man a philosopher's armor.'
The mystics began by wrapping one of their sages in the shells, a series of flourishes by two supra numerates, one hormonally tall and the other just under his arms. They ran around the carapace and through each other, applying holy resin drawn from the carcasses of the now-useless numbers between twelve and thirteen. Golden straws were quickly stuck through the mythic epidermal so the sage could breathe. After the ceremonial etchings were drawn into hardening resin, long lists of dead names and equations whose solutions were to be found in the mouth of the Chimer inside, there came the illuminations, inscribed by the bright, terrible fingernail of Vivec. From the nail's tip flowed a searing liquid, filling the grooves of the ceremonial etchings. They bled out to form veined patterns about the sage-shell that theologians would decipher forever after.
The ending of the words is ALMSIVI.
This sermon tells the story of the death of another one of Vivec's children, but this one is very similar to a previous incarnation of the demonic "Father," Molag Bal. We learn a few things about a previous Kalpa, and are introduced to a new group of mystics.
In Morrowind, Sermon 28 grants a bonus to the Light Armor skill. It is worth 200 Septims and weighs 3 units. A copy can be found in the house of Anja Swift-Sailer, in Dagon Fel. Another is in the Heran Ancestral Tomb. The Archcannon has one in his office in Mournhold Temple, and of course another is found in the High Fane.
Sermon 29 names this Sermon "The Drowned Lamp." Its number is 8, which references the word "the."