For me, I assumed the winds blew southward. Also, do not discount how much the wind can carry. When Mt. St. Helen erupted, ash was blown quite far east, and there have been pacific volcanos that also erupted to spread ash all the way to the US. I'd not think it too far fetched that the ash from Red Mountain was carried quite a distance to the Mainland, but I'd also say the impact of that ash probably wouldn't have immediately affected the dunmer as bad. Though, in the lands held by Dres, there is a likely scenario where the land was partially poisoned, due to the ash, which further weakened them. In addition, considering how the dunmer were able to cross the sea and land on Solsthiem, I'd say the north was probably not as badly affected, and the winds were not blowing north. At most some boiling water and aftershock affected them. The southern areas, not good. I can easily see Mournhold receiving a short end of the stick from the eruptions

As for Vvardenfel itself, I'd also say the poisonous gas was more dangerous than what you perpetuate. Considering how destructive a volcano's explosion can be, especially when it's coming from the largest mountain in all of Tamriel, I'd say a hell of a lot of damage was done to Vvardenfel as a whole, and not that slow moving. The impact of the MoT coupled with a rauaging explosion would at first crumble a lot of buildings, in my view. Following the immediate destruction, any towns situated in the ashlands would be burned to a crisp. Following that, the surrounding coastal areas and plains.

The tidal waves also probably hurt any surrounding coastal towns and cities, especially those on the mainland south, south east, and east of Vivec.

I hope we find out in the next game what happened to some of the characters such as Helseth, Barenziah, and Divayth Fyr. As I mentioned in the past, I'm not so sure that Fyr survived, assuming he was home that day. The fact that pockets of slavery still exist forty years later (as seen in "The Infernal City") might be a sign that Helseth and his attempted modernizations were swept away, though personally I hope both he and his mother survived.

I agree that the Dunmer are not close to extinction. My guess is that they've lost up to three-quarters of their population, but their story isn't over. It wouldn't surprise me if in later decades they start to resettle Morrowind even though they can't resettle the barren land that used to be Vivec City.

I've always liked Barenziah and I would be terribly saddened in the event of her death.

Meh, even if she died, she was very old for a dunmer.

I'm not much of a lore-buff, and I'm not reading the book -- but I think the bolded portion is kinda important. Teleportation magic is widely available in Morrowind, or at the very least Vvardenfell.

Something like the MoT crashing is gonna cause a massive Earthquake. And it isn't like the people living on Vvardenfell were ignorant of the MoT and what it represented -- Vivec had explicitly stated its purpose and I can't imagine that there weren't sermons on love and the like in the Temple. Given that the ten years leading up to Oblivion seem to have been pretty rough on the Temple and the years afterwards likely were too, I have a hard time imagining that a lot of people on Vvardenfell didn't have some sort of a contingency plan. The faithful flock to Vivec to try and keep the MoT in the air and everybody else, errr, hopes they are loving hard enough.

Unless, of course, there is no known connection between meteor strikes, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and tidal waves in Tamriel. It is possible that everybody just thought Vivec would get destroyed and nothing else.

I'd recommend reading Keyes' novel someday, though not at full price. Maybe send for it from interlibrary loan.
It seems to me that by the time of "Oblivion", teleportation is rare and tightly controlled. I get the feeling that the only people even able to use teleportation from the Mage Guilds are mages and a few adventurers; the ordinary Dunmer probably don't have the training or access to teleportation. It's also mentioned in the game "Oblivion" that levitation was banned, though as someone pointed out, that probably still doesn't stop the Telvanni. (Of course, the real reason for the loss of teleportation and levitation was gameplay changes between the release of "Morrowind" and the creation of "Oblivion".)

From reading the novel, I got the feeling that Vuhon's project was kept almost a secret except for the mages and workers who constructed it. I'll have to go back and reread it, but it felt as if the ordinary Dunmer didn't know about the Ingenium until it was too late. I doubt that the fact it was powered by lives was widely known either. The Dunmer were probably blindsided by the moon's fall and the eruption. They might have heard sermons on the Ministry over the years, but took it for granted that the moon would always be suspended there. Just my interpretation of events, though.

nice way o support yoir thesis, but i still disagree. The 'volcano' of red mountain is actually just the peak of the VOLCANO the is Vvardenfell. the entire island erupted.

1) Given that we can teleport pretty much anywhere outdoors in Oblivion, I'm not so sure that teleportation is rare. On the frontier, you can get away with jumping around anywhere. But in civilized areas, it makes sense to keep the locations somewhat more restricted but supported by a much larger infrastructure. I mean, look at the roads in Cyrodiil. They are horribly designed. And nobody wanders around between cities unless they are an outlaw of some sort. The most reasonable conclusion from this is that people teleport over any reasonably long distance, hence "fast travel". You can argue that time passes, sure. But when I walk between areas I routinely get attacked by bandits and the like. I don't when I fast travel, which suggests that I am using a means of movement distinct from just walking.

2) There would have been a delay between the MoT hitting and the volcano erupting, right? If Tamriel functions anything like the real world (and it may not), you'd expect the MoT hitting Vivec to cause a massive earthquake first and then the eruption. I felt the earth shake when they blew up a building two miles from my house. And I have to imagine the MoT is gonna cause a bigger blast than that. Plenty of time to say, "Oh crap! Time to teleport out of here!" And since the quarantine is over, no need for them to stay on Vvardenfell either. I'm sure there were a lot of panicky Almsivi and Divine Interventions that ended badly since they didn't teleport the person in question far enough away from the blast. But that scroll on your shelf for your vacation to Valenwood? Probably a good time to use that.

I think too many people are basing their ideas on gameplay, which is folly at best. Also, Fast Travel in Oblivion was the person walking, it's just that the player doesn't have to watch the process of going from A to B. And you also do wittness people walk from A to B. The Countess from Leyawin take a journey from Leyawin to Chorrl every so often. Really guys, don't base anything from gameplay as lore, or else you end up with silliness like how fighters in Morrowind can't fight, because they miss a lot, while everyone in Cyrodiil is a talented fighter and mage.

Also, what the hell are almsivi spells going to do? Take you to the nearest temple/shrine near you? You are not going to escape with those. There's just too many of you are basing way too much on game mechanics and gameplay to explain something most citizens do not engage in. Maybe a vendor or mage would have access to quick travel like that, but they don't make up 90% of the population people here seem to assume.

Here is how I saw the destruction of Vvardenfel: http://img62.imageshack.us/img62/7466/mapmorrenormous.jpg
If I am accurate, the areas that circle Vivec have been vaporized by the initial fall of the moon. Next, I'd foresee that Red Mountain blew up approximately an hour after the initial strike, causing the surrounding areas to be covered in lava (remember, it is the largest mountain in all of Tamriel, though poorly represented in MW). During the eruption, ash and poisonous gases are blown out, covering the areas in the green circle to be covered in ash and likely hit with toxic gas.

Some time after the initial eruption, I'd suspect the lava to flow south and north, wrecking a big portion of the Sheograd region, some of the southern Telvanni areas, and anything south of Red Mountain.

If of this occurs the way I have shown and explained, a good 80%, at best, of the population was wiped out before there could have been anyway for anyone to be transported out. Also, I highly expect the seas to be very unsettling, due to the initial fall of the moon, followed with earthquakes or aftershock around large portion of the southern to middle parts of the island.

If we can go by the http://www.imperial-library.info/obscure_text/5th_era_loveletter.shtml at all, it's heavily implied that many aspects of Velothi culture survived the cataclysm. Dunmer retain their House system, although with new Houses, and still follow the principles of Ancestor Worship with elements of Tribunal and Good Daedra thrown in.

The Cool Dunmer are not erased. They're far too tough and determined to be fully wiped out in such a way. They simply underwent a Renaissance of sorts. Heaven through Violence. A necessary reform to reteach them the basic principle of Love.

Shouldn't the red circle be centered around the Ministry?
[/nitpicky]

It landed in Vivec...and I couldn't get the circle to do what I wanted.

Judging by the apparent trajectory, it was aimed directly at the Temple canton or the palace of Vivec, so it likely landed somewhere around in there.

I dunno man. I figure we have to go by what the games give us. These worlds don't actually exist, and the single biggest window we have into them is gameplay. So it makes sense to me that gameplay ought be the single largest resource we draw upon when explaining the world.

Trust me, it isn't. Game mechanics are only to give a taste of it's reality. If you really want to think game mechanics = TES lore, then you're going to run into the issues like the Iliac Bay area is the largest place in Tamriel, Morrowind is actually has more land than Cyrodiil, people in Morrowind cannot fight and have to chant their spells, and so on. The only time Beth makes game mechanics lore is if they do silly tongue in cheek things like the levitation ban of 421.

And the best windows of lore are the quests and books, not the visual representation.

And of course you'd have to deal with the fact that the capital of the Empire has less than 1,000 people living in it and is like 20 square miles. Cyrodill is actually many hundreds of miles wide and has a population in the millions.

Billions, even.

According to what? Propaganda that may not be trustworthy?

Do you trust what is written or what you see?

Most people trusts what makes sense, and Cyrodiil wouldn't make sense if we took the number of npc's in oblivion as its total population. Also, everything considered, do you really think Cyrodiil is only 16-18 square miles, with 1,000 people? Rhode Island is bigger than that, and has more people.

Please tell me you're having us on.

I believe it is said in Redguard that Stros M'kai has 5,000 people or so when Tiber was taking over the world. This is a relatively unpopulated area, and so if we compare it to, say, the Outer banks of North Carolina, then 300 years ago the population would have been 4,000. Now it is about 34,000. If we compare that t Stros M'kai, then 42,500 people live their. Comparatively, if we compare New York City to the city of Wayrest, then it would have a population currently of over 24 million people. Can't find an number on the imperial city though; but it is called 'huge' by citizens of Wayrest.

I would think that http://img62.imageshack.us/img62/7466/mapmorrenormous.jpg got the MoT crash effect right.

After that, Vvardenfell erupted, and everything in Red mountain, perhaps a bit further was instantly covered in lava. (Ald-Ruhn, Maar Gan, the Zainab camp, and perhaps Tel Vos is gone)

The lava goes into the parts of the land where lava had previously been (forgot the name <_<). There are certain parts where these paths quickly stop. There's one near Balmora. The lava would either burst over into Balmora, or go the other way, to Lake Amaya, where everything is already destroyed, thanks to MoT.

Gas starts to fill up the air. There's plenty of time for most to escape. There's always someone with some skill in each city to teleport others, and there has to be at least one with a sense of decency to help the others.

I estimate the places with a chance of survival (not certain) to be:

• Gnisis
  
• Ald Velothi
  
• Khuul
  
• Dagon Fel
  
• Tel Mora
  
• Tel Ahrun
  
• Tel Fyr
  
• Sadrith Mora
  
• Tel Branora
  
• Hla oag
  
• Gnaar Mok
  
• Balmora
  
• Caldera

Balmora and Caldera are kinda 50-50. There's a chance that the lava will burst out too quickly, but it may not. Due to being so close to the ashland, it's hard to tell.


Places on islands have the highest survival chance. The lava has a harder time getting through water than over land. These places are usually Telvanni, too. They have a lot of mages who can teleport people.

Also, it's quite a while later. There has to be more, bigger towns all over. And Vvardenfell is already way bigger than represented in game. There's more people around, it's more than likely there's one mage who'll teleport people out.

There has to be a good hour or so for the teleports to be done. It will take some time for the gas to reach each city, and for the lava to burts over, and get to the outskirts of Vvardenfell.

The northern tip of southern mainland Morrowind is destroyed by MoT. Mournhold Survives. People don't realise Vvardenfell has erupted yet. By the time they realise, hardly any have escaped. (unless the Vvardenfell refugees go to Mournhold for some reason)

Everyone hears news that Mournhold has been ravaged by lava. Everyone starts to teleport out. The Argonians hear. They decide to start attacking the southern cities. The guards put up a fight, but eventually get beat. The Argonians take a lot of Dunmer hostage, but die when the gas gets there. Is it just standard poisonous gas? If so, the Argonians are fine.

This is all just my opinion. I don't think enough died to make Dunmer an endangered species. Being able to see it early was a great advantage to those in Vvardenfell. The east and west mainland was fairly ok. They managed to teleport quickly.

/\
How could that map be possilble if Cities as far south as Narsis are now coverd with ash? and ALL of the Inner see if boiling water with random nislands made from ash settling. That's the books decription. I feel that it could be possible that, where Red Mountain's peak once was, there is now a small volcanic island.

Vivec was covered with a few feet of ash in the book, along with boiling water.

Regardless of specific zones that weren't initially destroyed, the Island is completely uninhabited by man or presumably beast at the moment.

Perhaps the most sad aspect of it all is the loss of culture - Dwemer ruins possibly buried forever, the Kwama egg trade as well as Ebony and Glass..not to mention the Dunmer culture of the Island.


I wonder if this means Ebony and Glass armor will be more rare in the next game? It would make sense if they follow this line of thinking. Or maybe Morrowind will become repopulated with Dunmer by then.