The Empire lost all of it's field armies. The Dominion suffered the loss of it's main army. Nothing to suggest it doesn't have plenty of other armies lying around, whereas we have a definitive statement marking the Empire's losses.

I don't want to get back into the big fight, but I just thought of a new point you may wish to consider: they only went into the war for a ban, and assuming they had any common sense at all, they'd know that this wasn't going to magically end Talos worship. So at the very least, at the start of the war, they thought an imperfect ban would be worth it.

I fear I have to leave the big fight. It's 2am, and generally being up all night arguing about fantasy elves does not hold up as an excuse for coming into school late. Goodnight, fellows.

Walrus, Great War states their entire force in Cyrodiil was annialated while Imperial armies were down to half strength. In the end the Dominion sued for peace.

Minotaur, I don't think we should have any issues as long as we can respectfully disagree.

Stopping the Oblivion Crisis.

1.) Petit-bourgeois or petty bourgeoisie, please, darling. "Petite bourgeoisie" is a barbarism. If you're going to be pedantic, at least be precise about it.

2.) You can choose to define "fascism" as any number of things because, like many "-isms," it's been used to describe many political organizations, both by them and by their enemies. It is possible, for example, to define fascism as nothing more than the political movement which took over Italian politics between 1922 and 1943. I personally find this definition to be useless as a label that can help us understand the tumultuous political history of the twentieth century. My definition of "fascism" is "an authoritarian and corporatist state which employs a revolutionary, ultranationalist rhetoric (usually involving the creation of cults of personality and myths of national/ethnic/racial superiority) to unify and control a population across class lines and promulgate the expansion of its power." But my definition of fascism, your definition of fascism, and Todd Howard's definition of fascism are neither here nor there because

3.) The notion that something in the real world is "real-world only" and cannot at all figure into the creation of a fantasy world, particularly with regards to subtleties of aesthetics or temperament, is patently absurd. No, the Thalmor may not have all the elements that you may tick off in your personal list of characteristics of a fascist state, and no, they may not be a reaction to the political environment of the early twentieth century -- but I nevertheless find what little we know about them to resemble (resemble! resemblance! words you should perhaps look up sometime) what we historical types might think of as a fascist state. These include the forceful acquisition of power in Alinor, the race-myth, the megalomania, the totalitarianism, and the kinky leather uniforms. So I used the word "fascistic" -- not "fascist," not "syndicalist-corporatist," not "blackshirt" -- to describe them, as an anology or comparison. We often compare things in fantasy worlds to things in the real world because fantasy worlds are informed by the real world, being created by people who lived in the real world. You can question the accuracy of my comparison, then, but being a jerk and rudely denying my ability to make any such comparison is just bad form, particularly when you do it in such a way as to make yourself look smart by regurgitating the terms you learned in your AP European History class.

Their entire force in Cyrodiil. We know for a fact that they still had a large portion of their armies in Hammerfell. Those guys just got kicked out - not killed. And as far as I know, most wars of attrition where occupiers get kicked out of foreign territory kill a whole lot more of the natives than occupiers. The occupiers field soldiers, while the occupied fight with whoever is willing to fight. The Thalmor most likely left once things started looking either bad, or a bit too permanent (think Vietnam).

As for recovery times, Altmeri fecundity is (AFAIK) supposed to be directly tied to population pressure. If they were majorly depopulated* then their breeding rates should go up. In the meantime, the human recovery is severely hindered by their continued war amongst themselves, the serious damage to their infrastructure (at the very least, southern Hammerfell is screwed), and the serious damage to their civilian populations.

If the only thing the ban of Talos accomplishes is a backlash against the Empire, then, well, that's still a pretty notable accomplishment. At the very least, this Civil war in Skyrim must have seriously disrupted trade between the human provinces, which really is not good. Were it not for the civil war, Skyrim would be massively profiting by selling needed raw materials & exporting labor to war-torn areas (think post WWII USA), and those areas would be recovering much faster with Skyrims aid. Skyrim's location makes it effectively impossible for the Dominion to effectively attack, so perhaps they just connived to get the Empire to do the attacking for them.

*which isn't usually possible in an offensive war, because of how many civvies you must have for ever soldier. I think a Chinese Confucian idea was that you needed seven farm families for each individual soldier.

There is no need whatsoever to be so rude about this, by the way. I wasn't trying to be aggressive or antagonize you. You don't have to be so defensive.



I don't see how that definition even necessarily would make the Thalmor fall into your definition. They are in no way corporatist, I haven't seen any cults of personality, and their theories of racial superiority actually have groundings in game lore(Minotaur Warrior wrote an excellent post on this, but I can't seem to find it.) . Bosmer are undisputedly better at archery, Nords with smashing things with hammers. Wheras in real life, race differences are a myth, in real life, you don't have certain races living for hundreds to thousands of years more than others. Religious thinking, whereas a myth in real life, is proven fact in the Elder Scrolls. We cannot apply real world connotations with these subjects to a different universe where the fundemental qualities of said universe are completely different.





Firstly, The Elder Scrolls considerably invents and defines it's own concepts with real world ideas, and also ideas that are extremely imaginative and have very little basis in the real world, which is what I love about the Elder Scrolls. It would be extremely tacky, in my opinion, to take any real world political ideology, and supplant in ES with slight changes to make it universe appropriate, or to make a group with an obvious real-world subtext. I don't like fascism/nazism/whatever being used as anologies and comparisons for these things because they have significant negative connotations. Anyway, I wouldn't say that the Thalmor suffer from meglomania. They have a logical plan to improve their conditions. Finally, I had no intention of being a jerk. I have no idea what an 'AP European History class' is or what the equivelant of it in my country is. There is no need to make such sweeping statements about my motives here and about my credentials. I'm just here to talk about the Elder Scrolls, I apologize if I've offended you, and I'd prefer if we can continue to discuss the lore without things getting so heated.

I'd venture a guess to say that they lied about making the moons disappear too. No proof to say that they didn't make them go poof for awhile, but there's no proof to say that they did other than their word and that could easily be seen as an opportunist political ploy to influence the Khajjiit.




- The Great War

This makes it pretty obvious that after their initial success, their main objective (and with it one could only assume the vast majority of their military endeavors) was focused on Cyrodiil and toppling the Empire. To just say "Oh it was just their force in Cyrodiil" to me is a major understatement. The annihilation of their forces (and it makes the distinction, they were completely and utterly destroyed unlike the ones in Hammerfell) in Cyrodiil logically implies the annihilation of their main field army and thus would (To me) be a military blunder on behalf of the Dominion. It was after that, that the Dominion began to search for a peace option. These series of events make me think that their losses in Cyrodiil were enough to make the Dominion rethink their position, and weakened their military position enough that they were afraid of behind over run. Their goals turned from what they asked for in the ultimatum to the destruction of the Empire, only for their luck to be turned on them and place them in a position of dire peril, one that forced them to make peace at the risk of further Imperial counter attacks. Its speculated that the Empire, had they continued to push, could have at least pushed the Dominion off continental Tamriel, and its my belief they shared the same fears.



No question the war severely hindered the Empire. I believe I read that the Imperial Legions were based somewhere along those of the Roman Republic, so the destruction of three legions is about 18,000 men (If thats the right conclusion, which I'm not certain it is) however I don't believe that the Empire had a mere three legions to its service. It says no other legion had more than half strength, so we don't how many more legions are available for Cyrodiil but we also don't know how many men make an Aldmeri Army, it could be more or less, but in any situation we know it was enough to force the Dominion to the peace table.

Now regrading the Thalmors occupation in Hammerfell, the occupiers were in a hostile land were forced to keep vast supply line, and in the case of the Dominion they have one hell of a sea lane to upkeep with no land route to bring in supplies, men and money. From the sounds of it, they had little or no local populace to help fill their ranks and it would be extremely difficult to fill their dwindling ranks in Hammerfell and means they would have to constantly send more troops from Summerset or Valenwood (which Valenwood's not fully on board with the Thalmor anyway, just like before) to resupply and reinforce when every Raga available seemed to be fighting to expel the invaders. At that, the Raga are masters of guerrilla warfare, something I doubt the Altmer were really equipped to deal with effectively. Were not talking about a well established presence with military instillation and great defensible hardpoints like the French had in Vietnam, which had been gradually becoming apart of the French Empire since 1859 up until 1955. That gave France close to 96 years to dig in and fortify their strength where as the Thalmor faced constant unified resistance with no friendly backing and no real time to establish themselves. That said, to me it sounds like it was far to costly to keep and hold their new found holdings for it to really be worth it to the Thalmor who only held their ground for a few years.

For recovery times, I've always been under the impression that the Altmer genetically could not produce as fast as man nor in the numbers of man as a trade off for their extravagantly long life spans. No expert on population here, but wouldn't the same thing apply for man as well? who already has an advantage on population regrowth? in any case I don't believe the Thalmor would repopulate faster than the Cyrodiil, just my own personal opinion though.

Like I said, as the Empires borders shrink so does the Thalmors ability to influence those regions. The idea of getting the Empire to ban Talos was to get them to enforce it was it not? That's something they cannot do if their falling apart and more and more regions begin to fall out of the Imperial sphere of influence. If the Dominion is content to just let men kill each other that's all honky dory, but its not hurting Talos worship as much as its emboldening it as reason to stand up against the Thalmor pawns. To me, this just doesn't sound like a great victory to me and I'm not quite dazzled by the Thalmor as everyone else seems to be. Just my opinion on the matter.

I don't think the Thalmor ever said they made the moons disappear. They take credit for bringing them back (using "dawn magics"), but no one knows why they disappeared in the first place. Some people on the forums speculate that the Thalmor made them disappear so they could make them reappear and be hailed as heroes to the Khajiit, but that's really it.

@t M'lud Tidus: Agreed. Men are like bacteria or bugs compared to Altmer. They don't live as long, but damn do those bugger reproduce. Turn your perfectly bred golden-skinned back on 'em, and whammo-shammo-presto! They've produced two generations of screamin', padhomaic rugrats to further mire you in Convention. The Elves certainly aren't outpacing them in population anytime soon.

Of course, their ranks are no doubt bolstered, if not pretty much composed of Gobs, Bosmer, and Khajiit. But remember folks, Goblins are, well, Goblins and the Tree-Sap Folk and Desert-Walkers are flighty breeds, not suited to conventional warfare; Whereas Cyrodiil depends on disciplined citizen-soldiers.

You obviously never fought a goblin warchief (or whatever it was) in Oblivion They were pretty tough in Tribunal too...

As for recruiting- well, it's an interesting issue, and we don't have enought information. MinotaurWarrior is right about needing lots of civvies per soldier- which means war is as much an economic or logistical question as one of population. This puts Alinor in a pretty good position, what with its fleet and everything.

On the other hand, population and social configuration do indeed matter a lot. It's not a matter of some abstract ratio between soldiers and civilians- a surplus needs to be extracted (or given) to make the formation and supply of armies possible. The fleet, and control over trade, is only useful if there is someone to trade with, and something to trade. Supplies at home must be taxed, or provided by magnates who have tenants or slaves or what-have-you to exploit. There are slaves in Alinor (including at least one Dunmer, according to the book on light armour in Skyrim) who can be exploited, but you still need a populatoin of potential recruits- who are almost never the slaves or tenants working in the farms.

The way I see it, the Thalmor have a few options when it comes to recruiting in the Isles: Altmer, who are no doubt in short supply (though the Thalmor seem to use Altmeri soldiers exclusively, in Skyrim); mercenaries, if they can afford to pay them; some sort of Mamluk-eqsue elite of warrior slaves; or degenerate gobbo cannon fodder (I find it difficult to imagine gobbos as an elite, though is would be entertaining). The Mamluk option might be problematic, since the slaves would have to identify with (and, more importantly, be valued by) a regime which seems very racist, but stranger things have happened. Elite cadres of Household Dunmer-or, for that matter, Khajit and Ra Gada- fighting for the Thalmor?

They only claim to have made them reappear, though I personally think they were responsible for making them disappear in the first place. If not them, who? I think we can safely rule out the other Tamrielic powers (since it'd've been counter-productive), leaving the Sload, Maomer, and Akaviri as possible candidates, but the Sload and Maomer, if they had such power, would be the greater threat to the Thalmor, and so they'd have attacked them instead. I'll still admit that it could very well have been any of the Akiviri races.


Titus Mede II was actually the one to sue for peace, though the Dominion's acceptance of said peace after just losing a major piece of territory does show weakness on their part. They no longer thought it was worth wile to wage an offensive war deep in enemy territory.

Without a doubt, the Red Ring was a blunder, and a major defeat, however the question is how much damage did it actually deal? I find it unlikely that they posted the majority of their armies directly around the Imperial City, where the battle took place. The Thalmor had to have soldiers garrisoning the rest of Cyrodiil, fighting resistance groups inside of Cyrodiil, fighting the Hammerfell Front, and on home guard duty. It was likely their largest single gathering of soldiers, and a major section of their military, but I think it'd be infeasible to have more than half of their army stationed there. Now, I definitely agree with the idea that, had the Thalmor not surrendered, they still would have had to withdraw the remainder of their forces from Cyrodiil, be it immediately or after a period of fierce fighting. They had just had their main force destroyed, and the legions that achieved that would likely be more than capable of bringing the same fate to the smaller remnant forces in Cyrodiil. But the Thalmor's peaceful withdrawal was actually advantageous for them. It prevented them from losing the forces they had occupying the other cities of Cyrodiil, unlike the natives, who had their garrisons killed when the cities were taken.



The numbers are definitely going to be uncertain, but I think the 6,000 men / legion count should be fair.


What part of their supply line was vast? Summerset & Valenwood are quite close to Southern Hammerfell, whose cities are all coastal. Assuming that "Southern Hammerfell" means the four southern cities of Hammerfell, the Ragada only had one free port of their own. I think it's safe to assume the Altmer were more than capable of taking on the Sentinel fleet + any imperial privateers there may have been. Also, what makes you think the Raga are masters of guerrilla warfare? I thought they left that to the Argonians, while they busied themselves with nuclear swords. Is this just something I missed out on, having never played Redguard?

Otherwise, I think your assessment is fair. They would be under attack from all sides, at all times. The natives would mostly be uncooperative (though there were some exceptions, i.e. that girl in whiterun), and they wouldn't be able to really fortify themselves. It'd be expensive, and continued occupation obviously wasn't worth it for them. The question is, during the occupation, did they give worse than they got? I'd say yes. Southern Hammerfel is in shambles. When they took that territory, it was from the cold, dead hands of brave patriots. When they lost it, it was given up by a tired army of people who probably just wanted to go home.


As far as I know, the only source that explains merish infertility claims that elven reproduction is tied to population pressure, and so elves cannot reproduce when populations are high / stable, but after taking a hit they can bounce right back. So, the rates of repopulation should be about the same. I'd say that men should have a bit of an edge just because the lack of regulation / state family planning probably makes... ahem... acts of breeding more common among man than mer. However, the Thalmor likely did more population damage during the war, so men have a longer way to recover.


Well, the Empire's borders might not be shrinking. In my playthrough, the Stormcloak Rebellion was really just a purge of all those devout enough to fight for their beliefs, and an excuse to rile up the survivors against Talos worship (think anti-Islamic sentiment). But even if the Stormcloaks win, having your advantage shrink doesn't actually hurt you, it just doesn't help as much.

As for the dazzling, I'll admit that I'm prejudiced for them, partially just because I like to play Altmer characters (given a choice, I always play the wizard), but I think that you may have the wrong impression about the forums at large. The only other person who I know for sure to be a fan of the Thalmor is AE ALTADOON. Most everyone else seems to be either on your side (Huleed, Haute) or neutral / not invested (Lady N, a thousand others). It's possible that things are different in the Fan Fiction section, or in GD, but around here I think you're among supporters.

Definitely this. The lore forum is strongly aligned towards Man and Lorkhan. I always find it interesting when you and Walrus post on the subject for that reason; it's nice to see such different perspectives, and usually such well thought-out ones at that.

Thanks!

Most people are more Dunmer-alligned, actually. Cyrodiils like Shezarr for creating the world and thus allowing things like growth. Nords like just listen to him as their god king and want to party in Sovngarde. They lack a creation myth, and Alduin gets more credit for the next world being born.

Men like Shor is a hero. It's Dunmer who see Mundus as the path to ascension. Or at least Vivec

I like this.

can't post in full but you Minotaur and Walrus are but the most prominent voices ive come across when it comes to the subject. Just looking about I've seen a great deal of Thalmor supports who think their the bees knees since the Great War came out. it wasn't until this paticular thread that anyones came out in direct support of opinion aside from the most recent one about the Legion that. That's not to say you haven't seen your fair share of opponets, but I've seen my fair share enough that an influx of Thalmor lovers has come into view ever sense.

Aw, no mention of me being a Shor fan? My presence is waning more and more

My point isn't about ideology, its about the war itself. I would never try to.changs your own personal fictional religious preference, its the over powered assumption that the Thalmor have the world by the throat.

That's not much of a surprise I suppose. Things you disagree with probably stand out more.


Ever since I noticed that Proweler has a second e in his username, I've become kinda paranoid about misspelling lore-buff usernames, and I couldn't remember for the life of me if your username was Hellmouth or hellmoth or helmoth or...

This is more due to Mannish fear-mongering than Merish arrogance in the lore forum.

How many threads have there been already with the formulae "X is how the Thalmor will be defeated, and X is how the empire is going to survive."

http://youtu.be/kpxnUUi-Mmw?hd=1

*Ahem* catching up..ish...Everyone's hurting bad. Empire is sprawling and losing influence everywhere, the Thalmor are having to save face after losing too many soldiers, even if a good amount of forces was khajiiti and bosmer, and they only managed to get a treaty signed, no land. In addition, with Skyrim in upheaval, it's likely ideas will change, especially if the Stormcloaks win, in my view. The nords openly give the Thalmor the middle finger when it comes to Talos. If the nords pull it off, Cyrodiil will need to rethink about what it's doing.

That extra e is the only reason why I remember Proweler from ages ago. That and I argued with him over whether it was possible for the Tribunal's apotheosis to create a dragon break (as it turns out, there was no dragon break, Vivec just cheated).

The only other person I recall from that long ago is Allerleirauh, and she hasn't been around for a long time.

[[ Can someone tell me the source about the Thamlor killing the Bosmer?
Is it all in the books? I really want to buy them =D ]]