Occam's razor

I don't know. If we follow that line of thought one could argue that Argonians aren't sentient at all. They're just an extension of The Hist. In other words; we haven't really been playing as Argonians all along, we've been playing as The Hist.

I seem to recall reading about Glim being drawn back to the Hist somewhere in near the beginning of the first novel, and he resists the urge.

The fact that Glim also retains his self-hood when he is cut off from the Hist when he gets to Umbriel, is evidence enough that the Argonians are not simply puppets of the Hist.

Exactly. Which is why I believe the relationship between the Argonians and the Hist is more complicated than what we know as of now

That's the view I've been running with.

Unless that's what the Hist wanted him to do...

Best case for the race of man is the Argonians side with them
Worst case for the race of man they side with the dominion
for now it looks like they are not getting involved so that works almost as well as having them as full on allies.

It would be nice if about 100 or so signed on.Having the equivalent of 100 navy seals that could hide anywhere in the ocean could play havoc with summerset.

Only in the sense that you've never been playing as men or mer, you've been playing as Ehlnofey.

The nature of sentience is the core theme of the Elder Scrolls series. Nothing is itself, everything is a sub-gradient of something else. The Argonians are a sub-gradient of the Hist. A clear distinction is made between the Hist and the Ehlnofey, which means that the rules which apply to the Et'Ada -> Ehlnofey -> Men and Mer relationship do not necessarily apply to the Et'Ada -> Hist -> Argonian relationship. It doesn't mean the Argonians are less sentient then men and mer, only that the Hist are more sentient than the Ehlnofey.

Like the Ehlnofey, the Hist spread their selfness out amongst a mortal race, but unlike the Ehlnofey they left behind physical forms as an anchor, the trees themselves. A Hist tree maintains a self-awareness that extends to its Argonian "descendants", something that the Aedra do not have. This anchor allows the Hist to reach out and reassert its own will upon its fragments simply by overriding the self-ness of the Argonian in question. It's clear, however, that the Hist don't normally do this: chances are good it is not without cost, since whatever it was about Mundus that forced them (and the Aedra) to subdivide themselves presumably is still in effect. A mass recall might weaken a Hist or even kill it, or maybe the opposite would happen, it would grow too large (metaphysically) and the other Hist would feel threatened and destroy it lest it consume them all.

It doesn't mean the Argonians don't have a will of their own, no more than the fact that each Man/Mer is made up of fragments of gods does for them. The only difference is that the Hist can reassert themselves upon their fragments while the Aedra cannot. We have reason to believe that Argonians are capable of resisting the recall (and apparently, individual trees can resist the combined will of the Hist hivemind) but we have no idea how difficult this might be, or how common Argonians/Hist capable of this defiance are.

Wow! Thanks! I hadn't really looked at it like that. Nicely phrased and worded, very interesting read!

The Argonians strike me as very cowardly. I can't see them involving themselves in an actual head-on conflict. (Unless some tragedy decimates the Thalmor first.)

The nature of the Argonians we meet in each TES game is based on their purpose to the Hist. What the Hist need out in the world on a day-to-day basis are eyes, people who can watch, learn, and gather information without ruffling too many feathers, hence the Argonians' stealth and thievery related abilities, and their generally non-confrontational attitudes. However, when the need arises, the Hist are apparently capable of changing the Argonians' minds and bodies to suit whatever purpose is required. During the Oblivion Crisis, as has already been noted in this thread, the Hist turned the Argonians into shock-troopers who were sent directly into Oblivion in force. They were the only province of Tamriel to launch a successful offensive campaign against Dagon. Marching straight into Hell and getting (in effect) Satan himself to back off? Hardly "cowardly".

If the Hist deem it in their interest to take a part in the conflict, they will do so. Based on the ability of the Hist to activate some kind of super-effective combat mode in the Argonians, I pity whoever they side against.

^^^^ This.

The Argonians live, nay thrive, in Tamriel's most difficult, hellish and hostile environment. Something tells me "cowardice" is not in their vocabulary.

Living in Argonia doesn't make them brave. They are naturally adapted to living there. It would be like saying a bird is brave because it isn't afraid of heights.

Every race is going to have its share of heroes and cowards. But the Argonians are definitely unique in their worldview.

I'm particularly intrigued by their concept of time and how their perspective of time is reflected in their language. It is no doubt an influence that the Hist has over their biology.

I think the wild-card here is the Khajiit, actually. They've shown that they can thrive anywhere, even Skyrim. They've been skirmishing for 200 years, first against the Leyawiinite Imperials and later against the Thalmar of Alinor. The thing about skirishers is that they can do very big things with very little in material or men. It would be the same as any fight against insurgents. The US lost to insurgents in Vietnam, and the Soviets were destroyed by similar insurgents in Afghanistan. It was the same kind of problems really. They'd strike hard and fast, and be gone before anyone could figure out where they were -- or in more modern times not even being "there" in person.

So I think Khajiit -- if they firmly take a side -- could very easily turn Elswyr into a "graveyard of empire" for whoever they decided they don't want.

• Vaba Do'Shurh'do: It Is Good To Be Brave
  
• Vaba Maaszi Lhajiito: It Is Necessary To Run Away
  
• Fusozay Var Var: Enjoy Life
  
• Fusozay Var Dar: Kill Without Qualm
  
• Ahzirr Durrarriss: We Give Freely To The People
  
• Ahzirr Traajijazeri: We Justly Take By Force

They fare perfectly well outside of Black Marsh, as evidenced by the fact that they were used as slaves in Morrowind to great effect for millenia. They're generally just not fond of leaving home.

Also, they probably could've taken all of Morrowind. At the end, they simply chose not to.

Not really. The Thalmor have demonstrated they can take away the moons: if it was an illusion, it was an illusion which convinced the Khajiit, whose entire life cycle is dominated by the moons. In other words, the Thalmor have shown they can halt, or at least disrupt, the Khajiit lifecyle. This means the Khajiit are more firmly in the Thalmor camp than even the Altmer themselves. No wildcard here, we know what side they're on. The Argonian lifecycle, by contrast, is outside the influence of external stimuli, and entirely under the control of the Hist, meaning the Hist's unknowable whims are what will decide when or if they will join the battle, and on which side, and as noted, their choice will be devastating to whichever side they side against.

To me, this means the narrative dictates the Hist will side with the Thalmor, since the Thalmor are the big bad guys and the narrative doesn't have a great place for a superpower joining forces with the goodguys (unless it's a last minute save the day deus ex machina) especially not when them siding with the enemy means the heroes will get to fight against super-mutant dinosaur men.

There's a thing about the Argonians that seems extremely unstructured and uncohesive. Even though the Argonians get bigger and faster and stronger at the whim of the Hist, they don't have the logistics to move armies. A Legion could take an equal number of super argonians, because the Legion is professional, much better equipped, has better logistics, and better overall strategies, tactics and formations (not to mention horses). If they Argonians did decide to move against the Khajiit, they would probably starve in the desert. The khajiit would cut off their supplies and trap them.

Anecdotal evidence doesn't mean anything.

That's just wishful thinking. They couldn't do it, they didn't do it.

That's not anecdotal evidence, that's simply a fact, and it completely debunks your statement that they don't "fare well outside of Black Marsh." They're a hardy people and they don't fare any less outside of Black Marsh than they do inside. The lot of them just don't believe that there's much in the world worth seeing.

And that's your imagination talking. Nothing anywhere ever said that they couldn't have conquered the whole of Morrowind. All we know is that they were on a roll, and then they stopped.

Nothing suggests that they could have conquered all of Morrowind either. We don't know how well they fared against certain factions (mages, heavily armored opponents), in certain pieces of terrain (mountains, open plains, ash lands). We simply don't know enough of the war to assume they were stopped by a more powerful force in an open battle, stopped by a few mages with extreme power, stopped by a combination, stopped by ashlander guerilla warfare or if they simply decided to stop fighting themselves.

You have a good point, but as I mentioned, what we do know of the whole conflict is that at the beginning the Argonians were stomping the Dunmer. Simple extrapolation of that fact would dictate that they did well at the end as well, but of course extrapolation is not fact, and I won't pretend it is. Nonetheless, right now it's the closest thing we have to fact, so I will continue to believe my original notion that the Argonians willingly withdrew out of a disinterest in furthering the conflict.

Number 1 seems most likely. They haven't seemed to care about what happens outside Black Marsh, with the exception of the slavery in Morrowind.

That sounds a little less than plausible. If the resistance was utterly routed, why would they not seize the opportunity and take over all of their land, instead of just half of it? Blacklight is still a thriving town - why would the Argonians leave it be, unless they were incapable of doing so? That flies completely in the face of Argonian nature, Dunmeri nature, basic military logic, and the invasion's purpose.

What if they just wanted to take some land back in the south of Morrowind that had been their property thousands of years earlier? Or if they just wanted to take revenge on some people and got that?

I'm not saying the Argonians stopped out of their own free-will, but there are a lot of reasons why they would do that. Not everything is always about total conquest.

If my theory is correct, the Thalmor want a purely elven future, and because of this, they're going to betray the khajiit as soon as they've "outlived their usefulness" so to speak. Now, my guess is that when this happens, the khajiit, hated and hunted by both the Thalmor and the Empire, with WAY less troops than either of them, will be forced to join forces with the last "non-affiliated" race, the Argonians. This would basically divide Tamriel into three MASSIVE armies: The Men, The Mer, and The Beasts. Setting the stage for one of the biggest wars the series has ever seen, and one hell of a game.



P.S. Sorry for using so many commas.

It's like Hitler. He was allied with the Japs and the Italians. But he believed in Aryan supremacy. He would have betrayed them eventually, but only after all his other enemies were defeated.