I agree with Lord Tidus. Men generally appear to share the morality/thought processes of men in our own world (similar value system at any rate). If we agree with the general idea of not destroying the world or enslaving others (imperialism is a whole 'nother topic) or eliminating raes, then the Altmer are at odds with our beliefs. Bosmer too, you could say. The Dunmer aren't necessarily evil (despite consorting with "demons") so much as generally being jerks.

I have to admit, the phenomenon of evil golden Nazis just sits a little bad with me, as far as ambiguous Elder Scrolls awesome storytelling goes, particularly as it has gained more attention with the Thalmor. ES has made its bones off of letting things be grey; people trying to categorize the Daedra as "demons" on the forums have always had to come to grips with the reality that nothing is that black-and-white (or just clear, one-sided, and blandly coherent) in this world we love.

To play the 'invading, insidious racists that we can all uniformly hate' card is a tad too obvious for ES' standards.

Then again, perhaps it is just the flip side of creating a 'good side' with Shor and CHIM and all that. I like to think, however, that ES can always maintain the magic of us all being in the same boat, confused and chaotic, with a ray of light at the end of the tunnel. Why shoehorn-in 'villains' at all?

Molag Bal seems to me the most evil a person can get in the Elder Scrolls. Typically there is a destructive force that is usually BAD for all and involved and that a person (Hero or what have you) needs to rise up and stomp it out. You could try to say that the Thalmor aren't all bad, but involving the destruction of man in your tenants is not exactly a sympathetic approach to things. I'm all for having something completely out there that make people go "lolwut", just for the sake the we have real crazies like that in real life. Now not black and white mind you, but just that one group of people that really make you think just how strange the world can be.

'Force' is the key word here. Earlier it was pointed out that Dagon was condemned to be the way he is, and as has been expounded in detail in the past, the Daedra are natural forces that maintain the universe as it is, as much as being 'beings' (the wheel with its spokes and voids). Along that line, going through the list, Daggerfall, more or less, has no true 'villains' (Tharn is a good example of a vanilla character where the series was only just starting to find itself). Dagoth is at least a sympathetic character with a complicated past... a bit of an anti-Western 'freedom fighter.' In Redguard, the Empire is the enemy, which is perfect ES writing, as you spend most of the rest of the games helping them. This juxtaposition gets at the heart of the matter: everyone (every mortal, anyway) is a little screwed up, and there is usually a sympathetic side to every mass movement of human beings, if you are open-minded. Racist Altmer... is just a little too easy; it is a gut-reflex bad guy, not a melancholy, thought-provoking opponent (which, hell, MK even managed to make the Leaper Demon into, somewhat. The Commentaries also are along the lines of what I've said. They make some definite, good points... along with all the bs).

?
First, what the Altmer wan't to do is entirely different from what the Dwemer did. Second, who says the dwemer aren't pleased with what happened to them? They became 99% of the best entity in all of the Arubis. Sure, they're missing a pilot, but besides that, all is well (or, well, all was well before it kept getting destroyed). Some of my best friends would love to upload their souls into giant stompy robots (they're transhumanists). But what the Altmer wan't to do is entirely different. They want to get rid of death and all physical limitations, plus free up time.



Here's the thing: the Altmer are total monsters in our world, where all races are equal, getting rid of the laws of physics would just kill everyone, and things make sense. But they don't live in our world. They occupy a moral grey area in a world where, basically, every race but them has a horrible heriditery illness that cuts their lifespan dramatically, and reality is just a horrible cage. Now, I won't claim that they're seriously "on the right, 100%", and clearly they're going about things in basically the most horrible way possible, but I think part of the fun of fantasy is how changing a few factors of the world really changes how you have to look at everything. Maybe its just because of all those "critical reading" lessons they drilled into my head in middle school, but I'm naturally inclined to look at any group being portrayed as villains and try to see how they might be heroes. I think its really fun, and I think maybe you should give it a try.

How do they know they are going about it the right way? I'm asking for opinions here.

There are layers upon infinite layers in TES' cosmic onion it seems, for to my mind, the Daedra are Demons in the Mannish view. They're (usually) destructive spirits, invaders and interlopers in creation. So yeah, for men, Demons. Or at least Daimons.

After all, the word Daedra only really makes sense in the Altmeri cultural context, with their delineation of the spirits into "ancestors" and "not-ancestors". Men have no such pedigrees, so for them there should be no Aedra nor Daedra, only Gods and Devils.

So yeah, if ever you see anybody generalizing again, just assume that they're doing it in-character.

If you're talking specifics: same way the Nazi's "knew they were going about it the right way." The commoners are always indoctrinated by the elites, and the agents of genocide are always brainwashed. They "know" they're right because they've been told so a thousand times.

If you're talking generalities: Basically, they have cultural memory and some pretty strong direct evidence that the souls of mortals are immortal spirits that didn't have to do lame stuff like toiling to feed yourself before the world existed. They all know from direct, current experience that death and hardship are pretty lame. That's where they get their specific goal from. They seem to be pretty confused about how to really go about breaking the world apart though. Obviously, the towers didn't work that well (they got the idea from Ada-mantia. If-I-made-you-I-can-unmake-you logic). I think the whole killing-Talos idea came from mananauts (judging by the writing style MK chose for that piece)

Anyway, to answer the OP's question, there is no main antagonist in the Elder Scroll series. While many people like to point out Dagon being the aforementioned big bad, I don't even really seem him as a major antagonist. I personally do not see the Mer as a whole to be enemies necessarily, but just that there are extremely powerful, and extremely ambitious Mer that have a plan in the "Big picture." Really though, this is fitting. Mer have the advantage of living long lives, and couple this with what magic is capable of, you have a already formidable foe.

Wouldn't destroying the world trap them all in the Dreamsleeve though? Boom, no more death.

No. The dreamsleave is part of the world (by world, I mean mundus).

I couldn't say it better myself. http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/7028072/images/1260130142014.gif

As Alduin is the destroyer of worlds and Mehrunes Dagon actually tried to stop him by stealing parts of the world so Alduin couldn't devour the whole world without exploding, I think Alduin is the biggest evil. Mehrunes Dagon actually tried to save the world more than once. But because Alduin is also Akatosh people see Dagon as the biggest evil for being the arch-enemy of the greatest god. Atleast, that's how I understand it. Still I don't think he's the main villan. I believe there is not a main villan in The Elder Scrolls. But if it comes to the biggest evil: in my opinion, that's Alduin.

Alduin I must admit I don't fully understand. Aside from the fact that he's typically thought of as an Aedra, which are typically thought of as limited in power, Alduin is supposedly a vastly powerful being capable of more destruction than Mehrunes Dagon and leading an army of dragons. Not to mention MK said that "The Eight Limbs (and their Missing Ninth) have always, always made sure there was a loophole". And typically the Eight include Akatosh/Auriel.

1st: Alduin has always been massively powerful. Remember, the reason TES has time is because he said so. He's limited in power, but the limits are pretty damn high. What really keeps him down isn't any sort of restriction on his raw power, its a restriction on his freedom to execute that power. Because he's mostly dead, he can't do whatever he wants, but he is still allowed to eat the world every once in a while.

2nd: The Dovakhiin appears to be the loophole left by the eight / nine. Remember that the DvK is "dragonborn" and can "speak the dragon tongue" et cetera et cetera. He appears to have gotten a lot of powers usually associated with Alduin, so its possible that he was given them intentionally, as a way for Alduin to wriggle his way out of his duties.

But why would he not be able to do it anytime? I was under the impression he was biding his time and waiting (or perhaps recovering from a previous defeat), rather than being given some temporary freedom.


But it almost sounded like Alduin was not one of the Nine. I tried to do some digging, and it only served to further the confusion. Alduin being an enemy of man and the "man god" is consistent with Auriel. Auriel and Trinimac against the men and Lorkhan mirrors Alduin and Malacath against the men and Shor. But things get confusing when you look at the Imperials and the Skaal. The Imperial version of Alduin is a protector, a being who has been an essential boon to the previous Dragonborns, who supposedly exist to stop Alduin. The Skaal version of Lorkhan is a man-weakening world-devourer who opposes the creator of man.

Thartagg = Greedy Man is a reference to how the difference betwwen Shor and Alduin is one of perspective. The Anu worshiping Skaal see them as one in the same.

All of the aspects of the Aedra exist. Sometimes they fight each other.

They're one in the same. What would he be biding his time for, if not a temporary freedom?


Alduin is a big freakin' dragon that beats up whole three dimensional slices of reality, and lines them up in what we call linear time. He really doesn't care much about the petty affairs of mortals (so long as those affairs happen in the proper order of events). The thing is, he was severely bound by Lorkhan when the world was created (some call this binding "death") and now, with most of his mind gone, a bunch of people just do whatever they want with his body. Naturally, the Long-Lived elves, who feel that time is on their side, call him a hero, and make him into an agent of their agenda, as do the long-reigning Cyrodiils. The short-lived Nords, whose governments rarely last very long, consider time to be an enemy, and so they've made him into an enemy. The living time dragon doesn't really care what sort of puppets various cultures have made out of his corpse. For all their virtues, the mythologies of Tamriel are just mythologies.

The chance to achieve a more permanent freedom.

i like the fact that there is no central bad guy in tes

Alduin isn't seeking escape. He's the god of Time. How could he not be aware that he is just going to be trapped again in the next kalpa?

Alduin is pointing to a very simple and well-known idea: time is an enemy that preys on mortal men. It's an implacable fact of the universe marching ever onwards, not a sneaky conspirator.

Why is the world ending? Well, Skyrim may give us some reason, but until then I'm going with that line in the Prince of Persia trailer. "It's time..."

Haha, Jake Gyllenhall.

"The Moot looked to the tribe of Ald son of Ald but he would break no oath of the Pact, saying "Shor has paid ransom now three times for the the sins we accused him of, and by that we will hold him as dead and shake not our spears against him or his kin. Of the below he speaks, he is confused by it, for under us is only a prologue, and under that still is only a scribe that hasn't written anything yet. Shor as always forgets the above, and condemns himself and any other who would believe him into this cycle

"Shor found the alcove at the core of the world and spoke to his dead father. He said a prayer to remove any trickery of mirrors and the ghost of Shor father of Shor appeared, saying "Ald and the others have paid time and again for the the sins we accused them of, and by that you should hold them as dead and shake not the spears of your tribe against any of their kind again. Of the above he speaks, Ald is confused by it, for above us is only an ending, and above that still is only a scribe that hasn't written anything yet. Ald as always forgets the ground below him, and condemns himself and any other who would believe him into this cycle."

It's both Shor and Alduin causing the cycles. Specifically, Alduin blames Shor for restarting everything by recreating Mundus. Shor blames Alduin for the cycle since he keeps destroying Mundus.

Don't forget Satakal. The "world eatings" were happening before Sep created Mundus.

And it's probably the reason why the Thalmor wants to remove their enemies from the "pattern of possibility" don't just kill everyone, make sure they don't come back.

I got the impression that they switch places.Sort of, in a way.

So far what we know the dragons (jills) and Alduin are the main threat. The other baddies in past games just lead up to there arrival.

The Dragons arnt jills.