In Oblivion, a popular topic of conversation among NPCs is that Nords are at war with Morrowind (I think House Redoran?) I've been trying to read up on my TES lore, and from what I've read I understand that Skyrim has extended its boundaries into what used to be parts of Morrowind, and also parts of High Rock.

I assume this is the cause of the war between Skyrim and Morrowind? Why is Skyrim extending its borders?

Skyrim has an ancient claim to Morrowind, which is the Nord Dunmereth. I presumed they were reasserting that claim. We don't know whether it is an all-out invasion or a "reconnaissance in force". Anyway, House Redoran's territory is most in the way, and what's left of the Redorans are probably the most willing to fight.

So it was the Nords' land first? When did Morrowind take it over? And what about High Rock?

Skyrim took Morrowind in the 2nd C. of the First Era. They conquered High Rock in the same century. The united Chimer and Dwemer drove the Nords out of Morrowind in the 4th C, and the Nords left High Rock in the same century. See http://www.imperial-library.info/history/1.shtml.

As to why the Nords seem to have called the land "Dunmereth" even though the Chimer had not yet been transformed into the Dunmer, consider the translation of "Dun-": dark, cursed. So "Dunmereth" would be "the land of those damned Elves", an entirely reasonable thing for homesick and harassed Nord garrison soldiers to call it. ("Seen any Elves?")

Who was united?

Who occupied Skyrim before the Nords came from Atmora?

Was Tamriel completely occupied by Elves before the Nords came?

1) The forset Kingdoms of Northern Tamriel, in Present-day Skyrim
2)Falmer (Snow elves) Now extint due to bloody war
3)mainly...depends wether or not you consider Argonians elves or not. But the Kothrigi are men, and they were in clovia (in shackles to the Alyieds though)

It's not proven why the Falmer are extinct, or if they are (although they probably are).

Skyrim is invading Morrowind because the Nords and the Dunmer hate each other. The excuse is that Skyrim conquered Morrowind before, and then I guess the Khanate of Resdayn (what Morrowind was called before the Armistice - I think it was a khanate, as its leader was known as a khan) was able to take lands from Skyrim after it declared independence.



No, there were native populations of men, as well as the Argonians (who aren't elves, that's the Khajiit) and others, such as the imga, who are apes in Valenwood who try to be like the elves. There were also goblins, who are a lot more civilised than most people given them credit for.

So the Nords sailed from Atmora, landed in Skyrim, and united the Falmer to form the first kingdom of Men? That doesn't make any sense. I must be misunderstanding something.

They drove the Falmer out, or killed them, and either way they're gone. It was the first kingdom of men, but they weren't the first men in Tamriel.

Right, so then who did King Herald come to Skyrim and unite?

The Nords, I think. There was more than one kingdom. Harald was more of a High King than a king, and the local rulers had a lot of authority. It's the same sort of thing as the Irish kingdoms and the Mongols - a group of kingdoms united by a single person, who seems to have been elected (or there was at least a discussion when the Nordic empire needed a new leader).

Ohh so the Nords sail from Atmora as many different groups, but once they get to Skyrim these groups are later united into one people by King Harald? What was Skyrim called before it was called Skyrim?

And if there were many kingdoms before King Harald united them to form Skyrim, why does the Imperial Library say that King Herald united these people to form the first kingdom of men?

"These first settlers named the land "Mereth", after the Elves that roamed the untamed wilderness which then covered the whole of Tamriel."
-http://www.imperial-library.info/pge/skyrim.shtml



I think that it was the first united human kingdom, like where all men in Tamriel could call themselves part of the same empire or kingdom.

"King Harald is also remembered for being the first King to relinquish all holdings in Atmora; the Nords of Skyrim were now a separate people, whose faces were turned firmly toward their destiny, the conquest of the vast new land of Tamriel."
--http://www.imperial-library.info/pge/skyrim.shtml

http://www.imperial-library.info/pge/highrock.shtml

Why did some Bretons put up resistance when the Nords tried to liberate them from Elven control?

Did the early Nedic people of High Rock ever interbreed with the Elves that lived there with them?

If you read the article about high rock you posted earlier,





I take that information and deduce that the humans living in high rock, that the Nords discovered, were intermingling with the mer and the Bretons are the result.

Intermingling and interbreeding are two different things. That article never states that the Nedic people and the Elves interbred.

Ah, well I guess I could be wrong. I took it as interbreeding. Hopefully some lore buff will straighten this out.

:blink:

Still, nowhere does it say the Nedic people interbred with the Elves. As I am interpreting it, "intermingling" means the Bretons get their knack for magic use because their ancestors lived among Elves, and in doing so learned many of their magical practices.

You're arguing about the simplest lore premise. So just to cut this discussion short - I don't believe this to be serious - :

I assume you're also going to argue that mongrel race is actually just an insult towards the more effeminate Bretons? Or that the Bretons at first sight were unrecognisable by the Nords because the Elvish bathing customs washed away their natural smell? And that you yourself intermingle on a frequent basis with Elven blood and thus has absolutely no relation with interbreeding or otherwise mixing bloodlines?

I'm just trying to refute a surmise that I can find no available evidence to support.


What? Mongrel means a cross between two things and I don't think it was intended to be an insult but simply a description. A cross between the Nedic culture and the Elven culture, not necessarily their genes.


When one culture assimilates into another culture, the Nedic people into the Elven culture in this instance, the assimilated culture tends to pick up on many characteristics of the culture being assimilated into. Styles of clothing, hair, body piercing and body art, etc. could have at first fooled the Nord raiding party into thinking the Nedes were Elves.


I don't know how to respond to this because I don't know what you are implying.

"Khosey, in his 'Tamrilean Tractates,' transcribes a firsthand account of the "discovery" of the Bretons by a Nordic hunting party. The Bretons, in ten generations of Elven intermingling and slavery, had become scarcely recognizable as humans. Indeed, the hunting party attacked them thinking they were some new strain of Aldmeri,"
and
"The Reachmen are a mongrel breed, even for Bretons. Descended originally from one of the earliest Atmoran tribes to settle Tamriel, their lineage now partakes of nearly every race imaginable. The uprising that finally "freed" the Western Reach ended in the extermination of the Aldmeri overlords, but Elven blood still flows strong in the Reachmen"

Both taken from the http://www.imperial-library.info/pge/highrock.shtml (the first ed.) both imply that "intermingling" is Beth's polite way of implying that the human slaves of the Elves in High Rock were interbred (by force and not) with the Elves themselves. Lore isn't always handed to you straight out and taking everything as it is literally put causes you to miss things.

Also, it is more clearly stated in the http://www.imperial-library.info/pge3/highrock.shtml"One of the earliest tales of Khosey describes a Nord raiding party attacking a group of what they presumed to be Aldmer, but who were, on closer inspection, a mongrel race between elf and human, the remnants of the earlier lost Nedic tribe. They were somewhat awkwardly called "Manmeri," but we know them today as Bretons"

Anyway, why did the Bretons put up resistance when the Nords tried to liberate them from Elven control?

Stockholm's syndrome? I don't know. But I wouldn't be surprised if the source was a little biased against the elves. How do we know that the nords were really attacking High Rock to save their human cousins? That may have been a lie, covering up their true intention of conquest. Kinda reminds me of some wars that have been fought historically in our own world. Just because the Nords claim that they were liberators, their true motivation for invading may not have been so altruistic.