I liked the book. It could have been better, but what can't? The Argonians just finished what the disasters started. They eliminated a serious threat to Argonia.

Deserve has nothing to do with it but it was a consequence of their, Dunmeri, acts.

Partialy yes. But how more could they destroy?
What has already happened in Morrowind:
1. Vulcano blew
2.Tribunal disolved - house indoril has striken hard
3.Invasion of Daedra
4.Crash of the rock in Vivec
5.Nord invasion in the north .

I gues that the argonians were the least isue for the dunmer. As they invadet mostly the holds of indoril, dress and hlalu. Indoril being in choas with the end of the tribunal and Dress and hlulu leading a aliance that was counting with the support of the imperial, which would not come as they were occupied by other things. There was litle to do .

You what is ironic That the worst xenophobe, slaveusing, rasist dunmers the Telvani , were doing fine. Yea they lost land and stuff on Vvanderfell but still they have large areas on the continent and the Telvani island, the beat of local deadra invasions with some strike groops and survived untouched by all this . They preserved the very foundation of the acient dunmer way.
Who will the beaten dunmer look upon ? How about the powerfull and acient mages dwelling in theyr hight towers. I bet a lot of dunmer escaped to the telvani.

Actually, the rumors in OB suggested the Telvanni were not doing that hot. They could close the gates, but were still losing ground. Have to remember, the rank-in-file guys are decent mages. Where all the power and wealth lie is with the mage lords, who are often too crazy and shut in to know what was literally happening right outside of their own homes.

As much as people like to think they're super awesome, I have a feeling they were still hit hard. They do have a bug and slave economy to keep up with, and if the bugs die and the slaves run away, they only have the hordes of treasure to live off of, but that's only really for the mages lords. Everyone else is pretty much cannon fodder.

Firstly the Tribunal getting disolved happened early (when Almalexia killed Sotha and was then killed by the Nerevarine). Their godly powers were already gone (from the MW main questline) so the fact that Vivec survived another 7 years only to vanish during Oblivion is quite irelevant. The loss of the Tribunal didn't really matter for the dunmer since the Tribunal were too reclusive to make a diference and the Temple probably went on fine without them. Now the civil war (between Hlaalu &Dres and Indoril& Redoran) was probably much more damaging since it blasted away the Dunmer unity. Also when the moon falling was probably the most damaging event. Not only Vivec one of the largest cities was utterly destroyed but the eruption that followed probably affected the mainland Morrowind as well (most costal cities were flooded, earthquakes damaged all the other cities, crops may have failed because of the ash). Now after all of that there wasn't much of a society left to enslave. Without any guiding political, military or divine power the dunmer would most likely have fragmented and fell to the first invader that just happened to be the aragonians.

Hellmouth: Well they were taking damage but still . However i think that the Telvani will form a isolated comunity living just for it self. I think that they will a lot stronger and have way more intregrity than the in solstein. One can never know, they have insightfull mages like Arion, Fyr etc. They could do majour change that would fit the situation

Alex25: The disolving of the tribunal was not a majour isue for most yet for Indoril it was dear wound that weakened them significatly.
I dont believe the flood was so significant , there is neither depth or lenght for a tsunami to grow big enought. Somewhere is said that you can croos from Sadrit Mora to the continental part on foot and dry land at times. And it is not the tide for sure.

My next may look as anther pro Telvani argument yet it is just a fackt. A lot of Telvani housings are build on the top of those fungus things. Even poor people have theyr home on a upper level.
I know not everyone if you refer to the litle fisherman houses like in tel bramora.
As for the ash,yes that could be problem . Still they have backup at Telvani islands, but i consider that questionable due to the nature of relationship between telvani.

And as for the Argonians, i heard that they reached only to Vivec .
I agree with you on the civil war, the impackt of the volcano, and the crashed planet.

The Dunmer is a cool race, but they totally desserved to get sacked.

I don't think it's a matter of whether or not it was " justified" IMO i think it's more a matter of if you would have done the same if you were the Argonians in that situation. IMO if my people had been enslaved by a nation for centuries, and that nation was suddenly weakened, i would gather as many people as possible , and take our vengeance. It wouldn't be right, but it would FEEL right, if Argonians have similair emotions to humans and mers * can someone check the lore on this?* Ohh and this is my first post, BTW.

In that case, http://www.imperial-library.info/sites/default/files/dogate_til_fishystick.jpg!

Fix'd
It's uncertain how much sway the King of Argonia has, but usually when Black Marsh operates as a single force, it's thanks to http://www.imperial-library.info/content/pocket-guide-empire-third-edition-war-trees-argonia-and-black-marsh

Thanks for the fishy stick! and thanks for pointing out my mistake about the Hist, I'm still not sure how that piece of lore works. So wait, is there even less justification if the Hist were the driving force, since they weren't being enslaved, or is their relationship such that attacking Argonians is like attacking the Hist?

The argonians don't make any real distinction between them and the Hist, as far as they are concerned, their one and the same (please correct me if I'm wrong.).

I dunno. If the M. Sul author guy is somewhat accurate, the argonians would rather have half of their population die than have 1 Hist die. To them, the argonians can die and not have much effect, and they can repopulate quickly. With the Hist, if it dies, everything around it dies and they can't seem to replenish that well.

So why would the Hist organize an open war against an already destroyed enemy, especially if losing individual argonians is no problem. Unless they saw this as an opportunity to permanently remove a threat to the argonians and themselves by association?

The dunmer were a threat to Black Marsh, and I'm sure as hell the dunmer have been responsible for felling Hist. I'm sure there are other reasons, but I'm not a psychic and magical tree.

Okay so basically its the physic tree leaders making a logical tactical decision to eradicate a threat entirely before it could regain its strength, rather than a vengeance based attack, is what it seems lke IMO.

It was very likely both. The dunmer do make raids into Black Marsh, and I wouldn't be surprised if they have chopped down Hist in border disputes.

What happened around here- there used to be a lot more love for merethic cultures on this forum. Now you are all lizard lovers.

Anyways- yes I do sympathize with the Dunmer (I even subscribe to their religion a little bit- venerating the ancestors that is) and no I do not think the Argonians were justified. You all try to make it sound like Argonians are this poor helpless species that can't fend for themselves without a natural disaster aiding their cause. You forget that they were once the greatest threat to the Elnofex. They were really the only power standing in the way of a completely Merethic Tamriel- until those bloody northern barbarians came down from Atmora and the Yokudan's nuked their own islands with a magical atomic bomb.

The Merethic races are elitist and rightly so- this is their land- that a small part of the continent included a fragment of the old hist kingdom is mostly irrelevant. Argonia is but a small portion of the continent overall. When man finally arrived in Tamriel one of the first things they did was started slaughtering the indigenous population- personally I can't help but feel a twinge of revulsion for the human races- they did after all already wipe out two Merethic races (Ayleids and Falmer) after all- merethic blood is all intertwined- so it is likely the humans killed distant ancestors of my Dunmer characters.

That the Dunmer look down upon other elves- well, the Altmer pretty much cast them out when Veloth swayed them to ancestor worship, so in a way Dunmer resentment of Altmer stems from Altmer resentment of anything and everything that is not purely Altmer . Then there are the Bosmer- nobody likes forest dwelling cannibals that lurk in the shadows with their little bows and say gay things like I want to give you a back rub and I have a feeling you and I are about to become very close.

I am sure I can think of further justifications.

On the subject of slavery however I would submit that in Morrowind it seemed to me like everyone was in on the action- and fyi most of the slaves in the Telvanni Slave pits were former criminals of varying race- I don't remember there being too many betmer in those slave pens. It is a different story for the slavers in caves and whatnot- but the slavers were hardly all dunmer.

Thus- it is only logical that the Argonians should lash out at them too- you can't tell me that all those former argonian slaves languishing in caves in Morrowind reserved all of their resentment for the dunmer who were amongst the many slavers they would have to deal with on a daily basis. How come they didn't lash out at the Cyrodiilic Imperials during the Oblivion crisis- again it was an opportunistic moment they could have taken advantage of. After all- it was the empire that ultimately let slavery go on as long as they did. They could have broken the armistace at any point after they had conveniently set themselves up in Morrowind province with Imperial forts dotting the landscape- they could have then demanded further concessions.

As I seem to recall, there were a number of abolitionist characters in Morrowind- did the Argonians give any thought to whether the Dunmer they were slaughtering might have been amongst those abolitionists?

No- I think that it boils down to the fact that instead of a proper explanation that would have satisfied us all a little better, we got a one page treatment in a crappy novel describing how one of the most beloved races in fantasy was almost wiped out.

I can tell you one thing. Deserve it or not I am going to be mercilessly slaughtering Argonians when Skyrim rolls around. I am sure that for all of the bloodthirsty argonians they didn't stop to consider whether the Dunmer truly deserved it or not- in a similar fashion I shall reserve no mercy for the bastards. No the Argonians didn't do the most damage to Morrowind and her people- but theirs was the hammer blow that hit hardest, and they will pay.

@^ thank you for the comment about Dumner chopping down hist- you gave a new idea for my fanfic.

i gotta say karma dealt the dunmer one heck of a mighty back hand

Also to remember, the Hist never really cared for the men and mer squabbles, and just sat back and watched as the two killed each other. However, they still had most of their lands sunk and destroyed because of their squabbles during the Merithic Era. On top of that, they lived in isolation for a while, with the argonians as the walking and talking protectors of the Hist, only to have a bunch of mer come back and go "our land now!", begin to steal and enslave the argonians, and likely chopped a few Hist. Wouldn't surprise me if the Hist are the ones actually making sure Black Marsh is uninhabitable as a way to "discourage" other races from entering the Hist's lands.


And I'm happy they got nuked and removed from Morrowind. Chaos disapproved of their complete stagnation and needed a wake up call.

And, Eldarion Ciareth, not many people like merithic culture, most people liked dunmer culture. Big difference, and you should have known better. As for us being "lizard lovers," well, I hate mer in general, the dunmer were a stagnant people, and it this recent turn of events shook things up, even if had been known this would have eventually happened.

The Hists' separation from the man-mer conflict is one of the reasons I want a game to take place in Black Marsh. I also want to see their opinion on Lyg and Aka because of this.

The only thing we know about Hist and mythology is that they recognize that Sithis was the one to give the initial push. I guess they also subscribe to a similar view the Redguards have with "The Hum."

As a matter of fact I do know better- at least better then you it seems. I still maintain what I said about Merethic Culture- after all- half of the Dunmeri Language as it appears in the games is actually Aldmeri (not to mention the many religous parralels once you look past the tribunal).

BTW- yes it is true that the Red year would have happened irregardless- I just wish it had been expanded upon in the novel a bit. It was literally dealt with in a couple of paragraphs in the book right? A little more care on the part of the author would have been great. Even if he had mentioned some sort of reprisal on the part of the surviving Dunmer when the Argonians finally showed up on the scene. But yeah- I actually kind of agree that it was a great thing for people that play Dunmer Characters- it is just kind of hard to imagine all those places I visited ingame destroyed by war and natural disaster and crawling with lizards. Gives us a reason to play even more resentful characters.

No, the dunmer were the pretty different altmer, which is why they left quite early. Their entire belief is incredibly heretical to the altmer, and Vivec did subscrib to a mannish view of the world. The idea that the daedra are also ancestors would be akin to saying "Cubs svck" in Wriggly Field, and that Shor wasn't some malevolent trickster is even worse.

Yes, there are some superficial similarities, but in reality, the culture and beliefs of the dunmer are highly different from any other mer.

Sorry, I just reread my above post and realized it sounded unintentionally harsh- I probably should watch that, after all the reason I quit posting in the lore forums in the first place was due to my being too much of an [censored]. As per the similarities/ Difference between the Dunmer and other mer- well I see a lot of similarities. Probably should get back on topic though.

I dont think that the dunmer deserved it, but they still had it coming.

just a quick question: how thorugh were the argonians? did they kill every dunmer they could get?

Yeah they killed Any dummner thay see. Hell, they probably took some as slaves