Why waste mostly mindless beasts, when you could create a vast army of these beasts under your wing?

wow the dwemer are pricks, does make me wonder if the goblins are mutie elves the altmer decided to enslave,

Dude, they're Altmer. Their defining characteristic is wasteful obsession with purity. Hell, they kill nine tenths of their own kids. If ten tenths of their kids survived, they could create a vast army out of them.

They do that to themselves, because they're altmer. With gobbos, they're purely meat shields. Every goblin trainer has been an altmer so far.

I thought the racial purity was a bunch of Tiber Era Propaganda meant to demonize the Altmer in the eyes of Tibers growing Empire. Other than the 1st Procket Guides outrageous claims, I don't believe theres any evidence suggesting that the Altmer practiced baby killing. The Thalmor themselves are a extreme right-wing radical group at that.

edit: I know they believe themselves superior and even look down on other elves, but the racial cleansing seemed to out there for me.

I would normally agree with you, however the Thalmor's conduct thus far leaves me to wonder that it is a remote possibility that they did indeed practice some form of racial purity. Perhaps not infanticide like the pocket guide claims, but carefully planned marriages and other precautions put in place in the off chance they would have children.

On topic: I found it interesting that the Falmer had people from the surface as servants, they are a lot more sophisticated than I thought. This also tells me that they conduct raids more often than I gave them credit. Perhaps the rumors that babes disappearing is indeed result of Falmer antics.

Exactly. Gobbos (you've got me saying it now) get away with being dirty impure scum because they're gobbos. If they were elves, the altmer wouldn't put up with it.


Well, Carthage sacrificed babies whenever they felt the need, the original Roman Constitution said that all defective infants were to be thrown into the Tiber, and really, the altmer need to have some way of keeping their population in check. They basically have the Japan problem of finite living space. Whereas the Imperial Japanese tried to fix that problem by [censored] pregnant Chinese woman, cutting their bellies open, and tearing the fetus apart while the dying mother watched helplessly ([censored] of Nanking), the altmer came to a relatively humane solution. Its still really [censored] terrible, but it's a humanly possible sort of terrible.

Don't wanna have the same conversation over two threads so I'll just reply in the other one. Probably more appropreate there anyway But like I said, I swear I've read Altmer have a slower breeding process.

Yeah, elves are only fertile when there is low population pressure.

I did a search for "fertility" on TIL. Apparently it comes from a single line of dialog in Morrowind. I'm inclined to say that puts it on the same level as the argonian life-phase, but even if it doesn't, the Altmer could easily manipulate the conditions of their fertility. One easy technique: wage war.

I've never seen a war cheaper than a family planning program

I've never seen a family planning program that eliminates mankind from the pattern of possibility

It started out back in the Real Barenziah. Given that it was written all the way back in Daggerfall, the parameters could have been altered.

I'm starting to think that the Altmer, far from being so frivolous with Merrish life, don't actually euthanize their defective babies.

They just paint 'em green and ship 'em off for Goblin-boot-camp.




It does make sense, in any case, for longer lived organisms to reproduce less. If the Altmer, who can easily reach 200, were to be not just perennially fertile but fecund, the population strain would be of several thousand magnitudes past 'totally Malthusian apocalypse'. Ecological collapse, mass starvation,
overcrowding, urban squalor, crime. All very un-Altmer.

The high-folk are static, anuic. They aren't given to the chaos of men because they don't suffer the same population burdens. Men aren't always at war just because they feel like it, they need lebensraum.

Also, wars deplete populations. I can't imagine a total war being good for anybody's birthrate.

[insanity]Goblins are actually pure elves. The elves we see have been purified of their goblin-esque features through mannish blood. [/insanity]

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Fall_of_the_Snow_Prince


Quite a different image than what we are presented with here. Instead of the elegant noble Falmer of this book you have a corrupted form. I think that is what happened to the Falmer. Elves are keen to change their nature due to their surroundings from their original Aldmeri root. This plays into the whole over arcing "elven culture" that carries from various series in that the Elves are more keenly sensitive to the nature around them than man.

No, it was the dwemer. Mentioned in a book, that the dwemer took the retreating falmer in, and made them smoke meth and constantly require it.

You could've at least said skooma. Or made up something Dwemer-sounding.
I lol'd anyways.

Oh, I have no trouble at all believing that the Thalmor practice infanticide, much like the Spartans did. I'm sure the nine out of ten thing was an exaggeration but I don't doubt that it happens. During the Third Era the practice probably fell by the wayside (at least openly) but the new (old) lords of Alinor do not strike me as the type of people who would go "oh how cute a baby" rather than "let's figure out what's wrong with it and if the answer is 'anything' throw it off a cliff."

That's why they kill the babies. To keep things under control. All elven races live under some sort of population-draining conditions. Morrowind has always been a bit of a hellhole, Valenwood is full of terrors (some of which used to be bosmer), and the altmer live with other altmer.


Men say: we have too many kids! So, uh, who cares? I'm still going to sleep with my wife and try to take care of my kids.
Mer say: we have too many kids! I know how to keep that in check...


If Altmer are only fertile when their populations are low (as this one quote from MW say) then killing off large portions of your population (via war) would be good for your birthrate.

You guys do know that most mer can have 2 kids at most, biologically, right? Barenziah got lucky.

I'm still really iffy on that, since it comes primarily from the positively ancient Real Barenziah. I'm sure that the Altmer don't find it more of a problem - less people to take care of, and more time to focus on transcendental rather than physical things. Although I have no proof, I would hazard that the Altmer have some level of genetic engineering to assist in maintaining their population and making sure they don't have too many rejects.

OK, I just read through the Real Barenziah again. She says that dunmer have between two and four children, normally. The MW quote implies this was because she lived in a polulous area / era. However, this seems a bit suspect, unless elven children never die of natural causes in infancy.

Of course, the best prevention (of babies) is abstinence. And the Altmer do strike me as given to extreme skin-on-bones asceticism and celibacy. Maybe they could overrun the world, but that's Mannish hat and would run contrary to their grand mythic projects.

Then again, wasn't childbirth Shor's whole point? That the et'Ada should become parents, and then die. It strikes me as very Mundus-y and Padhomaic and just not very Elvish. I just think they're going to be outstripping anybody in a pure numbers game. Not that it matters anyway, conventional warfare just isn't their bag really. Who needs vast legions when you have dracochrysalis?

Now, there is the distinct possibly that the Pocket Guide's claims contained a kernel of precious truth. Presumably, from what we know, the anti-Mundus Altmer treat the Summurset Isles as a sort of sacred realm, a quarantine zone free of infection from the Lorkhanic soul-sickness plaguing the rest of the wicked world.

The closest thing to transcendence, in other words.

Trouble is, space in the lifeboat is limited, so they initiate a PROC-style one-child-with-really-killer-cheekbones policy that just seems totally abhorrent to Cyrodiilic eyes who think every baby is a precious gift from Mara/Arkay/Wacky Nibenese Mudcrab God.

Between the the Oblivion Crisis and the Civil War in Skyrim, the elves lost their weakness to magic. The Altmer are prone to 'editing' the mundus, who isn't to say they can't take care of their low birthrate problem when they need to? I can very well imagine them using dawn magicks to allow people to have more children, and increase the rate of passes to rejects.

Also, the Aldmeri Dominion just lost an amount of people in a great war. The Altmer would not have started the war unless they had a back-up plan for population regrowth. The Thalmor aren't just 'Lol, let's invade and see what happens.'. Every stage of the invasion was meticiously planned. They wouldn't just leave out something like the Dominion having a decimated manpower level.

The Thalmor are obviously planning to go at round two once Talos has been completely erased from the mythic. To do this, they will need to rebuild faster than the empire. The empire is still pouring manpower into the Skyrim civil war, and it's possible they'll lose Skyrim which will include losing probably around 1/3 to 1/2 their total manpower. Even if the elves don't regrew fast enough, the Empire isn't going to rebuilding itself anytime soon.

Also, on the subject of skin-on-bones celibacy, I'd imagine that while Altmer would vaery from individual to individual on their potential Altmer mates, I'd speculate 99% of Altmer would be reviled at the consequence of even touching a human. Impure blood would be a big deal to them, and they would be abstinent from impure Altmer and mannish types.