So, Dwemer ruins were once their cities, correct? You can see that they have living quarters, dining areas, armories, etc.

If that's the case, why the hell did they fill their damn cities with traps? I got turned into mince meat by these spinning blades that activated when I opened a door. What kind of moron would design his CITY to have deadly traps rigged to half the doors and staircases?

Did the Dwemer king just think "Ah, we might go extinct, let's place THOUSANDS of traps, just to [censored] with any adventurers that may try to explore our ruins." I wonder if THAT'S how the Dwemer went extinct. Thousands dying to the SPINNING BLADES OF DEATH that two-shotted my orc in all his Daedric armor.

So, thoughts? I'm still surprised that scholars haven't figured out the Dwemers cause of extinction. The last few probably just left false notes that they didn't die in a completely [censored] manner.

:rofl:

I'm sure they knew where the traps were and were smart enough to avoid them. You're the complete moron for stepping on them.

Serious answer:

That's exactly the obvious reason why they put all the traps there... They put them there to keep safe their treasures... they probably knew that they will go extinct so they wanted to make sure the treasures are safe though and only the smartest adventurers might get something...


But the thread made me laugh, thanks
I actually was horribly scared the first time i got chopped by one of those blades...

I've wondered that myself. Plus those automatons attack anyone, even the person who pulled the lever to let the Centurion loose. Personally I think they may have had a slight Skynet problem and when they tried to escape all their traps cut them down.

The dwemer probably knew all about the traps they had put down.
Like bandits in their...oh...

I assumed that they were security systems that were inadvertently activated during the great disappearance or due to wear-n-tear over the years.

Maybe they were really, really paranoid and dont forget they were at some point

In all seriousness:

They were in a war. iirc it was in the 1st Era, dwemers had surely rigged their cities to stop invaders from reaching them. This can also be seen from all the steam-machines that are still active and killing invaders, they are in a war-state as no dwemer was able to put them to non-aggressive mode before they disappeared from nirn for good.

In not all seriousness: Yeah, funny. Heh. :vaultboy:

If you'd ever played Dwarf Fortress, you'd know placing traps all around and inside your home is the only way to go really.

It's probably more like the traps where in active when the ruins where in use. Perhaps they where used as security measures to stop thieves at night. Perhaps the ruins can sense when there are no peoples of Dwemer blood within the ruins and they all automatically set themselves.

Maybe they knew where traps were. Who knows how long those ruins themselves were abandonded. Maybe we are going in ruins of ancient Dwemer citys that were abandoned for some reason before the whole Disapearence

The first step in defeating a trap is knowing of it's existence.

If you know it's there, you can avoid it. However, those pesky in-laws?

I think they mainly did it out of pleasure because you can find one ruin where there is a throne in front of a cage that has a lever next to it which triggers the spinning blades to cut up whoever was in the cage

I just assumed it was automated. A simple fail-safe, if nobody countermands an order and intrusions are detected devices click on. The robots could guide authorized presences around any said traps.

You know, I've always found it sad that such an intelligent and advanced race would just disappear the way they did. I'd imagine they succumbed to their own devices in the end, but nobody is really sure. Another thing I was and still am not sure of is, were the dwemer actual dwarves or just another type of elf?

Were they short and stubbly with magnificent beards?

the real mystery is, if they were dwarves why is all their armor man sized? that dwarven armor lying there in a dwemer ruin for thousands of years? man sized..what's up with that? O.O

Dwemer are man-sized.

to ward off the horde of falmer when they got uppity.

They're just called Dwarves because that's what the giants of Skyrim called them.
They are, if anything, a tad bit shorter than Wood Elves.


On topic, they were at war with both the Falmer [inside their cities] and the Dunmer[outside their cities] at the time of their disappearance, it makes sense they would fill their cities with traps. To prevent the Falmer from below and the Dunmer from above from coming in.

It would be especially effective on Falmer because well...they are blind. They wouldn't know what hit them.

So what exactly makes them dwarves?

It was a nickname, given to them by a race of giants, since they were dwarves compared to them. I guess the name just stuck. They were actually a race of elves, hence the name Dwemer.

Ah ok. That's rather underwhelming... I prefer traditional dwarves myself. It's too bad there no such race AFAIK...

I could imagine a note or message being passed around the cities regarding the war with the Falmer telling everyone to stay inside their rooms and food and other accommodations be sent regularly through the pneumatic tube system they seem to have set up. Also, places like Blackreach don't have many traps around them and it seemed very residential, whereas the factories were higher up.

The first species the giants encountered were the Dwemer. To them, they were small and short and they called the Dwemer "Dwarves".
The only thing the Dwemer have in common with typical fantasy dwarves is: they live (lived) underground, and they make great armour and weapons.
The real earth culture the Dwemer were closest to was Mesopotamia.

Yeah, I'm just a little peeved because there are SO MANY TRAPS.

It'd be all fine and dandy if all the traps were in the entrance corridor, but they aren't. What's this [censored] with a massive spinning death machine of brutal mutilation and rainbows in the middle of the damned sleeping wing?

I found the answer to their extinction. The kids were to stupid to realize blades [censored] hurt.