I've been trying to work out the events between Oblivion and Skryim, I found "The Great War" which filled in most of it but I do not understand the references to the "eruption at Red Mountain". Is this just the events of Morrowind or is it something else? If the latter are there any good ingame books to track down on the subject?

The Elder Scrolls novels cover that subject pretty nice...

The eruption at Red Mountain happened a few years into the 4th Era, after the events of Oblivion. I haven't found any books refering to it and it's aftermath (yet) and don't know if they exist. But in essence Red Mountain errupted and threw most of Vvardenfell under the influence of a volcanic eruption. Which of course severly hurt the Dunmer.

Cheers for the quick replies. I'm playing a Dunmer (my favourite race) and so thought I should probably know what's going on there

I started playing "Skyrim" a few days ago and:

Morrowind, to some extent, does seem to have been reclaimed or not entiely overrun by the Argonians. There are refrences to Dunmer still living there.

What do you mean the nords gave Solstheim 'away' to the Dunmer? Solstheim was a disputed territory which neither Skyrim nor Morrowind had the greater claim to. At the most, the Skyrim retracted their claim to it.

Didn't ther Argonians withdraw from parts of Morrowind? It would make sense, who'd want a moon-struck (ahahahaha puns) wasteland? Or at least I find if hard to believe that they'd have put up a fight to hold it.

Well, there is this place called "Sarethi Farm" - Yes, Sarethi as in the Redoran name, but I digress - in which one of the women talks about "going to Mournhold". Small hope, heh?

morrowind was just... bombed... pisses me off.



:tes: love

Morrowind wasn't, Vvardenfell was and it was technically done long ago, Vivec just prevented it from happening right away.

Morrowind itself was sacked by the Argonians after centuries of strife. Remember all the Argonian slaves? Yeah, they got their revenge when the Dunmer were at their weakest.

And to the OP, if you really want to know more, you should totally check out the two novels. Really good stories.

I still think is strange, I completely get the Argonians invading but holding on to land? How did they manage something like that? The Dunmer should be more then capable of kicking the Argonians back, even in a weakened state.

Dirty lizards could only put up a fight against after we were hit by a [censored] moon.

Yeah, the moon hit. Vvardenfell was destroyed for a very large part, especially with red mountain erupting after. Still the Dunmer in the mainland should have been able to kick back the Argonians... More important hower Vivec was near 50% foreigners, a large district was based around the Temple of the tribunal who lost their power and the Arena was closed, no cities close by were mayor Dunmer strongholds, so yes it would have hurt them but it's not like it would have crippled the Dunmer completely. So it's not like there was absolutely nothing left in Vvardenfell to help the mainland. House Hlaalu should still have power and a good reason to wish to kick the Argonians out.

Just to clear up confusion, it wasn't actually one of the moons that fell into Vivec, but the Ministry of Truth (which some may remember visiting in Morrowind) that utterly destroyed the area. All of Vivec was gone, and I'm sure important House leaders dead. So, that would have lead to Chaos and power struggles in the houses. We all know how volatile the politics in Morrowind was already amongst the houses. The crash also lead to the eruption at Red Mountain covering the whole island in Ash, so Vvardenfell wasn't going to be much help to the mainlaind at all, and most of the survivors of everything that happened fled to Solstheim, which is in the opposite direction.

So, with all the political chaos, potential power struggles, the empire without strong leadership, and a large portion of Morrowind's Territory (Vvardenfell) destroyed/runied; the Mainland wasn't prepared for the Argonian attack. Don't forget that the Argonains were also pretty united at this point and had grouped together to push the invaders of Oblivion out of Black Marsh themselves. We can also add that the Tribunal was completely destroyed. Two dead and the other vanished (possibly dead or disappeared due to waning power that lead to the Ministry falling in the first place).

So, united front vs. nation in chaos. Argonians had the upper hand.

The Ministry of Truth was a moon. Just sayin'.

How much help did the mainland and Vvardenfell gave each other during previous crises however? The mainland of Morrowind was used to dealing with Argonians, without Vvardenfell houses and armies. Why were they all of a sudden incapable of doing that? And if not stop them, which I can understand, why weren't they able to push them back to the swamps? They knew the land are generally speaking beter mages and beter warriors when it comes to battlefields (medium and heavy armor against mostly light) they should have been able to deal with the Argonians. I also see no reason to believe that all houses were without leadership. In the years following the fall of the Tribunal and the dissapearance of the Hortator every house should have selected a new leader. Not all of those leaders would have been on Vvardenfell let alone stand Vivec city, now House Redoran and House Hlaalu could have suffered terribly but House Indoril, Dres and Telvanni should have been left mostly in tact. Those houses united should have been enough to push the Argonians back.



True, which would explain their initial succes, but what bothers me is that the Argonians are somehow holding onto pieces of Morrowind, even the Dunmer can unite against a great outward threat they have always done so in the past... I just don't see how they could possibly hold on... Especially for a long period like it would have to be here. or is simply that the Dunmer care more about restoring Vvardenfell then in keeping the mainland?

From what I've seen (yet to read the books myself) it wasn't a Plinian (explosive) eruption akin to Krakatoa, but a more drawn-out Vulcanian eruption, or more likely a widespread Peléan eruption. It described much of the island's surface as "destroyed," but given the massive volume of Vvardenfel and Red Mountain, obliterating it all to below sea level would've filled an ocean, well beyond the capacity of the Sea of Ghosts.

At least, judging both from in-game scale measurements as well as map conversions, Red Mountain had, near the end, a peak height of somewhere around 55,000 feet. (16,800m) Like most volcanoes, one can presume that its height grew over time as material built up. It also had a (once converted from scale) surface area of around 50-60,000 mi2. (130-155,000 km2) Obliterating (or even substantially changing the topography of) Vvardenfel would've required an eruption well, WELL past any explosion in recorded history; given the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volcanic_Explosivity_Index is logarithmic (each step is a full order of magnitude above the one below it) such a blast would have to rate as a 9 or possibly a 10, when human history has never witnessed anything beyond a 7. (and Krakatoa was actually a 6)


I'd doubt that Mournhold and the city of Almalexia would've been wiped entirely off of the map. The eruption was only said to have devastated Vvardenfel, and the capital wasn't even on the shores near it. And after all, the city had been razed before, with a new one built on top of it.

That, and given how the destruction was implied to be limited JUST to Vvardfenfel, it's likely a number of outlying parts survived. Mostly, these'd by on the outlying islands of Azura's Coast and the Sheogorad; especially, I'd imagine, much of House Telvanni's property both there and across the sea in northeast Morrowind would still be there.


I could actually readily see this, especially given that the Dunmer lacked the aid of any of the Tribunal; it was largely due to Vivec's leadership that a combined force (including argonians) was soundly defeated in an invasion attempt of Morrowind in 1E 2920. Without any assistance, and thrown into chaos, they'd be at a severe disadvantage against the Argonians, who were also masters of combat in swampy terrain, as was evidenced in the latter part of the second century 3E in The Armorer's Challenge. One must remember that while Vvardenfel might be mostly ash plains, southern Morrowind, where the bulk of the dunmer lived, was rather swampy.

All those factors would contribute to the Arognians marching into Morrowind, taking many cities or large pieces of land but I don't think the south of Morrowind is swampy, it borders the swamps of the Argonians but I don't think the land there itself is actually swampy. According to UESP House Dres is situated on the Deshaan Plain, House Dres is the most southern of the Argonian houses.

"The Deshaan Plain is a fertile area in southern Morrowind, which merges with the swamps of Black Marsh further south. It borders the Valus Mountains to the west and the banks of Thir River to the east, where the Hlaalu city of Narsis is situated."

Source: http://uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Deshaan_Plain and http://uesp.net/wiki/Lore:House_Dres

This doesn't sound like terrain where the Argonians would be able to fight best. It does sound like the kind of terrain where heavily armored troops and battle mages would be at their best.

Also as you said yourself the bulk of the Dunmer live on the mainland, Vvardenfell settlements are all relatively new because Vvardenfell wasn't opened to the general population until 3E414. So the erruption of Red Mountain, likely wouldn't have had devestating affects on the population number and the amount of troops Morrowind lost.

I might've been mistaken on that one... But I did recall the location of Sotha-Sil's Clockwork City being described as in the "marshes of southern Morrowind." Similarly, Dres' lands were primarily used for saltrice plantations, with saltrice preferring wetter climes.


I was referring to what parts of Morrowind were erradicated. A volcanic explosion certainly has more far-reaching effects than the reach of where it completely buries the land in lava, ashfall, and pryoclastic flows. I'd imagine that there'd been more temporary effects to the Dunmer's disadvantage from less-intense ash; as a real-world example, think back to when Eyjafjallaj?kull managed to make live miserable for Europe back in 2010. If a famine had struck Morrowind, that would've weakened the Dunmers' ability to fight back. Meanwhile, the Argonians wouldn't have been so affected, living so far away.

I think the Telvanni might have done remarkably well in this. Apparently only southern Vvardenfel was occupied. I assume the Argonians don't have the strength or courage to risk meddling in the affairs of wizards.

House Redoran was nearly wiped out during the Oblivion crisis, destroying a large part of Morrowinds armed forces. The rest of Morrowind would also have been hit very hard, lacking the guidance of the Tribunal and all that. A great deal of Morrowind was thus probably devastated and in the process of being restored when the red year happened, but it would have been chaotic due to the general turmoil in the Empire. The dunmer might have expected help from the legions but didn't get it.

Kind of funny how the dunmer never attempted to settle it, yet there were two nord settlements an imperial fort, and ravenrock.

Both the Dunmer and Nord's layed claim to it, but officially, it was Imperial territory. Those of Thirsk and the Skaal were there before its 'discovery'.

I have to wonder how Skyrim couldn't know about the settlements when they regularly communicated with skyrim for mead shipments.

If the dunmer were unwilling to enforce any claim to it, they aren't really claiming it. They could claim Skyrim was theirs too.

It's pretty simple, skyrim's people actually settled it. Morrowind's didn't. Never even tried until the Red Year at which point the Nords gave it to them.(The Dunmer were in no position to bargain)