I personally think the Imperial's were kinda unfair, the Ayleid's ruled Cyrodill and the Imperial's make out the Ayleids most of the time as the bad guy's when they were the one's who invaded the Ayleids first.
What do you think?.
And DON'T say that if we hadn't invaded them we wouldn't of had this games history, etc etc.

Imperials didn't invade the Ayleid kingdoms.

They were enslaved by the Ayleids before rebelling. So no, I don't think they are being unfair.

Also it was Ayleids who invaded Cyrodiil from Summerset Isle.

So on the poll I voted "other" since there was no invasion by men. It was an invasion by Ayleids.

O.O Oshi, i fail at lore.

The Ayleids were extremely evil! Haven't you read any of the backstory concerning all the grizzly, horrifying ways they used to torture the people who were their slaves? They may have made beautiful buildings, but they were all evil to their core, if you accept the backstory. Their rule was as heartless and terrifying as anything Mehrunes Dagon might impose.

Be well - Pax
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Starting point for more info:

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Ayleids

Im new to Oblivion still and i don't know as much lore as others.
Moderators can lock this if they want, thanks for the link!

I for one welcome our Ayleid overlords.

Sorry, I just wanted to post that

If they were so extremely evil why haven't they built up and attacked the empire?
Those books were written by men, so clearly they are immensely biased.
There is a book in the series in which a pregnant woman gets lost in a forest, then the Wild Elves come and help her, not kill her or torture her
But to the question in the poll, it wasn't really an invasion, more a rebellion which was justified as they were slaves, how badly treated we don't truly know.
EDIT: Anyone know what that book was? I can't remember and I'm not sure if I finished the series (if there was a series )

Yes, the Imperials write things down, but most of the details and descriptions are pure fantasy, and fantastically biased. Look at what Alessia Ottus writes, and what is written in the official Biography of Barenziah.

I don't deny that the slaves were badly treated, at least if they crossed a few sacred lines (they could be executed for looking at Ayleid crowns, according to Umbacano in Oblivion). But seriously, the Ayleids dedicated parts of major cities for torture? Also, note how vague the descriptions of torture chambers are in the Adabal-a. They don't even make sense.

From what I've read, only the cruel Ayleid overlords were rebelled against and defeated. There were other Ayleid lords who fought with the humans against the evil slavemaster Ayleids, and they were not taken down, but continued to rule their provinces, under Alessia, after the rebellion. However, even they (or their descendants, not sure) were driven out around 400 years after the rebellion by a controversial faction claiming allegiance to Alessia. Apparently the actions and tactics of these Alessians(?) were not sanctioned, since they were themselves wiped out by the non-Ayleid inhabitants of Cyrodiil... but not before they had decimated the remaining Ayleids.

Be well - Pax
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Those books were written by Imperials, so it's obviously going to be biased towards the Ayleids. Plus, I truly doubt that they were all evil, simply because they kept slaves. I mean, would you call the dunmer evil for doing the exact same thing?

:lmao: Reality Check! :rofl:

Be well - Pax
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Of course, the Elder Scrolls lore is generally recorded in in-game books and dialogs, as opposed to given to players through objective sources. And I doubt much of the backstory we have on Ayleids was written by the Ayleids themselves, or people who would have been in favor of them, so it's entirely possible that the Imperial accounts did paint the Ayleids as worse than they actually were. Certainly, Imperial accounts aren't going to make Ayleids out to be saints, of course they probably weren't saints anyway, and I'm sure the Ayleids did to some pretty horrible things, but I doubt all of them were as completely evil as we might be led to believe.

That being said, since the Ayleids enslaved the humans, I'd say the humans did pretty much the logical thing to do, when people are oppressed or enslaved, it's hard to see it as unreasonable that they would eventually revolt against their masters.



Yes, in fact, I would, an evil that needs to be wiped out, preferably with blood, lots of it. It's just the Dunmer that keep slaves, though, those who don't might still be annoying and arrogant, but at least they don't have as urgent a need to die as those who keep slaves, the thing with Dunmer though is that not all of them practice slavery, a few are even opposed to it, and those who are not but don't actually practice it only really seem to defend it with saying "it's the law".

Ditto. when you're rebelling slaves it's a different ball game than when you're a preestablished power trying to wipe out another. Rebellion is usually fine as soon as the immediate problem is dealt with, and since the slavemasters were dead (and the High King as well) they didn't see a need for total extermination until the "Alessians."

Yeah, some were quite decent guys and since the biased humans wrote this it clearly shows they weren't all bad.
Some rumours are that the Ayleids remain, we'll probably never know for certain but I hope we do
Some crazy religious order with a prophet believing to have seen Saint Alessia I think... Mankunative Selectives? (Forrgive the spelling) Maybe it wasn't them... I can't remember...

http://www.imperial-library.info/obbooks/2920.shtml series.

Thank you very much! I'll catch up on my reading

What you DO to and with your slaves counts for a lot, wouldn't you think? Why would you disallow the majority of the backstory, when it was only written in the first place to flesh out your gameplay? Why would the Devs lie to little ol' us about their game?

Be well - Pax
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It's not really about lying as adding an extra dimension to the game. Instead of just being told exactly what's true and exactly what's false, you sometimes need to really take some time to think about it and decide who is right and who is wrong, if any party is completely right. If it wasn't like that, we probably wouldn't be having this, or any other lore discussions right now.

And despite what we're shown in the game, which would lead us to think that all Dunmer really do with their slaves is make them stand around all day doing nothing, the lore actually suggests that many Dunmer slave masters do some pretty terrible things to their slaves, just look at the thing about using slaves to smuggle moon sugar, by forcing them to swallow bags of it. It's probably best not to ask how they get it out, and in this case, we know they do it as one quest in Morrowind deals with it.

On the other hand, I guess they can't all do things like that, one could only assume that Dyvath Fyr was unbelievably kind to his slaves, since one of them chose to stay after being freed by his master, or maybe he was just a complete idiot who was also brainwashed, we'll never know.

According to in-game overheard conversations, the Dunmer abolished slavery.

Be well - Pax
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They did abolish slavery... Caused quite a ruckus for ol' Helseth... But they still mistreated their slaves when they had them, even in Morrowind

Pelinal Whitestrake? Didn't he become a cultural hero and an 'immortal' champion because he suggested massacring the Ayleids? Now, seriously, if you can suggest something and become one of the greatest heroes in the history of an entire civilisation, people wouldn't look down on you if you actually did it.

Greatest hero THEN. Now everyone thinks he is completely insane

no, not really. people nowdays have more admiration (or so it seems, based on KotN) for him that men did back in the day, his massacres and genocides have been forgiven and hes seen as a white knight who rescued them from the ayleid oppression.

Pelinal gained notoriety and hero status for helping to free the nedes and being an all around hardcoe dude (lazer canon for an arm? check!) his Pogroms werent all that popular, but people saw them as a means to an end. when youre fighting a revolution you cant refuse demigod help just because hes a wee bit unstable.

The existence of Ayleid gas cages in Sardavar Leed suggests to me that the Ayleids dserve a lot of their reputation. What benign purpose can a room full of cages suspended over gas vents have?


The dunmer didn't do "Flesh sculpture", which I don't want to know what that is, nor did they set children on fire in order to use as torches for nighttime hunting trips.