The navy was destroyed by numidium. This thing was big enough to stand in the ocean and do its whoop-ass. Hell, it lifted its leg and a fifth of the fleet capsized.

I am more inclined to believe that Azura incinerated all of them on the spot.

Apparently, the effects of the Heart itself did not reach beyond Nirn.

Edit: I'm guessing that it'd be because Lorkhan was the prince of Mundus, and wherever Yagrum was it was outside his influence, at least to a degree.

Nirn is the "Prince" of Mundus. Anyway, the story Yagrum tells is after years of brain degeneration. What purpose he ever may have had is disputable. Sotha Sil's last words, in the Divayth Fyr comments, reveals Yagrum was given the tools, which may have booted some latent programing, because posession of them changed his personality.

I generally write it up as a failure for various reasons, most of which I noted in my article (ie, that the Numidium was just left sitting there, that they were forced to act prematurely due to the Chimer attacking them, that they took the whole endeavor too literally from the getgo, that the fact of there still being one left defies the logic behind uniting as one in reversal of the process and that even in this logic the uniting of just the Dwemer might not be sufficient to actually accomplish anything). http://www.imperial-library.info/interviews/skelm.shtml sounds equally pessimistic when he states that "Kagrenac had even built the tools needed to construct a Mantella, the Crux of Transcendence. But, by then, and for a long time coming, the Doom of the Dwarves marched upon the Mountain and they were removed from this world." Not only does this just make it sound like they failed but it also implies that Kagrenac didn't have a Mantella, just the tools needed to create one.

Of course Xal also offers the possiblity that they might have been successful to some degree, or at least that their failure should be regarded in a slightly different light:

"The Brass God is Anumidum, the Prime Gestalt. He is also called the divine skin. He was meant to be used many times by our kind to transcend the Gray Maybe... This Warp is but a realization of the trap that is the Gray Maybe, and that champion of release, the Brass God, has but reminded us again what the failure of his misuse means in the Arena Mundus."

The statement that it was meant to be used many times could easily imply that the Numidium wasn't meant to disappear after the Dwemer used it, but rather that it was meant to be left there for other groups to follow in their footsteps - the problem according to this would be that the subsequent groups 'misused' it.

This opens a variety of possibilities:

• Perhaps the Numidium was meant to serve more as a mold for the souls to adhere to, under the assumption that once the souls were made to fit the mold that the souls would then ascend in united form, leaving behind the mold for others to use. Granted, not only does this fail to explain the bit about them literally becoming the 'metal body', but it can also fall into all the same holes that I mentioned above. The metal body bit might be explained in the idea that that might simply be the form that the souls take upon fitting the mold.
  
  
• Perhaps in sacrificing their own souls to become the metal body they were simply completing the mold - this still allows Yagrum the possiblity of acting as the agent needed to complete the final touches.
  
  
• Perhaps sacrificing their souls isn't what destroyed their bodies. Afterall, if the Numidium was already near completion one would assume that it already had its body, the metal body of the Dwemeri souls. Furthermore, both http://www.imperial-library.info/mwbooks/nerevar_redmountain.shtml and http://www.imperial-library.info/mwbooks/battle_redmountain.shtml suggest that the Dwemer were 'immortal' during the war. One might be able to draw the conclusion that their souls had already been taken from their bodies (or at least that their souls had somehow been attatched [anchored?] to the Numidium) and that the Dwemer themselves were similar to a sort of immortal sentient husk or animunculi (or even comparable to the Ash Vampires, who are immortal, sentient, and even retian their souls yet can be 'killed' and have some sort of deeper connection to Dagoth Ur in that he gets weaker when they die, and more importantly that they die if you kill Dagoth (or more pointedly, if you destroy Akulakhan), note the bit about the oversoul I mention further down).
  
  http://imperial-library.info/mwbooks/lessons.shtml#36 is also of note here, which refers to the Numidium as "a walking star" and states that "When the soul of the Dwemer could walk no more, they were removed from this world." Within this Vivec speaks of the Numidium being activated, refers to it as "the soul of the Dwemer", and implies that it wasn't until after the Numidium was deactivated that the Dwemer disappeared (which is somewhat similar to 'Nerevar at Red Mountain' stating that it wasn't until the tools were used a second time on the Heart with the goal of separating them from it that the Dwemer disappeared). Not only does this give further credence to the common theory and Xal that the Dwemer merged all their souls into one sort of 'oversoul' but it also supports the idea I presented that it wasn't the sacrificing of their souls that destroyed their bodies, rather it was due to the 'destruction' of their oversoul in the Numidium.
  
  Back on the topic of Dagoth's, this sort of sentient yet vitally connected to the central member bit comes to mind - deactivate the Numidium and 'kill the oversoul' and the Dwemer disappear, destroy Akulakhan and the Ash Vampires disappear despite having their own souls. If there actually is a correlation here then it would suggest that the Dwemer would have been able to retain the soul in their body while being connected to the Numidium. How this exactly works I can't say, whether they could both have the soul in their body and have it somehow in the Numidium, whether a simple anchor connection to the Numidium would be enough to count as "sacrificing their souls", whether being symbolically united with this oversoul is enough in such a way that the Numidium somehow uses their souls from afar and binds them without actually removing them from the Dwemer's bodies. Which brings me to the last bit.
  
  Finally, note the Zurin/Talos Entantiomorph which Xal mentions as having the 'Oversoul' of Tiber Septim. Xal further states that "the Anumidum went berserk and created an Empire of Evil to house the malignant half of its soul" which seems to imply that the Oversoul also served as the Numidium's soul despite Tiber Septim and the Numidium being different beings. This gives further credence to the aformentioned idea that the soul or souls which make up the Numidium's oversoul/golden skin don't necessarily have to be seperated from their original source, ie, Zurin/Talos/Tiber still existed as individuals despite being part of the Numidium's oversoul. Its not too much of a leap to then say that the Dwemer could have still existed as [immortal] individuals despite being part of the Numidium's oversoul, at least until the Numidium was deactivated by Nerevar/Tribunal, thereby destroying the oversoul; the ramifications of which destroyed all the souls which made it up and the Dwemer with them.
  
  As to why this Oversoul didn't ascend, it might be chalked up to the Tribunal/Nerevar were simply able to deactivate it in time, that it wasn't an instantaneous process in that "Lorkhan had his Heart again, but he had long been from it, and he needed time."http://www.imperial-library.info/mwbooks/wulfharthsongs.shtml, or maybe its still Yagrum's fault.

Sorry if that's convoluted, I was thinking it through as I went and when I started that list of possibilities these relations to Dagoth/Tiber Septim/Oversoul hadn't even crossed my mind. Anyway,

In case you want to skip reading all that:
To sum up this rambling, the basic idea here would be that they were succeeding but that they were cut of in the process. The Dwemer could have been connected to the Heart before the Battle of Red Mountain, already part of the Numidium and its Oversoul, already its golden skin - this assumes that it wouldn't actually require the complete removal of the Dwemer's souls from their bodies (with reference to the Enantiomorph being the Numidium's Oversoul later and reference to the relationship Dagoth Ur/Akulakhan shares with the Ash Vampires, ie, they disappear when its 'deactivated' just like the Dwemer did when the Numidium was deactivated).

In this case, the Dwemer had already succeeded to a degree, however when the Numidium was finally activated and the final steps being put in place they were cut off. Should this be true, the Enantiomorph really did follow in their footsteps of joining with the mold, it is only the later groups during the incidents of Daggerfall who misused it. The Numidium is still a uniting of many into one in reversal of the creation process, a mold to follow or perhaps even the literal object of unification, this just adds more elements to the process than my article detailed - not to mention that it draws a before (as far as I can remember) unstated relation between the Dwemer and Enantiomorph's usage of the Numidium as well as Dagoth's recreation of it in Akulakhan.

Don't take any of this as researched fact. I haven't studied the sources in depth in a long time, these are just ramblings to pass the time from what I remember and just made up... I'll try thinking it through when I have alot more free time, feel free to refute or elaborate as you like, as I said, these ideas haven't fully come together in my mind.

Yea, they had different goals. The Dwemer were trying to affect everybody, the Tribunal were only trying to affect themselves. Of course its been pointed out before that the Dwemer were burned to a crisp while the Dunmer were only slightly toasted...

This is the quote you're looking for:

"It's not the Brass God that wrecks everything so much as it is all the plane(t)s and timelines that orbit it, singing world-refusals.
The Surrender of Alinor happened in one hour, but Numidium's siege lasted from the Mythic Era until long into the Fifth. Some Mirror Logicians of the Altmer fight it still in chrysalis shells that phase in and out of Tamrielic Prime, and their brethren know nothing of their purpose unless they stare too long and break their own possipoints."--MK

A cookie to anybody who actually reads through and understands that convoluted mess... :cookie:

I mostly get it. Do I get a mostly cookie? Still very convoluted, but I the ramblings seem to fit in a way.

I like the idea the Numidium is the echo of the dreamsleeve, or oversoul, those golden scales a thousand possabilities slide across. When infront of it, things get lost or appear when they shouldn't. Is that the Nerevarine or the Sharmat? Thanks for the insights, Luager.

Yea, sorry about that. I wrote it on and off during free periods at work. It seemed like I'd write a paragraph, go off and do something, have time to think it through further and then come back and write abit more. Basically its a written version of the progression of my own thoughts, which works well when organized after the fact, not so much when they're thrown down in their raw form.

I'm glad you made the connection to a sort of dreamsleeve function. I knew I left traces of that idea by mentioning the anchor system and the general association with an oversoul; almost made a direct point of it but got sidetracked. It works well in relation to CHIM and furthermore gives a solid model for how they can be connected to its oversoul and still retain their own souls.

Not faulting you there, it is an arduous task to connect the dots of what the dwemer tried to do and stuff. And mostly because I want a cookie...