I'm dseigning a throne room for a Dwemer fortress and it occurred to me that the Dwemer probably associated depth, rather than height, with status given the amount of energy it takes to dig and then instead of the throne being higher than the subjects it may be lower/deeper. Which brings me to my question - are there any instances in lore in which these fundamentally different viewpoints are present? For example a high priest may be referred to as a "Deep Priest" or instead of "head for high ground" it could be "burrow". I may be over-simplifying things but am still interested to see if anything like this is reflected anywhere.

not really. they didn't have priests, and their rulers were "cheifs." also, Dwemer ruins boast some really awesome towers above ground although you go into the basemant.

The dwemer are nothing like typical dwarves, save for having a beard. They were mer, who doubted the power of the gods, and sought to recreate themselves (i.e. the entire race) into a god, via the Numidium. If you were to classify a "dwemer priest," the closest guys would be the tonal architects, with Kagrenac being the highest. They did have a king, and it was Dunmac. However, their entire race is gone, save for one corprus crazed guy.

As for their architect, go to their ruins and look around, take note of everything, and so on. They are called "Deep Elves" not because they lived underground, but as a metaphorical connotation with how they thought. Many of their ruins had towers and such, and only really dug underground as a way to most likely stick their power generators closer to the magma to generate better thermal energy or something.

I assume you are talking about making a mod for MW, right?

i before e except after c.

One of the many lies told by gradeschool teachers. It seems like half of high school and college is unlearning the junk they teach us as kids.

Learning German has totally ruined me on when or when not to use that rule because their rules are so much more logical about it.

Anyways, you'll notice that the dwemer ruins weren't really designed very well to house a population. Certainly, some of the stuff around Red mountain because those were fortresses and designed to withstand a siege, but the other areas (especially the formerly densely populated areas) didn't. Likely the stuff that has survived are their machine areas. It's just like the ayleid ruins: the stuff that's survived is mostly their mausoleums (discounting the entire Imperial City as that's been kept in good condition).

As for a fortress, they'd likely funnel you through the machine shop (centurian storage) before getting to any sensitive areas, which would be where the magma is, which would be fairly deep in, so generally speaking the deeper the more important it is, yes. If you want to add some extra flavor, I'd go with something music related. They're very into tones and harmonies and melodies (see the instructions for how to operate keening and sunder on the Heart).

I have . The Tonal Architecture process involves music in order to construct the devices and constructs. The trick will be finding a large number of short tunes that aren't annoying.

Something that struck me quite a while ago that although every Dwemer ruin I've been to tends to take the player downward, there is an awful lot of the structure that is visible above ground. As another poster said, you can see a lot of towers sticking out of the ground. In some places one can see what might be windows. Now I admit I am forming my own conclusions here since there really isn't much of anything in the lore to tell us what the daily life of the Dwemer was like, but my theory is that the big machines we see in the game are what powers things such as the "electrical" lights that we see in the corridors and who knows what else. These are the floors where the Dwemer might have worked. The sections of the ruins we see above ground, and there is actually a good bit of it with some of them (such as the ruins at Red Mountain) could be where the Dwemer lived and spent leisure time.

http://www.imperial-library.info/content/morrowind-thirty-six-lessons-vivec-sermon-thirty-six

Vivec calls Kagrenac a "high priest." But then again, Vivec isn't a Dwemer.

In http://www.imperial-library.info/content/morrowind-kagrenacs-tools Kagrenac is also referred to as a "high priest," but that's also written from a non-Dwemer perspective.

So, at least the Dunmer think "high priest" is an acceptable title for a Dwemer.

Though we do encounter living quarters in the underground sections of Dwemer ruins, which is confirmation that they at least slept underground.

Perhaps the towers were administrative centers, or only available to upper-class citizenry?

Some living quarters, but not nearly enough (even with extrapolation) to justify an entire population. My guess is that it's there for the caretaking staff or researchers (tonal architects) so that work and sleep are close by.

Well, we have orreries which tend to be near-ish to towers in geography, so perhaps in the situations where the place has an orrery the two are related.

Dwemeri society had "magecrafters", which, because of the fact that outsiders sometimes referred to them as "priests" (High Priest Kragenac), likely fulfilled a role somewhat anologous to a priesthood (though certainly not the same).

At any rate, aside from the words of The Last Dwarf, we have absolutely no record of Dwemeri attitudes and institutions from a Dwemeri standpoint. Everything we know is, at best, second-hand from their neighbors. I suspect that's part of their disappearance: even their teachings, in their own words, have disappeared from the world.

They're priests were the most pious of all the peoples' religions. The Tonal Architects were enraptured by God.