I used to think that the Nedes was just a name used to refer to all enslaved humans by the Ayleids. But after reading http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:The_Adabal-a and http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:The_Song_of_Pelinal it seems that it was just one of the tribes among the many that lived in the Niben. I've tried to see if there was any information on the other tribes, but I couldn't find anything from other sources.
Here's a list of the tribes and the info I've gotten so far:


Kothri ? Probably a shortened version of Kothringi, who were a race of men mentioned in only a few in-game books hailing from Black Marsh. They were said to look like men only with metallic skin and were quite common in Black Marsh during the Second Era. They were eventually wiped out by the Knahaten Flu in 2E 560. Their origin is unknown. Some say they are the result of Nedes and Argonians interbreeding, others say that they were simply Nedic settlers that adapted to life in Black Marsh. From what the Adabal-a says, some must have lived in the Niben area if they were enslaved by the Ayleids. Other non-argonian peoples who lived in the Black Marsh besides the Kothringi were the Orma, Yerpest, and Howallli men, and Barsaebic Ayleids and Cantemiric Velothi mer.

Nede - http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Nede

Al-Gemha - ?

Men-of-'Kreath ? Not from the Niben. Apparantly 'imported from the North,' so they were probably from the city of Falcreath in Skyrim. Also mentioned in The Song of Pelinal.

Keptu ? Nothing known of them except that the name Zuathas is of Keptu origin, and was given to a Nede known as Zuathas the Clever-Cutting Man.

Men-of-Ge ? Destroyed when the Flower King Nilichi made a great sacrifice to an insect god whose name is now lost. One known man from this tribe was called Garid, who once saw Pelinal Whitestrake go into his infamous madness in battle. He avoided Pelinal and waited until the madness had left him before joining him for a drink and asking what the madness felt like, to which Pelinal replied "Like when the dream no longer needs its dreamer."

Al-Hared ? ?

Men-of-Ket - ?

I'm really curious about these peoples and their enslavement under the Ayleids.
If anyone has anymore information on them, and on the Ayleids themselves, please tell me.

Kothringi = Kothri

http://search.freefind.com/find.html?pageid=r&id=72791987&query=Kothringi&ics=1&fr=0

Men-of-'Kreath = Men from Falcreath, a city in south west corner of Skyrim.

Don't know about the others but I suspect you can discover them in a similair way.

Alright thanks. I'll be sure to add that to the list.

I don't think anything on the others exists. Barring the Keptu, that is the only place they are mentioned.

But really, roll that up in your horned helmet and smoke it, Out-of-Atmora.

Apparently they didn't like being enslaved by the Ayleids very much.

Another thing I forgot to mention concentrates more on the labors the slaves might have gone through and where exactly the Ayleid Sorcerer-Kings ruled from.

"Men were given over to the lifting of stones, and the draining of the fields, and the upkeep of temple and road; or to become art-tortures for strange pleasures, as in the wailing wheels of Vindasel and the gut-gardens of Sercen; and flesh-sculpture, which was everywhere among the slaves of the Ayleids in those days; or, worse, the realms of the Fire King Hadhuul, where the begetting of drugs drawn from the admixture of daedrons into living hosts let one inhale new visions of torment, and children were set aflame for nighttime tiger sport."

From what the Adabal-a says I think we can guess that some of the chores for slaves were probably construction, maybe irrigation, and renewal of buildings and roads. The Ayleids also apparently tortured slaves for entertainment, especially in Vindasel and Sercen. (Reminds me of the Romans and the Colloseum) I'm a little confused on what exactly King Hadhuul did to the slaves, seeing as my brain is completely fried right now, (Insomnia does that to you) but I think he would make them eat pain inducing drugs that would give the feeling of fire and then burn children alive during the nightime, (Wow, sounds like a charmer) though I could be wrong.
I also think that the realms of the Fire King Hadhuul might have been Ceyatatar, because The Song of Pelinal talks of how Pelinal "slew Hadhuul on the granite steps of Ceya-Tar," which http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Ayleid_Language says is just an early Cyro-Nede synonym for the same place.

That makes me wonder if all the places where Pelinal slew the Sorcerer-Kings were actually the places where they ruled from, since The Song of Pelinal says that Pelinal usually challenged them to duels.

Same trick as with the tribe names, check the names of the ruins for once that are phonetically similair.

edit:

It also works for gods. Unless context clearly suggest otherwise.

I went and looked at a lot of those ruins in the song- Sardavar Leed, Vahtacen, etc. It's interesting that he killed one of the kings at "the Tor," which must be Sancre Tor. I don't even know where to begin on that one.

He tortured people by making them inhale daedric drugs. And then he hunted tigers in the night, using as source of light human children set on fire.

Hmmn,reminds me of Half Life. Burn, zombine, burn.

It was Alessias belly so to speak. They're never quite flat in the first place.

Godamnit. Why didn't you say that four months ago when I was writing that thing?

Thanks for clearing that up. That makes alot more sense than what I had before. At the moment, It was murder on my brain trying to read that passage with the way it was written, (Stupid figurative language ;P) it's like trying to read the entirety of Macbeth as a 12 year old after drinking a can of Monster.

http://www.imperial-library.info/obscure_text/watergettinggirl.shtml is a rather good text in relation to the Kothri tribe of men.

http://www.imperial-library.info/obscure_text/aldudagga.shtml series has a few references to the Tribes (in particular Fight Six, "The 911th Cow"), including calling the Southern Nedic Tribes (the tribes of Cyrodiil) the Aleshut-Tribes.

I also suggest reading http://www.imperial-library.info/obscure_text/onthe8.shtml text, which is more about Shezzar, but does mention the Tribes.

Aleshut just being another word for Alessia. Does that mean she was a Nede or that Aleshut is the favorite Nedic corruption of Al-Esh?

This doesn't have much to do with the Ayleids, actually it's very off topic, (I should probably make a seperate thread) but I noticed that in the story the girl Perrif prayed to the Dib-Mar-Kin, who she called the three mothers. (Which is a painfully obvious similarity to the celtic triple goddes the Morrigan, or the Maiden-Mother-Crone)

I've often thought that all the religions on Nirn come from one original source, so there are Eight Divines (Nine technically, but I'm ignoring Talos for now), but they're not wholly what the Cyrodiilic, Nordic, meric, etc. make them out to be. Each pantheon is like a fragment from the truth, and has come to be what it is today from the watering down of oral tradition and blending of cultures. This story makes me think that Dibella, Mara, and Kynareth (Kyne) might all be the same person, (Or the three-in-one thing that is so impossibly hard to explain, the only way to slightly understand it is to compare it to a three leaf clover) she/they just answers to whoever calls upon her to do a specific thing. Like if someone asks Kynareth for a swift journey, they're also asking Dibella and Mara, because the three are the same goddess. She's just been seperated into three different people in the eyes of people because, well, oral tradition isn't exactly reliable.

This theory has faults though, because if the three goddesses are the same, then that means Akatosh and Lorkhan are the same god too and Alduin will be left out of the picture. Since to the Nords Shor(Lorkhan) is married to Kyne, while Mara is married to Akatosh. There's probably an explanation to make sense of that, but I'm to lazy to scroll through pages upon pages of lore for ten hours straight to find it.

Anyway, sorry for the off topicness, just wanted to put that out there.
BTW thanks TOYB for the links, they were a great read. Now back to the Ayleids.

@Paw-prints:
I have no idea weather Alessia was a nede or not. I'm still a noob to lore, so the senior members (or at least people who are lore-buffs) will have to answer that.

:rofl:

Do you wanna tell him or should I?

(Serious post to come soon)


Edit: Well crap, the thread I was going to link to has been culled from the forum's backlog. Suffice to say yes, Akatosh and Lorkhan are the same, or at least joined at the hip.

Note that Kyne of the Nords is a wife and mother like Mara, presumably totally hawt like Dibella, and shares Kynareth's affinity for wildlife and the elements. Skyrim's pantheon includes Mara and Dibella these days, but those could have been transplants from the south.

The Kothri weren't worshiping three goddesses so much as all that is female in the Aedric pantheon, a collection of concepts. How those concepts get parceled out into various identities is mysterious and unique to every province, but those differences of perception can have power. Kyne and Kynareth could not possibly be a difference of interpretation and storytelling alone. The Aedra were once indivisible, concrete spirits but their association with Nirn has made them susceptible to major changes. What may have been three could now be one, or what may have been thirty may now be three, I suppose. What's final is that there are eight that are common to everywhere now.

And then there are major differences. Alduin is indeed very separate from Akatosh and Auriel, who are more like equivalents or even successor and predecessor. The Akatosh of the Nords isn't half of dueling pair but an entire battle within himself. He eats the world and he is much greater than it- the Redguards have something similar in Satakal. Things get complicated when you try to relate these beings to each other.

And the Song of Pelinal says that Alessia's original tribe is unknown. It also states that it is unknown where Pelinal's name came from, yet correctly identifies the source of it a few pages later.

That text actually has alot to do with the Ayleids -notice anything about some of the language in it? It's broken Ayleidic, after the Slaves brake free of the Opression of the Ayleids, they take with them the language, and while eventually Cyrodiilic as we know today takes over, oringinally it seems as though they spoke in Ayleidoon, learnt off of their masters, but eventually broken down. The whole under current of the text is rather lively with Ayleid references.

And Alessia was a Nede, afaik. Nedes weren't a tribe, they were basically the proto-humans of Tamriel.



Or someone link him to one of the many threads on the subject, that have confused a good many newbies.

That's what we thought pre-KotN. The Song of Pelinal suggests that the Nedes were simply the tribe which survived and absorbed or surpassed the others.

As for the Kothri and other indigenous humans, here's a good question: did they get their religion by adopting the pantheon of their elven neighbors-come-masters, or was the indigenous population in agreement with the elves in most things, and the quintessential 'human' worldview only arrived with the Nords? The Redguards developed their worldview in isolation and it was closer to the Aldmer than the Atmorans. But then again, both civilizations had hostile contact with elves in their homelands. I dunno about that one.

Passed on by ancesotrs since the dawn, all races remember it differntly, but it's still there. The slaves of Cyrod may have forgotten though in their captivaty, and learned from the Elves instead.

I think that texts give us the picture that elves and men came pretty close to coexisting in pre-slavery Tamriel. The Nords have their diametrically opposing worldview, for they fought elves from the beginning (the long-vanished nation of Altmora), whereas the elves and men of High Rock interbred. There was a lot of room for exchange, and even if there wasn't much, I don't think slavery was not the most important interaction between the races- more like the desperate excess of a decadent empire that was worried about the immigrants.

I don't know, maybe it's all. I mean why is Sheor the Bad Man?

Well for what it's worth. Mara was variously married to either Lorkhan or Akatosh. So you can hopscotch right by Kyne and Dibella.