I'll hold off on saying nyah nyah, but yea. In the main quest, when you reach Alduin's Wall, Esbern identifies humanoid figures as the Akaviri. I guess that settles that?

That confused me too, I thought they were snake people going from some books in Oblivion.

There were men on Akavir ... so its not all that confusing if you really think hard about it.

Aye, it mentions Akaviri, not Taeseci specifically (who were snakemen). Personally, I prefer that all the men were literally consumed rather than assimilated, but Beths (obviously) not making a game for my taste alone.

The Tsaesci are, and always have been the Akaviri who invaded Tamriel and fought at Pale Pass. The thing is, "Tsaesci" only exists in text, because it's too hard for the voice actors to say. That's why everyone calls them "Akaviri" instead. However, all the books calling them "Tsaesci" and depict them as snake people exist in Skyrim.

But I think there's a number of possibilities for why they're depicted as humans in Skyrim.

1. "Snake people" implies that they don't have legs. So if the men on Alduin's Wall are Tsaesci, then there's a possibility they're just reptillian bipeds like Argonians (in which case "lizard people" makes more sense).
2. It's also possible "snake people" is completely metaphorical. People just call them "snakes" because they got Reman killed, and people see this as a traitorous, snake-like thing to do. It could also be because they're Lorkhan worshippers, who is sometimes depicted as a snake (eg. Sep). Worshipping Lorkhan is also a pretty human-like thing to do, which could mean that they're just humans, who are associated with snakes.
3. However, while the 2920 books are completely fictional (if historical), "History of the Fighter's Guild" is a history book, and also depicts them as literally snakes (who can't wear armour designed for humanoids). Pretty sure "History of the Fighter's Guild" appears in Skyrim too, though I might be mistaken. So they were literally snakes, it's just that the Akaviri sculptors who made Alduin's Wall were inspired by Nordic art. Esbern actually says something like this (that they were inspired by Nordic art, not that they were snakes).

Indeed, I enjoy that story too. What I'm going with in my head is that the Taeseci sent the invasion force of Akaviri men as a precursor to their invasion in all of their snake-men glory, but when the men failed at pale pass, the Taeseci eat all the remaining men as punishment. And before they could launch the remainder of their invasion the Po Tun distracted them. Hey, a man can fantasize :shifty:

MK (the man who created them) said that the Taeseci are "Immortal.Vampire.Snakemen." and the only reason they weren't portrayed that way at Pale Pass was because of technical limitations.There for unless this is yet another retcon of good lore they must be something different about these bipedal Akiviri. I can only hope your third option is the case.

That's a pretty wild claim considering all the stuff they have people like Chris Plummer and Max von Sydow saying in Skyrim. If the celebrity voice actors can manage, I'm sure Beth can hire a few professional VO artists to say Tsaesci.
I never said the invasion didn't involve the Tsaesci, just that this pretty clearly shows there were humans too. Obviously Pale Pass in Oblivion cleared this up several times over (letter, ghosts), but the 'humans-were-eaten' folk just can't let it go, even when the Tsaesci are already shown to use the word 'eat' metaphorically.
What Esbern says, by the way, is that some of the wall-carvings in the entrance show the Akaviri craftsmen (and while it's hardly a smoking gun, he does in fact use the word craftsmen) adapting the "more fluid Nordic style." It's a pretty big leap from that to "oh and also they started depicting themselves as humans, for some reason."

And yes, I think this means the Rimmen are the descendants of the Akaviri Humans/Dragonguard.

That's what I always thought. Akaviri humans would also help explain the origins of the Blades (Akaviri dragon slayers that searched for a Dragonborn, or something)

Disproved where?

I didn't use that term, and you quoted my whole post, so I'm not entirely sure to what you refer?

Where is that shown to be metaphorically?

Skyrim makes this explicit. The Akaviri invade Tamriel because of a prophecy of a Dragonborn, and surrender when they meet him (Reman Cyrodiil).



In Mysterious Akavir, the same source which says the Tsaesci ate the men.



Then there's the Tsaesci Creation Myth, which is all about eating in a way that it would be hard to describe as literal. Disaster as Ionith mentions mounted Akaviri (though I suppose a snake could mount a horse somehow...). And if you want to make the argument that the Tsaesci themselves are human (which I'm not; just arguing for Akaviri Men on Tamriel), the Anuad classifies them among the races of men. And didn't MK write that too?

I fail to see how the eating was proven to be metaphorical. There's nothing mindbending about the Tsaesci attempting to eat all the dragons, for which they'd need to get a hold of them first. I'm not saying that the eating was necessarily physical, rather that it's not definitively proven to be metaphorical.

No, I'm pretty sure your thinking that The Invasion at Pale Pass and the Akaviri Dragon-Hunters happened in Tandem, which is not the case.

I often attempt to eat a steak and wind up enslaving it instead. The way the sentences follow one another makes it pretty obvious. They tried to eat all the dragons. They managed with some, but others got away. The action being eat/enslave.
A lot of hoops are jumped through to hold onto this theory here. A spot of Occam's (Mehrune's) Razor is needed.



Esbern describes the middle panel of Alduin's wall as depicting the prophecy of the Dragonborn which caused the Akaviri to invade Tamriel. He says they found what they were looking for in Reman.

I was reading "Mysterious Akavir".

The humans being eaten is no metaphor.
But it does have a description of the Tsaeci in that book also.



So, makes sense to me that they're Argonian like in appearance.

I think Huraren is right about eating being wholly metaphorical. However, the invasion was only by humans, and the Tsaesci are a Cyrodilic fable. The Kamal are a fable, too.

But the Potenate was a Tsaesci?
People seen him.

What about the Po Tun?

It states clearly in that book that the Tscaesci are bi-pedal Serpent/Lizards.

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Mysterious_Akavir

I've said this many times, that I feel Mysterious Akavir should be discredited as nothing butt a travelers tail, akin to Gullavers Travels in our real world. Still, one can dream that kitty dragons will try to rule the world.

My thoughts on the matter are this. The Tscarai attempted to invade tamriel. Lead by their Immortal Vampire Snake masters (because the fact that the Tscaeri who ruled in the era of the Pontinate were slithery is confirmed in a number of different sources) the Humans of Akavir chased the Dragons, and eventually met the Dragonborne Reman. Alas! In Akavir, a new, evil government took over the rule of Tscarai, and decided, "Hmm, those humans look tasty". And ate them all up (if you take the eating to be physical, not metaphorical) After all, it has been, well over a thousand years since the Akaviri invasion of Tamriel; almost two, even. Much can happen in Akavir over that time.

If not wrong the snake people of Akavir shoudl look like humans but have teeths like snake , reptilian golden skin or stuff like that ...

There's always the possibility that the Taeseci are bipedal and lack tails, and that the Reman Dynasty historical fiction books took liberties from how they believed the Taeseci looked like at the time. The books were wrong about the Akaviri not using shields, they could be wrong about them having the lower half of a snake. This would explain why the Akaviri skeletons were humanoid, why the messengers had legs, why they're depicted as men by the Nords, and how the Taeseci were able to interbreed with the Imperials.

I don't see how Shape shifting Khajiit like creatures are any less far fetched then say, Sload or Kahjiit and Argonians?

Where did I say it was far fetched? I only stated that Mysterious Akavir is far from a reliable source to use for descriptions on conditions in Akavir. Its a good read, yes, but anywhere near reliable? No.

Ok I remembered well seems :

From the book I read ingame the Mysterious Akavir :