Just read the Final Report to Trebonius.

My mind...is blown. That was extremely interesting and now has me asking all kinds of questions.

It's been said before but;

You wonder where the Dwemer have gone? Perhaps better to wonder why one remains. Even gods dislike the absolute, for it stinks of something larger than themselves.

Perhaps that's the realization that's making Yagrum more and more angry these days (Last Words of Sotha Sil). That or he remembered why he was left behind and now has no way to act on it.

I take it you didn't read past that line in Demnevani's speech, or any of the other accompanying source texts.

The Dragon break theory also holds some weight. WIll edit post after I get some sleep with what I mean.

Their belief in making themselves greater than gods finally pissed someone off enough to make them all cease to exist? (Except the ones in other dimensions at the time of course)

That's the Beginner's Theory to Dwemeri Disappearance.

Is it beginner's or just not the overthought theory? Thought so. : ) In any case my general thought process on this all is thus. Sometimes there shouldn't have to be some remarkable in depth theory. The dwemer were arrogant and were too intelligent for their own good, they bit off more than they could chew and paid for it. Its poetic justice, maybe I'm wrong but dang does that make sense ; )

Beginner's.

It's not poetic justice, especially not in the Elder Scrolls universe where mortals are more powerful than gods and have the ability and the purpose to surpass them. The Dwemer had a greater understanding of this than your average mortal, thus they sought to do just that. Not to mention that none of the Aedra or Daedra have the power to remove an entire race of mortals from existence.

In short, this is what happened to the dwemer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWmJfX2AI2Q.

This is the Dwemer, everything has been overthought; thus, beginners. The disconnect is in that we finished overthinking that tangent about seven or eight years ago, so now it seems like we no longer pay it any heed.

I think there was a divide by zero error in the Numantia thus making pre-existance impossible.

Oh! scratch my old theory, you know what really happened to the dwemer?

"They got better."

Sorry for not editing my previous post, forgot when I woke up.

Anyway, this little bit from the UESP seems to provide an alternate theory

"Do you mean, where were the http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Khajiit when the Dragon Broke? R'leyt tells you where: recording it ... While you were fighting wars with phantoms and giving birth to your own fathers, it was the http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Mane that watched the ja-Kha'jay, because the moons were the only constant, and you didn't have the sugar to see it. We'll give you credit: you broke http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Alkosh something fierce, and that's not easy ... You did it again with http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Numidium, not once, but twice! Once at http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Rimmen, which we'll never learn to live with. The http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:The_Warp_in_the_West_(event) it was in http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Daggerfall, or was it http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Sentinel, or was it http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Wayrest, or was it in all three places at once? Get me, Cyrodiil? When will you wake up and realize what really happened to the http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Dwemer?" — http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Where_Were_You_..._Dragon_Broke

So, being new to the Lore forums.... I'm seeing a lot of fan fiction, and a lot of actual research that quotes people and books from the games. This is fan-fiction that quotes content from the games, correct? If I'm understanding correctly, Bethesda is intentionally keeping the mystery without a definite answer, allowing many possible events to be interpreted from the evidence, correct? I'm popping in here to do some research and get some ideas for my own project, but the more I play and research, the more I realize that things are simply open to interpretation.

Additionally, a lot of the information about the Dwemer could have been rumors, lies, and here-say that gets translated into evidence after several thousand years. From a modder's point of view, writing my own "fan-fiction" in the form of a mod, I could have even more characters with their own theories and ideas, and conflicting evidence. Especially considering our own histories and religions in real life, and how conflicted certain events could be, how tainted by countless interpretation, motives, and cultures in even less time. Especially considering that Bethesda is a company that may even have multiple writers whose ideas conflict or change over time (There are plenty of precedents of things being re-written, re-envisioned, or changed from game to game). I'm often surprised at how fans of the series assume that every character and every book provides correct and accurate information about the game world - that everything mentioned by anyone in-game must somehow fit into the grand scheme as law and truth.

Then, Bethesda releases an official mod for Skyrim that gives you a little space robot companion... probably as a way of telling us all to lighten up.

Its more than fan fiction.
It combines every ounce of data available on the dissapearance of the Dwemer and crafts it into a plausible theory, using an in-universe voice.
Then there is that dev's have outright stated the author hit the nail on the head with the final report.

MK, on 20 June 2006 - 05:54 AM, said:
"Kagrenac was devoted to his people, and the Dwarves, despite what you may have read, were a pious lot-he would not have sacrificed so many of their golden souls to create Anumidum's metal body if it were all in the name of grand theater. Kagrenac had even built the tools needed to construct a Mantella, the Crux of Transcendence."

Okay. So now everyone can stop posting about where the Dwarves went. I TOLD YOU EIGHTY YEARS AGO.

Filthy with it, I am.

It's also not a fanfic in any fashion. It's an essay, a research project as it were. Nothing is added to the gameworld, no new story is told; it is in no way fanmade, but rather a dissection of ingame evidence.

Hi, Dagoth Ur here. I don't know why everyone freaked out about them leaving. I was there. They all got into the van and just left. Something about six flags. Oh, the stories that spread....

Thank you for saying "more than fan-fiction" rather than "not fan-fiction." Thank you for the explanation... in a forum that seems to be filled with complete fan fictions, I wanted to be sure before spending time on it.


After reading the report and the addendum, it's pretty clearly left with some mystery and questions still remaining. There's still a lot of room for other possibilities, such as the Dwemer having vanished for several different reasons - there's nothing that states that anything happened to the entire race at the same time, in fact there is evidence that it might have happened in stages, and there was one left over who wasn't in Vvardenfell when it happened. So, easily, there could be some Dwemer left who were outside the sphere of effect that were left behind that simply went into hiding or died from natural causes without having been written about. Or, some of the Dwemer could have fled. Maybe they transcended, maybe they failed to transcend, maybe they died of old age by having their mortality returned, maybe some of them did indeed escape to another plane as yagrum speculates. Only in fantasy or sci fi do we assume that an entire race of beings shares the same religions, beliefs, and goals.

This Dev you're speaking of, MK - do we know who this is, and can we actually verify that this is one of the writers that is in charge of the final answer? And, if so, what exactly is he trying to say by quoting that that supposedly ties up ALL the mysteries that are left after this article? It seems to me that there are still many plausible explanations. What does he mean by eighty years ago, and what does "filthy with it mean"? People keep quoting this quote as if it answers everything, but it seems to just be a quote of something that was already quoted in the report, followed by several unintelligible phrases.

Thanks!

The amount of fan fiction has sky-rocketed after January of this year. Before that, it was a rare thing to see much on this forum.

MK is an ex-dev who is responsible for the vast majority of the awesome [censored] in Morrowind, and still to this day works with Bethesda on a contractual basis in aiding with the lore. For example, he wrote the Mythic Dawn Commentaries and Mankar Camoran's speech, he wrote The Song of Pelinal and participated with that story, and he came up with the White-Gold Concordant. We can verify that it's really him. What he's saying is that the Dwemer became the skin of Numidium. The last part is just him being angry and frustrated that people STILL keep asking what happened to the Dwemer as though it hasn't been answered.

I'm pretty sure that this mystery has already been solved, because I've read some lore on it that seemed to clear it up definitively

Apparently, the Dwemer's whole aim was to achieve transcendence for their entire race--they wanted to escape the mortal plane, and a bunch of other planes, until they ultimately arrived at the plane where they would be made into a single god-entity beyond even the Aedra and Daedra. They wanted to do this because they just hated the thought of being so many 'sub-gradients below creation', as apparently all elves do (except the Chimer/Dunmer).

To make this goal happen, the Dwemer built a brass vessel in humanoid form called the Numidium. They intended to power it with the Heart of Lorkhan, which they had discovered in the bowels of Red Mt.,and transmogrify themselves into the "skin" of the Numidium. This was going to be their mechanism for apotheosis, and one of the steps involved in a syetematic process of "violating the laws of nature" until they caused a "dragon break" (basically a break in space-time continuum that allows you to exit the normal confines of the universe), which would allow them to get to 'heaven' together.

A Dwemer engineer named Kagrenac was the mastermind behind all of this; he created the tools Sunder, Keening, and Wraithguard to operate on the Heart for the purposes of powering the Numidium and violating natural laws. By the time the Chimer even got to Red Mountain to fight the Dwemer, they were already immortal--their souls had all been bound to the Numidium, and they were only a short way away from acheiving transcendence. But Azura, the patron of the Chimer, had shown Nerevar and the Tribunal how to separate the Dwarves from the power of the Heart, which was the only thing that was keeping them on that plane.

In the end, either the Chimer successfully separated the Dwarves from the Heart, or Kagrenac hastily tried to make the final move to transcendence by operating on the Heart himself and messed up. Either way, the Dweren people ended up vanishing all at once and being transported to the plane of Oblivion, instead of the plane outside Aurbis, as they had intended. They were totally unprepared for Oblivion, and a bunch of daedric servants killed them all.

Not really my theory that's what some of the lore says happened.

MK is Michael Kirkbride, the man responsible for (most of) Morrowind lore. The good bits at least, imo.
By eighty years/ filthy with it, he presumably means that he already told people what happened to the Dwemer a long time ago and that he is a bit fed up with repeating himself.

Individuals within a race do not all share the same religious outlook or beliefs, and in Morrowind you could find a Dwemer book that contested Kagrenac's theories.
But the Dwemer were all connected mythically and Kagrenac didnt really care who was Rourken or any other Dwemer clan when he struck the Heart, he called upon all Dwemeri souls to complete the Numidium.

As far as Yagrum, and Divayth, knew, Yagrum was the last living dwarf.

Really, the only mystery left is why Numidium did not come to life.
Its possible that it did, but the Triune disabled it while it was still powering up.
I once put forth the theory that it did come to life, but entropically reversed to the rest of Tamriel, moving backwards in time.

At the risk of getting shouted off the mountain, I have a question (or a couple of questions, even, depending on the answer;)

Do we know if, or have any reason to believe that Vivec lied when the Nerevarine asked about the Dwemer? (Where he answered to the effect that he couldn't sense them in space or time, in any of the planes or outer realms.)

If (we accept that) he lied, what possible reasons might he have had (that we can fathom) for doing so?

If (we hold that) he did not lie: Does this reflect upon his (supposedly) waning powers?
~Or~
What implications might this have about Yagrum Bagarn? Does corprus fundamentally alter the soul as well as the body, and could it have altered him to the point that Vivec would no longer recognize his presence? Is it possible that he might never have been a Dwemer to begin with, and is some agent with his own as-yet hidden agenda? Or did he come to be after the Dwemer became the golden skin of Numidium, a shed-aspect of the gestalt-entity/God they created? If these questions have been answered before, please feel free to shoot me down.

As an aside sparked partially by the tone of this thread post Superkitten, following my own disastrous attempt at raising a question/idea through creative writing (because the notion that I wrote even bad fan-fiction makes me uncomfortable, here,) I think I'm just going to stick to my old lurking-pattern with the occasional question.

Apocrypha. Some of it, anyway.


(Passing over the Vehk-issues)

I don't think we can really answer whether or not corprus alters the soul, as we're not too sure on the nature of that construct. But my hunch would be that it does, considering that it is, in essence, the channeling of divine essence through a mortal shell. Seems a bit farfetch'd that that could happen without mutating the bloke's spirit. And, really, underneath all the funky transmogrifications, that's what the Sharmat's Endeavor was all about.

Dunno about Yagrum himself, but there is http://www.imperial-library.info/content/sotha-sils-last-words that he was affected mentally by the Divine Disease. And the theory that makes most sense to me is the one postulated http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1334598-a-long-delayed-post-about-the-dwemer/page__view__findpost__p__20086068, that Yagrum was purposefully left out of divine adsorption in order to enact the final step of Numidium's activation.

But the Vehk-issues are important.


I was familiar with the theory before, but i'd never seen it fleshed out to that degree; thank you for that, Dinmenel.

I know; I'm just not qualified to answer them.