I have been interested in the war since I read a book in Skyrim called the same name as the title of this thread. So Let's ahave a little dissucion of this thread. What would happened to Tamriel if the Thalmor won or the empire? (Despite the treaty I think it's a tie). And say if you were in charge of Aldmeri or Imperial forces what would be your strategy on the war?

I think if the thalmor won the war then pretty much all of the other races would either be exterminated or enslaved and maybe the destruction of the mortal world. If the empire won the war completely then Tamriel would overall be much more much more stable and possibly most of Tamriel would be reunited like it was in the late third era..

If I was comanding the imperial forces. I would of made the first move launching an invasion of elswere. Having a navy blockading the south and have troops attacking on the east, North, and south After taking the capitals of the 2 kingdoms I would then attack Valenwood. I would have the navy once Again form a blockade to cut Valenwood from Alinor. Then invade the province from all directions. Then when The thalmor lost Valenwood it I would attack the smaller of the 2 islands in Alinor first. When I am done I will attack the southern part of the main island due to the capital being there from what I know lore wise. After taking the captial I would push up North Until the Thalmor surrender.

If I was in charge of the Thalmor force. I would pretty much use the same strategy as they did in the actual war but after taking the IC I will launch another massive offense pushing the empire out of Cyrrodil. Regroup with the Thalmor in Hammerfell. While also have a smaller army invade northen Morrowind where it is controlled by the empire. When Hammerfell and Northern Morrrowind is under thalmor controll I will launh an invasion of Highrock. Blocking it of from skyrim. I will attack from Hammerfell. When High rock is lost to the empire. I will attack Skyrim. Capturing Solitude first I would then advance closer to skyrim whiile Thalmor troops from all directions will push the empire to whiterun as well as eventually regroup there. And once we captured whitetun. Well the thalmor wins the war. Now let's see your thoughts.

Yes.

The Thalmor want this:

Interesting. Good thing that didn't happened... yet.

I dunno... that seems to offer immortality for all non-man races. And the man-races won't care because they'll never have existed.


Pelletine, Anequine, and Valenwood are strong allies of the Thalmor/Dominion. Aside from some backward, violent resistance cells, the Khajiit and Bosmer are happy with the rule of the Altmer - Them being slave-races is pretty much just Imperial Propaganda.

Well I believe that erasing an entire race. (or 4 to be exact) Is wrong no matter what reason. And How do you know the Khajiit and bosmer are happy? Infact that could be a lie. Have you ever met Malborn? They killed his family and village back in riverwood during a purge and that happened all over Valenwood. So I think many Khajiit and bosmer are pissed at the thalmor. And sure they may not enslaved them since they are both related to elves but what about the others. After hearing what happened to the Imperial City residence. I'm sure the will enslave the humans until they erased them.

They aren't "erasing" humans. You can't erase something that wasn't, isn't, and never was there.

And as far as the "purges" go - that's more about putting down rebellions from savage resistance movements, about as much of a travesty as cleaning out a Forsworn encampment in the Reach.

Do you have a source on them only slaughtering resistence cells? It seems much more inline with the Thalmor killing Bosmer for mixing times line.... they went after mix-races in High Rock during The Lord of Souls. An Altmer legate in the Imperial Legion also witnessed the Thalmor chasing refugees into Hammerfell, where they killed them all.

Considering it takes one mistake (none, actually, because Erikur lied because he was pissed that she didn't accept his advances) for the Bosmer women at the Thalmor Embassy to be tortured, I'd say that they aren't treated too well. The Khajiit caravans, from Elswyer, also refer to the Khajiit assassin sent after Malborn as "Thalmor filth."


That's like saying it's okay to kill an entire race because they won't know they're dead, because you can't think after death (if you don't believe in the afterlife).

And what do you think wiping out Man means? So Mundus won't come back. Both the Dunmer and Khajiit like Mundus, despite them both viewing it's creation as an act of trickery. So they're gonna die too, because they're remember Mundus and the good things it brought despite the suffering.

Just because they say he was "Thalmor Filth" doesn't mean they believe it. Khajiit are notoriously duplicitous. It's just self-preservation to distance oneself from someone who's affliliated with a kill-on-sight enemy of the local area. When in Skyrim, hate on the Thalmor and all that.
You keep insisting everything will "die" - when in fact, the removal of Mortality and Creation means the exact opposite of everything dying.

You seem to be stuck in a rather loopsides argument here... Are you doing this on purpose, as in defending the devil, or do you honestly believe it?

Because nothing and I do mean nothing points to the Thalmor wiping out just resistance cells, there is however lots of people talking about racial cleansemant programs, there has to be truth there. We know the Thalmor are methodical killers (see the Blades for instance) we know their end goal is to wipe out man and remove them as a possibility, this probably means killing half breeds as well. Seeing as they would know man existed. They are killing and torturing people for believing in Talos (as evidenced in several quests) for no apparant reason other then to torture them... And sometimes they torture people just because they can.

As for your argument about not killing them because they never wiill have existed, well you need to kill them first in order to make them impossible they need to be wiped out.

Just look at their goals:

To kill Man is to reach Heaven, from where we came before the Doom Drum's iniquity. When we accomplish this, we can escape the mockery and long shame of the Material Prison.
To achieve this goal, we must:
1) Erase the Upstart Talos from the mythic. His presence fortifies the Wheel of the Convention, and binds our souls to this plane.
2) Remove Man not just from the world, but from the Pattern of Possibility, so that the very idea of them can be forgotten and thereby never again repeated.
3) With Talos and the Sons of Talos removed, the Dragon will become ours to unbind. The world of mortals will be over. The Dragon will uncoil his hold on the stagnancy of linear time and move as Free Serpent again, moving through the Aether without measure or burden, spilling time along the innumerable roads we once travelled. And with that we will regain the mantle of the imperishable spirit.

Things in Bold are rather important here. They literally say Kill man, they also want to remove them from memorry, meaning all that can and will remember will have to be killed as well. That pretty much includes everybody that does not follow the Thalmor idea and every half blood out there.

Should the Thalmor win, then the world will end and many millions of people will be killed in the process... To say that's not a bad thing is like saying that it wouldn't be a bad thing if the US, Russia and China would now launch all their nukes and destroy the world. After all nobody would survive to complain about it.

Fair enough. But do you have any evidence for the Thalmor only killing rebels?


You just said the Mannish races disappear. If their souls remain but without their memories, it's still death.

Whatever happened to the Numidium from Daggerfall after giving the Totem to whatever faction? I know it was retconned with the Warp in the West to take into account the many different endings, but what happened to the Numidium itself?

Zurin Arctus still managed to spirit it away, after everyone got their turn with it.

In the end, there doesn't seem to be much hope for Tamriel to keep resisting the Thalmor. I wonder whether Akavir will make use of the opportunity to invade themselves.

The Thalmor's bark is bigger than it's bite (though that bite is still dangerous). They're good at demolishing their enemies moral, and are good at ripping their enemy apart from the inside. They've been preparing for the Great War for a long time, and the Empire was caught unaware. When the Empire finally got it's stuff together, they wiped out the Dominions army (in Cyrodiil).

Er, is there an in-game source for this bit about the Aldmeri wanting to commit genocide against mankind and unmake the world? If so I must have missed it.

No, it's from MK-posts. However, the Altmer wanting to escape Mundus is found in Morrowind, in the Monomyth, Varities of Faith, and Spirit of Nirn. Futhermore, I doubt Bethesda decided to have them ban Talos if they weren't going down that path.

However, we don't know if this is common knowledge for the Dominion. It appears that the common footsoldiers really believe Talos is a Mannish herasy, and that the Dominion merely wishes to conquor Tamriel and make Men slaves. Still, it is mentioned in The Infernal City that they wish to "purify" Tamriel.

So... all we have is the ravings of a madman and Imperial Propaganda to "confirm" that the Dominion is actually evil instead of merely an aggressive occupying force.

I can understand several reasons for wanting to remove the worship of Talos.

IIRC, the Thalmor wanting to purfy Tamriel comes from spies for the Emperor. Colin, I think. This is not public information.

And unless you consider this to be Imperial propaganda, then it comes from Altmer too:

Some which to return to the original state, the spirit realm, and that Lorkhan is the Demon that hinders their way; to them Nirn is a prison, and illustion of escape.... - Spirit of Nirn

Auri-El (King of the Aldmer): The Elven Akatosh is Auri-El. Auri-El is the soul of Anui-El, who, in turn, is the soul of Anu the Everything. He is the chief of most Aldmeri pantheons. Most Altmeri and Bosmeri claim direct descent from Auri-El. In his only known moment of weakness, he agreed to take his part in the creation of the mortal plane, that act which forever sundered the Elves from the spirit worlds of eternity. To make up for it, Auri-El led the original Aldmer against the armies of Lorkhan in mythic times, vanquishing that tyrant and establishing the first kingdoms of the Altmer, Altmora and Old Ehlnofey. He then ascended to heaven in full observance of his followers so that they might learn the steps needed to escape the mortal plane. - Varities of Faith in the Empire

The ravings of a madmen? I sourced in-game lore. Are you suggesting we not trust anything written by MK?

I'm saying is you're jumping to a conclusion that cannot be reached simply from the presented lore. Yes, the elves want to "Unmake" the world and free themselves to return to Eternity... But I'm not seeing how you're getting "Elves want to KILL ALL HUMANS" from "Auri-El ascended to heaven in full observance of his followers so that htey might learn the steps needed to escape the mortal plane"

From what I see, both races are trying to achieve Apotheosis through mutually exclusive means. If the Men succeed, the Elves become imprisoned and enslaved to Mundus forever, before getting hacked to pieces by men who decide to give themselves Wuuthrad.. If the Elves succeed, men get erased from existence. There also isn't evidence in anything that I've seen that Men are inherently incapable of Ascending into eternity along with the Elves, as long as they cast aside their worship of the Traitorous Shor and Jailor Talos.

My point was I don't think Bethesda would choose to make the Dominion ban Talos and have Imperial spies report the Thalmor having genocidal tendencies if they weren't going down that route.

Are they "racial Cleansings" or Ideological Cleansings, purging the worship of Talos and other beliefs that hold the Altmer back from re-establishing their connection to the Eternity? Do we know that the Imperial Spies can tell the difference?


And that is different from what Talos is doing to every Elf on Nirn how? From the moment each elf is born into Mundus, it begins to die - Slowly and painfully, over the course of centuries. What the Talos Worshippers "suffer" is nothing compared to that. Some elves, such as the Dunmer, have decided they like it, and are willing to bend over for Talos and take it.

Blame the Altmer's culture for causing suffering. Biggest hypocrites on that side of Nirn. They impose a chaste system on themselves, with the rich mages at the top. Shopkeepers and the like, according to an Altmer in Redguard, are the "lowest of the low" in that society. If they want to whine about suffering, they'd best fix up their own socities first. This information is also found in the much more neutral Third Pocket Guide.


Hell, they torture that Bosmer maid in the Thalmor Embassy quest. Why? Because Erikur accused her of coming on to him (really, he was pissed she didn't accept his advances). That shows the Bosmer's place in the Dominion. The purges are also not Imperial propaganda. Delphine tells you they do it and how it's "one of those purges we don't hear about." Which means the Dominion is trying to keep it secret, and the Imperials aren't saying much about it. They're purging them for one reason: they don't fit their racial ideolgy. They mixed with humans, which the Altmer lament in The Heart of the World.


Bosmer are also more focused on the "now" than the Altmer. So it's only really the Altmer who obsess (or the religious ones, most Altmer care more about their social standing) over escaping Mundus. The Khajiit present Mundus was being created by trickery, but good things came of it.

The Thalmor you encounter just seem to be made of arrogance and manevolence. The way they speak. How they treat you. Their arrogance. Their cruelness is not Imperial propaganda.

Even if it weren't for Altmer society, do they still not grow old and die? That is the suffering that Talos inflicts on them. They could, and should, be Immortal.

Its not that I don't think this is likely, but given MK's limited involvement with Skyrim, I don't think his word can be considered gospel, at least as far as predicting what we'll see in future games. And yes, I am of the mind that the in-game material alone is truly canon. Particularly when the Thalmor may not even be relevant in ES VI. And I know I'll probably get flack for this opinion, but it is how I view things.

Well, I guess it's just too bad for the Altmer that it's pretty unlikely that they will achieve their goal of unmaking the world and reaching immortality again. Since doing so would destroy the Elder Scrolls universe that the developers at Bethesda have based their video games in. The video games that have made them lots of money (especially Skyrim). So I guess the Altmer will just have to svck it up eventually.