Of course they left incomplete stuff and open ends that I would like to see a explanation about. I just think that the Lore as a whole makes up for the sometimes-annoying inconsistency.

Companies don't make Lore (5 Eras and more...) like that anymore. Specially for a Game-Only franchise.

Whoah, I just had the strangest idea...

Say the dwemer do return... having no knowledge of what's going on, and after hearing boths sides of the story, do you think they would side with the Thalmor or the Empire?

I believe they'd side with the Empire, they have a previous relationship with them anyway right? And wouldn't they not like the evil that the Thalmor kind of represent? Just something to think about.

Totally agree! Leave the Dwemer be.
There is so much lore and potential in there, it's mind-bending to conceive anything else than what is.

Well, that's kinda what i meant


I believe they'd side with neither. They are technologically superior and surely arrogant in their mind, and would probably not like to give Altmer any leading role in the elven supremacy campaign, even if the Dwemer themselves were interested in it.

You should also note the ongoing (or it was ongoing before they disappeared) construction of the more advanced and destructive golems, for instance the inactive giant ones found inside the Mournhold Dwemer ruin. I doubt that the Dwemer would bother having an alliance with anyone after advancing their military to a whole new level with that kind of stuff.

Has anyone else considered that another race may look to take the place of the Dwemer, with regards to the technology?

I've seen Falmer doing some strange things with Centurions, while I've been hiding in the Shadows. Almost like they were putting it back together/building it from spare parts.

They'd make them both eat mushrooms and put them to work.

@soop: Cargo cult all the way. Native tribes of pacific islands would imitate landing procedure because they believed that that brought the sky-boats with the cool loots.

Anyway, my theory is that the Dwemer became an Elhnofey again, but because Yagrum Barnum was missing they had a hole in their being. Possibly where the heart would go. The Dwemer were without love, after all.

Bringing the Dwemer back would feel like an extremely cheap cash-in on Bethesda's half, to satisfy the "LOL DWORFS WERE R DEY!?" attitude of people who don't give a crap about Elder Scrolls lore.
The disappearance of the Dwemer is one of the most unique things about the Elder Scrolls and it would be terrible if they changed it. I'm already a bit dismayed at Bethesda's refusal to integrate any (or at least 99.9999%) of the utterly awesome lore that's been brewing in here since the release of Morrowind, instead just dumbing plots down to "lol smash de bad guy". I'm just ranting on a tangent here but I'm frustrated. I played Morrowind for a few hours today and it reminded me just how incredible the amounts of lore you're bombarded with in that game are in comparison to Skyrim. Stupid voice acting, taking all that potential dialogue out. Just the little info Hasphat gives you about the Nerevarine cult and House Dagoth during Morrowind's first main quest is more dialogue than 10 average Skyrim characters put together, and a hundred times more interesting. It feels like they are nowadays aiming at the lowest common denominator.

Sorry for ranting, I'll stop now.

I disagree entirely, on both points. Morrowind had walls of text that weren't realistic, in Skyrim story and lore are delivered in much more succinct and personable ways. Just because there's less doesn't mean the quality is less, in other words. I loved Morrowind, still probably more than Skyrim, but just because what is immediately given to you is not very in depth lore, doesn't mean it is not available for people to look for (see: people like every inhabitant of these forums). Personally, I think it makes more sense that random inhabitants of cities and villages don't go on rants pages and pages worth of pure information. There's still the in-game books, and even in the mainquest there's tons of lore thrown at you just in hard to decipher language (and from beings which important information makes more sense to be coming from - the librarian at Winterhold, Parthurnax, the last two Blades, etc).

3.5 million sales in the first two days means they'll have more money for more voice actors voicing more precious dialogue in future.

About Dwemer, I don't see what's a cash-in about bringing back a disappeared race. If anything that'd be another avenue for them to go more in-depth about lore, as you desire.

The average resident in Morrowind didn't have unrealistic amounts of lore-related dialogue either, if you'll remember; but asking someone like Hasphat, who supposedly knew something about lore in Morrowind, gave you so much to consider that the amount of lore-related dialogue in Skyrim (as far as I've encountered) combined doesn't even match up to this one character's dialogue. The stories of the battle at Red Mountain and the conflicting views, the strange metaphysical origins of the Tribunal gleaned from books and so much more that was introduced in Morrowind has made me wrack my brain around the lore for hours on end; but in OB and Skyrim it's like they just dropped this unique part of the lore completely, and anything metaphysical and esoteric in the lore nowadays comes from quasi-official MK forum posts and forumites desperately trying to make stupid plot points like the amulet of kings into something more than it really is. Beth doesn't care to implement that kind of stuff in the games any more. There might be a row or two in an obscure book, but I fear it will never re-emerge as strong as it was in MW main quest. Obviously this is just my opinions from playing Skyrim a lot, but I'd love to be proven wrong.

I agree, and disagree at the same time.

The Lore is there, but its certainly "lite version" compared to Morrowind. I would certainly like to see more in game books with the information along with one or two characters who are nice enough to share an opinion/fact on certain events and occurrences.

I agree that some members her put to much emphasis on unexplained plot devices allot of the time, but then that reflects back to a lack of story telling on Bethesda's behalf.

The DLC that tends to come along with these games doesn't really fill the gaps either. The KoTN barely scratched the surface of the actual story before it was all over and even then when you look at it, doesn't make sense lore wise.
Is it asking too much to have a couple dozen books with actual facts put in the game, even if the player has to "discover" them in ruins or the like?

One particular thing that frustrates me greatly is the Dwemer ruins are seemingly devoid of any form of discernible cultural references at all. They for the most part, boil down to nothing more then a different dungeon chipset.

They'd enslave the Thalmor, and turn them into tuning forks, with which they'd eat a salad made from the flotsam of memory foam that the dreamsleeve leaves behind. The Empire would likely be scolded for misusing the Numidium. However, just because they have robots doesn't mean they'd be unstoppable. Remember, primitive ashlanders kicked their butts a few times. The robots give the dwemer a big advantage, but it doesn't make them unstoppable.

Yeah, that's part of what I'm implying. Bethesda's recent plots are extremely simple and often go against the accepted and generally awesome forum-version of the lore (see Alduin/Akatosh), and then people start theorising wildly left and right until they finally manage to cram this new bit of contradictory lore into what's already existing. Then comes the next game and yet again Beth doesn't give a crap about the cool stuff that lore-buffs created with what they supplied in the last game, but instead bulldozes in with another stupid plot. All I ask is that the writers get into the wholly unique and truly mind-boggling resources that ES lore has, instead of just taking the simplest aspect of it.

Again, I'd love to be proven wrong, but from what I've experienced so far, there's very little in the way of unique lore in Skyrim. And sorry for derailing this thread.

As i mentioned earlier, they were already working on constructing bigger and badder robots at the moment of their disappearance. It would be realistic to say that their rapid technological development would have given them too vast an upper hand to be resisted in the end, unless Gods themselves interfered (lolcheats).

You haven't derailed the thread at all, its all pertinent to the issue at hand. The whole aspect of the Dwemer Disappearance is controversial because it doesn't really make sense. Much like most other segments of the TES Lore if I'm honest.
To be brutally honest, I don't think Its ever going to have any form of clarification - not to the standard we'd like anyway. Because as you say, Bethesda usually run with the most simple explanation and its usually entirely lame.

If Bioware can annihilate any interest I had in the Protheans, Bethesda surely can with the Dwemer.\


Duil - The thing with the TES Universe is that there are two "technologies". Magic and Engineering. The Dwemer were master Engineers. But the Altmer are master Magicians. Neither is any more advantageous then the other. Simply different routes to the same destination.
In reality the Human races are a little "savage", but what they lack in technology they make up for in sheer presence and commitment.

The image of Dwemer tonal architects shaking their heads and sighing while delivering parent-to-idiot-child-esque reproaches to the empire: Priceless.

If you want new, awesome, Morrowindish stuff, look to MK. If you want things more along the lines of Daggerfall or Oblivion, look to other gamesas writers.

Tbh, in the case of Skyrim, it is like they finally started putting their minds around some of the stuff MK wrote. We got something that was both a rehashing of previous theoretical lore stuff, and a sort of middle ground between Morrowind/standard gamesas sides.

[EDIT]: One other note: "I also heard a strange story about the centurion spider that we captured and sent back to Cyrodiil. The ship captain I hired wrote to me with an odd story. He said that the spider nearly broke through its cage several times while near Vvardenfell, but once he left the Sea of Ghosts, the centurion suddenly stopped working. What happened next shows that he had more wits than I gave him credit for. He ordered the ship turned about and as they approached Vvardenfell again, the centurion began moving just as suddenly. This is a curious phenomenon and certainly deserves more investigation." - http://www.imperial-library.info/content/morrowind-senilius-report

The only way I can see to interpret this is that the constructs only work when they are near the Heart (or just Vvardenfell itself). So how does that work in Skyrim?

Hmm. Perhaps the Dwemer in Skyrim have another source of power?
Every Dwemer Autonotom in Skyrim holds a Soul gem, in Blackreach there are various veins of Geode. Perhaps its linked?

If the dwemer were to return, they might be something entirely different from what they were when they vanished. Wherever they'd been, it was beyond the reach of both the last dwemer from Morrowind (who mentioned having travelled to outer planes searching) and Vivec, a godlike figure unto himself. Spending any amount of time in such a place might result in changes both bizarre and unpleasant, and let's not forget that the dwemer weren't exactly benevolent when they disappeared.

The only way I could see them coming back would be as a major new threat, worthy of a TES game unto itself.

I'd love to see a new thread that summarizes what we actually learned lore-wise in Skyrim.

During the first few hours, I thought "damn this game is rich with lore", stumbling upon nice bits like Potema. But after 170 hours, I have to realize that those moments are very, very few, and what we can actually read up on is mostly disconnected from anything we thought to know about TES. Sure, it has been 200 years since Oblivion. But still ...

Did anyone notice that Falion, the guy that cures your Vampirism, says he's spoken with Dwemer?

Skooma is a hell of a drug.

The Return of the Dwemer? Maybe Numidium is shedding his skin?

i heard the tale of a dwemer tricking a dardirc god, and pissing of the god from there technology mabye they have been forgiven or mabye we will see a suriving dwemer or half born use an elder scroll to bring them back

I dare say the most probably occurance, if any at all, is that the PC will use an elder scroll to travel back to the beginning of the first era. And I could live with that.