A thought randomly occurred to me while I was making a cup of tea. Human stuff really seems to be very low-quality, and I don't really understand why that would be. The Altmer, Dunmer, and Orsimer seem to be the only ones who produce high-quality arms and armor, and I don't quite see why that would be. Specifically: why haven't the imperials improved on Orcish designs? The smith in Markarth shows that even some Stronghold Orcs are willing to teach their arts to imperials, and imperials have been the best friends of the Orsimer for hundreds of years, and they love heavy armor, and yet imperial armor still svcks.

Even outside of the obvious, like in-game gear, there's a lot of issue to be had with human construction and industry. The grandest Imperial city is a left-over Ayleid structure, for example. The Orsimer have built metal cities, the Altmer have still-standing structures older than linear time, the dunmer (Telvanni) can grow a strong tower in about a month with almost no labor, and the humans are stuck with normal, constantly-ruined, stone, wood, and other simple weak structures. Why? Again, my biggest question is, why didn't the empire ever borrow from the Orcs? But there's more to it than that. The Empire had every opportunity to take the best from almost every other province, and gather them in Cyrodiil. They could've imported Telvanni spore-construction by offering research space and free necromancy licenses. They could of studied the IC's construction, and used it as a base for more of their structures. Outside of construction, there's a lot of other things they could've, and should've imported. Bonemould & chitin seems like a great material for all of the bones that the empire must produce as a waste product (I'm talking about animal bones, not human remains). They could make all sorts of stuff out of it, and yet they don't. Siltstriders are an amazing form of transportation - which Cyrodiil failed to import after four centuries.

I guess my point here is two-fold. Why do none of the human races seem to have any sort of meaningful specialized indigenous crafting traditions, and why did the supposedly cosmopolitan & integrative Septim Empire never actually seem to import and learn from the cool stuff their provinces were making?

Ebony armor in Skyrim is a human design. I think it's a High Rock design.

I think the human races make Ebony armor, which trumps the rest. And in Oblivion, there wasn't really a single unified architectural style. About half of the cities had very nice, solid looking buildings. And in Skyrim the Nord capitols (Solitude and Windhelm) both were very well fortified and looked nice. I understand what you're saying about the Imperials though. It would make sense for them to gather components of each culture and integrate them into their culture, but I think that would have been difficult to display in Oblivion. I'm sure Bethesda only has a somewhat faint idea of what each province's architecture looks like (e.g. Elsweyr, Black Marsh, Valenwood, etc.), and if they gave a hint of what it looked like, they would be compelled to adhere to it in future games.

Really? I though it was a Dunmeri design (I geuss I just assumed, since Ebony comes from MW). Could you point me towards were you got that info?

Windhelm comes from before the Nords, IIRC. As does Markarth. Solitude looks like it'll soon go the way of Winterhold.

Windhelm is Nordic, though it was built by Falmer slaves. Markarth is Dwemer, though.

There are ebony mines in Skyrim, and probably High Rock as well. I know glass is also in Alinor, so... maybe ebony shows up wherever there is volcanic activity. I realize it supposedly fell from Shor's heart, but Dagon's deadlands have lots of ebony too. And Skyrim's ebony armor looks absolutely nothing like Dunmer design. I say High Rock because it looks like a midieval knight.

The humans almost seem to be devolving, technology-wise. The early Nord settlements, like Saarthal and Windhelm are thousands of years old, made from tough stone, as are the Nord ruins which are just as old and still mostly entact without, we can assume, much maintenance. Can you image an entirely wooden town lasting for thousands of years without constant rebuilding and repair? A more recent example of this technological devolution comes from Solitude. Taken from http://www.imperial-library.info/content/walking-world-vol-xi; "The tower and the windmill serve as one of Solitude's most recognizable man-made landmarks. The Windmill's power was once used to open the gates to what is now the East Empire Company Warehouse, but today that task falls to the strong backs of the dock workers." For no apparent reason, the people of Solitude abandoned their technological advancement in favour of primitive, pure manpower.

Even the ebony armour set in Morrowind seems mannish in design.

Length of time able to devote to things, based on lifespan. Also, until modern economic structure/institutions form, most large scale stuff gets built by slaves (or as a result of domineering organizations), and slavery in TES seems to be pretty consistently Merish.

Finally, construction of massive projects, such as the towers, seems passed down by the Aedra with their fiefdoms (see 'Sithis') all the way down to the Altmer, Direnni, Ayleids, etc. They don't call the Mannish ancestors the Wandering Ehlnofey for nothing. A slight anti-economic conservative bias seems to be present in MK's work, as well, with his advocation/support of revolt against overlords and taskmasters (See 'Song of Pelinal' and 'Commentaries on the Mysterium Xarxes'). Lovely for freedom, not as lovely if your intention is to build tall sh**.

Speaking of ancient Nordic ruins, I always wondered why the Nords don't clear them out and start living in them. That's what I would do if I had money. Hire some mercs, clear it out, do some remodeling and interior decorating. I'd have a pimpin crib.

Draugr smell, like old people smell, never seems to go away.

Probably because of the "sacred dead" thing.
Also, they don't seem to have a great success rate with the traps. I mean how many explorers does one have to trip over in any given tomb?

Empire is at down fall. Looking at time when Rome fell dark ages ensued whole western Europe and it took about 1000 years (being rough here) for Europe to reach level of good old days. Heck even decent paved roads detoriated into muddy dirt tracks as Romans weren't there anymore to fund and upkeep their infrastructure.

As for Siltsriders, well Imperial trade is supposedly based on water-connections so they are better off with good boats and ships. And i'd argue that imperial weaponry and armors bases on cheap cost which provides decent performance to equip vast amounts of legionnaires. Orcish armor already is getting too costly for that goal, chitin probably too.

Some one has to svck to make everybody else look good. And yet, it was the Empire of Man that conquered all. So perhaps you shouldn't look for rare feats of high quality craftsmanship but rather mass produced mediocrity. Seems to be the basis of any major industry.

Earth trade was mostly water-based too. Then we invented rail, and things changed a bit. And I'm not necessarily asking why they don't equip everyone with orc stuff, so much as I'm wondering why they don't seem to have learned from it.

What do you mean, "looks mannish"?

Well, two things:

1. When they actually conquered everything (founding the 3rd empire), they did it with a Dwemer robot.
2. Are they that good at mass production? That'd be cool.

You'll note that most Merrish armor is often very ornate, and a departure from things we think of when one recalls your standard fantasy weapons and armor.(aside from Royal guard armor in Morrowind, but I'd hazard a guess that itself is based on human influence.), Then theres the ebony armor we have seen in Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim, which seem to have a more european influence to it, its even more obvious when you look at the weapons...well, except the ebony swords in Skyrim. Those have a strange design.

Personally, I wouldn't look into it too much. It's a common trope in fantasy for the non-human races to be inherently superior at making things and the humans to be stagnated in a pseudo-early medieval tech level.

I don't like it. It seems to fly in the face of everything we know about IRL human craftmanship and ingenuity. Compare early homo sapiens tools to those made by neanderthals from the same time period, or hell, how quickly we've advanced since then. In, what? roughly 10,000 years, we've gone from stone to copper to iron, to steel, to mass-production. It took us half a century to go from barely-stable aircraft to landing on the moon.

If I ever publish some kind of fantasy setting, you can bet humans will be the advanced ones.

To be fair, mer have had knowledge of how to mold metals and such since the dawn, but they haven't advanced since then. Men, on the other hand, have learned how to take the blood of a god and mold it.

Man in TES haven't been given their due credit, and the only time the mer advance is when they become more mannish, but even then, they can fall into the trap of stagnation.

Sources?

Yeah I'd wager that the ebony armor in Morrowind is a human design. Just look at it: http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://images.uesp.net/thumb/8/80/MW_EbonyArmor.jpg/142px-MW_EbonyArmor.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Ebony_Armor&h=249&w=142&sz=14&tbnid=rWIc4Fs7KpDBKM:&tbnh=90&tbnw=51&zoom=1&usg=__UwnUtfBYz-2DmzeREII8bghYBzs=&docid=nKc9x0fb46sEEM&sa=X&ei=QmDJT6SIN6TU2AX8yuXaCw&ved=0CHMQ9QEwAg&dur=276

Umm... what? For one thing, men and mer were the same race at the dawn (and men clearly declined technologically immediately after they split). For another, mer have, post-dawn, developed: the schools of magic, necromancy, lichdom, mysticism, tonal architecture, responsible architecture, the dominant mortal language, slavery, Telvanni fungal construction, bonemould, metal cities, and a thousand other things. Plus, they've produced the most new gods (humanity created Talos, which is really just Lorkhan 2.0. Mannimarco, Xarxes, Phynaster, Syrabane, Vivec, Almalexia, Sotha Sil, and possibly Numidium/Akhulakhan, depending on your definition of god). For a third, the only way I know of in which humanity has definitely advanced is in that they developed plate armor and Stahlrim (though that might have been stolen from the Falmer). Steel weapons are only as good as ancient nordic ones (and those have been sitting around for millenia. Long enough that steel would of rusted to nothingness), and modern human fortress building is significantly inferior to their ancient fortress building, especially when it comes to automated defenses (traps).

I just don't see it. I'm not saying it looks incredibly elfy, I just don't see what's so human about skirts. It sounded earlier like someone actually had a source for this theory. Does anyone have a clue what that source might be?

Gah, never mind.

Elves (other than dunmer) are Anuic

Men are Padomaic.

Ebony armor in Skyrim is of Dunmeri design. The artbook that came with the Collector's Edition said that the designers wanted Ebony weaponry and armor to reflect the style of the dark elves or somesuch.