Questions without answers are tantamount to an ever-consuming black hole. On the surface, it is not knowing incites a great thrill in chasing the answer, in harboring the cornerstone of discovery. On a deeper level, we might find questions to have such weight and brevity to cause an existential crisis: where did reality come from? Is there a God? If so, what created it? Why are we here?
Taking a step back from the construction of reality is important to enjoy life in a minimalist sense. For this, I will shift the context to video games by looking at the Elder Scrolls game series, and ask a key question that stumps all: where did all the Dwemer go?
Why did the Dwemer disappear?
By all accounts, the Dwemer (“Deep-Elves”) or “Dwarves” (as Man may put it) were a highly advanced race and civilization of Mer. That would be putting it lightly. Their tactics, knowledge and magic constructions were uncompounded by faith in deities, and were considered alien to an already bio-diverse selection of Men, Elves and Betmer. Their understanding of technology, engineering, crafting, metalwork, stonework, architecture, science, maths, magic and the arts were beyond contemplation and a great source of discussion for millennia.
There is an indication that the Dwemer were far ahead in technological development than other races and possessed a different culture gap from them. While the early Atmorans and Yokudans were rising from an end-of Stone Age setting, the Dwemer’s technology and magical contemplation moved toward an Information Age society (for reference, that is roughly 5000 – 10000 years difference). Industrialization, automatons, keen understanding of Nirn’s physical structure and their “Calling” ability to one another is reminiscent of humanity’s discovery of the internet, of which this post would not be possible. With these developments, the Dwemer were often in conflict with warrior-like, theistic races of Nirn, after a goal incomprehensible to outsiders…
Dwemer scholar Calcelmo even notes that even an “idiot” child Dwemer would be vastly more intelligent than even the smartest of mankind, a testament to their prowess from training at youth.
That said, how… and why, did the Dwemer vanish?
To start, this is an investigation well explored in The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind with the Nerevarine tasked with encountering Yagrum Bagarn – the final living Dwemer. At first encounter, I half expected a sage filled with the knowledge of the ancients, only to be met with a Corprus-infected shell of a Dwemer whose memory had long since faded. Direct answers would not be found here, but I had little else to on.
Learning what happened to the Dwemer is very in your face, as it is written in many books and recounted in second-hand tales that they disappeared completely during the Battle of Red Mountain, squaring off against the Falmer on equal terms after warring against the Chimer (Dunmer). This disappearance is said to have occurred in 1E 700 during the War of the Crag. During this time, Chief Tonal Architect Kagrenac had been plotting to reach the Heart of the Red Mountain presuming it to be the resting site of the Heart of Lorkhan, then known as the “traitor god” for creating Nirn and mortals.
Kagrenac is also responsible for the creation of the Brass God, Numidium. When Kagrenac struck the Heart with tools he devised – Sunder, Keening and Wraithguard – the entire Dwemer race vanished at once. Not a speck of them left. While this establishes that tampering with the Heart had some effect the Dwemer may or may have not desired, it questions their intentions with the Heart, and if they succeeded in manipulating the Heart to transcend time and mortality.
The Dwemer as Mortals
It’s important to remember here that for all their talents and ambitions, the Dwemer were very much mortal, subject to the same consequences of death like any mortal. Mer are defined predominantly as peoples from a culture that consider Mundus, the living world, as a containment device. A prison inflicted upon them. Each race of Mer has a different perspective of their origins, and desire to return to divine status (Altmer), move beyond the world (Dunmer) and transcend to new states of being.
Michael Kirkbride – former lore writer for ES – had this to say in his “Loveletter from the Fifth Era“:
You in the Fourth Era have already witnessed many of the attempts at reaching the final subgradient of all AE [Aedra], that state that exists beyond mortal death. The Numidium. The Endeavor. The Prolix Tower. CHIM. The Enantiomorph. The Scarab that Transforms to the New Man.
Simply put, as the Gods cannot know joy as mortals, their creation, so mortals may only understand the joy of Liberty by becoming the progenitors of the models that can make the jump past mortal death.
Michael Kirkbride, “Loveletter from the Fifth Era
Noted here are the Six Walking Ways – the six devices created by Mer to become gods, only to be brought to mortal form. The Numidium is noted here to be one of six ways, a vessel perhaps, in which the Mer would fill the constructed Brass God with the Heart of Lorkhan and ascend.
This is a warning to the mortal races of Nirn, describing a unilateral metaphysical pattern of inevitable subcreation and emulation of the Gods, beginning with the void and descending the mortal form, and eventually death. It explains the Altmer’s disdain for mortal Tiber Septim’s ascension to god Talos in the Nordic pantheon.
However, it may also be a commentary on ascending to divine status while retaining the identity one had as a mortal, becoming a seneschal and overseeing the wider planes of reality. It is a warning for mortals to enjoy their finite, mortal lives with impunity, and avoid seeing the center of the world. With Tiber Septim’s use of the Numidium to conquer and unify Tamriel, Numidium’s status as one of the Six Walking Ways may have inadvertently ascended him to godhood, or to an insane world beyond comprehension. Both means are considered pious and egregious for the sake of mankind, which become hypocritical when Talos is in strong faith among Nords.
The Numidium is described in legends:
You have probably not heard the fairy tale of Numidium, but you need to. The legend dates back to the earliest parts of the third era. Numidium was supposed to be a giant so big his hands could knock the moons from the sky. I do not recall from the stories whether Numidium was supposed to be good or bad, but the legends used to scare me as a child. The legends are, in fact, true. There was a Numidium, and, if situations continue, he will come again.
Anonymous, The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall. The Mantella Revealed: Letters You May Receive.
The Dwemer seek to move beyond the mortal realm while retaining their bodies and minds, by rejecting Mundus and reality altogether in the same manner they reject the omnipresent Aedric and Daedric forces in the world. This is corroborated in a story told about the Dwemer’s “escape plan” in The Hanging Gardens of Western Coridale:
why they did not use solid sound to teach escape from the Earth Bones
Anonymous, “The Hanging Gardens”
The “Earth Bones” in question regard the Ehlfoney, the common ancestors of Men and Mer. And yet it criticism of the Dwemer’s logic that they could not reasonably cut their ties to their mortal bodies. This brings a question: by what measure does reason lie? It is known that Dwemeris logic supersedes logic of Man by wide margin, and so the question holds little weight except for reiterating the merit of escapism that the Dwemer sought to achieve.
Calcelmo’s Theories and Fabrication of Reality
A partial translation of Calcelmo’s Stone speaks of their interaction with the Falmer – a derogatory name for mutated Snow Elves – and the reasoning behind taking them in and blinding them:
Malautavoy fey nou darre ye alata nou malae, asma moraga sou anyamis av sercen pado, ye gethena sou wend narilia vey emeratu sou oia bisia.
Know only our mercy and the radiance of our affection, which unbinds your bones to the earth before, and sets your final path to the music of your new eternity.
Kurt Kuhlmann, Calcelmo’s Stone, line 10
The Dwemer believed they offered a mercy to the Snow Elves, and thus did not harbor malice when mistreating them. Rather, they believed they offered affection to the now Falmer by erasing their sight of a blighted, imperfect world. The Dwemer’s statement “Only by the grace of the Dwemer did your culture survive” implies an unwilling, but later cooperative partnership. Survival meant enduring blindness and insanity. It could indicate the Dwemeris’ own desire to reject the world, its sights and its logic.
The Mer perspective of being released from the world holds among the Dwemer. Their viewpoint indicates a desire to move beyond Mundus and find reality to be a disappointment. The general directive holds their position to be one of denial, and yet not the same as nihilism. Nihilism holds that there is no inherent meaning to life, whereas the Dwemer believe life to be pointless without a purpose, that life itself does not exist.
Baladas Demnevanni’s thesis on the Dwemer captures their desire to deny the world, not to leave it entirely as one would in death:
In their denial of both phenomena and noumena, the Dwemer found comfort in the creation of Animunculi, which in their operation, combined two incompatible principle, thus denying both.
Demnevani, The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, dialogue regarding the Dwemer’s disappearance.
One can be reminded of Immanuel Kant’s theories of phenomena and noumena; it is not so much as two separate world between mortals and gods, but two perspectives of seeing the same world or object. If we follow Kantian logic of phenomena and noumena within metaphysical concepts of reality, we can think about it this way:
it is vital always to distinguish between the distinct realms of phenomena and noumena. Phenomena are the appearances, which constitute our experience; noumena are the (presumed) things themselves, which constitute reality. All of our synthetic a priori judgments apply only to the phenomenal realm, not the noumenal. (It is only at this level, with respect to what we can experience, that we are justified in imposing the structure of our concepts onto the objects of our knowledge.)
Immanuel Kant, Experience and Reality: Phenomena and Noumena
This way. the phenomena refers to objects as we can experience them, and the noumena refers to objects having no cognitive relations to us. The noumenal concept, which Dwemer seem to understand, is a limited space which its essence is essentially unknowable. The Dwemer, if Demnevanni is to be believed, did not only scrutinize the fabrics of reality, they criticized the very presumption – a normal one at that – that reality is an independent validity, and found it wanting. The Dwemer contextually did not exist in a way that was fully sufficient to them. A common Merish thought, but only the Dwemer possessed the necessary technology and knowledge to enact the rite of ascension.
More so, it can be said that the Dwemer people were correct in presuming that the world does not exist physically, but is the dream of an omnipotent being. In-universe, this refers to the sleeping Anu and Padonay, the primordial origins of reality. If taken out of context, this relates to H.P. Lovecraft’s Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath in which any mortal to see the center of the world would see Azathoth, the insane god. Encountering this Great Old One results in complete insanity, and Azathoth’s awakening beckons the erasure of reality. Thus, the other Gods seek to keep him asleep for eternity.
The Dwemer consider the escape from the Earth Bones, from physics and from Nirn itself, to achieve a state that is “godly” to us, but “sufficient” for them. Denying both phenomena and noumena established a path of controlling reality from a higher plane. Kantian Transcendental Idealism corroborates this point in arguing that there are finite and dependent realities projected from the mind, alongside an independent, boundless reality. Michael Kirkbride states:
Dwarves knew that phenomena (that which can be perceived by the senses) and noumena (that which is the thing-itself) were both illusions, with the second one just being more clever.
Michael Kirkbride, From The Dwemer, Noumena And Phenomena topic in Elder Scrolls Official Forum
You now have the phenomena, the sensory environment that we as a reality consumer takes in, and the noumena, the actual thing in itself, yet the Dwemer deny the existence of both. The reality they seek is the “reality” they were always meant to inhabit, controlled through their own hands. This raises the question on what the Dwemer believe to be reality, when their current state is an “Illusion”. Is the illusion something, or is it nothing (as in, not a thing).
Berkeley and Solipsism
A physical parallel contemplates the works of Bishop George Berkeley, who contends the existence of only minds. Minds, and the ideas that inhabit them are the only true, original, and existent things in this world. Which implies that all sensory perception is a fabrication of the mind to cope. An “objective view” of the physical world in Berkeley’s work argues that all existence derives from the imagination of God, who sits as the linchpin of reality. The Elder Scrolls universe does not assume there to be a single source of reality, and what is left is that which can, or cannot, be real. This is the viewpoint the Dwemer take, as they grasp and contend with what can be made real.
They refuse the world. The “world-refusals” can be understood in modern terms as Us (the world-believers) versus the Other (world-refusers), but the Dwemer do not occupy either side. Rather, their existence is so far beyond comprehension that they do not understand concepts of superiority, even when their behaviors suggest otherwise. The race as a whole seeks an existence beyond existence, without need for grudges, diplomacy or war. Kirkbride notes the Dwemer having an intelligence and value system as being Beyond Human Comprehension. Beings who “could divide by zero” and were “atheists on a world where gods exist”.
Simply put, the Dwemer did not work in personal dealings, nor did they have feelings of animosity. The race itself was geared toward the singular goal of escaping the mortal realm, together. Kirkbride writes,
stories written by them should read as communiqués between an X and Y axis that is tired of planar love poetry. Personal accounts of their wars with the Chimer should seem like Revelations written in computer syntax. Anumidum isn’t a Giant Robot to them, but God’s Encyclopedia of Amnesia. Or their Automated Hypnogogic Transgression…
ibid
Stories, wars, love letters, robotics, all simply pieces of a puzzle, a piece of code to be run in a machine, one without feelings. How fitting then to consider them beyond comprehension.
Their complete and utter refusal to accept Man, Mer and Betmer communal reality is titled the Heroic Abjoration of Everything. And this fits with Solipsism in believing that your mind is the only real thing that exists in the world. In Dwarven context, they believe everything, including themselves are unreal and false, and must change reality to better accommodate and validate their existences. How ironic then that their disappearance changed nothing in reality or the physical world, although it helps that they only sought to change their reality, not everyone else who remained in the illusion. With Dwemer standing as academic champions, atheists in a god-teemed world, they might have sought to dissolve the boundaries between mortals and gods.
Per Demnevanni:
It was unfashionable among the Dwemer to view their spirits as synthetic constructs, three, four or forty creational gradients below the divine.
Demnevani, The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, dialogue regarding the Dwemer’s disappearance
I am reminded of The Elder Scrolls author Marobar Sul’s critically acclaimed book, Azura and the Box and Nchylbar’s studies in his adventurous youth. As he grew more and more curious about the et’Ada, Aedra and Deadra, he concluded that Gods were mortal fabrications. However, his greatest question of the Gods was to discover the limits of divine power. Were the Gods the ultimate masters of the world, or could the mortals – beings which were inadvertently granted autonomy by Lorkhan – develop the power to establish their own reality, and change their fates? Upon meeting Azura – a being considered fabled – and opening the Box, he found it to be empty. He had been tricked, with Azura demonstrating her divine power upon the entire Dwemer race for having skepticism. This attitude was considered pious and rash, and so Nchylbar’s answers remained unanswered, likely fueling a sentiment shared by many more members of his race: to pursue an answer regardless of the extent of the dangers.
The Publisher’s Note in the book raises a fair point:
Whatever the true nature of the Gods, and how right or wrong the Dwemer were about them, this tale might explain why the dwarves vanished from the face of Tamriel. Though Nchylbar and his kind may not have intended to mock the Aedra and Daedra, their skepticism certainly offended the Divine Orders.
Marobar Sul, Azura and the Box: Ancient Tales of the Dwemer XI
This returns the Dwemeris philosophy to the Berkeley-style philosophy of the world as a mental projection. Beyond that implicates Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza’s theory of existence being all one form, part of all that is physical and immaterial in this world. This laptop, that television, those two people walking together down the street, all made from the same materials, cast in various textures and shapes of flesh. Considering his Ethics on the existence of God:
III. By substance, I mean that which is in itself, and is conceived through itself: in other words, that of which a conception can be formed independently of any other conception.
IV. By attribute, I mean that which the intellect perceives as constituting the essence of substance.
V. By mode, I mean the modifications of substance, or that which exists in, and is conceived through, something other than itself.
VI. By God, I mean a being absolutely infinite-that is, a substance consisting in infinite attributes, of which each expresses eternal and infinite essentiality.
Baruch Spinoza, Ethics, Part I – Section III-V. 1677.
If we consider modes and modifications as not a byproduct of existence, but as a causality of existence, what then constitutes “existence” if it is the same form without foundational differentiation? Our existence can be referred to here as being “conceived” through something other than ourselves, which would imply we are made in the image of a God, and furthermore that a God is imperfect if we are the result. Spinoza moves to argue that existence thrives only because of the existence of God. This does not apply to the Elder Scrolls universe, who regularly tampered with the forms of their God.
With the Dwemer’s monist viewpoint, divested from inherent belief in an overarching deity, following Spinoza’s theory could explain why the Dwemer are atheists in the world walked by physical gods: the Gods are made of the same substance as mortals, and are therefore imperfect and unworthy of worship and reverie. By this logic, the Dwemer could deconstruct the substance they are made from, that reality is made from (in Berkeleyan fashion) and reconstruct it to their liking. Doing so would require a vessel of power and stability to hold their form.
The Numidium. One of the Six Walking Ways. The Dwemer hyperfocus on that which is beyond reality. Dwemer King Dumac aligns in Nerevar at Red Mountain by the “fifteen-and-one golden tones”, likely a reference to the sounds made by Dwarven metals, and given that his Tonal Architects are master metalsmiths who work in sound construction, there is an implication that to work the Heart of Lorkhan, one would need to reach or capture a frequency perfectly to harness it. It can argued that the reason for their extinction was not simply petty revenge of the Gods for their heresy, but for incorrectly manipulating the Heart without precise timing of the sounds.
The Dwemeris’ callous but calculated revolt against the gods was corroborated by Manka Naram, aka Skeleton Man, who described their actions as having purpose, but also acted within range of the gods’ revolt:
Do not think as others do that Kagrenac created the Anumidum for petty motivations, such as a refutation of the gods. 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…
But, by then, and for a long time coming, the Doom of the Dwarves marched upon the Mountain and they were removed from this world.
Manka Naram/Skeleton Man, “Skeleton Man’s Interview with Denizens of Tamriel” 1999.
If this account is true, it states that this is not the first transgression of the Dwemer against the gods, and therefore validates the story in Azura and the Box. Countless endeavors must have happened for the Aedra and Daedra to become enraged to the point of eliminating the race. Yet, Lorkhan was neither an Aedra or Daedra, but rather a deity among the founder et’Ada who predated the pantheons. It is possible that the Dwemer, who sought transcendence beyond reality, first needed to harness the higher power of the Gods that they themselves lacked, and so drew the ire of the remainder. Even so, it was not meant to be a personal affront to the gods, but a self-serving mission to use whatever was necessary to ascend. Given that the Dwemer purposely blinded the Snow Elves in an attempt to have them “see” beyond the gritted world and evolve into a new state of being, the Dwemer’s ultimate goal is to escape the “earth bones”, and begin the path to a new eternity. Of what has been and what will be, in an unchanging cycle.
On Enantiomorphism and Cause for Transcendence
An enantiomorphic pattern is at play in the Elder Scrolls universe. a transcendence granted by the eyes, shaped by the sound of reality. Only the Dwemer seem to have seen and heard beyond the world via their advanced methods. One who observes an enantiomorph is noted to have sensory deprivation, while those involved in the enantiomorph are split from something. The Elder Scrolls wiki uses an adequate example:
the Ehlnofey, common ancestor of Man and Mer, are split due to conflict in the primordial era and both a Time-God and Space-God are formed. Each with their own individual state of being and ideologies. That war reached no conclusion, and sparked a true enantiomorph, with Man and Mer descending from these two gods as separate, distinct beings who conflict in modern times.
As stated before, one who witnesses an enantiomorph is twisted or maimed in the process and lose their senses of sight or sound. The Falmer are demonstrations of this, with the Dwemer purposely separating Snow Elves from their sight to continue their own path of separating from reality. One ancient example are the Elder Scrolls themselves; these documents which record all known history, and can see the past and present will blind a reader instantly (or in the case of the Elder Moths, gradually). Since the Elder Scrolls themselves have a minor sentience, it is not out of range to presume that they cause blindness to those unable to resist its power. The enantiomorph involved in reading the Elder Scrolls derives from severe overwhelming of the senses and has the power to drive one mad, in Septimus Signus’ case in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. The scrolls were never meant to be interpreted by mortals. Making sense of all possible realities in a single viewing is a task made for those of higher power, yet why would it exist on the mortal plane?
The Elder Scrolls can be cracked not only with high willpower, but higher technology as well. Enter the Dwemer. Skyrim demonstrates that the Dwemer were capable of not only deciphering and unsealing an Elder Scroll, but could store all levels of information on a Lexicon, which are both useless on their own without the Dwemer’s knowledge. The only known method of reading the Elder Scroll on one’s own is to visit the Ancestor Glades and be surrounded by Ancestor Moths to partially divine the secrets of the scroll. As part of a heretical act, the Dwemer have the intellect to copy and modify this process to be able to read the scrolls. That may be the very beginning of this: the Dwemer may have seen the secrets to the world and sought to escape it due to what they have read on the Elder Scrolls. Whether that is related to the (Dragon) scroll they possess and attempted to escape Alduin’s return is unknown, but given that there are limitless Elder Scrolls, each foretelling an event and appear randomly through the world, it is not farfetched to presume that the Dwemer have procured more than one Scroll, and saw a way to move beyond the gods and the “earth bones”. This could explain how and why they came to the conclusion to reject reality.
Enter the enantiomorph based on this predilection. The reading of an Elder Scroll – impressively without risk of blindness or madness, I might add – would begin their path to constructing the Numidium and harnessing the Heart of Lorkhan to power it. Just as an Elder Scroll would predict, given its examples of acquiring Dragonrend and seeing the Forgotten Vale in the Scrolls as keys for defeating Alduin and Harkon, respectively. Two powerhouses and threats to reality all on their own. Interestingly, this does not carry to Hermaeus Mora, who holds all knowledge, all secrets and knows the fabrics of reality. He may have known of the Dwemeris’ treachery and chose not to act.
Conclusion?
How then, did the Dwemer disappear from the world? What is known for certain is that they found the Heart of Lorkhan, the long-dead Trickster God, and sought to use its power. Kagrenac’s tools were specially designed for this purpose, though, as stated before, may have been used incorrectly. Then again, how does one learn to use a heart of a God on the first try? The Dwemer may have been pressed for time given that there were two surface wars against the Chimer and the Nords and a subterranean war against the Falmer happening at the same time. The Numidium would be the only way to survive, by crushing the opposing forces with the power of Lorkhan. When this failed due to time, the Dwemer may have resolved to ascend instead. We do not have enough information at this time to ascertain the success of this plan.
Physical God and Tribunal Member Vivec recalls the Battle of Red Mountain, where the Dwemer disappeared:
With Dumac fallen, and threatened by Dagoth Ur and others, Kagrenac turned his tools upon the Heart, and Nerevar said he saw Kagrenac and all his Dwemer companions at once disappear from the world. In that instant, Dwemer everywhere disappeared without a trace.
Vivec, The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind – Tribunal. 2002.
A third hand account of Nerevar telling Vivec about Kagrenac about an isolated visual event is not much to go on without proof, although Azura is noted to have visited Nerevar (as the patron god of the Dunmer). Dunmer Dissident Priests note:
[Dagoth] went to his dying lord Nerevar and asked him what to do with these tools. And Nerevar summoned Azura again, and she showed them how to use the tools to separate the power of the Heart from the Dwemer people.
And on the fields, the Tribunal and their armies watched as the Dwemer turned into dust all around them as their stolen immortality was taken away.
Dunmer Dissident Priests
With this bent, it implicates Azura as being the herald of the Dwemeris destruction by using Nerevar to cause the Dwemer to either hastily use the tools, or to have Nerevar himself use them with her protections and destroy the Dwemer. The “stolen” immortality is also a curious statement, since the Dwemer are not said to have had godly power until after the use of Kagrenac’s tools. With King Dumac dying mysteriously during the war, Kagrenac may have used the jerry-rigged heart and erased his race, which would fit in line with Azura’s wishes. After all, Azura and the Box even states that it is not the first time the Dwemer have angered her and the other Daedric Princes for their heretical tactics, and so divine wrath was invoked.
This calls into question whether the Dwemer were ever meant to succeed at their goal of transcendence, given the casual and dangerous reactions the world delivered in response to their actions. Demnevanni argues in Morrowind that the Dwemer have reversed the process of subgradience in trying to recreate the Dwemer’s former essence and putting them together as one. I am reminded here of Neon Genesis Evangelion’s “Third Impact”, which caused a singularity to merge all humans (Tang) into a single cosmic, sentient being with the power to remake and lead the world on its own. No differences, no wars, no contrasting ideologies, meant to lead into everlasting peace. Of course this failed, but reminds me nevertheless that the Dwemer may have attempted this singularity to properly rule over others, by way of nigh-impossible transcendence. Subgradients refers to extracting material from a whole being. Done to a human, it can be taking their organs, their blood etc. In fantasy fiction, it refers to the heart, the soul, and the mind, of which they are incorporeal and non-quantifiable. Done in a non-violent way, an example is in extracting specific sounds from an audio recording, but reconstructing the entire scenario using those bits will not work. Working with only the souls of the Dwemer would have been impossible, given that each soul was different despite working toward the goal of ascension in singularity.
Hence the Heart of Lorkhan, the Numidium, and Kagrenac’s Tools, which serve as additional instruments to create a new god. While the Dwemer were certainly far ahead of their time, their technological prowess only allowed them to comprehend godhood, not to emulate it. Since the Numidium did not activate upon their disappearance, it is a safet bet to presume they were either waiting for activation, or failed entirely. Which leads to a next question: why ascend to godhood when one requires a mortal force to push them the rest of the way? It would defeat the purpose of ascension if the Dwemer required one of their own to make it happen.
Theories state that they were transported to Oblivion, but this does not logistically work when Yagrum Bagarn states he was in an Outer Realm during the time of the Dwemer’s disappearance. There are many planes of Oblivion, and many planes of Aetherius. Given’s Skyrim‘s interpretation that it consumes much magicka to travel to any plane of Aetherius, whereas Oblivion Gates did exist without cost, I find it difficult to imagine the Dwemer spending vast amounts of magicka to help one Dwemer explore an Outer Realm when they needed their strength to power the Numidium and fight several wars at once. With “The Calling”, Yagrum Bagarn would have been able to detect their presence in Oblivion, and reaffirmed their existence. He did not do this, and is equally confused why his race disappeared at once. Divath Fyr, a 4000-year old Dunmer mage notes that he has never heard of the Dwemer existing in any Outer Realm or another Dwemer on Tamriel.
To reiterate a point in Nerevar at Red Mountain:
On the fields, the Tribunal and their armies watched as the Dwemer turned into dust all around them as their stolen immortality was taken away.
The Dwemer have definitely been erased from the world. Whether that means ascending, transcending or burning into ash piles, they do not exist anymore. If we believe in transcendence in this context, they may have fused together with the Numidium, in itself a hulking Brass God with pseudo-divine powers. This is reinforced by statements from Dunmer that there were no traces of conflict, nor even ash piles to be found. Baladas does state that Kagrenac’s intent was to create a new god, to transcend the mortal realm.
However, why did the Numidium not power up on transcendence?
Perhaps there needed to be someone left to activate it from the outside, since the Numidium itself was not a sentient being, but a powerful medium. Built as a thousand-foot weapon, its sole purpose was to dominate the Chimer, but was later used by Tiber Septim. The unlucky Zurin Arctus’s soul was used instead. One way or the other, the Dwemer’s plan did not come into physical effect. Whether the plan was to become gods, or to become the Numidium, there is no physical presence proving either point.
If there must be an outside force to help them complete the merge or transcendence process, it begin with Yagrum Bagarn. The only known Dwemer to have been outside the mortal dimension during their Disappearance. Kagrenac’s plan to ascend the Dwemer must have fallen through when tapping the Heart of Lorkhan – either by Deadric providence or miscalculation – and they did not receive the ascension they sought. A fitting, small scale example occurs in Skyrim through Arniel Gane’s accidental bounding to Keening and his soul becoming summon-able by the Dragonborn. Having Yagrum away during the Dwemer’s most incredible moment is far too convenient to be considered happenstance. However, whatever the plan was left with Yagrum, it failed once he caught Corprus. With it, his body would bloat, he would be immortal, and his mind would rapidly erode.
Sotha Sil’s final lament, Last Words offers incredible details on Yagrum’s condition:
Yagrum, on the other hand, seems to have regained much in the past. He still shows signs of corprus, but his memory seems to slowly be coming back from time to time. He spends quite a bit of time on his own now and wishes to remain alone. I am sure that glimpses of his past, coming freshly back to him, give him much to ponder over. I feel for my old friend. I only wish there was more I could do. A temper seems to rattle him every now and then and I have instructed my sister-wives to leave him be. In time, he will come to and understand what fate holds for him.
And interesting thing…. Yagrum confronted me after my arrival from the council, and wished to know if I still had the Tools in my possession. Upon hearing that the Hortator had taken leave and carried the items off with him, Yagrum seemed quite upset.
Sotha Sil,The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind: The Tribunal.
If read this way, Yagrum is regaining his memory, and perhaps the finer details of a grand plan left behind by his kin to complete the transcendence, albeit Three Eras later. Upon learning Sotha Sil did not have the Wraithguard, Sunder and Keening, he grew upset, as he would know the importance of these tools in the process. Without a body or mind to fulfill the grand plan, anyone would become driven to despair. As the pilot who missed his moment to shine in history, we may never know what became of the Dwemer. It is most likely then, that the Dwemer were accidentally bound to the Numidium, having truly ascended beyond mortality into a collective hive entity, but are not in control of it, existence, reality or themselves in the process. A painful and disastrous end to the mightiest Merish race in Tamriel.
Until we have more updated information that does not span 1999-2011, we will need to wait for the next Elder Scrolls installment. Upon which this post will be revised.
Until then, be well.
-N