The Elder Scrolls, Dwemer, Hermaeus Mora, Snow Elves

The Scrolls

I’ve actually been wracking my brain about how the Elder Scrolls fundamentally work, and came up with my own theory. The lore/game says they allow the reader to see the past/present/future, but I have a strong suspicion that this is actually based on observation/chance, and that the Elder Scrolls don’t actually mean anything by themselves.

I think maybe they just tap into the whole “multiverse” thing, and those future events actually come into fruitio “as” the reader is reading them. Before you read the Elder Scroll, there’s no guarantee as to what might happen. When the scroll is closed, its contents are just swimming around in the eternal ether of space and time. Once the scroll is opened, it immediately snaps into context, or the “now”, and whatever events the scroll just so happens to land on are the ones you end up reading, and as a result, eventually happen. You have an equal chance of seeing a prophecy that tells you how to kill Alduin, as you do seeing events that lead up to you discovering a spell that accidentally turns everyone into sweetrolls. Since the scrolls take the past and present into account, then the future events it can land on always make sense within the context of that particular “when”.

The wiki says that past and present events become solidified as they happen, according to the scrolls. Another good example is if I go punch the Jarl of Whiterun in the face, then that event is recorded. However, if a scroll is read to me, telling me that I’m going to punch the Jarl in the face before I planned on doing it myself, then I’m eventually going to do it. Future events and circumstances are going to bend and warp in my particular universe to make sure I end up punching him in the face, because that’s my fate now. It will happen (this of course can lead to paradoxes, like maybe back when I punched the Jarl on my own, I was really fated to do that all along, which brings the previous idea into question, but whatevs). Anyway, that’s where the whole observation thing from earlier comes into play. There’s a type of philosophy that basically states that anything we can’t or aren’t observing doesn’t exist yet, and once it’s observed in some form or in some way, it becomes real and concrete. That’s how I think the Elder Scrolls “cement” future events into happening after they’ve been read.

The Dwemer, Hermaeus Mora, and the Snow Elves

Now, what’s more is that all of this makes the role of Hermaeus Mora that much more interesting. As the daedric lord of secrets, fate, and forbidden knowledge, the Elder Scrolls are right up his ally. Since the daedra do their thing in Oblivion, they’re outside the realm of the Elder Scrolls I think, which is why they’re so volatile and such a huge deal. The scrolls only affect Nirn, or reality as we know it. Oblivion, Sovngarde, the Soul Cairn, and any other realm outside of Nirn is exempt from this. This is also why I think that people who travel to these places are never quite the same as they were when they come back to Nirn, assuming they can come back at all. As far as the scrolls are concerned, that person/variable just suddenly “blinked” out of existence, so that gap naturally gets filled in with other wishy washy time stuff. Once that person/variable returns, the scrolls are like “Woah, fuck, that thing is back? Shit.”, and can’t quite cope correctly, so weird/interesting stuff always happens while that returned variable is being smushed back into an appropriate spot in time (which undoubtedly shifts around or moves other events/variables around it). It’s like stuffing a cube into a circular hole. I strongly believe that this is why nobody can ever predict or see when daedric princes decide to fuck shit up, and once they do, it’s like the very fabric of time is groaning under its own weight. It’s a variable that was never accounted for. Shit gets really hairy when they decide to meddle.

Now, as for the Dwemer… these guys are so technologically advanced that they literally don’t fit in with the rest of TES. The wiki touches on the fact that the Dwemer actually had a process that allowed Elder Scrolls to be read without causing any blindness (inscribing the info onto a Lexicon). That’s a big fucking deal. That’s like playing god, as far as the rest of Tamriel is concerned. The lore constantly talks about how the Dwemer were shunned because they were so different from everyone else. Their customs and methods for doing things were literally alien in nature. Just going through their ruins gives me goose bumps. Everything related to them is totally detached from everything else, even down to the metal they make everything with. It’s apparently some unknown alloy that can’t be replicated. But one thing is for certain: something is afoot in regards to the Dwemer. You can’t just have a race THAT technologically/socially advanced among all these other races that are so far behind.

Hell, the Dwemer even demanded that all Snow Elves be blinded, when they went to them for aid. Why? Probably because they didn’t want anyone actually seeing the fabulous technology they had. It’s possible that they were afraid any visitors who saw this crazy advanced tech would start to question its existence, wondering how it was even possible, considering everybody else was nowhere near that stage of civilization. That could be why Dwemer ruins are such a huge deal now. Nobody was able to actually get in there and start exploring until long after the Dwemer were gone. While they were alive, you had no chance of even setting foot inside a Dwemer city, unless they specifically allowed it, which I imagine was very rarely. I bet that’s why most of their cities and technology are so deep underground. They’re far removed from the rest of the world and prying eyes. Cities like Markarth were probably just a formality. A surface city built so the Dwemer could safely interact with the outside world without too much questioning, while all the real tech was deep underground, making up the rest of the city, or the real city. The fact that the Dwemer went to all these lengths only shows that they had something to hide. If anyone actually managed to see some of the crazier shit the Dwemer had, the only explanation would be some sort of gift from the gods…or the Daedra. No race wants to be branded as having such close ties that that sort of thing, so to keep their reputations intact, they kept all of that hidden, and left the world wondering. The Dwemer were an enigma, and they intended to keep it that way.

Now, the fact that they’re capable of inscribing the Elder Scroll’s secrets onto a Lexicon, and the fact that they have an Elder Scroll in the Mzark Tower for some reason leads me to believe that they were using the Elder Scroll to some capacity to get where they got. It’s possible that some of them may have been in cahoots with Hermaeus Mora and his infinite library of everything ever. They could have been transcribing things for him from the Elder Scroll, and in exchange been giving them back advanced scientific methods for everything.

Hermaeus Mora deals in knowledge, and that Elder Scroll held the ultimate prize: shit even he didn’t know. I think his library was an endless dump of all knowledge from all over Nirn; knowledge/events that had already happened or were happening, but nothing unknown. The Dwemer were in the ultimate position to bargain. They had the scroll, and they probably already knew what Hermaeus Mora was all about, based on books. The deal was probably constructed after Mora realized the Dwemer had the potential to carry out his scheme, after they managed to get a hold of an Elder Scroll (no idea how they did, but that alone would have been enough to spark Mora’s interest in them). So, he made himself known to them, offering them a means of reading the scroll. If the Dwemer shared the knowledge the scroll contained with him, he would share with them the methods to create the most advanced technology Nirn had ever seen (it’s also not too farfetched to say that the info Mora gained from the scroll is what makes his library even more impressive now, then it was before the Dwemer shared its knowledge with him). This marked the beginning of the Dwemer’s technological advancement. Other races might have also had Elder Scrolls back in that time, but Mora knew he wouldn’t be able to get what he wanted from them. However, the Dwemer weren’t like the others. They were independent, rebellious, shunned all ideologies that everyone else on Nirn held, and most importantly: weren’t afraid to try/attempt new things, if it meant giving them an edge. They were a very progressive people, and the concept of “playing god” meant nothing to them.

This is just a long ramble of stuff that occurred to me as I made connections while playing Skyrim and its DLC, and I wanted to share it. What theories do you all have, in relation to this? I’d love to hear any lore I might be missing so the gaps can get filled in, or what you all think.