Numidium’s Skin

The Dwemer became the skin of the Numidium. This always resonated with me. They are not the heart and soul, the innermost essence. The Numidium already had a heart, either the heart of Lorkhan or the Mantella, already filled with soul(s).

So what does it mean to wear the souls of a sentient and highly complex race as your skin?

Let us explore what skin is, and maybe we will learn a bit about the fate of the Dwemer, and assess whether or not they were successful or not in their endeavours.

We will discuss first the Biological significance of skin, and then the social aspects of it. After that a quick discussion of how that is applied to the fate of the Dwemer.

Biological

Please feel free to correct any factual errors I make here, my knowledge of this biology can be…skin deep. I know I’m such a punny girl.

Your skin is your largest organ, by mass and by cell count. It is stretchy, water and airtight, protecting your meat, bones and brains in a cocoon that is unbelievably strong and incredibly flexible. Water and Airtight it may be, but it is not inert, like plastic, it is loaded with neurons that interface with your pretty much every internal system in your body, ensuring its interactions with the environment are accurate and safe.

It provides an essential cross reference with your other senses to help you best assess a situation. It tells you if your fingers are on the right keys on the keyboard, if your child has a fever, what your lover is feeling, if there is an allergen in the environment, and if you are in danger of over heating or freezing.

It is self-repairing, and surprisingly resilient. Yes, if someone runs me through with a sword or attacks me with the Mace of Molag Bal, I remain squishy and fragile, and I would be euchred. However, for something thinner than a sheet of paper, it does an exceptionally good job in unexceptional circumstances.

Social Skin

This section will focus more on my perceptions of social significance of the humanoid carapace, feel free to dissent, in fact, I encourage it if you feel differently.

The skin is of enormous social significance. It is our first visual cue about a person we meet for the first time. It can inform us of the person’s race, age, health, lifestyle, occupation, even beliefs. We use our skins to become informed about our environment in ways that cannot always be determined by other senses. A sweaty handshake tells us someone is nervous, rough hands tell us we are addressing a labourer, a tattoo can reveal much about a person, same with a lack of tattoos. Different cultures value different aspects of the skin; some prize a deep healthy tan, others prefer a delicate pallor, others still cherish the freckle or beauty mark. Scars can be a badge of honour, or a mark of shame.

To comfortable in your skin is to have confidence, to accept yourself for who you are, to love your skin even though it is mottled with stretch marks, scars, ingrown or errant hairs.

To have your skin crawl is to be uncomfortable, to have your pores open and close with the memory of an ancestor who once made their hair stand on end to appear more impressive.

To be obsessed with skin is to be superficial, to use it as a measure of value, rather than a functional part of the human body, like a liver or a lung. We take a biological trait and assign it social merit based on judgements that rely heavily on social context and culture. To judge a person based on their skin is to ignore their brain, meat and bones underneath.

So how, pray tell, does this relate to the Numidium and the Dwemer?

What does it mean to be the skin of a God? From my definitions and interpretations of the significance of skin, I would say that the Dwemer inform Numidium’s interactions with the environment. Their souls form a film of sentience around the divine metal of the monster, allowing it to reflect on its environment.

However, as Gods are not built for self-reflection, having a sentient skin does not confer any measure of that quality upon the New Medium.

Symbolically, what this may represent in terms of the success or failure of the Dwemer is very open to interpretation, and I invite others to share their thoughts. I believe that it’s a form of poetic justice for the arrogant and ambitious Dwemer. Yes, they have become part of a God and created a new reality, but they are only the most superficial veneer of the God, their biggest contribution being a conduit of interface between the God and the Mundane world, a tool of the God, like an altar or relic. They are part of the God, their presence informs the God, but they have no control over the decisions of the God.

Is Numidium well-served to wear them as it’s shell? Talos is Talos to the people, sometimes Shor, or Shezarr, but he is always himself. Kyne may be Kynareth, or Tava, or Kaan, but she is still herself.

But the Numidium is always “that Dwarven creation”. Mortals will never see it as anything other than that. Well, maybe not all Mortals, Jubal saw it differently, and perhaps that is why he was allowed to kill it, he was willing to look deeper, and appreciate it for what it was, not what it appeared to be.

Personally, I believe being the skin of Numidium represents a failure on the part of the Dwemer. The Dwemer wanted to be divine, to become their own Dream, like the Altmer, just in a different way. What they ended up achieving, however, was a pale shadow of their goal. They became a perception of a God, and an element of that God’s perception. But perhaps because they never knew Love, they failed to actually become Numidium.

The skin is not capable of feeling or knowing Love/love, compassion, hate, anger or fear. It is capable of sending and receiving signals of those things, but without the sentience underneath, it’s signals are meaningless and empty.