A Concise Report on the Various Types of Mer, Chapter III

Pontius Cerallius, by the Divine Grace and request of the Emperor Titus Mede the Second, 4E 170

###Chapter III: BRASS

Having already covered the basis of Mer nature, Stasis, and that of Men, Change, I now proceed to tell of a third nature, Denial.

Every citizen of the Empire has heard of the Tales of the Dwemer as told by Marobar Sul, but few among the less studied of Tamriel know of the true nature of the Dwarven people. The Dwemer started as a sect of Aldmer society which did not agree to the veneration of the Ancestors as Divine entities, they did not believe in the distinction between the Aldmer and their ancestors, the et'Ada and the Aedra, this small group believed that these so-called gods were merely Aldmer who had enough will, power and cunning to change reality to their will and to convince the people of their superiority, and that Mer had no reason to venerate and praise these ancestors as their gods. There's no such thing as a god, said the Dwemer, and for this they were persecuted and punished, but, as contested as the exact moment of their seceding may be, they managed to escape from Summerset and wandered through the mainland until they found a place worthy of their interest, the region of Morrowind. If they did find the Heart of Lorkhan and from Red Mountain they spread and colonized the rest of the area or if the Heart was a later discovery is uncertain, but, as biased as I may be, I believe the Heart was the only thing that would make the Dwemer settle down.

What matters is that once they found the Heart, they began researching every aspect of it. To what purpose you ask, to become themselves gods out of the Divine essence of the Heart? No, as I have already stated, the Dwemer did not believe in the ascension to godhood. To discover the essence of the Divine and show that it was by no means superior to themselves? No again, for they discovered the Heart was more than they were, they discovered the Heart had special properties they could not mimic, at least initially, it had a different essence to that of their own. To what purpose then? To prove to all people of Tamriel gods are not born, they are created, they decided they would alter and channel the essence of the Heart of Nirn to create their own god, a god of denial, a god to spit on the face of every other deity.

At first this seems like a contradiction, why wouldn’t the Dwemer recognize that the Heart belonged to a superior being? Why wouldn’t they adhere to the more common religions? Because denial is stubborn, I theorize. They would first do everything in their reach to disprove the Divine essence of the Heart than to accept it as superior, only if they could not extract that essence and “transplant” it into another being would they give up and proceed to destroy the Heart for it was an abomination in their eyes.

The Dwemer distinction from the rest of the Aldmeri clans seem to go as far as the own usage of Magicka, while the rest of the Magick users of the Mer races use Magicka and the spells every citizen of the Empire is very well accustomed to, the Dwemer used a unique form of Magic, one unmatched to the date, Tonal Magic. While sources, including the very ghost of one of the Dwemer (who sadly wouldn’t contribute more than what I present here, through the notes of the Nerevarine, which were being held under strict security by the Emperor’s archive masters, and to which I was fortunately granted free access to), say almost any Dwemer could easily handle the spells and incantations any Adept is proud of, there was a distinct sect of the Culture called the Mystics or the Tonal Architects.

These Tonal Architects were master stonemasons and mystics, being able to shape the very stones of our land into their desire, creating the magnificent halls and cities they left behind, works and wonders that Men and Mer alike have yet to match. And I’m left to imagine the wonders of Aldmeri civilization in the time of Aldmeris, the Tonal Architecture of the Dwemer, the Light Magic of the Ayleids, the Bosmer terraforming, and many other Magical abilities and schools that have been lost in time, but I diverge.

This very nature of their usage of Magicka, if it is indeed Magicka and not something else, reflects the Dwemeri way of thinking, their denial of Aldmeri culture was so profound, they denied the very notion that Magicka was something coming from their higher ancestors and the connections between the Aldmer and the et’Ada now residing in Aetherius. The nature and origin of Tonal Architecture varies fundamentally from the use of Magicka, from the very source, Magicka being the energy that reaches Nirn from the Planes of Aetherius and Tonal Architecture basing its uses from the very essence of the object to be manipulated, the form of use isn’t as comparable for the lack of any sources as to the usage of it by the Dwemer, or any record of the building of their great Cities, but the results of it are yet here to be studied.

Tonal Architecture seems to have been a technique developed to change the structure of any given material, to change to seemingly random formations of rock and its veins into straight halls, in perfect angles and without a flaw in its walls and columns, all straighter than spears, a feat I haven’t personally seen equaled by even the best Altmeri builders. And building their cities was the least of the uses of such Magic. The very Heart of Shezarr was manipulated, the energy it emanated was being channeled and manipulated, first by the Dwemer and after by the Tribunal, trying their best to mimic the Dwemer techniques, but only tipping the surface of possibility that Tonal Architecture provides. According to my studies on the Dwemer, they seem to have discovered everything on Nirn is comparable to musical notes, every object and every soul in Mundus emits a Tone, a Tone that can be identified and compared to other Tones to precise the similarities between two distinct objects, but Tones that can also be manipulated, intensified, cancelled, or twisted, changing the object in the process, but there seems to be a limit to how much the Dwemer could manipulate, Tones that have too loud a “sound”, like the very Heart of Lorkhan and Nirn itself, some objects just impose their own will upon reality so strongly their Essential Tones cannot be manipulated, only the “music” they emit can be changed, manipulated, harnessed. Through Tonal Reverse-Engineering, the Dwemer seem to have noticed some connection of their own Tones to that being emitted by the Heart of Lorkhan, and so decided for sure they could mimic the Gods and spit on their faces with a god of their own, with the Tones of Shezarr mangled with the Tones of their own selves, since they could not change the Tone of the Heart, they would make one of their own craft.

And so they did, with their own Tones, fueled by the Tones they harnessed from the Heart, the Dwemer slowly built their god, their own Tower. A god and a Tower reflecting their very people, the God-of-Denial, the Brass Tower, erected from the material that four Eras later yet defines that people. Numidium, as they called it, was the ultimate symbol of Dwemeri culture, the embodiment of Denial. And, as evidenced by the Tiber Wars and the War of the First Council before that, it is formidably effective. On its first activation it actually made the entire Dwemer people vanish, maybe it denied and cancelled the Tones the Dwemer emitted, or maybe it required the Tones that gave it purpose to work, what truly happened to the Dwemer I cannot tell, but that the Brass-Tower denied, that it did. But the Dwemer culture seems to have survived, for the Brass-God still walked some millennia afterwards. When Blessed Tiber Septim managed to conquer Morrowind in a swift and beautifully-executed act of negotiation, he requested from the Tribunal the great artifact the Dwemer had left behind to help him conquer the Summerset Isles, and the Altmer were so afraid of the Numidium’s power of Denial that they surrendered to our Holy Emperor only an hour after they caught glimpse of the Brass Tower approaching their shores does reinforce the power of Denial.

But that does not truly matter, and I may have fallen prey to my own admiration towards the Dwemer, but don’t think for a moment that only because their race is no longer present in our daily lives that they are less important, because they represent a unique sect of Aldmer, and an unique school of thought, one school that has shaped many events in history, and that may yet prove either helpful or apocalyptic in the future.

Back on the matter of the Dwemeri political and social structure, that may prove useful in understanding the Mer races. Dwemeri government seems to have been based on various city-states, each relatively independent from the others, as evidenced by some of the records of wars between Dwemer clans and the unusual connotation of the known alliances between Dwemeri cities that we have record of, as the research conducted by Taron Dreth concerning the Aetherium Wars and the alliance crafted between a number of cities in the current province of Skyrim seems to imply. The relative difference, in both architectural and functional aspects, between the many ruins we currently have access to also indicate some additional differences between Dwemeri clans and city-states.

While many of Vvardenfell’s Dwemer ruins seem to be facilities and not actual cities, probably outposts and assembly-facilities located near the main “residential” structure and the proper city, the ruins found in Skyrim display a different thinking. The Dwemer structures in the Island of Morrowind differ from those in Skyrim and on the Mainland of Morrowind in architecture, style, material, and, seemingly, purpose. While the ruins in the Mainland, Skyrim, and in Hammerfell resemble cities as we know them today and that any could imagine even the Dwemer having necessity of to satisfy the residents needs, as dormitories, conference halls, kitchens, dining halls, storage rooms, and engine houses, the ruins in Vvardenfell seem to be divided, with some small outposts serving an specific goal, being smaller in size to other facilities and not having the least of comforts or any sort of basic-needs structure such as beds or anything making it seem like a housing structure, which leads me to think the Vvardenfell Dwemer, and the most famous sect of the race, had a very different thinking compared to the rest of the Dwemeri Clans.

In my explorations of Skyrim’s, Morrowind’s and Vvardenfell’s ruins (I am sorry and ashamed to inform that I could not venture too much on the ruin in the province of Hammerfell because this Imperial could not endure the heat of the Alik’r Desert) I began theorizing that Dwemeri society, just as the Aldmeri from which it derived from, had its own small fractures. What leads me to this thinking is not only the structure of their cities, varying drastically from place to place, because it may be explained by the very stones the Dwemer worked, maybe there are qualities to the material they shape through Toning that cannot be changed, such as the shape the material is more aligned to - mushroom-shaped as the ruins in Vvardenfell, straight and bright looking as in Skyrim, and more tower-looking in Hammerfell -, but from the internal and external structures of those cities.

In Skyrim and in the Mainland of Morrowind, the cities consist mainly from small tower-like structures, only denoting the site of the city, for its main complex is buried way below the surface, sometimes hundreds of meters below. And in these cities all sorts of necessities could be taken care of, many sections have extensive halls with various small dormitories along its corridors, with visibly separate sections serving each purpose, I recall a time, while visiting one of the many cities of Skyrim, I found a chamber resembling a chapel as the ones dedicated to our Divines, initially I was in disarray, how could there be a place of worship in a Dwemer city? before I realized it was no more than a debate chamber, or maybe a place for some sort of ruling council to meet, good were the times when this body could yet explore those magnificent cities, but I diverge, once more. In Vvardenfell though, even the bigger ruins seem to be smaller than those in Skyrim and the Mainland. These ruins have much more over-ground structures, with tall towers and structures that seem to reveal surface-level activity, and the underground of the cities, with the exception of Dagoth Ur, seem much shallower than their counterparts.

Now I believe my previous claim that the Dwemer would only settle down for the Heart seems to be flawed and I was probably taken by my musings on the Dwemer, because, after analyzing my research and better formulating my thoughts for your majesty, I have come to believe the Dwemer became a divided people even before they reached Morrowind.

Aldmeri society, by all sources, seems to have been divided in great Clans, seeing as the Dwemer, Orsimer, Chimer alike were divided in Clans, just as Clan Direnni of the Altmer, subject of a future chapter of this analysis, and during the times of Aldmeris, those Clans seem to have been very strongly united in case they were formed out of family relations, but I have not found very solid evidence suggesting that those Clans were formed from common thinking, but it seems to be one of the few explanations as to how those Clans remained so united, to some extent at least. Dwemeri society seems to have been divided into at least two separate Great Clans, one that came to reside in Skyrim and one in Morrowind.

The basic differences between those two Clans - and I intend to cover only the basics for I fell I have already prolonged myself more than enough on an extinct race – seem to be the focus of their denial. The Dwemer of Skyrim seem to have been more inclined to the discovery of the aspects of our world, trying to deny it from its bases, understanding the rules that govern reality so they could either revoke them or manage to find a way to elevate themselves to a higher position than those rules and such be removed from futile existence, as evidenced by various structures related to the study of both the starts and Nirn herself present in some of their cities, along with the extensive research on Aetherium, which probably has relation to Aetherius or some kind of Divine spark. And the Dwemer of Vvardenfell and Morrowind were the more radical and “rebellious” of the two, decided to bring down the notion of godhood, the ones that wished reality denied. The reason behind the fragmentation of the latter facilities still eludes me, but my understanding tends to believe it would help their research in some way, and maybe that Clan was more united among themselves than Skyrim’s Clan, sharing some of their facilities with different Houses. Also to the point of the difference in unity of the two Clans, one can easily see the difference in thinking of both sects, while the Dwemer of Skyrim only united, and only a few of its city-states joined such alliance, over a source of some unknown magical-power from Aetherium, and only so that they would not start a war among themselves over the resource (a fact that eventually happened nonetheless), the Dwemer of Morrowind were united for quite long time under the same banner, that of Dumac Dwarfking, a figure so well-known for his unmatched feat, the uniting of the Dwemer Houses of Morrowind, much in the same way Nerevar became Hortator of the Chimer people. But even Dumac’s leadership did not subvert the nature of the denial-centric people, for in their philosophy, they could never work as a whole, and conflict and insubordination and secession followed quickly, the Rourken Clan, the one that eventually ended up in Hammerfell seceded from the Eastern Dwemeri Branch during this point, probably refusing to follow Dumac’s banner or to be counted amongst the deity-worshiping Chimer or both, the Rourken decided they would follow their own path and so went West until they found a land where they could settle down, and among the Clans that followed Dumac, there were the ones who continued the research on the Heart of Lorkhan and the building of the Numidium, even under Dumac’s strict rules of halting such research. Although the whole inconsistence within the Dwemer society seems to mean their Tower would be less defined or less powerful for that matter, it may mean the complete opposite, considering the possibility that the Numidium has incorporated the Dwemer race to his own Tone, it gives the Walk-Brass an unparalleled power, fueled by all aspects of Denial and its own internal contradictions may give this Denial even more cultural-definition. Brass Tower is also one of the finest examples of how a Tower can impose its culture and people’s “personality” upon Mundus, how it made the whole of the Dwemer race disappear is just one of its examples, the time inconsistencies that seem to follow each of its activations also serve well to exemplify this. But well, I have already covered enough of the Dwemer, probably much more than necessary, and should now move on to the next cultural secessions.

On the next chapter I will need to speak yet more of the Dwemer, but from the perspective of another non-Anuic sect of Aldmer, the Chimer and their Red Tower.