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

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

###Chapter IV: ASH

The most well-known tale of seceding from the Aldmer nation is that of the Chimer, or Dunmer as they are known today, the demon-worshipping people of Morrowind. Although such tale is soaked in religious metaphors and misconceptions.

What any Dunmer would tell you is that, during the Merethic Era, Veloth, an Aldmer with strong ideologies, followed the teachings of the Three Good Daedra, Boethiah, Mephala and Azura (all demons of the worst kind if you ask the writer), and that Veloth and his followers, by disagreeing with the "crying" and "shaming of the ancestors' culture that the bulk of Aldmer followed, were persecuted by Trinimac and his followers, Boethiah then ate Trinimac, "relieved" of the warrior-god and led the Velothi towards Morrowind. But now I shall present actual facts.

The Velothi were a clan (now only known for its more famous member and leader) of Aldmer with strong ties to its ancestors, worshipping them to the same scale of our modern days Dunmer, but, different from the rest of Aldmer, their ancestors were not considered gods nor Aedra, they were only their ancestors, their forebears and were constantly called back from whatever afterlife they may go to after their demise, and used as masters, tutors or guardians for the current generation of Velothi. They disagreed with the form of ancestor worship of the Aldmer, they believed their ancestors were to be present in their daily lives, that once they went beyond the grave, they too would come back and aid their offspring, instead of the Aldmeri static image of their ancestors, the search for making the supposed godly image of their ancestors crystal and immutable, eternal as a formation of crystal.

But, contrary to the Maormer and the Left Handed Elves, the Velothi Clan had no intentions of leaving the Summerset Isles, they were forced to leave. Most probably because of the internal discrepancies of the Aldmer race and culture, an order of knights, following the banner of the most well-known Aldmer knight, Trinimac, who had become a cultural god of the Aldmer, started, by incentive of the theocratic ruling body of the archipelago, persecuting any and all seceding movements or different ideologies, trying, by brute force, to suppress those movements, and the Velothi Clan were one of the groups who didn't bend to the will of the Order of Trinimac.

Probably the Velothi already had their dealing with Demons before they left on their "exodus", only more reason for the Knights of Trinimac to pursue them, because the nature of their exodus is very tied with the sphere of one of the "Good Daedra", who are anything but good, and, as much as I hate the mythic additions of tales of both the birth of our universe and of the races that dot the lands of Tamriel, Boethiah may have played a part in the seceding of the Velothi.

The Velothi splitting from the Aldmer is tied with the Orsimer's own splitting, which I will cover in the next chapter, who, despite the mistakes made by previous scholars, are indeed Mer and not beasts as they were mistaken by in previous Eras. Through means now too long lost within the many mythical elements added to the tale throughout the years, the Velothi managed to infiltrate the ranks of the Knights of Trinimac, and through some sort of speech or slow corruption of their ideals, the Velothi twisted the Knights' belief system, making them also turn on Aldmeri belief; Trinimac as the order worshipped him underwent a drastic change, and became something else entirely. The Orsimer, as they were known from that point forward, left the Summerset Isles, and the Velothi took the opportunity to leave as well.

Veloth then led his people, who became known as the Changed Ones, or Chimer, across Tamriel, in what they perceived as a "holy pilgrimage". They never settled down until they reached modern day Morrowind, and they also never suffered from an inner-division as the Dwemer, as much heterogeneous as they were among themselves, their culture embodies this inner conflict and even war among themselves in a manner I would never understand, it should come as no surprise that they were never fully integrated into society, it seems they could never be without murdering their own neighbours.

And, speaking of neighbors, as soon as they met the already settled Dwemer in the region of Morrowind, the first thing they did was to go into war with their cousins. Apparently they knew what they were after from the start, since they did not settle until they had it, and only became "changed" once they had it. The Red Tower.

But the Chimer were not able to reach their goals, initially, for they were few in number and did not have the means and abilities for fighting they developed after generations living in the harsh environment, which the Dwemer already knew better than them. And in time, the culture that Veloth had brought to Morrowind started eroding, and the Chimer fell to their initial inner struggles and became a tribal and very isolationist society, which only later became known as the Great Houses of the Dunmer, but are essentially the same thing as the tribes. The Chimer were scattered, not united and prone to inner conflict, they had no established lands and lived like nomads, settling where they could and while they were not dislodged by the Dwemer or by the very nature of those lands.

And it took the Nord conquer of Morrowind for the Chimer to unite again. Under the banner of Indoril Nerevar that the tribes, by then becoming akin to the Great Houses as we know them, united under a common goal. But what is most interesting about it is that not only did they unite among themselves, but also with the Dwemer, creating the kingdom of Resdayn, so they could fight against the Nords. It was then that the Rourken fled West, and it was during this conflict with the Nord Empire that the Dwemer disappeared.

The Chimer were never fond of their neighboring-cousins and their "un-religion", being as fundamentalists as they were in their own Padomaic fashion, and never did they fully agree to the alliance, and with this we may see the picture of how the savage Nords must have treated their elven subordinates.

When Dwemer and Chimer united, under the flags of Dumac and Nerevar, the Nords were driven out of their lands, and never were able to re-conquer the lost territories. The Sermons of Vivec tell a short narrative of how the Nords were driven out, but the validity of the information contained within these Sermons are extremely dubious, but that is not the focus of this study, so I'll move on to how the discrepancies between both Merish races led to the disappearance of the Dwemer.

As much as the sentiment of victory may allude to strong friendly and long-lasting relations between two cultures, and Your Highness should always consider this, it is only momentarily, and as soon as the previous threat starts sinking in memory, all turn back to look at inner petty feuds, which usually scale into a civil war. A solution I would propose is to always have a new target for the common hate in mind, never leave the people to settle down, but many would disagree with me, so I leave it in my liege’s hands, who bare more wisdom than my own.

Eventually, discord rose between the Chimer Clans and the Dwemer, for as soon as the both started not living in constant conflict and were able to start negotiations and trade relations, the Chimer, ever so faithful to their Daedra, felt horrified by the hypocrisies of the Dwemer, and soon learned that they would not be able to live in peace while the Dwemer constantly challenged their faith by either direct philosophical debates or by their very acts, which seemed as defiance to the gods to the Chimer. Some sources say that the war, later known as the War of the First Council, was started after one of Nerevar's generals, Voryn Dagoth, of a now forgotten Chimeri Clan, brought evidence of the construction of the Numidium (the Dwemer Tower, which I have already covered in the last chapter), and accused it of being a direct mockery of the gods of the Chimer, and to be taken as a personal offence to the Chimer people. Nerevar, the king of the Chimer during that time, is remembered as a great negotiator and one with mastery of words, but for whatever reason for the discordance between he and Dumac, the king of the Dwemer, both races went into war.

The events surrounding the Battle of Red Mountain differ drastically from source to source, and there doesn't seem to be any consensus among scholars as to what exactly transpired during the battle, except that at the end, the Dwemer were gone. It is safe to assume that the Numidium was first activated during the Battle, where the armies of the Chimer clashed with the Dwemeri forces (which may or may not include one of the Chimer own Clans, the Nords and even the Orcs that lived in the Velothi Mountains during the time), and upon that activation the Dwemer vanished and the Chimer were the sole rulers of Resdayn, and finally they had their own Tower. In case Your Highness have not yet understood how fundamental a Tower is to a given culture, even if only the struggle for one, now you may understand, for it was only after the Chimer had their Tower, only after they established it as a center-point of their culture (and their annual pilgrimages to the Mountain serve as evidence to it, as well as the almost god-like veneration of the Mountain and its symbolic representation of their homeland) that they thrived and became a sound culture and society and developed a true government. Only after the War that they became of relevance to the bigger picture of Tamriel and were slowly integrated into civilization. Only after they were established as a culture; and that is extremely visible when you compare the House Dunmer with the Ashlanders - before the Red Year of course - and how disparate were the two, how primitive and unimportant were the Ashlanders compared to the more civilized Dunmer.

The Chimeri/Dunmeri Tower is of special note, because, for whatever reason, be it by divine intervention (which I wouldn't favour), or by mere adaptation of both their culture and lifestyle, the Chimer, after the end of the War, became known as the Dunmer, and their appearance reflects the harsh and unforgiving landscapes that surround the Red Mountain, with their ashen skins and harsh manners.

After the War the now Dunmer also reorganized as a government, with their king killed in the last conflict with the Dwemer, the three most trusted surviving generals took the power, and under their rule, the Chimer many Clans started merging together into the various Dunmer Houses we know today, and so began the golden age of the Dunmer.

I will not enter in arguments of whether or not those generals became the Dunmer gods or not, because that is unimportant, and probably false as well. What is important is that from that day on, the Dunmer would play more significant roles in the events of Tamriel. The many failed attempts at conquest of its territory by the various Empires or the Akaviri invasions being only some of the many examples for this.

The rest of Dunmeri history is well-recorded on other sources, so I will jump ahead to the events of 4E 5, the infamous Red Year. It is said that the gods of Morrowind lost their divine power after the events surrounding the Nerevarine Prophecies of 3E 427, though I would call for other explanations, but with the official records lost to time, I cannot truly say what happened, only that eventually, the Red Tower of the Dunmer was deactivated. And that meant disaster.

Apart from the natural disaster, which by itself was already bad enough, and its consequences are felt to the date, damage also struck Dunmer society. Without their Tower to help uphold their cultural identity, the Dunmer were hit even harder by the disaster, it almost destroyed their society, and led to a grand reforming of both Dunmeri faith and society. At first they were left in disarray, most of them becoming refugees, without a home or land to call their own, and this problem is still the source of many complaints by the Nords of Eastern Skyrim, but as the eruptions and aftershocks calmed down, the Argonians took advantage of the weakened state of the Dunmer to conquer vast lands of Southern Morrowind, and afterwards the Temple religion, which had stood as the most official ruling body of Morrowind, was replaced by the ancient Daedra worship, that had been maintained by the (insignificant, as I have remarked previously) Ashlanders, who now were and are the leaders of Dunmeri faith, and thus, of many political matters as well. Other than this, one of the most influential Dunmer Great Houses, House Hlaalu, the one who had strongest ties with the Empire, fell from its status as Great House and was stripped from all its former significance, and many other Houses were either obliterated, had its ranks vastly diminished, were incorporated into other Houses, or rose in power due to their participation in the events of the Oblivion Crisis and the Red Year following that.

And so, Dunmer society went through a major shift, and I dare say, apart from the eruption of the Red Mountain, that it was all caused because Red Mountain was the Dunmer's Tower. Had it not been so important to them, I can say that the disaster and loss for the Dunmer wouldn't have been so great. The point being that when their Tower fell, they were left vulnerable as a culture, and so, prone to drastic changes, and, until – and only if – they find a new Tower, they will most likely remain as irrelevant to Tamriel as a whole as they are now. Since the events of the Red Year, Morrowind is not capable of supplying the Empire with Ebony any more, nor was it capable of defending its Southern borders, only reclaiming them when the Argonians decided to retreat into their fetid swamps once more, and until today, most of the population of Dunmer live in foreign lands, as refugees and unwanted guests.

In the next chapter, I will speak of the already hinted Orsimer, and how their Tower fell and rose up more than one time throughout history.