First of all, we should discuss the similarities between the Dwemer of the Elder Scrolls series and our dwarves. Other than the usual dwarf traits of luxurious beards and living in huge underground mountain fortresses, by the other races the Dwemer were feared as monsters, they were "fearsome, unfathomable, and even cruel, though also careful, intelligent, and industrious." Well, maybe our definition of intelligence and care doesn't really fit our dwarves, but the others count.
Secondly, one of the abilities of the Dwemer was the "Calling". It's pretty much a massive telepathy network that allowed all of them to communicate like a magical psychic internet. How do you think your dwarves can organize themselves so well without actually meeting? One of them starts harvesting Plump Helmets, another starts brewing them into alcohol, and another starts making barrels out of wood which in turn is about to be chopped by a woodcutter. They don't meet and communicate directly, so how do they organize themselves? Simple, they have the Calling too.
Now here's where the Dwemer have surpassed our dwarves and what our dwarves can learn from them.
1. Thousands of years after they all vanished, their machinery and mechanisms are still all working and maintaining themselves without needing input from them. They use reality breaking concepts to provide infinite power for their defense automatons from trapped souls.
2. They outdid every other race on the planet with their accomplishments. Though the same could be said of our dwarves, they sheer scaled by which they surpassed everything else is mindblowing. Thousands of years later and still no one has deciphered their secrets. Partly because the gods themselves feared what the dwemer could do, and do their best to stop people from understanding them.
3. Losing is fun, and they all Lost in the most spectacular way possible. All of them in the world simply vanished. Poof. They poofed themselves out of existence, and it was very likely related to their own Megaproject, something no dwarf of ours has ever come close to...
4. Numidium, the name of their megaproject. What it essentially is is a massive golem so powerful it's effectively an artificial god, powered by the heart of a dead god of creation. It's so powerful merely activating it causes reality to BREAK APART. It's pretty agreed on that the Dwemer vanished because they were trying to achieve godhood, and they might have done it by fusing themselves with the Numudium as its skin. That or they poofed themselves out of reality by realising they were in a video game, but that's another thing entirely.
As an example of how ridiculous it is, when a human emperor used it to lay siege to the capital of the elves which had resisted everything else he threw at them before, they had to surrender within minutes. And even then, because of how the Numidium messes with space and time just by being turned on, it's still attacking them from alternate dimensions even when the siege itself was hundreds of years ago. The elves have to send their most powerful mages into these alternate dimensions just to fend it off, and even then it manages to slip a little by every now and then to cause more mayhem. It will continue to attack for at minimum a few hundred years more. The same Emperor who used it later became a god himself.
So? Are the dwemer perhaps the final form of our dwarves? What else should our dwarves strive to learn from?
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Topic: The Dwemer of Elder Scrolls are everything our dwarves should aspire to be. (Read 5090 times)