Is There a Future for the Falmer? The Snow Elves | The Elder Scrolls Podcast #10

[Music] what is up ladies and gentlemen welcome back to fudge muppet my name is scott i'm here with michael and drew and today we are discussing the snow elves otherwise known as the falmer so which one of you want to uh take the reins i'll do it so the snow elves are basically extremely extremely pale elves like a lot of elven races they're very good at magic and uh they're not around anymore unless you delve far deep under the grounds of skyrim and find the corrupted version of them that they've become the falmer now falmer means snow elf but i think for this episode if you two are okay with it we'll separate the word the phrases snow elf and falmouth into old version and the new one yeah for sure i think there's even references to that yeah it might even be gullible or from a text someone specifically says yeah like we we distinguish between the two even though it means the same thing it's just an easy way of knowing which one you're talking about yeah yeah he doesn't like that you know falmouth now the connotations is that they're corrupted and foul and twisted but who's he to say oh we don't like that he's what one snow elf yeah well he calls them the betrayed instead which i guess we'll get to yeah so i guess we could kind of talk about the uh origins too of the snoils and there's some things that indicate this a little bit as well but as you know if you've been listening to this podcast for a bit we've sort of thrown out there and touched on the idea of aldmeris actually being a tamriel when it was once one big landmass that was then sundered during the el nafee wars versus the idea that aldmeris is some sort of offland continent that they lost um so you know we sort of speculated that the dwemer sort of since the marathi era had been just in aldemaris which is tamriel that sort of been there for a while but potentially other things could have happened as well but you know i guess the snow elves it sort of seems to indicate that they have been um there forever like there's no clear sort of uh explanation as to their like you know why they're in skyrim and why they're pale white and so on i think a slightly awkward thing about the snow elves is that much of the information we get from them comes from the records of men you know like it is when israel comes over with the nords which isn't the first human settlers in skyrim and the regions around there he's credited as being like the first human historian because he's transcribing stuff in their language and that kind of gets passed on so most of what we know about the snow whales does end up coming from very heavily skewed nordic um viewpoints yeah people that hate them yeah exactly absolutely despise them it is interesting if you think about top of the pilot's voyages around tamriel he didn't really speak about skyrim did he i don't think so i think he's basically skips for tomorrow and to be fair like if you look at the top of skyrim it's like this frozen wasteland kind of thing of icebergs and stuff you're not necessarily being like let's jump into there and explore it it's like you know what i mean it's pretty desperate yeah of course so it's not like he met any snow elves or saw any of them so the idea that they could have always been there definitely holds up i mean they could have left from somerset isles when the other elves or the old men departed to various provinces and became different races but at least in my head canon i kind of liked that idea that they were always there or at least have been for a very long time and that they kind of always were yeah i mean we can we can jump into the uh sort of some of the histories in a second but just something to um that you actually mentioned before the line um that gala boar says about oh yeah i've got is this about the warring one yeah yeah so he says if you say who were your people to gullible which is the snow off you meet in the dawnguard dlc he says we were once a wealthy and prosperous society that occupied a portion of skyrim unfortunately we were constantly at war with the nords who claimed the land as their ancestral home and then he goes on to say we'd always maintained an uneasy alliance with the underground dwelling dwarves but we'll get onto that later but he is saying that they were constantly i wonder if it's another one of those cases where they're kind of using like a mix of the words sort of like the words that are more contextual to you because you know we understand nords but it could also actually be referring to sort of atmorans and kind of even that war way way back in aldmeris when they're the wandering come to aldmeris and then they're fighting or there's the idea that because you know it's like the nords claim it as their ancestral home there is some working you can do with the timeline too and you know in their mythology that they're breathed by kind on to the um throat of the world and that's where uh men were created but then perhaps then during the sundering that the nords were just on the wrong side of the border and then you know atmora and tamriel were split and became separate so it that phrase there could be referring to the fighting that actually happened back in those elena fey times as well as well as inclusive of when they came back to southall and so on and you know what i mean yeah that would that would make sense i mean you never you never know he could just even be referring to once isgramor returned you know when he's kinda and to him in his head that kind of is a significant chunk of time you know we're always fighting with the nords and and so on and so because i mean the pocket guide says they got along harmoniously you know and then when we get to talking about the night of tears if these guys are constantly at war this big betrayal of the night of tears kind of doesn't really make any sense it would almost be expected yeah that's kind of why i do put a little bit like the warring thing but the warring part could also refer to um post-israemore's return because israel rocks up and you know he genocides a bunch of them but it takes a while before that they're completely sort of extinct and so on you hear about um i forget his name but one the original um founder of your vascular the ship captain of your vascular and so on and where it was down the river was it gee jake of the river that's it and he sort of comes across and he finds them and they're these elves are the snow elves are scared of the sky forge and stuff there's some cool stuff going on there but you know he's sort of split from his gramor at that point there all these captains are going off in their own directions and they're still sort of getting rid of snow elves so this sort of warning could be referring to like the last bastions and remember as we'll sort of get to in a sec we'll explain it in better context but um you know the snow prince um the leader of the snow elves was like the last best hope for the snow civilization and he died at the battle of mosering on solstheim but that's kind of but at that time there are still snow elves elsewhere he's sort of referred to as the best hope the snow prince was so so official there is a period of sort of constant warring that happens after his return another thing to consider as well is while gellerbor is obviously very old by the time of skyrim when the player meets him you don't actually know when he was born back then because this was all going on in the late morethik era very early first era he could have been born even well like being quite young at the time that everything was going on so for most of his kind of life back then that he remembers it was kind of you know filled with war yeah we just don't know the context of where he fits in exactly and yeah the idea that it'd be very easy to to kind of like see where all of the snow elves are and easily push them you know to solstice and then win one final battle seems really unrealistic when you look at a couple of things like it says because they're so good at dealing with a cold they can live in really inhospitable ice caverns in the middle of mountains and stuff and then in the pocket guide um you've got you know superstitious villagers saying all the snow elves they're still around and you've got a note right at the bottom saying um someone saw signs that um that might be falmer boundary runes so like protecting their hiding places and things like that so it would have been a very long drawn out process actually getting rid of them yeah and you know technically they're still there as the falmer as well but um i think we'll just sort of retouch on the the history sort of chronologically because you know so snow elves are there i mean we could speculate on their society and religion a little bit but i'm gathering from what we've seen with the chantry of oriel that auriel like in other sort of traditional elven societies is very important and you know i'm sure there's indications of like the rest of the elven pantheon i feel like it would be rather similar and even in sort of culture they're probably quite similar to the durani or to the um high elves or or basically any other elven group that didn't sort of you know sign to sign a pact with a forest god or go off their own way and start doing things with the daedra you know i think gullible even says that they they did worship the same uh pantheon like including trinimac siribane um jeffer and finaste or finaster yeah um but obviously auriel was definitely a important one based on the the chantry and all the trials and and so forth yeah i'm not sure when we're going to talk about religion but i've got a theory that there's that you know there are others that were quite essential to them well let's hear it let's hear it well why not well gullible specifically says um our empire had temples to some of the other deities so you know like um one who i truly believe they worshipped was magnus um and you know like maybe they didn't necessarily need to have temples to magnus when you know you've got the sun up there that's kind of you know you don't you've got his presence right there they can just worship out worship him out in the open but i mean my idea is that you know even though um you know the sun being a rift in the sky is different to the sun in our world there's still the reality that cultures you know that come from very hot regions like say the red guards have darker skin whereas the the pale skin snow elves they'd absorb a lot more not vitamin d but a lot more of magnus's divine light and i really feel like they would venerate him a lot and i also think that might come into play with the night of tears and why they were so desperate to get the eye of magma well let's connect that so so we'll give him a little brief and then i'll let you continue with that so we have um sarthal basically gets established um with a bunch of atmorans that come to skyrim and you know is gramor and his two sons are all there and it's from what we can understand is relatively peaceful there because you know they start flourishing and so on and and it kind of like how do you establish a city well i mean it's possible with constant warfare but it sort of seems of a different tone and the way that the knight of tears is described which is basically that the conventional ideas is that the snow elves were concerned about um the nords and how much much they were breeding and that they were going to get out of control and it will be the end for their society so basically they agreed upon let's just massacre them in the night so in the night of tears they came and they mastered the entire city of southall except israel and his two sons escaped so um there's the conventional explanation of as to why and you know it could be all manner of little little grievances or perhaps like you know this family killed this family and they're trying to maintain a delicate piece kind of thing and it just didn't work out but in the college of the winterhold questline we do find that the eye of magnus is underneath the um underneath the ruins of southall which really leads into the idea that you know perhaps they were perhaps that was their problem with um the nords and that was the catalyst for their like fight is that they sort of discover that the nords have found the eye of magnus and then they're like they just can't let their venerated patron um have you know have the eye of magnus come and fall into the hands of nords or men or whatever yeah i'd totally believe that i mean especially if you believe that little kind of off-the-cuff quote that encarno says at the end of the college of winterhold storyline which is having the power to unmake the world at his fingertips it's no small you know little magical trinket it's obviously extremely powerful and you know if we like this idea that elves kind of well at least some of them have this idea where they would almost want to unmake the world and you know follow the path of auriel and and ascend to godhood and or go back to how things were before to their original forms then i mean surely they would want it um yeah absolutely i did just want to add one extra little anecdote there um in reference to uh as a doll and how his sort of experience kind of confirms the idea of uh sarthal being at you know at relative peace with the elves is that when so so as a doll was i'm not sure was he born in southall was it or was he just living in south i can't remember exactly which one it was but regardless he's in he was young boy living yeah so he lives in southall right um but then what happens is he goes off to learn about enchanting and stuff from the elves he goes off and seeks the tutelage of the elves and to me if you were warring with the snow elves all around you constantly it doesn't make a lot of sense that he'd just go off and you know learn from them kind of thing and then obviously as it all comes back and saathle's being destroyed and he gets super angry and then he joins up with israel and helps them out but yeah so i sort of gather the idea that that it truly was a peaceful period perhaps it could have been a delicate piece perhaps there could be little bits of frictions here and there you know because this little group of nord farmers you know killed this elf or something you know or you know what i mean like if i if i could just interject for a moment about azerdal staying on topic it says that he went to all kinds of elves to learn you know more and more but i find it a bit strange can you imagine a lids teaching him you know about dawn magic and ancient runes yeah i mean that's what it says in the story it says i mean would make sense too you know talking to the durani i mean unless it's just sort of uh like you can imagine the curiosity if you if you reach you know all of these wizards and stuff and he's just this remarkable sort of mage even for a human that kind of a little bit of curiosity would kick in and then maybe they would yeah it just feels like a bit of a stretch like the aliens are like yep come here human it's time to teach you some masterful enchanting secrets yeah but in the outdoor magics yeah at the end of the day safal be you know being the capital for men at the time and it's like if you're in kind of a civil war with another race in skyrim you're not going to leave your city you know maybe it had some guards but not enough to prevent a massacre you know you'd think you you'd think if you're you've got active hostility with the snow elves they're not going to just be able to waltz in in the middle of the night and kill you all yeah yeah there's it kind of implies a degree of trust yeah that was there and i mean like you know if we're kind of subscribing to the idea that the snow elves have always been there if they discover that uh an artifact they figure out that it's the eye of magnus and it's buried somewhere in their homeland they would feel like it belongs to them you know versus these north just coming down and stumbling across something that was on your land and you know it would really annoy them and the idea that um you know obviously hindsight it's easy to say but the nords didn't really miss as far as we know they didn't misuse it once they kept it you know for it for a long time whereas the snow elves i mean i have a little theory maybe perhaps that because we know that they are the human gods um or the atmoran gods whatever are quite different to the um elven gods in some regards but then they don't really have like oriole equivalent at the top of their pantheon they have shaw instead um when they fight i think i feel like they that the nords didn't recognize the eye of magnus as the eye of magnus like they weren't aware of what it was because as far as i'm aware they don't have magnus in their pantheon they don't sort of they have different stories um and then i feel like maybe it's some sort of you know maybe an elven diplomat or something you know tight with his grammar or something and then he's like oh look what we found or so on but the elf knows what it is because they're you know revere magnus and so on and this became a big debate amongst like a snow off council and they're like we've got to take action we have to you know if they know the power of it but maybe the the nords didn't know what was up they just thought it was almost like a curiosity obviously some things look at this cool floating yeah turquoise ball yeah absolutely but um yeah so i as everyone i i think that's everything with the snow elves they're sort of basis yeah i mean another thing about the the eye of magnus as well is if just going on what you were saying the nords weren't super fond of magic you know oh though there is the things that the clever men stuff was doing yeah yeah yeah the the attitudes that's a more uh modern attitude because there's like junile and stuff was revered and so on it's a little bit fair enough but i feel like just just hear me out regardless i'm not saying they're like terrified like it's kind of stuff but if you were one of the nords and then you found the eye of magnus and you know that you kind of supposedly live peacefully with this extremely magically adept race you'd want to show them i'd be one of the first people you'd want to ask about it yeah i think the the nords are actually the way i sort of interpret the nords in their approach to magic is just there's little hints of it um but they see it as quite a i think a deeply at least the early nords are way more um philosophical mythical kind of related things so there's like janelle described as the the god of hermetic orders um so that's like hermeticism and sort of like you know mysticism religion mythology kind of stuff but then also that the thumb itself which is a mu which is a power that they use um later on is you know achieved by a sort of enlightenment and kind of thing it's you know what i mean it's kind of like intertwined for them i guess a little bit more than less so than they look at looking at it like modern magical institutions do where it's a very lack here is the science of illusion and this and this and this and cast ex fireball and so on but to be fair i feel like that attitude could also be common among all societies at that time including the snow elves you know um i mean as soon as game mechanics came in the schools of magic and thought about it and philosophies all changed yeah but just by the very nature of the way humans are in in the older scrolls is um they're much they're going to be much more likely to uh you know kneel before a magic artifact rather than use it as a tool so you know it it even though they met might not have been at war with the snow elves there's probably doubt in their minds like oh if we show it to them there's always a chance that our slight frictions and awkwardness could like really escalate just just something else to add to that that mindset that you pointed out by like men usually treating uh magical artifacts and stuff with reverence as opposed to the elves is because i think the elves it's part of the elven hubris is they believe they're descended from gods and so on whereas whereas the men generally believe that they were made by god so it's sort of like they're created if it's related to to the creators rather than the sort of like elven sort of almost like i guess they could be like we ownership of it because it's our ancestors and you know what i mean so it's a different sort of look at it but uh yeah i guess do we want to start moving on to you so so i i guess as we go further in history is grammar's return happens he comes back starts genociding the snow elves which you know some people will go like oh you know bad is grammar but it's also like well bad snow elves before them it's like you know no one's justif it's not like a justified sense in morality like a genocide's not a good thing but you can understand from their point of view like you know it's justice to them in in the rev in the vengeance sort of sense of justice which you know yeah complicated i mean it's like every every race people make a big deal out of it with with this one part in the timeline but every race in the elder scrolls has done something like this whether it's the okudan's coming over and just killing every single thing in hammerfell or yeah to be fair there's like some of the most like brutal indiscriminate sort of ones where they just killed everything that wasn't them and they did not want to interact with anything outside of them like they were just really oh yeah like um but yeah whether it was goblins or needs or or anything so it's kind of like if you want to come down on the uh it's like even in that sense at least the uh atmoran one was provoked by the no by the slaughtering of an entire city i wonder if they were really kind of hoping for provocation as well you know like oh might be a bit of a crackpot theory but you know like the idea that they truly believe skyrim is their home i feel like eventually they probably would have tried to take it by force anyway so they just pull you know isgram pulls a shock pikachu like oh my god we've all been massacred now we've got our excuse yeah maybe maybe but anyway he hated the elves uh massively and when he came back he the extermination of the snow elves went on for quite some time it didn't end up finishing i believe until harold who was like 13th in his grammar's line yeah and that was in the early first era yeah so it's not like this ended in the marathi it was a process and we know that we know that before then there was the uh the battle of mo's ring which was the final fall of the snow prince which was the last best chance for snow elven civilization so the ones that were being cleared out in the times of harold and just before were snow elf civilizations that were like little bastions but trying to survive on and i probably imagine similar to uh the forgotten veil kind of vibes like just little hidden away communities that are trying to just hold on basically and not get slaughtered essentially that i think one of the diaries that you translate in the dawnguard dlc actually talks about someone's experience it from the sounds of it they don't specifically use the word nords but it sounds like they're actually living with a nord family or like being hidden or sheltered somewhere right one thing i actually just need to just double check harold sorry um he was it was the dragon cult that was the dragon cult that he snuffed out was the last remaining of the dragon cult i don't know if his was the snow elf stuff so perhaps the snow stuff even happened a little bit earlier but right uh oh hold on it says during his reign the elves were finally driven from the present boundaries of skyrim at least driven from the inhabited service okay so it was that it's both yeah no it was okay sorry it was both i i didn't i didn't just throw it out yeah yeah um as you were just saying michael i've actually got that source up but um the the refugee essentially is saying in her um journal i dare not write where we stay for fear of endangering the good people of this house should this diary be discovered so you know that that insinuates it's talking about a nord family that are taking them in or something like that well it wouldn't be a snow yeah well you know or like obviously not the dwemer because something else happens there but yeah it's going to be nords yeah so anyway eventually uh the snow elves it's actually one of these translated texts kind of talks about it they're saying that the they say young ones and old ones but from the sounds of it it's just their society like the young people the older people like the snow elves are saying oh i can hear that they're talking about um the dwemer you know i've heard tales of them i think that even mentions to them that they were called honorable and that they can help us and that we're going to go and and speak with them and see if they can save us and help us take back our home and we all know what happens next yeah so you know in desperation they uh go down to the dominant did you have the translation of that um i can find can you find it so basically if you remember in cal selmo's uh museum thing in markham there's basically a uh tablet of falmer text and um kurt kuhlman who is um one of the the co-lead designers for skyrim he offered a an official translation outside of the game but still it's the you know co-lead designer that works with ezra so on that says this is the translation we had in mind so i'm going to sort of take it as canon to be honest like you know and just before we go underground i i just want to interject that i think it's really cool that um after the battle of the mose ring the snow prince was such an intimidating foe that the nords actually honored him by giving him a really good burial um as well which is just a neat little piece of info about how much they you know can appreciate good warriors yeah it's kind of like shows a little bit into their mindset too just a bit like it's not just some homicidal genocidal maniac there is kind of like the genocide was really revenge based but so far that they could even honor their like greatest enemy still like it wasn't just a do you know what i mean it's not just like a you know what they did to um what to call oh my god william wallace and like cut him into pieces and spread him all over scotland it's like they you know they would they were nice about it they were nice about their genocide they gave a full burial with all the weapons and stuff the spear and the armor you can find that in the blood moon dlc in morrowind it's just steel it's ancient steel but the story talks about it being some super shining armor so whether it was just really shiny steel or whether as the story describes because it's imbued with magic it just looks like it's shining so brightly and the as the snow prince goes across the battlefield the kind of snow kind of goes around and is used kind of as a weapon as well i do also like how he was kind of just stabbed by a young girl and that's that was his demise like it's just sort of an interesting like well by throwing a sword too it's some force unleashed level stuff yeah her mother had just been cut down by the snow prince she picks up the sword in a rage it was like yeah but anyway i found that translation so it says in the night i overheard the old ones whispering secrets of the underground and the dwemer who dwell there i thought back on story's father once told me of these dwarves heroic tales of honor and glory the old ones must know of these stories for it has been decided that we will change course upon first light i feel hopeful that the dwemer will help us to avenge our fallen and to reclaim our land yup and they didn't no they didn't now what's interesting is if you read gallibor's or listen to gullible's dialogue about that so i'll go on from what i was saying before we had always maintained an uneasy alliance with the underground dwelling dwarves and when faced with extinction we turned to them for help surprisingly okay surprisingly they agreed to protect us but demanded a terrible price the blinding of our race so according to gallibor it's not like like when i first played skyrim i kind of thought like oh you know yeah you can come and it was like a trick but more with what gelabo is saying it's almost like they're like okay but you have to go blind yeah at least that's what he's saying they agreed to protect us but demanded a terrible price the blinding of our race there were splinter groups that resisted the agreement and even some that sought alternate alliances but when it was all said and done those elves were either slaughtered vanished or gave up and took the dwarf's bargain so you know this toxin was not like a they didn't know about it and to me i don't know it seems a bit cowardly i i personally think i'd rather die hmm well like um then then like if i knew i was going to go blind 100 and like almost live in these caverns underground i don't think i'd be down for it because i mean the conventional idea too i think on the the blinding is that it's to protect dwemer secrets and civilization because the dwemer are a secretive group with you know they've got their whole cities hidden underground obviously they're practicing lots of uh you know insane tonal magics and all kinds of stuff so they don't want these secrets potentially being leaked i would imagine and to be honest as the ethereum wars indicates they don't even want secrets necessarily leaked between dwemer city's states either so in order to sort of have these kind of which i imagine they sort of ended up using them as slaves or perhaps experiments and so on um they would need them to be blind because they just can't have they can't risk the chance of it and i think all the dwemer would be an agreement of that i mean they had torture rooms as well yeah that they would use so it doesn't sound too nice honestly i obviously when you're faced with extermination you do crazy things but one thing i always wondered was unless they have to live in the snow i know that they're really good in the snow but unless they have to live in the snow why didn't they just flee somewhere else that wasn't skyrim you know yeah yeah just go somewhere else i don't know take your chances in although they didn't have i guess i mean initially perhaps but i guess then they didn't have an option soon after like as you have to enter the first era and so on you've got like this new empire of men that hate you know one they don't hate the elves they were working with some of the elves initially so they could use discretion but um you know you've got an empire man i guess you've kind of that's all in retrospect though like if you were then in the moment you just keep fleeing i just feel like i wouldn't be descending down into at least like before i used to think before i really dug into gullible's dialogue i used to think like oh you know if i didn't really know that they were going to blind me eventually then yeah sure i would have done it but if they actually when you first wrapped up like yeah sure but i'm going to blind you but i guess i feel like i'd be like nah i have a feeling there was a gradual um blinding no i have a feeling that they were blinded like you know intentionally they knew it was going to happen but i have a feeling like all of the other stuff was a bit more gradual like the dwemer started abusing them and generations of and that's kind of what lit up the war of the crack i feel like initially it's like okay you're blind but you're treated with the same respect as any of the other elves or so on oh i still feel like it'd be a no like just fleas well and one thing though like obviously this happened in places other than soul stein but you know like one of um cause elmo's translations um for the poem called the betrayed is like and when the snow prince fell to the ground the isles divided above and below so it seems like almost a direct response to them losing their last hope so you imagine there's a lot of refugees basically all the wives and children and old people on soul styme they don't really have directions to flee you know they're not really going to be able to get away on a boat or anything like that it seems so those ones especially i think are forced basically to find the dwemer depends there actually just the interesting thing which we could just sort of add as a little bit of info but if we believe the mythology that uh solstein was connected to the mainland of skyrim it would have still it would have still been connected at that time because the nords had to take it then they had to establish the dragon cult then mirak and valok and that's what severs the yeah because supposedly valk and mirak have a big fight and that kind of rips solstheim off skyrim to be honest even then it would have been kind of a peninsula right it's a problem yeah it's probably not much of an escape anyway but yeah go on it's all right i do like the idea that it is severed and so on and you know what i mean and like i i generally take them at face value it's like the class like you know geography's been shaped more than by by you know more simple means but when would a sundering of a continent ever not be true yeah yeah but i also feel like as as well um that the the kind of worship of auriel i know they weren't all devout religious folk obviously when you go and visit gallabor and that those types are more so but the whole concept of like enlightenment and the light and that like when you go to the forgotten veil you're in this cave and it's dark and you can't see and this represents the absence of enlightenment and then you come out into you know all the beautiful thing and you carry the how do you pronounce it you are you are carry the you are and go through all these crazy trials and stuff and then ascend up the stairs and reach enlightenment and all that i feel like going into a cave in darkness and agreeing to be blind could also be like a almost it sounds a bit extra but could almost be like turning your back on kind of your principles yeah like l'oreal and light and and even magnus and i mean eyes are a portal to light as well at least in our human scientific yeah realm of things yeah it seems like a real descendants away from especially considering the fact that they'd be aware that the dwemer are a kind of godless race too like you're agreeing to go blind live among a godless race yeah and turn your back on kind of who you are perhaps that's what like uh the modern how about that for a hot tub perhaps the modern falmer though actually sort of like my own this is only one indication but you know how one of the falmer uh possesses auriel's shield and so on and treats it like you want to mean like maybe that is still and they and they do sort of well here's something for you they lost their soul if you if you go by game mechanics the soul trapping and stuff they don't have the like the mortal like grand soul it's all different types of souls i believe yeah i definitely think what they became was also a just a huge degeneration over time as well you know the toxic fungi would have done certain things to them but i still feel like they would have been quite close to what snow wells should look like after that happened and then yeah and then they become hunched over you know like complete lack of sunlight which you know with magnus and stuff the theories they really need it you know they need to absorb that light well there's the there's a thing to throw in there is uh with the war of the crag like it could have been like because i i mean i always imagine them as sort of like hunched falmouth all the time when i hear the word falmer but at that point they could have been much more like you're saying just snow elves with like white blind eyes or something well one thing about that as well is i'm not exactly sure when it was built but the statue of the snow elf in irkingtand i think it's called um uh that that looks a bit beyond the capabilities of the hunched over really degenerated falmer you know i feel like that if that was built in the depths of a dwemer ruin it probably would have been done when they you know was slightly more capable i mean that further sort of that's confusing a little bit actually if you think about the statue being in a dwemer ruin so obviously they were allowed to bill i think it was i think it was hidden um i think it was hidden there's there's some but here's the thing if they're blind they can't even see a statue yeah so it does say uh it was built in secret by the betrayed let me find these yeah but my question then is like well i i guess they can i think it was a gradual i think they the agreement was you will go blind that doesn't mean it's like boom you ate the first fungus and your eyes disappear i also had this wack theory that maybe it's just silly but i just thought of it may as well say it's the oldest girls podcast that the eyes of the the falmer the actual like items these big powerful gems that maybe they could hold some secrets into like restoring the farmer's site maybe but i yeah it's just like maybe yeah it's just one of those things but when you read there's a there's a book there's a book what does the book say it's called thief's last words actually and it's like nobody thought they were real but i've seen them the eyes of the snow elves the dwarves thought they took them from the falmar but they themselves were fooled so whether that's the the gems or actual their eyes the dwarves thought they took them from the falmer but they were fooled a statue built in secret by the slaves the eyes burn into you i and i see them even now um and then it goes on about other stuff which isn't like as relevant but i i do like the idea that these artifacts have some kind of magic or powerful potential beyond just like a prized thing for a thief to take because it could be like the way he spoke about it could be like a poetic thing as well of course but thief's last words he's dying a time to be poetic plus so much is poetic isn't it that it's it it's true but yeah be funny if it's like you know they've kind of transferred their sight into these gems and then you've got the entire betrayed people all looking through this statue and then you've got those afraid cutting it out we could have saved them we could have reversed it using these eyes but instead we sold them to delvin i sold them to delve and malware they looked nice on the british guy in the whole world yeah now anyway that's just some food for thought we'll get back onto some more cannon stuff yeah well so basically regardless of the situation i'm i'm actually kind of with the with the in my head canon idea that they're actually more human like well humanoid shaped um at the time of the war of the crag but uh the war of the crack goes on um so this is decades for decades and this is this big snow elf versus dwemer um debacle so you imagine i imagine it's like a big prolonged sort of guerrilla warfare kind of uh situation for a while um but then you know then we know the dwemer disappeared vanished all of a sudden in the year 700s so then there was no more war of the crag because your enemies have all just vanished so they were left to these dwemer ruins just by themselves now and i feel like perhaps in the time since then is where they started developing you know all of their different kind of like the kiteness kind of um armors and the dependents um on chorus um just because beforehand like i don't really imagine the dwemer being like even with even if they were like slaves to the dwemer being like let's uh do you want to mean like the chorus kind of stuff like that they're not going to just let slaves sort of invent their own weapons like don't don't let them make weapons perhaps perhaps though actually that's it was a thing that uh during the war of the craggers that's what they first started using is improvised weaponry and um i like the chorus stuff makes sense i still find it hard to believe that that war went on for decades especially con considering that you're in dwemer home territory like the falmouth eating this toxic fungus and the dwemer have all this superior like tech and magic and stuff well it makes you wonder you just think it would be but it's the one thing which is easy for them to win we need to be careful too just to never over glamorize any particular race because like you would go yeah otherwise they'd take over all of tamriel yeah in the same way that the nords stomped all over the dwemer kaima for a long time and they're just like the phalma uh an organized army they're a disarmed blind yeah i know slaved blinded race yeah yeah but um yeah but you know this is the other thing they have access to magic as well like you know that's true um so there's potential workarounds and stuff those icy spears and you'd think if you know if they had some more of their abilities when this was going on that when it was all over you'd almost expect them to escape but at the same time it's like these citadels are probably much more complex than they appear just in game so you can imagine them you know they're they're blind or very close to blind their enemy disappears and they're just lost in the dark you know and then which would facilitate even more degeneration i'll throw it sure i heard um someone was talking about how um obviously separating game mechanics and actual things like obviously a lot of these ruins serve as like dungeons for for you know delving purposes in an rpg um but perhaps you know as time goes by like even even in our real world like things that are stored underground offered and get preserved better than things that are on top and exposed to weathering and and you know sieges and all that kind of stuff um but there's ideas that that the dwemer cities were actually expanded much more up above ground same would go for you know the ancient nordic cities would have been a generally more spread but or you know you would find more ancient nordic buildings and stuff same deal as and some people are actually asking this question is that uh we see like no snow elf ruins really like they're not dotted around but a i think it's there was just wasn't design for thought because they really established like snow elf architecture and stuff for the dawn guard dlc after skyrim's release but you know simple it's a simple but boring explanation but it's like you know maybe they were just torn down by the the nords and stuff like that that's what i was thinking because forgotten vale is a secret area untouched by the nords so if i was the like a nord and i hated snow elves right i wouldn't want their architecture you know within sight of where i lived or where i traveled and absolutely you just get rid of it although it makes you wonder why the ayleid ruins are still around in cereal but yeah i mean we could say that they're made better to be fair to be fair uh also it was closer in time like alid's you know around 200 200 of the first era and they also um some of them for a bit of time afterwards were still active helping versus the snow elves which was this is merethic era kind of stuff um rw network was asking that since the falmer are technically still an elven race do they share the same longevity of age with the other elven races could these falmer have been around since the marethic era well here's my take on it i i think gullible there's all the elven ages seem to be a little bit more fluid like there's the rough you know multiple centuries kind of thing but then you find examples like dive a fear or certain psijic order majors and so on that just they just live for thousands of years right so it's a little bit more fluid it seems um but i think gallabor is kept alive like by some divine sort of like or real power i don't think gullible is representative of of ages of i feel like the snow wells would have been much like every other elf like the high elves that you know average maybe two or three hundred years but then most of the time they get old and die but then of course there's those outliers but um so i don't think there's there would be many like falmer as in the corrupted sort of ones i don't think that have been around since the marethic era like that's huge but there's potentially like ones that are centuries old yeah i mean i the same as you just said i think gullible is a special case because he is the one person who is responsible for protecting you know one of orioles most one of his most beautiful temples and all the charm trees and stuff like that it's like uh yeah he's gonna be kept alive it's pretty wild to think then that the farmer must have been breeding yeah like what does a falmer baby look like in the corrupted form uh not pleasant like a little like a little gremlin the um i guess we could also talk a little bit about so like a lot of before dawnguard dlc and we got to learn a bit more like sort of directly from them um and you know in the baseline game of skyrim we just sort of experienced them as you know goblin-like enemies um that's you know in nordic folklore i like the idea that falmouth are blamed for like every misfortune every kidnapping all these kinds of things like they're the equivalent of like you know like an irish mythology of like fairies coming up and like stealing your babies and stuff like that like basically every misfortune imaginable is attributed to these evil thelma which in you know by the time of skyrim we get um confirmation that they are actually around and it is potentially it could have been them you know slaughtering this little village here or there or but yeah or but but you know they would blame it on all we had bad year for crops this year yeah exactly that's the foul because in the time of uh blood moon in the morrowind dlc uh reeklings uh you know the little uh blue gobliny looking things but maybe the point it is they're actually speculated to be like related to snow elves and so on now i don't think that really stacks up yeah that's a strong disagreement yeah but from me that's what um one little connection there and there is another connection which i actually find oh yeah is that the wisp mothers are like sort of souls or like ghost souls because they've got they're really really pale and they've got the sharp ears and so on and and it's the example of the pale lady that they're like these uh souls of um of snow elves that are you know bound to this earth to you know cast vengeance on on the nordic inhabitants of skyrim and so on you know what i mean like sort of like an a like a traditional sort of angry ghost kind of thing but of this ancient race particularly when you look at their appearance i don't know if i'm fully sold on that i think there is a tendency they show up all over tamriel yeah and there's kind of a tendency i mean we looked at it with the yeah sorry go on yeah yeah just like the idea that there's a tendency to oh something looks kind of similar has similar skin tone they're the same thing but it's like yeah look things are going to be pale in the in the far north and you know yeah i i don't really buy it i subscribe i subscribe more to the theory there's a book about them and one of the theories is that they're kind of just like another manifestation of nirn like a spriggan or or something of that nature i uh i wasn't there's a few ideas i wasn't aware that there were heaps spread in eso that kind of like yeah there's there's a valen there's a valenwood um one i think yeah um and also as well not that it couldn't be it absolutely could because you don't know how curses work and things like that but they're all female too it's like oh we just just female snow elves became these well here's an interesting thing to talk about falmouth society and this might it's a very loose connection but perhaps females were important in a spiritual role and perhaps that's why they're there um in like a vengeance sort of sense now because if you look at you know people go like oh there's no female falmer but i'm pretty sure when you look at the the wizardish ones they've got like they're female yeah so all of all of the wiz not just exclusively like the ones with the staffs and the like shamany type ones with the white hair they're female which might imply some sort of um you know connection there that they're basically that the females might be uh the spiritual sort of yeah the kind of the wise women which you see in a lot of cultures yeah and then if also if then they are taking you know that spiritual sort of charge then you could have the wisp mothers of skyrim be being snow elves it makes a little bit more sense i'm not entirely convinced but it's yeah but i don't want to just throw that one to the wayside the reeklings one i'm like pretty like they're a goblin related thing um but for the wisp mothers at least the ones in skyrim i would but with smothers in other places like looking at the picture of the eso ones they kind of look like they've just gone like oh noon wraiths in in and stuff in witcher let's put him in you know what i mean like a very similar yeah i mean i mean that's just a classical looking ghost but you know what i mean it looks so much more like a irish depiction of a banshee kind of vibe thing you know or a typical sort of screaming woman ghost i've noticed we completely ditched our idea of separating the terms falmer and snow elves yeah well i mean yeah they're uh guillermo would not be pleased everyone can grasp what we're talking about yeah i think they're um they gather but uh yeah so what to next um yeah so basically i guess we could speculate a little bit more on we'll get to some questions after a bit on the religion and society family we sort of touched on it a bit with the idea that they've gone blind or turned away from akatosh kind of thing um and so if we can look at like what we see is in the in the structures they're dependent on chorus this sort of like underground um silverfish looking animal some kind of like little like chitinous insect creature that lives underground um that seems to supply them the chitin for their weapons their armor their huts um it their fences it becomes their um their the eggs and the flesh of the chorus become what they eat news so they're completely symbiotic with this um chorus creature and um like we just speculated like perhaps there's the shaman wise woman sort of thing and interestingly there is that they they do have some like this probably is some sort of warrior hierarchy if we look at some of the perhaps the falmer names and so on but like things like shadow master that might even like lead more into what your theory was about the them turning away from auriel and so on in the darkness and so but even like a shadow master doesn't sound like something that really is like oh i love auriel like i'm a do i mean yeah exactly i mean there is there is that um at some point it would be nice to read the there's a book touching the sky that talks about the pilgrimage that they actually make so it kind of touches on their religion and how it's viewed for the falmer themselves for the snow elves right right just last point i'll just put there it's just two uh two other things night prowler is another description and gloom lurker like these don't sound very like i i don't get the vibe that that auriel necessarily is they might feel like vither like arch curate viather who they feel abandoned by auriel who should have protected them against the nords in the same way that he feels like he should have been protected by the um from vampirism by oreo that's true that's that's actually an interesting take hey there's another little thing instead of like the betrayed instead of thinking about them as the betrayed thinking about like betrayed by the dwemer think about the betrayed as in the betrayed by oreo maybe like another little tank or maybe they other betrayers for betraying ariel and and going to live in the dark with the dwellings should have just died i just feel look it's i know there'll probably be comments like oh yeah easy to say that you'd just keep fleeing it wouldn't take the deal but i just feel like you could have fled somewhere else take a chance on not skyrim territory and then maybe build force and come back but underground with a godless race who according to gallabor you've always had a uneasy alliance with i don't know i mean yeah i don't know why they couldn't like high rock i feel like the durani elves of high rock would have been accommodating like very close to their sort of civilization like i can understand not wanting to go to the kaima and dwemer and so on for like you know societal frictional reasons but there's yeah alids too like could be because of the danger worship that gets thrown in there but durrani would be a pretty pure example of of l's you know yeah for sure but um yeah sorry you're saying touching on the sky oh not not to be confused with drew's favorite kanye west song touch the sky touching the sky touching the sky it's a book about like the journey with the chantry and stuff and i guess i won't read the whole thing because it can get a bit long but basically they go on this pilgrimage on this journey with this crazy desire to become one with auriel and it's like a super like they with heaps of determination to prove their worth and they go through these trials right um it says the pilgrims struggled not only against the natural elements of the treacherous veil but with a myriad of tests upon their faith and loyalty now a lot of them because think about it as well like you're the dragonborn you can go all through it but imagine actually carrying the ewa like that thing of water actually carrying it not just putting it yeah in your inventory and off you go it would suck man and like without food and like anyway so a lot of them gave up and turned back but apparently they copped so much rebuke when they came back and it was cruel supposedly crueler than any punishment that may have lay ahead of them along the path in their failed attempt they were forced to live in the shadow of those who did continue on to achieve the great glory and honor of ascension into the light and then forever after that their faith and loyalty to auriel would be scrutinized and they would live the rest of their life with shame and regret so it's an interesting like idea that if you embark upon these trials like you do not want to turn back like you're basically a joke to all of the religious society i mean there's an interesting parallel there that if enlightenment through going through great hardship but by going through the darkness to reach the light if that's important to them you can imagine that be used as a justification when they go down to the dwemer like we're being put through this hardship we're getting taken down into the darkness but we will emerge on the other side only they never did so that's where the corruption's complete that's that's an interesting take that it definitely could be i mean you don't know how they would have looked at it i feel like this uh that's a nice point just to tie in on like laggy talos aka tyler1 says uh do you guys think that falmar will ever be able to evolve to the point where they can integrate back into society on some level um because there's things uh that guellabor says that it's so far i think it was that the felmer are still like far from that sort of ideal but he kind of seems to believe in this idea that there is sort of like a a rehabilitation some kind of way that they can just leave them in the sun for a long time just let them soak up all that magnus glory and i'll get sunburned see what happens they just get really really sunburned yeah just take a whole bunch of sun damage and die yeah but now i i can kind of believe that they they could i mean look i i said this i've said this before when we've had questions and i know it's not the answer that people necessarily want to hear but it's just like it's the elder scrolls and the elder scrolls podcast crazy things happen anything it's just like the answer to anything no but like it could like there's do you think is crazy things have happened it's no but this is not like that if the question is reasonable yeah as in could there be some magic ritual to turn a falmer back into what they were before sure but will they come back on mass and and be like a snow off society again probably not i think at least i think it's like the tie up of the snow elf story is pretty much dawnguard that gullible kind of gives you this idea that perhaps there is a future for them will help but you will never see in another game like no yeah you know that they yeah if there's not you can only speculate i feel like the question is very similar to to frodo believing that gollum can turn back into smeagle it's like nice fair enough anyway going going back to this book um i like how as well once they actually reach the inner sanctum that they're not really who they were before but not just in like oh i'm enlightened now since as in like they're just shells of what they were which you could almost say is like kind of like an ego death thing perhaps but it says like someone mad from sleeplessness and starved to the point of frailty and that it's you know it's a marvel that they had the strength to carry their vessel and ascend the stairs of the temple which was the last true testament of their loyalty and then i really like this this part regardless of each individual's tale the final words remain eerily similar it is said that every pilgrim ascended bathed in light a look of relief and contentment on their face hmm i think it's cool i i think are we going to talk about the uh here's a video titled like we'll just go uh snow elves are cowards question mark alvaro this question michael velvet suck and here's why but like we were talking about this before but i just kind of want to bring up that like at least to me like besides there's some nice aesthetic stuff like their temples and so on their armor and stuff like that but they're kind of just like they're just like high elves in skyrim that got beat and they're also heaps they're re like the cowardice kind of element like we're kind of talking about is the first big example is that they were scared of either what might happen with the nords like spreading or that they needed the eye of magnus and maybe they'll figure out what so they made this coward move and they attacked them during the night and slaughtered in the city just yeah and then um then there's the whole cowardice thing it's like oh we need to live blind us please please kee let us just you know keep us safe please and it's just like when people get on the snow elves side like yeah they're these super like cool thing i'm just sort of like yeah they're you know they're cool to me in in the way that a gem a frail piece of jewelry is cool um you know it's like this is a really cool gemstone but it's not like but to to to build off that though the the strong the falmer are interesting and cool like as we know them like the hunched over goblins of their society and so on because it's kind of like you know maybe like you're saying before like maybe they are going through the darkness to come back to the light but maybe that's why they were abandoned by auriel just because they're a bunch of chickens and they're here and they heaps dog and they just i mean even even just to pile on while we're piling on even the snow prince the most powerful fighter was killed by a 12 year old girl yeah you know like like a child a child felt the most powerful leader that's such an interesting recount that that um fall of the snow prince story i like how they talk about the the the noises that the snow elves are making almost sound like a cheery happy like sound before the fight like a almost like a laughy cheerful like noises yeah even though they don't understand the language because they're like that confident in the snow prince yeah yeah then then he gets killed by a little girl but anyway i mean while we are piling up like we can keep thinking but like marcellus core is asking uh what are the falmouth's great racial accomplishments on par with the regatta sundering an island with sword singers and the argonians invasion of oblivion during the crisis but i'm like i don't know if like at least ones we know about i don't think there are many great accomplishments i mean look it says they were a prosperous advanced magical society yeah but they say that about everybody else i think that's which elf doesn't think that or it doesn't say that about themselves or have that what about about them what else whatever fine they're one hippie elf group but every other elf thinks they're a magically advanced prosperous society well i mean they all come from well not necessarily but you know there's that common ancestor yeah they definitely have some sort of common elven ancestry like but they are advanced i mean i'll just say the winners write their history so you can never say for sure what exactly they did or didn't accomplish but oh but why weren't they yeah no but look i i do believe the idea that they were an advanced elvish society simply because we do have proof like you were saying it almost is the proof that all the other elven societies were they were very advanced there's no debating that yeah so i just assumed that the snow elves would be as well they're at the bottom of the toilet bowl of elven races every other elven race is better i think maybe maybe maybe but maybe bosman not so but they chose to go be hippies but the rest of them they're all are the orcs more accomplished uh i guess if we're including them no they're literally i mean even though they're not even they're not even in the toilet box they got flushed but but yeah i think like you know dwemer dunmer durani heils ultima ali aylids they're all kind of and that's not to say that they're not it's just that they're at least what we know about there are no remarkable snow elven achievements that are like i'm better than the early other than like maybe they could be there's some unwritten law that says they are but you know it's pretty generic they were they were a prosperous advanced race that's that's about advanced also define advanced like obviously they weren't as advanced as the dwemer but i'd call the dwemer advanced because they're building robots like what's what do you call us you know what i mean like what constitutes advance to like i have a writing like you know it's not um or you know have a snazzy building have a little bit of magic you know but it depends there's anyway it's funny to to uh [ __ ] all over the snow elves but uh but they are actually interesting and fun i just i just like to we just got carried away to con well it's because i feel like they receive a lot of love and it's just funny to be you know contrarian and be like they're actually not that cool yeah yeah yeah i'm on board with that it's the story of what happened to them that's cool yeah so how people it's the story of how big a cowards they are and how that they became these little like you know insect loving like little grubby goblins that murdered nordic children next episode we're gonna blind you scott and see how brave you are we're gonna leave you in the basement of blinding for 5 000 likes all right i think that i think that brings us to the end of this elder scrolls podcast i don't know about youtube yeah i don't think there's anything i think we're devolving into are we becoming the film yeah we're devolving so all right thank you everyone for watching it has been a very fun podcast if i must say so myself social media links are in the description below check out our merch as well if you're interested and want to support the channel i've been michael this is scott and drew and we look forward to nerding out with you again very soon

Channel: FudgeMuppet

Views: 113,245

Keywords: skyrim, skyrim lore, elder scrolls, elder scrolls lore, falmer, falmer lore, snow elves, snow elves lore, snow elves theory, elder scrolls podcast, falmer theory

Id: _5xaOj3cu7Y

Length: 66min 8sec (3968 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 13 2020