The Great War of Tamriel - Why Mer Deserve The Worst

it's no secret I love elves more than any other fantasy race they truly are perfect and I will defend them in almost any form be it as a faction such as the Asura the Eldar or his individuals such as teclas and Eldred I will defend almost any Elven race in some capacity even the ones that are evil are just generally harmful the what else are psychotic but they're awesome the dark Elder might be the only people in existence trying to out evil the forces of hell but that gives them a certain charm as affection and if nothing else everyone loves a good villain but for something that will become a running theme of this video I said I will simp for and defend almost any elf Lord of the Rings Warhammer the various Dungeons and dragon systems I love those elves quite a bit but as for the topic of today's video I will not be defending these elves I would never defend these elves in a million years in fact let me sum up my opinion towards them with a question if I am not supposed to brutally Slaughter every single altmer I come across then why is this ax especially deadly to elves so with that in mind let's learn about the Great War not the one which wrenches the one with magic and elf murder to explain how this travesty came about we have to look at the fourth game of the Elder Scrolls series Oblivion the Oblivion crisis where maroon's Dagon decided invading reality was as good a way to spend a couple of weeks as any did not only affect cyrodiil it's where the worst stuff went down sure but not the only place all across Tamriel did the jaws of Oblivion open wide to swallow the world some places held out better than others as I'm sure you're aware because it's circulated around the internet quite a bit a while ago the argonians not only repelled The Invasion but forced the danger to close their portals because they started counter invading let that be a lesson to any dunmer trying to start [ __ ] because they still think they're in Morrowind but in other places such as the somerset Isles where the High Elves of Elder Scrolls chiefly reside it was a different story the danger had ended up overrunning most of the island and only Crystal Tower remains standing the commanding rage ryandor and his fellow Wizards and archers killed so many Daedra that those that followed literally climbed over the defending walls on top of their fellows corpses this was not enough however and the Crystal Tower was torn apart by Daedric war machines just as things were about to end in total altmer death however the daedral Disappeared in an instant we know that this was because of the efforts of the hero of kavach and Martin's septum sacrifice to defeat maroon's Dagon and then his assault into amriel but the High Elves knew no such thing they only knew that they are on the brink of getting their own version of The Fall of the Eldar and then suddenly all the demons just up and left a quote from lathaniel of sun hold even says that they were desperate to find out just who did this so they could thank them because whoever shut down this Invasion saved the entirety of the somerset Isles and then entered the Thalmor or as you may prefer to know them as the high elf Nazis the Thalmor had actually existed for a decent bit of time before this as a fringe group of radicalists they'd once tried to unify the somerset Isles previously in history too of course Tiber septum and his magical imperator Titan he Bauer for more Hammer put an end to that attempt and even after that happened they never really gotten any momentum behind their attempts at unification but it did give them quite a grudge against Talos and his Empire which is something that as you can probably guess becomes pretty important going forward pretty much every high elf who wasn't a them or dismissed them entirely and that was followed by them laughing at these morons for the stupid views they held but in this one moment of weakness where the elves were left grasping its straws as to how the hell any of this happen the Thalmor crept in they began spreading news at the ending of the Oblivion crisis was all there doing it was the sacrifices of the Thalmor that allowed the elves to live another day and that perhaps it was time for all altmer to recognize the Thalmor were the ones who should be in charge plenty of people were still skeptical of their claims and outright dismissed them as fools but in this critical Moment Justin of people were willing to give them the benefit of the doubt that they were soon able to gain complete power dissidents were silenced either with Exile or murder and soon enough pogroms in the Isles of all those of non-altimer blood had begun even that Ryan or gentleman the high elf who by himself almost certainly did more than every single film were combined to fight the Daedra was killed for calling these [ __ ] out on their [ __ ] they finally got their wish you know the somerset aisles under the banner of the third aldmary Dominion in the year 29 of the fourth era it of course didn't stop there with a coup Val wood and all the wood elves that call it home were brought under the thalmor's wing elsewhere the land of the khajid was made a protectorate of them as well all the while the thalmer continued eliminating any High Elves would speak out against them until the only ones left either believed in their lunacy wholeheartedly or were too afraid of what would happen to them and their loved ones if they spoke out the Empire of cyrodiil meanwhile was in rough shape putting out a house fire doesn't magically fix the damage caused after all the septin dynasty was dead and gone their lands were ravaged by the Oblivion crisis and the Thalmor had been gobbling up the aforementioned lands of Elsewhere in valenwood while the empire was distracted trying to catch its breath black Marsh had become fully independent since the crisis since the argonians decided they quite liked being on their own marwin was in deep [ __ ] ever since the tribunal either disappeared or were never ever read and hammerfell had a bit of an infighting problem going on only the provinces of High Rock Skyrim and cyrodiil had any semblance of order to them and do keep in mind that when I say High Rock Skyrim and cyrodiil were ordered they were ordered within the context of a continent-wide demon Invasion have incurred relatively recently that's not the kind of thing you just bounce back from I mean I guess you know the argonians did bounce back from it but they have the magical trees that give them God Powers when they need it Emperor Titus Mead II had come to power in the year 168 of the fourth era and had just three years to get a grip on his new position before things went as far south as they could short of another Daedric Invasion the Thalmor in the year 171 sent a delegation with a covered wagon of the Imperial City with a rather Hefty List of Demands the most important ones were as follows give us a shitload of money as tribute to our oh so wonderful Empire Seed large portions of hammerfelt in the newly formed Dominion to span those goddamn blades [ __ ] who keep interfering with our work and perhaps most importantly of all Outlaw worship of that upstart Talos who handed us our asses on a silver platter otherwise it's time for war Titus Mead was at a Crossroads very early in his career on the one hand he could surrender to the Thalmor in their demands his generals and advisors warned him that the legions of the empire were in no state to fight a war at this time what with Tamriel still reeling from both the Oblivion crisis and the more recent umbreal crisis because in the Older scrolls Supernatural catastrophes happen every five minutes on the other hand he could stand defying even though it may damn well cost him not only his life but the entire Empire and everyone in it in no uncertain terms Titus Mead told the thalamore to go [ __ ] themselves perhaps a bit more professionally than that but the message was there the thalmer then tipped over their carton revealed that the gift they had was the head of every single blades agent that had been assigned to the somerset Isles in valenwood and War was on and fittingly enough for a group that's very explicitly modeled after the Nazis the first stages of the Great War were similar to the first stages of the second world war within days of War breaking out the thalmart attacked all across the Empire's provinces they had set up hidden camps near the border of valenwood and cyrodiil because while the Thalmor are backstabbing Weasley disgusting Vermin they're also clever Thalmor General Lord narifin who you should remember because he gets what he deserves later on let attacks cross cyrodiil's Southern border the city of Leon was quickly captured while Bravo was besieged in small groups of Thalmor Were Striking all Acro across the land meanwhile a separate Army led by one lady aranelia which to give the thalmar any amount of credit is perhaps the single most elf name I've ever heard in my life to cross straight through Eastern cyrodiil into hammerfell while the legions had a presence in hammerfels that do all provinces of the Empire they were vastly outnumbered by the thalmar and so were forced to Retreat through the alakir desert in what is known as the march of thirst and you know I couldn't find much information on that one but let's all use some context clues and assume that it sucked for everyone involved who didn't have knives for ears things were going horribly for the Empire to say the least and only a year into the war the Empire looked at the Thalmor like it was on the verge of total collapse of course as I said at the beginning of the video take note of how I worded that once again it looked like it was about to kick the bucket it wasn't there quite yet though things were looking dire things in the war were moving at lightning speeds so allow me to do a quick overview of the situation Southern hammerfell had only one city left remaining Agatha it's spelled like this but I didn't know how to pronounce the word tithe until half of you yelled at me for saying it wrong so my apologies if I'm butchering the city's name this was exactly what a thalmar wanted the entire southern coast of the region so they were content and hammerfell to consolidate their Holdings and leave it at that for the most part in addition by the year 172 the second year of the war the thalmar had continued pushing into cyrodiil and encroached ever further into its Heartland Bravo and Anvil had fallen to the elves both and by Year's End nari Finn had pushed to the gates of the Imperial City itself I'm sure he said something stupid and poetic along the lines of the elves have come to retake their Lost Empire or some [ __ ] like that because pelanol whitestrake did one thing wrong and that was failing to finish the job at this point the pace of the War Began slowing down the thalmar while having made tremendous gains in cutting off the Imperial City from nearly all sources of Supply couldn't keep up their early Pace survivors from the march of thirst have been able to regroup in Northern hammerfell and were joined by additional reinforcements and most importantly for the Empire they had an uncontested stream of steady reinforcements ready willing and able to cut a whole lot of elves into a whole lot of pieces remember how I said there were really only three stable Imperial Nations left one is cyrodel which is covered in Thalmor at the moment two is High Rock which while providing the Empire with reinforcements is a bit too far away to reliably reinforce the homelands but then there was Skyrim and there weren't any Thalmor in Skyrim to keep a whole bunch of angry Nords from coming down to demonstrate to the altmer what happened to those snow elves thousands of years ago in the year 173 things began to change in the Imperials favor at least outside of cyrodiil the siege of hagatha was lifted driving the Thalmor out and having the added bonus of cooling down the tensions between the two main factions of the region Lydia anelia was successful in crossing the desert to get away from the angry people with curved swords but then she went straight into the Imperial Legions under the command of one General deseanus at the city of what the [ __ ] all right well at the city of skaven those two armies clashed in one of the largest battles of the war though the outcome wasn't really decisive for either side aranelia's Army was weakened to the point that any further gains would be impossible and in a defensive War keeping the attacker from attacking any further is a good enough start as any now before I move on with the war itself I want to talk to you about someone important to this little lore event here Emperor Titus Mead II A lot of people think he's a pushover who signed away the Empire with a white gold Concord ad in the highest show of cowardice this opinion is pretty prevalent both in universe and out of it let me tell you why it's [ __ ] Titus Mead like I said before was dealt a bad hand from the very start he inherited an empire in Decline one that was almost holy inferior from what it once was due to no fault of his own the thalamore were the rising power of nirn while the empire was falling apart the spirit of Tiber septum himself even says that perhaps it's time for something new to take its place in Morrowind whether or not you side with him is up to you but either way it clearly was a ghost of its former glory and sure enough barely three years into his Reign the Thalmor began threatening him and when he tells him to go away within days nearly their entire Army is pouring into his lands and let it be known again that his advisers all asked him not to go through with this war and accept the demands of the Thalmor and there's not a chance in hell that at least some of them weren't Nords the very people we've spent the last 11 and a half years listening to [ __ ] about the Treaty meat signed Titus Mead II stood tall against the Thalmor and did the best he possibly could and to be Frank if you disagree you're a goddamn fool and nothing encapsulates this point better than the siege of the Imperial City in the spring of 174 the thalma redirected pretty much their entire Army towards the capital of the Empire it was the last Bastion of meaningful resistance that they cared to take plus the white gold Tower is located inside the city and the Thalmor are very interested in those things for reasons we'll cover later the army of nari Finn attacked from the South West and East while an additional Army came from the north to ensure the city was completely cut off Titus Mead once again had two options before him he could do the classic heroic sacrifice and go down with the ship and ensure that the few remaining months the Empire had left he would be worshiped as a hero or he could do what very few people in fantasy settings do and use his goddamn brain a bit so he hatched a plan it was very simple in concept and required a set of Skyforge steel testicles to pull off he was going to fight his way out of the Imperial City in the old Marian circlement the eighth Legion of the Imperial Army fought a doomed fight on the walls of the city to hold out long enough for Titus mean in his main Army to retreat away from the capital it was a resounding success but this is the sort of success that no one celebrates over much with the main Army gone and the eighth Legion destroyed the Imperial City was now in Thalmor hands and they did a whole load of wacky and silly war crimes in the inhabitants Just Elves being elves you know they all rights it looked as if the Empire had well and truly lost with this of course much like earlier it only looked like that to the Thalmor and indeed Titus Mead was more than happy to keep the Thalmor thinking this was the case from the winner of 174 into 175 he gave every appearance that he was getting ready to surrender making all sorts of motion and sending Messengers to the right stuck-up pointiered bricks that sort of thing and then immediately afterward he was getting ready for the last Hail Mary of the War General decianus the general who had fought the city named after ratman had been ordered to come assist cyrodiil rather than continue fighting the ELD Marion hammerfell while he complied with his Emperor he discharged as many invalids from the Army as possible to help keep the province at least somewhat secure you might be wondering how that helped in any way understandably so the thing is invalids isn't the largest quotation marks possible he'd walk around and go how's your arm feeling today Soldier and if they said something along the lines of you know slept on a kind of funny but it's all right he'd tell them they were not fit for active duty and cyrodol and were to be discharged to remain in hammerfell it was simply a happy coincidence no doubt that these men were allowed to form their own Army to drive back the elves from hammerfell later on regardless destined his remaining forces then marched home to heed the emperor's call in the year 175 Emperor Titus Mead committed all of his available forces to one final desperate Gambit he assembled General deseanus and his remaining legionnaires through the thalmers soon was actually still in hammerfell as a result of the legionnaires he left behind in addition to this was an army of Nords led by one General Jonah and a final Army led by himself at least I'm gonna keep saying it was led by him that blades game on mobile or whatever the hell it was invented a whole player character and had him replace Titus Mead but if Bethesda can drag and break their own Cannon away then I can too so we're gonna go with it was tightest meat himself who led this Army the battle to retake the Imperial City was to be known as the Battle of the Red Ring which is something most people who played Oblivion or Skyrim on an original Xbox 360 would be familiar with it pains me there's people who won't get that joke because they're not old enough General deseanus and his forces came at the city from the West while Jonah and the Nords came from the south though the Thalmor did launch several counter-attacks especially on Jonah's army they were unsuccessful in driving it off and Titus Mead LED his forces Into The Fray on the fifth day of the battle gunning it directly for the Imperial City wielding the Legendary Blade gold brand a sword cleverly named after the fact it is gold he carved his way into his capital and took it back the Thalmor tried to get the hell out of Dodge and were promptly met by a shield wall of Nords all too happy to send them to whatever Pagan hell the Ulmer believe in probably Chicago or something like that General narifin himself was captured alongside the Imperial City and was kept alive for over a month straight hanging off the white gold Tower it's not known where he was buried and some sources say he was carried off by a danger at the end of a stay in hotel cyrodiil look no further for proof the Thalmor or the worse than the Daedra helping this guy out personally I like to think they just chucked him in some plot of land being used for farming his corpse would then go on to become fertilizer doing more for the people of nirn than it ever did when it was alive with this resounding success a large majority of the Thalmor Army and cereal have been completely obliterated and the empire was able to force a peace deal with the thalmar known as the white gold concordat the aftermath of this piece of paper is quite well known and I'm sure you're aware of the big sticking points I'm gonna assume you have played Sky armor watched people play it or had been on the internet in the past 10 years but for the sake of a complete video I'll go over the big points ultimately the provisions forced on the empire were little different than the ones in the initial demands the thalmar sent Southern hammerfell ended up being given over to the Thalmor despite not only the bloody battle at skaven but the Imperial remnants waging a war against the thalmer alongside the native red guards the blades were disbanded and the survivors would be haunted down by the Thalmor agents in the coming years and of course Talus was no longer to be worshiped with a deity by the humans of Tamriel and the thalmo were allowed more or less open access to the Empire to ensure worship didn't occur any followers of the man God found were to be dealt with lethally and of course all this it's a pretty drastic consequences hammerfell was outraged by what they saw as cyrodil handing away its independence they felt that the thalmer could have been defeated once and for all if the Empire had just kept going and so they waged their own war against the elves the empire was forced to abandon any claims to the region and recognize it as his own independent Province because of this hammerfil was successful in dealing with the thalmar which lends some Credence to their claims although at least personally I find it understandable the empire did what it did their armies were barely holding on as it was and while the thalmer in the region were anniated related there were plenty morels in the somerset Isles and while this may be cheating the loading screens for Skyrim say with the blades in the game do it was either this or complete Destruction for the Empire speaking of the blades this is perhaps the least consequential of the major stipulations of the treaty while plenty of knowledge and capable agents were no doubt lost as the Thalmor hunted them down in the end the Empire just formed the pentatus occulatus to replace the blades as the emperor's bodyguards you can argue that they weren't as effective as the blades but both of them were the bodyguards when an emperor was assassinated during his rules so it's not like their track record is any worse if nothing else the oculatus never tried to get me to kill parthernax and of course Talos worship being outlawed made a whole load of people unhappy at first the Empire just went yeah bro we're totally not allowing Talos worship trust me bro I promise and then thalmer Justice started walking around the Empire purging worshipers and the treaty was actually enforced from that on out not much by the Empire granted but by the Thalmor agents cyrodiil no doubt had some Strife regarding this but in Skyrim this is where things got real spicy it won't go too much into detail on it because you have no doubt played Skyrim but the Nords of the region were quite unhappy with this and a large portion of them led by Ulfric Stormcloak did their damnedest to Rebel from the Empire they saw as forcing unfair obligations on other people the Nords in particular were so angry because not only were they forced to follow the Concordia despite the Thalmor never having gotten to their lands they also believed Thai receptin was one of them nobody tell the Nords he was probably a bread and both sides know damn well that war in the future is inevitable hell the thalmar call it the first war with the Empire you don't call something the first if you don't plan on there being a second both sides are making their own preparations to get ready for round two the thalmer don't intend to lose this time and with Skyrim erupting into Civil War things look Grim for the Empire but hey at least the Empire didn't have to give the thalmer all that gold right that's something if nothing else assuming you play Skyrim like me you've probably killed more Thalmor throughout the course of your playthrough than died in this entire war and if you allow me to speculate there's one more thing to consider historically in the Elder Scrolls avatars of the Dead God lorkin have a habit of appearing whenever elves really need to die as soon as possible yusgramor and his fancy ax weren't one though one of his 500 companions likely was and of course palatal white strike is almost certainly another such case he'd suffocate you with moths if you try to say that to his face but among being a cyborg time traveler he's probably also an avatar of lorkin and of course History's Greatest elevator Space Marines have nothing on the level of hatred pelinal white strike has for elves who's to say that in the coming second war against the Thalmor another one of these figures won't pop up but for now the story of the Great War for Tamriel is over unlike many background events and fantasy stories the war is a living memory for many people in the setting and if I remember correctly Bethesda said we'll see the outcome of the Skyrim Civil War and the next Elder Scrolls game which will no doubt be released sometime within the next Century so look forward to that my fellow haters of myrrh will have our revenge yet thank you of course to my wonderful channel members you are the towers to my Mundus keeping me from dissolving back into Oblivion if you'd like to support the channel feel free to subscribe or become a member either way thank you for watching and take care out there there what are you doing is this how you honor the sixth house and the tribe Unborn how can you kill a God what a grande too late for my Mercy hey you are finally awake

Channel: PancreasNoWork

Views: 713,996

Keywords: PancreasNoWork, The Elder Scrolls, Skyrim, Oblivion, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Thalmor, Imperial, The Empire, Talos

Id: oZ7k8okmHXk

Length: 20min 32sec (1232 seconds)

Published: Tue May 09 2023