Elder Scrolls: Snow Elves and Dwemer, A Dark History of Betrayal and Enslavement

      As a person who wishes to become a fiction writer, I often find that many of the stories that I both write and read belong in the fantasy genre. With both fantasy games and books giving views into worlds that often have a life of their own. Such as the famous Tolkien books and Elder Scrolls games. The Elder Scrolls , published by Bethesda, is a long running series that starts back in 1994 with Elder Scrolls Arena. Since the beginning of the Elder Scrolls, many inpreations from Tolkiens work can be found,  such as the Elves in both attitude and magical nature to their Nine Divines sharing aspects with the eight Valar. Each game following a chronological timeline over hundreds years between games, often foreshadowing or mentioning events that occurred within one game as distant legend, though other times these games will bring mention to races and cultures that are not present throughout the series. Its 12th and latest game in the series, Elder Scrolls Skyrim came out on November 11, 2011 and with its expansion, Dawnguard, came the long foreshadowed race, the Snow Elves. This race having their skin matching that of snow, though it came to be reveled that only two, Gelebor and Vyrthur of this race had survived and one of them, Vyrthur, is killed due to the stories events.

Though this game contains their only appearance, besides their mentions in in-game books and brief mentions from characters, I found that they contain quite a long history of interacting with other races. Primarily their interactions with the similarly extinct race the Dwemer. The Dwemer also knows the Dwarves, despite being a race of elves who were the size of humans, had advanced rapidly into building machines and robots, while living in underground complex cities. With the Dwemer's culture having them dress similarly to those of Arabic Knight styles when compared to most of the races, with exception to the Dark Elves and Khajit, more Western Europe designs. I found this to be quite a refresher due to the idea that they didn't depict the more Middle Eastern like race to be savages or to be less advanced when compared to other more European inspired races. However upon learning of their relation with the Snow Elves and their plans to become gods, it seems that while they were more advanced technologically, showed little regard for other races as shown by their enslavement of the Snow Elves, leading to

their current state.

While I was reading the varying stories I found that the Snow Elves were a very prosperous race until the Nord's ancestors had come their home leading to a violent war. This caused them to seek refuge with the Dwemer, who they had an uneasy alliance with them. Despite the Dwemer and Snow Elves being mer, the series name for elves,  the Dwemer required these elves to ingest a toxic fungus as their only source of food. This being a plan to use and enslave the desperate snow Elves who were nearly wiped out due a war with the invading humans. After consuming this fugnus This their race  slowly began to devolve into the slaves of the Dwemer, now being called the Falmer. These Falmer being nearly blind and now appearing almost bat-like. The Dwemer mainly used this new slave races as  guard dogs for their underground cities or simply servants in Dwemer homes.

I found this story of the white elves being kidnapped and forced into slavery by a dark skinned elves to match the tale of Eol's kidnapping of Aredhel in the Silmarillion. Aredhel being called the "White Lady of the Noldor" and sharing descriptions of whiteness that matches the Snow Elves, who are shown to nearly be the same color as snow.  As well as the Dwemer whose skin while not being as Dark as Eol are often depicted to have complexions similar to another race in the series, also called the Dark Elves.Though in Aredhel story she manages to escape with her son before being killed by Eol where as the Snow Elves are unable to escape their new masters and are forced into their service until the Dwemer had disappeared. This idea of the white pure elves being subjugated my the morally bankrupt dark skinned elves matches the puritan and colonial fears of the whites being captured and exploited by those they met outside of Europe and thus justifying their enslaving and murdering of many native populations.  Whether intentional or not ,this story  themes of the of the innocent white race seeking the aid from one they could consider kin but are ultimately betrayed and abused as if this point in history is to a warning to others not to trust those of other races.