Where are the Dwarves?

[milehigh026]

I'll be the first to admit that I don't know all of the elder scrolls lore. But I have been playing these games since the original oblivion came out 20 years ago and there's something that has always bugged me. Why are there no dwarves in the game?
We have Dwarven weapons and armor. There's Dwarven technology like the orrey. So why are they not featured in the game?

[dlux]

They disappeared millenia before the Elder Scrolls games.

Elder Scrolls lore is pretty bad anyway, so who cares.

[BushudoDragon]

Due to an event involving Lorkan's Heart that occurred at the battle of Red Mountain during the First Era, the Dwemer mysteriously disappeared. The only recorded Dwemer still living was encountered in TES III: Morrowind.

[psychotron666]

Play morrowind. That's a very big back drop to the game, the disappearance of the "dwarves". There's even a quest you're given that you're not meant to complete to discover how they went missing.

However the quest is actually completeable though very obscure with no direction on how to do it. You're supposed to do the other branch of the mages guild quests instead of that quest because the guy who gave it to you is a ♥♥♥♥ and not expecting a result.

Here's an out of game text written by morrowind devs, written from the view of a character who was given this obscure quest by the archmage of the mages guild, and how he solves the disappearance.

https://www.imperial-library.info/content/final-report-trebonius

It's basically the closest thing to an official answer you'll get from Bethesda.

[[TG] zac]

As others have said they vanished a thousand years earlier during the first era.

the TLDR is basically they F$%3d around with the heart of Lorkan (one of the creator gods) trying to empower themselves and it either backfired and wiped them from existence or caused them all to ascend to another plane of existence, nobody is really sure which.

Similar thing happens in skyrim for one of the quests where you gather the tools the dark elf tribunal later used to steal power from that heart.
The mage you hand them into screws with them and there is enough left over residual power to turn him into nothing more then a shade & that is without the heart even being present & just one of the 3 tools.

[TechyySean]

There's a decent chunk of lore videos on YouTube now that dig into this topic.

[Silenzeio]

tl;dr, the dwemer tried to make a god and system 32'd themselves out of reality.

[jonoliveira12]

The Dwarves disappeared from existence when Kagrenac tried to logic their way into divinity, yet found out that reality is not real, just a dream, and therefore taht they were not real, and vanished into thin air.

Elder Scrolls lore is that the greatest knowledge is that all is but fiction, nothing actually IS.
You attain godhood when, confronted with the ultimate reality, you say what God said to Moses: I am.

[Velber]

Originally posted by milehigh026:

I'll be the first to admit that I don't know all of the elder scrolls lore. But I have been playing these games since the original oblivion came out 20 years ago and there's something that has always bugged me. Why are there no dwarves in the game?
We have Dwarven weapons and armor. There's Dwarven technology like the orrey. So why are they not featured in the game?

its a big mystery in the lore
in skyrim they talk about it more, but apparently they all just "up and disappeared" as a skyrim npc actually put it
supposedly it has something to do with the "falmer" who were snow elves until the dwarves betrayed them and turned them into falmer with experiements and that being a possible connection to why the falmer are the ones who now inhabit dwarven ruins and underground cities, but again, theres no known for certain reason, just theories the characters come up with

[milehigh026]

Thanks guys for the answers.

[Vaporwave Spirit]

Originally posted by dlux:

They disappeared millenia before the Elder Scrolls games.

Elder Scrolls lore is pretty bad anyway, so who cares.

....then why are you here?

[Brady4444]

In terms of Cyrodiil, they didn't really settle in that area. That was the area mostly dominated by the Ayleids.

[Crossbones162]

They zero summed after trying to make god. They also just never settled Cyrodiil, the Aylieds did.

[Cuddle_Rat]

Originally posted by jonoliveira12:

The Dwarves disappeared from existence when Kagrenac tried to logic their way into divinity, yet found out that reality is not real, just a dream, and therefore taht they were not real, and vanished into thin air.

I can't wait until we do this to ourselves. By Azura, by Azura, by Azura, there is no spoon!

[Daqhegh]

We aren't supposed to know.

A mage did an experiment where he cast a spell at a modified soul gem and disappeared...but it was never explained and he never wrote it down. We don't even know if he was transported or if he died. Not all mysteries need definite explanations.

The story of the Dwemer is one of hubris. They had achieved everything they possibly could have as a civilization, and decided they wanted to become the gods they worshiped. And they paid the price for their arrogance. That or they all agreed to go wherever they were sent in the belief that it was a higher plane than Skyrim, that they would at least live with the gods if they couldn't literally become them.

[milehigh026]

So maybe it's just me over thinking this and trying to apply logic where there is none. But if the dwarves were wiped out ages ago, and they never settled in cyrodil (or skyrim). Shouldn't there weapons and armor be extremely rare. We have a whole tier of equipment that is Dwarven. Where's it coming from? Would make more sense to have something else replace that tier level.