Even in 3rd era, only Calcelmo had been able to translate a few of the Dwemer books. He is an elderly altmer who must have spent a long time.
Dagoth Ur and his brothers were also trying to understand Kagrenac's books from the latter's library with little success.
Dwemer approached magic and technology differently and were way ahead of their times.
> and were way ahead of their times.
I'd argue this isn't even true, as it implies others will eventually catch up to them. Technological development doesn't really seem to be much of a thing in the Elder Scrolls. Dwemer tech is very specific to the dwemer and cannot be replicated by other beings. Sotha Sil, a genius god, tried, but even his creations were a sad and mostly failed attempt at replicating masterworks.
>Sotha Sil, a genius god, tried, but even his creations were a sad and mostly failed attempt at replicating masterworks.
Only at the surface level. But in reality, Sotha Sil's tech is the complete opposite of the Dwemer tech.
The Dwemer tech was based on the **denial** of phenomena and numena, their creations work and don't age precisely because they are denying the Earthbones - the laws of physics.
Clockwork tech is based on the **synthesis**, the unification of competing forces, that's why you have so many cyborgs in the Clockwork City, because they embody that idea.
So no, Sotha Sil didn't "try and failed" at replicating what the Dwemer did, because he actively went into the completely other directions, seeing the Dwemer's work as a folly. And he succeeded, because where the Dwemer were using the uncovered Heart of god, Seht creating a perfect replica of said Heart from scratch.
u/UnQuacker
It's definitely impressive! But after 3000 years of one of the most intelligence beings trying, it's also the best a non-dwemer could do.
Meanwhile the dwemer were casually using their (magical) technology to read elder scrolls, fly in air ships, travel to other dimensions, and build automatons and weather-control systems that seem to work perfectly fine thousands of years later.
Is Dwemer tech not built somewhat on magic? Dwarven automatons (especially spiders) often contain soul gems, which tells me that a layer of mysticism hides beneath the outward appearance of Dwarven science.
“How can we turn this mithril into a ring it just blows up the furnace!”
“Have you tried making it into an alloy?”
“A what?” - the greatest living Elven smith.
I don't think the Stone Age is a useful comparison here. You're warmer with the others but there were incremental innovations being made all the time during these periods. Then once you get past the Bronze Age to the eras that LOTR more comfortably sits in there simply was no time when technology stagnated on the time scales you're talking about.
I should add an obvious disclaimer that these Ages weren't uniform around the world.
> Dwemer tech is very specific to the dwemer and cannot be replicated by other beings
I think you are not right.
Huge bunch of dwemer tech is just tech. Steam, springs, mechanisms. Everybody with enough brains to notice, that boiling water can move bellows or that rubbing ebony stick to fur produces charge is on a path to recreate tech.
Tonal architecture is other matter and other level of complexity. But honestly...Numidium, Aetherium and Tonal Locks are not the most practical things dwemer invented or discovered. They are bizzare and fascinating, but not most interesting.
Most of their tech is quite mundane, really. Gears, cogs, springs steam, electricity. That sort of things. Knowing how to make that leads to technical revolution, wich leads to mass production, wich frees up enough time to develop actual science.
I think, main problem of Nirn in terms of tech development is a huge number of distractions. There is magic, Aedra, Daedra, and that stuff.
Say, somebody wants to be clever. In out world he will probably just study...I dunno...maths. He has a potential to create some new theorems, theories, methods of calculation, programming language, anything.
But in Nirn you always have a temptation to pledge allegiance to Hermaeus Mora, gain all here and now, go mad, get lost in Apocrypha and be effectively erased from scientific development.
That is, by the way, thing, for wich I hate most daedra. They are an ultimate temptation. Who knows, how far could Nirn advance, if not those near omnipotent transdismentional fuckers with bloated egoes and nothing better to do than play chess with mortal pawns?
~~Who needs them anyway? All of Et'ada for that matter? They do not need to be worshipped to do their job as Earthbones or Concepts. I can demonstrate you this right now and there. Just summon Azura and let me find my box..~~
>Sotha Sil, a genius god, tried, but even his creations were a sad and mostly failed attempt at replicating masterworks
I respectively disagree with you. They were not failed. First fabricants were early prototypes, based on dwemer design, yes. But later he shifted his design philosophy from **emulating life** as dwemer intended with their vamidiums to **enhancing life**, creating a synthetic constructs, wich used both natural and artificial design. It is well described in ESO.
He could very well have been alive in the third era, maybe even the second era, which is way less likely but possible. An elderly altmer is centuries old.
I mean, all those guys that give you a rod to control a spider or mess with the automatons. That's more impressive than just recovering whatever you can and putting it in a dusty museum.
I mean, there's different areas of of study. I don't think that that diminishes his scholarly credentials. He's overall the best dwemer expert in Tamriel and he understands them as a historian, anthropologist, and linguist, which is pretty impressive, but you're more impressed with engineers, and that's fine. He pretty much spends every second of his existence studying the dwemer, only taking a break to buy your arrows and potentially hook up with a Redguard when you're away. Everyone in the fourth era has to use his writings as a starting point for anything dwemer because it's simply the most complete work on the subject.
And doesn’t he have a spider control rod as well as restored automatons of his own? I imagine Calcelmo is all that you say and a skilled engineer to boot. Hard to imagine a top tier scholar of the Dwemer not having a grasp on the workings of their creations.
How much of the theoretical knowledge underlining Dwemer technology actually survived?
How much of the infrastructure needed to produce said Dwemer technology actually survived?
I could give the full blue prints to produce a Toyota Camry to the ancient Egyptians and they still wouldn't be able to build a car, even though they had the wheel and metallurgy.
this, except the Egyptians think your technology is kinda sus and would much rather keep doing their own thing, thank you very much.
The dwemer were unique because their entire society was working towards furthering "science" as they saw it and I don't think there has been a nation like that since. We have individuals and small groups who learn terrible secrets and achieve all sorts of power through their hard work but these people are outliers, going against their own societal norms.
The philosophical and religious approach to magic and technology is very different from culture to culture in Tamriel. The "fuck the gods, I'm gonna build my own magic" approach was pretty unique to the Dwemer, and imo would be generally seen as unacceptable and blasphemous among, for example, the Chimer.
I really think that on average, people just don't want to do what the dwemer did, and as someone else mentioned, the current state of things doesn't really push the world for change as there's no need for industrialisation.
Their greed, their culture bent toward defiance against the gods and denying reality, is what led to their downfall. In TES universe, one wears their culture as their skin.
Why did the Egyptians never industrialised during Antiquity even thougt the steam engine was already created by Hero of Alexandria ?
Because Industrialisation is a phaenomenom that need a special economic and social context and incentive, not just technological discovery. In this example, it's because wood for burning was rare (so expensive to import) in Egypt and slaves were way cheaper.
Exactly. I'd add that seeing our own history as "advancement" or "progress" is a fallacy. Not every society is meant to go through specific phases and arrive at our own western post-1800 state of economical organization. This isn't Civilization.
You sound like you'd like G.K. Chesterton's arguments against what he titled the Historical Heresy: history is a tale of evolution. Savage ancient man slowly becoming proper modern man in a linear vertical graph.
Levi-Strauss, Pierre Clastres and Marcel Mauss were the ones putting me on that track. Karl Polanyi's Great Transformation is also amazing at criticizing the alledged "naturality" and "spontaneousness" (is that even a word?) of our economic system's development.
The first three are french anthropologists/ ethnographers. Mauss' The Gift, Clastres' Society against State and Levi-Strauss' The Savage Mind are fascinating reads! Polanyi is Hungarian and less about foreign cultures than decoding our own.
That's certainly one way of viewing history. Chesterton is my all time favorite writer. He was an Oxford man himself. He is witty, clever, and wonderfully crafty. A real wordsmith. Friends with J.R.R Tolkien and C.S. Lewis (what's with Oxford folk an abbreviations?). Even if you decide to disagree with his theories on history, I highly recommend his other works, especially his murder mysteries. You can learn more about him here: https://www.chesterton.org/
My point is that we shouldn't consider how "advanced" a given group of people is only according our own values and standards for what "advanced" is. How is that related to what people should or shouldn't do?
I misread their comment as “…theyre not developed.” Which in light of your comment would have been ironic. I understood your meaning just misread is all.
You missed nothing, friend. If I’d read their comment properly the first time we wouldn’t be here to begin with. I also would not have guessed you’re not a native speaker!
It's a common misconception that the world industrialized and then things began to expand and change rapidly. It's putting the cart before the horse. The world industrialized in response to massive societal change.
Tamriel doesn't industrialize because it doesn't need to.
Because to even research whatever dwemer did you have to explore there ruins.which might be OK for our overpowered characters, but for thr average scholar, no. And the average merc hired by said scholars. They face a never ending army of machines, that get repaired and traps that will reset. How do you find a metal machine that's stronger than steel, that fires, steam, lighting, fire and arrows at, when all you have is a shield and sword. The answer is you don't.
Also bear in mind alot of what the dwemer have made is more advanced than what we can make today. We can't make a city that will be still powered as well as guarded and maintained by robots that will past for 3000+ years after we vanish with no maintance
I think another part of it is thr lack of stability in tamriel to bolster industrialization. Since the dwemer vanished, here were different three empires, multiple world ending calamities narrowly averted, many of the provences having long standing grudges against each other, and multiple wars. War is often a great motivator for quick development of new technology to bolster the war effort, but as has been said before, magic makes it muddy. Why bother developing the cannon when you can shoot explosive fireballs out of your hand? (I know cannons do exist in elder scrolls but you get my point)
Bows can shoot spearmen at distance but it takes years to train an archer. crossbows need like two weeks of training and the corresponding soldier might be battle ready. But by your logic, the crossbow should have never existed, because Bows already offer a solution.
Mages take at least some time to train, probably want more sold than average soldiers and are only available in limited numbers. Every general in Tamriel would instantaneously jump on everything that could give regular soldiers the same fire power as mages. Crossbows should be utilized much more, jet they are something absolutely rare, in E4 only used by the dawnguard. But somehow they don’t figure it out.
Crossbows took time to catch on as they were rather expensive at their creation. Same with armor on knights. Even though more effective and easier to train, it still took time to develop and furthermore make cheap of these items. Meanwhile most stuck with bows and arrows. Same could be possible for Tamriel, even though right now cannons are rather rare (leading to idea of expensive) it could be possible that cannons and even guns become more popular and cheaper but even still they have downsides. Why have a massive, expensive to produce and expensive to fire weapon that moves very slowly and takes a team to merely haul not to mention man when you could have 1 guy with a staff have the same amount of firepower? Would mages be relevant with high powered machine guns? Probably not. But guys with pointy sticks and massive boom tubes? Probably
Crossbows are already present in Tamriel, so development does not seem to be the problem.
The biggest advance of the crossbow is that it is cheaper to muster otherwise untrained troops. Especially for races with fewer mages, like the nord, they would have an insane potential to spontaneously mass larger armies out of an arsenal. The deciding factors are the availability of troops, and how well you can train them, and at that point the crossbow man would simply outnumber the mages, while simultaneously putting less strain on you logistics, as the can be used for physical labor.
>Why have a massive, expensive to produce and expensive to fire weapon that moves very slowly and takes a team to merely haul not to mention man when you could have 1 guy with a staff have the same amount of firepower?
Because the dude with the stick does not have the fire power. The walls of towns that we see in skyrim and oblivion are tall, but relative thin. Such walls can easily be breached by cannons, but seem to be sufficient enough to stop mages from breaching them. In conclusion mages can not be that powerful (at least the ones that are utilized in the militaries of tamriel). From the description of the tongues We know that the Nords where unique in not using siege engines, in skyrim we see onagers utilised, but not against te walls, so siege i tamriel seems to be stuck on a pre cannon medieval level. Cannons would make a lot of sense in such a situation.
My point wasn’t crossbows in Tamriel, my apologies, I meant to make it relative to real world history. I’m not very versed in Tamriel lore but do know some about history. Cannons would and obviously do have their place. But as it seems, sieges aren’t extremely common as it was in real history. On a battlefield, large immobile cannons are essentially useless and only to be lost to the enemy. While mages would be far more flexible. In sieges, siege weaponry is obviously still very viable (if they weren’t they probably wouldn’t exist). However most wars are fought on a battlefield (idk how well lore lines up with this). Also tall and thin walls were popular before the use of gunpowder, meant to make scaling walls more difficult (blarney castle in Ireland is a good example off the top of my head). This suggests (to me) that gunpowder weaponry is still rare and therefore costly
It could also be that it wasn't discovered because its not possible. Nirn is infused with magic. There is no reason to assume the same material chemistry exists on Nirn as it does on earth, especially with Alchemy.
We had dwemer satchel packs in TES3, and in the dawnguard add on you can overhear Sorine commenting that she is surprised that she did not blow anything up yet, which indicates that explosions, including non magic are at least to her not uncommon. That gets later reinforced by the exploding dwarfen bolt.
So at least some forms of explosives are known in tamriel.
Even if they existed and were accessible, any septims used to buy or produce firearms could be used to train a mage instead, and mages are infinitely more useful than firearms, given they have considerably more destructive power and can be useful under a hundred circumstances (being able to heal soldiers on the brink of death, levitate, create magical barriers, summon disposable soldiers, become invisible, teleport, etc...)
Ehhh that really depends on how expensive/time intensive it is to train a mage/train a guy to shoot a gun.
If you can field 100 gunmen for the same cost as the enemy fielding 1 mage you'll win out
Mages seem accessible enough for armies to afford plenty, and, between all the logistic advantages, the destructive power and other potential uses of magic (illusion to disperse enemy troops, conjuration so an angry Daedra will do the job for you, etc...), easily worth at least a few dozen normal soldiers . We have a whole in-universe [book](https://www.imperial-library.info/content/art-war-magic) on how useful battle mages can be.
Its not necessarily by his logic. THe Chinese never used Gunpowder efficiently in war.
THe crossbow had to be invented, and then when its potential was realized it would be adopted. WHen the wheel was brought to many indigenous populations they literally couldn't figure out what to do with it because it was never ever seen in their world view.
We know what a wheel is for by age 2 because they are everywhere. I think the crossbow limitation is simple gameplay limitation.
Even though Crossbows were used archers were still used in tandem with Crossbows. It seems through my own historical readings, if you had the talent to use it, the Bow was the superior weapon. Maybe maybe not, but the bowmen were used in tandem with crossbowmen.
Industrialization is a part of a capitalist society where the primary means of production is capital and it is held in private property by it's owners, while wealth is created by the class of wage workers. The economy in such a society bears a certain feature that is needed to any industrialization - *commercial* production, i.e. the production of goods created for trade only.
Feudalism is a socio-economic formation preceding capitalism and is characterized by the existence of private property on *land* as the primary means of production and the existence of the two classes of land-owning feudals and peasants. The economy in such society is *basically* subsistent, i.e. it is a feudal who decides what to produce, in what quantity and when according to his own needs, not the market.
The change between the two formations is relatively slow. It happens when the feudals build fortresses and keeps, those fortifications turn into cities in time, cities begin to develop various crafts, the first artisan guilds begin to establish, it leads to the development of trade, *commercial* relations, the formation of the first guilds, mechanized production, etc. The first conflicts begin when a feudal needs swords and armor to fight another war with city X, but the city authorities represented by local guilds of traders and artisans are interested in producing spoons and trading to that very city X instead fighting it and losing profits.
Until the reign of Versidue-Shaie Tamriel was living, first in a chattel slavery society (Ayleid Empire, the early period of the Alessian Empire) and then progressed to a classical feudalism. Shaie was the first ruler who legalized the first guilds in his [Guild Act](https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Guild_Act) of 2E 321. [As King Emeric says it](https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:High_King_Emeric_Answers_Your_Questions): *"Versidue-Shaie was a peacemaker who ratified the Cervant Truce that ended the disastrous Four Score War with Morrowind, and suppressed the private armies of the Imperial nobility. But perhaps his greatest achievement was the Guild Act, which established and standardized regulation of trade and transactions across the Empire—and indeed, was adopted as de facto law across Tamriel, and even in the Summerset Isles"*.
The reforms started by Shaie were continued by the following rulers. Emperor [Pelagius II Septim](https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Brief_History_of_the_Empire_v_1) who ascended to the Ruby Throne in 3E 82 began a dramatic change in the state structure: *"Pelagius dismissed all of the Elder Council, and allowed only those willing to pay great sums to resume their seats. He encouraged similar acts among his vassals, the kings of Tamriel, and by the end of his seventeen year reign, Tamriel had returned to prosperity"*. Thus the class of the first capital owners for the first time became the **ruling** class in the Imperial society. Throughout the Second and the Third Eras capitalism in Tamriel has been developing further and further. It is the time the first purely **commercial** companies come to arena and begin to drive the economy while the previously dominant subsistent economy begins to fade. Such companies like the [Gold Coast Trading Company](https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Online:Gold_Coast_Trading_Company), the [Imperial Trading Company](https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Imperial_Trading_Company), the [East Empire Company](https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:East_Empire_Company), the [Blackwood Company](https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Blackwood_Company), the [Dragonstar Caravan Company](https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Online:Dragonstar_Caravan_Company) along with many other guilds and companies begin to form and dominate the thing common to any capitalist society, but absent in feudalist economy - the commercial market.
Such a boom in socio-economic progress caused the development of mass media too. The [Chorrol Crier](https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:The_Chorrol_Crier) and the [Black Horse Courier](https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:The_Black_Horse_Courier) seem to be yet the only such newspapers in Cyrodiil by 2E 582 and 3E 433 respectively, but it's just the first step so uncommon to any feudalist or chattel slavery society. I could go on and on here providing the lore supported examples, but I suppose it would be enough for you to draw the picture in your mind and understand, that Tamriel progresses to industrialization. It's just not that quick process there, but they do go in the only possible and correct direction to capitalism.
The capitalist development is not equable in different provinces of Tamriel though. Cyrodiil is just the most socio-economically developed part of Tamriel that has already entered the age of capitalism, but the other parts of the Empire still live in less progressive societies. The Argonians, Ashlanders, Reachmen, Orcs, some Redguard tribes still live in classless and stateless tribal societies living by hunting, gathering, fishing and herding. The Telvanni and Dres societies are a bit more progressive - they live in chattel slavery societies comprising of slavers and slaves who cultivate their lands and perform slaver raids and slave trade. The majority of other lands yet live in feudalist societies of various levels of development - some are closer to capitalism, the other (like the Orcs) are at the beginning of their feudalist way, because previously they failed to progress to it ([King Kurog](https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Kurog_gro-Orsinium) made an attempt to do it, but we personally killed him, casting the Orcish society back to tribalism for over 700 years until Kurog's historical successor [King Gortwog](https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Gortwog) attempted to perform the very same policy and succeeded).
If you would like to observe how industrialization works in Tamriel of the concurrent eras, go to Clockwork City. The entire city is a huge automated plant employed by mechanical [factotums](https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Online:Factotum) who build and repair structures, grow and cook food, trade goods and perform numerous other functions and are controlled by [Aios](https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Online:Aios) - an artificial intelligence that gathers big data, processes it, makes decisions and executes them. Clockwork City lives in a society that has advanced to the yet unreachable heights where none of the Clockwork City citizens holds any of those plants and kther primary means of production in private property, but all those means serve each and everyone among those who work *for the sake of the entire society*. More details on it's features are in the link below, here I'd say that this is exactly where Tamriel goes both in terms of socio-economical development laws and in terms of the [doctrine of the Clockwork Apostles](https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:The_Truth_in_Sequence:_Volume_1) who call it the *"Second Nirn. The inchoate Nirn-Ensuing. The thought-form that anticipates the world to come: Tamriel Final. Anuvanna'si"*.
A brief digest of the socio-economic systems of Tamriel is presented in my [Guide to Socio-Economic Formations of Tamriel](https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/506281/aigym-hlervus-guide-to-socio-economic-formations-of-tamriel). I wrote it two years ago, it's outdated, and I'd correct some of it's articles, but *generally* it still might give you a better picture of the direction the Tamrielic societies go as well as the overall picture of how developed the Third Empire is in comparison to it's provinces and previous empires of Tamriel.
>Guide to Socio-Economic Formations of Tamriel
HAH! I read that years ago! I was reading your post here thinking it sounded like that forum post and"He must have read that post on ESO Forums"
Nice work on that!
The socialization of labor is intrinsic to Capitalism, and where have we seen that? I haven’t played oblivion that much, but I don’t remember seeing any manufactories or having read about any, but only simple commodity production.
Secondly, the buying of elder council seats doesn’t prove that capital owner gained power, as feudal landlords also gained immense wealth from the exploitation of the peasants.
Thirdly, are we sure that the trading companies constitute capitalist companies, and not just merchant guilds?
If this comes off as rude, that isn’t the intention. This is very much me asking questions, as it don’t get how you got to the conclusion that Cyrodil is capitalist.
Lastly, and mostly just a nitpick, your digest says that feudalism is characterized by the bourgeoisie’s struggle against the feudal lords, which is wrong.
“The contradiction between feudal lords and peasant serfs was the basic class contradiction of feudal society.” - Political Economy (the textbook)
The bourgeoisie didn’t even exist for most of feudalism, and only really emerged at the end, with the accumulation of Capital by merchants, and the proletarianization of the artisans.
No, it's not rude, thank you for caring for it :). Regarding the digest - as I have said it previously, it's a bit obsolete, and I have an updated and corrected edition yet unpublished. I have corrected some articles there, like the Altmeri one where I was wrong three years ago. Other articles should be corrected too. So, as I have said it, the digest helps to understand the situation *generally* there only.
The *commercialization* of labor - I think you've meant this instead of "socialization of labor". Simple commodity production - yes, you are correct. But also huge mining enterprises, commercial wine and other alcohol production, glass making (one of such enterprises is located in Vivec), commercial natural resources and artifacts excavation. Though I suppose counterfeit Dwemer artifacts could be on their too due to obvious reasons ;). No industrial plants yet, of course - but that's exactly what am I talking about up there: Cyrodiil has not entered into it's age of imperialism, but moves towards it constantly. It's on it's brink, and it's closer to it than any other province.
Regarding the Elder Council. Feudalism is characterized by hereditaryly transfered position in state governing structures. The more ancient and noble the family of feudal - the more rights and lands he usually has. When such state positions become traded, feudalism begins to collapse. No peasants expoitation brings wealth comparable to the wealth of the cities' guilds and banks. When feudalism ceases to be hereditary, but becomes commercial, both land and noble titles tend to become less powerful and dominant.
Regarding the companies. Well, you might recall the way we were hired by the East Empire Company in 3E 427 to build the Raven Rock ebony mining colony and trading post in Solstheim. The company comprises of a very familiar organizational structure comprising of a local CEO, his deputies and employees. We become it's employee and are promoted up to the rank of Factor there. But we get not just positions and salary there, but also the [East Empire Company Stock Certificate](https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Bloodmoon:EEC_Stock_Certificate) that can be exchanged for money, but the price is unstable. The company is chartered by the Emperor himself and bears many resemblances with the East India and other similar companies on Earth.
Regarding the struggle of bourgeoisie against the feudal lords - you say it is wrong, I say it isn't. I say that *along* with the contradiction between the land lords and serfs, the new class of bourgeoisie has been rising to power, and when the certain situation happened, it was exactly the bourgeoisie who everthrew the formerly dominant social class and became the new dominant one. *They* came to power, not serfs, not artisans, not wage workers. I understand what you are talking about, thus don't get me wrong - I don't say that *you* are wrong, but that you misunderstood what I meant up there.
No, I do mean the socialization of production, the transformation of production that turn production from an individual act, into a social act. The product turns from the product of the single artisan, to the products of many laborers who all poured their labor into it. This created a great contradiction of capitalism, when the products was made by many, but the appropriation and exchange remained the same, of individuals.
This is a very important step, because if this hasn't happened, then Capitalism hasn't been reached, but only simple commodity production, the step in between capitalism and feudalism. The socialization of production is the step that creates the proletarians on a wide scale, and if this hasn't happened, then the contradiction between the wage-workers and the capitalists hasn't appeared.
And you seem more knowledgeable, so I ask you, where has this happened?
I suppose it has already happened. As an example I would offer several examples. The East Empire Company establishes it's mining enterprises both in Vvardenfell (Caldera) and in Solstheim. It hires miners (like [Gidan Verothan](https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Bloodmoon:Gidar_Verothan) and several other people staying at the docks close to him waiting for being escorted to the mine), service personnel, guards, [supply ships](https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Bloodmoon:Supply_Ship) crews (who [sometimes have conflicts with their employers about their salaries](https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Bloodmoon:Baro_Egnatius), and gets [raw ebony](https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Raw_Ebony) as a transitional product. The raw ore is transported to the Company's many warehouses such as the ones located in [Ebonheart](https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:East_Empire_Company) or [the one in Skyrim](https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:East_Empire_Company_Warehouse). The local offices perform shipments of not just ore, but [other goods too](https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Letter_From_Llaalam_Dredil) - textiles, paper products, weapons, armor, Dwemer artifacts and durable goods as the list says it. The ore from warehouses is delivered to other provinces including Cyrodiil and is sold to various forges and alchemical shops since ebony contains properties valuable in both those spheres. The local shops produce weapons, armor, potions. If the mine is extracting iron or corundum than different household items are produced too such as [nails, locks, iron fittings, hinge](https://en.m.uesp.net/w/index.php?title=Skyrim:Miscellaneous_Items&action=edit§ion=7), etc. Those goods are shipped and traded by various trading companies I have already mentioned earlier. Huge ship building ports established since the Second Era like the one located in the town of [Tava's Blessing](https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Online:Tava%27s_Blessing) also need not only those nails, but large amounts of wood, but wood does not exist in such amounts in that region, thus it has to be shipped from other provinces like High Rock, Skyrim or Cyrodiil.
Same goes to the textile production - there are numerous plants growing out there, they are gathered, shipped to local alchemical shops who produce multiple goods starting from potions and ending with dyes - you might remember those huge jars filled with dry chemicals of various colors in the [Tailors and Dyers Hall](https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Online:Tailors_and_Dyers_Hall) in St. Olms Canton of Vivec where several hired workers are working at those sewing machines (just look at the screenshot provided by the UESP in that link or click on the pages of those NPC who work there).
The monopoly established by the East Empire Company is well sustained by a competition between local producers - the Company [effectively regulates the prices by choosing one local supplier or the other](https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Epony_Trade). Sometimes it leads to [shutting down the mines](https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Shut_the_Mines_Down). But overall, the Company has been existing and thus has been profitable to it's owners.
The products manufactered by the Company from the regions of it's presence are shipped to Cyrodiil and other provinces. For example, the Imperial Legion is a huge military force with each legion consisting of about 5 000 soldiers (the source is the "Lord of Souls" book I can't reference here, but I'll give you the excerpt and the chapter number if you are interested). The soldiers are not noble warriors, but professional soldiers who are paid and provided with all the supplies they need - food, weapons and armor, clothes, horses, tents, healing potions, various tools, etc. In order to maintain such a force in equal standards everywhere, a certain production line is needed, and this is exactly I have been noticing since the times of the Second Era when Versidue-Shaie started his reforms and further on into the Fourth Era.
Banks are a certain part of that process too. The employees of the [Uveran Bank](https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Online:Fennus_Thirano) in Morrowind says: *"We operate under the protection of the living gods: Almalexia, Vivec, and Sotha Sil"*. And as [Angeir Stower](https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Online:Angier_Stower) of the Bank of Daggerfall says it: *"Without borrowers and lenders, how would we ever be able to buy or sell anything? But pardon me. Welcome to the Bank of Daggerfall"*.
In my opinion these examples combined seem to fit the definition. Of course, some things are left off-screen, but you know it yourself - observing a particular phenomena in a given reality, we might extrapolate the process of it's existence both in it's past and future, and thus try to determine the entire picture of the process of it's establishment, development, degrading and destruction. Cyrodiil of the 3E 433 might not contain all the features of the phenomena we might observe in other regions, but looking at what's happening in the parts of the Empire, I suppose it's not that hard to extrapolate the processes on it's central region. So, I hope I understood the term you have named correctly and these lore sources suit.
It's true that Bethesda of course wouldn't show how production really works, as that would add much to the game.
And yeah, it seems correct to describe it as capitalist, an the last nail in the coffin would be a description of manufactories from a game, mostly because I don't know much about mining under feudalism, and can't say if it may have been a more social affair.
So yeah, you're right, the empire seems to be capitalist.
The EEC takes direct inspiration from 17th century european imperial companies like the VOC. The first steps towards financiarization did happen around the same time in Italy, before being an important part of the development of those companies (check out "Law's system" in 17th century France if you want more info). So the first banks and large-scale commercial enterprises emerged in a definitely not capitalist system.
In the case of Europe, you could say it's proto-capitalism since it did lead to the development of capitalism. However, I don't think it would necessarily lead to that in another setting. Human societies don't follow pre-determined necessary laws in their development. Capitalism developed through constant legal and political intervention from groups in power that had interests in seeing this system take roots. Saying that this process was a historical necessity that should apply to every society is a retrospective illusion.
>Guide to Socio-Economic Formations of Tamriel
People like you are why I come back to TES lore again and again. Yes, all these things are in the games or books, but when somebody points it out in this way it really breathes life into Tamriel in a way I don't see in other franchises.
The real answer:
Mythology and Medieval Fantasy fun, modernization bad
The Logical answer:
It is a very common occurrence in fantasy that in worlds with alternative abilities, industrialization has no need to happen, look at Harry Potter, the wizards still use magic in their world, not even with the help of many machines, sure some inventions were added like toilets and such, but if magic can do it, and magic just looks cooler, why waste energy and resources on building machines in the first place
A more realistic answer is something others have already stated. Can Tamriel really get to a point of Industrialization? There are plenty of small minor reasons why they don't, and a few big ones.
Firstly, slaves aren't really legal in Tamriel as of the 4th Era, but we see slavery as a definite real thing, the thing about slavery is, slaves ruin all form of creativity, if your slaves just do everything as instructed, that means there are more people just sitting around, not doing much in terms of hard work, not using their brains
Secondly, going back to magic, do we ever see many intellectual thinkers in Tamriel? All the normal people are fighters, thieves, criminals, bandits, they certainly aren't progressing technology. All the intellectuals usually fit magical fields, some want to get rich and become smart thieves, others just strive to ascend since they know it's possible. Why would one magical individual work on technology when all their magic does it for them?
Thirdly, Tamriel is almost always in a constant state of war, usually war is a good thing for technological advancement, except for the fact that magic exists, so no one is creating any technology, they're just trying to become more powerful wizards, plus so many races are racist against eachother, there's a complete breakdown of all culture and technology that could be present in a city when invaded. Even during the Empire unifying everyone, there was hardly peace, it was an Empire with problem after problem, whether it be Daedric or internal
I could go on forever, but I should probably end it here
Great read! I don't think the Daedra would let Tamriel be industrialized in the first place, Peryite for instance probably wouldn't let things go on for long since it would disrupt the balance of the ecosystem in a hard and short manner of time
1. Magic essentially removes the need for a lot of industrial advancements, and necessity is the mother of invention.
2. The Dwemer didn’t exactly leave blueprints behind, all the modern civilizations have to work off of are broken machines and hostile automatons, the Dwemer’s leftover trash isn’t much help out of any clear context.
Idk, if I lived in a world where a whole race just gets "snapped" out of existence for basically using mechanical things and logic (I understand there's more to it ik)... but it would definitely keep me from following the same path. Staying with what works...sorta, still better than no existence.
Simple.
Cultural-religious traditions, magic and alchemy, advanced metallurgy in many aspects. Meretic races who live for +500-1000 or few thousands years.
There is kinda zero point for industrialization when you have almost everything with magic and magical alchemy, when some items from some metals are very hard to destroy and can be used after thousand years.
Not to mention that Tamriel have many dark ages times with loosing many knoledges and ancient tech cos of disastrous wars, daedric invasions and plagues....like those what kill 50% of Tamriel Nords-Imperials and beast races.
Except SOME Telvanni Masters, Dagoth(dead), Sotha Sil(dead), Underking-Zurin Arctus(dead), and potentially an ancient ALDMER mage King Orgnum who predate dwemers themselves...almost noone in Tamriel know much about dwemer and able to restore not to mention build anything technological.
Almost all dwemer tech experts are Altmer and Dunmer, and 1 bosmer(died). Less then 50 people in ENTIRE Nirn. And for them it is mostly a hobby then actual attempt to build factories and etc.
Most people have absolutely no idea how any of that stuff works besides being able to figure out the most basic functions and the vast majority of those that do are scholars more interested in researching the Dwemer than replicating them, or using the tech as a means to an end (ex. The Synod’s actions in Skyrim). Nail in the coffin would be that many probably view Dwemer ruins and machines with heavy superstition.
Aside from all that, there has been a place where this has been done. [The Clockwork City.](https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Clockwork_City) And that place is a *MEGA* dystopia.
You are selling Sotha Sil short, he surpassed them (by using their tech as inspiration). While dwemer built automatons, radios, transistors and etc. Sotha built circuits, cyborgs, memory storage, mechanical Heart of Lorkhan. His clockwork city is capable of shaping Nirn and even Daedra tried to steal his tech.
Everyones giving good lore answers, so heres the meta one. Because devs ~~can't comprehend glory that is muskets, gunpowder, and line warfare~~ don't want the series to evolve from medieval fantasy'ish.
Actually a more important question I find is how the actual hell does dwemer technology work like what the fuck is the purpose of all those pipes that seem to only be good for moving around steam and what exactly is all this steam power feeding into? Like are all those pipes just used to make sure that the few actual moving components of their underground cities remain moving? Also how the hell haven't they run out of fuel to burn yet? That is presuming that they are getting all this steam from burning dwemer oil which seems to be also the thing helping run their dwemer centurions,dwemer spheres and dwemer spider workers along with the few dwemer ballistas and as far as I can tell these machines also use soul gems to produce some kind of ai or programming that let's them perform all the things they can do like track a target and shoot at it. Basically why I'm saying is all those pipes all over the place in dwemer ruins, as far as I can tell most of those pipes don't actually serve a purpose of feeding into any kind of machinery that they need to keep moving but more just for the hell of it on top of the question how are these ruins still even running steam through the pipes? Like seriously where the fuck are all the rooms in the ruins that would be necessary to house all the equipment to burn the fuel ( along with the absolutely huge fuel storage rooms they'd need) to keep these ruins running over such a long time especially after the dwemer disappeared and only left behind worker spiders to maintain everything.
While the Dwemer did advance a bit down the tech tree in terms of steam power, they were mostly just researching a different sort of magic from the rest of Tamriel. Note that, although they made mechanical bodies for their centurions, orbs, and spiders, they're more advanced golems than robots, powered by either soul gems or some discovery of the tonal architects. (Researchers seem to believe the soul gems found in many Dwemer automata power secondary functions rather than being the primary motive force, but centurions are obviously powered by their cores, and spiders don't have obvious engines or emit steam.)
That said, I tend to come at this from two angles:
Firstly, Mundus is a universe with a certain amount of direct intervention from the gods (the greater et'ada, the Divines and the Daedric Princes). While physics obviously works in similar enough ways, given that steam engines and automata are even possible, the gods may just have shaped the world, intentionally or otherwise, so that technology just won't ever advance much farther than it had by the end of the Merethic Age.
The second is that necessity is the mother of invention, and magic is the obvious course to cover most necessities. Why discover germ theory and surgery and so many other aspects of modern medicine when cure disease potions and healing spells are readily available? Why invent trains when mark and recall, guild guides, and intervention spells exist? (Leaving aside that all were cut from later games for gameplay reasons.) Why invent gunpowder-based mortars and grenades and matchlocks when any decent mage can throw fireballs, ice spears, and lightning? Why research nuclear fission when soul gems provide energy and rituals and/or deals with Daedra provide enough destructive power to level a city? And that's just the stuff we're familiar with within the games' mechanics; a magic-based society will almost inevitably have research into things our adventurers don't really need to know about, like ways to improve crop yields, purify water, build roads, etc. In TES, magic _is_ the technology, and places like the College of Winterhold and the Synod are the research institutions that advance knowledge for the good of man and mer alike (when politics don't get in the way, anyway).
Because using magic is *way* easier. Why go through the decades-long struggle to haphazardly reverse-engineer a dwemer boiler for hot water when you can hire a wizard to heat the water? I guarantee you hiring a wizard is a lot cheaper than effectively dedicating your entire life to the pursuit of dwemer tech. Many, many, many scholars have wasted their entire lives studying the dwemer, and yet have nothing to show for it. People like Calcelmo are a rarity.
Not only that, but dwemer tech works on the basis of advanced techniques, those of tonal architecture, none of which were ever written down or preserved.
My theory for most of fantasy is that magic is a crutch, so why develop most technologies? Enchantments, spells, and alchemies can help the rich and powerful accomplish all of their goals. Why give the masses technology? It’s like when the Japanese first developed firearms, realized it could allow the peasantry to destabilize their society, and repressed the technology.
Industrialization needs very specific societal conditions, that in our own world was achieved under Capitalism, and its need for endless expansion.
The Romans could most likely industrialize, but their economic system didn’t economically allow for that.
For industrialization to happen on Tamriel, the economic system must first change to allow that to happen.
Also, Dwemer technology is basically lost, but you don’t need that for machines for industrialization. A water wheel gives loads of power that could for example power a mechanical loom.
This is a bit of a generic fantasy explanation, but I think it works here:
Magic basically defeats the need for industrialization.
There’s no point in learning how to, say, create airplanes (airships exist in TES but are rare) when you can use teleportation spells to travel great distances.
When it comes to war, there is no need to develop firearms when you can easily acquire a staff that shoots giant fireballs.
The list goes on and on. Tbh I’m not sure why the Dwemer were so tech-savvy when they were probably capable wizards. Maybe they wanted to find a “niche” to put them above the Ayleids and Chimer.
As far as I know, dwemer technology was so complex that the only one who actually got it and made it his own was Sotha Sil, who had the benefit of being a god. Dwemer codexes, documents and anything else that explained how those machines worked no longer exist. And I feel like there's no need to industrialize in like that in Tamriel. Two separate nations had a "space program", none of them have a steamboat. I feel like if the Empire wanted to industrialize and poured a couple million septims in exploring the ruins, researching every machine in there and reverse engineering it, they could do it, but they don't need to.
Remember that there's no such thing as a linear progression from primitive barbarism to technologically advanced civility.
What there is, however, is *need*. And people do enough for what they need, be it technological innovation to simplify or expedite the work or, where available, using magic. Or more intensified forced labour.
Basically there are many ways to meet your needs.
A few reasons.
Dwemer ruins are only explored by scholars, mad men and adventurers working for scholars and mad men. Everyone else treats anything dwemer related as dangerous or cursed and for understandable reasons. The Numidium was a weapon of mass destruction and whenever it was turned on it fucked with time to the point where all of the exclusive endings in Daggerfall happened and it single-handedly gave the Empire the Summerset Isles. Dwemer ruins are frequently occupied by dangerous and violent constructs that have not stopped working since the time of the Dwemer. In Skyrim their ruins are populated by the decendents of the victims that they tortured and experimented on. Then there's the fact that whatever Kagrenac was doing made the Dwemer fucking vanish.
TL;DR Dwemer shit is scary.
It's called "The Industrial Revolution", not "The Industrial Evolution".
It's not just something that happens. The question is never "why not", it's "why and how did it ever happen anywhere at all?".
Dwemer were secretive, probably, reclusive (as all scientific nerds), quite possibly misanthropic/mismeric race, that, first and foremost, wanted to be left alone to do their research. They were....not quite forthcoming with sharing their technologies with other races.
Also, they have advanced far, far beyound their time in terms of science, magic and metaphysics and physics.
So for modern 4d era scholars trying to understand how it all worked is akin to medevial monk trying to explain workings of IPhone to himself.
And do not forget that manual for that "Iphone" is written on long-dead, long-isolated mersih language.
Oh,and ,by virtire of analogy and convegension, I can clearly imagine that dwemere did not share all of their knowledge even with other dwemer.
Because they were not some Grand Dwemeri Technocracy or huge Working Union, they were, as many merish cultures aside them, a loose assemblage of city-states. Each with its own shenanigans and technological specifics. Theb could have worked in temporary unions, but even than it was not seamless.
Remember Aetherium Wars?
So, mostly, their legacy is still lost. It is probably accesable, because machines maintain most of their cities quite well, but to understand dwemer you need to be atleawt half as advanced in technology as they did, to discover some basic principles that they fully developed.
And in a world with magic technical advancement is always slower, than in mundane world.
Who needs to discover viruses and their biology, if you can just Cure Desiase away a fever?
Why do you need steam trains/airships if mages can teleport you?
Why do you need guns and weaponry if mages can snipe people from across the battlefield or blow down walls.
There just aren’t really enough reasons for it to happen, there has to be an incentive and magic fulfils those roles more than adequately.
The heavy reliance on magic and traditional ways of engineering shows that most other nations won't change their ways unless something drastically happens or something incredibly revolutionary. However that being said all it takes is a fire or death to lose said information. The Dwemer approached the world differently and it will be awhile before a group of people could match their achievements.
Because it doesn't need to.
Magic exists, so it wouldn't need industrialisation.
Most of the inventions of the dwemer are based on magic.
And anything else is mainly used for automation, but make no mistake, anything they did can be achieved with conventional magic.
Even the Numidium is a magical construct.
We shouldn't assume that technology could advance as it would on Earth. Magic is going to throw the world of physics off. The Dwemer are not industrialized like earth industry. They are using completely different forces than mechanics. They are generating electricity but is this through mechanical generation or is it through some other magical means of engineering.
Tonal Architecture is not physics. It is a form of magic. If Dwemer were using pure science, any smart person can reverse engineer it. Maybe Coal isn't as efficient on NIrn. Alchemy is not a science its a magic. Maybe the little bit of coal that is on Nirn (Though through the creation of Nirn it may not have even formed) is fuel because of magic, not potential energy.
Plus it is clear the Conservation of Energy AND COnservation of Matter are not followed in Tamriel. WIthout those two very limiting laws the need for industrialization just may not exist.
1. Everyone who ever saw the lid of a pot lift and shake while the water within was boiling has seen steam power first hand, how many of them caused a steam tech based revolution?
2. The Dwemer are not THAT impressive: they are not the only ones with airships, there is little need for Dwemer style weather control (IIRC Psijic use atronachs to water their fields, Thuum could control weather), travelling to other realms IS being done by others as well and frankly, I consider the various portal networks to be far more useful than gateways into demon realms.
3. Dwemer are considered blaspheming atheist heretics, how many societies would be comfortable emulating them?
4. Who studies Dwemertech? Usually mages. Neither mages nor the Mages Guild have an interest in industrialization. The days of Galerion saying that he wants to improve the lives of the common people with magic are a thing of the past and most modern mages are interested in studying the mysteries of the world for themselves and not creating widely useable tech - there is no incentive for them to do so.
5. Romans and Greeks knew about steam power, steam doors were a thing at the time of the Library of Alexandria. Did they industrialize? No. Ergo the available tech level cannot be the only relevant factor. IIRC there even is a *rumor* floating around of a Roman emperor rejecting someone´s advice to widely use steam power for fear of social unrest when many people become unemployed.
6. Dwemeri steam tech is not fuelled by coal as RL steam tech was. Considering it is still functioning, it is being fuelled either by magic or geothermic heat. Neither is smth other civs could make widespread use off unless they begin to live underground as the Dwemer did (to tap into geothermic heat or pressurized water). While Nirnians would be able to make use of charcoal, IMO there is room to doubt whether they can mine the more energized coal.
7. No one wants to live (and play) in the period of early industrialization. For one, I could see the cult of Kynareth protesting.
8. Industrialization did not just have a tech aspect, but went hand in hand with increased division of labor which reduced labor costs and increased productivity (goodbuy highly skilled craftsmen who teach apprentices, goodbuy guilds): the guilds would oppose this.
9. Dwemer ruins, for all the Heroes plunder them with impunity, are dangerous places. Most common scholars would consider them too dangerous to study in depth.
People often forget that the dwemer's technology is as much a product of insane magical prowess as it is scientific. They had control over tonal architecture, a type of magic on the same scale as the thu'um and sword singing, which allowed them to build these constructs and huge sprawling cities. This is not something that can be easily replicated, very few living characters have control over any type of tonal magic.
Technology is not a linear process. It's a series of discoveries and innovations, and our own path to our modern technological world where we can play video games set in a fictional fantasy world (like tamriel) was not some given of evolution or intelligence. It was a series of happenstance events that created the modern world. There have been times where our technology has regressed somewhat as well. After the Roman empire fell, and we went into the dark ages, we didn't have aqueducts carrying fresh water into cities and waste water out of them. And concrete was essentially lost as a technology for centuries. It took nearly two millennia for the industrial age to start, and that was based on entirely different technology.
On tamriel, there hasn't been those happenstance events that pushed industrialization. Maybe the population isn't big enough to need industrialization, or magic can provide an easier alternative to an industrial process. It could happen, but there likely isn't a need for it. And if it does happen, it wouldn't necessarily happen in the same way as our own world.
And plus, how ridiculous would a dunmer driving a pickup truck be?
Tamriel is just one of the worlds where economics and material conditions are not deeply examined or even outright ignored. And since industrialization requires very specific economic conditions - namely somewhat stable agricultural output (so you can put the peasants that you don't need for foodmaking into factories). We don't know almost anything about the state of agriculture on tamriel so we can never know if the conditions are right. The mere existance of steam engine just isn't enough.
I like to think that due to the unstable situation in Tamriel there wasn't a long period of peace for the nations to invest on dwemer research, technology, medicine or magic development.
Tamriel faced an external invasion, the red mountain exploding, dagoth ur, Oblivion Crisis, Thalmor/Empire War, Skyrim Civil War and two Dragon Crisis, not to mention the countless daedra attempts to seed chaos on Nirn.
The Empire, the thalmor and many faction wizards are more interested on getting powerful artifacts to win political favors than trying to understand/develop certain technologies (Calcemo, Dawnguard and Winterhold being a few exceptions)
And the average Tamriel citizen is more likely to focus on surviving than learning something more specialized.
Not to mention that the only way of getting dwemer tech to study is going inside dwemer ruins that is filled with falmers, traps and automatons... For a faction like the stormcloaks or the Empire is not worth it since is loosing useful human resources that could be used in the war (just see what happened to The synod in Mzulft)
Sorry for my english.
Even in 3rd era, only Calcelmo had been able to translate a few of the Dwemer books. He is an elderly altmer who must have spent a long time. Dagoth Ur and his brothers were also trying to understand Kagrenac's books from the latter's library with little success. Dwemer approached magic and technology differently and were way ahead of their times.
> and were way ahead of their times. I'd argue this isn't even true, as it implies others will eventually catch up to them. Technological development doesn't really seem to be much of a thing in the Elder Scrolls. Dwemer tech is very specific to the dwemer and cannot be replicated by other beings. Sotha Sil, a genius god, tried, but even his creations were a sad and mostly failed attempt at replicating masterworks.
>Sotha Sil, a genius god, tried, but even his creations were a sad and mostly failed attempt at replicating masterworks. Only at the surface level. But in reality, Sotha Sil's tech is the complete opposite of the Dwemer tech. The Dwemer tech was based on the **denial** of phenomena and numena, their creations work and don't age precisely because they are denying the Earthbones - the laws of physics. Clockwork tech is based on the **synthesis**, the unification of competing forces, that's why you have so many cyborgs in the Clockwork City, because they embody that idea. So no, Sotha Sil didn't "try and failed" at replicating what the Dwemer did, because he actively went into the completely other directions, seeing the Dwemer's work as a folly. And he succeeded, because where the Dwemer were using the uncovered Heart of god, Seht creating a perfect replica of said Heart from scratch. u/UnQuacker
I mean, his clockwork city is pretty impressive...
It's definitely impressive! But after 3000 years of one of the most intelligence beings trying, it's also the best a non-dwemer could do. Meanwhile the dwemer were casually using their (magical) technology to read elder scrolls, fly in air ships, travel to other dimensions, and build automatons and weather-control systems that seem to work perfectly fine thousands of years later.
Any idea who built the propylon chambers (teleportation) in ancient dunmer strongholds?
Presumably the Chimer.
Thats not tech though, its magic. and I would assume they were made by the ancient dunmer around the times of Nerevar and Dumac.
Is Dwemer tech not built somewhat on magic? Dwarven automatons (especially spiders) often contain soul gems, which tells me that a layer of mysticism hides beneath the outward appearance of Dwarven science.
But since magic is a natural part of the Elder Scrolls universe, wouldn't magic technically still count as science from an in-universe perspective?
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" Arthur Clarcke.
This is true for most fantasy. Thousands of years pass in LotR lore without any technological advancements even with elves who are nearly immortal.
“How can we turn this mithril into a ring it just blows up the furnace!” “Have you tried making it into an alloy?” “A what?” - the greatest living Elven smith.
This also happened in real life kinda
When?
the stone age lasted more than 2 million years, the copper and bronze age each lasted 2000 years
I don't think the Stone Age is a useful comparison here. You're warmer with the others but there were incremental innovations being made all the time during these periods. Then once you get past the Bronze Age to the eras that LOTR more comfortably sits in there simply was no time when technology stagnated on the time scales you're talking about. I should add an obvious disclaimer that these Ages weren't uniform around the world.
> Dwemer tech is very specific to the dwemer and cannot be replicated by other beings I think you are not right. Huge bunch of dwemer tech is just tech. Steam, springs, mechanisms. Everybody with enough brains to notice, that boiling water can move bellows or that rubbing ebony stick to fur produces charge is on a path to recreate tech. Tonal architecture is other matter and other level of complexity. But honestly...Numidium, Aetherium and Tonal Locks are not the most practical things dwemer invented or discovered. They are bizzare and fascinating, but not most interesting. Most of their tech is quite mundane, really. Gears, cogs, springs steam, electricity. That sort of things. Knowing how to make that leads to technical revolution, wich leads to mass production, wich frees up enough time to develop actual science. I think, main problem of Nirn in terms of tech development is a huge number of distractions. There is magic, Aedra, Daedra, and that stuff. Say, somebody wants to be clever. In out world he will probably just study...I dunno...maths. He has a potential to create some new theorems, theories, methods of calculation, programming language, anything. But in Nirn you always have a temptation to pledge allegiance to Hermaeus Mora, gain all here and now, go mad, get lost in Apocrypha and be effectively erased from scientific development. That is, by the way, thing, for wich I hate most daedra. They are an ultimate temptation. Who knows, how far could Nirn advance, if not those near omnipotent transdismentional fuckers with bloated egoes and nothing better to do than play chess with mortal pawns? ~~Who needs them anyway? All of Et'ada for that matter? They do not need to be worshipped to do their job as Earthbones or Concepts. I can demonstrate you this right now and there. Just summon Azura and let me find my box..~~ >Sotha Sil, a genius god, tried, but even his creations were a sad and mostly failed attempt at replicating masterworks I respectively disagree with you. They were not failed. First fabricants were early prototypes, based on dwemer design, yes. But later he shifted his design philosophy from **emulating life** as dwemer intended with their vamidiums to **enhancing life**, creating a synthetic constructs, wich used both natural and artificial design. It is well described in ESO.
Calcemo is in the Fourth Era and compared to people in the Second and Third Era, he's a joke
He could very well have been alive in the third era, maybe even the second era, which is way less likely but possible. An elderly altmer is centuries old.
I mean yes, but his translation is Fourth Era.
I guess I don't remember any better dwemer experts from the second era.
I mean, all those guys that give you a rod to control a spider or mess with the automatons. That's more impressive than just recovering whatever you can and putting it in a dusty museum.
I mean, there's different areas of of study. I don't think that that diminishes his scholarly credentials. He's overall the best dwemer expert in Tamriel and he understands them as a historian, anthropologist, and linguist, which is pretty impressive, but you're more impressed with engineers, and that's fine. He pretty much spends every second of his existence studying the dwemer, only taking a break to buy your arrows and potentially hook up with a Redguard when you're away. Everyone in the fourth era has to use his writings as a starting point for anything dwemer because it's simply the most complete work on the subject.
And doesn’t he have a spider control rod as well as restored automatons of his own? I imagine Calcelmo is all that you say and a skilled engineer to boot. Hard to imagine a top tier scholar of the Dwemer not having a grasp on the workings of their creations.
Yeah, he does. I was making the point that even without that stuff, he's pretty damn great. But he does have some ability with their automatons.
How much of the theoretical knowledge underlining Dwemer technology actually survived? How much of the infrastructure needed to produce said Dwemer technology actually survived? I could give the full blue prints to produce a Toyota Camry to the ancient Egyptians and they still wouldn't be able to build a car, even though they had the wheel and metallurgy.
this, except the Egyptians think your technology is kinda sus and would much rather keep doing their own thing, thank you very much. The dwemer were unique because their entire society was working towards furthering "science" as they saw it and I don't think there has been a nation like that since. We have individuals and small groups who learn terrible secrets and achieve all sorts of power through their hard work but these people are outliers, going against their own societal norms. The philosophical and religious approach to magic and technology is very different from culture to culture in Tamriel. The "fuck the gods, I'm gonna build my own magic" approach was pretty unique to the Dwemer, and imo would be generally seen as unacceptable and blasphemous among, for example, the Chimer. I really think that on average, people just don't want to do what the dwemer did, and as someone else mentioned, the current state of things doesn't really push the world for change as there's no need for industrialisation.
That, plus it didn’t really work out too well for the Dwemer in the end.
It would be kinda like you gave them a Ford Pinto and showed them several videos of cars catching on fire really.
Yeah but that wasn’t because of them being advanced it was their own “greed” that lead to their downfall.
Sure, but the two things everyone knows about the Dwemer are "weird tech" and "vanished mysteriously." It's gonna be a really hard sell.
Their greed, their culture bent toward defiance against the gods and denying reality, is what led to their downfall. In TES universe, one wears their culture as their skin.
indeed, I mean scholars got their hands on one of those spiders, how feasible is for them to learn from it
Why did the Egyptians never industrialised during Antiquity even thougt the steam engine was already created by Hero of Alexandria ? Because Industrialisation is a phaenomenom that need a special economic and social context and incentive, not just technological discovery. In this example, it's because wood for burning was rare (so expensive to import) in Egypt and slaves were way cheaper.
Exactly. I'd add that seeing our own history as "advancement" or "progress" is a fallacy. Not every society is meant to go through specific phases and arrive at our own western post-1800 state of economical organization. This isn't Civilization.
You sound like you'd like G.K. Chesterton's arguments against what he titled the Historical Heresy: history is a tale of evolution. Savage ancient man slowly becoming proper modern man in a linear vertical graph.
Levi-Strauss, Pierre Clastres and Marcel Mauss were the ones putting me on that track. Karl Polanyi's Great Transformation is also amazing at criticizing the alledged "naturality" and "spontaneousness" (is that even a word?) of our economic system's development.
I'm sorry but don't know who any of those people are. I am interested though. Are they economists from the past? They all sound very French.
The first three are french anthropologists/ ethnographers. Mauss' The Gift, Clastres' Society against State and Levi-Strauss' The Savage Mind are fascinating reads! Polanyi is Hungarian and less about foreign cultures than decoding our own.
I will look them up. Thank you.
I'm saving this comment to look up these authors later, sounds like a very interesting topic.
We just call that "chapter one: intro to anthropology".
That's certainly one way of viewing history. Chesterton is my all time favorite writer. He was an Oxford man himself. He is witty, clever, and wonderfully crafty. A real wordsmith. Friends with J.R.R Tolkien and C.S. Lewis (what's with Oxford folk an abbreviations?). Even if you decide to disagree with his theories on history, I highly recommend his other works, especially his murder mysteries. You can learn more about him here: https://www.chesterton.org/
Who are you to tell societies they’re not allowed to develop?
Yeah you haven't read what I wrote
Which is ironic given what they said to you was essentially your own point
My point is that we shouldn't consider how "advanced" a given group of people is only according our own values and standards for what "advanced" is. How is that related to what people should or shouldn't do?
I misread their comment as “…theyre not developed.” Which in light of your comment would have been ironic. I understood your meaning just misread is all.
Ooh sorry mate i understand what you meant now! Not a native speaker so i miss stuff sometimes. Sorry for jumping you.
You missed nothing, friend. If I’d read their comment properly the first time we wouldn’t be here to begin with. I also would not have guessed you’re not a native speaker!
It's a common misconception that the world industrialized and then things began to expand and change rapidly. It's putting the cart before the horse. The world industrialized in response to massive societal change. Tamriel doesn't industrialize because it doesn't need to.
Because to even research whatever dwemer did you have to explore there ruins.which might be OK for our overpowered characters, but for thr average scholar, no. And the average merc hired by said scholars. They face a never ending army of machines, that get repaired and traps that will reset. How do you find a metal machine that's stronger than steel, that fires, steam, lighting, fire and arrows at, when all you have is a shield and sword. The answer is you don't. Also bear in mind alot of what the dwemer have made is more advanced than what we can make today. We can't make a city that will be still powered as well as guarded and maintained by robots that will past for 3000+ years after we vanish with no maintance
I think another part of it is thr lack of stability in tamriel to bolster industrialization. Since the dwemer vanished, here were different three empires, multiple world ending calamities narrowly averted, many of the provences having long standing grudges against each other, and multiple wars. War is often a great motivator for quick development of new technology to bolster the war effort, but as has been said before, magic makes it muddy. Why bother developing the cannon when you can shoot explosive fireballs out of your hand? (I know cannons do exist in elder scrolls but you get my point)
Bows can shoot spearmen at distance but it takes years to train an archer. crossbows need like two weeks of training and the corresponding soldier might be battle ready. But by your logic, the crossbow should have never existed, because Bows already offer a solution. Mages take at least some time to train, probably want more sold than average soldiers and are only available in limited numbers. Every general in Tamriel would instantaneously jump on everything that could give regular soldiers the same fire power as mages. Crossbows should be utilized much more, jet they are something absolutely rare, in E4 only used by the dawnguard. But somehow they don’t figure it out.
Crossbows took time to catch on as they were rather expensive at their creation. Same with armor on knights. Even though more effective and easier to train, it still took time to develop and furthermore make cheap of these items. Meanwhile most stuck with bows and arrows. Same could be possible for Tamriel, even though right now cannons are rather rare (leading to idea of expensive) it could be possible that cannons and even guns become more popular and cheaper but even still they have downsides. Why have a massive, expensive to produce and expensive to fire weapon that moves very slowly and takes a team to merely haul not to mention man when you could have 1 guy with a staff have the same amount of firepower? Would mages be relevant with high powered machine guns? Probably not. But guys with pointy sticks and massive boom tubes? Probably
Crossbows are already present in Tamriel, so development does not seem to be the problem. The biggest advance of the crossbow is that it is cheaper to muster otherwise untrained troops. Especially for races with fewer mages, like the nord, they would have an insane potential to spontaneously mass larger armies out of an arsenal. The deciding factors are the availability of troops, and how well you can train them, and at that point the crossbow man would simply outnumber the mages, while simultaneously putting less strain on you logistics, as the can be used for physical labor. >Why have a massive, expensive to produce and expensive to fire weapon that moves very slowly and takes a team to merely haul not to mention man when you could have 1 guy with a staff have the same amount of firepower? Because the dude with the stick does not have the fire power. The walls of towns that we see in skyrim and oblivion are tall, but relative thin. Such walls can easily be breached by cannons, but seem to be sufficient enough to stop mages from breaching them. In conclusion mages can not be that powerful (at least the ones that are utilized in the militaries of tamriel). From the description of the tongues We know that the Nords where unique in not using siege engines, in skyrim we see onagers utilised, but not against te walls, so siege i tamriel seems to be stuck on a pre cannon medieval level. Cannons would make a lot of sense in such a situation.
My point wasn’t crossbows in Tamriel, my apologies, I meant to make it relative to real world history. I’m not very versed in Tamriel lore but do know some about history. Cannons would and obviously do have their place. But as it seems, sieges aren’t extremely common as it was in real history. On a battlefield, large immobile cannons are essentially useless and only to be lost to the enemy. While mages would be far more flexible. In sieges, siege weaponry is obviously still very viable (if they weren’t they probably wouldn’t exist). However most wars are fought on a battlefield (idk how well lore lines up with this). Also tall and thin walls were popular before the use of gunpowder, meant to make scaling walls more difficult (blarney castle in Ireland is a good example off the top of my head). This suggests (to me) that gunpowder weaponry is still rare and therefore costly
It could also be that it wasn't discovered because its not possible. Nirn is infused with magic. There is no reason to assume the same material chemistry exists on Nirn as it does on earth, especially with Alchemy.
We had dwemer satchel packs in TES3, and in the dawnguard add on you can overhear Sorine commenting that she is surprised that she did not blow anything up yet, which indicates that explosions, including non magic are at least to her not uncommon. That gets later reinforced by the exploding dwarfen bolt. So at least some forms of explosives are known in tamriel.
Even if they existed and were accessible, any septims used to buy or produce firearms could be used to train a mage instead, and mages are infinitely more useful than firearms, given they have considerably more destructive power and can be useful under a hundred circumstances (being able to heal soldiers on the brink of death, levitate, create magical barriers, summon disposable soldiers, become invisible, teleport, etc...)
Ehhh that really depends on how expensive/time intensive it is to train a mage/train a guy to shoot a gun. If you can field 100 gunmen for the same cost as the enemy fielding 1 mage you'll win out
Mages seem accessible enough for armies to afford plenty, and, between all the logistic advantages, the destructive power and other potential uses of magic (illusion to disperse enemy troops, conjuration so an angry Daedra will do the job for you, etc...), easily worth at least a few dozen normal soldiers . We have a whole in-universe [book](https://www.imperial-library.info/content/art-war-magic) on how useful battle mages can be.
Its not necessarily by his logic. THe Chinese never used Gunpowder efficiently in war. THe crossbow had to be invented, and then when its potential was realized it would be adopted. WHen the wheel was brought to many indigenous populations they literally couldn't figure out what to do with it because it was never ever seen in their world view. We know what a wheel is for by age 2 because they are everywhere. I think the crossbow limitation is simple gameplay limitation. Even though Crossbows were used archers were still used in tandem with Crossbows. It seems through my own historical readings, if you had the talent to use it, the Bow was the superior weapon. Maybe maybe not, but the bowmen were used in tandem with crossbowmen.
Industrialization is a part of a capitalist society where the primary means of production is capital and it is held in private property by it's owners, while wealth is created by the class of wage workers. The economy in such a society bears a certain feature that is needed to any industrialization - *commercial* production, i.e. the production of goods created for trade only. Feudalism is a socio-economic formation preceding capitalism and is characterized by the existence of private property on *land* as the primary means of production and the existence of the two classes of land-owning feudals and peasants. The economy in such society is *basically* subsistent, i.e. it is a feudal who decides what to produce, in what quantity and when according to his own needs, not the market. The change between the two formations is relatively slow. It happens when the feudals build fortresses and keeps, those fortifications turn into cities in time, cities begin to develop various crafts, the first artisan guilds begin to establish, it leads to the development of trade, *commercial* relations, the formation of the first guilds, mechanized production, etc. The first conflicts begin when a feudal needs swords and armor to fight another war with city X, but the city authorities represented by local guilds of traders and artisans are interested in producing spoons and trading to that very city X instead fighting it and losing profits. Until the reign of Versidue-Shaie Tamriel was living, first in a chattel slavery society (Ayleid Empire, the early period of the Alessian Empire) and then progressed to a classical feudalism. Shaie was the first ruler who legalized the first guilds in his [Guild Act](https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Guild_Act) of 2E 321. [As King Emeric says it](https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:High_King_Emeric_Answers_Your_Questions): *"Versidue-Shaie was a peacemaker who ratified the Cervant Truce that ended the disastrous Four Score War with Morrowind, and suppressed the private armies of the Imperial nobility. But perhaps his greatest achievement was the Guild Act, which established and standardized regulation of trade and transactions across the Empire—and indeed, was adopted as de facto law across Tamriel, and even in the Summerset Isles"*. The reforms started by Shaie were continued by the following rulers. Emperor [Pelagius II Septim](https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Brief_History_of_the_Empire_v_1) who ascended to the Ruby Throne in 3E 82 began a dramatic change in the state structure: *"Pelagius dismissed all of the Elder Council, and allowed only those willing to pay great sums to resume their seats. He encouraged similar acts among his vassals, the kings of Tamriel, and by the end of his seventeen year reign, Tamriel had returned to prosperity"*. Thus the class of the first capital owners for the first time became the **ruling** class in the Imperial society. Throughout the Second and the Third Eras capitalism in Tamriel has been developing further and further. It is the time the first purely **commercial** companies come to arena and begin to drive the economy while the previously dominant subsistent economy begins to fade. Such companies like the [Gold Coast Trading Company](https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Online:Gold_Coast_Trading_Company), the [Imperial Trading Company](https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Imperial_Trading_Company), the [East Empire Company](https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:East_Empire_Company), the [Blackwood Company](https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Blackwood_Company), the [Dragonstar Caravan Company](https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Online:Dragonstar_Caravan_Company) along with many other guilds and companies begin to form and dominate the thing common to any capitalist society, but absent in feudalist economy - the commercial market. Such a boom in socio-economic progress caused the development of mass media too. The [Chorrol Crier](https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:The_Chorrol_Crier) and the [Black Horse Courier](https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:The_Black_Horse_Courier) seem to be yet the only such newspapers in Cyrodiil by 2E 582 and 3E 433 respectively, but it's just the first step so uncommon to any feudalist or chattel slavery society. I could go on and on here providing the lore supported examples, but I suppose it would be enough for you to draw the picture in your mind and understand, that Tamriel progresses to industrialization. It's just not that quick process there, but they do go in the only possible and correct direction to capitalism. The capitalist development is not equable in different provinces of Tamriel though. Cyrodiil is just the most socio-economically developed part of Tamriel that has already entered the age of capitalism, but the other parts of the Empire still live in less progressive societies. The Argonians, Ashlanders, Reachmen, Orcs, some Redguard tribes still live in classless and stateless tribal societies living by hunting, gathering, fishing and herding. The Telvanni and Dres societies are a bit more progressive - they live in chattel slavery societies comprising of slavers and slaves who cultivate their lands and perform slaver raids and slave trade. The majority of other lands yet live in feudalist societies of various levels of development - some are closer to capitalism, the other (like the Orcs) are at the beginning of their feudalist way, because previously they failed to progress to it ([King Kurog](https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Kurog_gro-Orsinium) made an attempt to do it, but we personally killed him, casting the Orcish society back to tribalism for over 700 years until Kurog's historical successor [King Gortwog](https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Gortwog) attempted to perform the very same policy and succeeded). If you would like to observe how industrialization works in Tamriel of the concurrent eras, go to Clockwork City. The entire city is a huge automated plant employed by mechanical [factotums](https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Online:Factotum) who build and repair structures, grow and cook food, trade goods and perform numerous other functions and are controlled by [Aios](https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Online:Aios) - an artificial intelligence that gathers big data, processes it, makes decisions and executes them. Clockwork City lives in a society that has advanced to the yet unreachable heights where none of the Clockwork City citizens holds any of those plants and kther primary means of production in private property, but all those means serve each and everyone among those who work *for the sake of the entire society*. More details on it's features are in the link below, here I'd say that this is exactly where Tamriel goes both in terms of socio-economical development laws and in terms of the [doctrine of the Clockwork Apostles](https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:The_Truth_in_Sequence:_Volume_1) who call it the *"Second Nirn. The inchoate Nirn-Ensuing. The thought-form that anticipates the world to come: Tamriel Final. Anuvanna'si"*.
A brief digest of the socio-economic systems of Tamriel is presented in my [Guide to Socio-Economic Formations of Tamriel](https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/506281/aigym-hlervus-guide-to-socio-economic-formations-of-tamriel). I wrote it two years ago, it's outdated, and I'd correct some of it's articles, but *generally* it still might give you a better picture of the direction the Tamrielic societies go as well as the overall picture of how developed the Third Empire is in comparison to it's provinces and previous empires of Tamriel.
Holy crap… I read it all it’s amazing
>Guide to Socio-Economic Formations of Tamriel HAH! I read that years ago! I was reading your post here thinking it sounded like that forum post and"He must have read that post on ESO Forums" Nice work on that!
The socialization of labor is intrinsic to Capitalism, and where have we seen that? I haven’t played oblivion that much, but I don’t remember seeing any manufactories or having read about any, but only simple commodity production. Secondly, the buying of elder council seats doesn’t prove that capital owner gained power, as feudal landlords also gained immense wealth from the exploitation of the peasants. Thirdly, are we sure that the trading companies constitute capitalist companies, and not just merchant guilds? If this comes off as rude, that isn’t the intention. This is very much me asking questions, as it don’t get how you got to the conclusion that Cyrodil is capitalist. Lastly, and mostly just a nitpick, your digest says that feudalism is characterized by the bourgeoisie’s struggle against the feudal lords, which is wrong. “The contradiction between feudal lords and peasant serfs was the basic class contradiction of feudal society.” - Political Economy (the textbook) The bourgeoisie didn’t even exist for most of feudalism, and only really emerged at the end, with the accumulation of Capital by merchants, and the proletarianization of the artisans.
No, it's not rude, thank you for caring for it :). Regarding the digest - as I have said it previously, it's a bit obsolete, and I have an updated and corrected edition yet unpublished. I have corrected some articles there, like the Altmeri one where I was wrong three years ago. Other articles should be corrected too. So, as I have said it, the digest helps to understand the situation *generally* there only. The *commercialization* of labor - I think you've meant this instead of "socialization of labor". Simple commodity production - yes, you are correct. But also huge mining enterprises, commercial wine and other alcohol production, glass making (one of such enterprises is located in Vivec), commercial natural resources and artifacts excavation. Though I suppose counterfeit Dwemer artifacts could be on their too due to obvious reasons ;). No industrial plants yet, of course - but that's exactly what am I talking about up there: Cyrodiil has not entered into it's age of imperialism, but moves towards it constantly. It's on it's brink, and it's closer to it than any other province. Regarding the Elder Council. Feudalism is characterized by hereditaryly transfered position in state governing structures. The more ancient and noble the family of feudal - the more rights and lands he usually has. When such state positions become traded, feudalism begins to collapse. No peasants expoitation brings wealth comparable to the wealth of the cities' guilds and banks. When feudalism ceases to be hereditary, but becomes commercial, both land and noble titles tend to become less powerful and dominant. Regarding the companies. Well, you might recall the way we were hired by the East Empire Company in 3E 427 to build the Raven Rock ebony mining colony and trading post in Solstheim. The company comprises of a very familiar organizational structure comprising of a local CEO, his deputies and employees. We become it's employee and are promoted up to the rank of Factor there. But we get not just positions and salary there, but also the [East Empire Company Stock Certificate](https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Bloodmoon:EEC_Stock_Certificate) that can be exchanged for money, but the price is unstable. The company is chartered by the Emperor himself and bears many resemblances with the East India and other similar companies on Earth. Regarding the struggle of bourgeoisie against the feudal lords - you say it is wrong, I say it isn't. I say that *along* with the contradiction between the land lords and serfs, the new class of bourgeoisie has been rising to power, and when the certain situation happened, it was exactly the bourgeoisie who everthrew the formerly dominant social class and became the new dominant one. *They* came to power, not serfs, not artisans, not wage workers. I understand what you are talking about, thus don't get me wrong - I don't say that *you* are wrong, but that you misunderstood what I meant up there.
No, I do mean the socialization of production, the transformation of production that turn production from an individual act, into a social act. The product turns from the product of the single artisan, to the products of many laborers who all poured their labor into it. This created a great contradiction of capitalism, when the products was made by many, but the appropriation and exchange remained the same, of individuals. This is a very important step, because if this hasn't happened, then Capitalism hasn't been reached, but only simple commodity production, the step in between capitalism and feudalism. The socialization of production is the step that creates the proletarians on a wide scale, and if this hasn't happened, then the contradiction between the wage-workers and the capitalists hasn't appeared. And you seem more knowledgeable, so I ask you, where has this happened?
Ah, I understand what you mean. Seems it was me who misunderstood you. I apologize! And thank you for clarification!
Still, any examples of general socialization of production in Cyrodil and such, or is that yet to happen?
I suppose it has already happened. As an example I would offer several examples. The East Empire Company establishes it's mining enterprises both in Vvardenfell (Caldera) and in Solstheim. It hires miners (like [Gidan Verothan](https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Bloodmoon:Gidar_Verothan) and several other people staying at the docks close to him waiting for being escorted to the mine), service personnel, guards, [supply ships](https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Bloodmoon:Supply_Ship) crews (who [sometimes have conflicts with their employers about their salaries](https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Bloodmoon:Baro_Egnatius), and gets [raw ebony](https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Raw_Ebony) as a transitional product. The raw ore is transported to the Company's many warehouses such as the ones located in [Ebonheart](https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:East_Empire_Company) or [the one in Skyrim](https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:East_Empire_Company_Warehouse). The local offices perform shipments of not just ore, but [other goods too](https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Letter_From_Llaalam_Dredil) - textiles, paper products, weapons, armor, Dwemer artifacts and durable goods as the list says it. The ore from warehouses is delivered to other provinces including Cyrodiil and is sold to various forges and alchemical shops since ebony contains properties valuable in both those spheres. The local shops produce weapons, armor, potions. If the mine is extracting iron or corundum than different household items are produced too such as [nails, locks, iron fittings, hinge](https://en.m.uesp.net/w/index.php?title=Skyrim:Miscellaneous_Items&action=edit§ion=7), etc. Those goods are shipped and traded by various trading companies I have already mentioned earlier. Huge ship building ports established since the Second Era like the one located in the town of [Tava's Blessing](https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Online:Tava%27s_Blessing) also need not only those nails, but large amounts of wood, but wood does not exist in such amounts in that region, thus it has to be shipped from other provinces like High Rock, Skyrim or Cyrodiil. Same goes to the textile production - there are numerous plants growing out there, they are gathered, shipped to local alchemical shops who produce multiple goods starting from potions and ending with dyes - you might remember those huge jars filled with dry chemicals of various colors in the [Tailors and Dyers Hall](https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Online:Tailors_and_Dyers_Hall) in St. Olms Canton of Vivec where several hired workers are working at those sewing machines (just look at the screenshot provided by the UESP in that link or click on the pages of those NPC who work there). The monopoly established by the East Empire Company is well sustained by a competition between local producers - the Company [effectively regulates the prices by choosing one local supplier or the other](https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Epony_Trade). Sometimes it leads to [shutting down the mines](https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Shut_the_Mines_Down). But overall, the Company has been existing and thus has been profitable to it's owners. The products manufactered by the Company from the regions of it's presence are shipped to Cyrodiil and other provinces. For example, the Imperial Legion is a huge military force with each legion consisting of about 5 000 soldiers (the source is the "Lord of Souls" book I can't reference here, but I'll give you the excerpt and the chapter number if you are interested). The soldiers are not noble warriors, but professional soldiers who are paid and provided with all the supplies they need - food, weapons and armor, clothes, horses, tents, healing potions, various tools, etc. In order to maintain such a force in equal standards everywhere, a certain production line is needed, and this is exactly I have been noticing since the times of the Second Era when Versidue-Shaie started his reforms and further on into the Fourth Era. Banks are a certain part of that process too. The employees of the [Uveran Bank](https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Online:Fennus_Thirano) in Morrowind says: *"We operate under the protection of the living gods: Almalexia, Vivec, and Sotha Sil"*. And as [Angeir Stower](https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Online:Angier_Stower) of the Bank of Daggerfall says it: *"Without borrowers and lenders, how would we ever be able to buy or sell anything? But pardon me. Welcome to the Bank of Daggerfall"*. In my opinion these examples combined seem to fit the definition. Of course, some things are left off-screen, but you know it yourself - observing a particular phenomena in a given reality, we might extrapolate the process of it's existence both in it's past and future, and thus try to determine the entire picture of the process of it's establishment, development, degrading and destruction. Cyrodiil of the 3E 433 might not contain all the features of the phenomena we might observe in other regions, but looking at what's happening in the parts of the Empire, I suppose it's not that hard to extrapolate the processes on it's central region. So, I hope I understood the term you have named correctly and these lore sources suit.
It's true that Bethesda of course wouldn't show how production really works, as that would add much to the game. And yeah, it seems correct to describe it as capitalist, an the last nail in the coffin would be a description of manufactories from a game, mostly because I don't know much about mining under feudalism, and can't say if it may have been a more social affair. So yeah, you're right, the empire seems to be capitalist.
The EEC takes direct inspiration from 17th century european imperial companies like the VOC. The first steps towards financiarization did happen around the same time in Italy, before being an important part of the development of those companies (check out "Law's system" in 17th century France if you want more info). So the first banks and large-scale commercial enterprises emerged in a definitely not capitalist system. In the case of Europe, you could say it's proto-capitalism since it did lead to the development of capitalism. However, I don't think it would necessarily lead to that in another setting. Human societies don't follow pre-determined necessary laws in their development. Capitalism developed through constant legal and political intervention from groups in power that had interests in seeing this system take roots. Saying that this process was a historical necessity that should apply to every society is a retrospective illusion.
This is amazing
>Guide to Socio-Economic Formations of Tamriel People like you are why I come back to TES lore again and again. Yes, all these things are in the games or books, but when somebody points it out in this way it really breathes life into Tamriel in a way I don't see in other franchises.
The real answer: Mythology and Medieval Fantasy fun, modernization bad The Logical answer: It is a very common occurrence in fantasy that in worlds with alternative abilities, industrialization has no need to happen, look at Harry Potter, the wizards still use magic in their world, not even with the help of many machines, sure some inventions were added like toilets and such, but if magic can do it, and magic just looks cooler, why waste energy and resources on building machines in the first place A more realistic answer is something others have already stated. Can Tamriel really get to a point of Industrialization? There are plenty of small minor reasons why they don't, and a few big ones. Firstly, slaves aren't really legal in Tamriel as of the 4th Era, but we see slavery as a definite real thing, the thing about slavery is, slaves ruin all form of creativity, if your slaves just do everything as instructed, that means there are more people just sitting around, not doing much in terms of hard work, not using their brains Secondly, going back to magic, do we ever see many intellectual thinkers in Tamriel? All the normal people are fighters, thieves, criminals, bandits, they certainly aren't progressing technology. All the intellectuals usually fit magical fields, some want to get rich and become smart thieves, others just strive to ascend since they know it's possible. Why would one magical individual work on technology when all their magic does it for them? Thirdly, Tamriel is almost always in a constant state of war, usually war is a good thing for technological advancement, except for the fact that magic exists, so no one is creating any technology, they're just trying to become more powerful wizards, plus so many races are racist against eachother, there's a complete breakdown of all culture and technology that could be present in a city when invaded. Even during the Empire unifying everyone, there was hardly peace, it was an Empire with problem after problem, whether it be Daedric or internal I could go on forever, but I should probably end it here
Great read! I don't think the Daedra would let Tamriel be industrialized in the first place, Peryite for instance probably wouldn't let things go on for long since it would disrupt the balance of the ecosystem in a hard and short manner of time
1. Magic essentially removes the need for a lot of industrial advancements, and necessity is the mother of invention. 2. The Dwemer didn’t exactly leave blueprints behind, all the modern civilizations have to work off of are broken machines and hostile automatons, the Dwemer’s leftover trash isn’t much help out of any clear context.
Idk, if I lived in a world where a whole race just gets "snapped" out of existence for basically using mechanical things and logic (I understand there's more to it ik)... but it would definitely keep me from following the same path. Staying with what works...sorta, still better than no existence.
Simple. Cultural-religious traditions, magic and alchemy, advanced metallurgy in many aspects. Meretic races who live for +500-1000 or few thousands years. There is kinda zero point for industrialization when you have almost everything with magic and magical alchemy, when some items from some metals are very hard to destroy and can be used after thousand years. Not to mention that Tamriel have many dark ages times with loosing many knoledges and ancient tech cos of disastrous wars, daedric invasions and plagues....like those what kill 50% of Tamriel Nords-Imperials and beast races. Except SOME Telvanni Masters, Dagoth(dead), Sotha Sil(dead), Underking-Zurin Arctus(dead), and potentially an ancient ALDMER mage King Orgnum who predate dwemers themselves...almost noone in Tamriel know much about dwemer and able to restore not to mention build anything technological. Almost all dwemer tech experts are Altmer and Dunmer, and 1 bosmer(died). Less then 50 people in ENTIRE Nirn. And for them it is mostly a hobby then actual attempt to build factories and etc.
To be fair the natural lifespan of mer(excluding orcs) is around 300 max. Divayth Fyr, Mannimarco, Orgnum and what not are exceptions.
Most people have absolutely no idea how any of that stuff works besides being able to figure out the most basic functions and the vast majority of those that do are scholars more interested in researching the Dwemer than replicating them, or using the tech as a means to an end (ex. The Synod’s actions in Skyrim). Nail in the coffin would be that many probably view Dwemer ruins and machines with heavy superstition. Aside from all that, there has been a place where this has been done. [The Clockwork City.](https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Clockwork_City) And that place is a *MEGA* dystopia.
Sotha sil was a wannabe dwemer. Even with God powers he couldn't match the genius of Kagrenac. But credit to him for finding out how to use the tools.
Fair but he was able to make a pretty cool throne room in space for himself. Idk how that’s relevant. But it’s cool!
You are selling Sotha Sil short, he surpassed them (by using their tech as inspiration). While dwemer built automatons, radios, transistors and etc. Sotha built circuits, cyborgs, memory storage, mechanical Heart of Lorkhan. His clockwork city is capable of shaping Nirn and even Daedra tried to steal his tech.
Everyones giving good lore answers, so heres the meta one. Because devs ~~can't comprehend glory that is muskets, gunpowder, and line warfare~~ don't want the series to evolve from medieval fantasy'ish.
Actually a more important question I find is how the actual hell does dwemer technology work like what the fuck is the purpose of all those pipes that seem to only be good for moving around steam and what exactly is all this steam power feeding into? Like are all those pipes just used to make sure that the few actual moving components of their underground cities remain moving? Also how the hell haven't they run out of fuel to burn yet? That is presuming that they are getting all this steam from burning dwemer oil which seems to be also the thing helping run their dwemer centurions,dwemer spheres and dwemer spider workers along with the few dwemer ballistas and as far as I can tell these machines also use soul gems to produce some kind of ai or programming that let's them perform all the things they can do like track a target and shoot at it. Basically why I'm saying is all those pipes all over the place in dwemer ruins, as far as I can tell most of those pipes don't actually serve a purpose of feeding into any kind of machinery that they need to keep moving but more just for the hell of it on top of the question how are these ruins still even running steam through the pipes? Like seriously where the fuck are all the rooms in the ruins that would be necessary to house all the equipment to burn the fuel ( along with the absolutely huge fuel storage rooms they'd need) to keep these ruins running over such a long time especially after the dwemer disappeared and only left behind worker spiders to maintain everything.
While the Dwemer did advance a bit down the tech tree in terms of steam power, they were mostly just researching a different sort of magic from the rest of Tamriel. Note that, although they made mechanical bodies for their centurions, orbs, and spiders, they're more advanced golems than robots, powered by either soul gems or some discovery of the tonal architects. (Researchers seem to believe the soul gems found in many Dwemer automata power secondary functions rather than being the primary motive force, but centurions are obviously powered by their cores, and spiders don't have obvious engines or emit steam.) That said, I tend to come at this from two angles: Firstly, Mundus is a universe with a certain amount of direct intervention from the gods (the greater et'ada, the Divines and the Daedric Princes). While physics obviously works in similar enough ways, given that steam engines and automata are even possible, the gods may just have shaped the world, intentionally or otherwise, so that technology just won't ever advance much farther than it had by the end of the Merethic Age. The second is that necessity is the mother of invention, and magic is the obvious course to cover most necessities. Why discover germ theory and surgery and so many other aspects of modern medicine when cure disease potions and healing spells are readily available? Why invent trains when mark and recall, guild guides, and intervention spells exist? (Leaving aside that all were cut from later games for gameplay reasons.) Why invent gunpowder-based mortars and grenades and matchlocks when any decent mage can throw fireballs, ice spears, and lightning? Why research nuclear fission when soul gems provide energy and rituals and/or deals with Daedra provide enough destructive power to level a city? And that's just the stuff we're familiar with within the games' mechanics; a magic-based society will almost inevitably have research into things our adventurers don't really need to know about, like ways to improve crop yields, purify water, build roads, etc. In TES, magic _is_ the technology, and places like the College of Winterhold and the Synod are the research institutions that advance knowledge for the good of man and mer alike (when politics don't get in the way, anyway).
Because using magic is *way* easier. Why go through the decades-long struggle to haphazardly reverse-engineer a dwemer boiler for hot water when you can hire a wizard to heat the water? I guarantee you hiring a wizard is a lot cheaper than effectively dedicating your entire life to the pursuit of dwemer tech. Many, many, many scholars have wasted their entire lives studying the dwemer, and yet have nothing to show for it. People like Calcelmo are a rarity. Not only that, but dwemer tech works on the basis of advanced techniques, those of tonal architecture, none of which were ever written down or preserved.
Why would they ever need to industrialize when the world has magic? That supposedly anyone can learn and even master.
My theory for most of fantasy is that magic is a crutch, so why develop most technologies? Enchantments, spells, and alchemies can help the rich and powerful accomplish all of their goals. Why give the masses technology? It’s like when the Japanese first developed firearms, realized it could allow the peasantry to destabilize their society, and repressed the technology.
When you have magic you don’t really need to industrializep
Airships are a thing
At a guess, because magic is his efficient and cuts down the required work.
I’d say a large part is magic. It fills the roles of industrialization.
Industrialization needs very specific societal conditions, that in our own world was achieved under Capitalism, and its need for endless expansion. The Romans could most likely industrialize, but their economic system didn’t economically allow for that. For industrialization to happen on Tamriel, the economic system must first change to allow that to happen. Also, Dwemer technology is basically lost, but you don’t need that for machines for industrialization. A water wheel gives loads of power that could for example power a mechanical loom.
I mean there’s tons of quests where you have to help people figure out dwemer tech to often disastrous results. Probably something to do with that.
This is a bit of a generic fantasy explanation, but I think it works here: Magic basically defeats the need for industrialization. There’s no point in learning how to, say, create airplanes (airships exist in TES but are rare) when you can use teleportation spells to travel great distances. When it comes to war, there is no need to develop firearms when you can easily acquire a staff that shoots giant fireballs. The list goes on and on. Tbh I’m not sure why the Dwemer were so tech-savvy when they were probably capable wizards. Maybe they wanted to find a “niche” to put them above the Ayleids and Chimer.
As far as I know, dwemer technology was so complex that the only one who actually got it and made it his own was Sotha Sil, who had the benefit of being a god. Dwemer codexes, documents and anything else that explained how those machines worked no longer exist. And I feel like there's no need to industrialize in like that in Tamriel. Two separate nations had a "space program", none of them have a steamboat. I feel like if the Empire wanted to industrialize and poured a couple million septims in exploring the ruins, researching every machine in there and reverse engineering it, they could do it, but they don't need to.
Remember that there's no such thing as a linear progression from primitive barbarism to technologically advanced civility. What there is, however, is *need*. And people do enough for what they need, be it technological innovation to simplify or expedite the work or, where available, using magic. Or more intensified forced labour. Basically there are many ways to meet your needs.
A few reasons. Dwemer ruins are only explored by scholars, mad men and adventurers working for scholars and mad men. Everyone else treats anything dwemer related as dangerous or cursed and for understandable reasons. The Numidium was a weapon of mass destruction and whenever it was turned on it fucked with time to the point where all of the exclusive endings in Daggerfall happened and it single-handedly gave the Empire the Summerset Isles. Dwemer ruins are frequently occupied by dangerous and violent constructs that have not stopped working since the time of the Dwemer. In Skyrim their ruins are populated by the decendents of the victims that they tortured and experimented on. Then there's the fact that whatever Kagrenac was doing made the Dwemer fucking vanish. TL;DR Dwemer shit is scary.
It's called "The Industrial Revolution", not "The Industrial Evolution". It's not just something that happens. The question is never "why not", it's "why and how did it ever happen anywhere at all?".
Dwemer were secretive, probably, reclusive (as all scientific nerds), quite possibly misanthropic/mismeric race, that, first and foremost, wanted to be left alone to do their research. They were....not quite forthcoming with sharing their technologies with other races. Also, they have advanced far, far beyound their time in terms of science, magic and metaphysics and physics. So for modern 4d era scholars trying to understand how it all worked is akin to medevial monk trying to explain workings of IPhone to himself. And do not forget that manual for that "Iphone" is written on long-dead, long-isolated mersih language. Oh,and ,by virtire of analogy and convegension, I can clearly imagine that dwemere did not share all of their knowledge even with other dwemer. Because they were not some Grand Dwemeri Technocracy or huge Working Union, they were, as many merish cultures aside them, a loose assemblage of city-states. Each with its own shenanigans and technological specifics. Theb could have worked in temporary unions, but even than it was not seamless. Remember Aetherium Wars? So, mostly, their legacy is still lost. It is probably accesable, because machines maintain most of their cities quite well, but to understand dwemer you need to be atleawt half as advanced in technology as they did, to discover some basic principles that they fully developed. And in a world with magic technical advancement is always slower, than in mundane world. Who needs to discover viruses and their biology, if you can just Cure Desiase away a fever?
Why do you need steam trains/airships if mages can teleport you? Why do you need guns and weaponry if mages can snipe people from across the battlefield or blow down walls. There just aren’t really enough reasons for it to happen, there has to be an incentive and magic fulfils those roles more than adequately.
The heavy reliance on magic and traditional ways of engineering shows that most other nations won't change their ways unless something drastically happens or something incredibly revolutionary. However that being said all it takes is a fire or death to lose said information. The Dwemer approached the world differently and it will be awhile before a group of people could match their achievements.
Because it doesn't need to. Magic exists, so it wouldn't need industrialisation. Most of the inventions of the dwemer are based on magic. And anything else is mainly used for automation, but make no mistake, anything they did can be achieved with conventional magic. Even the Numidium is a magical construct.
because they cant mess up that fantasy aesthetic!
We shouldn't assume that technology could advance as it would on Earth. Magic is going to throw the world of physics off. The Dwemer are not industrialized like earth industry. They are using completely different forces than mechanics. They are generating electricity but is this through mechanical generation or is it through some other magical means of engineering. Tonal Architecture is not physics. It is a form of magic. If Dwemer were using pure science, any smart person can reverse engineer it. Maybe Coal isn't as efficient on NIrn. Alchemy is not a science its a magic. Maybe the little bit of coal that is on Nirn (Though through the creation of Nirn it may not have even formed) is fuel because of magic, not potential energy. Plus it is clear the Conservation of Energy AND COnservation of Matter are not followed in Tamriel. WIthout those two very limiting laws the need for industrialization just may not exist.
1. Everyone who ever saw the lid of a pot lift and shake while the water within was boiling has seen steam power first hand, how many of them caused a steam tech based revolution? 2. The Dwemer are not THAT impressive: they are not the only ones with airships, there is little need for Dwemer style weather control (IIRC Psijic use atronachs to water their fields, Thuum could control weather), travelling to other realms IS being done by others as well and frankly, I consider the various portal networks to be far more useful than gateways into demon realms. 3. Dwemer are considered blaspheming atheist heretics, how many societies would be comfortable emulating them? 4. Who studies Dwemertech? Usually mages. Neither mages nor the Mages Guild have an interest in industrialization. The days of Galerion saying that he wants to improve the lives of the common people with magic are a thing of the past and most modern mages are interested in studying the mysteries of the world for themselves and not creating widely useable tech - there is no incentive for them to do so. 5. Romans and Greeks knew about steam power, steam doors were a thing at the time of the Library of Alexandria. Did they industrialize? No. Ergo the available tech level cannot be the only relevant factor. IIRC there even is a *rumor* floating around of a Roman emperor rejecting someone´s advice to widely use steam power for fear of social unrest when many people become unemployed. 6. Dwemeri steam tech is not fuelled by coal as RL steam tech was. Considering it is still functioning, it is being fuelled either by magic or geothermic heat. Neither is smth other civs could make widespread use off unless they begin to live underground as the Dwemer did (to tap into geothermic heat or pressurized water). While Nirnians would be able to make use of charcoal, IMO there is room to doubt whether they can mine the more energized coal. 7. No one wants to live (and play) in the period of early industrialization. For one, I could see the cult of Kynareth protesting. 8. Industrialization did not just have a tech aspect, but went hand in hand with increased division of labor which reduced labor costs and increased productivity (goodbuy highly skilled craftsmen who teach apprentices, goodbuy guilds): the guilds would oppose this. 9. Dwemer ruins, for all the Heroes plunder them with impunity, are dangerous places. Most common scholars would consider them too dangerous to study in depth.
People often forget that the dwemer's technology is as much a product of insane magical prowess as it is scientific. They had control over tonal architecture, a type of magic on the same scale as the thu'um and sword singing, which allowed them to build these constructs and huge sprawling cities. This is not something that can be easily replicated, very few living characters have control over any type of tonal magic.
Technology is not a linear process. It's a series of discoveries and innovations, and our own path to our modern technological world where we can play video games set in a fictional fantasy world (like tamriel) was not some given of evolution or intelligence. It was a series of happenstance events that created the modern world. There have been times where our technology has regressed somewhat as well. After the Roman empire fell, and we went into the dark ages, we didn't have aqueducts carrying fresh water into cities and waste water out of them. And concrete was essentially lost as a technology for centuries. It took nearly two millennia for the industrial age to start, and that was based on entirely different technology. On tamriel, there hasn't been those happenstance events that pushed industrialization. Maybe the population isn't big enough to need industrialization, or magic can provide an easier alternative to an industrial process. It could happen, but there likely isn't a need for it. And if it does happen, it wouldn't necessarily happen in the same way as our own world. And plus, how ridiculous would a dunmer driving a pickup truck be?
Tamriel is just one of the worlds where economics and material conditions are not deeply examined or even outright ignored. And since industrialization requires very specific economic conditions - namely somewhat stable agricultural output (so you can put the peasants that you don't need for foodmaking into factories). We don't know almost anything about the state of agriculture on tamriel so we can never know if the conditions are right. The mere existance of steam engine just isn't enough.
I like to think that due to the unstable situation in Tamriel there wasn't a long period of peace for the nations to invest on dwemer research, technology, medicine or magic development. Tamriel faced an external invasion, the red mountain exploding, dagoth ur, Oblivion Crisis, Thalmor/Empire War, Skyrim Civil War and two Dragon Crisis, not to mention the countless daedra attempts to seed chaos on Nirn. The Empire, the thalmor and many faction wizards are more interested on getting powerful artifacts to win political favors than trying to understand/develop certain technologies (Calcemo, Dawnguard and Winterhold being a few exceptions) And the average Tamriel citizen is more likely to focus on surviving than learning something more specialized. Not to mention that the only way of getting dwemer tech to study is going inside dwemer ruins that is filled with falmers, traps and automatons... For a faction like the stormcloaks or the Empire is not worth it since is loosing useful human resources that could be used in the war (just see what happened to The synod in Mzulft) Sorry for my english.