From Auri-El’s Light to Namira’s Darkness: How the Snow Elves Became the Falmer, and Why They Attacked the Chantry
Some Falmer lore thoughts based on fic research I am doing. A lot of this may be obvious or "duh" to people, but in the words of a disheveled-looking hairy clan of Nords you might come across on Solstheim, please bear with me.
First: the Chantry of Auri-El, a magnificent and enormous Snow Elven temple devoted to their most cherished god, was built in the First Era. This is presumably long after the Snow Elves have been effectively driven from the surface of Skyrim by the Nords, but BEFORE the surviving Snow Elves have made their "pact" with the Dwemer. We know this because Knight-Paladin Gelebor claims the Chantry was built "long before" he arrived:
"The Chantry was constructed near the beginning of the First Era to provide a retreat for those that wished to become enlightened."
"Sadly, the magic used to construct these wonders were lost long before I arrived here."
So: the Snow Elves built the Chantry sometime in the First Era, long after their "final" defeat by the Nords at the Battle of Moesring on Solstheim. According to Gelebor, neither the Nords nor the Dwemer knew that the Chantry existed.
The Snow Elves conducted a massive, top-secret building project after being violently driven underground by a race of invaders that would literally make necklaces out of their ears. This detail included just to emphasize that Snow Elves were not just chilling in Skyrim after the Battle of Moesring; that battle was likely the last time that Nords saw Snow Elves above-ground in any significant numbers. The Snow Elves were fleeing a genocide.
This matches up with Gelebor's dialogue about the Snow Elves being "faced with extinction":
"We had always maintained an uneasy alliance with the underground-dwelling dwarves, and when faced with extinction we turned to them for help."
Temporally, the interesting part here is that the Dwemer do not seem to have meaningfully settled in Skyrim until the fourth century of the First Era, when Clan Kragen departed Morrowind to found city-state of Arkngthamz. It is strongly suggested that this was the first major Dwemer presence in Skyrim. Other Dwemer followed the Kragen, forming four-city states in western Skyrim that were often attacked by the Nords: in addition to Arkngthamz, there were also the cities of Bthar-Zel, Mzulft, and Raldbthar. These Dwemer clans mostly got along, and it was a prosperous time for them: they even built a great library in Blackreach called the Library of Arkthzand. Of course, these Dwemer clans soon started fighting over Aetherium and weakened themselves.
So where were the Snow Elves during all of this? It seems likely they were hiding deep underground in Blackreach even before the Dwemer came to Skyrim. They had to have been organized enough at this time to construct the Chantry, and some sources suggest that Snow Elves were known for their husbandry of Chaurus even before they became the Falmer.
So the Snow Elves likely lived underneath Skyrim, still as themselves, for centuries after their final battle with the Nords. It seems likely they sought refuge with the Dwemer when they arrived on the scene because the Dwemer could fend off the Nords militarily, for the most part.
We know that the city-state of Nchuand-Zel existed at the time around 1E 420, but did not participate in the Aetherium Wars between the other Dwemer city-states. Nchuand-Zel was one of the city-states that provided refuge to the Snow Elves; we know this from the translation of Calcelmo's stone which records the pact between the Snow Elves and the Dwemer:
And so your people given pass into our Halls of Fire-Water and...our power. Many of your people killed by...-tower-speak-throat kings of the wood, and your wills were cast down, and we heard you, and we sent our slaves/servants against your enemies so bring you caverns(possibly 'underground'). Only by gift of Dwemer...time-never your wisdom and only by musics...your lives new. We exile your acknowledgement...We exile your spoken gift, we...We...acknowledge...treaties foods our. And as your vision fades, as darkness comes forbidding...our...and light our high, by what...your life from...and...your final journey...music your new eternal.
What is illuminating to note here is that the blinding of the Falmer is not associated with some toxic mushroom, but with Dwemer "music" or tonal manipulation. My thinking here aligns with this fascinating lore post from 10 years ago. The bottom-line I am working from: the Dwemer used their "music" to plunge the Falmer into an eternal darkness.
Coincidentally, what source of darkness do we know that the Dwemer were messing around with in roughly this time period? The Dark Heart, found in Blackreach.
To rewind a bit first: before the Dwemer came to Skyrim, Blackreach (and the Reach) were ruled by underground vampires who relied on the Dark Heart (an artifact primarily associated with Namira) for sustenance. When the Dwemer came along, they stole the Dark Heart from the vampires and studied it in the Library of Arkthzand in Blackreach. According to Count Ravenwatch in the Second Era, the Dwemer built an orrery designed to "manipulate various cosmic forces—tonal, aetheric, and kinetic—to chart the expanse of the Void."
Whatever the Dwemer used the Dark Heart for clearly depleted its power. When the vampires reclaim the Heart later in the Second Era, after the Dwemer have pulled their vanishing act, the Heart is not able to sustain them as it did before.
My theory: the Dwemer used the power of the Dark Heart to twist the Snow Elves into the Falmer in order to make them weaker and more subservient. This is what depleted the Heart's power. Much like the Falmer, the vampires who use the Dark Heart's power become gray and twisted. And in reference to the Heart's power, Lady Belain says:
"To taste of the dark is to taste infinity."
This seems to echo the words from Calcelmo's Stone, with its forbidding darkness and "new eternal" music.
Everything about the Snow Elf -> Falmer transformation suggests an immediate change that could not simply be the result of a change in diet or "evolution" over a few thousand years. The Falmer you come across in ESO are basically identical to the Falmer you find in Skyrim many centuries later. Gelebor himself is skeptical that the mushrooms alone were responsible:
"The blinding of my race was supposedly accomplished with a toxin. Certainly not enough to devolve them into the sad and twisted beings they've become."
Remember how short the timeline is here: the Snow Elves were organized enough to build the Chantry in the early First Era, but 400-600 years later they've become the Falmer. Assuming that the Snow Elves are as long-lived as the Altmer, that is a quite small number of generations. I cannot think that toxic mushrooms and Dwemer cruelty alone could account for the transformation. But whatever the cause, the Snow Elves are transformed into suitable servants for the Dwemer.
Word of the pact takes a long time to reach the Forgotten Vale, where the Chantry is.
Why weren't the snow elves here affected?
"The Chantry is quite isolated, so it took some time for word of the dwarves' offer to reach us here. By the time the compact had been completed, it was too late for us to even attempt to intervene."
Is that why you had retained your sight?
"Correct. We only numbered perhaps a hundred at a time, so our presence remained a secret to the dwarves and the Nords. Ironically, our undoing came at the hands of our own people."
Okay, let's think about the timeline again here. The Chantry was an active place of worship in the First Era—initiates regularly came to visit the Wayshrines and complete pilgrimages. We know the Chantry was not completely cut off from the world, because it is a visiting initiate that infects Arch-Curate Vyrthur with vampirism.
We also know that there was likely a gap of generations between the initial Dwemer/Snow Elf pact that turned the Snow Elves into the Falmer, and the War of the Crag between the rebelling Falmer and the Dwemer which only ended when the Dwemer vanished in 1E700.
Presumably, the Falmer did not come to the Chantry of Auri-El and wipe out the surviving Snow Elves until after the Dwemer were already gone.
But why did the Falmer attack the Chantry in the first place?
Remember: the Falmer are an organized and intelligent people. They have a civilization, even if Skyrim portrays them as cave monsters. We do not see them attacking just for fun. So why would they launch a massive assault on what is basically a church?
Their aggression makes sense if we consider that their initial transformation was associated with the Dark Heart, an artifact of Namira. One potential explanation: Namira is a traditional enemy of Auri-El, and it makes sense that she would be a champion of the new Falmer.
More significantly, though, it seems quite possible that the Falmer, much like Vyrthur, would have felt abandoned and forsaken by Auri-El. Both Gelebor and Vyrthur refer to the Falmer as the Betrayed, but it was not just the Dwemer that betrayed them. It was their cherished Auri-El.
Gelebor claims the Falmer "swarmed the Chantry in vast numbers," which is unusual; all of the other recorded Falmer attacks we know about are small smash-and-grab operations, assaults by small groups of Falmer. As previously established, only the Snow Elves knew about the Chantry, suggesting the Falmer retained memory of the Forgotten Vale's location after their transformation. Gelebor speaks of the "hatred" of the Falmer, and in this context it is not hard to imagine the cause of that hatred. For the Falmer, the Chantry was a symbol of everything they had been taken from them. They were no longer a race with any use or respect for Auri-El.
The book Touching the Sky describes the process the arduous pilgrimage that Snow Elf initiates underwent as a result of their "paramount desire to become one with their god, Auri-El." If we take this book as gospel, then we understand that this pilgrimage was incredibly meaningful to the Snow Elves; those who failed would be shunned by their community, "their faith and loyalty in Auri-El would be scrutinized and their remaining days filled with shame and regret." Keep in mind that the Snow Elves are already living underground, at this point in history.
To build the Chantry and conduct the pilgrimages in such a context suggests an incredibly strong faith tradition. The Falmer attack on the Chantry perhaps reflects their sense of betrayal at the loss of that faith. They have been corrupted by the Dwemer (and potentially Namira) and subjected to centuries of war, first with the Nords and then with the Dwemer. Given this, it likely would have been stranger if they'd rolled up to the Chantry ready to walk the path of the Wayshrines and return to praising Auri-El.
Of course, the number one rule when talking about the Falmer: remember that they are not a monolith. By 4E201, there are no doubt many different Falmer tribes with various concerns and perhaps even various different forms of religion. My favorite example is the Falmer Warmonger that you find wielding Auri-El's shield and fighting frost trolls in a forested section of the Vale. Of course, because it's Skyrim, your only potential interaction with this Falmer is to kill him and take his shield. But it's very interesting to think about what this Falmer was doing. Was he a potential champion of Auri-El, trying to prove his worth?
Let's finally consider the collapse of the Inner Sanctum at the end of Dawnguard, symbolically. For devout Snow Elf initiates, reaching the Sanctum after the difficult pilgrimage and climbing the steps was supposed to represent "the last true testament of their loyalty" to Auri-El. Now, in the Fourth Era, it is impossible to complete that last step. There is no returning to what was. I interpret this in company with some lines from the diary of Faire Agarwen:
"We know that we can never again be the Snow Elves and live freely in this world…we know now to survive we must be born anew. Outside, we will appear as though we belong here. Inside, we will carry our truth and our scars."
The Falmer will never return to being the Snow Elves, and that is fine. They are something else now, and they are surviving.
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