Something weird about the Dwemer just hit me while reading Calcelmo's notes

[ScrollsOfTamriel]

the more I dig into the lore stuff in Skyrim the more I'm convinced we're not getting the full picture on what actually happened to them. Like, everyone just accepts "they disappeared" but the in-game texts keep hinting at something way stranger.

Calcelmo's got all these research notes scattered around Dwemer ruins and he's clearly onto something about their disappearance, but the game never really lets you follow that thread. And then you've got the Oghma Infinium stuff from the Daedric quest, which mentions the Dwemer in this weird cryptic way that feels intentional.

I'm not saying it's aliens or whatever, but I think the Dwemer situation is deliberately left vague because the developers wanted to keep that mystery alive. Like, we know they vanished during the War of the First Council, but how and why in a metaphysical sense? That's the part that gets glossed over in favor of "they were arrogant and it backfired."

Anyone else feel like a TES VI could actually use this as a plot hook? Not saying it will, but the groundwork is already there in Skyrim if Bethesda ever wanted to revisit it properly.

 

[DragonbornVet]

The Dwemer mystery is definitely intentional, but I think you're reading a bit too much into Calcelmo's notes specifically. Dude's just a scholar doing his thing - he doesn't actually uncover anything game-changing, he's mostly confirming what we already know from the lore books. The real meat of the Dwemer disappearance is in stuff like the 36 Lessons and other in-game texts scattered across the series, not hidden in his research journals.

That said, yeah, the vagueness is 100% on purpose. The Dwemer are one of the few things in TES lore that Bethesda has deliberately left as "we're not explaining this fully" and I respect that. It makes them feel alien and unknowable instead of just another solved mystery. The War of the First Council angle is the closest we get to a concrete answer, but whether it was metaphysical, magical, or something else entirely - that's the point. We're not supposed to know for sure.

The Oghma Infinium reference is just flavor though, not a hidden clue. That book shows up in a Daedric quest and talks about a lot of things in cryptic ways - that's kind of the whole aesthetic of Daedric artifacts.

As for TES VI using it as a plot hook, nah, I doubt it. Bethesda's been pretty consistent about keeping the Dwemer as a closed chapter. They're more interested in exploring what they left behind (the automatons, the ruins, the tech) than explaining where they went. But I get why you'd want that thread pulled.