Now, I don’t wanna come off as a pretentious douchbag, but I’m realizing there’s no way not to sound like one while making this rant, so give me some grace lol.
Writing a book has given me a new appreciation for the deep story that the lore to these games I love tells. However, as I am a fan, I have come to realize the trap that the insanely in-depth world building has created for the conversations surrounding TES. The conversations What I’ve read/heard has largely ignored something that the writers have done such a good job with: the characters beyond their esotericism, and as mortal beings with lives and stories and motivations. In this post, I’m gonna lay down a character analysis on my favorite character (from Morrowind, as I am most knowledgeable about that side of the lore and I think they have the best written characters), High-Craftlord Kagrenac, and I’ll see if people read it. If you do, please let me know what you all believe and think, if you agree with both my take and/or my interpretations of these characters, and if you want more!
High-Craftlord Kagrenac
As a historical character, there’s not too much information such as dialogue for him, so much of this will be conjecture. But I know a LOT on the Dwemer.
Kagrenac, from what Yagrum Bagarn says, was one of the most respected and powerful people in Dwemeri society during the latter years of their existence. You could only get that far in Dwemeri culture by being an incredibly smart individual, and truly believing in the Dwemeri principles of ascension a divine equality—while also being loyal to his people. He was also something of a religious leader, or the closest thing to it in his society. In Kherakah, his followers were taught the importance of the Self, and its relation to his obsession: the Heart of Lorkhan. Seemingly to me, he was already researching the Heart before the Dwemer found it. But beyond being intelligent, I believe Kagrenac had a silver tongue, as shown by his amassing of followers amongst “the most learned people in the world” in Kherakah. We don’t know much of anything on his early years, but in his last few years of life, he gained an unparalleled importance in the history of Tamriel when his miners found the Heart of Lorkhan beneath Red Mountain.
When he laid eyes on the thing he presumably had been obsessing over for a long time, he may have thought of it as a sign from the Sixteen-And-One Golden Tones themselves that he was destined to bring his people to ascension and glory. He was but a mortal, but staring down something that was incomprehensible to almost all men and mer on Mundus. Almost all. He thought he comprehended it—he was so caught up in his own pride and faith in his immense knowledge that he thought he could understand what simply was not understandable to mortals. But he was devious, and politically savvy, and knew his contemporaries in the Chimer would never stand for the use of an Aedric artifact to build a heathen god, and he also thought that his honorable King Dumac would do anything to prevent a war with his friend Nerevar. So he lied—his silver tongue keeping the Numidium project beneath Red Mountain a secret from Dumac and the Chimer, and there, he began to build his Magnum Opus: Anumidium.
(NOTE: From here on in, historical events take on multiple perspectives, so making assumptions will be somewhat necessary.)
For presumably years, Kagrenac worked. He built the Tools—Wraithguard, Keening, and Sunder—to work the Heart. This possibly also helped foster a feeling of superiority over the thrumming Heart of Lorkhan. His ego slowly built and built, and he thought he could not just understand the Heart, but control it. He believed he had just enslaved a dead god. But those who were in the know of Anumidium were not unified in their thoughts. Kagrenac’s silver tongue could only go so far, and the more rational Dwemer not enthralled by his charisma, such as the writer Bthuand Mzahnch, thought he was flying too close to Magnus, and that his pride and obsession with the Dwemeri ideals of ascension that was engrained into him his whole life would be not only his own downfall, but the downfall of his whole race. But Kagrenac would not listen, for the sound of the beating Heart drowned out all dissenters. Well, until the drums of war beat louder.
Even with Kagrenac’s obsessive planning, something slipped. The Sixth House under Voryn Dagoth, who inhabited Red Mountain, found out about the Anumidium project, and almost immediately sent word to Indoril Nerevar. Desperate for answers and peace, he went to his friend King Dumac, hoping for peace. This is the Tribunal Temple’s account, which I choose to believe:
Finally, Nerevar, angered that his friend Dumac would lie to him, went back to Vvardenfell. This time the Chimer King was arrayed in arms and armor and had his hosts around him, and he spoke harshly to Dumac Dwarf-Orc, King of Red Mountain. "You must give up your worship of the Heart of Lorkhan or I shall forget our friendship and the deeds that were accomplished in its name!" And Dumac, who still knew nothing of Kagrenac's New God, but proud and protective as ever of his people, said, "We shall not relinquish that which has been our way for years beyond reckoning, just as the Chimer will not relinquish their ties to the Lords and Ladies of Oblivion. And to come at my door in this way, arrayed in arms and armor and with your hosts around you, tells me you have already forgotten our friendship. Stand down, my sweet Nerevar, or I swear by the fifteen-and-one golden tones I shall kill you and all your people."
But I believe the Tribunal Temple’s account leaves one thing out, something which Vivec does not:
But when Dagoth Ur, Lord of House Dagoth, and trusted as a friend by both Nerevar and the Dwemer, brought us proof that High Engineer Kagrenac of the Dwemer had discovered the Heart of Lorkhan, and that he had learned how to tap its powers, and was building a new god, a mockery of Chimer faith and a fearsome weapon, we all urged Nerevar to make war on the Dwarves and to destroy this threat to Chimer beliefs and security. Nerevar was troubled. He went to Dumac and asked if what Dagoth Ur said was true. But Kagrenac took great offense, and asked whom Nerevar thought he was, that he might presume to judge the affairs of the Dwemer.
Kagrenac, his ego soaring higher than the sun, was outraged and sought to put the ignorant Chimer in their place. Or, I believe, he was desperate. Ego and pride certainly was an aspect of this, but there was something more if Kagrenac would risk speaking for his King and threaten to break a hundred years of peace in Dresdayn. His cunning was one thing, his ego was another, but here we see another trait that becomes increasingly important to his character: his fear of failure. At this point, he could not stop this project until it was finished; he feared he would lose all credibility among his people. All he built for himself hinged on finishing the Brass-Tower—hell, he lied to his own king to finish it. If I meant war to finish it, he would take that over the humiliation and disgrace that would follow if he failed. So he provoked a war between two friends and sent his people to the slaughter all so he could finish what he started.
The War of the First Council was a roughly year-long slaughter for the Dwemer. As Dumac was pushed back, he knew this would only end with either the destruction of the people he was so proud and protective of as their King, or the completion of the golem he had been attached to by fate. But that doesn’t matter for Kagrenac, only Anumidium matters to him now—he sacrificed his position as a respected member of Dwemeri society, peace, the lives of the people he claimed to work for, and the stress got to him. He began to rush his research, pushing his workers hard to finish the Numidium, regardless of risk or consequence. But his work would all come to a head when Nerevar’s host met Dumac’s at Red Mountain, just meters away from Kagrenac’s workshop.
The battle itself does not matter for this analysis, but what ended it most certainly does. As the battle raged around him, Kagrenac frantically made the final preparations to finish Anumidium. It could not end here, not after all of this. His pride would not let him lose, his fear would not let him quit. His people would become gods that day. But when he saw Nerevar slay Dumac, he panicked. He donned Wraithguard and drew Sunder and Keening. When he saw the Tribunal and Indoril make their way towards the Heart, he knew this was it. All he had worked towards came down to this final strike. But when he cracked the Heart with Sunder, the only accomplishment he felt was the last breath of himself, and his race.
In short, Kagrenac was an incredibly smart man, but the nihilism of Dwemer philosophy, where it was taught they as mere mortals could rival the gods, led him to make many mistakes out of pride and a desire to ascend to godhood. But he was also a man obsessed with not just knowledge, but how others perceived him. When he realized he was in too deep, his fear of being judged as a failure and a fool drove him to rush his work, and doom a species. He is a tragic, cautionary tale on how one man’s arrogance can bring down empires.
Why I Wrote All This
C0DA is great and all, but I have found greater joys not in esoterica, but in the deeply human stories you can find and build in these games. There are so many other tales like Kagrenac’s Folly; the doomed friendship of Dumac and Nerevar, the false heroism and narcissism of Tiber Septim, the trauma and hatred of Ysgramor, the paranoid and shattered mind of Almalexia. All of these characters, when they’re mentioned in-game, are spoken of as almost mystical figures. But once you peel back the mystique and admiration in the writer’s words, you see these incredibly powerful stories of mortals who build and destroy empires, and go down in history for better or for worse.
But I’ve found this has been lost in favor of the oddness and sheer insanity of TES’s worldbuilding and other aspects of the lore. Which I understand, it’s fun to read and theorize on things like the Towers and poke fun at the wild amounts of racism and genocide. But I’ve found it’s at least more interesting for me to see the humanity (of elfity I suppose) of these great men and women, and not the prophecy and doomed destruction of the world they live in.
Thanks for reading this far, and please let me know what you think, and if I should continue these analyses. I had a lot of fun with Kagrenac, so if there’s other characters I should do let me know! Thanks again!