Augur's Lore Breaking Quote

Revyn

In "A Time for Mud and Mushrooms" near Lower Bthanual the Augur says this:

"A Dwarf hold! Ha! What a silly bunch they were! Always whacking sprockets with their little baby hammers—toiling away on their tiny brass xylophones …. Good riddance, eh?"

Is this a reference I'm not getting? If not, then unless the Dwarves happened to use small tools, the Augur seems to be suggesting that TES Dwarves are similar to typical fantasy dwarves, being small in stature. While in the lore this is widely seen to not be the case. The Dwemer are said to be similar in height to the Dunmer, if not a bit taller. The idea that they're short comes from the Giants, for whom everyone would be considered small. This seems like a pretty odd error to make, since it's one of those "fun facts" about TES lore that a lot of lore readers are well aware of. So unless it's a reference to something, or he's talking about other dwarves, it seems ZOS made a pretty unimportant, yet odd error.

bongtokin420insd16

TBH I just thought he was making a joke lol.

Sharee

Revyn wrote: »

In "A Time for Mud and Mushrooms" near Lower Bthanual the Augur says this:

"A Dwarf hold! Ha! What a silly bunch they were! Always whacking sprockets with their little baby hammers—toiling away on their tiny brass xylophones …. Good riddance, eh?"

Is this a reference I'm not getting? If not, then unless the Dwarves happened to use small tools, the Augur seems to be suggesting that TES Dwarves are similar to typical fantasy dwarves, being small in stature. While in the lore this is widely seen to not be the case. The Dwemer are said to be similar in height to the Dunmer, if not a bit taller. The idea that they're short comes from the Giants, for whom everyone would be considered small. This seems like a pretty odd error to make, since it's one of those "fun facts" about TES lore that a lot of lore readers are well aware of. So unless it's a reference to something, or he's talking about other dwarves, it seems ZOS made a pretty unimportant, yet odd error.

They probably did. You don't build a fine clockwork mechanism using a sledgehammer.

WhiteCoatSyndrome

Remember that the Augur is only required to tell the truth when asked a direct question.

Yo_Donno

Also remember that the Augur is from a dimension in which "things are made of pure math" and beings from this dimension include things like "behemoth mind snails" which, seconds, after mentioning to you that they exist, he calls "cute."

Its likely that most things that Tamrielic peoples would consider "normal" the Augur considers "cute" or "adorable" which is generally associated with being small. When he says the Dwarves have "little baby hammers" and "tiny brass xylophones", it's possible that by Tamrielic standards these things are the normal size-- it's just that they are ineffective or small by the standards of whatever dimension the Augur is from.

Yo_Donno

[REDACTED]

RaddlemanNumber7

Whenever the Augur says that the thought which always goes through my mind is, "He must know what happened to the Dwemer. Why can't I ask him that direct question?"

AtAfternoon

If Dwemers are supposed to be around the same size as Dunmers, how come their ghosts are the size of Bosmers?

WhiteCoatSyndrome

AtAfternoon wrote: »

If Dwemers are supposed to be around the same size as Dunmers, how come their ghosts are the size of Bosmers?

The Dwemer ghost is crouched and leaning a little bit, the Bosmer is standing up straight. So the Dwemer is a little taller.

Ajaxandriel

Revyn wrote: »

it seems ZOS made a pretty unimportant, yet odd error.

Seems that you forgot the main point...

The Augur is lying all the time.

So basically, all this fluff can be as much *** as ZoS wants (unless you ask something directly and precisely, the psijics think)
The quote about the coral was fun and credible enough, yet.

LMar

I also thought he was was indirectly mentioning/comparing the hammers and xylophones to the Numidium or something else cosmically sized. Eg trying to change the whole of the Mundus with tonal architecture using mortal sized equipment. I mean normal sized hammer vs the whole size of the Mundus. That's pretty tiny in comparison

Vanthras79

Just remember to polish him at least three times a day!

M_Volsung

Vanthras79 wrote: »

Just remember to polish him at least three times a day!

I use him as a paperweight.

scipionumatia

Could he have meant "baby" and "tiny" as synonyms for "insignificant"?

and @RaddlemanNumber7 his last words were "good riddance eh?" I dunno about you but that seems to me that they did not ascend and instead got wiped out.

WhiteCoatSyndrome

scipionumatia wrote: »

his last words were "good riddance eh?" I dunno about you but that seems to me that they did not ascend and instead got wiped out.

I dunno, worded like that it works equally well if the Dwemer just up and left.

scipionumatia

@WhiteCoatSyndrome possibly. id like to know what happened to them officially, maybe we will be so lucky to find out in a future DLC of eso or in a different Elder scrolls title down the road. The reason I think he is alluding to them getting wiped out is from context, he clearly doesn't think much of them- at best he sees them as insignificant. If the dwemer had succeeded I would of expected him to say something condemning them for their success. The "good riddance" reads to me "they got what they deserved".
maybe not though, Bethesda has done a really good job keeping the mystery open to interpretation. sort of like one of those "choose your own ending" books.

Marginis

Yeah I'm gonna go out on a limb and say this doesn't break lore. There are plenty of reasonable explanations for this. Baby hammers could refer to small clockwork mechanism tinkering, in which big hammers would be... ineffective. Dwarves could be considered small by some standards, or the lore might hold them to be objectively small and the examples to the contrary might just be outliers. The auger could also just be being the auger, and we should take what he says with a grain of salt, in whatever way that is necessary. Either way, I never took this quote as anything near lore-breaking when I first heard it. Barely even stood out with all the other great dialogue in that quest.

KroRex

Just look at this dwemer hammer from Morrowind. It's really a "baby hammer".