Board Thread:Lore Discussion/@comment-24.44.141.89-20131113224543/@comment-24358064-20131230185408

The Akaviri Invasion of Tamriel at the start of the Second Empire has always been identified with the Tsaesci, so I don't think I need to argue this point further. It is of course possible that the Tsaesci are only the snakes and had an army host of non-Tsaesci Akaviri humans - but that would contradict the statement that the Tsaesci "consumed" all the Men of Akavir. Yet, as has been discussed at length in this thread, at the time the Akaviri were in Tamriel, there seem to have been serpentine *and* humanoid Akaviri. And if all the Men of Akavir have been "consumed" by the Tsaesci, then that means all those people must have been Tsaesci.

Another issue is interfertility. Men and Mer can all interbreed because they're all descended from the Ehlnofey; they cannot interbreed with Argonians for example. So when the people of Rimmen are called humans, I would assume that this means more than just superficial looks ("losing serpentine traits"), that they truly are human. People would notice if one couldn't interbreed with them. And such a transformation shouldn't be possible (unless, I suppose, the Tsaesci also are descended from the Ehlnofey, but that seems unlikely to me).

Mysterious Akavir is a pretty unreliable source by an ingame sensationalist author, but of course it's the most extensive work on Akavir we have. Even so, there is no reason why "consume" couldn't have meant "absorb, assimilate". Certainly, said sensationalist author of Mysterious Akavir wouldn't be the type to pick up such differences. And there is no reason why it couldn't have mean both literally and metaphorically, as so many things in TES mythology. In any case, there is nothing explicity stating that the Tsaesci take on the form of things they eat. Mysterious Akavir mentions the Tsaesci still look a bit like the Men of Akavir - well, that could be explained by either interpretation.