Board Thread:Lore Discussion/@comment-2.100.92.38-20130821121230/@comment-11204276-20130823204046

ZakMarcus wrote: Are we including races from Akavir or the Sload? Or just playable races.

If including them I'd say the Sload. I mean, they conjour sea monsters and have airships for Talos sake. They're the most powerful mages, by a wide margin, in the known world. Plus the most technologically advanced race that's still around. The people of Tamriel should count themselves lucky that they only take issue with the Altmer, and not really enough for a full scale invasion of the Summerset Isles.

If only including playable races, I'd have to jump halfway on the bandwagon and say the Black Marsh is the most defensible. The entire province is basically a deterant to any invaders. But I don't know about saying they're the best at war in general, the only reason they were able to do their almost-genocide of the Dunmer is because they took advantage of Red Mountain's erruption.

Also someone said that the orcs always seem to lose even though they're the best smiths and strongest fighters. That's because as a race, they are the least organized in Tamriel. The largest concentration is in Orsinium, which is really just a city-state instead of a province. All the rest are spead across the various strongholds throughout northern Tamriel, or serving in the Leigon.

So if the Orcs decide to organize, it's safe to call everyone else pretty much boned. The Orcs, like all aggressively patriarchal societies wherein women are treated like posessions only to be owned by one "line" of men (the leadership of any stronghold passes from father to son via mortal combat and only the chief may wed and procreate) are doomed to ultimate failure.

Despite their obvious physical superiority, the Orcs' blind refusal to progress or organize in any way as a society beyond each individual theo-cultish stronghold leads to in-breeding, which ultimately weakens any bloodline which in turn weakens them as an entire race. (In the real world many if not all Orcs would have been wiped out by some genetic mutation by now and we would be discussing them in past tense. Even modern day Amish people allow outsiders to join them and eventually marry into their society and have children.)

Treating over half of the populace as little more than slaves and a pool from which only one man selects wives prevents the growth of the society and physiologically vital genetic diversity. It also leaves much female talent untapped. Their isolationist practices prevent growth and innovation.

The Orcs could be a great asset, perhaps the strongest, in the battle against the Second Aldmeri Dominion if they could separate their theology from their politics (church from state) and allow equal rights to their females. Any society that fails to do so, in the game world or real, is doomed either to spectacular failure or a slow fade into nothingness.