Board Thread:Lore Discussion/@comment-24098614-20150903224420/@comment-9212235-20150904063125

I'm going to go into some serious detail here, but before I do I need to make one thing very clear. The beliefs and goals of the Thalmor do not equate to the entirety of the Altmer populous. That would be like saying every American is a Democrat because the President currently is. Now on to the goodies.

Who is the main antagonist of the Elder Scrolls Universe? There are four main possibilities.

1. Thalmor: As you have stated, they are wholey evil. But they do not believe themselves to be evil. They have been wronged by Lorkhan and his Men. They have one goal. To return to the Dawn. There are three steps to this goal. First, remove mankind from the Dream and from possibility. Second, remove Talos. Third, unbind the Dragon. According to their beliefs these events must occur in this order. They believe that by removing Man, Talos will no longer be a god since he is subject to mythopoetics and with no one worshiping him he will be gone. Talos is Lorkhan, and by removing him this will remove the Dragon (Aka) from his cage that Lorkhan put him in.

I would like to point out that the theory of the Thalmor trying to destroy the Towers holds very little merit. This is going off of the idea that the Towers keep Mundus out of Oblivion. The main purpose of the Towers are mythic foci. They are the center of impossible magical energies. There is no evidence that the Thalmor are deactivating them. This is based on the idea that without the Towers, Mundus falls into Oblivion, and the Thalmor wish to return to the Dawn. Listen to Mankar and you can see how this might seem ridiculous.

2. The Sharmat: There are many theories surounding the ideas of what the Sharmat truly is. My personal idea is that the Sharmat is a Dreamsleeve entity attempting to return the Sleeve to its former and original state, without Dreams. He does this by integrating all things within the Dream into himself. I AM AND I ARE ALL ME.

3. Numidium: The Dwemer race. Walk-Brass. Big Stompy. The Giant No-shouting Spoiled Teenager. Numidium's entire purpose is world refusal. He shouts NO at the Dream to remove it and himself from it. This was the Dwemer's goal. At the end (or more exact 'an' end) Numidium breaks everything. Nirn is mostly gone, time is broken, every Altmer never existed, basically s*** is f***ed.

4. The Prisoners (i.e. the player): If the Tower maintain Mundus and deactivating them would destroy Mundus, then the Prisoners are doing their best to destroy Mundus. Every core game saw the destruction of a Tower. In Arena we destroy a potential Tower, the Staff of Chaos, basically a personal Tower-that-never-was. In Daggerfall we remove Walk-Brass from reality during the Warp in the West. In Morrowind we banish the Heart of Lorkhan and deactivate Red-Heart. In Oblivion we destroy Chim-el Adabal to summon an Avatar of Akatosh and by doing so deactivate White-Gold. Finally, in Skyrim we defeat Alduin which destroys the Cave and deactivates Snow-Throat. Oops.