Board Thread:Lore Discussion/@comment-4092092-20130801070333/@comment-26893431-20170530174135

Dapoculos13 wrote: Thank you, CarloV3r.

I did about as much I could to convince him of the Orcs' Meric ancestry, and I don't know what else I could give to him that you haven't already. Frankly, the way he essentially brushed off my sources was just...dismissive. It felt like that, at least.

Anyway, on top of the Discerning the Transmundane quest requiring their blood, there's also their sharply pointed ears and a long lifespan shown by Urag gro-Shub. Orsimer are clearly capable of having a Meric lifespan, because he states, and I quote "Of course I do. If I didn't, most of these books would've been burned to ashes or dissolved to nothing before the Third Era." He says this if you ask him "You take your work very seriously." If his in-game statement is true, he'd be over 600 years old.

Call me a skeptic, but I don't think Urag is the type of wizard who would be extending his life via magic. From what I can tell, this privilege is reserved for the most powerful and well known of wizards, a good example being Neloth, Divayth Vyr, or the Psijic Order, and Urag doesn't appear to be skilled enough to acheive such a feat. No, Carlo went around it, severly differently. You quoted wiki pages, Carlo quotes sources. The big difference here is that pages are written by people on the wiki, sources are ingame.

The transformed Falmer also have pointy ears, but they are no longer the Elven race they used to be, hence why you don't need Black Soul Gems for them. Long ears on their own are not an argument.

Urag is a mage, one who works in a library even. The chances of him finding ways to alter his life is highly logical.

There's no source stating that Mer tend to get 600 years old by default. We only have a source stating they tend to get 200-300 years old, and only older if they use powerful magics.