Falmer



The Falmer were once a proud people with an unusually great aptitude for magic. They had a strong resistance to frost, as their skin was coated with a thin layer of blue-white ice. They inhabited Skyrim before the Nords returned from Atmora, and were responsible for the Night of Tears. They had a civilization which rivaled even the Altmer of the Summerset Isles. They had their own language, which was written in a complex and nearly indecipherable alphabet. They were purported to use spears and archery in Combat.

After the Night of Tears in the late Merethic Era, Ysgramor and his Five Hundred Companions launched a campaign to drive the elves from Skyrim. Ysgramor and his heirs succeeded, and by the second century of the First Era, during the reign of the Nordic king Harald, the last of the Falmer were driven from Skyrim to the island of Solstheim. The Falmer's civilization was obliterated at the Battle of the Moesring with the death of their leader, the Snow Prince. The remaining snow elves were scattered or slain, and were never heard from again.

Unknown to the Nords, many Falmer sought sanctuary with the Dwemer of Skyrim. The Dwemer agreed to protect the Falmer, but did not trust them. The Dwemer forced their Falmer guests to consume a type of toxic fungus found growing deep underground which rendered them blind. The Falmer became servants of the Dwemer, and then their slaves. The Dwemer made the fungus an essential part of their diet, ensuring that all future generations would be as powerless as their current slaves. The Falmer were embittered by this betrayal, and rebelled against their dwarven masters. They constructed the Great Statue of Irkngthand, which contained the "Eyes of the Falmer", two massive gems embedded in the eye sockets. The Falmer fled deep into Blackreach, a gigantic cavern inhabited by the Dwemer. Thus began the War of the Crag, a bloody war between the Falmer and the Dwemer which took place far below the surface of Skyrim. Sai, the god of luck, attempted to help the Falmer, likely around this time, but they were very hard to find and unfriendly towards him. Mara later condemned the ice elves, and considered them "gone altogether and forever". In 1E 700, when the Dwemer disappeared, the Falmer were left to spread freely throughout Blackreach. However, centuries of subterranean slavery, combined with their permanent blindness, had left the Falmer crippled, and years of fighting the Dwemer had left the race bloodthirsty and brutal.

A small handful of Falmer managed to avoid becoming slaves to the Dwemer, instead retreating to hidden shrines such as the Chantry of Auri-El. These few remaining Snow Elves (as they prefer to call themselves) look upon their twisted kindred (which they refer to as "the Betrayed") with pity. However, these sentiments were not shared by the Falmer, as they attacked their untainted cousins with the same ferocity that they displayed towards the other surface races.

There are two types of Falmer Characters: Pre and Post Slavery Falmer.

Pre-Slavery Falmer Characters
The following Characteristic baseline, Skills, Talents, Traits, and Powers apply to all Pre-Slavery Falmer Characters. Although not every Race receives an Item in from every category. Traits: Elemental Resistance (Frost) (75), Power Well (50), Elemental Weakness (Fire) (50), Reistance (Cold) (2)

Betrayed/Post-Slavery Falmer Characters
The following Characteristic baseline, Skills, Talents, Traits, and Powers apply to all Betrayed/Post-Slavery Falmer Characters. Although not every Race receives an Item in from every category.

Talents: Honed Senses (Hearing) (Per)

Traits: Resistance (Poison), Resistance (Cold) (2), Blind, Elemental Weakness (Fire) (50), Sun Scarred

Other: Falmer Characters take a -10 Penalty to Survival (Int) Skill Tests made above ground and suffer a -15 Penalty to Fellowship based Tests to interact with non-Falmer.

Powers: Ears of the Betrayed