fun fact! Orcs in TES are elves.
at some point in history a group of aldmer and their leader trinamac did something boethiah (a deadric prince) was not a fan of. So trinemac got eaten, turned into a deadric prince malacath, and all his followers were turned into orsimer (proper names of all elven races all end with -mer, altmer, bosmer, dunmer), that is orcs
Just to add in some fun tidbits to this:
If you go by one of the myths, Malacath is what was left of Trinemac after digestion. He’s the Daedric version of a Golgothan, not made of shit but born from it.
His plane of Oblivion, where his followers hope to go after death, is basically Valhalla after being reduced to ash. It’s straight up called “The Ashpit” with it’s notable features being the Great Forge and The Backbone of the Ashpit, which might be Malacath’s actual spine since Oblivion planes don’t make sense when you think about it for too long.
not really, but they all have the ability to piss off the wrong deadra and get cursed.
Dunmer are also changed elves, they used to be Chimer and have a similar ish skin colour to altmer. But then because their leaders (the tribunal) pissed off Azura she turned their eyes to volcanic red and skin to ash
Bosmer (probably) used to be unwilling shapeshifters until the green pact, though different in-lore historic accounts might disagree
and that leaves Altmer (from the playable races) who are technically the most direct descendants of Aldmer (the first elves). This is also in part why Thalmor exists, some Altmer see themselves as better than every other elf, and obviously better than the men or beast races. Also they want to destroy the world because they think the Aedra (the primordial spirits that used their powers to create the world and then stayed on Nirn [mortal plane] turning into mortal aldmer and men) made a mistake by staying (or were tricked into staying by Lorkhan), they think Altmer have a claim to godhood and will do anything to take it.
No mention of the Dwemer or Falmer, eh?I know they aren’t playable races, but they are pretty important lore-wise.
