Dagoth Ur

About

Dagoth Ur is the antagonist and final boss of The Elder Scrolls: Morrowind, which was released by Bethesda Studios on May 1st, 2002. In the game, Dagoth Ur is depicted as a powerful Chimer lord and the Lord High Councillor to House Dagoth. The character has been used in several memes throughout the 2000s and beyond, as well as featured in music remixes.

Origin

Before the events of Morrowind, Dagoth Ur was a Chimer lord named Voryn Dagoth, and served as a retainer to Nerevar.^[1] The Chimer discover that the Dwemer had found the Heart of Lorkhan and were using it to build a giant golem known as a Numidium to use as a weapon against the Chimer. Nerevar declares war upon the Dwemer shortly after this discovery.

Upon the defeat of the Dwemer, Nerevar comes into possession of three enchanted artifacts left behind by the Dwemer's Tonal Architect, Kagnerac: the legendary hammer named Sunder, the crystal dagger named Keening, and the heavy gauntlet named Wraithguard. These three artifacts were used as tools to control the Heart of Lorkhan and tap into its energies without causing harm to their user. Nerevar left these tools in Voryn's possession while he debated with the Tribunal to decide what to do with them. Upon Nerevar's return, he discovers that Voryn had used the tools to tap into the Heart's energy for himself and attain godlike powers. Voryn now called himself "Dagoth Ur," and he fought with Nerevar and the Tribunal which ended in the death of Nerevar and the disappearance of Dagoth Ur.

The "Profane Tools" of Kagnerac
Keening (Left), Wraithguard (Center), and Sunder (Right)

In Morrowind, you play as the Nerevarine, who is the reincarnation of Nerevar, and eventually, reacquire the tools and face off against Dagoth Ur once and for all. However, he can only be truly defeated by using the tools to destroy the Heart of Lorkhan and sever Dagoth Ur's connection to it, which causes him to become mortal again. Dagoth initially mocked the player if they attempted to fight him using forgeries of the ancient tools, but this was never implemented in the final game and only exists in unused dialogue and items.

Spread

On December 14th, 2013, Zanizoos posted a video to YouTube, which puts Dagoth Ur's voice clips to the Weebl tune "Joy Robot". The video, titled Dagoth Ur Fanfiction, received over 780,000 views in over 8 years (shown below).

A music video was made using Dagoth Ur's voice clips by young scrolls and was posted to YouTube on October 26th, 2017. The video, titled "Dagothwave," has received over 6.1 million views in four years (shown below, left)). On May 2nd, 2018, Sorenova made a music video with Dagoth Ur's laughter voice clips put to various background images. The video, titled "dagoth ur destroys vvardenfell (circa 4E 05)", received over 610,000 views in over 3 years (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References