I will have to disagree with you on that, I don't see animals with the tool use and complex social systems of the falmer. Aside from animated corpses, nothing else that uses weapons and armor have white souls. And even if they were "cavemen", that does not make then non-sentient, nor non-mer.
It really just sounds like your trying to justify a small mistake.

The problem I see inherent here is that men and mer can be rendered into creatures after centuries of fundamental metaphysical changes. In the case of the Falmer, they lost their Mer status after being enslaved by the Dwemer and becoming a primitive race, much like Goblins and Giants. Their souls became white souls, and so the size of the souls is equal to creatures themselves.

In other words, it's regressive evolution.

What about Oblivion goblins? White soul, armor wearing.

And I find the Falmer to be very intelligent. They're just an underground race. And they kick my ass constantly in master mode. -_-

By the way, I think that some of them have learned to repair and maintain dwemer constructs, so I don't see how they wouldn't be intelligent black-souled beings.

The falmer were kept as slaves by the dwemer, who forcefed them a special kind of mushroom to make them better slaves, turning them into sentient creatures in the long run.

The falmer who are actual mer haven't existed for a very long time.

But the Xivilai, like the Dremora are a well explained exception.
They are not man or mer, they are daedra. Daedra souls are not protected by the Aedra, there is no (known) convenant between the 8/9 gods and the daedra.
If anything the Aedra actively oppose the Daedra and their influence on Mundus.

Young sir, I am going to ask you to hit the books again.
Or read the thread.

Horse Armour?

What about Draugr?

The soul of the race shouldn't have anything to do with what the race does. It's like saying werewolves souls aren't human souls anymore. Or vampire wouldn't be human anymore.

It's something that can't be explained with lore, but it doesn't matter that much either..

well that is a really good explanation. there you go OP, falmer arent black souls because arkay said "screw you, cave-ridden druggies".

The mushrooms merely blinded them and made them dependant on them. As for turning them into non-sentient (presumably what you ment) creatures, they did nothing of the sort.


They may have been absent from the surface for 3,500 years, or there abouts, but that hasn't been long enough for the 4 playable mer races to be classified as "non-mer", especially given that most mer of aldmer heritage live several hundred years.

Which, whilst not imposible, leave the problem with them having less than grand souls.

Really, as a few suggested, seems to me that Occam would suggest it was a simple mistake on the part of the devs.

Excuse me?

"This history would state that the Falmer were driven into the underground preceding the death of the Snow Prince, where they sought sanctuary with the Dwemer in Blackreach—who betrayed them, making the Falmer into slaves and causing their physiological changes such as their blindness through a forced diet of toxic fungi."

What exactly made you refer to me as "young sir", anyway?

No, I meant sentient creatures, since they obviously ARE still sentient, but aren't considered actual Mer by Arkay.

/Edit: Hurrr, sorry for that double post.

Oversight. Even in their devolved animilistic state they are still mer and still have sentience.

If it bugs you just think of it as something the Falmer did during their time underground really annoyed Arkay, and he removed his protection from them, after all nobody knows anything about their history since the Dwemer vanished. Who knows why gods do what they do.

I did actually concede that I may have made a poor choice of words, the post you quoted shows that. I did however suggest that their primitive nature would put them closer to intelligent animals than men or mer.

and complex social systems? Evidence? Currently at best their organisation is more like a hive structure, with different castes in different roles.

Most generally it seems that Black Soul Gems are made by Necromancers for capturing human souls for experiments and creating their undead summons....Just a theory.

I don't know if this makes sense lore-wise.

But in the TES games pretty much anything that can talk in an intelligible language has a "soul" that cannot be trapped with a normal soul gem. Everything else has a normal "soul".

I don't think Falmer talk, so they fit the category of normal. Xivilai and Liches are another good examples, they appears sentient but has a normal "soul" since they don't talk (liches just mumble in oblivion). In Oblivion, Goblins squawk, and might be using some kind of language - they certianly have some kind of culture - but if they are talking it is not understandable, so regular "souls". In contrast Dremora Lords talk and so need a special soul gem.

ogres, goblins, etc. Lots of critters are as smart or smarter than falmer, but dont have protected souls.

From a design standpoint, anything that is a playable race, needs a black soul gem. Otherwise, white. I believe this was to keep people from slaughtering towns to train up enchanting skills (tho the black star makes that less true), and to give an 'evil' feel to necromancers in oblivion. on top of that, skyrim is already filled to the brim with bandits and the like, if falmer didnt give white souls, where would you get them?

From a logic standpoint, only 'true' man or mer (ie, playable races) are under arkeys protection. The protection itself is what elevates a soul to 'grand' when it is overcome with a black soulgem? I mean, why would the soul of a dumb human be worth significantly more than that of a smart ogre otherwise?

Anything past that is overthinking it.

Game mechanics =/= Lore

The only black souls are the races that worship Arkay and are under his protection.

Plenty of sentient races with language, a culture etc have white souls.
Giants, Spriggans, Goblins, Falmer.

WTH? The Falmer are literally cut'n'paste Oblivion Goblins (minus the insanity of the warlords) and those had white souls.

Falmer seem like they're pretty much just Skyrim's equivalent of Goblins to me.

Falmer are creatures, not NPC's.

NPC's (technical) have races, only actors with a race have black souls, this includes vampires and werewolves (since they need a race to have those abilities).

Falmer aren't a race, they're "generic" creatures in the game. They don't have customization for example like 'proper' races do (in technical terms). Hence they're white souls.