Okay, first off I am sorry if this was mentioned before but I just noticed this for the first time and I've played a crap load of Skyrim. I am doing the quest Unfathomable Depths and at one point during the quest you get to a part where the apparitions are standing next to two Dwarven Spheres and I (finally) noticed something that they said which was that the two were ignoring them and one joked that maybe they were waiting for the end of the world and they took care of them. So Alduin's return somehow made these things come back to life, is that what happened? I have done this quest a few times and never picked up on this before. So maybe the Dwemer are stuck in some realm, sent there by an Elder Scroll and it somehow ties with Alduin... I don't know... just grasping at straws but I just thought it was weird that it seems Alduin's return woke up the Dwarven Ruins.... anyone know why? If I missed some simple answer then I'm a moron but just thought I might have picked up on something potentially big.

The Dwarven constructs have been working even after the Dwemer disappeared, for hundreds of years or more.

I doubt it since Dwemer Ruins were alive and kicking during Morrowind, as well as meeting Yagrum (being a Dwemer himself) in Morrowind and a dev confirmed that they disappeared from tapping into the Heart of Lorkhan's power with Kagrenac's Tools Keening and Sunder, thus trapping themselves onto the brass skin of Numidium.

the Dwarven Ruins never "slept", their machines continue to protect their cities even after so many time because they are programed to it, Alduin has notthing to do with them, just with the Dragons
you can find dwarven ruins in Skyrim, Hammerfell, Morrowind and High Rock, all with their machines still operating because they are self suficient

and the Dwemer are gone, they got absorbed in the brass Skin of the Numidium when they tried to become Gods, the only remaining Dwemer was in another plane when all this happened and that's why he wasn't affected, but he then contracted Corprus and last time we heard about him he was in Vvanderfell

Yeah that's what I thought... that's why it was weird when the two "ghosts" said that the Spheres were ignoring them.

I know the Dwemer disappeared when they messed around with the Heart of Lorkhan and got absorbed into Numidium or sent to a random realm somewhere outside the Mundus but I just thought it was weird that those Spheres didn't attack them... they'll attack anything that shifts by them.

Well considering Dwemer animuncli were awake in Morrowind, no.

Well then it's just a hole in the quest...Bethesda trying to explain how they got so deep into Avanchnzel... thanks for clearing that up.

More likely those units were malfunctioning or outright broken. We know dwemer animuncli stop working when they get too far away from their power source, so perhaps whatever acted as a magical antenna for recieving the transmitted power was damaged causing them to powerdown.

This theory is reaching. And we already know what happened to the Dwemer since Morrowind. You just have to be diligent enough to find the material and figure it out. If it piques your interest enough for you to post a thread on the subject then it shouldn't be a problem for you.

Theyve been working and running before the return of dragons.
They might have been waiting for someone to steal the Lexicon, their soul purpose.
Then again, that one guy who said that did die...
So what does he know! Besides whats in Sovngarde...

I've read up on the lore on the Dwemer, about a month after getting Skyrim, and understand that in Morrowind the Dwemer Ruins were up and working. I was just thrown off why this one seemed to be so different and maybe Bethesda was hinting at something... but like I said a few posts ago I was wrong. I was more curious than coming up with a theory.

Been a while since I did that quest, but from what I remember the bit about the spheres sounding like that they were either being led into a trap... weither by the constructs or other we don't know... or those were defunct just for narrative purposes of giving them a bloated sense of self confidence.

Either way, they clearly learned in the end not all the machines were defunct.