Dark Elves , Dark Hearts Content . Orcs catch it in the tusks , no question . Doesn ' t matter where I go . I could be hauling rope in Wayrest or laying bricks in Bergama . Wherever I travel , I hear it . " Savage . " " Brute . " " Beast . " It used to really tear me up . I ' d look at my reflection in a bowl of water or a shop window and think " you know , maybe they ' re right . " But not anymore . Not since I moved to Vvardenfell . You want to get a good look at what " savage " really means ? Come spend some time with the Dark Elves . Sure , they clean up well . Everything here is clean and polished and pressed . But if you pull back the curtain even a little , you ' ll see evil . And I don ' t mean a clumsy , childish evil . I ' m talking about real evil — lusty , red - eyed , and smiling like a Daedra . Enslavement , murder , deception , cruelty — name a sin and you ' ll find it venerated . Name a Daedra and you ' ll find it worshiped . This island is corrupt , straight down to the marrow . Don ' t believe me ? All right , let ' s talk about bugs . Vvardenfell is crawling with insects — some as small as a babe ' s toenail , and some as big as mammoths . That alone wouldn ' t be cause for concern . I mean , the echatere back home give some folks the creeps . Most of these critters are hard to look at . But the real horror doesn ' t come from the bugs themselves . It comes from what the Dark Elves do to them . Take the nix - ox . Never seen one ? Picture a flea the size of a horse , propped up on six hairy stilts . Got it ? That ' s a nix - ox . Far as I can tell , they ' re gentle creatures . They don ' t bleat or grunt like other pack animals . They just wander about , grazing on hardened mushrooms — cracking them open with their great big mandibles and lapping up the fungus inside the husk . Gentle giants , they are . Too gentle , I think . Early in the morning , while the beasts are still dozing , six or seven Dark Elves will descend upon the herd like a pack of greedy welwa s . It doesn ' t take long for them to goad a dozen or so nixes into wheeled ox - pens . The leader of the crew will take a quick survey of the catch and mark their chitin with black chalk . Prices , you see ? Of course , some don ' t get marked . Some are too frail or two small to be of use . Rather than letting the creatures go , one of the wranglers will jab them with a spear . Right beneath the chin , see ? Then they kick them out of the pens and leave them to rot . The sad thing is that these are the lucky ones . Nix - oxen that make it to market are divided into two groups : Nix - Tovo , and Nix - Rima . Tovo oxen tend to be older and larger . You can snatch up two or three for the price of a single Rima . For the longest time , I couldn ' t figure out why . I finally asked one of the wranglers to explain why larger , stronger nix - oxen are so much cheaper . " Hide ' s too thick , " he said . " Can ' t pry it . " You see , an older nix ' s chitin is thick as oak bark . It cracks under pressure . Younger nixes ' hides , however , are more pliable . With a bit of pressure , you can separate the plates to see the organs underneath . This access is what makes Rima oxen so valuable . Wealthier farmers hire specialists called drenlyns to " train " their nix - oxen . It ' s a softer way of saying " break . " The drenlyn bores into the poor beast ' s back with an obsidian drill , and pries open the flesh to expose a bundle of nerves resting in a cavity they call the " drive chamber . " They set a few hook - like prods into the viscera , and then reset the plates . It takes the better part of an hour , but by the end , the ox is docile as a lamb . It just stands there . No restless pacing , no nervous twitching of the mandibles . Not alive , not dead . . . just a husk . I won ' t lie , it ' s hard to watch . But you know what the scariest part is ? The scariest part is how bored everyone looks . I looked into one of those drenlyn ' s eyes as he pried a nix - ox ' s back apart , and you know what I saw ? The same face my daughter makes when she milks an echatere . A weary , disinterested , nothing - face . Totally oblivious . Immune to shame . I ' ll admit , I ' m no green - child . I ' ll polish off a rack of spare ribs and wash it down with pig - gin without batting an eye . But digging around inside a beast ' s brains ? Turning it into a zombie ? It takes a black heart to do something like that . And you know what ? Dark Elves do it all the time .