The Elder Scrolls

Red_Sparrow

Red_Sparrow

World's most mediocre superhero
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This is the dedicated Elder Scrolls general thread; a place to talk about and share things Elder Scrolls related.
News, games, lore, etc.

General Information:
The Elder Scrolls is one of the most successful game series ever created and one of the quintessential traditional high fantasy universes out there.
The main draw of the series is highly in-depth RPG gameplay and unfathomably deep lore.
Wikipedia link.
Nirn is the planet the games take place on. Because of its many different pocket dimensions and planes it is actually far larger than our world. On Nirn rests four large continents, only one of which is explored over the course of the game series. This continent is called Tamriel. Tamriel as a whole is a roughly late medieval civilization, though more advanced in certain ways, mostly socially and politically, with bits of advanced technology, and widespread use of magic (which is studied and practiced by mages). Tamriel is filled with numerous different races that possess paranormal attributes. Normal humans, as in us, do not exist in this universe. Tamriel has experienced numerous apocalypses, continental wars, and setbacks keeping their civilization from progressing beyond medieval empires. As a whole Nirn is looked over by benevolent gods called the Aedra, and malevolent gods called the Daedra. These primordial beings each exist in their own side dimension, presumably maintaining the physical laws and forces of the world, and only reach through the planar barriers to gently interact with Nirn. Divinity and religion, as well as racial culture are the major themes of the games.

A map of Tamriel
Size estimates of the continent and Providences. (It is roughly the size of all Europe)
The population of Tamriel is unknown though estimated by experts to be around 200 million.
Technology: The level of technology in Tamriel is roughly late medieval, though is difficult to pin down and varies based on province, era, and culture. Ignoring magical devices the most advanced technology present are flintlock pistols and cannon equipped galleons in use by the Redguard Navy. Taking into account magical devices there are (were) teleport pads, airships, machines that run on souls, and colossal war golems capable of incinerating battlefields.

Magic: The level of magic in Tamriel is low-powered, yet widespread. There are numerous established guilds and universities for training mages academically. Magic to a mage is both a science and art. Magical ingredient and enchanted item shops exist in most major towns. Magic sees use in nearly all walks of life from scholars, to doctors, to soldiers. The average mage can shoot jets of intense fire dozens of meters to quickly incinerate targets and melt armor, project a shield capable of stopping arrows in flight, or heal minor wounds with a touch. If they have the psychic energy and training to do it.

Military: According to lore and The Elder Scrolls Online: The Imperial Legion is the most powerful and organized military on the continent. An Imperial Legion military deployment involves several legions each holding 6000, comprised of knight cavalry, heavy infantry, with longbow volleys, and mages enhancing their fellow troops with buffs, acting as medics rapidly closing wounds and mending bones, and artillery to bomb areas that call for it, depending on the type of mage, respectively. The average knight of the Empire dons full steel plated armor with solid steel shield and longsword, likely with one or more magical items boosting their effectiveness. An Imperial knight is also at least of peak human physicality given their ability to withstand orc charges and cleave into steel armor with swords. Imperial diplomats make full use of their paranormal ability called "the voice of the emperor" to be more charismatic and convincing than normal.

Religion and culture is a huge parts of the Elder Scroll's world. What with superhumans, magic, gods, and afterlife being quite real in this universe, this should come as no surprise. Most inhabitants of Tamriel are deeply religious if not spiritual, and are beholden to the will of these vastly powerful supernatural entities. Each race have gods they worship, an afterlife they strive to enter, and a racial culture to uphold. These profound ideological differences lead to most of the conflicts and topics of debate in-universe.
Dangerous, mysterious, and profoundly magical, Nirn is a place of utter fascination to many.

For more information on Lore please watch: The Elder Scrolls Lore Series
This is basically the game series made for those who like reading a lot of lore and traditional high fantasy stuff.

Feel free to discuss or share anything you want about TES here.
 
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megathreading franchises is silly. People talking skyrim and people talking TES aren't saying anything the other needs to hear.
 
Gangrene said:
Did the MMO werewolf fad die down yet?
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Unfortunately no. My werewolf guild leader is still prostituting himself off for huge costs to people wanting to become one.
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Allow me to pose a simple question to all those just arriving to start things off:
Which Providence would you like to host the next installment of the series and why?
 
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Hammerfell would make for a nice change of setting (arid desert region as opposed to the temperate forests of Cyrodiil or the tundra of Skyrim) and we already know control of the region was pretty heavily contested after the Great War, so it makes a fair bit of sense to have it be the place to start hitting them back.

Also, this is probably never going to actually happen, but I personally think it'd be really cool if Elder Scrolls 6 involves finding Numidium again (maybe it fell back into time or something, idk), and using it to curbstomp the Dominion, just like Talos.
 
Red_Sparrow said:
Unfortunately no. My werewolf guild leader is still prostituting himself off for huge costs to people wanting to become one.
--
Allow me to pose a simple question to all those just arriving to start things off:
Which Providence would you like to host the next installment of the series and why?
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Black Marsh

Cause the Argonians are my favorite race, but they're also the race we know the least about >.<
 
Red_Sparrow said:
Unfortunately no. My werewolf guild leader is still prostituting himself off for huge costs to people wanting to become one.
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As a someone who has not played the MMO... that sounds disturbing.


Red_Sparrow said:
Allow me to pose a simple question to all those just arriving to start things off:
Which Providence would you like to host the next installment of the series and why?
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Elsweyr, the khajit homeland has always interested as well as their species. So many variants and their homeland is also quite varied.

Other is High Rock, because the place sounds like a perfect place to have some Game of Thrones plots thrown around
 
Mandemon said:
As a someone who has not played the MMO... that sounds disturbing.
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lol. It makes sense in context. Players who are sufficient level Vampires and Werewolves can infect others but to do so it has a 7 day cooldown and is a somewhat rare ability.
A lot have taken to auctioning themselves off for a high price.
The slang kinda stuck in my guild.
 
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I want them to go for a two-fer next time. Maybe Valenwood or Elseweyr to either fuck with the Thalmor or get involved in a khajiit bosmer war. Or Black Marsh and the rest or Morrowind.
 
That would lead to even greater miniaturization. I'd rather not have that. In fact, a game that again only shows part of a province would make sense, to have less miniaturization. As for where, I think Valenwood has the greatest potential. Not only would it be an exotic place, the Green Pact and the Wild Hunt would make for great elements in a backstory. The story could get all mythological again.
 
Hammerfell would make the most sense both narrative and in a gameplay sense. People fucking love the Shouts in Skyrim, and removing them would be a huge step backwards without something to compensate. Hammerfell and its Redguards just so happen to be the home of HoonDing and the Ansei. Both of whom different enough from the Dragonborn to justify making a game about them, but similar enough that they can adapt the current shout system to fit in with sword singing.

If this gets made, there better be a HoonDing faction or I'll be really pissed.
 
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Polokun said:
Yeah, wasn't Cyrodiil basically supposed to be more akin to looking like Ancient Rome?
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Susano said:
Ancient Rome in a jungle.
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Kurt Kuhlmann said:
The Eastern people of Cyrodiil relish in garish costumes, bizarre tapestries, tattoos, brandings, and elaborate ceremony. Closer to the wellspring of civilization, they are more given to philosophy and the evolution of ancient traditions. The Nibenese find the numinous in everything around them, and their different cults are too numerous to mention (the most famous are the Cult of the Ancestor-Moth, the Cult of Heroes, the Cult of Tiber Septim, and the Cult of Emperor Zero). To the Colovians, the ancestor worship and esoteric customs of the East can often be bizarre. Akaviri dragon-motifs are found in all quarters, from the high minaret bridges of the Imperial City to the paper hako skiffs that villagers use to wing their dead down the rivers. Thousands of workers ply the rice fields after the floodings, or clear the foliage of the surrounding jungle in the alternate seasons. Above them are the merchant-nobility, the temple priests and cult leaders, and the age-old aristocracy of the battlemages. The Emperor watches over them all from the towers of the Imperial City, as dragons circle overhead.
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Kurt Kuhlmann said:
Refayj's famous declaration, "There is but one city in the Imperial Province,--" may strike the citizens of the Colovian west as mildly insulting, until perhaps they hear the rest of the remark, which continues, "--but one city in Tamriel, but one city in the World; that, my brothers, is the city of the Cyrodiils." From the shore it is hard to tell what is city and what is Palace, for it all rises from the islands of the lake towards the sky in a stretch of gold. Whole neighborhoods rest on the jeweled bridges that connect the islands together. Gondolas and river-ships sail along the watery avenues of its flooded lower dwellings. Moth-priests walk by in a cloud of ancestors; House Guards hold exceptionally long daikatanas crossed at intersections, adorned with ribbons and dragon-flags; and the newly arrived Western legionnaires sweat in the humid air. The river mouth is tainted red from the tinmi soil of the shore, and river dragons rust their hides in its waters. Across the lake the Imperial City continues, merging into the villages of the southern red river and ruins left from the Interregnum.
The Emperor's Palace is a crown of sun rays, surrounded by his magical gardens. One garden path is known as Green Emperor Road-here, topiaries of the heads of past Emperors have been shaped by sorcery and can speak. When one must advise Tiber Septim, birds are drawn to the hedgery head, using their songs as its voice and moving its branches for the needed expressions.
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It's a fair bit cooler and weirder than that.
 
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It does seem like the next game is going to take the fight to the Dominion, although I'm not sure that the next game would be in Summerset. Valenwood/Summerset would be neat, but they're probably sticking to one region/game.
Elsewyr would be pretty cool as well.

How has ESO treated those regions, anyway? I haven't looked much at ESO, and the little I've seen - Senche tigers, voting for becoming the Mane - has done little to encourage me to do so.
 
Susano said:
That would lead to even greater miniaturization. I'd rather not have that. In fact, a game that again only shows part of a province would make sense, to have less miniaturization. As for where, I think Valenwood has the greatest potential. Not only would it be an exotic place, the Green Pact and the Wild Hunt would make for great elements in a backstory. The story could get all mythological again.
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I'm not too convinced that Bethesda can't make a game that size work without shrinking everything. Because I'm not too convinced that the genre in general can't do that. They just need time, and to develop the shit out of the game.

Though, I guess we'll have to wait to see Witcher 3 and Dragon Age Inquisition to see if developers can go that far.

Though in hindsight, a smaller region of a single province would work too. I'd go for a size with a couple real large and detailed cities and their surrounding areas. Like, looking at a map of Hammerfell they could do the Southwest of the province.

Sentinel, Helgathe, Jilane, and Stros M'kai amount to a geographically interest map atleast, maybe the rest of the south too because if the main conflict is with the Thalmor big deal in the game there's no reason to go north, and the big honking desert provides a pretty good reason why you can't go that way.

Centering the city entirely around maritime cities would be cool, because they could focus on really developing the sea and islands, maybe even get us ships and go Black Flag in this shit.
 
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They have to scale everything down and speed up time.

Otherwise, would prefer weeks, or at least an hour, of real time just to get from one city to another, even when they are neighbors?
 
I think what Reveen means is "scale down everything even more". But I disagree: The size of the actual game area is hardly different between Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim. I see no reason why this should be different in future installations, so covering more in-universe space would most likely lead to more miniaturization.
 
Ah, Elder Scrolls. Shitty worldbuilding, great gameplay.

"Welcome to the most prosperous province in the Empire, the ancestral home of men in Tamriel for thousands of years!"

*looks out over shitty frontier wasteland filled with nothing but ruined civilization*
"Nice one. So where's all the highly populated, wealthy badassness this place has been constantly described as?"

"This is what we've got."

"Well I'm gonna go re-roll as a High Elf, because men are clearly fucked."

They had the opportunity to go full-on Anglo-Saxon sexiness, with armies of heavy chainmail clad huscarls with dane axes beating the shit out of each other over awesome stone edifices that have been lovingly built and expanded over thousands of years. Instead we get a handful of bumblefuck losers with quilted armor and iron axes squabbling over a half snowy dump. You are genuinely supposed to be able to choose the Stormcloaks in the belief that it'll result in a horde of angry Nords marching out of Skyrim and dealing with Altmer magic by smashing the offending casters in the face with axes, like one of the many mighty conquests Skyrim singlehandedly prosecuted in the past. Instead, I'm fairly sure their army might get crushed by a party of bandits on its way through Cyrodiil.

At this point I think they should just dump Elder Scrolls and make some other fantasy universe with no background except what they add in with each new game, because fuck me they can't realise pre-existing stuff at all.
 
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I think it's otherwise... great lore, not so good gameplay.

Seriosuly, some of the lore is so mindbogglingly weird you can't but wonder how they keep it all straight.
 
Mandemon said:
I think it's otherwise... great lore, not so good gameplay.

Seriosuly, some of the lore is so mindbogglingly weird you can't but wonder how they keep it all straight.
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It's cribbed from various mythologies and legends across the world, added onto some standard D&D stereotypes.
Demon-worshipping dark elves? Better-than-thou high elves? Wood elves that venerate nature? Vikings?
They mix it up to make it more unique, but if you look around then you can kind of see where they got the inspiration for stuff.

I mean, you know CHIM? That's pretty straight-forward. It's just making the assumption that everything is a Brahman-esque dream, and asking "so is lucid dreaming possible?"

I'd say that it has good lore and worldbuilding, but that's only for what isn't actually shown in the games. Beyond books, I mean. Gameplay is decent at best and the things you are actually shown in the games just don't live up to the hype and lose a lot of things in the transition from backstory to story. See Alduin, or Cyrodiil in it's entirety.
 
I agree. It is painful to see designers disregard established lore and fantastic descriptions to push shallow generic euro fantasy medieval bullshit.
On that note I was disappointed by Skyrim and the whole Stormcloak rebellion as well.
One day the games will again live up to their amazing lore and hype... one day...

(Thankfully I run Skyrim with around 2 dozen major mods which remedy most of my complaints.)
 
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