The Elder Scrolls

This is a /v/ related article, which we tolerate because it's popular or we can't be bothered to delete it.

The cosmology of the Elder Scrolls.

The Elder Scrolls is a video game series, and the setting of five main games and a number of spinoffs. Despite being a vidja, it is considered a type II game (indirectly related to traditional games, the first game was in fact based off one of the developer's homebrew settings), and /tg/ is very gay for this series and setting.

Setting

During the Oblivion Crisis, the Dunmer of House Redoran raised up the shell of the Great Skar to fight on their side, as a Giant Friendly Crab. This series is hardcore like that.

The games mainly take place in Tamriel, a continent consisting of nine seperate lands. After being buttfucked by the Ayleid for several centuries, Humanity rises up and overthrow their elven overlords, and took control themselves. After mucking about for another eight or so centuries, a man named Tiber Septiem steps up and leads his armies to conquer all of Tamriel to found the Third Empire. But instead of exterminating all the elves and beast races, they were allowed to co-exist with the other races and a time of prosperity began. Until Emperor Jean-Luc Picard died, and Mehrunes Dagon began to fuck his way from Oblivion into Tamriel, starting a chain of events that resulted in him being kicked back into hell by the Emperor's lost son, Sean Bean. He died in the process, and without an Emperor the Empire began to crumble. The Aldmeri Dominion (think Ayleid 2.0) sensed their weakness and began a war to subjugate the lesser races. The Empire only barely managed to stop them, and a tense cease-fire is currently in effect.

Races

Tamriel, shown alongside the now sunken islands of Yokuda, the original home of the Redguards, and Pyandonea, a land inhabited by the Maormer, sea-elves.

Aside from the first game, there are ten playable races in the Elder Scrolls games.

• Somewhere in between generic west-Europeans and Romans, Imperials are a civilised people, yet very adapt at warfare. Many hold high positions in the bureaucracy and politics of the Empire, and form a solid core of the Imperial Legions. The original lore described the Imperial Province of Cyrodiil as being tropical, this was watered down in Oblivion to a more generic and acceptable setting for the masses.
• The original ancestors of the men of Tamriel, the Nords are what you get if you take the Rohirrim, and add more viking. Tall, fair, strong and loyal, the people of the frozen province of Skyrim are one of the most imortant allies of the Empire.
• Bretons can be described best as half-elves from Bretonnia. Though the inferior elf characteristics have been bred out of race, their thin elven blood makes them adapt sorcerers. Their home province of High Rock is one of many quarreling factions, and court intrique is a way of life.
• The Redguard of Hammerfell are skilled warriors, though their individual independence makes them better suited as skirmishers and scouts instead of regular soldiers. They are skilled seafarers, physically more imposing than Imperials, and managed to fight the Aldmeri Dominion to a standstill, something tha the entire Empire managed only at the last second.
• The Bosmer seem as run of the mill Elves at first glance. Then you realise the Bosmer living in Valenwood strictly abide by the Green Pact: a code of conduit that enforces a carnivorous and cannibalistic diet, and forbids the use of vegetable matter as construction material. Resources based off animals (including humanoids!) and materials imported from outside Valenwood are an excempt from this, though.
• Altmer are more like traditional High Elves: haughty, long-lived, dismissive of the "lesser" races, and skilled mages. This, combined with that their home of Summerset Isle is the birthplace of the Aldmeri Dominion, might suggest that they are all snobbish assholes. A small number though rejects this life and lives amongst the other peoples of the Empire.
• Schisms in the Summerset Isles eventually led his followers, the Chimer, to the promised lands of Morrowind. Here they encountered the Dwemer, a race of progressive elf-kind, against whom they eventually went to war. Their eventual success and the ascention of three of their number to godhood, they were cursed by the Daedric Prince Azura, giving their skin a blue-greyish tint and bloodred eyes. By the fans, the re-chistened Dunmer are often compared to the Jews, mainly because they are disliked by the other people and are forced to live together in a borderline ghetto in Skyrim.
• The Orismer, also known as Orcs, are considered to be a race of Elves (which does not seem that outlandish to longtime fantasy fans). They are fearsome warriors who hold a place of honor in the Imperial Legion. They often had a kingdom called Orsinium, but that had a tendency to be burned to the ground by the races of man.
• Argonians are a race of lizard people, well-spoken and skilled as both warriors and mages. Some see them as emotionless due to their limited ability to form facial expressions, yet they are a friendly and intelligent people, but they WILL fuck you up if you mess with them.
• Khajiit vary from the other sentients more than any other race: their skeletal structure and dermal makeup make them appear as giant cats. Call them furries though, and they will end you on the spot. They are skilled desert raiders, merchants and farmers. Their prime export is Moon Sugar, a substance that can be described best as magical cocaine.

Another race of note are the Dwemer, who are basically human sized robot-building steampunk Dwarves. They have gone extinct sadly, because they were mucking about with a heart that once belonged to a god, and they accidentally erased themselves from existence when they tried to build their own god, in a cave, with a mountain of scraps. This information, combined with the fact they were based off ancient Mesopotamia, hints at they might very well be[s]benevolent[/s] (lolno, see what they did to the Falmer) Chaos Dwarves.

Games

Though several spinoffs were made, when refering to "The Elder Scrolls" only the five central games are being referred to.

The Elder Scrolls I: Arena

Jagar Tharn, the Imperial Battlemage and trusted servant of the Emperor Uriel Septim VII turns evil, locks the Emperor inside Oblivion, and takes over Tamriel. His apprentice Ria Silmane discovered this and told the player, so Tharn killed the former and imprisoned the latter. Yet Silmane persisted, and helped the player escape prison and revealed how Tharn could be destroyed: by recovering the eight parts of the Staff of Chaos from all over the empire. The player succeeds, kills Tharn, returns the Emperor and all is well. This was the only game to take place in all of Tamriel.

The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall

The player, a personal friend of the Emperor, is sent to the city of Daggerfall, High Rock to investigate a haunting by the ghost of the former king. Things quickly get out of hand when you discover the Numidium, a massive golem used by Tiber Septim to gain control over Tamriel. There are several mutually exclusive endings possible; canon opted to make them all happen in an event called the Dragon Break, where time and space took it up the ass hard.

This game is infamous for a number of reasons. First, it's the biggest game in the history of forever: though a good bit of it is empty space, this game features a map that's twice the size of Great Britain. As in, all of it. Secondly it has more bugs than Macragge during 745.M41 and is about as stable as a card house during Exterminatus. Third, dungeons are randomly generated, meaning you have ruins, ruins EVERYWHERE. Finally, the bizarre instructions. Early on in the game you get a letter from a person who wants to meet you in, say, Westfield Inn, Daggerfall. When you go to Daggerfall though, no Westfield Inn. Then you realise you have to look for the VILLAGE called Westfield Inn.

Oh, and there's a song that sounds like The Animals' House of the Rising Sun.

The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind

If you can explain at least 75% of what's going on on this image, you are a true fan.

Widely regarded to be one of the best vidjas OF ALL TIME. Taking everything good about the first two games, perfects it, raises its ass high and beckons you to make sweet, sweet love to it. Morrowind ships the player to the island of Morrowind Vvardenfell where you are to report to the perpetually shirtless crackhead called Caius Cossades to investigate a cult that is growing rapidly in size.

What made this game an instant classic was its new and unconventional story and setting, it's many factions, beautiful enviorment design (giant mushroom towers ftw), its empathis on your stats instead of your player skills (combat is more like a pen and paper RPG: there is being rolled to see if you hit your enemy, and for how much damage), the desolate beauty of the world, the unusual creatures, taxi services provided by massive ticks, and the smug end boss.

Two expansions were made: Tribunal, where you traveled to Morrowind's capital city of Mournhold after being attacked by an assassin, featuring a large city with its wide underground ruins, the wider ruins under them, and the even wider ruins under them. In Bloodmoon you travel to the frozen wastes of Solsteim, where you got to play Skyrim 9 years before Skyrim came out.

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

Emperor Uriel Septim VII and his heirs are assassinated, and it's up to the player who was unintentionally released from prison to fix that shit by finding the Emperor's last son. It was the first big-name RPG to appear on this generation's consoles, and made the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 work for their money.

Two expansions were made: Knights of the Nine was a Heroic Fantasy story that pitted the hero against an evil wizard, and Shivering Isles has the player recruited by Sheogorath, the Prince of Madness, to prevent the destruction of his realm.

Players felt that this game was being dumbed down for the console kiddies when compared to Morrowind, whereas the Oblivion fans claimed that Morrowind was a difficult mess of a game, unplayable due to its learning curve. It was kind of like the 3e VS 4e debate. And both groups were right.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

The player is once again imprisoned: on death row for jaywalking. At the very last moment when your head is about to get chopped off, Alduin, The Big Bad, appears and burns the village you're in to the ground, allowing you escape. The Empire is at war against the Stormcloak rebels of Skyrim, while Alduin, the World Eater, has returned and begins resurrecting Dragons to aid him, and it's up to the Dragonborn/Dovahkiin (a person that can absorb the souls of dragons and a master of Thu'um, the magic of the voice) to stop him.

Lauded as the great comeback of the series, Skyrim is one of the biggest grossing games of all time, and despite its radical redesign from the previous games (no more attributes, the including of feats, limited weapons) it is considered to be up there with Morrowind as the second-best game of the series. On release it was (and still is) a bugged up mess of a game, but it works, and The Dovahkiin and the Soundtrack are 2x Awesome!.

Memes

Like Dawn of War, The Elder Scrolls have spawned a considerable amount of memes.

• HALT HALT HALT HALT. The guards from Daggerfall shout this when you're running from them: it should have been a single HALT, but due to bugs it keeps being looped.
• N'WAH! Shouted by Dunmer in Morrwind onwards. Since you fight a lot of Dunmer in Morrowind, you hear this one a lot.
• STOP RIGHT THERE, CRIMINAL SCUM is Oblivion's most popular meme, and has its own page.
• If you become the champion of the arena in Oblivion, you can be followed around by the Adoring Fan: a Bosmer with an ugly as fuck haircut. He is often taken to Dive Rock, a location with one of the game's deepest drops, and kicked off.
• Mudcrabs are somewhat of a meme on their own, but in Oblivion they are a frequent subject of discussions between people having seen and avoiding them.
• Wonderful! Time for a celebration! Cheese... FOR EVERYONE! Shouted by Sheogorath during the Shivering Isles main quest.
• FUS RO DAH! is one of the first Dragon Shouts you learn in Skyrim, and is highly effective against pretty much anything, especially if it's got a cliff behind it.
• "But then I took an arrow to the knee." is a terminally unfunny meme that is sometimes said by the guards you meet in Skyrim. It has been butchered into pretty much anything.