The Elder Scrolls

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This article is autistic and stinks of fanboy drooling over irrelevant horseshit. You can help 1d4chan by stripping it down to only the stuff /tg/ cares about.

During the Oblivion Crisis, the Dunmer of House Redoran revived a whole city, Ald'ruhn, which was made out of shell of the Great Skar to fight on their side, as a Giant Friendly Crab. This series is hardcore like that. They still lost.

The Elder Scrolls is a vidya series, and the setting of five main games and a number of spinoffs. Despite being a vidja, it is considered a type II game.

These games have a very extensive modding scene. Alas, half of it is sickening porn, and one quarter of it is just porn. The last quarter contains several different types of mods - for example, porn.

/tg/ also has a 40k/WHFB hack named Scrollhammer, and a number of pen and paper games (notably Morrowind PNP and the UESRPG) set in The Elder Scrolls universe.

On a sidenote, Michael Kirkbride (the guy whose responsible for writing the really fucking weird shit in this series) has declared all canon null and void, mainly because of how much he is still butthurt about Bethesda kicking his ass out the door before work on Oblivion began. Or would be, had he not willingly quit - this is just him being artsy fartsy, which he does a lot. How weird the setting is depends on whether you accept his statements on the series or not. If not, then the Elder Scrolls isn't too out there as far as fantasy settings go; if yes, then you better buckle up because things are about to get bizarre.

There's another level to this mess, and it's to do with the way in-game flavour books from previous games tend not to get phased out when the next game comes along - wouldn't be too much of a problem, were it not for the fact that most of the lore is pieced together by the fandom based on those very same in-game books. Long story short: imagine every canon clusterfuck 40K has ever experienced, only there are no editions to draw a neat line between lore changes. And on at least one occasion, time has been known to break in order to allow simultaneous mutually exclusive outcomes. You know how in 40K everything is canon, but not everything is necessarily true? Here, nothing is canon and everything is true, especially when it contradicts itself.

Setting

The games mainly take place in Tamriel, a continent consisting of nine separate lands. After being buttfucked by the Ayleid for several centuries, humanity rises up and overthrow their elven overlords, and took control themselves. Then, a few thousand years later, a man named Tiber Septim steps up and leads his armies to conquer all of Tamriel to found the Third Empire of Cyrodiil. 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, ending with the deatth of Emperor Jean-Luc Picard the 7th, and Mehrunes Dagon then 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.

Being Sean Bean meant 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. The fluff of this series, unfortunately, suffers greatly from dissonance between written background and shown foreground: in the background, we have a setting developing technologically and culturally practically from Stone Age to Renaissance with the added Chim-punk, to the point where the Empire have had a successful space program, while the forefront present in Vidiya is one of the worst offenders of the Medieval Stasis trope.

Gods, Deities and other important people

Most of the Gods in The Elder Scrolls are Et'Ada, the "original spirits" that came from the interplay of Anu and Padomay. These spirits later depending on their alignment with creation got categorized into Aedra and Daedra, if you took part in creation of Nirn you are Aedra, if you were egotistic dick and went to Oblivion to make your small shitty realm, you are Daedra. There are some beings of either indeterminable origin or that reached apotheosis so that they became of power comparable to the et'Ada. Most of the lesser Gods are usual spirits, Ada. Also all of Aedric and Daedric spawns are Ada, for example all of the lesser Daedra. It's also interesting that Daedra can infinitely spawn from Oblivion, when you kill them you actually banish them, their Daedric soul which is called all sorts of things like Visage returns to Oblivion and feeds on Azure plasm to create a new body for itself. Also generally Daedra don't reproduce because that drains them and they get born when they randomly poof into existence in their realm anyway, same goes for most Ada. While most races worship Aedra or Daedra, Argonians seem to exclusively worship Hist, and it is unclear exactly what the Redguard gods are.

Aedra

The Aedra (Our ancestors in Aldmeris) are Et'Ada of Anuic origin. Many of them took part in the creation of Nirn, during which they "died", their essences fused together into Mundus. As such they do not have "physical" forms like the Daedra have. Yet their spirits live on in Nirn: as the Gods of the world they live in every part of it. While not as "focused" as their Daedric counterparts they are more widespread, worshiped and give their blessings and artifacts more freely than the Daedra, plus they have control over one realm that everyone wants to have, Nirn.

Daedra

"Not Our Ancestors" in Aldmeris, the Daedra (singular: Daedroth, not to be confused with the crocodile-like Daedra called Daedroth) are the et'Ada who did not partake in the creation of the world. As such their powers on the Nirn are more limited than their Aedric counterparts. As such their powers are limited to the likes of curses and artifacts, and can only walk the realm in forms that severely limit their powers. Though Daedric Princes instead have their own singular realms, Realms of Oblivion. In those realms Daedric Prines have full control over everything because it is part of them and their mind, they are made out of them similar how Nirn is made out of Aedra, but with one being and on a smaller scale, leaving them more alive and in control. Despite serving as the setting's "devils" (in that the word Daedra pretty much means Devil) they are not all different flavors of evil; they range from "hate undead" and "wants to hunt dangerous game" to "prince of destruction" and "king of rape". Even if they are benevolent at times, the Daedra are not to be trifled with and are very dangerous.

Because the word Daedra covers all forms of Daedra, the title "Daedric Princes" refers to the seventeen most powerful of the Daedra, the Et'ada that created solo realms in Oblivion out of which all the lesser Daedra spawn. Do note that in this context, Prince stems from the Latin "Princeps" (First) and not from the more commonly used "son of a king". Another reason that the "son of a king" phrase is wrong is because the Daedra are genderless beings, their shapes changing on their whim. Like many folklorific devils, Daedra have true names (their protonymic) that can fuck them up badly. These names are of course closely regarded secrets, the only time it is known that a protonymic was used against its owner was in the game Battlespire where they player fucked Mehrunes Dagon up badly.

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.

The first two Elder Scrolls games had eight playable races; the three after that added Imperials and Orcs as playable races. There's also a ton of unplayable races as well, but UESP can explain them better than us.

The races of Tamriel are generally divided into three categories; the races of Men are the various ethnicities of human, the Mer races are the different species of elf, and the Beastmen are explained as "where the fuck did these dudes come from?".

Men

Imperials: Imperials are a civilised people, more or less Roman in culture.
Nords: The First Men of the setting. Basically not-Vikings from the frozen land of Skyrim.
Bretons: Best described as half-elves from Bretonnia with a hint of French-ness.
Redguard: Skilled warriors hailing from the sunken islands of Yokuda, and the only guys to have invented gunpowder. Fantasy Africans.

Mer (Elves)

Bosmer (Wood Elves):" Wood Elves in the "Dwarf Fortress" sense, only less insane.
Altmer (High Elves): Every stereotype of Elves being narcisisstic pricks, amplified a hundredfold.
Dunmer (Dark Elves): Elves with a blue-grey tint to their skin who got cursed by their Daedric patron for complex reasons.
Orsimer (Orcs): Descended from a race of Elves who got screwed over due to Daedric faggotry. Mostly assimilated into other cultures.

Beastmen

Argonians: A race of warm-blooded lizard people, well-spoken and skilled as both warriors and mages. Have a weird connection to semi-sentient trees called Hist.
Khajiit: Technically related to Elves, but hard to tell by looking. They are skilled desert raiders, merchants and farmers. Their prime export is said Moon Sugar, a substance that can be best described as magical cocaine made from crystallised moonlight.

Games

Though several spinoffs were made, when referring 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 Warp in the West, a 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.

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 Vvardenfell, in the Dunmer province of Morrowind, where you are to report to the perpetually shirtless crackhead called Caius Cossades to investigate a cult that is growing rapidly in size. This cult is revealed to be the doings of the Sixth House, a clan of Dunmer that was destroyed after its leader, Lord Voryn Dagoth, rebelled against Lord Indoril Nerevar, the leader of the war against the Dwemer. Nerevar died shortly afterwards (though it is unclear if he died from the wounds Dagoth inflicted on him, or that his advisors, the Tribunal, killed their lord so they could use the tools of the Dwemer to grant themselves near-divinity), and the Tribunal took over as the god-kings of the Dunmer. There was only one problem: Dagoth wasn't actually dead, and he granted himself near-divinity too.

You take the role of Nerevar's incarnation, and long story short you kill him properly.

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 who had been sought out the last known child of the Camoran Dynasty, the family who had ruled over man for years before Alesseia came and slap their shit. It was the first big-name RPG to appear on seventh generation consoles, and made the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 work for their money. By the end of the game, you end up driving off an army of Daedra but the Septim dynasty comes to an end.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Also known as the Volsunga Saga: The Game.

You're a prisoner, but in a shocking turn of events, this time you're actually told WHY! Turns out you crossed the damn border illegally, you filthy alien (of course, if you are a Nord it's just chalked up to bullshit bureaucracy). And you're to be executed along with the a group of captured rebels called Stormcloaks, along with their leader - Ulfric Stormcloak (who is voiced by Vladimir Kullich). Before you're sent to Sovengarde (Guess what that is. Go on.), a giant dragon god named Alduin the World Eater decides to introduce himself to the world. Alduin being referred to as Akatosh's firstborn son is an outright confirmation that he is also an aspect of him. Some background characters speculate that Alduin is Akatosh himself in the role of a destroyer.

You end up learning you're the legendary Dragonborn who can basically do any of the shit a real dragon can do, and defeat Alduin. And possibly stop the civil war too.

The Elder Scrolls Online

TES: the MMORPG. Generally poorly received and not worth the time to discuss.

Gallery

This article contains PROMOTIONS! Don't say we didn't warn you.

This is depressingly true.
Almsivi!
An average day for a TES protagonist.

The Elder Scrolls

Contents

Setting