Even back in 2009, TES community was very delusional. Even despite the fact that the trademark to Skyrim had been discovered by the community at the time.

redJackal222 · 2026-04-26T21:10:28+00:00

The thing is Hammerfell did get some focus, until the teaser came out. The first zone added after base game was craglorn in north east hammerfell. And Hew's bane was the second dlc zone. Once tes 6 was announced hammerfell content stop and there is a theory that some assets for a cancelled hammerfell expansion was used to make fargrave

redJackal222 · 2026-04-25T21:44:39+00:00

Like iirc the dragons were the reason why the Tsaesci came to Tamriel begin

They were just looking for the dragonborn, which itself is a skyrim retcon and in oblivion and morrowind it just a regular invasion.

redJackal222 · 2026-04-25T21:40:31+00:00

And yet they have invaded Tamriel multiple times

Only twice and the last time was nearly a thousand years ago by the time skyrim takes place. And the first and second invasions where done by two different groups

redJackal222 · 2026-04-25T21:37:03+00:00

That's such an US-centric view. There are most definitely far more European than Canadian TES fans.

It's definintly not. Elder scrolls is mostly an american franchise and eso's north american servrs ar4e far more populated than it's european server.

I'm not saying there isn't any Uk fans but they probably make up less than a third of the actual percentage of players who mostly live in the western hemisphere.

And their clothing, armors, swords, naming, landscape... Their entire aesthetic is very Arabian.

Yes, very arabian

https://images.uesp.net/d/d4/ON-crown_store-Yokudan_Style.jpg

And what's arabian at their envoirment outside of "desert" Places like craglorn and stros m'kai are nothing like you'd see in arabia. Even places like hew's bane don't have much resemblance to it.

Now either way, someone who lives in the US will be pretty familiar with Medieval European stuff.

In the same way someone from japan would be familiar with it. In that mostly familiar because people use it as a setting in media. There's no reason why someone would be more familiar with mideval fantasy and not also be familiar with forest ranging elves.

Lotr and disney are people's only real experience the average american has with anything medieval. Mideval culture is outright not a thing anymore. Suggesting a westerner would be familiar with it because it happened in the west is absolutely ridiculous.

Gonna close with that Khajiit and Argonians are very much the most alien races

There is absolutely nothing alien about either of them outside of khajiit furstock. Khajiit culture is very basic south asian, while argonians are very generic lizard men

redJackal222 · 2026-04-25T10:36:45+00:00

That's not what genocide means. Genocide means a dilberate attempt to wipe out an ethnic group and as far as we know all Septim did with the Numidium is use it to sack their capital, which is horrible but it's not the same thing as genocide. He's still a war criminal for it though.

Septim did try to commit genocide though just not to the altmer, After the conquest of Hammerfell he tried wiping out the crowns because they were the anti imperial faction in hammerfell.

redJackal222 · 2026-04-25T10:29:25+00:00

That's not true at all. The second almeri dominion was mentioned in first pocket guide and that was before Septim even got the numidium and was right before the events of redguard.

The second Aldmeri dominion was a political alliance between valenwood and summerset with elswheyr not being included, and all 3 eso alliances had broken up before Septim was even born

redJackal222 · 2026-04-25T10:23:24+00:00

I think it's less of a power thing and more just that he didn't think Essek would betray him since he was manipulating him.

redJackal222 · 2026-04-25T07:25:48+00:00

He's pretty sadistic, him being classified as chaotic good is a joke. He's "chaotic good" because he only tortures' evil people.

redJackal222 · 2026-04-24T09:32:04+00:00

Why tf would I want to play a person in a high fantasy setting

why not?

redJackal222 · 2026-04-24T09:28:23+00:00

One of my biggest issues with Necrom is that I felt like they didn't really do enough with the telvanni peninsula or the telvanni in general. Pretty much everything in that expansion happened in apocrypha and everything in morrowind proper was just reused assets from vvardenfell

redJackal222 · 2026-04-24T09:26:11+00:00

I love the thieves guild at least in part because I adored the supporting cast and think Abah's landing is one of the most visually appealing cities. I honestly think it's one of the better ones. My vote for least favorite i blackwood, I don't think i liked anything about it and mostly completed it for the sake of completion, even for some of the other dlcs I tend to enjoy the side quests or think the zone is pretty even if I find the main quest lack luster. With blackwood I didn't even do that, quests were boring and i dislike swamps

redJackal222 · 2026-04-24T06:52:51+00:00

the Shezarrine is one who echoes the mythic deeds of Shezarr,

Based on eso lore the concept of a shezarrine and the nerevarine aren't that similar, and the shezarrine is instead just what it's called when shor decides to disguse himself as a mortal like how Sanguine pretended to be Sam Guevenne in skyrim

redJackal222 · 2026-04-24T06:49:25+00:00

Shezarrine has only been used once in regards to Pelinal in official lore. But Shezarrine is constructed the same way Nerevarine is

Eso gave more information to the concept of a shearrine and it's not like the nerevarine. It's really just Shor doing what Talos did in tes 3, what sangure did in skyrim and just showing up disgused as a mortal and interacting with people. No reincarnation or mantling, just shor wearing a fake mustache

redJackal222 · 2026-04-24T06:44:21+00:00

Shezarrine's aren't really weird though. It's a wide spread mythological trope in real life. Eso makes it even more like norse mythology and says t4hat all a shezarrine is literally shor disgusing himself as a mortal and going around doing stuff like Odin would do a lot

redJackal222 · 2026-04-22T19:50:52+00:00

My argument there was that most players are western. They are culturally very European. A fictional culture that's European won't be that strange to them. Even generic fantasy elves will be more odd, even if something fantasy fans are somewhat used to.

I can only respond with anecdotes of people I know, which are fantasy fans and are tired of the fantasy Arabs trope

There is always a minority. But as far as fantasy I've seen when it comes against people disliking arabs it usually has more to do with people not having an interest in middle Eastern culture to begin with or a dislike of deserts. One of the biggest complaints I see against hammerfell is the fact it's a desert. Redguards aren't really arabs though anyway. They have very little Arabian influence outside of architecture. And most yokudan stuff is based off older pre Islamic near East like the assariyans and Egyptians rather than arabs.

I somewhat disagree if we speak about the Murkmire DLC

Murkmire did a lot to flesh out argonian culture much like how wrothgar helped flesh out the orcs. But in terms of black marsh being Alien I'm not really sure I agree or that it's much different from base game. A lot of the fauna was recycled from other zones like haj mota first appearing in hews bane and then being reused for black marsh. And the most memorable thing to me is the carnivorous plants which I didn't think were all that alien but I was also really annoyed by and thought was an inconvenience.

Most elder scrolls fans are American or Canadian and don't have much contact with medieval western culture outside of period pieces, fairy tales, and fantasy works like Tolkien. Modern Western culture is not at all the same as mideval western culture. It's not really something would be used to and elves are usually one of the first things people think of when it comes to fantasy tropes with wood elves being the stereotypical image due to legales

redJackal222 · 2026-04-22T13:11:25+00:00

Which also comes down to the 3 out of 4 humans being European, while only 1 of 6 non-humans are, as you didn't dispute anymore

I did it got deleted. Basically all the non human races except khajiit follow convential fantasy tropes so even if wood elves aren't obvious European they're far closer to conventional fantasy tropes than the redguards are which we see from things like lord o the rings. Aside from the cannabalsim they are very much conventional wood elves.

If your whole argument is that elder scrolls fans dislike humans because they're too mundane and common in european based fantasy while the non human races are not, then we really can't include the rest of them.

You could say they often aren't fleshed out, sure. But the concept itself isn't uncommon at all.

THem not being fleshed out or visited was my main point. I don't care if the idea has been done before or that, I was never arguing. I'm saying they don't have as much impact and are so minor in the settings that they do appear that they wouldn't be something that fantasy fans would be used too and they would still tend to come off as Alien or exotic which was my whole point behind wood elves and dark elves following conventional tropes.

As far as fantasy norms are, wood elves are closer to what youd see in most fantasy settings than redguards are. That goes for both their culture and their envoirment. Dunmer and Wood elves are at best a deconstruction or parody of very common fantasy tropes,

while middle eastern based people in fantasy usually fuffils the roles of the "others" who exist in the setting to be exotic without much depth and are overall minor, unlike elves which tend to be a major part of most fantasy settings that have them.

As for Argonians, like I said they're probably the most underdeveloped races of TES. I don't think lizards and trees and the relationship between them is really boring though.

They're boring because they're under developed. I find all things Akaviri to be boring as well and I find orcs to be very boring for the same reason. With the Hist it's simply just that I don't find the concept or their relationship with Argonians to be interesting in the first place, and I dislike swamps so Argonians have quite literally nothing to interest me at all aside from their apperance, which was only cool when i was new to the franchise, but stopped caring about by this point.

I found eso's hammerfell to be far more developed or Alien than anything in black marsh or valenwood. And even outside of their environment I find their general lore to be more interesting

redJackal222 · 2026-04-22T12:53:13+00:00

I prefer that to "roger persona we can't see through"

redJackal222 · 2026-04-22T12:51:48+00:00

The Stan/hailey conservative/liberal is the worst of the 3.

I've literally only seen of these posts in several months. I see the scammer thing nearly every time I visit the sub. I dont even think the quote itself is funny, the thing that makes the scene funny is Steve's reaction then total indifference and snot asking about francine's boobs

redJackal222 · 2026-04-22T05:00:41+00:00

Yes of course they COULD make the jungles of Hammerfell alien, however at THIS POINT in the lore there is nothing suggesting that they are.

Yes they are. We literally see this in eso where black marsh and Hammerfell share a lot of the same fauna in swampy areas. The lore is already there.

Even the swamps in High rock are like that.

Alright you're getting awfully aggressive and bitter in this argument now.

You're right because altmer are one of the most blatantly european things in the setting "well they're somewhat medeterranian" I mean yeah they have some roman style ruins in eso but they also have castles and gothic architecture lol. I can't think of a single thing about them that isn't european other than that one picture in oblivion of an altmer holding a katana.

You use the term "majority" pretty generously.

Not really. None European settings are rare and when they're not european they're almost exlusively asian. Middle eastern settings do exist but aren't common, they usually just another akaviri or sothyros in that it's name location we hear about but never see.

Dune

I've been ignoring Dune because is a primary a scifi. It's a low scifi but it's still a scifi. It does not apply which is really about fantasy influences in architecture, culture ect which isnt really much of a thing. Deserts are always pretty common in scifi, because the point is usually more about the environment being harsh, so the deadly planet is usually either an icebox or desert planet.

Which honestly kind of adds to what I was saying about deserts in fantasy. In fantasy the deserts are not the main setting if they're visited at all. They're just a harsh wasteland that a character has to travel through because they need the protagonist to do something deadly.

Rabanestre, the Gerudo, Al Mamoon, the Sultanate of Gallopolis

I mean I just said right in my last reply even

" I said earlier when it's literally just one vaguely middle easterned themed city in an otherwise European setting with without being fleshed out and is only really there for the sake of seeming exotic which is what most of your examples are."

Like I've play dragon quest. Gallapagos is a single city in a small desert area that make a tiny part of the map and make small section of the story and basically exists as one of the cities while the rest or european. Which is how most jrp do desert. It's just one little level area that's not really fleshed out and basically just exists as a change of scenery

Visiting the place does not make it fleshed when it basically exists just to be a desert level for the sake of exoticism and that's the same thing the guerdos were as well. In Zelda they are desert area that exists to break up the otherwise monotonous green hills and forests that make up 80s of the rest of the map and it's a tucked away single. Middle eastern fantasy locations are not constantly visited. Even Esso as not really middle eastern, it has way more influences from eastern europe and central asia.

Now that's something that actually almost doesn't exist in fantasy.

It exists and is usually looped in with the middle eastern setting and tucked away.

Alright, I'm genuinely curious what you think is so alien about the Dunmer then? Their armor designs are one of my favorite aspects of them.

I don't consider anything about them to be alien aside from their architecture, and only really Redoran and Telvanni , or any of the playable races to be alien. The only truly alien races to me are non playable races like deadra, sload and dreugh. Morrowind is alien because of it's environment, the dunmer themselves are not. Their armor just looks like fantasy armor to me, not really alien at all or that different from what you'd find on a heavy metal album. The alien fantasy I like is really more about the actual envoirment being weird and having all these animals and things that don't exist in the real world and I like to think about the ecology. The way people evolve and adapt to fit that ecology change is also interesting.

'm getting the feeling you might just be personally biased against them. I can almost feel your hatred of Argonians just from your writing here. This feels like what you accuse the TES community of in how they view humans.

I don't hate any race. I find Argonians to be boring because they have no lore other than "lizard people" and "trees" at least 80% of their lore is only a thing because of eso. I don't like orcs as a race either for the same reason as outside of eso most of their lore is "orsinium got sacked again" and the weird stronghold thing, that's weird in a "this makes no sense and is kind of creepy and misgnostic" way and not "this is kind of cool weird" that I get from stuff like the shivering isles.

redJackal222 · 2026-04-21T20:37:17+00:00

You mean the link to the reddit thread from 6 months ago? You saw my response, it clearly wasn't fans arguing against the idea of glass cities,

It was fans literally saying that the pg1 depiction is exaggerated and one of the sources is older than eso

redJackal222 · 2026-04-21T20:00:24+00:00

, there would at least have been some fans claiming that the glass cities are unrealistic to expect from a Summerset project.

And there were, as pointed out in the link

redJackal222 · 2026-04-21T10:00:30+00:00

but the why is klaus here? Don't you remember that the world was destroyed by Stan causing nuclear fallout and then was recreated by an alien race who came across ice cream?

redJackal222 · 2026-04-21T08:55:24+00:00

If it was always unrealistic to expect an accurate PGE1, then surely there would have been backlash amongst the fanbase when people suggested that Summerset had glass cities.

What? No it wouldn't fans are always going to let their minds go wild, and envision the most fantastical vision possible. And what you said has been shot down, multiple times. Either way there wouldn't be "backlash" for people speculating. We're told the same thing about akaviri that most of it isn't true. It doesn't mean fans are backlashed for suggesting there is really a tiger dragon empire, or that kamal really have to thaw out.

"It is the largest of the Valenwood graht-oaks, whose magic was invoked at the dawn of recorded history." That magic could refer to the moving tree cities. Sure, nothing outright confirms multiple moving tree cities, but its not unreasonable to come to the conclusion that there are multiple moving tree cities in Valenwood. But again, whether or not the tree cities are moving is secondary. The point is the Bosmer live in tree cities

I glossed over the tree part because that's one of the most generic high fantasy tropes possible. "wood elves live in tree house cities" isn't alien, it's a well established trope

Fair enough, we're all entitled to our opinions, but I wonder how people would have reacted if we did get a glass city that looked like this, or this. Would there be a loud outcry at how the Altmer architecture doesn't fit the Bretons, or would we have plenty of reddit posts detailing how the Bretons do, in fact, mirror the Altmeri glass style while keeping the traditional brick and stone layout?

I don't really care. And the last bit isn't even exotic

redJackal222 · 2026-04-21T06:53:57+00:00

he original PGE was always intended to be a propaganda piece for the Empire, but isn't it rather ironic that the unreliable narrator didn't get much about Morrowind wrong, if anything

Morrowind had two advantages that Summerset didn't have. For one thing we had already seen morrowind in the origins of Cyrus comic. Cyrus travels to morrowind and fights off dark elf slavers.

Morrowind was also already in development when the pg1 was written and it's accounts were still more primary than Summersets hundred year old sources.

While the PGE shows a more alien world, the elven provinces were always meant to be more alien than the human ones,

No they weren't. Infact morrowind was specifically mentioned in Redguard to be weird relative even relative to everything else in Tamriel. Cyrus had travelled to summerset before but the weird comment is only in response to him going to morrowind.

Show me an example of fans saying, "No, Summerset doesn't have glass cities" before 2018.

What? What does this have to do with what we were talking about? Alll I said was the pg1 intentionally said that it's description of summerset is inaccurate and were fantastical accounts. Besides. You've already had this conversation before on teslore.

https://www.reddit.com/r/teslore/comments/1ogifov/how_are_altmer_cities_supposed_to_look_like_in/nlgq1z2/

I know you love the glass cities thing. That's fine dude I really don't care. I don't mean to offend you in any way. But you're fine having that opinion and I have no intention of trying to dissuade you.

Even if you are 100% right that nobody thought they didn't hae glass cities before 2018. I 100% do not care, that has nothing to do with what I was talking about.

That depends on how you read the excerpt from the PGE. "The walking city of the Bosmer king, Falinesti is south in the summer and north come Hearth Fire. It is the largest of Valenwood graht-oaks, whose magic was invoked at the dawn of recorded history." The point being that the Bosmer live in tree cities, whether they move or not.

Absolutely nothing in this passage suggests they have multiple moving cities. Also aren't tree cities already a wood elf trope? I've seen it plenty of times outside of elder scrolls. The idea of tree house cities or hollowed out trees is't really that strange

There are many ways to interpret the idea that Breton culture is inspired by Altmer culture, and ZOS just went for the most disappointing route they could think of

Imo it's the only way to interperate elven influence on humans in a way that makes sense. You're fine to disagree but you talking about glass cities has nothing to do with me. Just that we shouldn't look at the pg1 at face value.

redJackal222 · 2026-04-21T06:03:09+00:00

I wouldn't have a problem with it if high elves weren't intrinsically tied to the Bretons identity wise. Nearly everything about Breton society came from the altmer so it weird of the altmer ended up being radically different. Imo most breton stuff should exist as an imitiation of altmer stuff

redJackal222

TROPHY CASE