Jasper Matts

One of my favorite dumb things to do is to look up Inspirational Quotes on google images and then hunt to the most horrifically cheesy representations of them possible

Then I send them at my friends DMs unironically

An interesting detail for Actual Nerds

The Daedric Crescent visual from the Battlespire spinoff game was carried forward into Morrowind and ESO in some pretty interesting ways. Especially in Morrowind, where its featured as an architectural motif around ancient ruins and at the Ghostgate

Various drawings by LeFay

"Lesrizag the Crystal Ball"

From Julian LeFay's TTRPG Archives: The Potion of Beard Growing

While not related to Elder Scrolls at all, the imagery is Dang Amusing

'Tis not about prettiness Mr Lemon, but august and terrible function.

Portrait of Count Charus Valga of Chorrol, whomst died of death against some Nords in some conflict we never heard about

One thing Oblivion did which was pretty clever was screenshotting an NPC and slapping a watercolor filter over it to make it look like a painting

It's a cheap but fairly effective way of adding a historicity to the spaces you're playing in. And I wish they would've done it more throughout the game

Okay just found out the original in-game author of the books seen in the DF demos was originally "Ryders Bloc" — bro wasn't kidding lmao

Man this article makes me pretty dang sad.

Reminds of what Frank Darabont said before being let go from The Walking Dead: "We had a really successful first season, critically and financially -- you have an asset, I don't understand would you kinda needlessly punish it?" (paraphrased)

We have been granted access to even more from the estate of the Father of The Elder Scrolls, Julian LeFay. There is still even more we want to explore in-depth, and even more that we're working on preserving down the line, but today we wanted to share some high quality art scans.
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ah yeah true, biscuit gathering is among the most important of bi-daily buisness trips

when doth thou sleep? thy productivity levels are barking mad/awesome

Yo was that guy Tim McCracken? 👀

He mentioned in my chat with him that he was involved with a lot of the Yokuda and Daggerfall Covenant stuff. Rad dude.

Naw the other stuff comes across as very amateur, so I think it wasn't taken from elsewhere -- but it's totally possible.

It does seem to source an incredible amount of ideas from Lord of the Rings canon, with the Great Goblin Lord and wars between Dwarves and Goblins, and such.

There was a good chunk of original material written by the same tester (mostly nonsensical barfs of text). He also made up a number of the Yoku character names.

If I were handling this situation I'd take only a flavorful inspiration from Musashi's works for the Yoku, but dispatch the prose itself.

Yup...

For background: a small cabal of non-staff beta testers for TES2 were asked to write some texts so the bookshelves could contain actual readable books. One tester submitted a stack of Redguard books, and unfortunately no one on the dev side caught that the material was actually plagiarized.

In ESO you can travel to DLC zones via an activator outside the city. The High Isle activator is this ocean faring donkey from mainland Tamriel to middle-of-ocean islands. Pretty epic ngl.

A screenshot of The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall, wherein you could be werewolf mode and ride a horse and also levitate in the air at the same time.

me levitating across the seas to High Isle on this donkey

Man I'm getting pretty tired of all these CGI fungal/sand/floral/barf tv intros that are entirely deficient in narrative protein

It was cool when Daredevil did the original goop version a decade ago, but now every other show is doing it.

Please stop sending goop to my television, I beg of you

"The Daedra" by Mark Jackson, TES2 concept art; labeled as "Moloch Baal"

They never really got much play in the later lore, but generally these gods seem to be kind of Near Eastern in narrative aesthetic

Though Ted Peterson seemed to have recodified 'Baal' into 'Moloch Baal' before changing that into 'Molag Bal'. He also reintroduced 'Seth' as 'Sethiete' in a TES3 book

Funnest of facts: The 'The Elder Scrolls Chapter One: The Arena' video game has a bunch of temples dedicated to mega obscure deities and subjects of Tamriel.

And @jeffperryman.bsky.social did up a bunch of neat wall art and iconography for all the various temple types across the world's biomes.

End rant

Extended family also allows for bonus characters to whom a protagonist has an existing connection with to pop up as needed.

It allows for cool story reveals about somebody's past, or to work through a problem a character is having on a personal level with folks they know and care about in some way.

It embodies the fact that *people* actually come from somewhere, and where someone comes from informs their views on the world and how they deal with situations.

Whether someone was the oldest or the youngest or somewhere in the middle of their family unit. Thems is some meaty details for character

I adore the nuance of a character who comes from an actual family. It gives that character stakes -- something to lose, people to connect to, people to be in personal conflict with, and people to let down.

There's nothing wrong with that, certainly people in the real world come from such backgrounds. But it's so overused as a background prompt for stories of all sorts, and it often results in boring blank slate protagonists that lack actual ties to the world at large.

For short-form or slice-of-life fiction, I totally get wanting to focus your story down to a core group of characters and not overscope it.

But far far too many stories have characters with dead parents and they're orphans with no ties but evil aunts and friends they make along the way.

Begin rant: Something I've become quite fond of in long-form fiction is characters that come from actual families and have family trees. That's easily my favorite setting feature of A Song of Ice & Fire

Witness below the incredible McCallister family tree lore from the small indie film Home Alone!

💯💯💯

In addition, the globe from the game intro shows us a bunch of orbital bodies around Nirn as well!

Arena:Solar System - UESP Wiki - The Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages Arena's sky features a full orbital pattern for the solar system this planet is on, comprising two moons, other planets, and many many stars. It was implemented in such a way that one could feasib...

Something that has been lost over the years is the original "solar system" Julian LeFay created for the planet of The Elder Scrolls: Arena. It features a number of coloured blue and red stars, as well as a bunch of planets that have yet to re-appear in the series

=🌟🌟🌟=

en.uesp.net/wiki/Arena:S...