The Kelle. Elder Scrolls as you name them. They have often been used for prophecy.
Yes. Your prophecy comes from an Elder Scroll.
The Elder Scrolls is an open world action role-playing game series developed by Bethesda.
The franchise began with the release of The Elder Scrolls: Arena in 1994. This was not
only Bethesda's first attempt at an original concept, but also their first RPG. But it
didn't start out that way. Initially, the game was simply known as Arena and was not
to be an RPG at all. Instead the player and a team of fighters would travel about a world
fighting other teams in various arenas until the player became the grand champion. A sort
of gladiator type of game. At some point during development, Bethesda decided to include side
quests to bring some much needed variation to the gameplay. It wasn't long until they
realized that the side quests where a lot more fun than the tournaments themselves.
The gladiatorial gameplay was dropped altogether and Arena became a full blown open world role-playing
game focusing on quests and dungeons. But there was a slight problem with this decision.
All material had already been printed using the name Arena. Even the cover art for the
game give the impression that this is some sort of fighting game with an audience. They
decided to add the title The Elder Scrolls with Arena as a subtitle to give it more of
an RPG-sounding name. When it was first released in 1994, it wasn't exactly a success with
only a couple of thousand units sold. But as time went on, the game spread through word
of mouth and eventually became popular enough to get a sequel two years later in 1996. The
franchise slowly grew in popularity with each new installment and is today one of the most
popular video game franchises out there.
Open world RPGs are known to be quite expansive regarding both features and actual in game
world size. The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall stands out from most other games because of
its ridiculous, and some might say, unnecessarily vast map size. It's just over 160,000 square
kilometers. To put that into some kind of perspective, that's almost the size of Florida
in the US or two-thirds the size of the UK. I mean, if you think the world of Skyrim was
huge it's not even 0.03% of the size of Daggerfall. It would actually take real-time weeks to
get from one side of the map to the other. But Daggerfall ain't got nothing
on Arena though. Arena's map size is over 6 million square kilometers. As a comparison,
Australia is roughly 7.5 million. It would likely take you several months trying
to cross this world. The thing is that almost all of this was done using procedural generation
and not by hand. So while these games are not exactly comparable to their finely tuned
and hand crafted modern relatives, it is nonetheless an impressive feat for games released two
decades ago.
When Bethesda worked on Oblivion they considered adding children to the game to make things
more realistic. But this proved to be a very difficult decision. Because if you could kill
children in the game, it would no doubt make for some extremely negative press. But if
they made the children invincible, it would undermine the purpose of adding children in
the first place, as it wouldn't be realistic. In the end they decided to exclude children
from the game completely. When development began on the next game, Skyrim, this dilemma was
brought up once more and this time they did indeed include children in the game. But as
most of us know, they where made invincible. However this decision was most likely made
very late into development. Because if you use console commands or mods that disables
their invincibility, you can actually kill them. But what's interesting here, and possibly
morbidly so, is that the children actually make unique noises upon death.
This could mean that Bethesda planned for this to happen at some point during development.
Furthermore, if the player kills Braith. Then Lars Battle-Born, who was bullied by Braith,
will thank you for doing so.
This is even though killing her would of course be
impossible during normal gameplay, suggesting that this was at one point a feature in the game.
In many Elder Scrolls games you will find subtle references to fish sticks. For example
in Morrowind there's this book called Capn's Guide to the Fishy Stick.
In Oblivion, M'aiq the Liar has this to say...
If you approach Sheogorath in Skyrim he also mentions fish sticks.
This all began back in 2001 on the official forums when a user started
rewarding others with an image of a pirate holding a fish- or (in this case) fishy stick. This practice
soon spread outside of the website and grew to become a quite popular meme and even continues
to this day as a sort of greeting when welcoming new users to the forums. Bethesda took note
of this and liked it so much that they decided to include Fishy Sticks in their games ever since.
If you find yourself at this location on the map in Skyrim you'll find a stone bridge near
a waterfall. If it's your first time crossing the bridge, you'll witness two goats walking
across it. Soon after a third goat climbs up from under the bridge and joins them. This
is a reference to a popular Norwegian fairy tale called "Three Billy Goats Gruff" about
three goats trying to cross a bridge with a fearsome troll trying to eat them as they
pass by. In the fairy tale the goats manage to defeat the evil troll and if you take a
look underneath the bridge in Skyrim, you'll find a dead troll.
In The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, there's an extremely well hidden sword named Eltonbrand
that can only be acquired if the player performs a very specific set of actions. First of all
you need the sword Goldbrand. You must then complete the quest Shashev's Key and then
talk to Sirilonwe. Before doing so, make sure you also have exactly 11171 gold coins in
your inventory. If everything was done correctly, a message will appear saying "Go to Hell, Carolina!",
and your Goldbrand has been replaced with the Eltonbrand sword. The reason behind
this elaborate easter egg is just as elaborate. The name of the sword is a reference to Elton
Brand, an NBA basketball player who once played for the Duke Blue Devils. This is because
a designer at Bethesda named Mark Nelson was a big fan of the team and his username, BlueDev,
is a reflection of this. In fact, the script that triggers this easter egg is called "bluescript".
The message itself is referencing the North Carolina Tar Heels, the Duke's most hated
rivals. The quest Shashev's Key is referencing the Blue Devils coach named Mike Krzyzewski.
Shashev's Key. Krzyzewski. And finally the very specific number of gold coins is a reference
to Mark Nelson's date of birth.
If you open the console in Skyrim and type "coc WindhelmPitEntrance" you will access
a place known as The Windhelm Pit. This small arena of sorts was cut from the game for unknown
reasons but was to be used to get out of prison in Windhelm. To be released from prison, the
player would have to fight various characters to gain his freedom.
Back in early 2011 Bethesda announced on their blog that if anyone delivers a child on the
day of Skyrim's release, 11-11-11, and then names him or her Dovahkiin, they would receive
free Bethesda games for life. It's not entirely clear if Bethesda were being serious but when
it comes to fans of video games, there's usually someone out there crazy enough to actually
do it. Thus, a boy was conceived on 11-11-11 and named Dovahkiin Tom Kellermeyer. And as
promised, he and his parents will have free access to any past, present, and future Bethesda made games.
During a quest in the Tribunal expansion for Morrowind, you're tasked with stopping a journalist
from printing lies about the king. Once you track him down and talk to him, one of the
dialogue options is "I'm looking for the Eye of Argonia." This is in reference to the title
of the second Elder Scrolls Adventures game that was canceled before release. It was supposed
to be a direct sequel to Redguard but as Redguard sold poorly, they focused on Morrowind instead.
The character in the game is supposed to serve as an analogue for Bethesda and how they "lied"
about an upcoming sequel to Redguard.
The lore in this franchise is vast. It's incredible how much though has gone into creating this
universe reaching far beyond the scope of the games themselves. Each game takes place
in one specific province on the continent known as Tamriel. The exception being the
first game Arena which actually lets you explore the entire continent and The Elder Scrolls:
Online will eventually encompass all of Tamriel as well. But Tamriel is only one of the continents
on the planet Nirn. The other major continents and islands are Akavir, Atmora, Yokuda, Pyandonea,
Thras, and possibly Aldmeris if it exists. Very little is known of these other continents
and islands but Tamriel and Akavir are said to be the two largest. The planet Nirn also has two
moons called Secunda and Masser which you've likely observed during some late night adventures.
Personally, I used to be an adventurer like you but then I took an arro-
Masser is the larger of the two and Secunda is actually orbiting Masser and not Nirn itself. Nirn exist within
the mortal plane known as Mundus. The Mundus was first conceived by a divine being known
as Lorkhan. But Lorkhan could not create the Mundus alone so he either convinced or tricked
other immortals known as et'Ada to assist him in its construction. Those who helped
to create the Mundus became known as Aedra (meaning "our ancestors") and those who did
not became known as Daedra (meaning "not our ancestors"). Some of the Aedra gave parts
of themselves entirely to the creation of the Mundus and became the eight planets and
moons. Also known as the Eight Diviners. In very simple terms, think of the Mundus as
something similar to a geocentric solar system, just with you know, a lot of magical stuff.
Nirn is the center with the other eight bodies either orbiting around it or in close proximity.
Beyond the mortal plane we find Oblivion. This is the home to the supernatural entities
known as Daedra. Those who did not want to create the Mundus and thus continues to exist
within the realm of Oblivion. The immortal Daedra and the Daedric Princesses are both
feared and worshiped by the mortals within Mundus, a theme commonly explored throughout
the franchise. The mortals on Nirn cannot actually see or detect Oblivion in any way. Instead,
the realm is interpreted as the vast black nothingness of space. The only real indication
that Oblivion exists are the stars, including the sun. These are in fact not stars in the
common sense but rather holes that go straight through the realm of Oblivion, reaching all
the way to the realm of Aetherius. This realm is where the Aedra originate and is a sort
of opposite of Oblivion. Aetherius is a realm of pure magicka and through the stars
(or rather the holes) permit magic to reach the mortals on Nirn.
And that's a very very compressed version of the lore behind The Elder Scrolls.