Dear Bethesda,
I love you. But we need to have a talk. I’d say it’s not a big deal, but, well. It.
It kind of is. You see, I was playing Skyrim--you remember Skyrim, right? It was the one you
made about winter and chest hair. Anyway, I was in Riften, admiring this beautiful,
thriving world’ you’ve created. You know, that’s something I’ve always admired about
your titles, Betheseda: you’re amazing at world-building. I mean, you made Morrowind
feel alive, which is just incredible, because, when you really think about it, that world
is basically just the fever dream of a person high on mushrooms. Fast travel was done by
silt striders, which, honestly, are giant bugs with a place to sit carved into their
exoskeletons. Did you know that they’re controlled by the driver directly manipulating
their organs? That’s disgusting! Anyway, the point is, you guys rock at making the
unbelievable seem believable.
Well, mostly. See, here’s our little sticking point, Bethesda. I mentioned I was in Riften.
Good old Riften. Riften, the city of corruption, with a river running through it. It’s also
the home of the thieve’s guild, which are, essentially, a bunch of crusty homeless people
squatting in a sewer. But then again, so were the Ninja Turtles, so we can let that slide.
Where was I? OH, right, I was talking about Riften. I mentioned it has a sewer. Do you
know what sewers are for? Poop. Pee, and sometimes Y. Which is fine. I mean, you gotta do what
you gotta do. But it got me thinking: where the hell do people in Tamriel relieve themselves?
I mean, I figured Khajiit just try to find some sand somewhere, and Argonians just...
someone just cleans their terrarium, right?
But let’s talk about sewers a bit more for a second. Modern sewers exist to carry waste
water from showers, toilets, and sinks from homes, which is brought there via the miracle
that is indoor plumbing, to treatment facilities, where more magic turns poo water into drinking
water, because god bless sanitation, and God Bless America.
Sewers have existed for a lot longer, of course. In fact, Archaeologists have found some form
of drainage canals in what is now known as Iraq that date all the way back to 3000 BCE,
though one of the peaks of human sanitation in early history was, duh duh duh DUH: The
Roman Empire. In fact, Rome had a water system that, honestly, is close to something we would
recognize. They transported water from many miles away, had a grey-and-black water system,
where water from the public baths would be used to flush human waste, and they had toilets!
Really! Pipes were made of lead, because of course they were, and at the peak of their
human waste advancement, plumbing in individual homes was starting to crop up, at around 100
BCE.
Of course, the Roman Empire collapsed like my self-esteem during puberty, and in the
West, silly concepts like flushing your poop away and making sure you weren’t drinking
water mixed with pee went straight out the window. But, this is our stop. Gotta get back
to the point.
The first sewers basically weren’t anything we recognize as sewers. They were just poop
rivers that were designed to take the crap that people threw out their windows out of
town. But as far as I’ve noticed, these don’t exist anywhere in Skyrim, Cyrodiil,
or Morrowind. Sewers exist, sure, but they mostly seem to be place for weird people to
hang out. In fact, there’s a complete lack of toilets. They’re nowhere. No latrines,
no outhouses, no chamber pots--unless...wait is, that what the buckets we’ve been putting
on shopkeeper’s heads are for? Gross. But no, I don’t think so. I mean, someone would
have said something.
And I know you guys know toilets exist. I’ve seen them in Fallout. In fact, I’ve taken
drinks out of them before. So you ARE aware that people go to the bathroom, so I have
to ask: what’s the deal? I mean, the Empire in Tamriel is based off of the Roman Empire,
and they had latrines and baths. And the Empire has been around for THOUSANDS of years in
Tamriel--plenty of time to develop a centralized concept of human sanitation.
Is it magic? Is there just some sort of ubiquitous magic-bucket technology being distributed
that nobody told us about? You poop into a bucket and it’s all whisked away by some
tiny hole to oblivion? Is THAT why Mehrunes Dagon was so determined to invade Tamriel?
To get away from the smell? Or is it something else? Is there some sort of secret cabal of
alchemists and restoration magic users who have been keeping health advances suppressed
so they can continue to sell their magical cures for Cholera and Dysentery?
And I’m not the only one to ask this question, and some people have even made mods to address
it. You’ve gone five, wait, no, six, I keep forgetting about that one--you’ve gone six
games without talking about this, and we’re starting to notice. It’s starting to get
WEIRD that you don’t talk about it. I need to know. You write books like the A, B, Cs
for Barbarians, it’s time for the Everybody In Daggerfall poops. The world needs
to know. We’re ready.
Sincerely, Austin