100 Fun Facts About The Elder Scrolls

Which dragon, called the World-Eater, returns as the main antagonist of Skyrim?

Alduin attacks the town of Helgen just as the player is about to be executed, so the villain's first act saves the hero's life.

On which fictional continent are the Elder Scrolls games set?

Tamriel is one of several continents in the lore, but its people have so little contact with the others that reliable knowledge of them is scarce.

Which 1994 game was the first in the Elder Scrolls series?

Arena missed its planned Christmas 1993 release and drew little attention at launch, but word of mouth among role-playing fans turned it into a cult hit.

In Daggerfall, how do characters gain levels?

By using skills: a level comes only once a set of chosen skills has improved enough, so practice rather than kills drives progress.

Morrowind's main story takes place on which island?

Vvardenfell is one island of the province the game is named after, and the Blight storms that plague it blow out from Red Mountain, the volcano at its centre.

Which demigod, housed inside Red Mountain, is Morrowind's central antagonist?

Dagoth Ur was once a trusted ally of the gods he now fights, and he stays immortal only while he is tied to an artifact called the Heart of Lorkhan.

Morrowind was the first Elder Scrolls game on a console, arriving in June 2002 on which system?

Xbox players got the same huge world but none of the player-made mods, and the Construction Set used to build them came only with the PC version.

The Bloodmoon expansion for Morrowind let players become what?

A werewolf passes on a disease in combat, and the player has three days to find a cure before a forced change begins every night.

Oblivion takes place in which province of the Empire?

Cyrodiil is the Empire's heartland, and as the main quest goes on, gates to the demonic realm of Oblivion open all across it, shutting for good only when the quest is won.

Which actor voiced Emperor Uriel Septim VII in Oblivion?

Patrick Stewart shared the cast with Sean Bean and Terence Stamp, but his Emperor is assassinated in the game's opening minutes.

What was Oblivion's first paid download, which drew player complaints about its price in April 2006?

Horse armor set off a storm of complaints, yet plenty of players bought it, and Bethesda went on to sell a run of further small add-ons for the game.

In Skyrim, released on 11 November 2011, what does the player absorb from slain dragons to unlock shouts?

Their souls flow into the player when a dragon dies, and each one can then be spent to unlock a word of power learned from an ancient wall.

What kind of title was The Elder Scrolls: Legends?

A collectible card game, Legends had its development halted in December 2019, and its servers were switched off in January 2025, so it can no longer be played.

Skyrim: Very Special Edition, a 2018 parody text adventure, ran on which device?

Amazon Alexa really did get a voice-only version, while the same E3 2018 gag also promised ports for the Etch A Sketch, Motorola pagers and Samsung smart fridges.

The Dwemer are nicknamed Dwarves, but to which broader group of races do they belong?

Elves: often translated as Deep Elves, the Dwemer vanished long before the games begin, and nobody in the setting knows how or where they went.

The Elder Scrolls continent sits on which planet?

Nirn has two moons, Masser and Secunda, and the phases they are in when a Khajiit is born decide which of many shapes it grows into.

Which race comes from the province of Black Marsh?

Argonians met the Oblivion gates that opened in their swamps by charging through them, so fiercely that the invaders closed the gates themselves.

Which Imperial Battlemage traps Emperor Uriel Septim VII in another dimension and takes his throne?

Jagar Tharn disguises himself as the Emperor by magic and rules in his place for a decade while the player hunts the scattered pieces of the Staff of Chaos.

Daggerfall restricts travel to High Rock and which other province?

Hammerfell faces High Rock across the Iliac Bay, and the Emperor sends the player to the bay to lay the ghost of Daggerfall's dead king to rest.

Bethesda compared the size of Daggerfall's game world to which real place?

Great Britain is the comparison Bethesda made, and the map could be that big because most of it was generated by the computer rather than built by hand.

What does the spin-off Redguard force on players, unlike the main Elder Scrolls games?

A third-person camera follows its fixed hero, and the game sold poorly, one of a run of misfires that left Bethesda close to going out of business in the late 1990s.

Who composed the music for Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim?

Jeremy Soule scored all three, and his main theme for Skyrim is sung by a men's choir in the game's fictional dragon language rather than in English.

Which fanatical cult tries to open the gates to Oblivion in the fourth game?

Mythic Dawn assassins kill the Emperor and his heirs as the game opens, and their leader Mankar Camoran later hides in a self-made realm he calls Paradise.

The Shivering Isles expansion is ruled by which Daedric Prince?

Sheogorath, the Prince of Madness, turns out to be the other self of Jyggalag, the Prince of Order, whose Greymarch wipes out the realm at the end of every era.

The Elder Scrolls Online begins with the player imprisoned in which realm?

Coldharbour holds the player in the Wailing Prison as a Soul Shriven, a husk whose soul has already been taken, and the first task is to break out.

Which Daedric Prince is the main antagonist of The Elder Scrolls Online's base story?

Molag Bal schemes to pull the entire mortal world into his own realm, while three alliances are busy fighting each other over the empty Imperial throne.

Talos, the Ninth Divine, is the deified form of which emperor?

Tiber Septim was the general who founded the Third Empire, and the later ban on worshipping him as a god helps drive the rebellion in Skyrim's civil war.

Which studio was sued by Bethesda's parent company in 2011 over a card game it had named Scrolls?

Mojang, the Minecraft studio, settled in 2012 by keeping the name but giving up the trademark, and years later relaunched the game for free as Caller's Bane.

Which order, once the Emperor's bodyguards, survives in Skyrim as a few dragon hunters in hiding?

The Blades guard the Emperor in Oblivion, but by Skyrim the order has been outlawed and nearly wiped out, leaving a handful of survivors to aid the player.

Where is the final battle of Skyrim's main quest fought?

Sovngarde is the Nord afterlife, where the World-Eater retreats to feed on the dead, and the player has to follow him through a portal to finish the fight.

Which elven faction forced the Empire to ban the worship of Talos?

The Thalmor lead the Aldmeri Dominion, and the treaty that ended its war with the Empire outlawed the worship and let Thalmor agents enforce the ban.

Daggerfall's plot centres on reviving which brass golem built by the Dwemer?

Numidium cannot be revived without the Mantella, and the ending changes with which of the Iliac Bay's rival powers ends up in control of the golem.

Which Daedric Prince must the player defeat in Battlespire?

Mehrunes Dagon sends his Daedra to overrun a school for Imperial battlemages, nine years before he returned as the threat looming over Oblivion.

Redguard is set on which island?

Stros M'Kai is where the mercenary Cyrus comes looking for his missing sister, and the game's manual included the first Pocket Guide to the Empire, a tour of every province.

Morrowind's lead designer Ken Rolston first made his name designing what?

Tabletop RPGs such as Paranoia were his trade before Bethesda, and he retired once Oblivion shipped, only to return to game design at another studio about a year later.

The Knights of the Nine expansion pits the player against which sorcerer-king?

Umaril is an ancient Ayleid sorcerer-king back from Oblivion for revenge on the gods, and only the relics of the knight who first killed him can defeat him.

In The Elder Scrolls Online, which animal represents the Daggerfall Covenant?

A lion flies over an alliance the Orcs joined because its king, needing help in a war, promised to hand Orsinium back to them.

Which YouTuber was promised an NPC role in The Elder Scrolls VI after a fan petition?

Shirley Curry did not have to wait for the next game, because fans built a mod that adds her to Skyrim as a travelling companion, with lines she recorded herself.

The first Elder Scrolls novel, The Infernal City, features what kind of city?

Floating above the land decades after the events of Oblivion, the city of Umbriel kills everyone on the ground beneath it as it passes.

Who began at Bethesda in 1994 by testing the first Elder Scrolls game?

Todd Howard, later the director of Skyrim, first asked the company for a job while still a student and was told to finish his degree.

Which gods were weakened by helping create the mortal world?

Aedra are said to have given up part of their power to make the world, in some tellings tricked into it, while the Daedra took no part and stayed free of its limits.

In Morrowind, prophecy casts the player as the reincarnation of which ancient hero?

Nerevar is a hero of ancient legend whose rebirth the nomadic Ashlanders foretold, and the player has to fulfil those prophecies to be accepted as his return.

Which relic does the Emperor entrust to the player just before his murder at the start of Oblivion?

The Amulet of Kings passes to the player moments before assassins strike, and the main quest becomes a race to get it to the Emperor's last surviving heir.

Bethesda's parent company sued which two US senators for libel over Daggerfall?

Joe Lieberman and Herb Kohl had questioned whether Daggerfall was fit for children while campaigning against video game violence, so the publisher's parent company took them to court.

Battlespire was the first Elder Scrolls game to include which feature?

Multiplayer arrived in a game that began life as an expansion pack for Daggerfall and was turned into a stand-alone spin-off instead.

Which payment model did The Elder Scrolls Online launch with in 2014 and abandon a year later?

A monthly subscription counted against it at launch, when PC Gamer and Polygon both questioned whether the game was worth the fee, and within a year the charge became optional.

Which order of silent monks calls the player up to a mountaintop monastery early in Skyrim?

The Greybeards summon the hero to a monastery near the top of Skyrim's highest mountain with a thunderous shout, and begin the training in the Way of the Voice there.

Shadowkey, a 2004 Elder Scrolls spin-off, was released only on which handheld?

Nokia N-Gage players got a huge world to roam, but GameSpot and GameZone both complained that so little of it was drawn at once that it was easy to get lost.

In Oblivion, which city has already been razed by Daedra when the player arrives to find the Emperor's heir?

Kvatch is where the heir, a priest named Martin, is sheltering among the survivors, and closing the gate outside its walls earns the player the title Hero of Kvatch.

Bethesda pulled a free 2019 Elsweyr pen-and-paper adventure after it was accused of copying which game?

Dungeons & Dragons writer Paige Leitman showed side by side how closely it tracked her 2016 adventure The Black Road, and it was taken offline a day after release.

Which longtime voice of Nintendo's Mario also plays the ancient dragon Paarthurnax in Skyrim?

Charles Martinet, Mario's voice from 1991 to 2023, plays the sage dragon who leads an order of monks from the top of Skyrim's highest mountain.

A famous 2013 mod for Skyrim swapped the dragons for which children's television character?

Thomas the Tank Engine in place of Skyrim's dragons was one of the first popular Thomas mods; players have since put him into Sonic the Hedgehog and Resident Evil 2.

Which Lord of the Rings actor voices Martin, the Emperor's illegitimate son and heir, in Oblivion?

Sean Bean plays Martin, a priest who learns he is the last of the royal bloodline, opposite Terence Stamp as the cult leader Mankar Camoran.

Which star of TV's Wonder Woman has voiced Nord and Orc women in several Elder Scrolls games?

Lynda Carter had a family connection: her husband, Robert Altman, was chairman and chief executive of Bethesda's parent company, ZeniMax Media.

Before The Elder Scrolls, Bethesda was known for sports games and adaptations of which film series?

The Terminator arrived in 1991, timed to the second film's cinema release, and was the first video game based on the film series.

Which pastime did Skyrim's Anniversary Edition add in 2021, ten years after the original release?

Fishing came with player-owned aquariums to display the catch, part of a tenth-anniversary release that bundled 74 smaller add-ons.

A Skyrim mod made by Bethesda with Valve drops a talkative Space Core from which Valve game?

Portal 2 lent Skyrim its space-obsessed robot, voiced by Nolan North, which falls from the sky and then follows the player around.

Which PC storefront began selling Skyrim mods in 2015, only to scrap the scheme within days?

Steam's paid mods drew a petition with more than 130,000 signatures, and Valve admitted Skyrim's years-old modding community was the wrong place to start.

Skyrim's Dragonborn appears as a downloadable Mii costume in which Nintendo game?

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate sells the Dragonborn as a Mii fighter costume, placing Skyrim's hero in the same crossover brawl as Mario, Link and Pikachu.

The Elder Scrolls publisher Bethesda is named after the town where it began, in which US state?

Maryland's town of Bethesda is where Christopher Weaver set up the company on his kitchen table; his first choice of name, Softwerke, was already taken by a Virginia firm.

Which tech giant agreed in 2020 to buy Bethesda's parent company, and The Elder Scrolls with it?

Microsoft was not the first suitor: the parent company's chairman had earlier come close to a deal with rival Electronic Arts.

Bethesda announced The Elder Scrolls VI with a teaser trailer in 2018 at which gaming trade show?

E3 2018 offered only a brief teaser, with word that the game would follow two other Bethesda releases, the second of which arrived in 2023.

Skyrim made its Nintendo debut in 2017, with motion controls and Amiibo support, on which console?

Switch players got Skyrim in the same month that a separate virtual-reality-only version, Skyrim VR, was released.

Which Monty Python star voices the eccentric knight Sir Cadwell in The Elder Scrolls Online?

John Cleese plays Sir Cadwell, an ancient knight with a pot for a helmet, in a cast that also includes Bill Nighy, Kate Beckinsale and Michael Gambon.

Which star of The Exorcist voices the hero's mentor Esbern in Skyrim and narrated its debut trailer?

Max von Sydow was one of three Academy Award nominees in a Skyrim cast of more than 70 actors.

Main development of Skyrim waited until Bethesda had released which post-apocalyptic game in 2008?

Fallout 3 also gave Skyrim its technical starting point, since the newer game's engine was forked from its codebase.

Which rebels, led by Ulfric of Windhelm, fight the Imperial Legion in Skyrim's civil war?

Stormcloaks follow Ulfric Stormcloak, who starts the game as a captive awaiting execution alongside the player.

Which cat-like people of The Elder Scrolls come from the province of Elsweyr?

Khajiit means desert-dweller in the race's own language, Ta'agra, and the homeland's heat makes heavy clothing impractical.

In Skyrim, which of a character's three primary attributes is drained by casting spells?

Magicka sits beside health and stamina, and every level gained lets the player raise the cap on one of the three.

Early in Skyrim, the player warns the ruler of which central city that a dragon is on the loose?

Whiterun later becomes a trap, when the hero's allies capture a live dragon there under a truce in the civil war.

Skyrim removed which long-standing choice for new characters, so any hero can learn any ability?

Class had been picked at the start of every earlier main game; Skyrim instead lets one hero mix swordplay, stealth and magic, shaped by perks chosen at each level.

Skyrim's Dawnguard add-on asks the player to hunt, or join, a powerful clan of which creatures?

Vampires of the Volkihar clan can turn the player into a monstrous vampire lord, while the rival Dawnguard hunters hand out crossbows, a weapon the add-on introduced.

Which Skyrim add-on lets the player buy land, build a home from raw materials and adopt children?

Hearthfire offers three plots of land, where a house can grow to include a greenhouse, bee hives and beds for up to two adopted children.

Skyrim's Dragonborn add-on returns to which island, first seen in Morrowind's Bloodmoon expansion?

Solstheim was ceded to Morrowind by a High King of Skyrim, as a refuge for people fleeing a volcanic eruption.

A dragon attack interrupts the player's execution at the start of Skyrim in which Imperial-run town?

Helgen is a fortified town largely run by the Imperial military, and the opening quest set there is fittingly titled Unbound.

Which undead warriors, some able to use dragon shouts, guard Skyrim's ancient Nordic barrows?

Draugr began as living followers buried with their Dragon Priest, rising in shifts to worship at his sarcophagus while their bodies slowly withered.

Which club-wielding nomads of Skyrim travel with mammoth herds and decorate their camps with tusks?

Giants are brighter than they look: they are among the few who know how to grind tough mammoth tusk into a prized alchemical powder.

Which technology did Bethesda build for Skyrim after judging its Gamebryo software too outdated?

Creation Engine let Bethesda drop licensed foliage software and write its own, giving tree branches weight so that they sway in the wind.

Which title is held by the ruler of each of Skyrim's nine administrative holds?

Jarl was a real rank of Scandinavian nobility in the Viking Age; in Skyrim, each one governs a hold from its largest town.

Skyrim was the first Western-developed game to earn a perfect 40/40 from which Japanese magazine?

Famitsu has four critics each mark a game out of ten, so a perfect 40 means every one of them gave Skyrim full marks.

Which system did Bethesda create for Oblivion so characters make choices rather than follow scripts?

Radiant AI was scaled back in later games because characters who witnessed thefts tended, over time, to kill one another.

In 2006 the ESRB raised Oblivion's rating from Teen to which level after a mod unlocked hidden art?

Mature replaced Teen partly because of gorier scenes than the board had been shown; Bethesda complied but disagreed with the reasoning, and some shops began checking ID.

Which studio, later known for Minecraft's console editions, ported Oblivion to PlayStation 3?

4J Studios, founded in Dundee in 2005, delivered the port a year after the original release, and it was praised for its sharper visuals.

In Morrowind, travellers pay to ride between towns on the backs of which huge flea-like creatures?

Silt striders work like a taxi service on the game's main island, sharing the fast-travel trade with boats and teleportation.

Morrowind begins as the player, a freed prisoner, steps off a boat in which small port town?

Seyda Neen is where an officer and a bureaucrat register the newcomer as a free citizen, a scene that doubles as the tutorial for building a character.

The Elder Scrolls Online is set a millennium before Skyrim, during which era of the timeline?

Second Era dating puts the online game around 800 years before Morrowind and Oblivion, at a time when three alliances are fighting over the imperial throne.

The Elder Scrolls Online's Morrowind chapter added which nature-themed role with animal companions?

Warden fighters wield frost magic and summon animals into battle; the role was at first sold only to players who had bought that chapter.

Which Altmer homeland, unplayable since 1994, returned in a 2018 Elder Scrolls Online expansion?

Summerset earned the online game an Outstanding Video Game prize at the GLAAD Media Awards, and brought jewellery crafting along with its new story.

The monks allowed to read the Elder Scrolls eventually pay for the privilege by losing which sense?

Sight is the price paid by the priests of the Ancestor Moth, who by tradition are the only people permitted to read the scrolls at all.

The first Elder Scrolls game took its main inspiration from which dungeon series by Looking Glass?

Ultima Underworld shaped the 1994 debut, which its makers had at first not planned as a role-playing game at all.

Oblivion Remastered, a surprise 2025 release, rebuilt the old game's graphics in which technology?

Unreal Engine 5 handles only the visuals; the original Gamebryo code still runs the physics and combat underneath.

Which Skyrim mod, winner of an Australian Writers' Guild award, was remade as a standalone game in 2021?

The Forgotten City began as a mystery in a ruined Dwemer city; its creator then rebuilt it as a standalone game set in ancient Rome.

Which highly illegal narcotic of The Elder Scrolls is refined from moon sugar?

Skooma can be smoked through a water pipe or drunk, and it is so thoroughly outlawed that some innkeepers sell a sweet cordial that only imitates the taste.

Which capital of Skyrim, home of the Bards College, is built on top of a huge natural rock arch?

Solitude keeps its main quarter on top of the Great Arch, while the crowded harbour sits underneath beside the Karth River.

Which monastery on the slopes of the Throat of the World is reached by climbing the 7,000 Steps?

High Hrothgar sits roughly halfway up the Throat of the World, and its reclusive masters of the Voice can be visited only after the long climb from the village of Ivarstead.

Which early chief engineer at Bethesda is widely known as the father of The Elder Scrolls?

Julian LeFay steered Daggerfall and Battlespire, left Bethesda in 1998, and was working on a new role-playing game, The Wayward Realms, until days before his death in 2025.

Which author wrote the two Elder Scrolls novels, The Infernal City and its 2011 sequel?

Greg Keyes, also known for Star Wars and Babylon 5 tie-ins, set his story about 40 years after the events of Oblivion.

Morrowind's Tribunal expansion takes place in which walled capital city on the province's mainland?

Mournhold is not connected to the base game's island, so the player has to teleport there; the expansion was built in a development cycle of only five months.

Which vast cavern beneath Skyrim, lit by huge glowing mushrooms, once linked several Dwemer cities?

Blackreach stretches beneath at least five of Skyrim's holds, and its Dwemer builders installed great lifts for quick trips to the surface.

Which open-world Zelda game did its own developers say was influenced by Skyrim?

Breath of the Wild is one of several later games whose makers credit Skyrim, alongside the Viking survival hit Valheim and the fantasy role-playing game Avowed.