apocryfan

[apocryfan]

told myself I'd draw all the counts of Oblivion to finally pinpoint Imperial fashion. Think I'm off to a strong start

[apocryfan]

The one thing I will give ESO's elf designs is that I like that you can't see much of their sclera. I like to think they do the whale eye thing dogs do when they are uncomfortable

[apocryfan]

Children playing in the Niben Valley

(Clothes are very loosely based off of byzantine and minoan fashion)

[apocryfan]

You've mentioned before that you grew up in poverty, so as someone who grew up like the too, I'm wondering about the different kinds of poverty meals/Poor People Food™ from around Tamriel. What do you eat when you have very little and you need to make it last as long as possible? What kinds of food did you eat growing up?

Eating in poverty requires a good deal of creativity, but it doesn't take much to make a delicious and comforting meal even in lean times!

Altmer

One generally doesn't stop to consider that the generally affluent Altmer can also fall on hard times. Outcasts of Summerset, known as the aprax and huldkyn, have gotten by on the island's bounty without much issue for centuries. A warm salad with wild greens, seeds, and flaky wild-caught salmon sticks true to Altmeri cuisine, without the price tag.

Argonians

Many Argonians, especially in Skyrim, struggle to get by. Despite the hardships, Argonians are a fairly chipper race and know that good food is the cure to all woes. Being masters of spear fishing, they can whip up a wood-smoked salmon or slaughterfish in no time at all, with nothing but a pinch of sea salt and some scavenged wood.

Bosmer

Bosmeri cuisine is typically fairly sparse, but poorer families have fewer ingredients to get by on, especially ones with flavour. However, home-cured meat is a luxury; whenever a hunt is successful, a portion of meat is set aside for curing. As such, there's always something to eat even in rough times, and poorer families can trade or barter their excess meat.

Bretons

High Rock is known for its rich cuisine, so making do on less is almost inconceivable to the average connoisseur. Barley soup, however, is cheap and nutritious, and is a staple in poorer households, where it's spiced to taste. Barley is simply boiled in stock until soft, sometimes with potatoes and other vegetables. It's then served with bread, when that's available.

Dunmer

Where the Bretons have barley, the Dunmer have saltrice and ash yams. Dunmer in poverty make many dishes out of these ingredients as they are cheap and easy to grow. For example, baked ash yam patties or stir-fried saltrice with hackle-lo (and even a kwama egg, where possible) are two dishes that can be made with surprisingly little.

Imperials

It's no secret that places like Bravil are more poverty-stricken than other areas of Tamriel, but there's always a way to make do. Even without wine and cheese, Bravil's Best Beet Risotto is made from cheap ingredients and tastes great if you like beets.

Khajiit

As long as a Khajiit has rice and moon sugar, they're doing pretty well for themselves. Some Khajiit really do eat plain steamed rice with a sprinkle of moon sugar, though most others tend to boil it into a porridge and have the moon sugar with that. Rice porridge is delightfully versatile and can be sweet or salty, and can even be the base for more expensive dishes.

Nords

I grew up eating a lot of fish, as my father worked at the Riften fishery when he wasn't out hunting. A treat for us was always fish gratin, made from fish, flour, some milk or butter if we had it, and leftover breadcrumbs. This was baked in an oven until crisp on top, and to this day reminds me of good times as a child.

Orcs

Orcish cuisine is simple, but isn't always cheap. When an Orc is struggling to get by and meat is too dear, there are always alternatives. Fried potato cakes with frost mirriam and wild garlic are an unbeatable meal, especially if you've managed to snag some bacon. Simply mash the potato with finely minced garlic and a pinch of frost mirriam, smoosh it into patties, and fry on a hot stone until crisp on the outside!

Redguards

When saffron, goat, and coconut sugar are a luxury, there are always ways in which the rugged Redguards will make a good situation out of a bad thing. Bulgur and cous cous are extremely cheap, and most Redguards own a tagine (many are still homemade). Steaming their grains with whatever ingredients are available always makes for a delicious tagine every time. I once camped with a group of Redguards far from Bergama once, and we shared a tagine of bulgur, giant snake, palm fruit, and some dried orange peel. It was perfect.

[apocryfan]

Thoughts on the Wrath of Sithis*, Where It Comes From, and Why Mathieu Bellamont Did Not Receive One (Now Purified!**)

*For the purpose of this discussion, "Wrath" is used to refer specifically to the actual enemy specter/wraith encountered in ESO and Oblivion.

**ifykyk, a lot of this is copy-paste from an old post we no longer speak of nor circulate because it got toxic real quick and we never actually got to discuss the topic itself.

Imo, Sithis does not send the Wrath - it is instead conjured by the Black Hand themselves.

In this idea, the Hand disguises their conjured Wrath as Sithis himself enacting unholy retribution against a Tenet-Breaker - this lends credence to their authority in a way that also absolves them of responsibility for what happens to a member. Sithis works in mysterious ways, my brother! This could also explain the following:

Lucien straight up pardons the HoK for the Purification. That is apparently within his authority to do, yet breaking the Tenets is always said to be a surefire way to invoke the Wrath. You break Tenet Five like 8 whole times within a day, but Lucien has the power to just wave it off for you and carry on business-as-usual. There is something decidedly "mortal institution of laws" about that rather than sacred retribution.

Greywyn lasted for years in hiding without getting auto-Wrathed as punishment for leading an entire coup. A mortal assassin found him and doled out a punishment, not a Wrath of Sithis. This could be because the Hand was unaware he still lived, whereas if the Wrath was Sithis-sent, that dude would've been deleted pretty quick.

No one in the Skyrim DBh is ever sent a Wrath for breaking Tenet One, perhaps because there is no Hand at this time. Cicero is the only one who attempts to punish Astrid for what I presume was breaking a Tenet (large presumption, as we are never outright told). You could argue Astrid got her karmic comeuppance, and perhaps the Wrath was her crispy death, but that can also be explained by her simple hubris. But, like I said, for the purpose of this discussion, we're referring specifically to the physical Wrath here!

(Another new, additional thought) When you finally kill Mathieu at the end of the Oblivion DBh questline, there is no Wrath to come and claim him as in the case of the Black Dragon confrontation. No specter comes to aid you (save for Mother, who's only there to go "lol. lmao even.") This is also potentially because, as in Case #3, there's no longer a Hand to even conjure the Wrath - the only ones left are you and Arquen.

(New, additional thought) The ESO DBh and its traitor, the Black Dragon. The Wrath does appear later to take her ... but notably, it only appears once you have informed your Matron - and subsequently your Hand - who the traitor is and where she is hiding. You have now given the Listener the true identity of the traitor. When they send you and Green-Venom-Tongue to take her out, perhaps they quietly summon a Wrath too - not only as a back-up, but as reaffirmation of its existence to those who witness it.

Venom also remarked the following during your vision of the First Purification: "In the old stories, the Wrath of Sithis appeared to carry away the souls of traitors. If that's true, I wonder why purification was even necessary?"

So then, if it's the Black Hand sending the Wrath, and the Black Hand does not know Mathieu's identity, they cannot send him a Wrath throughout the entire questline. This would be extremely bothersome to them, because his continued activities undermine that faith-leverage they have. If a lower ranking member of the Family finds out that there's a traitor, but that traitor hasn't been punched in the face by a Wrath yet, then that lends itself to the same question we're asking here and the same questions Green-Venom-Tongue started asking. It lends itself to a member going "wait, so an all-knowing death god isn't enforcing these Tenets? so ... as long as no one in the organization finds out, I can break them." And I think Mathieu figured out that this was exactly the case.

Now then, encouragement of participation is always implied on tumblr dot com, but I'm saying it outright due to the history lol - please feel free to add on with your own thoughts! Even if you disagree and have a different idea! The only thing required for participation is respect.

[apocryfan]

Illustrations-“The Elder Scrolls: Legends” by Nuare Studio

[apocryfan]

kibby mini sketchdump because they're all i've been drawing lately ;-; i really liked southern elsweyr... (plus two mouse doodles since i found the symmetry tool in csp LMAO)

[apocryfan]

@outofcontextdiscord + the elder scrolls

[apocryfan]

So began writing a fic last night and kinda stuck, ended up with a completely unrelated sketch or what I imagine of some members of House Sotha and these bits:

House Sotha was never big in numbers, a couple of siblings at best, with some luck they would have more than one kid, he was a surprise, nobody expected his mother to be able to have more children after so many complications with her first pregnancy let alone the second, of their father, Nall remembered the most, which wasn’t a lot considering how young she was back then, a mage who got lost in a storm and was swallowed by the ocean, everyone said they both looked too much like him, except for uncle Taeloth, he called Sil the long lost child of a Dwemer until their mother would hear him and beat him with a wooden spoon.

He felt bad for her at times, their grandmother was too old to make all those trips to the mainland and deal with other house representatives or the locals, somebody had to take her place so more often that not, mother would walk around in circles ranting on how the other houses were as smart as a dead fish and screeched like cliff racers, all the while, giving her children instructions on how to weave a basket or make clay pots, fix a fishing net or patch a hole on the sails, House Sotha was a home of fishermen and sailors and everything that came with it, though fishing was the main focus next to a sense of practicality and simplicity, even their best robes didn’t compare to the ones of other houses.

Tiny Sil appreciation hours

[apocryfan]

in-depth tes oc questions

some world-building and character-building questions.

It’s a little unreasonable for everyone in a Middle Ages-esque fantasy to be perfectly literate, and writing with quills was considered legitimate labor! How well can your oc read and/or write? How detailed is their quest log/journal, if they keep one at all?

How educated is your oc? Did their parents teach them, did they have a tutor or were they apprenticed to a master, or did they attend a university? What university? What are they educated in? How long did their education take? (Learned skills like blacksmithing count here too!)

Does your oc have any kind of crafting skills that either aren’t in-game or don’t have as much importance in-game as they would in real life? (For example, can your oc sew or weave, etc? Are they skilled in any kind of art? Can they make jewelry or work glass? Are they musicians? etc)

What pantheon does your oc worship? If they worship the Cyrodiilic/Imperial pantheon, does that include Talos? If they secretly worship Talos, how do they justify hiding it?  

How religious is your oc? Do they come into conflict with others over their beliefs? If their patron deity told them to do something extremely undesirable or against their moral compass, would they do it? Would your oc sell someone’s soul for a corn chip?

Does your oc have a family of origin? How many members of their FoO are still living? Do they have a good relationship? How much contact does your oc have with their FoO? How in-the-loop is your oc’s FoO about your oc’s being Dragonborn/HoK/Nerevarine?

What social class was your oc born into? Did they change classes at all? How?

How politically active is your oc? Are they obviously influential, or is their influence more subtle?

What unplayable faction would/did your oc join, if any? Why?

How trustworthy is your oc? Would they ever change opposing factions?

What is your oc’s main source of income, if they have one besides plundering tombs and adventuring? If they’re mercenaries, are they part of a company? Does your oc own their own business, and if so, what is it?

Is your oc good with finances? Bartering? How long can they keep the money they make? 

Does your oc have any particular rivalry or mutual dislike with any NPC?

How well-liked is your oc? What is their reputation, if they’re well-known? Are they simply liked/disliked, or are they respected but feared, or personally liked but not taken seriously, etc? Do major factions consider your oc an important player? 

Does your oc have a horse/other mount? A pet? How did they get this animal? If they were given the animal, do they have the money to maintain it? How careful/careless are they with their animal? What do they do with their pets while adventuring, especially on dangerous quests?

Does your oc take their time as they travel, or are they purposeful? How do they survive in the wilds, especially if they aren’t hunter-types? How dependent is your oc on civilized society?

What does your oc like to eat? How much food do they eat? Can your oc cook, and can they do it well?

If your oc is a vampire, do they go outside in the daytime? Does the daylight affect or hurt them in any way different from in-game? If they interact with society, how do they justify looking half-dead and hating sunlight? How good is your oc at blending in? Do they even like dealing with society?

If your oc is a werebeast, how much control do they have over their transformations? Have they ever lost control? What happened? If not, why do they have such strong control? Does Hircine ever call on them, and do they answer?

What does your oc wear in the city/settlements? In the house? When travelling, but not adventuring or expecting combat? Do they vary their clothes depending on what hold/city they’re in? If they don’t, why not (e.g., if your oc wears the same outfit to tend their garden or lounge around the house as they did to meet Ulfric or Elisif, why?) Does your oc have a good or bad sense of fashion? How many clothes does your oc have?

How picky is your oc about their gear? Do they have different equipment for different adventures, or is it the same suit of armor for everything (not counting upgrades like from steel to ebony)? 

How does your oc acquire their clothes, and from where/whom?

Can your oc swim, and how well? Have they ever swam in the ocean, or only lakes/rivers? Remember, it’s much harder to swim in the ocean than in a lake! If your oc is an Argonian, do they take special advantage of it somehow (e.g., do they go diving for fun/for profit, do they instinctively hide in the water, etc)? If your oc is a Khajiit who can swim, how do they get their fur dry?

How easy/difficult is it to rob your oc? Pickpocket? Bribe? 

If your oc is part of one of the more morally questionable or outright evil factions, how do they justify it to themselves? Do they still consider themselves as morally good? How well known is their affiliation to these groups? Do they have separate personas (e.g. Dragonborn to some people, Listener to others)? Do their family/friends know? If they have separate personas, how do they keep their less than righteous activities secret?

How helpful is your oc, and why? Are they helpful or kind even during difficult situations? Are they pragmatic, or do they have a hero syndrome?

[apocryfan]

Grandmaster Voryn Dagoth in mourning after death of Wulfharth of Atmora (who later ended up being brought back to life)

headcanon: the Chimer had two colours associated with mourning - red and grey. Grey, associated with ash and ceremonial burial, meant peaceful mourning, acceptance of the loss and calm, quiet contemplation on mortality and the veil between the worlds of the living and the dead. Red, on the other hand, expressed despair, pain, vengeful mourning, and was typically worn by families of those murdered or executed. It was not the “dignified” way of grieving, and for the Grandmaster of a Great House to show up in an all red outfit - parts of which were made from a kind of a poisonous giant moth - for a council meeting with the Hortator was rather bold.

After being changed into Dunmer, the colours mostly lost their significance; however, some continued to see grey and red as the colours of death and mourning, and from their eyes and their skin they made a symbol of grief for the lost glory of Resdayn and before it the High Velothi culture.

In 3th Era, the newly re-emerged Sixth House adopted red as their colour, corresponding with their self-given title of Tribe Unmourned.

[apocryfan]

you wanna know how fucked up elder scrolls is? i’ll tell you how fucked up elder scrolls is. heres how fucking fucked up elder scrolls is

[apocryfan]

I've always kinda found altmer fashion lacking in game(s) bc with their magically advanced society and always warm colorful spring islands they would definitely not dress the same as nords basically

1. Layered dresses for more casual wear and cooler weather

2. Fancier dresses for hotter sunny days

3. Mage robes that have more oldie morrowind vibe and dont suck

[apocryfan]

i think oblivion’s “leveling problem” is actually kinda cool. i think if it was done intentionally by a modern indie dev, ppl would be calling it a brilliant subversion of traditional rpg mechanics, which builds and plays out over dozens of hours. i think the experience of playing an rpg that gets more difficult and hostile over time is weirdly cool and interesting. and it’s a shame that it’s seen as this irredeemable flaw, that only exists so gamers can bitch about it online. i’d go so far as to say that if you play the game according to “optimal leveling” guides, you’re missing out

if you play the dlcs after the main questline, it ties up the narrative and ludonarrative threads in a nice neat bow. see, you are never really the main character in oblivion’s main quest, you’re just the messenger. you’re constantly doing things so that martin can move the plot forward. sure, you’re a hero, you save the world. you do tons of heroic shit. you charge headlong into oblivion to save kvatch and bruma. and for awhile, everyone knows your name. but martin is the dragonborn. when mehrunes dagon shows up, it’s martin who faces him in the final battle, while you just stand there. that’s what the world remembers. most of your heroics are only yours to remember

so you find yourself facing increasingly impossible odds, on a quest you won’t be remembered for. isnt it fitting that during all that, you feel the world is turning more and more hostile toward you? that everything is out of your control? i think it makes sense that the rpg loop of killing monsters and getting loot eventually takes its toll on you. as you progress, it only gets less satisfying. you finish the main quest, and you still keep doing it, even when it starts to hurt. you might ask yourself, what’s the point of doing this anymore? and yeah, what is the point?

knights of the nine takes you a journey of transcendent spiritual healing. you learn to move on from these earthly things that have been grinding you down the past few in-game years. maybe there’s more to life than “adventure.” taking this path means becoming one with the gods. this questline involves one of the only quests in the whole game that asks you to not attack something. in the end, you lay some old spirits to rest and become one with the gods

shivering isles represents the opposite reaction to all this. if you play it after (or instead of) kotn, the narrative resolves with the pc accepting the futility and absurdity of their life, at the price of their sanity. and they ultimately succumb to ambition. this story also ends with you becoming “one with the gods,” but in a much darker way. just like martin mantled akatosh, you mantle sheogorath. and it brings you satisfaction. it feels good to be on equal footing with martin. you decide that power and progression have value. just look at what that turns you into

idk, i just think in an era where pathologic is getting serious love, i think oblivion has a place. not despite, but because of its “flaws.” i know oblivion is the haha ugly meme game. it’s bethesda’s awkward teen phase between the narrative genius of morrowind and the mechanical genius of skyrim. but i like it!!!!!!!! ok!!!!!!!!!!!! it can and should be judged on its own merits, as a single text with something valuable to say

[apocryfan]

I think nirnroot tastes like Kale with a hint of toothpaste. Like if wintergreen could rust.

[apocryfan]

Fuck it everyone gets to claim one TES/Skyrim NPC. Who’s yours?

[apocryfan]

this is a reimagining of this old post

& cross-posted from my twitter