106: Arkaniir from Tales of Tamriel

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Welcome to the Elder Scrolls Lorecast, a place where the Elder Scrolls community can come together to discuss the boundaries of our knowledge about the universe of the Elder Scrolls. Adventurers, we are back with this week's episode of the Elder Scrolls Lorecast. And if you are watching us live at twitch.tv. You might think that this is actually an episode of Tales of Tamriel, and I'm just building it for hyperpixie.

But that is not actually the case, because I am your host, Tom, a robot. This is, in fact, the Elder Scrolls Lorecast, and I'm here with Lois of Doom. Lois, welcome. Hello, hello.

Things are much better now than my internet is all cooperating and stuff. Yay for internet. Yay. And I said the Tales of Tamriel thing, because with us today, and somebody has been meaning to talk to you for quite a while now, he heads up the Dungeon Crawlers Network and is one of the hosts of Tales of Tamriel himself and also the most attractive host of Tamriel.

Sorry, Lotus. Arkin, you're welcome to the show. How's it going? It's going great.

It's going great. And it's just a hare. It's an illusion created by my hare. My hare is wildly overclassed by Ark.

Yeah, but you've been growing it out lately. You guys have kind of a competition going. I got to shave mine off, actually. It's driving me insane.

Saying things like that, I'm making you upset. Well, guys, I've been a guest on your show a few times. I've had, obviously, Lotus of the guest on my show. We had hyperpixie on the other day and Lotus is now a regular co-host of the show.

Ark, this is the first time we've had the opportunity to bring you on because we have to shoot electrons halfway across the world in order to make this work. But everything seems to be working out. Okay, today. I've been wanting to talk to you for quite some time about your take on the lore and some of your thoughts behind these games.

You've been deep, deep, deep into Elder Scrolls online, especially, but I'm sure you've played some of the other games. So tell you what, why don't we dig right in and I'll start asking you some questions after this really cool sound effect. Didn't happen. I didn't hear it.

We don't see it on our own. The illusion has been broken. This is where you get off. Come with me.

Can you guys not hear the sound effects now? I'm not going to lie to you. That's the first time I've ever heard it. Really?

Really? It was. I think it was getting caught by the noise gate because it was getting like in and out. It's funny.

I've listened to the show so long before I was on it. I just knew what they were. So I was able to do like, okay, perfect. I just don't hear it, but I know where it goes.

I just totally broke that illusion. I just say. Wow. Because I opened the stream then I remembered what it was.

But when you said sound effect, I just picked it up. I'm like, whoop. Yeah. That's weird.

It must be like a noisy thing. So initially when I said the other guests could hear them, but I'm going to have to play with my settings. Anyway, enough about the technicalities behind the show. So the first thing I wanted to ask here, and notice if you have any questions as we discussed this, feel free to jump in and bring some questions because obviously you've been talking with our community a lot more than I have.

Don't worry. I've got a couple. Oh, God. I don't want to sound like that.

Well, let's start out with, I think this is probably the thing that you're most known for. And of course, I'm sorry. We have to bring up that it seems to me, if you are a regular listener of Tails to Tamriel, that you're aware that you are definitely not for the high elves and you are not for bars and these kinds of things, you're almost better known for the things that you dislike in the world. True.

True. And because they're memorable, and of course they get brought up all the time, right? And this is just kind of a conversation centers around these things and jokes get made. But let's move it into the other side of things.

What if those are the things you dislike a lot about the lore? What are the parts of the lore that really, really intrigue you or are really, are the things that really draw you to the elders roles? All right. So not something, well, it's not something specific about the Elder Scrolls lore, like certain parts of it, but the way it is built, basic.

So to me, Elder Scrolls lore has, but before that, I should say I really love discussing things and arguing about that. I really love it if you don't already know. Yes. Elder Scrolls lore is a great opportunity for all that because it is layered.

So you have the common lore, the common knowledge that both the in-game common characters, the NPCs, like the farmer you meet or the guard you meet, the lord that they know, which is also presented to the player through the gameplay. And then you have the second layer of the lore that is written in the books, lore pages that you find or some more tricky quests that you get into in the games. So that's a bit more less known part of the lore. And then you have another layer that is only, you only get through piecing together a bunch of other things.

And it goes very in-depth, like the lessons of Vivek, the Tower lore, the right of the Wammers went. And then you have the complete, the unknown part. Again, where the Wammers went or all sort of things. The nature of the gods and those kinds of stuff that's shrouded in mythology.

And it's only talked about through metaphor and those kinds of things. Yeah. The ones that are never really revealed, at least so far in the games or in the lore, it's just unknown completely. And none of these layers are set in stone.

Unlike some other universes, like Dragonlands or even parts of Lord of the Rings, you know, if you at least have the parts where you have access to Tolkien's work, you know for sure what has happened. But not in Elder Scrolls because it is almost always given by people in the lore. So someone wrote a book from his perspective or someone went to an experience and you find that but it's never written in a meta level that, okay, this is what happened. It's always within the lore that we receive the lore.

So we never know for a certain if something has actually happened or if there's a different account of it. And that creates this infinite amount of arguing, discussing, theory, crafting. It's just you can go on forever about discussing a very simple subject in Elder Scrolls lore because it's never certain. You can never prove that you are correct.

So it is great fun. Yeah, we discuss this a lot. The unreliable narrator, the fact that you have differing accounts of the same events, even to the dynamic nature of something like a dragon break makes things both true and false all at the same time. And that's, I mean, we can divide this into two different things.

For the most part, the lore of the Elder Scrolls works a lot like the real world where you just have to trust whoever wrote the book that that's the way things actually worked, even though no account is perfect. But at the same time, you include things like Dragon breaks and all of a sudden that's not like the real world at all because at least in our reality, things are either true or false. They're not both. They're like, or at least unless we go on with the multivor theory and Dragon breaks.

And then it gets into a really deep philosophy. But at least for our own experiences with reality, things seem to either be true or false, at least on our level of existence and the things that we interact with. So yeah, it's interesting. And this is one of the things I've said many times is that the lore is very interesting in the fact that it is told in a very realistic world kind of way.

Whose account are you going to trust or can you trust anyone's account? So yeah, it's a really cool dynamic. Now when it comes to the people's and places of Tamriel, is there a certain culture that you are more drawn towards? Are there certain people's that you identify more with or that you prefer to role play as?

Nord's. Nord's and Skyrim all the way. If, well, closed seconds would be Red Gods, but yeah. So Nord's and Red Gods.

Manish men, manly, manly men, different kinds of manly men from snowy places and from desert places. From the exactly. I mean, one is closer to my real life self and one is closer to, you know, why would like to live in as a setting. Yeah, it's more so than the manly men part, but it's their understanding of honor concept.

So both Nord's and Red Gods, they have a huge concept, like a very setting stone concept of honor and glory. And that's what I guess makes me feel closer to both of their cultures because you have the, you know, sword masters of Red Gods and they are absolutely honorable people, even though from a different perspective, like they don't, they don't have a concept of some of them like Nord's, but they're still in a different belief system, different culture. They believe that they must be absolutely honorable. And then you have more from a, from a different perspective, they believe that unless they're honorable, they will get into Southern Guard.

So honor takes a really huge place in both of their cultures. So yeah, I really like that about those two. What about Orcs then? Don't Orcs have a similar code of honor.

I believe so, but for some reason, I never felt close to the Orcs. They are like, if I had to, I would again, Orcs would be in the top three, four of my list of races I would get along with in Tom Riel. But their way of life is a bit more, I guess, tribal than Red Gods and Nord's. Right.

I love concept of fighting, brawling, you know, honor, glory, all that, but not at a tribal level like the Orcs do. I still love my comfort then. Yeah. The Red Gods and the, the Nord's are a bit more sophisticated in their societies, structures and those kinds of things than the, than the Orcs are.

They're very much more tribal. Yeah. That is a big difference. And the Orcs are most likely of Moorish descent.

So they are a little bit different in that side of the culture divide for sure. Now. And we're really actually player characters for several games. Yeah.

They've kind of been fleshed out more as the series goes, which, um, and not to get super off the rails, but like it's funny just going through some of the older games. Um, you know, they, they kind of get ripped on a little more than some of the other races like in Tamriel because, you know, they were same keeps getting sacked and everything and throughout, throughout time. But it's kind of funny that as I'm playing through some of these old games, like Orcs have been written into being a like full fledged, like cultural race. Whereas in arena, it's just, here's an Orcs charges at you.

They all look exactly the same and they just bludgeon you. They're just a generic enemy. And same thing, it's unusual that you find an orc in Shadow Key. There's one that talks to you and your character is like surprised.

Like, Oh my God, this orc doesn't like try to bash my skull in just because he's a prisoner. It's like, wow, this came a long way. Right. It might as well be a skeleton or something.

It's just a monster. It was the equivalent of like skeleton based enemy. Like, okay, here's an, you know, here's your skeleton. Here's your orc.

Here's your dragon, whatever. And they became so much more. Yeah. Yeah.

Man, this is what we're already deep with the, uh, deep with the lore and the trivia knowledge here. Um, so one thing I didn't mention at the beginning of the episode is after the episode, especially those of you who are watching live and our patrons stay tuned for after the episode because our community will be our contestant in our use smarter than Twitch chat. So we'll be doing some Elder Scrolls lore trivia. Well, I guess I'll have more trivia trivia trivia stuff then.

Yeah. So stay tuned for that. So our, how did you get started with Elder Scrolls? What was your entry into the series?

Right. So my entry was with oblivion, but not by playing it, but more like watching it. So around, um, so I was born in 94. So when oblivion was released, I was what, like 12 years old, something like that.

Um, and at that time I was mostly playing Counter Strike, Call of Duty, you know, earlier in the series, Age of Empires, but the first Age of Empires, I played that a lot too, or like other console games and things like that. But I didn't have a concept of RPGs. And one day we had one PC in the house at that point and what I would like watch my older brother play games a lot. And one day I entered room, he's playing a game.

He's running in the sewers and I started watching him play oblivion just when, um, he exited the sewers into that beautiful scene, you know, living in the island across with the eyelid ruins and the mountains and bright sunny day and the trees. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So like a, I don't know, a shock at that point, because up until that I was playing, you know, games that are not focusing on the world or the atmosphere, but more just a game. Counter Strike, what do you expect from it in terms of that scenery? And I was, I was amazed by and immediately on the spot, I was like, what is this? What game is this?

And he explained that it is an RPG. It's oblivion. And I was hooked at that point and I started playing oblivion pretty much right then. And for the next several years, I guess I played oblivion very heavily, although I didn't understand much of it because at that time, my English was all over the place.

I would understand words and whatnot, but not full complex lore of it. Wow. That's really interesting to, I mean, you're right, like you're from a different culture, English is a second language. Man, that game, I understood what role playing games were.

That was my entry into the series as well, but I didn't understand what the series was about yet. So everything was new. The fact that like vampires existed, I had no idea until all of a sudden it became one. And I was like, holy crap, I'm a vampire.

That's a thing. So I kind of entered into it blindly as well. But I can't imagine also entering into it with, you know, the hurdle of it being a second language. And like that, how did you find that it was just more shrouded in mystery and that there were just more surprises when you didn't necessarily understand all the context of something and all this in came face to face with something that may have been hinted at in the language, but you just didn't pick it up until you saw it.

How did that work? So I used to play, especially online games and RPGs with a dictionary by my side. So it was a lot of reading something and then like opening up the dictionary trying to figure out what it is and then continuing to play. Most of that, at that time, I didn't pay attention to much to the lore actually because it was a lot of reading through a lot of material that I didn't understand.

But I was mostly trying to figure out what I'm supposed to do in the quest. So those were the parts I generally just translated and went about doing my quest. So the first, you know, I guess a hero solved my oblivion playthrough was generally just enjoying the quests and the atmosphere and the environment, the world, rather than the lore itself. Like I don't remember much now, but I probably didn't even understand, you know, the concept of the Imperial City or the war, you know, what are the data, what are the data, Prince's, none of it probably made any sense to me.

Eventually, I was constantly translating stuff and I started learning more and more English, getting more and more comfortable with it. And at that point, I also started playing other RPGs like Dragon Age at Witcher, I tried to play, I never got to play it because Witcher first was too much for my early game, myself. But yeah, oblivion was my entry into the Elder Scrolls and the RPG genre. And then from that on, it followed with obviously Skyrim and from Skyrim to Elder Scrolls Online.

And very recently and by very recently, I mean, like last year or so I played Elder Scrolls 3 more of it, only made it like 50 hours into it. I got that barely scratching the surface. I got through two quests. Right, right.

Yeah, 20 hours is trying to hit that first rat that you run into and you can't quite hit it. Yeah. I'm always going to joke about that because that's where I bounced off it and I was like, I don't get it. Why can't I hit a rat?

And then I was done. Yeah, you know, early playthroughs of oblivion, I, you brought up the Daedra, the Daedra Princess, and I was very confused about what they were because they're not really demons, but they seem kind of demonic. And I didn't have a template in my head for what that was. Like these are powerful beings that seem to have nefarious purposes, but don't always.

And I just, I couldn't place them. I'm like, are they supposed to be demons because they're Daedra? That sounds almost like demon. You know, like, what is that?

It was always a little bit foggy to me at first. And I think that's part of what was so appealing about the lore is that so much of it doesn't really reveal itself until you spend lots and lots of time in the world and really start to immerse yourself. So the point where things start to kind of click and make sense because it is foreign. It is very different.

Yeah. So you went from oblivion and then into Skyrim. So Skyrim comes out. And then you were more familiar with the world.

You probably spent a lot of hours in Skyrim, I would assume. Oh, yeah. So oblivion I played. I don't even know how much because back then I wasn't playing it on like any platform that was tracking my game play time, but I know that I played with a single character for like two years.

And eventually God, that's actually a funny story that I will get later. I got stuck in a dungeon and never were able to leave after two years of two years of playing with the same character. But yeah, so several years we don't believe me. And at that point, my English got gotten a lot better as well because I was constantly playing games and mostly RPGs.

So eventually I added up to a point that I was by the time I was playing Skyrim, I was I was able to understand everything that I read. So I started getting heavier into the lore as well with Skyrim, starting to reading up, you know, reading Vicky's off like USB or the other Elder Scrolls. We're getting into discussions with friends because at that point I was in high school. Some of my friends were also, you know, playing Skyrim.

So we're getting into these discussions. So yeah, I guess I've played Skyrim all the way until Elder Scrolls Online released. It just started over added more mods are the different mods started over again. And I was just like three, four years off constantly playing Skyrim.

Yeah, the Skyrim game is that really set that time. That's what we all did. Yeah. Yeah.

Let's try these 1200 mods and see how they work together. Oh, I crashed. Now my gameplay for the week was just loading mods. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So when Elder Scrolls Online came out, were you there for the like the big announcement?

Were you on board with it right from the beginning? I think I wasn't I think I missed the initial announcement of it. I think I got into it with the I think first better. I don't really remember.

But because by then I wasn't active in the online communities at all. And I was playing single player games. I wasn't I was I very rough to which existed, but I wasn't really interested in it. I would just watch gameplay videos or whatever on YouTube.

So I wasn't really active with the news and discussions, communities online. So I missed the initial like that initial. Oh, they are making Elder Scrolls anymore PG hype. But when I heard about it, oh man, that was that was the first time I was.

Really like extremely high beyond, you know, just how I'm excited about this, but like how am I supposed to wait for this level of hype? So I got into it with better. And from then on, I was pretty much always on. That's how I met during that beta phase is how I actually first met the concept of podcast as well.

Up until then, I didn't know podcast were a thing at all. And I was looking for content to watch or listen to during my classes, because at that point, I was in university and I was in a good student. I was listening to a lot of classes. So I was looking up and I saw, you know, the Elder Scrolls podcast of that time, one of which was Tales of Tom real and with Tales of Tom real, I started listening to it.

At that time, they weren't going live with it. So I started like sending it emails, doing some back and forth and then they started doing it live, which is how I sort of got pulled into the concept of Twitch as well. Yeah. And from that on, pretty much.

Continue to be part of the online Elder Scrolls on community and it was just a whole new world, honestly. Yeah. Yeah. And it's a it's a cool community.

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I've had many conversations with people who had a conversation on our Discord today with some of our patrons about some of the differences between the single player focused games that Bethesda's put out and games like ESO and Fallout 76 that are kind of a mix of story and always online multiplayer, MMO kind of elements. And they obviously they're a little different from each other. But this idea that was it did it, I don't know, I don't know the right way to frame this, but some people would rather have more single player games and that's all they want. They don't want to try to play through that in an online setting either because they don't want to be playing with other people or run through quest doing the same stuff in an MMO style game or they don't like the online always nature of the game.

They would rather be able to just download the update and then launch it even if they're not connected to the internet. And I totally get that because some people can't always be connected to the internet. And so they're missing out on some of the stories and things. But my perspective on it is had they they were going to launch a game that was an MMO, Bethesda was going to put down an MMO and they were either going to do Be Elder Scrolls or another IP they currently had or would have to make a new IP.

And if that's the case, I would rather have them create more Elder Scrolls stories because that's what I like. I want to play through each of the expansions. I want to see what happens in the world. I want to get more lore and more understanding of the different cultures and different people and that kind of thing.

So that's what keeps bringing me back. Do you have the same kind of love for the stories or are you know, like you came from a background where it was a lot of game mechanics and competitive stuff? Do you find that you dive equally into different aspects of the game or do you have certain parts of the game that you kind of line more up with more more often? So until recently in Elder Scrolls Online, I was a lot more story focused.

For example, for the single player games, I never played them in the highest difficulty because what I cared was not min-maxing my build or my character or the grind, but the story. So I would just drop the difficulty to easiest puzzle. I still play single player RPGs like that by the way. I drop it to the single like the easiest difficulty up until I have to fight a boss because I want to get the experience of fighting a boss as well.

But I don't want for example, in Skyrim, you put it on insane difficulty and you get killed by rats. And I don't want my game time to be fighting rats for five hours. For god's perspective, you run into a troll. Hyper-dixie gaming, thank you for the rates.

Thank you. Yeah, but like a troll in Skyrim, like max difficulty, like heals faster than you can hurt it. If you're a new character, you just have to run away. There's nothing you can do.

Yeah. So I generally put everything to easiest difficulty and then just got to just absorb the story as much as I can. But without the scrolls online, I was also for the longest part was very story focused, but recently, I might be saying that I guess the last couple years or so, I started getting into more challenge runs. And now I have to be honest, I can't really go back to the story side of ESO as much as I like to because those challenges are addictive.

That's a whole different world for me. So like I haven't touched Markart storyline, for example, yet, but I still love the stories. However, I am now getting more into the MMORPG aspect of Elder Scrolls Online. Interesting.

I'm pretty sure when we get a new single player storyline for Elder Scrolls, I'll just probably go back to my own self, put it on the easiest and play it on my pace, just absorbing as much of the story as I can. Interesting. Yeah, I'm very much into the story aspects of these games too. That's what keeps bringing me back into the game after I'll take a break and play.

Other stuff, obviously, do other shows about other games. So I have to spend some of my time here and some of my time there. But every time there's a new story, I always come back and always check that part out. And of course, that draws me into some of the other aspects and then I start diving the dungeons again and maybe do a little bit of PvP and whatever the event is.

So that's, yeah, we have kind of a similarity there. I never quite drop the difficulty in the single player games down to easy. I always try to keep it at just in normal, normal difficulty. What is you?

How do you play those games? This is interesting because everyone comes at the stuff from a different perspective. And it's interesting. So it's kind of funny.

I have this overarching thing of I like something of a challenge, but I don't usually like to find a reason to make myself miserable despite what it seems like. I'm from playing games or everything, but I have a real fascination with achieving things. So I'll play a game more often than not. I'm like a normal, I'll just leave it as whatever stock is most of the time.

In a single player thing. And then if they put an achievement behind it or something and suddenly it's like, oh, play the game on ultra nightmare difficulty. I'm like, oh man, I could play an ultra nightmare difficulty. And like, so that that totally works on me.

Like, and then I mean, I don't know. I guess sometimes I make my own achievements where I'm like, I'll just play all of the Elder Scrolls games. There is no difficulty in the old Elder Scrolls games playing them is difficult enough. So like that's, but like more of them than not, I don't know, like a standard challenge is fine with me unless there's a count like that competition aspect does make me much, much more interesting.

I mean, for a while on Tails, when we all had fully functioning dungeon teams, whereas schedules were meeting up, we were all battling up who could do speed run, no death, hard mode of specific dungeons just outdo each other on the show. So like scheduling became a bit of a problem. So we haven't been able to do that in a while, but like that little aspect really, I kind of do share that, but I also like to go through things. So it's, it's a little of both.

And I come from honestly a pretty similar background arc. Mine wasn't so much Counter Strike, but I would be from the like battleground style of Call of Duty or Unreal Tournament or Quake and stuff like that. So I'm used to like, you know, everybody at each other's throats and it's you win or nothing. And then right now I'm, I don't know, I got old and now I play RPGs and I'm like, Oh, these are great.

I love these. Yeah. I don't know. I feel good on real tournament.

Oh, my God, that's great. Yeah. My prime, my prime when it came to like Twitch shooters was Counter Strike source like 2004. That was about as good as I got.

You know, I'm older than arc is, but yeah, we played on a local server and they would keep track of say 8,000 people who played on the server regularly. And I made it, I made it to fifth place on the server. And I was like, I was, you know, I could tell like where my bullets were most likely to hit by like averages. They had like the body layout and where all the bullets are and your averages were hitting from body parts and with different guns, all that stuff.

This is way before, you know, go with some of the more technology stuff they do with that. But yeah, that's, that's as good as I got. And then I was like, I'm not going to have to be better than this. And then that's for sure was the, that was the truth.

And then ever since then, I've never been as good at shooters. Yeah, that's. Sometimes it's good to know though, just be like a peak. There it is.

I peaked. I can just look back at this fondly now. I'm like, yep, back in the night. Hey, I could shoot back and headshot a man of 50 yards and two milliseconds.

Exactly. Yeah. Oh, man. So, you have any questions for arc?

I've been kind of running running the show so far. So far. So, I mean, I might have gotten arc once or twice before this. Yeah, every now and then.

Sure. But no, so I actually find it fascinating. I never thought of the fact of when you said playing through these for the first time, you needed to translate. Like, yeah, that is like a level of hard mode that just surpasses like screw arena being difficult.

That's like blank and blindfolded. Like that is I just never I had never considered that. So it was, I don't know. That was like, I, when you said that, it just holds and click.

And I was like, holy crap, that is that's intense. But no, the only the only thing just because we got a raid from our other tales, because it's a tales reunion here. Yeah, I'm a real number hyperpixie. It wouldn't be a tale show without me asking why you have to love the Elmer Dominion so much.

I won't. Why is this? So, let's get down to the root of this. What is it about the Elmer Dominion specifically that you just like?

Ultimers themselves. Is it the like I'm so much better than everyone else attitude thing? Pretty much like that, arrogance. I mean, they all act in such a way that it's just immediately punchable.

Right. The ordinary characteristic is just that immediately punchable. Yeah, it's like every time I see a picture of Joel's, you know, I want to just punch his shiny teeth. Yeah.

Like, I don't like that as an adjective punchable punchable. Yeah, there's a punchable face. You're like, mm, the face makes a fist in it. Pretty much.

Yeah. Yeah. They are irritated. That's that's the thing.

And they are at bayne in the existence of Tom Yell as well as we see in the future, you know, eras of Eller Scholes universe, AKA Fortera, the war, the White Gold Concordat. They're not good. They are not good for the benefit of the, you know, all of the people of Tom Yell. So if you can get rid of them in second era, we solve a lot of problems in several hundred years in the future.

That's my, that's my logic. Yeah. Yeah. So it's kind of funny because like obviously the Alliance War joke has been going on with our show for a very long time.

And it's kind of funny just because regardless of who happens to be on the show as, you know, tales have been on for almost six years at this point, I think there's been a decent amount of rotating cast as the three of us are, none of us are original members of the show. So it's funny though, because in that same regard, we have overlapping things where I'll agree with something with Ark, but then disagree with them on something else. And then Pixie will agree with me on something, but disagree with me on something else. And it's funny.

I have such a thing where like I am, I like that all of the races in Tamriel are the same. Like I like them all like kind of equally. And that's in the way that I think they're all super flawed and a disaster. Right.

Right. But like actual people. Amazing. Exactly.

It's amazing. Realistic. Like no culture is just full of saints and angels, you know, like we all have our darkness. When you look at, you know, the fact of the things I'm so gung ho on the web and heart packs, just because I think that's like the best option pretty much.

But it's funny in the regard of the Elmer Dominion, it's funny. It's that fourth wall, you know, broken knowledge of what they become, even if it's just like in its infancy. I, they're so infuriating in Skyrim. And I mean, they're obviously designed to be like that.

You're not supposed to sympathize with the fourth era, you know, thom or whatever. But like, yeah, that's like you. Thom. So it always makes me curious like what if yes, so had come out before Skyrim?

Like, I wonder if I mean, a lot of people like the AD. It's that's fine too. But I always wonder if more people would like the AD if you didn't know what they would become. Probably it's kind of like to jump in.

It's kind of like the brotherhood in Fallout 3 versus the brotherhood in Fallout 4. Right. In Fallout 3, the brotherhood are like the shining nights because they're lions, brotherhood, who is actually open to bringing people in and they're trying to build peace in the wasteland. But in Fallout 4, it's Maxine's brotherhood and not the original Maxine's brotherhood.

And they are very anti anything that's not human and very racist. And right. And two different groups really. Not to turn this into a Fallout thing, but like I also won't fall out.

So the direct con like contradiction when you put the brotherhood despite their flaws against the, I mean, in the background, you've got the enclave, which is like, oh my. It's like fascism. Right. Yeah.

There's some pretty apparent evil going on compared to some like maybe a couple questionable things and it becomes much more of a star contrast in that situation. Right. Right. Which would be like the middle of the second era, Elmeri Dominion.

Right. Because you're like, yeah, perfect. But they've got some good intentions compared to the Thalmor, which you're just like, no, they're straight people. They're straight people.

Yeah. Yeah. They're directly, I mean, it's as directly correlated to like just fascist Nazis. I mean, that's just what they are.

Like in parallel in Skyrim and that's kind of supposed to be their point. They're not supposed to be likable. Yeah. Yeah.

I remember giving them kind of the benefit of the doubt playing Skyrim early on. I was just like, yeah, these guys seem like they're not up to no good, but I'm not going to just murder them as I pass them on this bridge somewhere. Yeah. And then after playing the game for a few years, it was just like every time I came across them, it didn't matter if I was ready for the conflict or not.

I was just like, these guys are getting straight up murdered on this bridge because I am not letting them walk around here. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

It's very funny. Talmore is not the reason I hate all from RSI there because I hated them in Oblivion as well. It's just that. Oh, yeah.

It's the you definitely dislike the snooty atmosphere to the much more than I do. I mean, I'll find something about all of the people in Tamriel will be like, you did this. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Oh, I mean, hi, I was there. It could be saints and I was like, they're not to do that. I will not be talking.

That's the thing. Yeah. I mean, are Nords all like Ben and then saints? No, we spend our time just punching each other as well.

But that's at least honest. And like drunken punching. That's really fun. Quest that's how you become friends.

Yeah. Hey, bro. Yeah. They're bro bros.

We're bro bros from the north. Oh, man. Oh, no. Okay.

So like we take the conversation here. Yeah, we can say how do we steer that back? How do we steer this back? Actually, you know what?

I did have another question. And being that we are in December and announcements for last year's next year of elders roles came about roughly this time of year and then we started getting actually we got a lot of we got a speculation in December and then we got confirmation and then of course January, there was absolute confirmation. Do you guys have any thoughts about where things might be going on the next year of elders girls online? That is actually a good question.

I haven't thought about that at all. Yeah. Yeah. Right.

So I had a pretty decent streak of nonsense guesses that kind of were way more accurate than I had any right to be. And I doubled down on the one that I pretty much figured was impossible. And it was definitely not the case for the final deal. But I still I don't I it would seem weird to me if they would extend more.

I mean, people loved going back to Skyrim. This was like a huge hit. It did help that people were stuck at home and were like video games. So that's true.

We also help their numbers too. But I mean, it was very, very hyped going back to Skyrim. But at the end of the dark artist, I remember this year, Skyrim isn't complete. Like we don't have white run.

Oh, yeah. Don't have the College of Winterhold, which will basically be at the infancy stages around this time, which they more or less seem like they had scrapped it back back in the day. But it wasn't an active development. But for a long time, spell crafting was suggested, which if they're ever going to bring that in, it's most likely going to come with the College of Winterhold.

If they can ever pull it off, I don't know what the original plan was or if they were clearly there were issues that I would have brought it out sooner. But I'm just curious. It seems weird to not finish Skyrim with two such incredibly notable places still missing. So I'm curious if there's still more to come with Skyrim, but I'm not can.

I don't know how I would feel if we started another year in Skyrim. I feel like that might fatigue people. Like they might need to take a year gap between us. Something.

Right. Well, I'm just going to take a year gap in Dominion sites. So they did Somerset and then elsewhere, which was back in both in Dominion, if you will. Yeah, they were different cultures of it.

So one was more, you know, Kajiti focused and one was nasty high elsewhere. So they had two Dominion. Expansions back to back. Now, I don't think we will be in Skyrim again, but if they do do another expansion in Skyrim, I would obviously be very happy and wouldn't be surprised because we already had two same zone expansions back to back before.

Right. So here's a question with all of the speculation for the Elder Scrolls six being is in somewhere like High Rock and the large swans of high rock also not being flexed out yet. And Elder Scrolls online. Do you think they're going to avoid going to high rock in order for that map to be first revealed in the Elder Scrolls six?

That's another thing I've noticed about the layouts of the world. That's a good. That's a good. That might be an odd ish clearly in charge of all of this.

So he might be saying, OK, we've got some high rock in here, but let us craft the rest of this and then you guys can mirror it in a later expansion for everyone. Elder Scrolls online because the mainland games are the priority. If one is good priority. And yeah, that's that's really kind of interesting because sectioning off what is missing from, you know, high rock would be the deck of all covenant faction of the Alliance.

They fliched out a lot up there outside of that. So they're kind of limited specifically in what they could do there. Same thing with the Dominion. It's, you know, a lot of it's been covered now.

So I believe the most generous portion of the map is still ebb and heart, but they did. Merckmeyer has one of the areas. It was the zone DLC. And despite the fact that Merckmeyer is very, very good, it seemed like it fell a little flat in the overall scheme of things.

People just kind of didn't, you know, they didn't seem like got the fanfare of some of the others. Yeah, I think people are a little bit less excited about Argonians. I think that's part of it. Yeah.

There's definitely that part of the map that's up there. Now, I've got a third idea here because I think I think it would be good to have if they did more Skyrim, I'd be happy with it. If they created a gap of the year, like you said, I think that would probably be a good idea as well. I'm doubting that they're going to go to High Rock.

Here's here's an idea that I've got two other ideas actually. One, what if we go back to an oblivion zone that's kind of like cold harbor? I would love that actually. That could be really cool.

And that would open up the ability to do anything. I agree. And I loved the start of the spiral sky when we got to go there for the first time, because we had never been able to go to the spiral sky and at least in any of the other roles games I've ever played. That place was creepy as hell.

So I would love it if we did more with that since it's kind of been started. Yeah. So there could be something like that. But then another crazy idea I had was what if they move time forward and adjust Cyradil there is.

Yeah. What if they remake parts of Cyradil and you could still have PvP combat in there. You could go into like a PvP version of Cyradil, but then you could also go into PvE version of Cyradil, then actually has towns and cities and things. And so you start kind of like that.

Yeah, especially since the campaigns are separate. You choose to enter that instance when you're going in there and it's like a zoning thing. But that would be interesting to have like a more PvE focused version of Cyradil. Right.

And also there's more to Cyradil that they can still flesh out. They do a little bit with the Gold Coast with the Dark Brotherhood DLC. So it's like there's still more to stretch into. And you've got the city.

You've got and there's I mean, anybody who's played a Bolivian, you do any one of those cities and they're going to have memories of like being in Kavach or being in wherever. And all of a sudden that's, you know, like it's almost like going back to Markar. Right. It's a place you're for a bit.

And it would be really cool to see what the people look like there. But instead of running around feeling other PvP players, you actually get to interact with the town. And the city and deal with like the war issues that are going on with their side of the map and all that kind of stuff because there's still people who live there, you know, there's still stuff going on. Yeah.

You know, as you go toward without necessarily completely barging into Daggerfall, you can also explore the Colovian Highlands and stuff like that. There's there's room to work with in that whole thing without. I don't want Colovian Highlands though. I want Niba in a Valley.

I was going to say, yeah, you know, I am more Niba in a side of yeah, I don't see. So for that matter though, I'm down with that. Let's go with the Niba in a stand. But yeah, either way, you want to go.

There's there's some options to work with, which I think that would be cool to. OK, here's the idea then. So Zos has not been reluctant with bringing back that character. So they just pop out left and right.

Right. Now one thing how how spoiler can we get here? When the elsewhere spoilers that's fine. I mean, we are a loracast.

We are looking. Yeah, we do kind of talk about anything. Other than most recent. Yeah, we're not talking about most recent myself anyway.

So I can talk elsewhere. That's fine. That's OK. So I'm not on at the end of elsewhere.

He sacrifices himself, but we never really see him actually die. Right. But he appears that he dies now. He looks like he explodes, but we don't see him die.

Right. Yeah, I mean, in the far like VCD explosion, but not of no time in the explosion, because we watch it from afar after we go to the portal. Now, I don't want Abnotarn to be brought back into the game, because then all my emotions from him dying goes away. Stand like, why did I feel all this?

Right. Abnotarn is also from the Tan family is from Niba. Yeah. And what if you listen to turmoil and Abnotarn was hell bent on restoring empire?

What? What? Even a expansion. Yeah.

I'm going with this here. And I'm so yes. And what if he doesn't come back, but we deal with his family grieving him. And it starts with like the ceremony of his death and family members vowing to further his goals.

Right. And of course, you have like a younger way more solid because I love where this could go. Yeah, especially because man, this is going to be way back to promotional material before elsewhere dropped. So bear with me for a minute.

The original letter sent out was Abnotarn talking about trying to end the three banners war and it was a literal letter that was sent with the clique, little Rathstones that some of us got. Yeah. And it was an actual letter sent out with him talking about ending it. That could be an interesting twist if they were to bring some type of PVE element into it where it's like, OK, this is like toward the end of the fighting or something like that, which is the three banners war.

So yeah, I don't know. That kind of storyline with robots added as well. I would love that because it's Niba. It's Tarn family and it's zero to expansion, all of which together.

That would be my ultimate expansion idea for for now, at least. I mean, they might announce something that will blow my mind and I could go, oh, wow, this is better. But at this point, my best combination would be exactly that. Getting more involved with the Tarn family.

Yeah, maybe he has some really cool, like nephew or somebody who doesn't have as big of a stick up as but you know, and then people actually like him. Well, and it's fun because he's so polarizing. Yeah. Yeah.

And personally, I'm not really of the Abner Fink Club or the Admer pay fest. He's just he's fine. He's pretty funny. However, his relatives are obnoxious.

Yes. As annoying as Abner can be from time to time, screw all of his relatives. They are awful. Right.

Right. Two times that we know were so one is Septimatarn, which is the like metal mage leading the seventh Legion. If I remember correctly and they're basically loyalists to Molakina and we fight them. I think it wasn't Daggerfall storyline.

I don't remember well. And then obviously we got elsewhere with who was it? What you would be a sister? Yeah.

Yeah. She really outdid herself. Like, I feel like maybe not enough people grasped out. I mean, the lore in Elder Scrolls is pretty warped as is.

But the very, oh my God, that that specific scene where she mummifies and resurrects Camira's parents to kill her. Yes. You're like, God, that's dark. Yeah.

Like she has no scruples about just being the worst. And then yes, as brought up in chat, as everybody who's ever seen any of my mainstreams screw yay, your bomb, Tharn. Yeah. I think it would be really cool, though, to have a character like I love character development in stories.

So to have somebody who's just as terrible as these people go through some sort of character arc in the next expansion and to become somebody who's, you know, like, I'm going to avenge his death and then comes to find out that, like, no, he freaking saved the world and then is now motivated to, you know, actually make themselves a better person and kind of change the way things go. It'd be kind of a neat way to introduce a new character. Also, slight correction because dark caught it. I had that backwards.

Klivia was in the white gold tower. The one screaming about my scroll, the scroll is mine. It was Eoraxia that I meant. There we go.

You're actually. Yes. I had mixed up that. Tharn.

So, yes, Klivia is actually like old tower. Dungeon Eoraxia was what I meant. So good catch on that, thank you. Thanks, dog.

That's dog, dog mark from the red. I was actually wearing their t-shirt on the screen. I did yesterday. Well, I think I think we've solved all the problems for anything that could potentially be a future update to Elder Scrolls Online.

So good job, everybody. Yay, we did it. You came up with the best idea. Now developers are scrambling to get up to actually make it.

Right. Oh, we have to develop this in less than a month. Go. So, we don't have to clear what that would be due whenever we've had devs in our streams on tails.

I mean, we clearly floated them gold that they paid lots of attention to and didn't immediately be like, well, these, they're all more on. Well, back to the idea of like high rock not making an appearance in ESO until Elder Scrolls 6 potentially considering that that is, but I assume Elder Scrolls 6 is quite a bit into development at this point, at least a general layout and how it will be and what I assume them to be complete. Yeah. So instead of waiting for Elder Scrolls 6 to mirror into Elder Scrolls Online, what they could do as a possibility is mirror Elder Scrolls Online into Elder Scrolls 6 as well.

If they already have the idea for Elder Scrolls 6 and how Hammerfell and High Rock would be, they could just bring it into Elder Scrolls Online as it would be in second era. And then have the nostalgia effect or whatever in Elder Scrolls 6, sort of do it backwards. I can see that being sort of, yeah. Yeah.

And use Elder Scrolls Online basically to market Elder Scrolls 6. This is the MMORPG 2 market single player game. The opposite of what they did before with single player 10, MMORPG. Yeah, no, that's a solid point.

They could do it the other way around. That would make a lot of sense. Man, too many options. I'm sure we're going to be very shocked when they actually get announced.

They're like, it's the year of this thing and we're like, Oh, we should have seen that coming. That's unfortunate. Solsk time. That's a big city.

What? Really? OK. Really?

That's a bold change. Well, Arken, thank you for joining us. This has been super fun. It's been way too long for me to get you on here.