Hello, everybody. It's another episode of the Elder Lore Podcast. In our episode today, we are going to discuss Argonia, the province in southeastern Tamriel, which is also known as Black Marsh. So, the Pocket Guide to the Empire not so affectionately refers to Argonia as the quote-unquote garbage heap of Tamriel, where, quote, everything rotten and despoiled eventually flows, end quote.
This sentiment is echoed throughout much of Tamriel, where the lack of exploration and documentation of the province itself has led to a general lack of knowledge and ignorance. Argonia may be a province of harsh, unforgiving swamplands, but it is also home of the Argonians, one of Tamriel's most interesting and enigmatic beast races. We'll start our story with the fabled Aldmeri explorer known as Torval the Pilot, who is more commonly referred to as Topol the Pilot. And he was exploring the coasts of Tamriel as early as the Merethic Era.
He discovered the Nibbin River, which was named after his boat, the Nibbin. He is the namesake of Tobol Bey, and the patron saint of the city of Leowin, which sits in Cyrodiil, right where the Nibbin River meets the sea. His exploits were documented in poem form, in lay form, of which only fragments still remain extant. You can read these excerpts in the book titled Father of the Nibbin, where these fragments have been reproduced and annotated by the author, whose name is Florian Jalil.
Fragment three reads, quote, The fetid evil swamplands and their human lizards retreated to the east, and Tobol and his men's hearts were greatly gladdened by the sight of the diamond-pure, sweet ocean. End quote. Tobol had originally planned to travel through one of the many tributaries that ran through Argonia, but was turned away by the reeking swamps and aggressive territorial Argonian tribes that lived on the coastlines. So we can see that even from the very beginning, again, Tobol was doing his exploring during the Merethic Era, and even from the start, we see people who don't really take the time to get to know the province because of its harshness and alien quality.
Argonia is the name that the elves gave the province. They named it after an ancient battle, which may or may not have taken place in that part of the world. The Argonians speak Jal, which is said to be the closest speech to thought, and that men and elves cannot use it enough, or well enough, to converse freely in the language. In Jal, the Argonians refer to themselves as the Saxleal, which, I believe, translates to the people of the root.
This underscores their deep connection to the sentient histories of Argonia. The Argonians are one of the most alien races in Tamriel. Again, this often leads to misunderstanding from the other races, and as a result, they are often distrustful and aggressive towards outsiders, because, mainly, outsiders are often distrustful and aggressive towards them. The harshness of their homeland doesn't do much to assuage these preconceived notions about them as people.
They have become fierce warriors over time, because they have often had to defend themselves and their homeland against pirates, imperials, and even the Dunmer. It is said that they are equally at home on land and in water, and that they have gills behind their ears. Travel within Argonia is usually relegated to swimming or traveling by boat, as the province has few roads. In the first era, pirates began using the coastal regions, which were the more hospitable regions in Argonia, as staging points for raids into Cyrena.
The Alessian Empire was forced to respond to these threats, and they sent an army into Argonia. The pirates had also been hostile to the Argonians, and as a result, as we've talked about previously, the Argonians over time has become more hostile towards any outsider. So despite the fact that the Argonians and the Alessians were not necessarily enemies, they ended up fighting each other in the deep swamps of Argonia. This conflict did nothing to improve the general perception of the Argonians.
Eventually, the pirates were defeated, and we'll talk about that again a little bit later on. And afterwards, the Alessian armies were very quick to get out of the marsh. The Argonians were not selectly later on in the first era, however, when the Raymond Empire and Cyrodiil defeated them in battle and absorbed Black Marsh into their empire. The empire used Black Marsh as a prison state, and they sent their worst and most dangerous criminals to live in the dungeons.
In the second era, during the chaos, that was the Interregnum, which is how we refer to the time in between the end of the Raymond dynasty and the coming of Tiber Septim. The Dunmer marched into Black Marsh in force. The Dunmer often viewed slavery as their ancestral right, some great houses more than others, but the Khajiit and the Argonians were viewed as easy targets, perhaps because they were beast races, although I'm not sure we'll ever know the truth of it. Many Argonians in Khajiit would be forced into subjugation and hard labor under the Dunmer in the coming years, and it would remain so until the abolition of slavery.
Before slavery is abolished, we also have the Nhatan Flu. This was a disease that was deadly for any non-reptilian, and it spread through Argonia like wildfire. It killed off whatever Dunmer had come into Argonia to find slaves, but it also killed off the Kothringi humans that had lived in the province up until that point. Because of its effects and the fact that, you know, it had no effect on Argonians, many believe that it was started by an Argonian shaman in Stormhold in the year 560 of the Second Era.
The disease itself eventually died off, but fear of it kept many outsiders from coming into Argonia for a very long time. We know that in the Fourth Era, the Ministry of Truth crashes into Vibeck City, and the Red Mountain erupts, and the Argonians sweep in in the wake of these cataclysms and clean up the rest of the Dunmer, focusing on the specific great houses that had perpetrated the most slavery. When Typer Septim decided to conquer Blackmarsh for his empire, this is back in the Third Era, he was only able to give footholds on the coastal regions of the province and didn't even really bother marching into Blackmarsh's interior. The current state of Blackmarsh is, as far as I know, a little up in the air at the moment.
A lot of what I'm about to say has to do with the excellent books that were written by Gregory Keyes in the Elder Scrolls universe, the first one being The Infernal City and its sequel, Lord of Souls. So if you haven't read those yet, I'm not going to give away huge spoilers here, but I would strongly recommend reading. So as I said, the current state of Blackmarsh is a little up in the air. Many of the province's most important cities have been overrun early in the Fourth Era.
By the year 40, most of Argonians' most important cities were swarmed and overrun by armies of the undead. Lilmoth, the home of the warlord Ylokth, who marched with the Raymond dynasty against Mornhold in the Third Era, home and political seat of the Anzalil, Blackmarsh's ruling party at the time, was the first to fall. Black Rose, where the Alessian armies under the command of Empress Hestra brought down the pirate leader Red Brahmin, where Akaviri Potente vs. Dushay built Tamriel's most secure dungeons, where the associates of Jagarth Arn would be sent, was not far behind.
One, or perhaps more, of the Hiss, have quote-unquote gone rogue and disconnected themselves from the Hivemind, which ends up being a disaster for the Anzalil, Blackmarsh's ruling party, because they often commune with the Hiss. According to the Anuad, the Hiss are some of the first sentient organisms to live on Nern. The Pocket Guide to the Empire erroneously refers to the Hiss as just a different strain of Argonian, but we know that they are in fact sentient trees that play an integral role in Argonian society. The Anuad states that the, uh, quote, the Hiss were bystanders in the Elnafei War, but most of their realm was destroyed as the war passed over it.
A small corner of it survived to become Blackmarsh in Tamriel, but most of their realm was sunk beneath the sea, unquote. So, in other words, when the Elnafei, the ancestors of the elves, were fighting the wandering Elnafei, the ancestors of the men, the Hiss remained passive and uninvolved, but it did not, in the end, prevent their lands from being destroyed and sunk into the sea. So what remains of their once larger realm is what we know today as Blackmarsh. By most accounts, it's in the early Marathic era that the first preliterate tribes of Argonians come into existence.
Seeing as how the Hiss have such a prominent place in the lives of the Argonians, it is possible that the Hiss played some part in their evolution. This is, as far as I know, at this point, unproven speculation. Seems likely to be. As earlier mentioned, the Hiss share a kind of hive mind where they can all communicate easily with each other, despite what might amount to a great distance between them.
They can also communicate with Argonians through visions granted when the Argonians ingest the sap of the Hiss. This can be seen during the Fighters Guild questline in Oblivion, when competitors to the Fighters Guild have kind of kidnapped a Hiss and ingested its sap. Of course, it has a different effect on non-Argonians, and these warriors fly into a dangerous hallucinogenic bloodlust. The sap has a strong physical effect on young Argonians as well, as they often ingest it as children on their naming day, and it affects how humanoid or how reptilian they will appear when they become adults.
They believe that the Hiss give them a soul when they are born, and that when they die, their soul then returns to the Hiss. According to Monomyth, the Hiss recognize Scythus as the original creator. As we've seen in Gregory Keyes' novel of the Infernal City, it is possible for a tree to go AWOL and separate itself from the hive mind of the Hiss. In the Third Era, the Hiss foresee the coming of the Oblivion crisis, and called all the Argonians within earshot across Tamriel back to Argonia.
They spoke to the Anzalil, which at the time was just a fledgling kind of anti-imperial political party, and the Anzalil organized the legions of Argonians just in time for the opening of the first Oblivion gates. So they had the drop on the Daedra that came pouring through the gates, whereas everywhere else in Tamriel, it was almost entirely a surprise, and they found themselves not prepared to deal with the threat of that magnitude. Meanwhile, in Blackmarsh, the Argonians are pouring through the gates so fiercely that the lieutenants of Maerun's Dagon were forced to close the gates themselves in order to save themselves from the armies of Argonians. The Argonians, most likely because of their connection to the Hiss, also have a deep reverence for Scythus.
Scythus, we will remember, is just another name for Padme. Argonians that are born under the sign of shadow are given into service of the Dark Brotherhood and are called Shadow Scales. You can meet a member of the Dark Brotherhood in Skyrim, who claims that they are the last of the Shadow Scales, although I'm not sure how this could be possible. They usually live together in tribes, which are often organized by appearance and customs.
You can find some examples of this within the many books of the Argonian account, but they include the Agasseths, who have needle faces and really bright colorations, the Archynes, who made their fortunes selling other Argonians into slavery, the Patru, who are described as being toad-like, and the Sarpa, and the Nagas, which appear more serpentine and reptilian than humanoid. So that's it for our brief overview of the province of Argonia, aka Black Marsh. There's a lot of stuff that I've left out, mainly because as far as current events in the province go, I really do want to encourage everybody to go out and buy those two books by Gregory Keyes, because, well, because they're fantastic. He really does a fantastic job of capturing what the spirit of Black Marsh is and of the Argonian people, which is especially powerful, seeing as how the rest of Tamriel often doesn't really give them a chance.
So it's really interesting to see how things work within Black Marsh, and I didn't want to take too much from those two novels, because I do think that you should go read them. But be sure to check the blog. What I'm going to do is I've had a number of requests to post the sources for each episode, so I haven't been recording them in the past, but I will from now on. And so starting with this episode, on the page for this specific episode, you will find a list of books that you can find a game that I have used to get information out.
So be on the lookout for that. Be on the lookout for our next episode. All right? Thanks for listening.
Bye.