Elder Scrolls Races and Fantasy Tropes

KAJ3D · June 2018

I was describing this game to my wife to gauge her interest in playing it. She's never played any of the Elder Scrolls games but she is a big fan of the fantasy genre. So when I was describing the races to her, I used generic descriptions like:

High Elves, Dark Elves, Wood Elves (lol, these are already tropes so she knew what I meant just by naming the race)
Cat people, Lizard people, Orcs (straightforward)
and for Nords, I said 'Vikings'. Not completely accurate but close enough.

The last three though were a bit tougher. For Redguards I said "Middle Eastern-y or Nomads maybe?". Imperials were just 'Humans' and Bretons were 'Magic Humans'. All three of these I felt could have better 'Generic descriptions' but I can't think of any. I think the problem is that most fantasy games have a single 'human' race whereas Elder Scrolls has 4.

Any ideas? Or are those three destined to be the un-describable human races?

DenMoria · June 2018

Redguards - Middle-Eastern warrior people - think classical Persian (IMO); Imperials - think Romans; Bretons - think Magic Potatoes with vaguely French sounding names.

KAJ3D wrote: »

I was describing this game to my wife to gauge her interest in playing it. She's never played any of the Elder Scrolls games but she is a big fan of the fantasy genre. So when I was describing the races to her, I used generic descriptions like:

High Elves, Dark Elves, Wood Elves (lol, these are already tropes so she knew what I meant just by naming the race)
Cat people, Lizard people, Orcs (straightforward)
and for Nords, I said 'Vikings'. Not completely accurate but close enough.

The last three though were a bit tougher. For Redguards I said "Middle Eastern-y or Nomads maybe?". Imperials were just 'Humans' and Bretons were 'Magic Humans'. All three of these I felt could have better 'Generic descriptions' but I can't think of any. I think the problem is that most fantasy games have a single 'human' race whereas Elder Scrolls has 4.

Any ideas? Or are those three destined to be the un-describable human races?

Ghanima_Atreides · June 2018

Bretons - Magic humans with Elven ancestry
Imperials - "civilising conquerors"/statesmen/politicians inspired by the Roman Empire
Redguards - a mixture of Middle-Eastern culture and Asian swordmaster warriors

You may want to mention that unlike other fantasy genres, Orcs aren't just mindless brutish cronies of the bad guys, they are actually Elves. :P That particular piece of lore is complicated for a newcomer, but you might want to tell her that while they embody the "tribal warrior" archetype quite well, they aren't all that; there are Orcs even among the Mages Guild!

DenMoria · June 2018

You forgot the "Magic Potato" thing though. That's important.

Ghanima_Atreides wrote: »

Bretons - Magic humans with Elven ancestry
Imperials - "civilising conquerors"/statesmen/politicians inspired by the Roman Empire
Redguards - a mixture of Middle-Eastern culture and Asian swordmaster warriors

You may want to mention that unlike other fantasy genres, Orcs aren't just mindless brutish cronies of the bad guys, they are actually Elves. :P That particular piece of lore is complicated for a newcomer, but you might want to tell her that while they embody the "tribal warrior" archetype quite well, they aren't all that; there are Orcs even among the Mages Guild!

KAJ3D · June 2018

DenMoria wrote: »

Redguards - Middle-Eastern warrior people - think classical Persian (IMO); Imperials - think Romans; Bretons - think Magic Potatoes with vaguely French sounding names.

Ooh, I like the Persians and the Romans! Good descriptions...

Two out of three ain't bad!

Danikat · June 2018

The human races are a bit harder to define because fantasy generally only has 1 human race. But like the nords you could use the real-world cultures they're inspired by.

Imperials are basically Romans. Their names, clothing and architecture are Roman/Italian inspired and they're best known for conquering and/or trading with the rest of the world.

Bretons are based on western Europe, particularly France (presumably Brittany)...I'd say probably around the Renaissance period. Lots of castles. Lots of nobles of various ranks fighting with each other (both openly and in secret) and lots of interest in understanding the world around them and creating new things...with mixed results.

And Redguards are based on the peoples of the Middle East and North Africa, but probably most notable for their skill with martial combat and distrust of magic, especially necromancy. Most people in Tamriel seem to disapprove of necromancy in at least some ways (even if it's just wanting to know their corpse won't be used) but redguards really, really hate it.

Minno · June 2018

Bretons - half elf/half human from when high elves had sex *** with humans of high rock.
Nords - full human original human settlers that really really hate elves.
Imperial - full human but mix of Nord/other humans/akaviri in cyrodill.
Redguard - are decendants of ancient swordsmen that left yokuda after their empire basically tried to commit genocide against them. They are like nords in that they aren't mixed but are heavily weapon based warriors.

High elves hate all races, even wood/dark elves
Wood elves have lore connection to the forest (are cannibals) try to be non-combative (since for every kill they have to eat the entire body including other humans/elves lol)
Dark elves are high elves that openly worship daedra (and got turned dark when they caused some issues worshipping the tribunal over some daedra).

Argonian and khaijit even weirder.
Argonian come from eggs and are tied to hist trees.
Khajits have different forms/breeds according to what lunar cycle they were born under. Some look humanoid some look like house cats and some look like giant lion mounts.

That's my quick explanation of the races. And each race has a connection to art/armor/architecture that take direct influence from our own human history. For example nords are Viking, Bretons are English/french medevil,. Argonian are Aztec, etc.