Hot take maybe, but in future tes games I really want to see more of the divines/daedric princes being weird w their gender. The best we have is Boethra, which is already a big win, but in my opinion we should get all the princes being gendered differently at least in one instance
They embody their spheres, and there's no way that all the cultures just agreed on what things are associated with masculinity vs femininity. Religions with completely separate folklore on how the gods came to be wouldn't just coincidentally just agree to gender all the princes the same.
It makes even less sense for the intelligent daedra species to also agree with those assigned genders, especially Mazken and Aureal, who have a matriarchal society and consider their male counterparts inferior to them – it would make much more sense for them to refer to any prince they serve as female, regardless of how mortals or other daedra view them. Dremora clans would also likely have different opinions on the matter, as they famously rarely agree and often outright fight eachother, even while serving the same prince.
Mannimarco, the Worm God directly contributes to the creation of Black Soul Gems, if i recall correctly, and thus they didnt exist before, at the very least, he rose to godhood, and I think at least in terms of games, before Oblivion. Its been a while since I played Oblivion and I didnt get far enough into Morrowind that a black soul gem would even have dropped for me at all but i'm mostly sure of this.
This means up until around 4E 1, the highest order of soul gem was the Grand.
In Skyrim/Dawnguard we find out that the Ideal Masters feed off of, at least according to Serana, the *high power* souls in soul gems, implicitly meaning the Black souls, since we don't exactly see a lot of Trolls or w/e running around the Soul Cairne. So like.
Before Mannimarco created Black Soul Gems, were the Ideal Masters just waiting around?? Do they feed on all souls but the black souls last longer than all the others, maybe? Like, if a Petty Soul is like a blueberry, a Black Soul is like a whole watermelon? But then I suppose a Grand Soul is still a lot like an apple, so the jump is big but wouldn't Grand Souls still be around for long enough that we'd see a few?? Flawed simile maybe.
Alternatively, were they just...starving? In their plane of Oblivion? For...millenia??? Before necromancers in the worm cult learned how to trap sapient souls?
BUT ALSO in the Soul Cairne, there are little cups that turn your white soul gems into black soul gems so like DID THEY JUST STEAL THE RECIPE FROM THE IDEAL MASTERS??????
And NOW i'm thinking-- is ESO Canon? Cause technically IIRC the start of the game sees you get soul-trapped and then wind up in *Coldharbour* of all places, despite that NOT BEING WHERE TRAPPED SOULS GO ACCORDING TO A GAME THAT CAME OUT BEFORE ESO.
Can a more knowledgeable lorebeard explain this to me?
There have been many different forms of coinage across Tamriel and its different eras. Gold forms the most common coinage, but underneath it sits silver and bronze, for the every-day small trading. This has been as such since the Second Empire of Reman imposed it on every land in its reach.
The Ladder
The currency ladder works on 12s and 20s. 12 bronze (mite) to a silver(scale), 20 silver to a Drake. See the Slang section below for more terms.
Gold struck both whole, and in smaller forms. These are the coins that actually move, often than not.
Half-drake = 10 silver
Quarter Drake = 5 silver
1 drake (1dr) is often what someone is paid with rather than paying with.
Under the Reman Empire, drakes were rather split in halves and thirds, as such a third-drake is often weighed like a bullion.
Below a mite is the half-mite. Something never struck, but made by cut across a chisel. One can find quartered-mites, in the poorer quarters of cities, but is generally refused.
Written and Said
There are numerous ways for sums to be written or spoken out. When written, the sums are listed in the ledger fashion: gold, silver, bronze.
2dr 14sc 8m Two drakes, fourteen scales, eight mites
14sc written alone as 14/–, the dash standing for no mites
3/6 three and six, the way a price is chalked on a market board
19/11½ a hair under the drake, and every bastard knows what he is at when he writes it
In speech, the tier is dropped when it can be easily guessed.
Drake, Scale, and Mite are the Cyrodilic terms, which more often than not is what goes into a ledger in most realms.
Slang
Gold
Head — a drake.
Shive — a half-drake.
Stiver, nib, scute — a quarter-drake.
Trine, cast — a third-drake, meaning the old Reman coin that fits no modern reckoning.
Silver
Wing — a scale. The more poetic word for it.
Wash — debased silver is bronze with silver laid over it, so a washed one is shite.
Wedge — a scale.
Bronze
Black — a mite. Paid in black means paid poorly, and the shame is in the metal.
Grit, dross — a mite.
Reman Reckoning
The system was not arrived at naturally by most, but imposed by Reman Cyrodiil. The ladder was set in the First Era, and spread throughout Tamriel wherever the Legion went. It was the system of their taxes and their trade, if a country didn't deal in it, they would be left out of the greater trading networks.
High Rock, Hammerfell, Skyrim, Elsweyr, Valenwood, and even Summerset took it. The Altmer took it later than the others, and on terms suited to them. They paid their tithes in Reman's coins, in exchange that no outsiders come to their island, outside scant traders and the Emperor's own men. Within their own lands, outside of Alinor, what the Altmer trade in is their own mystery.
Morrowind never took it, and not for want of the Empire's trying. Reman II took his legions in, and never left the region alive. Four score years bought nothing but a fortress and a truce. The Dunmer thus use the Cyrodilic system only at ports, and purely for the pitying sake of the foreign traders. The usage stops at the docks, by and large. (I will expand on the Dunmer Later)
The Empire outlived Reman, until it died finally in 2e 430, with the death of Savirien-Chorak and his heirs. With the collapse of the Second Empire, the final authority that could say what a coin ought to weigh died in that house with the rest of them.
The Name and the Metal
There's the standard, and then there's what sits in a man's purse. The Reman mints struck to a fixed weight and a fixed fineness and enforced both harshly. When the vassal kingdoms stopped paying their taxes in 2e 283, the Potentate spent 37 years putting it down by force. This conflict left everyone involved worse-off than it found them. With the treasury in shambles, the coin began to be shaved. The coins had been thinning long before Savirien-Chorak was killed.
Every mint since then has struck its own. Every one of them has shaved a little off during a hard year. It is the greatest tax a king can levy, as it's the most quiet of them. Silver went first, the silver now coating something greyer beneath it, with no two realms agreeing on the lie. Bronze was gone long ago, and keeps going.
A ledger and a man's purse speak of different worlds. The ledger still works under the Reman scale, working to a weight. The purse holds anything from a Wayrest scale, to a Sentinel scale, or something struck in Rivenspire by a man who was not being watched. Nearly all counting houses keep multiple columns to work with it. The difference between the columns is where much money can be made, for them.
The Coins Themselves
Hammered, irregular at the edges, thin at the rim, and no two quite ever the same even if from the same mint in the same year. They are bitten, rung on a counter, and weighed on a scale.
In Cyrodiil, they are struck to weight against the angaid (7 grams, roughly)
Drake — about one angaid of gold.
Scale — about three-quarters of an angaid of silver.
Mite — about half an angaid of bronze, and worth rather less than the metal in it.
Mint Marks
The main difference between the coins between one land and the next. Every coin is read by the seal on it.
Second Empire coin — the Red Diamond on one face. Old, heavy, and purer than any silver struck since. Passes well above its face wherever a man knows what he is holding. Hoarded, culled from the till, and melted.
Daggerfall Covenant kingdoms — Daggerfall, Wayrest, Camlorn, Shornhelm and Evermore each strike their own, each to its own device, all five accepted at face within the Covenant and discounted the moment they cross out of it.
Bank-struck coin — a crown on one face, a chest on the other, standing for the house that issued it.
Hammerfell — no one coin, because there is no one Hammerfell. Forebear **mints run similar to Imperial standards and style often, with a head on the face, a legend round the rim, and the weight kept standard. Their coinage travels far. **Crown mints vary more, often marked with blades, marks for HoonDing, or often a device out of Yokuda that a Breton factor will not recognise and was never meant to. Both often carry marks of various animals or birds native to their lands.
Cyrodiil — the mint under the Imperial City has not stopped working through any of it. It went on striking for an Empire of Cyrodiil for years after there was no Emperor to hold it. It strikes for whoever holds the city. The device upon changes with each holder. Many often make a trick out of dating a Cyrodilic coin purely by such marks.
Skyrim — the holds strike, badly and rarely. No Nord puts much trust in what comes of it. Trade in the north runs on silver weighed against a stone (see hacksilver or deben) , reckoned in marks by weight rather than in scales by count.
Elsweyr — struck at Rimmen and at Senchal, and neither is trusted very far by the other.
Orsinium — new, heavy, and struck with more gold in it than the reckoning requires. A kingdom that strikes its own coin is making a claim about being a kingdom, and Orsinium is paying above the odds to have the claim taken up.
First Aldmeri Dominion — a face on the one side, and no mainland man will take it without a long look and a shorter price. The joke is that the metal is generally beyond reproach. The Isles kept the Reman weight for centuries without once being caught shaving it. It is the face that gets the coin discounted, never the gold.
The Reach — nothing. The clans strike no coin.
Why Gold?
Silver is worth more melted than spent. It wards, and it bites what ordinary steel will not. Every hunter, every shrine, every smith with a reputation to keep buys silver above its face and turns it into something with an edge. When mints put it out, crucibles take it back.
Bronze doesn't cross a border, with every kingdom striking its own weight. A mite in Wayrest is not the same as a mite in Anvil. It is refused at ferries, and laughed at in ports.
Bronze mounts up heavy and buys little. A drake in mites is a weight one notices on their belt.
Bronze has been thinned more than any other. Old bronze had good tin in it and rang. New bronze rings dull, and there is more lead in it every reign.
Prices have gone up to climb away from the mite. What was a wage in mite decades past is paid in scales now .What one bought with scales is now bought with drakes and its splits. The old still quote in mites out of the habit of their upbringing.
Gold holds its weight near anywhere. A drake struck in Sentinel or Shornhelm are nearer the same coin than not.
The Reman ladder survives because it is remembered; the Reman scale didn't survive, and neither truly the mite. A drake out of a First Era hoard still spends at the hand of men who could not name the emperor whose face is on it. That is why any sum that matters is reckoned and settled in gold.
For anything above a certain amount of drakes, most won't carry it at all. Instead bank-houses issue a writ-of-coin, with a charge.
The Crown
Twenty-one scales; a drake and a silver. No mint ever struck one. There is no such coin and there never was. The ladder says twenty and has said twenty since Reman, but the ladder was written when the silver was honest.
Gold has held. A king shaves his silver and lets his gold be, for gold is what foreigners weigh, and a realm caught at it stops being dealt with. So the scale has thinned three hundred years against a drake that has not, and a man buying gold with silver in any open market pays about one-and-twenty for it.
The counting houses worked the actual rate out long ago and set it at a round figure, so that nobody need work it out again. That is the crown. Twenty is what the reckoning says. One-and-twenty is what gold costs.
To name a fee in crowns is to name it at the honest rate, not a kind one. Anyone who lends or deals in money knows it. Who names their price at a crown is trying to say something with it. Guild workings, physickers, advocates, horse-copers, and any craftsman who would rather be thought an artist do it oft. A joiner charges scales. A joiner who calls himself a master charges crowns, and takes his extra silver in twenty for it.
Nobody carries crowns. They are settled in drakes and scales like anything else.
Rough Prices — Evermore, 2E 570s
The rough conversion
A day of unskilled labour is 2/–. Multiply any real medieval price by eight and you have the drake-and-scale figure.
Coin is weighed in angaids because coin is assayed. Goods are sold by the measures the trade uses, and no cheesemonger has ever weighed anything in angaids.
The gold discount
Any price at or above a drake means a different sum depending on how it is settled. A price named in drakes and paid in silver costs a scale in twenty more. Every merchant would rather be paid in gold.
Wages
Day of unskilled labour — 2/–
Journeyman’s day — 3/–
Master craftsman’s day — 4/–
Night on a warehouse door — 2/– to 3/–
Archer or common spear, hired — 2/– a day
Armoured man-at-arms, hired — 8/– a day
A knight, hired — 16/– a day
Labourer’s week — 12/–
Journeyman’s week — 18/–
Master’s week — 1dr 4/–
Labourer in steady work, over a year — near 20dr, and few are in steady work
Household servant, by the year — 16/– to 1dr 12/–, with board and cloth on top
Groom, carter, messenger, by the year — 2dr to 3dr 9/–, likewise
A chapel priest, by the year — 37dr
A great advocate in a capital, by the year — hundreds
Drink, bread and board
Pint of small ale — 1m
Pint of the good stuff — 2m
Gallon of cheap wine — 2/– to 2/8
Gallon of the best Skingrad — 5/4
Coarse loaf — 2m; white — 3m
Hot pie or a sweet pastry off a stall — 4m
Salt herring — about 1m each
Cheese — 4m the pound
A dozen eggs — 4m
Dried fruit, almonds, rice — 8m to 2/8 the pound
Spices — 8/– to 1dr 4/– the pound
Pepper — 1dr 12/– the pound
Saffron — 5dr the pound, and worth stealing
Floor of a common room — 3m
A bed, shared — 6m
A chamber to yourself — 1/–, or 1/6 with a meal in it
A good dinner with wine, at a house that keeps glass in the windows — 3/– upward
Full keep at a genteel house, by the week — 16/–
Fodder and stabling, one horse, one night — 1/4 to 2/–
Livestock and provisions
Fowl — 6m to 8m
Sheep — 11/–
Pig — 16/– to 1dr 4/–
Cow — 3dr to 4dr
Ox — 5dr
Cloth and clothing
Landless man’s tunic — 8m to 4/–
Linen chemise — 5/4
Woollen tunic — 1dr 4/–
Craftsman’s tabard and supertunic — 1dr 4/–
Fur-lined garment — 2dr 13/4
Hat — 6/8 to 9/4
Purse — 1/–
Shoes — 2/8
Boots — 4/– to 6/–
Cobbler’s resoling — 8m
Best wool — 2dr the yard
Silk — 4dr to 4dr 16/– the yard
A gown worth being seen in — 80dr, and there is no ceiling on it
Tools and household
Spade and shovel — 2/–
Axe — 3/4
Cooking pot, earthenware — 4m
Brass pot — 16/–
Table — 4/–; chair — 2/–; stool — 2/8
Sheet — 2/8; mattress — 1/4; pillow — 8m
Barrel — 2/–; bucket — 4/–; coffer — 8/–
Tallow candles — 1/– the pound; wax — 4/4 the pound
Anvil — 8dr
Whole kit of an armourer’s tools — 110dr
Arms, armour and horses
Cheap sword, the sort a farmhand carries — 4/–
Serviceable arming sword — 1dr
A good sword, a week of a smith’s life in it — 2dr 8/–
Closed helm — 5dr 6/8, and 1dr 6/8 again to line it
Mail hauberk — 40dr
Ready-made plate, foreign and fine — 66dr
Everything a knight stands up in — 130dr
Draught horse — 4dr to 8dr
A sound riding horse — 15dr to 25dr
A gentleman’s mount — 80dr
A warhorse — hundreds, and no upper bound worth writing
Roof and rent, by the year
A cottage — 2dr
A room over a shop — 2dr to 3dr
A craftsman’s house, with shop and work-room — 8dr
A merchant’s house — 16dr to 24dr
To build rather than rent: a cottage 16dr, a craftsman’s house 80dr to 120dr, a merchant’s house 260dr upward.
Fees, rites and paper
A crown is 21 scales — 1dr 1/– settled in metal. Anything quoted in crowns below is quoted that way on purpose.
A lesser Guild working, by the fee-book — a crown
A physicker’s attendance on a household — a crown, and two if he is sent for at night
An advocate’s written opinion — 2 crowns
A master joiner’s commission — quoted in crowns and settled in drakes, with the extra silver in twenty going quietly into his pocket
A horse-coper’s asking price on anything he calls sound — crowns, always
Enrolling an apprentice — 8/– to 16/–
Joining a guild at the end of it — 2dr 13/4 to 24dr
Freedom of a town — 1dr 6/8 to 8dr
Emptying a cesspit — 2dr 13/4
Ferry, one horseman — 8m
A guide for a night — 8m
A book, plain and copied by hand — 5dr upward
A year at a monastery school — 16dr
A wedding feast a prosperous family would not be ashamed of — 8dr
The whole of such a wedding — 24dr to 32dr
A modest funeral done properly — 56dr
On funerals: the old reckoning is that a burial done right costs a year of what the dead man earned. It is the plainest arithmetic of poverty there is. A family either finds the year’s money or finds another way, and everyone in the lane knows which happened.
Rules of thumb
A scale is half a day’s honest wages.
A drake is ten days of them.
Mites are change, drink and bread. Nothing above that is quoted in bronze by anyone under fifty.
A working man handles gold most fortnights and thinks nothing of a shive. A purse of full drakes is another matter, and says something about how it was come by.
Named in drakes, paid in silver, costs a scale in twenty more. Always.
Steel is cheap and cloth is dear. A man will own a sword before he owns a good coat, and the coat will be the better indication of what he is.
Anything with a horse under it costs more than everything else in the scene put together.
PRICES MADE BASED OFF https://medieval.ucdavis.edu/120D/Money.html
(follow-up posts attached to this one about Morrowind, later)
All of Tamriel has experience with giant spiders which are valued for the incredibly durable silk they produce and can be spun into high quality clothing.
The frostbite spiders of Skyrim has two additional properties that make them particularly valuable to those bold enough to harvest them.
The first is that their silk is not just durable but also an excellent insulator which protects the spiders from Skyrim's extreme cold. This makes frostbite robes very popular with the College of Winterhold, who uses them for both lightweight protection and warmth in their frozen college.
The second is that frostbite venom does exactly as its name implies, freezing the injection site. This makes it useful for preserving food.
Farming these spiders is one of the most dangerous but rewarding professions in Skyrim. They cannot be tamed or domesticated as far as anyone knows (though there are questionable tales of the mythical falmer being accompanied by allied spiders).
Frostbite farmers will curate a section of caves or perhaps an old nordic barrow as a site to keep the spiders. Goats, chickens, & skeevers can be raised as a feed supply.
When its time to harvest the silk, the farmers will light a fire in one of the lower caverns. The heat & smoke will drive the spiders out of the caves enabling the farmers to enter and collect the silk safely.
Venom harvesting is more difficult, as there is no safe way to milk the venom from a live spider the size of a dog. When spiders leave their caves, tunnels of different sizes can be arranged to lead the larger spiders into a trap where the waiting farmer can harvest the venom from its corpse. The body can then be thrown back to its fellows to be cannibalised.
Frostbite farming is one of the most profitable industries in skyrim, but the danger tends to dissuade many hopefuls. This keeps the supply limited and further drives profit. One of the most successful spider farms is Cronvangr Hall in Eastmarch. The owners are reclusive however and the secret behind their success is unknown. They did agree to let an Imperial scholar inspect their farm, but they were never seen again.
Ancano can't actually leave the College of Winterhold through anything but teleportation. Though the College insists on neutrality in all matters, Jarl Korir has made perfectly clear that if he gets one glimpse of Ancano then the Thalmor is being arrested and sent to Windhelm. Whenever Ancano has to leave or send a message he needs to take a portal back to the Thalmor Embassy.
B:
Skyrim's northeastern coasts aren't normally so choked with icebergs except in the dead of winter. After all, those should make shipping out of Dawnstar, Winterhold, & Windhelm too dangerous.
This is in fact deliberate. Since Skyrim didn't have an independent navy, Ulfric knew that he couldn't compete with the Imperial Navy. To prevent being invaded by sea, Ulfric had what few mages he had create large icebergs to choke the sea of ghosts. Limiting the conflict to land.
Of course the College of Winterhold in centuries past had already thought of that problem. The Winterhold Ghostbreaker is a class of ship with enchanted rams to sail through icy waters. It just so happens that Ulfric now owns every surviving ghostbreaker since the Great Collapse.
Ulfric expects that the icebergs can be melted naturally or artificially post-war, but as with many shortsighted measures of war, the scars will likely last for decades.
Trying to think of justifications for why Forsworn/Reachfolk equipment is like that. Being made of weak leather, bone, & wood while everyone else around them uses steel.
Just saying they don't or that they're primitive doesn't work when no explanation is given & there is nothing stopping them from learning it from more advanced neighbours.
ESO's Iron Orcs are actually one of the greatest flaws to it in how they do have a metallurgy narrative. The Iron Orcs are their southern neighbour who believe its blasphemy to break rock & mine, but did so anyway in order to compete with more advanced enemies. So why hasn't the Reachfolk done so?
My first justification is that for them, leather & bone isn't inherently weaker than steel. Reachfolk uphold Hircine as one of their most important gods. So by dedicating their hunts to him, they can receive blessings on items made through hunted materials. Reachfolk equipment can therefore match steel through divine blessings.
This is combined with straight advanced leatherworking skills since they do it so much.
My next justification is that they do indeed have a cultural stigma against mining, but for obvious practical reasons. If you tunnel deep in the Reach (at least the eastern part), what you're going to find is dangerous Dwemer ruins, and Blackreach full of Falmer. They even have old stories of vampires coming from below to plague them.
This actually brought about one of the only exceptions to their disuse of forging. The Wayward Guardians started using silver & scavenged dwemer metal in response to the extreme threat of the Grey Hosts vampires & werewolves. This practice did not last however.
Mining is just inherently dangerous and not worth it while Hircine enables leather.
Finally is that the easterns reach's mineral wealth just isn't in martially useful metals anyway. Sure there is iron & such, but the majority of mines available are for silver. Cool if you want to get jewelry for your beloved, but currency is mainly a foreign tool to them. The clans have more use for directly trading & bartering goods. Not like any unifying state of reachfolk can standardise the currency (not counting foreign occupiers).
Some of the Reachfolks few experiences with mining is when colonisers push them into working the dangerous mines for them. A deeply negative connection.
In conclusion, the Reachfolk could mine if they wanted to, but they don't want to take part in the dangerous, miserable work so long as they have a more culturally appropriate alternative.
Would they benefit more from using metalwork to fight invaders? Probably, but how much would it cost them as a people. Bleeding into the ground, turning from Hircines sacred hunts, and using the ways of the Enemy.
