Little Inspiration (maybe)

Been reading a bit about Elsweyr and its climate and such and I've seen a lot of discussion here about it being mostly desert. Personally I don't see it that way, and I find the idea pretty predictable and boring if I'm completely honest.

I recently started playing Far Cry 2, and I instantly thought "Elsweyr". The game is set in Africa and is pretty much how I imagine Elsweyr to look. Minus the guns and vehicles.

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What do you think?

After reading through both Pocket Guides to the Empire i find it pretty obvious that the southern stretch of land should be mostly rainforest, mostly... And almost the entire area above that should look like Africa, similar to that seen in Far Cry. I think if you go all out desert everything will look very bland and boring as shit. (Obviously this is just my personal opinion)

Made a real quick illustration of what I mean.
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Sand...... Saaaaandddd............. oh look a Khajiit

See what I'm saying?

Also, I think the entire border to Cyrodiil and Valenwood is supposed to be forest and jungle respectively.

So yeah, just my opinions, you can take it how you like.

I see exactly what you mean. But we have plans, and nothing around the desert will be boring. It definitely will not just be empty, and yeah, the southern half is all rainforest. And we will also have the borders forests also. We are going to have TONS of quests around the desert, and even more small settlements.

We are hoping to do groundcover also, for more visual appeal.

Lore first, and nowhere does it say that the desert is boring sand and thats not what we intended. We were going to put some nice plants and rocks all through. These pictures are basically what a large chunk of the desert will be like. There will be badlands and dunes though, just not ALL through. Your idea there is basically what I had in mind for elsweyr. Redguard is supposed to be more middle east and africa while elsweyr is more...indian.

:/ they pretty much summed up my thoughts. So, what they said.

So Ryu, you agree with me that that's what it should look like? From those screen shots I mean?

I can't see anywhere in lore that says its boring and just a plain desert with fuck all about. But I was kind of thinking you were planning on just making some empty desert, stereotypical palm trees and shaded areas.

I'm not saying that's what you had planned either. I'm just putting forward some ideas is all.

So long as it doesn't look like this
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EWW! Fuck! Only a small area kinda near dune will look like that. A very small area compared to the whole map. DOTS TO REPRESENT ELSWEYR!!!

Okay, the below dots represent Elsweyr. The commas represent the area of desert that looks like what you linked. It may be a bit larger or smaller. It's not a huge sandpit we want. We want a lively, active ecosystem.

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It'll probably be smaller...

The border to Cyrodiil is hilly. I think it was grasslands. The valenwood border is TBA! When I get ahold of solid lore on it, I'll tell what we should do.

having some canyon places like antelope canyon(can't post links atm) would be awesome. the close windswept passages are inspiring.

I like your idea. If you need to post links, just put spaces in them. That is one of the now few problems with this site.

Yes, I have tried and tried again to find the place to change that. I saw it once, but after I clicked a link. Forgot where it was. pROvAK is right though, just use spaces for a week.

A little bit of necromancy on this thread instead of opening a new.
Finally TESO show some images of their Elsweyr (only two and with the same Khajiit)! But don't expect to have more infos, pictures are not commented. From what we know, it could be Senchal. It looks a little like a chinese city but don't forget that Senchal was the imperial capital and the residence of the tsaesci Potentat during the first part of the Second Era. Architecture seems also to share similarities with other elven buildings (bosmer, aldmer and ayleids) with archs, spiked and curved roofs. They were one kind at first after all.
Elsweyr is really the poorest documented province in the game. Even argonians have more pic and are in the videos!





About inspiration, did you see [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] for Skyrim? It changes the environment of Skyrim to make it tropical. I think it could look a lot like Elsweyr.

wow

From what I know of TESO, you won't be able to go to Senchal because of the Knahaten Flu (for the moment). At the beginning, the playable areas will be an island in the South of Tamriel and the region around Dune. So the previous pic was about a Khajiiti town.
New pic of Khajiiti Temple taken from a video:
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Do you think that is one of their monk temples that specialize in unarmed combat?

They are among the many Khajiti arts of claw and tail. Jobasha learned Rawlith Khaj before traveling to Vvardenfell. The name means "rain of sand," and the art has many styles such as Rain, Sand, Wind, Sun, Storm, and Two-Moons-Dance.

They are many temples in Elsweyr which have their own martial style. The most famous is the Temple of the Two-Moon Dance in Torval.

The advantage with the Second Era is that Elsweyr have been burned, ransacked, destroyed by the imperial legion, Tiber Septim and the Numidium and it was 400 years ago so we have a lot of freedom compared with TESO. But I'm not disappointed by what they have done until now for Elsweyr. Our ideas weren't very far.