Bonus internet points will be awarded to anyone who actually tries this exercise before voting.
Assume you need to get the spelling at least somewhat close, and if a character has multiple names, only one counts. Also, if a character doesn't have a canonical name, I'm sorry, but "that guy's wife" doesn't count.
For reference, if you can name the 9 members of the Fellowship, the eponymous Hobbit and his 13 dwarf buddies, 3 prominent women, and the guy who runs the Rivendell B&B, that's 27 characters right there. And you probably also know the name of a dragon.
For further reference, Tolkien Gateway has 637 (!!) pages dedicated to Third Age characters. (Don't click that link until you've voted, of course)
Edit: Your humble pollmaker gave this a try, and got as far as 73 before deciding she was too tired to keep trying to remember dwarf and Silm names. If you also want to share (and don't mind people being incredulous at your having forgot ____), pastebin allows you to paste text and share it for free. :)
2K notes
·
View notes
i think one of the least used concepts in elder scrolls lore is its nebulous relationship to truth.
like something i do actually appreciate about that cunt kirkbride's writing in morrowind is that the mythology of the tribunal is allowed to be relatively ambiguous and there's room for poetry and fable and unreliable narrators. there's a strong general tendency in both fandom and dev to interpret lore quite literally and treat every text as reliable sources of fact about tamriel even when the text is like. fiction or written with a clear bias towards certain factions or prejudices.
the main example I'm thinking of is the 'notes on racial phylogeny' lore book. it's literally just racist pseudoscience and in a real life context would be considered unreliable and deeply offensive. but in tes, i rarely see anyone stop to actually consider that perhaps this lore isn't really a factual study of how bodies work but about how the imperial empire categorises the people it colonises and justifies it's supremacy. there's so much focus on determining the rules and metaphysical aspects of the world that there's no consideration that the way factions like the empire see the world is inherently flawed.
it's fun to think of a world where stars are literal holes punched in the fabric of the sky, or that water is made of memory, but i also think it would be a much more fun and flexible world if these theories are considered to be just a few of many lenses that people in tamriel use to try to understand their world. some of my favourite pieces of lore and world building are things like 'cherims heart of anequina' that imply a rich world of culture and art; i love the idea that tamriel has art and art critics and people who discuss ideas for other purposes than trying to figure out what's The Only True Lore.
611 notes
·
View notes
Dropped my phone last night and shattered the screen this is so fucked
467 notes
·
View notes