With Elder Scrolls Online: Summerset right around the corner, I've updated B's excellent Guide to the Psijic Order so everyone can catch up on the history and beliefs of these ancient monks, and get a little taste of what you can expect in the upcoming Chapter. 

Check it out right here. 

The story of the Clockwork City for Elder Scrolls Online is now available in the Storylines section! If you're a fan of Sotha Sil, Nocturnal, or robots, this will be right up your alley.

Many thanks to Bird Person for transcribing the first two parts, and to Mazurah for letting us use her screenshots to transcribe and illustrate the story. 

Check it out!

I've added a ton of new maps to the Library for your enjoyment. In addition to in-game maps from Elder Scrolls Online, we have several top-down satelite style maps from that game, extracted from the data files. Some of these maps were shot while the zone was still in progress, and offer interesting notes for the level designers. Here, for example, are the Morrowind regions of the game:

You may also be interested in this map of western High Rock, again extracted from ESO. It shows several locations that were removed or changed by the time the game was released. You'll see these crop up in the future as I add more datamined ESO quests to the Cut Content section.

Last but not least, two new fan made maps have been added to the gallery. The first, created by Dillon241 of the Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages, translates the small West Tamriel map into something that's actually readable using in-game loading screens, maps, and the art on the Redguard game box.

The second, created by yours truly, uses in-game data, official maps, lore mentions, and data mining to put together as complete a look at Tamriel in the 4th era as I could manage. 

In my work for the Library, I spent the first month of the new year looking back into the years gone by. Our developer archives have always been one of my favorite parts of our collection, and they are now more up to date and easier to browse than ever. 

First, the Forum Archives section has been split into Post Archives and Thread Archives. The Post Archives document individual lore-related posts by developers on forums, websites, or social media, while the Thread Archives are backups of whole threads that feature interesting discussions or a lot of answers from developers. 

The Thread Archives now hosts each thread as its own book in the library, which makes them easier to read by cutting away all the clutter of the forum backup (signatures, post dates, etc.) as well as selectively editing down the posts so that only those pertinent to the discussion remain. The original backed up threads are also available, of course. Another bonus to this structure is that the threads now show up in searches. There are still quite a few threads to add to the collection, and if you've got any in mind that the original archives were missing, please let me know.

The Post Archives section has also gotten an expansion. Tons of new quotes were added to the pages for Ken Rolston, GT Noonan, Ted Peterson, Michael Kirkbride, and Lawrence Schick. The latter two have had their archives split into chronological sections. This both gives added context to the quotes and makes linking things easier. As with the threads, this section will continue to be updated in the coming weeks. 

While the Obscure Texts section saw no new additions, I did go through and add dates of publication to many of the texts. The dates provide much needed context to the works. Redguard Forum Madness, previously hosted under Obscure Texts, has moved to the Thread Archives. 

Last, but certainly not least, I added an "interview" with Julian "LeFay" Jensen, who was one of the chief programmers and designers behind Arena and Daggerfall, and is considered to be the "Father of the Elder Scrolls" because of it. The interview collects lore-related answers from a r/daggerfall reddit AMA conducted late last year. If you're interested in the origin of TES and in its evolution, this is a must read.

I'd also like to give a shout out to everyone who has provided me with links to old posts or with corrections to TIL's existing materials. Keep it coming!

Festive greetings, scholars!

2017 was a big year for the Library. In addition to Elder Scrolls Online keeping us very busy adding hundreds of new books, we added a number of new sections to our collection. Let's take a look back at some of our biggest additions. 

• We started the year off with several new alphabet pages, including the Dragon and Mage scripts from Skyrim, the Akaviri script from Oblivion, and the Ancient Nordic runes from Elder Scrolls Online. 
• Later on, we started documenting the main quest and DLC storylines for ESO. The story of the Daedric siege of the Imperial City and the waning of Vivec's power in Morrowind are both complete. 
• The storylines of the latest addition to the TES family - Elder Scrolls Legends - have also been documented. You can check out its main quest here and the Fall of the Dark Brotherhood DLC here. 
• With the release of ESO:Morrowind came an all-new, in-universe text for you to own: Naryu's Journal. It, too, is available in full on the library, with the generous help and permission of Zenimax Online and Lawrence Schick. 
• After covering the recent releases, we took a look back in time to add all of the text from the very first Elder Scrolls game, Arena. While there are no actual books in that section, there are plenty of dialogs, place descriptions, and quests that let you see what Tamriel looked like in its earliest stages.  
• We also added an interview and a gallery looking back at the nebulous time between Daggerfall and its sequel, which would eventually become Morrowind but once looked very, very different. 
• The Astronomy and Astrology section was wholly redone to round out the year. 
• We got a Discord server! It's pretty small and very informal, perfect for talking to some of the library patrons and staff in a casual setting. 

Last, but certainly not least, we've gained a few new staff members. Acer and The Lusty Dovahkiin have joined Tailin Sero (promoted late last year) as Assistant Librarians, and have already contributed greatly to the library. I'd also like to take this opportunity to thank others who help us out without a formal title - you guys are the best!

There are things to come in 2018, but for now, go forth and celebrate! 

Have a joyous, lore-filled 2018,

The Imperial Library Staff

Last month saw the total overhaul of our Astronomy and Astrology section. It features descriptions of the constellations and depictions of them from every game, alongside all new star charts, videos of the orreries we've encountered in our travels, information on the moons, as well as gifs and graphs to illustrate the celestial movements. 

It's located in the Religion & Mythology section of the sidebar, do check it out! 

Happy autumn, everyone!

This month's big news is the addition of Elder Scrolls Online's Morrowind chapter storyline, transcribed by our newest Assistant, The Lusty Dovahkiin. She's been a long time community member and a bureaucrat on the Polish Elder Scrolls wiki, and we're happy to welcome her to the Imperial Library team. The Morrowind chapter strikes a balance between evocative familiarity and wholly new content, and should be an interesting read to any lore fan. 

Lusty has also updated our Meet the Character archives, which are now back up to date. All the entries are worth checking out if you've not seen them already, but the news ones are Naryu Virian, Eerika Skjoralmor, Sun-in-Shadow, Provost Aruni Arvel, Proctor Luciana, Dominaus the Bloody Horned, Divayr Fyr. 

And, as always, I've been on book upload duty. Here's a few of my favorites from this month's crop: 

• Residential Logistics Log - an accounting of the citizens of Sotha Sil's realm, their needs, and their behaviours
• Factotum Model Registry - similar to the above, but for robots. Includes patch notes!
• The Factotum's Secret Voice - Explores the mysterious "verbal artifacts" of Sotha Sil's robots
• Barilzar's Journal - we met this guy as a lich in TESIII: Tribunal, but here we get to see his earlier days as an apprentice in the Clockwork City.

Finally, I've also added a Boethiah's Bidding to the Cut Content section. It was a quest intended to follow Skyrim's quest for the prince Boethiah, and features the player assassinating Elisif the Fair. 

With the test release of the Clockwork City DLC for Elder Scrolls Online, books are once again at the forefront here at the library. The DLC added a lot of interesting texts about the city itself, as well as a few that have an impact on Tamriel in general. Here are a few of my favorites: 

• Truth in Sequence - Sotha Sil's Sermons gain six more volumes.
• A Brief History of Ald Sotha - A little about Sotha Sil and his defunct house. 
• Factorum Classification - description of the NPCs robots that staff the Clockwork City. 
• Love Poem LT0782 - Something to steal on the next Valentines Day
• Worshiping the Illogical - How the worship of Sotha Sil fits in with the worship of the Almsivi. 
• Catalogue of Afflictions - Describes mental illnesses particular to the Clockwork City

There have also been a few updates to the Gallery section of the library. The Redguard concept art page has been updated with quotes from an interview with John Pearson, lead artist of Redguard, which originally appeared on the old redguard.elderscrolls.com site. The quotes provide wonderful insight into the creation of the game. 

I've also added a brand new galley and interview to the site with the help of Benefactor, our friend from Tamriel Foundry and TES history extraordinaire. The galley is dedicated to an 1996 Clyde Cadwell cover for a game that was supposed to be the sequel to Daggerfall. The cover bears no resemblance to the Morrowind that eventually came to be, but is a fascinating look into the early history of the franchise (and a really cool piece of art!). Check out the gallery here and read the interview with the artist here. 

• Artifact Dialog - Rumors and conversations about the mythical artifacts of Tamriel. Many of these artifacts are also found in later titles, sometimes with nearly identical backstories. 
• City Descriptions - Welcome messages and brief descriptions of each city found in Arena.
• Exclamations - "By the Wood of Elborn!" Region-based exclamations and curses from around the Empire.
• Holidays - Descriptions of Arena's holidays and what the people have to say about them.
• Jokes - Pretty lame jokes.
• Location Entry Messages - Messages displayed based on season when you enter an audience chamber, tavern, shop, temple, or mages guild.
• Occupations and their Descriptions - Various occupations available to NPCs in Arena. Unlike later games, which focused more on classes (fighter, assassin, etc.) these are all very utilitarian occupations.
• Organizations - The various guilds of Tamriel, and messages for when the player faces their members in combat. 
• Rumors - Stuff the people tell you, general and quest-related.
• Stolen Items - Describes the contents of people's pockets. 

In addition to all those new pages, the Arena Storyline has also been extensively updated to include rumors and the quest dialog related to finding each location. The manual's Introduction has been split off into its own page, and the French Introduction has been graciously translated by Tailin Sero. The English version takes place after Jagar Tharn has imprisoned the Emperor and is told by "Talin," who takes the role of the player character. The French version, meanwhile, focuses on Tharn himself and how he came up with his evil plan.

Enjoy!