This reminds me of Middle Ages cartography. There is no reason for maps of Nirn world to be accurate. Look at antique maps of the Middle Ages of the New World or other places. No one could have known how beautiful the Earth looked from space, or the real relationship of the continents. Those old antique maps are nearly priceless now. There is one that is very ancient of the New World that includes the land and shoreline of Antarctica that is actually covered in glacier and ice shelf. How could they have done that? Three dimensional space is tricky to map. With all it's sham and drudgery the world is still a beautiful place (re: Desiderata)
I respect the lore. I wouldn't want to contradict it. The creation history and others in the game remind me of a human military engagement on a foreign planet, or refugees and the subsequent devastation brought about by dremora. Survivors who no longer remembered who they were or where they came from. The only prehistory they have are the creation legends. The dremora changed DNA if one takes seriously the Orc creation stories and origins of the dragon born. There is a popular show that has that very same thing happening on Earth (i.e. the roles reversed).
There is a type of art style that is describe as 'Naive'. The astronomy maps from the Dark Ages to Renaissance Earth intellectually has this look, because they were illustrations of the small amount of technical information they could use. Even between different games, this parallels the sampling of geography to scale down the games for practical game use. People have made improved mods to show the moons without mystery shadows around the edges, like burnt cookies. There are complicated physics involved with having two moons that could explain much about the planet Nirn, in the real world people don't know how to resolve all the questions of dynamics like this, but they exist anyway in the world of Nirn. What the inhabitants of Nirn wouldn't be able to see is the transparent layer of atmosphere surrounding their planet giving it the glow of life. Wouldn't this be an incredible jewel in the sky? Thank you for your work and mod submission. I'll look forward to seeing any further progress
The scale is all wrong. This map wrapped on this globe makes the Imperial city island look like its hundreds of miles wide. In reality Tamriel is smaller than Australia. Tamriel is really about the size of Alaska. I don't care what the old lore says over the size of Tamriel, its nothing but a very big island. Nirn has to be a very ocean covered world with what we can call sub-continents. you have to look at the geographical scale of things. I used to make planetary textures for for an open source astronomy app, so I do know something about making alien worlds that look real. I plan on doing a realistic texture map of Nirn and get the scale proper. Some will not like it. Others will. I do give you credit for trying this though. Its not easy taking a rectangular map and wrapping it around a sphere and it not look like its getting magnified. I can give you instructions on the way to do it right. That way an island that is no more than 3 miles wide wont looks hundreds of miles in stead.
Let me know ur tips , but the map is soecifically done based on the MK sketches I knowmlore states a 250 miles thing , and actually measuring ingame Tamriel is smaller than Malta island moreor less , but the concept is that its anyway a large landmass despite all mistakes and contraddictions in lore.
I don't know about the lore, but could it be that Nirn is much smaller than Earth? I know this would rise even more questions, like gravity, but I guess they're not impossibile to solve in a fantasy world. I mean, in Morrowind you could jump moon style...
I tend to agree. The game Redguard came with a map of Stros'Mkai that included lines of latitude and longitude. If you take that map seriously and try to match up the size of that island with the low-res blobs that represent it on the larger maps and do a bit of trigonometry, it seems to imply that Nirn is about the size of earth. It is a bit tricky, because the Redguard map does not contain distances, only geographic positions. You need to get scale by comparing the size of the island with the size of known distances. One such is that it is 250 miles from Mournhold the to peak of Red Mountain. It is difficult to match the Redguard map exactly with the low-res versions in the other maps, so there is a source of error there. But according to my calculations, Nirn should be about the same size as earth. That is assuming the definition of the mile in the Cyrodiilic empire is the same as the statute mile here on earth.
Link to the Redguard map: http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Redguard:Map
Map of Tamriel used: http://www.uesp.net/wiki/File:TamrielMap.jpg
The distance from Mournhold to the peak of Red Mountain is about 166 pixels on the map. Of course, the representation of Red Mountain on the map is not topographical but artistic. So this Introduces some error.
The width of Stros'Mkai is 17 pixels. The problem here is that it is low res. And it doesn't match the map for Redguard which has two islands, Stros'Mkai and the Isle of N'Gasta. The big map just has a singular blob. I'm going to assume the width of the blob roughly corresponds to the whole width of Stros'Mkai and N'Gasta together.
250*17/166 = 25.6 miles across. Since there are so many sources of error, I doubt anyone can claim this number accurate to a decimal place. I'll simply say it is about 25 miles. This also assumes that there is no significant map distortion. Mapping a sphere to a flat surface always introduces distortion, but if the size of the mapped area is small relative to the whole sphere, then it is not a problem. Since the size of Nirn turns out to be big and Tamriel very small, this is negligible.
On the Redguard map, 336 pixels span 0.25 degrees longitude. 540 pixels span the whole width, so that is 0.25*540/336 = 0.40 degrees latitude. So we have about 25 miles spanning .4 degrees longitude at 26.75 degrees latitude. Now we can figure out the equator, assuming Nirn is fairly spherical.
25*360/0.4 = 22500 miles around that line of latitude. To get to the equator, we need to know how much bigger the equator is.
cos(26.75) = .893. So the line of latitude is about 89% the length of the equator. 22500/.893 = 25196. Since these numbers are not that accurate, I'll just say that:
Circumference of Nirn is about 25200 miles.
Earth is about 24900 miles, so they are very close. Note that there are a lot of sources of error, so my number has a lot of error in it. This is a crazy situation. All of Elders Scrolls seems to take place on a land about the size of Alaska floating in a world the size of Earth.
It would be nice to have a high-res, topographical map of Tamriel with an accurate representation of Stros'Mkai. But no matter what, if you take the lines of latitude and longitude seriously on the Redguard map, it seems that Nirn is huge compared to Tamriel.
It is 383 pixels going from Dagerfall horizontally to below Elinhir. Keep going across, and it is 60 pixels above the 30 degree mark. It is 125 pixels per 5 degrees, so that turns out to be 5*60/125 + 30 = 32.4 degrees north.
Longitude has about 116 pixels to represent 5 degrees. Daggerfall is at 30+5*54/116 = 32.33 degrees east. Elinhir is about 50-5*30/116 = 48.71 degrees east.
So they are 16.38 degrees apart at 32.4 degrees north. Now let's find the distance using the map of all of Tamriel.
323 pixels on the whole Tamriel map. So that is 250 * 323/166 = 486 miles. Around Nirn at 32.4 degrees would be 486*360/16.38 = 10691 miles.
cos (32.5 degrees) = .844. Thus the equator would be 10691/.844 = 12667 miles.
So Nirn's circumference would be about 12700 miles give or take a few.
This is half the distance I found before. This should not be surprising for two reasons. One, this is a fantasy world. We should not expect the maps to be consistent all the time. Second, there were significant sources of error in the previous one. I would think that this newer method is more "accurate."
So if this is right, Nirn is half the size across as Earth. That is still huge compared to the size of Tamriel.
One more wrinkle in all this mess. The globe from Daggerfall makes the landmasses look in comparison to Nirn look more like what you see in this mod.
Skyrim is only 14.3 square miles. If you draw from the borders, you can do some easy estimating and figure that the size of Tamriel is absolutely puny. With Tamriel taking up as much surface area as it does on Nirn, you could assume the entire planet is far smaller than most states in the United States.It's funny how people complain about the population of TES games, but when you look at the mileage and geography, it's just about right
Not really. Skyrim (and for that matter Cyrodil and Vvardenfell in the last two games) is small because of technical limitations. It's a scaled down, very simplified version of the "real", in-universe land. The "real" Skyrim would have cities the size of entire holds with thousands or tens of thousands of inhabitants. In the early games it's implied Nirn is a world that has a believable size and population.
If you took as a reference the map in Daggerfall, which only had some coastal regions of HighRock and Hammerfell, Tamriel would be very large and truly realistic. This would be suggestive:
I haven't studied any of this, but based on the globe sprite we have from Daggerfall showing much of Tamriel and Pyandonea... Prometheus' map looks accurate enough to me:
If the globe is Earth-sized, then Tamriel is definitely larger than Alaska. So is this globe wrong, or is the "250 miles" thing wrong? One of them is, and my money is on the latter because of the environments and temperature in Skyrim and Elsweyr (suggesting a continent stretching across much of the planet).
In Skyrim, Lokir mentions that he would be half way to Hammerfell if he stole the horse. That was three days, so according to that, it would take six days to get there. That's easily a few hundred miles. I am not sure of the true speed of the horse though.
Anyways, lore wise, there are several different references, Nirn is roughly around the same size as Earth. As for BGS, they said they don't create a world map showing the total size as it is ever changing. Plus, if they did, we all know that Akavir, or any other continent would be different when there's gameplay on that continent.
According to Michael Kirkbride and Lady Nerevar, Tamriel is actually impossibly massive. It's just scaled down for the games. High Rock is the size of all of Europe for example. The Imperial City is so large that the people of Tamriel affectionately call it the only city in the world. If you don't believe me, I can find you the conversation I got this info from.
All I've got to say about the arguments over the scale of Tamriel is that the games downplay the scale because of limitations it becomes much more apparent when say you go to towns like the capital in Skyrim Solitude. Its incredibly small for what would be called a capital city with only ~20 people living there. Same goes for the Imperial city where I'd say ~30 - 40 NPCs live. If it was to scale those cities would be much bigger Id say by 3-4 times what they currently are at least. So it really isn't a lore issue that makes Tamriel smaller its just game limitations and scope limitations in putting these games out.
I love this. Endorsed. But some people hate your guts.
I for one like it. Seem professional, gives the illusion that it is geographically accurate, and doesn't do the mistake, in my opinion, of making Nirn to be a boring planet with just one or two continents, really scaled down.
Lyg being a mirror image of Tamriel could men anything, not just a copy-pasted map.
I also never liked the idea of Aldmeris not also being a geographical location. Why must it be just a lost ideal? Couldn't it be both? The Nedes and Atmorans have their continent, Yokudans theirs, but the Aldmer don't. It either sounds like Aldmer-supremacist propaganda trying to justify the purges, since its their homeland, or just as bad, anti-elven propagand by the Imperials and the Nedic humans, asserting that elves have no place in this world. If Lyg can exist, why couldn't Aldmeris?
As a side-note, why is every metaphysical lore text taken as truth? When dealing with TES texts, one is told to take everything with a grain of salt, since most, some or all of the information can be false, and that the falsehoods contained within are either the product of ignorance, or an agenda.
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Would it be alright if I used the Nirn texture in a mod? Thanks.
I respect the lore. I wouldn't want to contradict it. The creation history and others in the game remind me of a human military engagement on a foreign planet, or refugees and the subsequent devastation brought about by dremora. Survivors who no longer remembered who they were or where they came from. The only prehistory they have are the creation legends. The dremora changed DNA if one takes seriously the Orc creation stories and origins of the dragon born. There is a popular show that has that very same thing happening on Earth (i.e. the roles reversed).
There is a type of art style that is describe as 'Naive'. The astronomy maps from the Dark Ages to Renaissance Earth intellectually has this look, because they were illustrations of the small amount of technical information they could use. Even between different games, this parallels the sampling of geography to scale down the games for practical game use. People have made improved mods to show the moons without mystery shadows around the edges, like burnt cookies. There are complicated physics involved with having two moons that could explain much about the planet Nirn, in the real world people don't know how to resolve all the questions of dynamics like this, but they exist anyway in the world of Nirn. What the inhabitants of Nirn wouldn't be able to see is the transparent layer of atmosphere surrounding their planet giving it the glow of life. Wouldn't this be an incredible jewel in the sky? Thank you for your work and mod submission. I'll look forward to seeing any further progress
Fantastic resource, thank you so much!
I knowmlore states a 250 miles thing , and actually measuring ingame Tamriel is smaller than Malta island moreor less , but the concept is that its anyway a large landmass despite all mistakes and contraddictions in lore.
Link to the Redguard map: http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Redguard:Map
Map of Tamriel used: http://www.uesp.net/wiki/File:TamrielMap.jpg
The distance from Mournhold to the peak of Red Mountain is about 166 pixels on the map. Of course, the representation of Red Mountain on the map is not topographical but artistic. So this Introduces some error.
The width of Stros'Mkai is 17 pixels. The problem here is that it is low res. And it doesn't match the map for Redguard which has two islands, Stros'Mkai and the Isle of N'Gasta. The big map just has a singular blob. I'm going to assume the width of the blob roughly corresponds to the whole width of Stros'Mkai and N'Gasta together.
250*17/166 = 25.6 miles across. Since there are so many sources of error, I doubt anyone can claim this number accurate to a decimal place. I'll simply say it is about 25 miles. This also assumes that there is no significant map distortion. Mapping a sphere to a flat surface always introduces distortion, but if the size of the mapped area is small relative to the whole sphere, then it is not a problem. Since the size of Nirn turns out to be big and Tamriel very small, this is negligible.
On the Redguard map, 336 pixels span 0.25 degrees longitude. 540 pixels span the whole width, so that is 0.25*540/336 = 0.40 degrees latitude. So we have about 25 miles spanning .4 degrees longitude at 26.75 degrees latitude. Now we can figure out the equator, assuming Nirn is fairly spherical.
25*360/0.4 = 22500 miles around that line of latitude. To get to the equator, we need to know how much bigger the equator is.
cos(26.75) = .893. So the line of latitude is about 89% the length of the equator. 22500/.893 = 25196. Since these numbers are not that accurate, I'll just say that:
Circumference of Nirn is about 25200 miles.
Earth is about 24900 miles, so they are very close. Note that there are a lot of sources of error, so my number has a lot of error in it. This is a crazy situation. All of Elders Scrolls seems to take place on a land about the size of Alaska floating in a world the size of Earth.
It would be nice to have a high-res, topographical map of Tamriel with an accurate representation of Stros'Mkai. But no matter what, if you take the lines of latitude and longitude seriously on the Redguard map, it seems that Nirn is huge compared to Tamriel.
https://negativesum.net/games/redguard/gallery/redguard_map.jpg/image_view_fullscreen
It is 383 pixels going from Dagerfall horizontally to below Elinhir. Keep going across, and it is 60 pixels above the 30 degree mark. It is 125 pixels per 5 degrees, so that turns out to be 5*60/125 + 30 = 32.4 degrees north.
Longitude has about 116 pixels to represent 5 degrees. Daggerfall is at 30+5*54/116 = 32.33 degrees east. Elinhir is about 50-5*30/116 = 48.71 degrees east.
So they are 16.38 degrees apart at 32.4 degrees north. Now let's find the distance using the map of all of Tamriel.
323 pixels on the whole Tamriel map. So that is 250 * 323/166 = 486 miles. Around Nirn at 32.4 degrees would be 486*360/16.38 = 10691 miles.
cos (32.5 degrees) = .844. Thus the equator would be 10691/.844 = 12667 miles.
So Nirn's circumference would be about 12700 miles give or take a few.
This is half the distance I found before. This should not be surprising for two reasons. One, this is a fantasy world. We should not expect the maps to be consistent all the time. Second, there were significant sources of error in the previous one. I would think that this newer method is more "accurate."
So if this is right, Nirn is half the size across as Earth. That is still huge compared to the size of Tamriel.
One more wrinkle in all this mess. The globe from Daggerfall makes the landmasses look in comparison to Nirn look more like what you see in this mod.
http://www.imperial-library.info/content/daggerfall-globe-official
So what is "truth"? I don't know.
Not really. Skyrim (and for that matter Cyrodil and Vvardenfell in the last two games) is small because of technical limitations. It's a scaled down, very simplified version of the "real", in-universe land.
The "real" Skyrim would have cities the size of entire holds with thousands or tens of thousands of inhabitants.
In the early games it's implied Nirn is a world that has a believable size and population.
If you took as a reference the map in Daggerfall, which only had some coastal regions of HighRock and Hammerfell, Tamriel would be very large and truly realistic. This would be suggestive:
http://ladynerevar.tumblr.com/post/66412506492/the-continents-of-nirn-scaled-to-those-of-earth
If the globe is Earth-sized, then Tamriel is definitely larger than Alaska. So is this globe wrong, or is the "250 miles" thing wrong? One of them is, and my money is on the latter because of the environments and temperature in Skyrim and Elsweyr (suggesting a continent stretching across much of the planet).
Anyways, lore wise, there are several different references, Nirn is roughly around the same size as Earth. As for BGS, they said they don't create a world map showing the total size as it is ever changing. Plus, if they did, we all know that Akavir, or any other continent would be different when there's gameplay on that continent.
I for one like it. Seem professional, gives the illusion that it is geographically accurate, and doesn't do the mistake, in my opinion, of making Nirn to be a boring planet with just one or two continents, really scaled down.
Lyg being a mirror image of Tamriel could men anything, not just a copy-pasted map.
I also never liked the idea of Aldmeris not also being a geographical location. Why must it be just a lost ideal? Couldn't it be both? The Nedes and Atmorans have their continent, Yokudans theirs, but the Aldmer don't. It either sounds like Aldmer-supremacist propaganda trying to justify the purges, since its their homeland, or just as bad, anti-elven propagand by the Imperials and the Nedic humans, asserting that elves have no place in this world. If Lyg can exist, why couldn't Aldmeris?
As a side-note, why is every metaphysical lore text taken as truth? When dealing with TES texts, one is told to take everything with a grain of salt, since most, some or all of the information can be false, and that the falsehoods contained within are either the product of ignorance, or an agenda.
I did it to have a more coherent view of the World , I tried to use the known lore to also fit my own Island mod Issgard .