Welcome to the Imperial Library, your source for Elder Scrolls lore since 1998.
Library News
All of the books from the new Elder Scrolls Online update, Gold Road, are now uploaded to the Library! Since these are from the public test environment, they may change when the Chapter is properly released on June 3rd.
You can see the full list of books at this link, but here's a few special highlights:
Culture & Religion
- The Footsteps of Shezarr - Myths of Shezzar as an inspiration for Liberty among aboriginal Nedic tribes
- Atmoran Cult Writings - Legends of obscure forms of Atmoran totem worship
- Cries from Empty Mouths - Translation of a poetic exchange between two Left-Hand Elves
- The Truth About the Green Pact - An outsider's overview of the philosophy and practices of the Green Pact
- An Argument for Common Sense - the beast people of Tamriel are all fake
History
- On the War of Righteousness - The war that ended the Alessian Order
- The Emperor of the Villa - Biography of Emperor Brazollus Dor
- The Ship of Ice - Oral history of the landing of the last ship out of Atmora
- Thulgeg's March - The history of how Thulgeg and the Orcs of the Hollow Wastes escaped the Ra Gada and Bretons to found Orsinium
- An Abbreviated History of Skingrad - Cliffnotes on Skingrad's history from Ayleid settlement, to Rislav Larich, to the present day
- Vashabar In Valenwood and Beyond - Overview of the village of Vashabar and the Greenspeaking technique
Last week, on April 4th, Elder Scrolls Online celebrated its 10th anniversary! It's a rare and momentous thing to keep a game flourishing for an entire decade, and our congratulations go out to the team that made it happen. Zenimax Online celebrated in Amsterdam with a special preview of this year's Chapter, Gold Road. Our friends at the UESP have a great writeup of that, if you're interested.
For our part of the festivities, we decided to look back to the original launch of the game, and the Improved Emperor's Guide to Tamriel that shipped with the Imperial Edition. We've had the text for this book available since launch, but are now excited to also feature all of the artwork, too. Thanks to exclusive permission from Zenimax Online, Lady Nerevar has scanned and uploaded all of the artwork that was previously missing, as well as publicly released art, to fully illustrate this gorgeous volume.
You can read the newly illustrated guide right here.
We've got a shiny new coat of paint, dozens of improvements to site usability and functionality, and some major new features I want to highlight:
- Dark mode! This feature is still in progress, but you can toggle it on and off at the bottom of each page (your setting will be remembered)
- Site now works well on mobile devices
- Better galleries and image display, including an automatic lightbox mode that lets you view the images without leaving the page you're on
- Improved search results which allow you to easily filter which games' contents you want to see, and displays the total number of results for your term on the site (there are also more improvements to search coming in the future)
Under the hood, we've completely switched the software that runs the website and introduced a whole new organizational scheme. This means that we'll be able to update content much faster and create all sorts of collections that were not previously possible.
The vast majority of our previous books and articles have been carried over, some have been updated and improved, and there's some completely new material as well, with more to come in the following weeks. The few articles missing were those that were severely out of date, and can still be accessed through Archive.org.
Of course, this is all brand new, so there's bound to be some bugs. If you find them, shoot us a message in the #website-issues channel on our Discord. There are also lots of additional improvements in the works.
Finally, a special shoutout to waferbaby, baxter, Throûdin, and dreaded.night.turtle of the Ishtar Collective for their advice on this project. If you're a fan of Destiny lore (and if you're into TES, you should be!) check out the Ishtar Collective.
On March 25th, 1994, a little game called The Elder Scrolls: Arena was officially released to the public. Today, 30 years later, we're celebrating a full three decades of the incredible universe and gameplay that it begun.
So whether you joined all the way back when the Druids of Galen were a throwaway mention on the Breton character creation screen (TES: Arena) or if you came on board when they got an entire year's worth of game content (ESO: High Isle), we hope you'll join us in wishing this amazing series a very happy anniversary.
Much like our own Imperial Library cataloging books is something that any good library needs. With the release of update 40 for The Elder Scrolls online we can delve into Hermaeus Mora's Endless Archive, a depository of books held within Apocrypha.
We recently took a trip to this archive ourselves to find it overrun with Maligraphies, Daedric creatures made from ink taking the form of the book they came from. Thankfully this invasion gave us the oppurtunity to smuggle some books out of the Endless Archive. Please enjoy the newest inclusions to the library and if you spot any inky creatures coming out of any of these books please inform the nearest librarian right away.
Books on Tho'at Replicanum & Nymics:
Notes on Tho'at Replicanum (Recommended Reading)
Malkhest's Journal (Recommended Reading)
Archmagister Mavon's Ascension
Books used to create Maligraphies:
Materials for Novice Necromancers
On the Discovery of Relic Fiends
The Felling of Windweaper's Grove
Captain Burwarah's Records
Izzmothar's Power
The Silver Rose Blooms over Borderwatch
Tales of Tribute:
Lantern of the Endless Clue
Unfathomable Secrets Clue
Challenge of the Archivist
Other Books & Notes:
Fynboar the Resurrected (Recommended Reading)
Obscure Killers of the North (Recommended Reading)
Snushularg's Promise
The Last Addition of Bikkus-Muz
Warning: Wandering Monsters Spotted