How Big is Tamriel? : The Elder Scrolls Series Discussion

» Sat Feb 19, 2011 1:31 am

I mean, I can't imagine it being any larger than the continent of Australia, and probably only the size of a country like Germany or France. I know that the maps were larger in Daggerfall, but going by Oblivion and Morrowing Tamirel is TINY.

Thoughts?

» Sat Feb 19, 2011 1:07 am

It's only a model.

» Fri Feb 18, 2011 8:54 pm

Nirn isn't a big planet, it's relatively small compared to Earth, however not that small, as it is represented by games like Oblivion and Morrowind. What you see in those games is a mere taste of the true Tamriel, not an actual to-scale replication.

» Sat Feb 19, 2011 2:57 am

I don't really see how that matters at all. If your character can walk across Vvardenfall in 1-2 days on the scaled version, he could do it on the full scale version too.

» Sat Feb 19, 2011 8:19 am

Nirn isn't a big planet, it's relatively small compared to Earth, however not that small, as it is represented by games like Oblivion and Morrowind. What you see in those games is a mere taste of the true Tamriel, not an actual to-scale replication.

Well, that would explain why things don't fall very fast or hit the ground very hard.

» Sat Feb 19, 2011 10:23 am

You said it yourself, you have a problem of matching an exact scale to it since it varies between games. At best we have to assume that the largest of these is at least how big it is, but then we must assume that they are all just models for how the true Tamriel would be. So it matters very much.

» Fri Feb 18, 2011 10:14 pm

I don't really see how that matters at all. If your character can walk across Vvardenfall in 1-2 days on the scaled version, he could do it on the full scale version too.

That's the silliest thing I've heard today, and I just watched a hour-long vid about YouTube.

» Sat Feb 19, 2011 2:35 am

Using references from Oblivion (An Argonian Account) it takes days to travel through only a small part of Black Marsh. And remember that each Ayleid ruin was an independent city-state. So the game world is many hundreds of times smaller than the lore world. I'd estimate that, as the population of Oblivion is about six hundred and fifty nine, not including respawning NPCs, it would be a thousand times larger in real life.
So, if six hundred and fifty nine thousand is the population of Cyrodiil, the other provinces should be easy to work out.

» Fri Feb 18, 2011 7:50 pm

The only Lore-wise distance we have is 250 miles between Mournhold and Red Mountain from the First PGE. This is in agreement with the size of Daggerfall.

» Sat Feb 19, 2011 8:43 am

The only Lore-wise distance we have is 250 miles between Mournhold and Red Mountain from the First PGE. This is in agreement with the size of Daggerfall.

Ooh, didn't know that. Thanks, that is quite useful. If you wanted to, you could actually estimate the size of Tamriel from that and comparing it to the various maps and averaging the number.

Another good example, is the Time-scale in the games. I think it is quite obvious that in actual Tamriel, the days don't go by quite that fast. I assume it has the same time-scale as we have, although I don't know of any evidence to point to this other than if you set Timescale to 1, time passes at the same speed. That isn't exactly lore, but I think its good enough.

» Fri Feb 18, 2011 8:57 pm

Has noone ever thought to open up Arena a go to Daggerfall, then fast-travel to Necrom?

It tells you the distance and how long it take you to get there.

Then do that same from Senchal to Solitude.

» Sat Feb 19, 2011 7:57 am

The only Lore-wise distance we have is 250 miles between Mournhold and Red Mountain from the First PGE. This is in agreement with the size of Daggerfall.

That's interesting.

» Fri Feb 18, 2011 9:25 pm

Wait...there are other sizes mentioned in the game and in other places, such as:

looking at her face over a distance of thousands of miles

That is in one of the books that deals with the Four Score War in Oblivion, and is about Vivec looking at Almalexia from Vvardenfell to Mournhold. This would mean that Morrowind itself is at least three thousand miles from the House Dres plantations on the border to the Sheogorad region.

He and his tribe live here in stately and exotic palaces built from massive timbers of Valenwood oak, whose territorial borders are only a few hundred miles away

That is from the Imperial Library, and seems to hint at a similar sort of scale to the source mentioned above. Torval seems to be right on the border with Valenwood on some maps, though, which means that it is at least two thousand miles across.

» Fri Feb 18, 2011 8:06 pm

That is in one of the books that deals with the Four Score War in Oblivion, and is about Vivec looking at Almalexia from Vvardenfell to Mournhold. This would mean that Morrowind itself is at least three thousand miles from the House Dres plantations on the border to the Sheogorad region.

That might have been only a poetic hyperbolization. Anyway, both of the sources are far from being precise to base the whole world scale on them

» Sat Feb 19, 2011 9:44 am

It's only a model.

I genuinely laughed out loud. Thanks for that.

» Sat Feb 19, 2011 2:22 am

I haven't had much success getting my hands on a working copy of Daggerfall, does anyone know if it was only in Arena that the sun came up in the west and set in the east? And having read several books from various games I couldn't work out which is the lore correct west-east or east-west, anyone know? Did some massive planet shift happen inbetween games or did they decide that it was too confusing from a dev point of view and just pretend it never happened?

» Fri Feb 18, 2011 8:24 pm

I haven't had much success getting my hands on a working copy of Daggerfall, does anyone know if it was only in Arena that the sun came up in the west and set in the east? And having read several books from various games I couldn't work out which is the lore correct west-east or east-west, anyone know? Did some massive planet shift happen inbetween games or did they decide that it was too confusing from a dev point of view and just pretend it never happened?

The game world is different in every game. It's consistently inconsistent.

» Sat Feb 19, 2011 5:54 am

Using http://www.tamriel.fr/images/oblivion/cartes/cartes_tamriel.jpg in Autocad with the 250 miles as the determinant, I get the whole of Tamriel as 1,027,103.42 square miles, give or take a bit. That's about the size of Mauritania.

» Sat Feb 19, 2011 3:15 am

Uhh, my map has a scale, you know. And it's accurate.

http://www.imperial-library.info/maps/politicalmapqb8.jpg

» Sat Feb 19, 2011 2:31 am

Uhh, my map has a scale, you know. And it's accurate.

http://www.imperial-library.info/maps/politicalmapqb8.jpg

That looks a little smaller than what I gave allowance for in my estimate, I'll run the area figures on it tomorrow. Pushing that way, Tamriel's just about 1/100th the land area of Earth.

» Sat Feb 19, 2011 9:27 am

I actually took the distance between Almalexia and Dagoth Ur and made the line horizontal. And it's overlayed on top of a canon Tamriel map (that seriously needs cleaning now that I'm looking at it). That's about as accurate as you're gonna get.

And remember, Tamriel's a continent: in fact, it's the largest on Nirn.

http://www.imperial-library.info/maps/cyrodiillargelowrescr7.jpg

Here, this one looks better.

» Sat Feb 19, 2011 4:45 am

And remember, Tamriel's a continent: in fact, it's the largest on Nirn.

More accurately, we don't know the size of some of the others.

» Fri Feb 18, 2011 6:10 pm

Regardless, I made sure that the scale on the map was accurate and it is a realistic figure given the sheer number of cities on the continent (which appears to be roughly 1/6th the size of the United States).

» Sat Feb 19, 2011 8:25 am

Uhh, my map has a scale, you know. And it's accurate.

http://www.imperial-library.info/maps/politicalmapqb8.jpg

I actually took the distance between Almalexia and Dagoth Ur and made the line horizontal. And it's overlayed on top of a canon Tamriel map (that seriously needs cleaning now that I'm looking at it). That's about as accurate as you're gonna get.

And remember, Tamriel's a continent: in fact, it's the largest on Nirn.

http://www.imperial-library.info/maps/cyrodiillargelowrescr7.jpg

Here, this one looks better.

Regardless, I made sure that the scale on the map was accurate and it is a realistic figure given the sheer number of cities on the continent (which appears to be roughly 1/6th the size of the United States).

Your map makes Tamriel 568,000 square miles.

» Sat Feb 19, 2011 3:13 am

Sweet, we finally got an exact number.