Game Skyrim Forum

I know the baby takes on the characteristics of the mother? Do any of the father carry over?

1. If a Redguard mother and Dunmer father mated, would you get a dark brown elf with pointed ears?

2. Vice versa (Dunmer mother and Redguard father), would you get a greyish-blue human with regular ears?

The result of inter-species mating is always the race of the mother with only some aesthetics and other minor effects from the father, so a female dunmer with male redguard would produce a dunmer that only looked slightly different than normal and a female redguard and male dunmer would produce a redguard that only looked slightly different than normal. As an example, Karliah is probably half-human and the only differences are that her hair is a shade of brown that is uncommon among dunmer and her eyes are purple instead of red. Agronak gro-Malog is half Imperial and only has pale skin to show for it.

Extensive crossbreeding can blur the line between species, as demonstrated with the bretons, but that kind of thing takes many generations. Looking at a first generation hybrid, you would always be able to tell what species their mother is, but the father's race would be much more difficult to determine and, in some crossings, it might not even be possible to tell that they're a hybrid at all.

I'd imagine that it'd end up looking like...well, a Redguard or Dunmer. I doubt anything but the subtlest of features carry over to the child, so in most cases no one would really know they're of mixed parentage. The only instance of humans bearing Aldmeri features is some Breton families having pointed ears, and that's about it.

I imagine the Aldmeri equivalent would be the Bosmer, but aside from some very light skintones in Oblivion (And if the art of Legends is taken to account, they seem to go the same route with some characters featured from that game), I don't think much can be said on the topic.

Real quick since we are talking about cross-race children...has there been any recorded instances of a half Akaviri child?

I'm not sure which one they're talking about, but now I'm interested in if any Akiviri races crossed with any Tamrielic races.

Yes. This comes from the 1st Pocket Guide to Empire:

The Akaviri in this case would be the Tsaesci. Don't ask me how it would have worked.

Its always the race of the mother with some traits from the father. The traits of the father seem random and can probably vary even within families.

Lets take your example pairings to demonstrate:

1. You get three Redguard children, two boys and a girl. The eldest boy might have violet or pinkish eyes and slightly pointed ears. The youngest son might have skin that is grayish or ashen in hue. Finally, the daughter might look completely normal for a Redguard child, but ends up living to the ripe old age of 240.

2. You get two Dunmer girls. The eldest girl's normally sharp Dunmer features like the ridges above the eyes, pointed chin, narrow face and chin are all muted. Her face is rounder and fuller than many of her peers and is eerily human. The youngest sister, on the other hand, looks pretty much like a Dunmer but has naturally wiry and curly hair. Later, when she's grown up and become a prominent Redoran councilor, she survives a poisoning attempt which killed the other Dunmer she was eating with.

Thanks for that visual example, Fiore1300. I was trying to see if Bethesda had any exceptions to the strictly mother-only rule.

In reality, Bethesda made the lore like this so they wouldn't have to spend an extra 5 years per game to come up with all the possible mixed races that would otherwise occur. Can you guys imagine how many variables there would be if you had full on cross-breeding between races? Tamriel would be far different than what it is now. Not to mention, you'd have even more mixed cultures, religions and ideologies. So to stay on time and within company budget, it's mother-only traits that carry over. That keeps the 9 races pretty much, more or less, locked in place.

My reason for starting this topic is I want to give my female Dunmer character brown skin (instead of bluish-grey) and the physical musculature of a Redguard but still keep the Elvish features (pointed chin, raised brow, narrow face).
Something similar to https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/59/8a/b5/598ab5ce7df048f0e84d8180e4dbb3db.jpg. Would that be plausible?

I didn't draw that.

I imagine brown dark elves would be the same as Mexicans who have white skin (Spanish decent) as opposed to Mexicans with dark brown skin (native or Aztec decent).

There have been quite a large range of skin tints for all of the races, and the Dunmer in Oblivion were often greener than Orcs. I'd just go for an unsaturated (greyish) brown, Keep the red eyes, though, to distinguish from Bosmer.

I've heard people say the Dunmer in TESIV looked like large blueberries with heads because they were so blue. TESII & V dunmer are very grey. TESIII dunmer are somewhat bluish grey.

I don't think it's necessarily canon for all Dunmer to have the red "cursed" eyes. Do you? TESV dunmer have the option of solid black eyes and other such variations. I don't see any hard-evidenced reason why dark elves couldn't have green or blue or grey or purple eyes.

The red eyes are apart of their curse. Most Dunmer except the blind ones have red eyes. Karliah has purple eyes though? But I heard she's half breed. I don't know I've only done the Thieves Guild questline once, and never finished it.

It's never brought up in game or anything, but her appearance is in-line with what we know of how hybrids work. As for the appearance of the Dunmer, that Azura cursed them is the story told by the Tribunal Temple. Whether that's actually what happened is ambiguous, to say the least.

There seem to be a lot of blue eyed Dunmer (NPC's at that) in ESO. Like there's a minority of not so yellow Altmer.

That's the Ashlander story.

Yeah you're both right about the cursed red eyes thing. But I never knew there were blue eyed Dunmer in ESO? I know you can change their eye color in Oblivion and maybe Skyrim I think?

It's pretty weird. Although I say blue, another may say grey. http://www.uesp.net/wiki/File:ON-npc-Acolyte_Cadiva.jpg.

Those eyes look grey. I think Zenimax, and probably Bethesda, will be mixing things up more in the future. It's why they keep the lore not 100% locked in place. It gives them a lot of wiggle room.

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Karliah is a full Dunmer according to all the information available. Only her former lover, Gallus, was an Imperial. But that wouldn't have any affect on her race any ways.

Well it is ESO...Dunmer should have red eyes and Karliahs eyes could just be a result of her pact and she is the only Dunmer that purple eyes.

And children in TES take most featues from their mother and only a bit from the father and we don't know the race of her father.

There are actually two stories regarding her parentage.

In the Real Barenziah and the Biography of Barenziah, a thief known as "Nightingale" was responsible for the theft of the Staff of Chaos from Mournhold. The thief was later recognized by Barenziah as Jagar Tharn, the principle antagonist of TES I: Arena.

In The Nightengales, however, the thief is identified as Dravyn Indoril, a member of the Nightingales, who was hired to steal the precious artifact by Jagar Tharn.

So this remains a point of debate in the community. Many cite Karliah's unique purple eyes as evidence that she's a half-breed and her father was Jagar Tharn. This is also the most juicy and scandalous explanation, so its pretty popular. Others put more faith in the explanation that The Nightingales offers. Still another group speculates that Jagar Tharn was the father, but that he also wasn't wholly Imperial himself as is commonly assumed. This is becausehttp://www.uesp.net/wiki/File:Arena_Jagar_Tharn_Vision.pngdepicts him with red eyes (and perhaps other Dunmer-esqe features).

Both theories are also off. Barenziah was Karliah's maternal grandmother, not her mother. Karliah's mother was named Dralsi and was a thief living in Skyrim. Her father is unaccounted for, but her maternal grandfather could be either Jagar Tharn or Drayven Indoril.

Why do people think Jagar Tharn an Imperial? As far as I can tell, that idea came with Online as the Tharns there are Nibenese nobility, but Jagar himself is only referred to like http://en.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:The_Real_Barenziah,_v_5, when it comes to his lineage: "I just don't trust that mongrel Elf. Part Dark Elf, part High Elf, and part the gods only know what. All the worst qualities of all his combined bloods, I'll warrant." He snorted. "No one knows much about him. Claims he was born in southern Valenwood, of a Wood Elven mother. Seems to have been everywhere since -- "

Barenziah, sunk in the contentment and lassitude of pregnancy, had only been humoring Symmachus thus far. But now she suddenly dropped her needlework and looked at him. Something had piqued her interest. "Symmachus. Could this Jagar Tharn have been the Nightingale, disguised?"

Symmachus thought this over before replying. "Nay, my love. Human blood seems to be the one missing component in Tharn's ancestry."

With the addition of Online to the lore, it is likely that Jagar did actually have human ancestry (or took the name for himself), but he was definitely identifiable as an elf.