I mainly pleased with the amounts of other races. It was almost rediculous in Oblivion, even if it is the "cosmpolitian heartland of the Empire" that there was such amounts of foreign races there.
Most of the orcs probably mainly built their strongholds in the mountains West of Skyrim, on the border to High Rock. They got a good relationship with the Imperials too, so they might have traveled to Cyrodiil.

I think the subject regarding more from other mediums is a rather interesting one (is "mediums" the proper plural form im looking for?)

I kind of feel the same way about "official more" coming from other sources - kind of.

Like for instance, a movie series. In all honesty, I think it's a lazy way out when events between movies is supposed to be filled in via a book or something. For something like that, I feel like it should be addressed in the movies, you shouldn't have to go looking at books to find out what happened between 2 movies.

I dont think it bothers me in Elder Scrolls so much, and I -think- its because the events of TES aren't particularly connected, and its kind of known going in that it has a particularly expansive more outside just the game's story.

You dont -have- to know what happened to Morrowind to play Skyrim. Hell, you dont have to know what happened in the -game- Morrowind to understand Skyrim. The games aren't necessarily story driven, rather, each game just so happens to take place in a particular time in that world's history during specific events. Take part in those events, or dont. The lore's canon will recognize that the Nerevarine, Champion, or Dovahkiin existed, but they dont necessarily have to be you.

So maybe that's why I dont mind official more existing outside the games for Elder Scrolls. But for most things, I do. I dont care what George Lucas approves, only the 6 movies (and I suppose Clone Wars) are official Star Wars to me. Or with The Matrix. I only consider the trilogy. And so on and so forth.

I just dont care for stories to go inter-medium like that.

I totally agree with that. The story line is not based on the previous series of the game altho its has related history. This simple fact is allowing gamers to get a quick grasp of the game even if they are playing it for the first time and in the process they get a general understanding of the history of the game ( emphasising on the hundreds of books . letters , notes and etc..) For example i first played TES III Morrowind. i was fascinated by the story line in witch i had to read quite a number of books to get to the next stage witch on its way brought a interest to the different topics regarded in the books and so on and so on.. afterwards i stared the series from Arena to daggerfall and finally Oblivion. Needless to say they are all unique games but every one of them brought bigger and bigger of a interest in me to play the next ( the simple fact of seeing The famous homepland of the Dumner , or the altmer etc...) .
Altho i share that view with you i don't agree, and i can safely say that a lot of people will back me up on this, with your statement that there is no need for interlude between the story lines of each series. Those "mediums" are what brings most of the viewers or players of the series back to the new fragment, without them the link with the past one is broken witch in the most of cases leads to total loss of interest, a simple example is the movie "Pitch black" and all the following movies. The gaps that the movie team creates after each fragment led to bigger and bigger loss of interest.