In Elder Scrolls lore, are there any Argonian settlements that are entirely underwater? I mean, they breathe water, so why not, right? Well, they might prefer to live in the air; and it's probably hard to talk underwater, if you're vocal chords are adapted to speaking in air (obviously, some critters talk underwater, like wales, so it's potentially possible, and you can do sign/body language, I suppose, instead of audio). In any case, just curious about it.

Most industry is difficult underwater, what with the whole "fire doesn't work so well" thing. That means no forges and much of alchemy/chemistry off limits, excepting purely biological ones (not that such a thing is outside the realm of possibility).

Meanwhile, underwater, oxygen levels become much more of a problem. The trophic levels of aquatic life are necessarily more shallow than surface life due to the limited quantities of oxygen in water. Whole cities would probably require constant gardening and ensuring that the water remains crystal clear to avoid overtaxing the oxygen supply. (Especially if you start to go into industrial use of underwater biological chemistry.)

TES is set in a universe where magic allows mages to breath in poisonousness realms of oblivion, anything is possible ( air bubbles for alchemy and whatnot )

To the OP none that I'm aware of.

You might be getting slightly too hung up on the word "city". It wouldn't necessarily be a huge, 10,000+ population settlement. Might be something small with a hundred or 200 hundred argonians. Might be they live their because they are outlaws, or perhaps they are a persecuted conclave, similar to the one that lived in that secluded cave in Morrowind (the one you had to enter at dawn or dusk as it was protected by the magic of Azura). If we ever get a TES game in Black Marsh, I'd really hope for such a thing. It just seems to be something which would happen, you know?

There probably wouldn't be any "industry" in the usual sense - however, there might be some special types of industry specifically suited to the environment - "farming" of certain types of aquatic life forms, or perhaps unique alchemical products which can only be produced in the environment (maybe there's an underwater "vent"/hotspring nearby which has unique magical properties necessary for creating a certain type of potion or poison, etc). Seems like there's all sort of possibilities to explore with such a thing, from a story standpoint, and it would make an awesome use of the breathe water spell, which I've always thought suffered from too few interesting reasons to stay underwater for extended periods. If you're going to have water breathing magic, give me a reason to go underwater and stay there for extended periods.

But again, a swamp with enough overgrowth on the water will create a dead zone with no oxygen.

I wouldn't expect a city, or even a town to really be built that way, but certainly clever argonians might make from necessity a city that is only accessible from underwater. (This is how mudskippers make their nest - their nests are safe from both land and sea predators because their nests require both to go up onto land, and then back underwater, then back up into the air to be able to access their nests.)

This would depend mightily upon the degree of military threat they face from either Morrowind or the various random baddies out in the swamps, however. It is expensive to build in such a manner (if not in monetary terms, than in terms of how much labor must go into such things), especially since a mud-cave has little room for growing food. (But then, yes, tell this to Blackreach, with its giant jellyfish mushrooms, which I am quite annoyed I cannot harvest in any way for alchemical ingredients.)

Anyway, if I was designing such a thing, I wouldn't build a city entirely underwater, but would simply have underwater facilities for those facilities that needed to be underwater. (With access to some requiring underwater travel if they are especially threatened.) If nothing else, it is much easier to warm yourself beside a fire than to try to warm yourself by magically heating the water around you. Especially since magic is not so totally ubiquitous in TES that you can expect every argonian to just wield it willy-nilly.

Of course, I am using reason in my ramblings. If Bethesda makes a game, they will be more concerned with two things: Gameplay mechanics they believe people want, and presentation.

Also, if you want a look at how lore has treated Black Marsh, then the http://www.imperial-library.info/content/oblivion-argonian-account is the best in-game lore we have had.

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EDIT:

I would also point out that in the current game, you cannot cast breath water while underwater, and cannot fight back against predators, even if you are an argonian, making living in the water render you helpless if a slaughterfish somehow got into your house.

Obviously, this would have to change, but it does show how much derision there is for spells like Breath Water or anything else besides Direct Damage there tends to be in Bethesda's current line of development.

Please, stop applying real world physics to Nirn, pretty please.

I am accounting for mythic pseudo-subjective reality, as you can clearly see, especially in that second post, and also mentioned its likely handling in-game.

Unless you are only opposed to using reason at all, in which case, I can't help you.

I was to lazy to quote the specific part of your post that I was talking about, but if that's your attitude, fine, I'm http://scodal.tumblr.com/post/8698954394/oh-wow-you-really-gonna-fight-me-over-the.

You are the one picking the fight about what is or is not possible, the OP asked about the possibility of underwater cities, and I related what ideas are applicable, as did the OP.

In any event, Bethesda can create almost anything they want to with enough of an explanation to make such a thing make sense, but the thing is, every time they break with reality, they have to make that explanation.

If Argonians could just live underwater all the time, after all, why not just live out in the ocean? Odds are, they would be hit with less predators out in the open sea than in Argonia itself.

If there is not some sort of ecological or physiological reason for doing so, where are the deep-sea argonians? Surely, in the deep trenches off of Tamriel's coast, there might be undersea mines to be explored.

TES is such that even arbitrary decisions made for aesthetics or gameplay eventually end up having tremendous amounts of lore wrapped around them. (See: Dragon Breaks and the end of Daggerfall.)

There isn't much in the water now (and they have to hide the bottom of the ocean in a brown fog when you go underwater) because you aren't expected to or meant to go underwater. If this changes, and you are meant to go underwater, and doing so becomes a major part of the game, then people will start naturally asking many more questions about why we are going underwater now, and couldn't go underwater before, and that means Bethesda's going to have to have answers. When they reach for those answers, they tend to turn first towards physics, myth, and then metaphysics.

I can't speculate on what myth or metaphysics they might create, but physics is something knowable. And as such, those are the questions that would have to be answered.

Warith Magus:

Ok, if it makes you happy: Presumably, even though Black Marsh is a swamp, there are also coastal areas, where the water would be more highly oxygenated. If there's any rivers, those would likely be more highly oxygenated as they are constantly being fed by rainwater (which, I think, correct me if I'm wrong, would be highly oxygenated from falling through the sky). So, even though the entirety of Black Marsh might not be suitable for underwater habitation, there could potentially be some specific places where this would be viable. That is, for example, even though you probably wouldn't have an underwater city in the river itself, because it would presumably be too shallow, you might have a river near the point of the coast where the river dumps into the sea, as the waters near the rivers mouth would get oxygenated by the river, yes? As to the issue of heat, I already mentioned volcanic vents and hotsprings. There are natural sources of heat underwater.

Additionally, you could have an entirely underwater cave which was warm due to being also deep underground (although, that cave might have more oxygen problems).

I believe Blackmarsh is in an area of Tamriel which has a naturally very warm climate, and so there may be many places in Black Marsh or its coastal regions where the water is almost bathtub-warm without any vents or hotsprings. Finally, I have a question: Are argonians warmblooded? They are amphibious, and most amphibians are not warm blooded, and can survive just fine in cold (but not freezing) water, without even really caring or "knowing" that the water is cold (cold water I believe has the advantage of actually holding more oxygen, so Argonians would probably survive better in cold water, actually, than warm water).

And, as Ryan points out, Nirn is a magical place, so there's plenty of room for "extraordinary" things like an underwater city which otherwise wouldn't seem to be "realistic".

I think, disregarding such irrelevant things as real world physics in a video game which takes place in a magical world, the idea of underwater cities or at least settlements of some sort would be interesting. I admittedly don't know very much about the Black Marsh area, but I think mining areas like WM mentioned would be neat. Pirates that come from camps under the surface? Awesome.

The idea isn't something I've seen in canon before, but it would certainly be a cool addition if Bethesda ever wanted to go that route and add it. Of course, as WM also said, gameplay mechanics would need to change at least a little if such an area were visitable by the PC. Something to think about for fanfiction if that's your deal or maybe a TES tabletop style game which I'm be interested in running with some friends someday.

Just neat.

I'd say Black Marsh cities are less like say, Rapture, and more like Venice.

Definitely.

Skyrim is the first Elder Scrolls (OK, I only know about Morrowind on - never played Arena or Daggerfall), where you were so restricted underwater, so it would not at all be a shocking change for them to allow you to once again do the things you could in Morrowind and Oblivion (there were some restrictions; IIRC you can't cast ranged spells underwater, only "touch" spells, and "self" spells; can't remember if fire had any effect underwater, but since it's "magical fire", I could see your enemy being able to burn underwater, even if the water around them doesn't burn, same for ice).

I think part of the reason there's no underwater combat is that with Skyrim, they ditched the traditional touch/range/self spell system, and spell crafting. So, that means that, with no "touch" spells in the game at all (flames/frostbite/sparks are more like ranged attacks than touch; just very short range), a mage wouldn't be able to use any magic underwater at all, except maybe "self" spells, so that would probably raise all kinds of protests from mage users, getting stabbed with knives and completely unable to fight back. So, they probably figured it makes more sense to just have no underwater combat at all, then to completely exclude magic users.

They're not Gungans.

Right, I'm not saying it's impossible. Only that in such a future installment where an underwater area or city or whatever would be a feature that the mechanics involved would evolve or change back or a mixture of both as well.

Oh, yeah, I would definitely expect most BM cities to be similar to Venice, mostly in the air, maybe partly underwater. I could totally see an Argonian underwater "bar"/club sort of place, that's in an otherwise above-the-surface city. Build it underwater so you don't have to worry about any 'undesirables' bothering you, because they can't breathe there (well, the occasional mage, alchemist or idiot with a magic ring of water breathing might show up, but in general, the air-breathers would stay away).

I just thought it might be cool if there's one or two places where the Argonians mostly live underwater. Would be a cool way to make use of their inherent water-breathe.

You seem to be mistaking speculation for combativeness.

Anyway, oxygenation does not occur through rainfall, at least, not enough to matter for actual swamps or rain forests, it occurs from underwater plantlife. There is, again, a real-life reason for why most aquatic life lives in the shallow bodies of water, and not the wide-open ocean, and that is the most logical explanation in-game without having to resort to all kinds of myth and lore reasons.

Likewise, I'm merely talking about the obvious out-of-game ramifications of introducing underwater cities where none existed before: People are going to ask "where were they before?" That would mean Bethesda would need an answer.

Likewise still, there is a problem with being "too alien" - Just look at the TVTropes entry for "http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AtlantisIsBoring", where the imaginations of the viewers can be stretched, sure, to include underwater architecture, but that inside of that, there is not enough underwater stuff to do besides go spearfishing.

Yes, you CAN introduce all sorts of new things they can do to generate oxygen underwater magically, and have all sorts of magical parallels to a fire-powered forge... but then, why did the Argonian armorer from http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:The_Armorer%27s_Challenge just use a forge like every land-breather if he was supposed to be representing Argonian smithing techniques?

Yes, you CAN introduce all sorts of underwater agriculture... but then, why do they only export rice and root when they could export exotic kelp foodstuffs if that's what they live on?

Or you can just say "they don't live underwater all the time and in large concentrations because there is a limit to the rate of oxygen replacement" or "there are more predators in the water than on land", and have Argonians live on the surface (or at least, mostly on the surface, with a few partially-submerged buildings), like they always have. That way, they don't have to go explaining away the inconsistencies.

The Argonian Account treats them more like tribal villagers.

They have small subsistence agriculture collectives kept in relatively safe areas, and use scales of the beasts they hunt as their armor. They don't have large trading paths and caravans or merchant fleets, they have rivers and rafts or else they use the "arterial veins" of the Underground Express to move things around.

Then, there's the stuff that the Imperials try to impose upon Black Marsh, without understanding how Black Marsh isn't Cyrodiil, and it tends to fail.

To have underwater cities may be "neat", but it breaks with established lore.

Because we all know the denizens of Nirn breath good old fashioned oxygen, made of oxygen atoms. They're also probably effected by Arsenic the same way as us, and were probably all relieved when some mage discovered Penicillin can treat Syphilis.

Also, if you have a "bar" underwater, remember that whole "physics" aspect of trying to drink from an open bottle underwater... which contains a water-soluble liquid, in a room full of water.

And I don't care what you say about how Nirn is too magical for physics, the physics of things being dissolved in water still seem to apply to Nirn.

Again, this would make more sense with the mudskipper anology, where the bar simply had a watery entrance.

I was going to say something similar to this, although perhaps with less surface anol irritation. Do we know for a fact that the Argonian ability to breath underwater means that they function identically to real world fish? Maybe they have some other, different or mystical, explanation for being able to survive without traditional surface oxygen. Maybe it depends on the level of Hist sap they take in, in the same fashion used to handwave the evolution of Argonian appearance in the games.

Or maybe, it's a video game and doesn't really matter.

http://www.binscorner.com/pages/a/amazing-underwater-river-in-mexico.html

Unless we are told otherwise, yes, with the exception of Penicillin.

We can already cure most diseases with the medicines produced through alchemistry in-game. Penicillin is a fungus, though, and I hear Elf Cap Cup is good for what ails you.

As for arsenic, Nightshade is a family of real-world plants, known for several breeds of highly toxic plants, albeit with some varieties that have medicinal uses... exactly the same as in TES, which obviously just copied it over from the real world.

The problem with both these lines of reasoning is that you aren't thinking things through...

All that's going on here is saying "Wouldn't it be cool and totally different if there was a bar that was just like a regular bar, but underwater?" When asked about the problems regarding that, there is only an angry response about how thinking about things is wrong. That's a laziness that goes beyond being unwilling to drag-select and delete out the parts you weren't referring to in your response, it's a laziness of the imagination.

The simple answer is, "no, it wouldn't be cool." Again, http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AtlantisIsBoring for a reason - you can't just take a regular city, set it underwater, declare everything is exactly like on land, and pretend that just because you add a filter over the camera to make it look like there's water all around, even though everyone walks on their feet and rides sea horses for no reason that you've suddenly created a fleshed-out world.

There are ramifications to the changes you make, and unless you actually address them, you really haven't created anything interesting. After all, how is this Spongebob Squarepants "underwater city" any different from life on land when they're doing everything exactly the same way they would do them on land?

I think it comes from the execution. The tiny example I mentioned offhand a few posts ago, Argonian pirate/raiders coming from submerged camps to wreak havoc would be an interesting use of it, I think. It would tie into the emphasis the lore places on Argonians being guerrilla warfare experts without just being "well here's a city but it's all in shades of blue, everyone moves slower and there are fish instead of birds - have fun".

I'm sure with more than half a second of thought there are other ideas to use it which could be brought up as well.

That said, if a game were set in the Black Marsh, I don't think there would be any hurt for "interesting" ideas. People often talk about the alien atmosphere of Morrowind and how its departure from generic medieval fantasy was such a plus. I don't think a Black Marsh game would need an Atlantis to achieve a similar feeling, given all the craziness going on there.