so I've been reading on the uesp wiki lore section and they know a lot about the other provinces, but what about black marsh and the argonians? Any lore buffs know anything about them other than what the wiki says?

Black Marsh, and the Argonians in general, are very shrouded in mystery. More so than most other races, so not much is really known about them. Your best bet is to seek out the few sources that we do have, like The Argonian Account, if your looking for lore-reliable information.

Found vol. 1 of that book in a dungeon yesterday. Haven't read it yet though.

Check out the Argonian Compendium:
http://z8.invisionfree.com/People_of_the_Beasts/index.php?showtopic=10

The information there is not up to date, but there's still a wealth of knowledge to be found there on all things Argonian. Check it out.

If you're interested in Argonians, The Argonian Account is a gem. It is virtually the only in-depth source we have so far. All the other information that we have is very spread, and a lot of it comes in the form of passing dialogue.

If you haven't read this yet, you might find something new here.
http://www.imperial-library.info/content/pocket-guide-empire-third-edition-war-trees-argonia-and-black-marsh

That's an insane amount of info! I love to see fans dedicate that much time to compile all that knowledge. Makes it easy for the rest of us.

Thanks for the info

I'd get to reading the TES books, The Infernal City and Lord of Souls. Two of the main characters live in Black Marsh, and one of them is a Saxhleel (argonian). Here's also some other bits of info.

• The Saxhleel can be molded by the Hist
  
• The Saxhleel can be hiveminded by the Hist, should the Hist choose to do so.
  
• The Saxhleel language has no sense of time. This possibly hints that to them, time has no real meaning.
  
• It's very possible the Saxhleel are soul recycled through the Hist.
  
• Black Mash took contested territory from Morrowind, and drive the dunmer out of Morrowind at the beginning of the 4th era
  
• The inner swamps will kill anyone that is not native to Black Marsh, due to the horrific amount of diseases and poisons, along with the fauna (flesh flies are fun!)
  
• The very land of Black Marsh wants you dead
  
• There are werecrocodiles in Black Marsh
  
• The Saxhleel kicked the ever living [censored] out of Mehrunes Dagon's forces, to the point that MD's forces closed their own gates.

You forget to mention that in The Infernal City, when Annaig and Mere-Glim are travelling up that ruined tower, they find particularly strange carvings.
Which if my memory serves me right.. can lead one to believe that the saxhleel evolved from the Hist in some kind of manner, in their ancient history.

It has been a while since I last read it. Wouldn't surprise me, frankly, as the lone Saxhleel in the game "Redguard" mentions something similar. You ask me, the Saxhleel are mobile Hist. After all, they're the only major race not related to everyone else.

Well aside from Argonians, Hist trees are also very important parts of Black March. They're basically sentient trees that are usually credited with being the first inhabitants of Tamriel. The Argonians have very close connections to them, and sometimes call themselves "people of the root," which also accounts for any mention of "Roots" in Argonian names. Argonians lick the sap of the Hist tree to get visions from them and that's how they communicate. But if any other race tries to do this, they just get extremely powerful and violent hallucinations.

The Hist speak more directly to each other (they're all said to connect at the root) and to the An-Xileel, a political party that wanted Black Marsh's independence from the Empire. The Hist were apparently able to foresee the Oblivion Crisis before it happened, and thus summoned all the Argonians across the Empire to return to Black Marsh. Through the An-Xileel, the Hist spoke of the Daedra that would come flooding out of the Oblivion Gates and ordered Argonians to attack the hell out of the gates. They attacked with such unyielding ferocity that Mehrunes' generals and lieutenants had to close the Oblivion Gates themselves to keep the Argonians out. Sooo because of that, the Hist and An-Xileel are almost always recognized as the reason Black Marsh survived the Oblivion Crisis. And because they did it all by themselves, that's how the Empire lost its foothold in Black Marsh and the lizard people got their independence.

Source is this book "The Infernal City," which basically detailing events that transcribed directly after the events of Oblivion. Also the main story is about this floating city of death, that's pretty cool, too.

Werecrocodiles? I thought since they're lizards they'd be weredragons

WOAH, buddy. There is a HUGE difference between Dragons and Argonians.

Oh, and for the record: Argonians are lizard-like, but they are NOT lizards per-se. In many ways their physiology is much more human or even completely unique to their race. For example, in terms of sixuality Argonians are decidedly un-lizardlike.

The books actually have very little to say about that. Mere-Glim actually doesn't believe in werecrocodiles.

The only source that specifically says that there are were-crocodiles in Black Marsh comes from a book in Daggerfall:
http://www.imperial-library.info/content/lycanthropy

Also:
Actually, the Saxhleel do have a sense of time. If they didn't, they wouldn't be able to comprehend the human language at all. What the book does say is that their language doesn't use http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_tense

No, from what it seemed, they see the idea of a "then" "now" and "will be" as nonsensical.

If the idea of a past, present, and future were absolute nonsense to them then they wouldn't be able to understand tense at all, let alone apply it to any sentences they came up with. Period.

The Argonians have a sense of time, but they don't use it in their language. Apparently they don't believe that establishing a linear sequence of events is important to perceiving another's thoughts, so they never bothered inventing tense. Their inexperience with the concept is what makes the human language so difficult for them to learn.

You're one of those people that believes Khajiit are elves?

And the Hist didn't call all the Argonians from all across the Empire. There would have been no Argonians in OB if they did.

Because they find the idea of a "then" "now" and "will be" to be nonsensical to the argonians.

And not quite Trillid. They are descended from mer, which means they're still related. Men are are also related to mer, but that's because they were all Elfphony (or however you spell that). And The Hist did, as NPCs did say of Saxhleel returning to Black Marsh. Not all of the Saxhleel could have been given the call, which the Hist can do, selectively call Saxhleel.

There's a book that has a creation story that says they descended from "Forest People" who were stuck between people and beasts. People assume that is Bosmer. But the Cat Demons have been around since Topal the Pilot. There is more evidence that the Khajiit are older than the Bosmer.

edit: They may be descended from Ehlnofey, but definitely not from Mer.

edit 2: I don't think they are descended from Ehlnofey, but it's not disputed.

Words of Clan Mother Ahnissi directly states that the "forest people" are the progenitors of the Khajiit and the Bosmer.

Hmmm. Yes it's even worse than I remember. Nothing there is correct. The Bosmer came from the Aldmer.

If the idea of time was nonsensical to them, that would be it. They wouldn't understand human language at all and they wouldn't be able to speak it at all.

But since they obviously can understand the human language, the concept of time must make sense to them.

This is just basic logic, how is it that you do not follow me?

Sorry if I'm failing at trying to explain there's a little nuance to what I'm really trying to say.

And nonsensical doesn't mean they don't understand it at all.

It's foreign to them. It's like some Native Americans. Past and present tense wasn't as important to to them as the fact that it happened. When they would tell of a battle, they would have the most important details first, regardless of when they happened, and then the less important details. But they still understood the concept of time.

I'd chalk it up to weirdness with respect to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_aspect and call it a day.