Everyone has an idea what Skyrim might be like, more or less informed by what we know from lore and comments in the games, and as much imagined from our real-life experiences in colder climates and with certain hardy cultures. I propose, as a creative outlet, building our own, fan-imagined Skyrim in http://spearthane.netcipia.net, with the limit of creativity being contradiction of canonical lore.

I imagine this could be a useful resource for those basing fan fictions in Skyrim. I do have an ulterior motive: I'm not prolific enough to come up with an entire province on my own, for the text adventure I'm writing. As always, if Bethesda objects, I'll drop the project, and I don't want to host their copyrighted material.

My apologies if this sounds a little blunt, but you are not going to get very far that way.

Imagine a giant better-graphicised solstheim with falmer ruins and stuff.

No worries. Why do you feel so?

Imagine Easthaven, except the Temple of Tempus is now replaced with the Temple to Shor.

I've got some thoughts on what http://www.freewebs.com/anticlere/skyrim.htm could be just after the events of Oblivion.

Is this pretty much what you posted before? I went through it and made notes, which I will eventually post on the Spearthane blog.

I really like your other pages, crimes and shops will be very useful, and guilds will be as key as your political setup. Looks like I've got my work cut out for me.

You could always play Arena, I think, but am not certain, that you can go to Skyrim there. And that's pretty much all we got now.

I do understand that this is all the official lore we have. I'm not trying to just gather lore on Skyrim: TIL and UESPWiki already admirably do this. I'm trying to gather fan interpolation and extension of the Skyrim province, to serve as backstory for my game and others' fan fiction. A large part of it may be obsoleted by TES V, but I'm fine with that, because at least it gives us something to work with in the meantime.

I think I posted this in the wrong forum: it should be in Fan Fiction.

I think it will do ok here, really.


I said that because I strongly believe that is often better to come up with a good new idea that may contradict things, rather than hold on to a bad idea.

I assume that the reluctance of people to conflict with "established" lore partially stems from the false idea that a writer should be bound by his creation for the sake of consistency. I, however, prefer to espouse the opposite school of thought, namely that a fictional work is bound by its creator. Things can only look inconsistent to us, not to the people within our fictional worlds. If one comments on inconsistencies in lore, one is really commenting on the writer, rather than the world itself. It's not changes in the fictional reality that one discerns, but just in our knowledge of that world.

Pingos as far as the eye can see!

One that has been losing allot of its students lately.

I like to think of the whole argument as one over poetic license. Rules and canon exist to make works coherent, familiar, and accessible. Too much coherence, familiarity, and accessibility lead to bland, cliche environments. So you take poetic license, alter, upset, or break the mold, if you have something interesting to replace it with, and if you have confidence in the integrity of the new vision with which you override the old.

The problem with creative license is that it has to either work better that the original, or at least hold interest in its own right. Where either, or especially both, of these fail, people start to wonder why you didn't just stick with what's already there. Since almost no-one sees the entirety of a new vision until it's published, people tend to view sneak previews of isolated changes in terms of the older context, and don't see why things fit in the new context.

I posted http://spearthane.wordpress.com/2008/05/11/shades-skyrim/ to Shades' backstory. Mostly I wrote about my own preferences for its use in Spearthane, rather than in-depth anolysis of the political situation.

Sounds awesome. The G.M. inside me is dancing. *goes to start brainstorming*

Posted http://spearthane.wordpress.com/2008/05/12/shades-whiterun/ in response to Shades' backstory. This one does comment on the political situation.