I've just been noticing that besides the fact that Tamriel's plants are bigger then our plants that they're based on, they also seem to be entierly different when it comes to medical properties. Take for instance the Mandrake in Cyrodill and the real-world Mandrake. Mandrake was commonly used by people who practised magic, but it was never actually ingested because the root was highly poisonus, so it was mostly worn as an ambulant. However in Tamriel the root of the plant can actually be used to cure diseases just by eating it raw. A lot of other plants in Tamriel are poisonus in real life, but are treated as healing plants such as the Foxglove.

So this makes me think that the plants on Nirn, while they look similar to the plants on Earth, actually have different properties.

Technically speaking, the Elder Scrolls world is a completely different one from our own, it just happens to look a lot like ours in many places. And even if the fundamental workings differ greatly from our own, many things, on the surface, seem to behave much as we'd expect them on Earth (except where magic is involved, of course.). So while there may be many plants that are based on real life plants, it seems reasonable that they might differ in some ways, whether in appearance, or in other properties. In fact, I'd say it's sort of necessary for the game for them to differ in some ways, since I don't think there are any plants in real life that induce spontaneous combustion when consumed.

I guess it's like how rats are bigger than the ones you'll likely see in real life, and much more aggressive.

Now that I think about it, nothing is smaller. Things are only the same size or bigger. Maybe the entire planet of Nirn is in fact at a smaller scale than our own world, except for rats and a few other things like magic hour glasses. If we assumed similar rules of gravity and muscle function, you could suddenly use lore and science to explain the high jumping, people carrying eight hundred swords and three thousand sets of armor, and the slowly falling axes!

Separate, but equal.

What?

It has more to do with game mechanics than with them being purposefully bigger than the irl objects they represent.

I like to think it was the devs for TES IV just being unimaginative. <_<

But hey, it gives us something to anolyze to death right? ^_^ Unless I'm just the only person curious about stuff like this.

As interesting a theory as it is, I don't think it has much real bearing. The unrealistic carrying capacity and unrealistic jump height is just game mechanics, I'd imagine and the slowly falling physics objects is probably Bethesda implementing Havok physics poorly. As for things like rats being bigger than in real life, that's probably just because fighting a realistic sized rat would probably be even more boring than fighting a giant one, not to mention they might be rather hard to hit with your sword.

Oh? Didn't you know? I'm racist towards Nirn Plants. Yeah I don't think those plants deserve to be treated as equals like our plants on Earth. They shouldn't be in the same schools as the Earth Plants, and they should be forced to sit on the back of the bus.

Anyways about the rats, yeah it is probably easier to hit giant rats then small rats, but that doesn't mean that it's the only reason, everything on Nirn seems bigger then Earth probably because of the fact that Nirn is a different planet. And because of that I think the plants have different medical properties too. I don't think it was all just "laziness of the developers", I think they really did think about making things similar to things on our planet but different.

Actually, rats of that size do exist in some parts of the world.

And rats smaller than those exist in Tamriel.

If you read the in-game dialogue from Morrowind, particularly from an Orc or Nord Barbarian NPC, they mention the giant rat enemies in the game are called Cave Rats, and are a larger variety of the common rat, which must also logically exist since they were mentioned. They're simply not represented in-game.

Things having magical properties: obviously, they don't in the real world because magic isn't real.
Eating raw mandrake roots or other poisons: wortcraft is not eating. It involves the alchemy skill. It's so abstracted it might look like eating but it's not.
Giant rats and other oversized things: in the real world you have a much greater field of vision than what you get by focusing on your computer screen. Oversizing stuff compensates for that by making it easier to see the relevant things.

Wortcraft: A name for herblore herbal remedies and herb magic used by followers of Heathenry

Wortcraft is just the knowledge of various plants and their medical properties, when you consume an ingridiant's first effect in Oblivion, that is not "Wortcraft", that is simply chewing the ingridiant. So yes, it is eating. I don't know what makes you think otherwise. :nono:

This, perhaps?

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Fundaments_of_Alchemy

Wortcraft
Wortcraft is, in fact, amateur Alchemy. Eating an ingredient requires grinding it against the teeth, which occasionally releases its simplest essence and results in a fleeting effect on the eater. Wortcraft never has as strong a result as a potion created using the proper tools.

You just proved what I said.

Eating an ingredient requires grinding it against the teeth, which occasionally releases its simplest essence and results in a fleeting effect on the eater.

Edit: And plus you shouldn't compare Elder Scroll's "Magic" to real Alchemy and Witchcraft. There's so much more to true alchemy then simply taking a bunch of plants and parts and making potions. Alchemy also invloves the art of changing lead into gold, or making a man-made human from the earth. The same goes for Wortcraft. Real Wortcraft is just the art of knowing how to cure things with simple plants, but it was believed to be like Witchcraft a long time ago, so most people who practised Wortcraft were treated like witches, even though it was really no different then using modern medicine (which is made from a lot of herbs).

I know, I meant that the emphasis on the grinding bit may make people forget about the eating bit. NPCs don't just chew and spit out their food, do they?

Oops, sorry. Yeah, they really are eating the food. You even see the NPCs eat it themselves.

To go back to the OP and the idea that Nirn has less gravity, this can be arugued to be true as Nirn is in fact a good deal smaller than Earth. I forget by how much but there is a thread knocking around that discusses it. Also if you take Arena as the basis for Nirn, the sun sets in the east and rises in the west.

Nirn's gravity is artificial and unrelated to normal astrophysics.

Even though you might find a source in-game saying you eat the ingredients, keep in mind you find the same kind of source in-game telling you that there are people out there that are mining orcish to make orcish armor with the mined orcish ore -- because orcish, just like dwarven, elven or daedric -- is just a material like iron or steel.

When compared with common sense, and things such as the possibility to "eat" raw glass or raw ebony in Morrowind, you are forced to conclude that using ingredients is an alchemical process (proof: it increases your Alchemy skill), not gastronomy.



Plus the philosophical aspect.

That... would actually explain http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1PxstH2VpI. :blink:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tBMwMqkfhk&feature=channel