If your player character ever holds up an imperial tower shield to block, you can see that they've scratched lines (the sort you use to count- four vertical and one horizental to make five) onto the inside of their shields - almost as if they were counting the number of kills they've gotten. It probably was the shield's previous owner, come to think of it. My character has far more that 16 kills

Yea I always wondered what that means. Is it always 5 lines?

Sorry, it's not just five, it actually looks like this: IIII IIII IIII I

So it was actually sixteen. I was just describing the base unit of five, since I couldn't think of how else to describe it. And yes, it's always the same number of lines. it's part of the texture of the shield, so all imperial shields have it.

THAT IS AWESOME!

It's on quite a few shields, one of my characters even has it on her bound shield. On her shield it's only six lines though, and the sixth is on the wrong side of the five.

The word you are searching for is 'tally marks'

I had noticed these, and I thought they were on more than one shield. I wouldn't exactly classify it as an Easter Egg, but it's still interesting.

Ah. Quite right.

" I wouldn't exactly classify it as an Easter Egg, but it's still interesting."

It's not an easter egg in that it's not a hidden message, but it's quite an obscure one. I just wanted to draw attention to it for people who might've missed it, which I think is quite a few..

Agreeing with Fomorian. The tally can be pretty hard to spot unless you're looking down with a shield out.

Now all we need to do is see why my character's tally was six and Fomorian's was sixteen. I'm guessing it depends on the shield type and nothing else but it'd be nice to know more.

Was it your bound shield that had a tally of six? I guess the texture for daedric shields only has a tally of six, while the texture for the imperial shield has a tally of 16. I imagine every imperial shield in the game has the same tally and every daedric shield, bound or not has the same tally.

this is where i hope you can tally your kills on a sheild in skyrim

interesting find btw, i never really use sheilds so i would never have noticed