I'm nearing the end of my Skyrim mod (at least, its main questline), and I'm in the process of designing the final boss encounter... which happens to take place in Coldharbour.

However, there's some fairly conflicting accounts as to what it looks like, and since Lore-khans such as ourselves are the only ones likely to actually care, I thought I'd run this by y'all.

Do I go with Bethesda's take on the realm, with its burning sky and sludge for ground, but otherwise fairly similar to Tamriel, as seen in "The Doors of Oblivion"...

Or do I go with Zenimax's misty, floaty-rocked, blue-skyed, vaguely Soul Cairn-ish version?

This might well be one of the first positive things I've said about TES:O but, aside from the burning sky, I think they got the aesthetics pretty spot on for Coldharbour. Re-examining the trailer, the ruined Tamriel aspect is pretty prominent. I suppose the question for me, and I don't recall reading it anywhere, is the burning sky red (which seems a little too Dagon-y for my liking) or more blue-hued flames?

My take on it is that Zenimax used colder colors to depict it that it does indeed feel...cold there. In reality, we don't have a lot more then some of the screen shots that have been shown to us, and as most TES games preclude, its kind of hard to judge the place as a whole based off of that.

Color pallet aside, I don't see why the two would necessarily have to be mutually exclusive, as they both sound like places of fantastic svck. I'd definitely go with sludgy ground since that sounds very unpleasant, but I do like the general feel that Zenimax is putting on with Cold Harbor. The blackened buildings are apparent, the geography is twisted, and those strange pyramid-like structures are very out of the ordinary.