Village City Island Sim 1.9.6 APK [Mod] [Full]
Gabriella Waser
Being interested in the lore of the Elder Scrolls series of games, it really surprised me to see that this forum was still empty after all those years. My interest is particular fixed on the various settlements and regions present in various games and literature. Anyone who has played Arena knows various city-states, towns and villages existed, and various mod authors have revived settlements, either destroyed or not. I have always wondered if the devs of Skyrim might have placed some remnants of these lost settlements in the last TES game, Skyrim. I have purposely left out The Elder Scrolls Online and the books of Greg Keyes (The Infernal City and Lord of Souls), although it has been included in TES lore. I also will not comment on villages built by mod authors for Skyrim, although one village stood out: Laintar Dale, located east of Windhelm while originally located halfway between Windhelm and Labyrinthian.
Many of those settlements and regions still exist in the latest game, although maybe not at the same locations as they may have been in Arena. In my opinion in the Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages a few mistakes are made when comparing the Arena map with the Skyrim map:
In the next image I have positioned all lost city-states, towns, villages or settlements and regions described above, according to the original map and my personal opinion. I have also added all the passes from Skyrim to High Rock, Hammerfell, Cyrodiil and Morrowind.
I know you said you weren't going to comment on mods but when I read your post I immediately thought of this mod. You might be interested in it if you haven't seen it already. It adds the towns of Sunguard, Pargran Village, Dunparwall, Granite Hall, Nimalten, Helarchen Creek, North Keep, Blackmoor, Vernimwood and Amol.
Also next to TES Arena which is perhaps the best village/city lore mod out there to date, this is Altbert's Arena Lore - Skyrim's Old Cities. This is the current compilation of all Arena towns/villages by end 3rd era:
Their mod suite has 3 hard to find village locale mods (Laintar Dale, Oakwood and Amber Guard) plus the more popular Granite Hall. Basically adds these lore locales which TES Arena (a permanent WIP) sadly didn't get around to including.
This modder used to host their mod suite on Nexus. But was unfortunately banned (ages ago around 2013 time frame) for plagiarizing existing cutting room floor base game content (think this was the Faction : Pit Fighter mod series). Which they apparently rebuilt and posted as their own work. They appeared to have retired from the Steam modding scene around 2013 based on their workshop status. So unfortunately their work remains only available on Steam to date. Whole thing is a shame really, because they were one of the gifted few modders on Nexus (at the Chesko, Arthmoor, Apollodown elite creative talent level).
These screenshots look very nice. I've never downloaded anything from Steam (or posted on their forums for that matter) so it's never occurred to me to look for mods there. Thank you very much for the heads-up. I love town mods!
Sadly, the Steam forum is often overlooked. There also still remains a few talented mod authors on Steam who don't post/upload on Nexus (before it moved to sub model). So it seems a lot of the newer forum SSE/Fallout members are unaware the Steam mod resource exists.
"Arena Lore - Skyrim's Old Cities" in the Steam Workshop is a mod I made long ago (published 5/1/2014), but changed my mind about various locations, after long walks through the province, reading all possible references and trying to match the Arena map with the map of Skyrim. On the last map I made a mistake by exchanging the locations of Snowhawk and Markarth Side.
Two days ago I found another destroyed village, Vundeheim, that is mentioned in the translation of one of the lines of the Storm Call word walls. In my opinion the village would most probably have been situated in the valley south of Forelhost. The word wall was raised in commemoration of the death of the villagers and destruction of the village.
At the moment I am working on a new map to replace the last one. I am also adding more references to regions, forests and mountains which you may hear about or read about, but never actually see in game.
Unfortunately, Steam Workshop is basically broken, and has been since April '15 (the time of the paid mod fiasco). See this for why: Regarding Use of Steam Workshop - NOT Recommended If a person is going to use Steam Workshop (which is only for Oldrim) they should follow this guide: "Reliable" Workshop Use - By Arvyn
well admittedly it has been a while since I used the Skyrim workshop, but I am currently using it for mods in Conan Exiles and there it works as it should. So I don't know maybe its fixed now or its just the Skyrim workshop that's broken. I'd have to go and check it out to be sure.
For me the Steam Workshop works fine and I still use it on a regular basis, most of the time when I have accidently deleted my own mod backups, but also to keep track of new mods that are not available on Nexus, AFK or TESAlliance. I just unsubscribe after downloading a mod from the Workshop to prevent any possible updates.
What I have been trying to do, is to find the original locations as seen in Arena, not trying to rebuild those, but maybe raise a small commemoration monument on the locations I found and that match the location on the Arena map. Arthmoor's locations of Granitehall and Oakwood are pretty consistent with the Arena map, but most of the authors have relocated those settlements of old, sometimes far from their original location, maybe for obvious reasons. BTW, Granite Hill was never a settlement but a region west of Fort Sungard and around the dragon mound of Vuljotnaar, from which Granitehall took its name. The Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages didn't add to consistency between Arena and Skyrim by referring Markarth Side to Markarth, Amol to Fort Amol, Helarchen Creek to the area around Heljarchen Hall and some others.
This is actually really interesting. Much as I appreciate the desire to match up the two maps I looks to me like Bethesda deliberately rearranged the Eastern portion of the map. I'm always believed that Markarth is the result of the Nords excavating more the Dwemer ruins and occupying them, whereas Markarth Side was mostly outside the old Dwemer settlement. Looking at the road network and the relative positions of settlements on the two maps it seems Markarth has been moved to roughly where Karthwestern was, Karthwestern has been moved up tot he position of Amber Guard and Dragon Bridge has been moved down to the position of Snowhawk.
Hello! I create my account for AFK some times ago, but htis this is the first time i write here.
I like to see when other people other than me think about the lore and the location of historical or old games places missing in newer TES games.
First of all I want to say that in my opinion the placement of TES 1 Arena shouldn't be taken into account as lore friendly.
- First of all, no in game information apart from the game map talks about their location (the main topic about all the towns and their thanes/rules or their population are possible rivalries and the possibilities to travel from one to another, but without some specific direction and distances).
- While with less severe degree, there are misplacements of locations also between TES 1 and 2 for the southern High Rock and the Hammerfell coast along Iliac Bay (Daggerfall city itself for example in Arena is located on the peninsula coast that look at the Ocean, while in TES 2 is placed in the inner coast, in the mouth of the bay) and between TES 1 and 3 for Vvanderfell (Old Rhun, wich is Ald'Rhun, is located in the southeast of the Arena map, but is placed in the western part of the island in Morrowind). And more often the lore in recent games follow the placement of the most recent game instead of the Arena one.
- Third, and most important: in TES 1 there is no way to actual travel from a town to another one "by foot", leaving a town leads only to the local finte (and procedurally generated) wilderness, the only way to travel from a location to another one in another cell is to use the map. On the oppoiste, TES from 3 to 5 are Open World, and while not 100% open world (since the wilderness between towns are procedurally generated), also in TES 2 is possible to manually travel from a location to another. This means that the location matters in later games, but are meaningless in TES 1.
This is not true only for placement, but also for other lore elements: in TES 1 Skyrim is where the player retrieves a tablet so the Winterhold Mages Guild can "decipher the Elder Scrolls" (!!!) and tell them where Labyrinthian is. Also some info ingame in varoius place (Labyrinthian itself) also suggests that, at least at some point, Skyrim had a monotheistic religion in dominance (totaly false for the lore). Honestly, I don't think Arena is even canon at that point. Let's also not forget that the Arena manual, opening cutscene and actual dialogue contradict each other about who the Emperor is, who you are, and who Talin is (and other things).
Arena was the first game, it creates the base for the lore, but outside that it lacks consistency with other lore info. TES1 info should be used only for "this place/person" use to exist, but nothing else.
With that in mind, and taking into account that during times the places can transform their purpose, i think that all the place you listed before that are present in both TES 1 and 5 must follow the Skyrim locations.
With that, Amol, Dunpar, Greenwall, Karthwasten, Markarth, Sungard, Snowhack, and also Neugrad (there is a Fort with this name in Skyrim, southern Falkreath hold) are covered. And also Blackmoor (by lore Fort Greymoor during history was called also Blackmoor and Darkmoor).
For other places:
-Dragon Wood is not missing, is simply called with a different name, a Nordic instead of a Cyrodilic one, in Skyrim and TES:O. One of the Nordic god that have a dragon as an avatar is Kyne, and "Wood" and "Grove" can have the same (or at least close, related) meaning... Dragon Wood = Kynegrove! This is confirmed by lore. This is not the first time a place in Arena have a name that later was changed to a more "local" one by lore and laguage: in TES 1 in the isle of Vvanderfell, in Morrowind, there is a place called Stoneforest. In the same location in TES 3 there is Balmora.... a translation from Dunmeri laguage to Cyrodillic (english) is Bal=stone, and Mora=wood, grove or forest... so this is another example of an alternative name. (I prefer the names in local languages... i also call more often the various elf races with thier "-mer" names).
-Helarchen (or Hijelarchen, in tes lore sites i've found their are the same place) Creek and Granite Hall (or Granitehill, one is the name of the town, the other the name of the natural place where the settlement is) are missing because of Bethesda lazyness, but it's know they should have been in the Nigthgate inn location the first, and near the crossroad between lake illinata and fort Sungard the second... since in the actual game in Skyrim Helarchen is missing as a town, but there is the Hearthfire Pale manor, maybe is possible to "relocate" the town near the manor, since there is no lore sure location for the settlement, but there is for the house... maybe Loreius farm could be a farm on the border of the town, and the manor take the same name because it dominate the place from above? My idea
-In the TES lore Helgen is known as "the Gateway of the north", and for some TES sites this is a clue (but without confirmed info) that, the North Keep location in Arena could be the actual Helgen (again taking into account that the placement in Arena are meaningless), since it have a name that remember the alias "Gateway of the NORTH", and Helgen is actualy a keep. This could explain both the missing of some specific "North Keep" named location in Skyrim and an "Helgen" named location in Arena.
- Vernim Wood is the name of the forest that cover most of the Rift, in particular the plateau between Shor's Stone and Treva's Watch, so the town that was build with the same name should be located in this area, in the middle of the forest or at lest in the border. Another lore information is that before the town was built, the main landmark was a Nordic tomb (Vault of Vernim, from wich the forest take the name). But the only possible Nordic tombs here are Geirmund's Hall and Srhoud Hearth Barrow, both present in TES:O at the same time of this other tomb, and the same is true even if we cross the river and take into account also Angarvunde. So the tomb is missing in Skyrim (maybe it becomes some other landmark?): Looking at other places in the area, the presence of a farm (Sarethi) 2 towers (Rift Watchtower and Nilheim) and a Fort (Treva's Watch), make me think that the town could be placed betwee 2 of this places (for example Sarethi farm and Nilheim), and whe could think it disapears, leaving only some minor landmark... another alternative is that the town was in the place where in Skyrim we found Redwater Den (that was once a house of this town), but the place was destroyed by vapires.
-Nimalten is said by lore to be placed in the Rift along Treva river... Treva's watch, Faldar's tooth, or Hearthwood mill could be what is left of the place.
-Alto (or Aalto) is not the name of a town, is the name of the volcanic thermal area south of Windhelm, so there is no settlements to find in this case, any town in the eastmach could brew the Alto Wine.
-Olenveld was a town in an island north of Winterhold, but by lore it was destroyed way before the events of TES 1, so no need to find this too.
- Cascabel is refered to be only a castle, keep, manor or something similar (Cascabel Hall), not necessarely a town... giving the fact that we don't have a name for the palace where there is the Thalmor Embassy, i ask myself if the Thalmor Embassy in the past was actually Cascabel Hall... if not, i think we are quite free to place it near Solitude in any direction.
- Bardmond by lore is placed not far south from Dawnstar... maybe place it somewhere between Dawnstar and fort Dunstad/Fellhammer?
-Oakwood is confirmed by lore to be in the Falkreath Hold, but apart from that nothing else (as i said, i don't look at Arena placement, since they are inconsistent with Skyrim and TESO ones even for existing places).
However i found interesting the fact that we have in the (oak?) forest east of Falkreath a house (Pinewatch) and the place of Lakeview manor, with some towers and guard outpost along the road (even if controlled by enemies in TES5)... i thin the placement near Pinewatch and Lakeview manor is perfect!
For other Arena towns (Amber Guard, Lainalten, Dunpar Wall, Laintar Dale, Pargran Village, Reich Corigate) there are no sure information, even for the hold that control them, so in this case we must use the only source of info (TES1 map) to at least place them in the Holds. However i think we are quite "free" to move them elsewere, for the above mentioned inaccuracy of Arena map (at least until future source of lore give us more info).
- Amber guard should be in the Reach, and i would place in the area near Harmugstahl, Druadach Redoubt and Deep Folk Crossing ( a lot of path in the area, an ancient cross for the border to control and where a town could grow up with commerce, a river and rich terrain, a possible fort neaby, Harmugstahl, and a core region for the forsworn that could be the reason for a downfall of other nordic settlements).
- Lainalten could be in the Reach, as much in the Whitern hold, or also in the Hjiaalmarch... near the border of the 3 holds (under the last one i write) in Skyrim we have a river, a crossroad that should be controlled, and a small fort, Robber's Gorge (overtaken by bandits in game)... i think this area is a perfect place for a town (maybe Robber's Gorge itself use to be that settlements in the past??)
- Reich Corigate seems to be in the Eastmarch or in the Rift... since we have a lot of location under Riften rule, but very few under Windhelm (and since i don't trust the Arena map so much) i would place it under the Eastmarch but near the border, so 2 possible places could be near Mistwatch or in the area near Ansilvud and the Eastmarch Imperial camp... (a fort or some path suggest good location for towns)
- I would Place Pargran Village in the Winterhold: not only there is no other remaining location to place here if we look at the Arena map, but (Fort) Amol in the Skyrim map seems to fit decently well in the location where Arena map place Pargran, so i think we could suppose the placements are swapped (as happened for Karthwasten and Markarth). Also there are other places that in Arena map seems to be in an hold, but in Skyrim and TES:O end up being under another: for example (Fort) Sungard (from Rift to the Reach/Falkreath/Whiterun border) or (Fort) Dunstad (from Hjiaalmarch to the Pale). Swapping in the Arena map Amol and Pargran, this one end to be located somewhere in the route between Windhelm and Winterhold city.... i would place it somewhere near Whistling mine.
- Laintar Dale seems to fit in the Pale along the road to Windhelm... since before i moved Helarchen Creek from the possible Skyrim location (Nigthgate inn) to Loreius Farm (fitting better with the Hearthfire manor), this leaves a "free spot" for a town around the Inn and on the east shore of Lake Yorgrim... so i would put Laintar Dale here.
- Dunpar Wall: this is a particular case where i trust more the Arena map. Not for the placement itself, but looking at the fact that is connected only to Helarchen Creek and nothing else (the only other location in Arena map to do that is Blackmoor/Greymoor, that is decently well placed). So i will trust to make it in the Pale. The name "Dunpar WALL" is something that should be notice. Could be a reference to some place with an ancient wall near the town itself? And if this ancient wall is a Daconic Wall of some Dragon Altar? 2 good spots for the wall in those cases could be Skyborn Altar (near the Lord Stone and Mehrunes Dagon Sanctuary) or Shearpoint: placing the town just east of the first or anywhere near the second will end with the settlement under the Pale (Skyborn Altar is under Hjiaalmarch, but on the border of the 2 holds) and with some sort of direct path to the road that connect Windhelm, Dawnstar and Whiterun (and ending so close to Helarchen Creek)
Not an arena location you've metioned, Dunbarrow for lore, as you said, is in the northern cost of Haafingar march. I would place it somewhere near Widow's Watch tower or Ravenscar Hollow, or maybe near Broken Oar Grotto.
Other places i found in a map (through reddit or other sites) that showed an ancient Haafngar march (maybe even from before the revolt of humans against dragons?):
- there was a small settlement east of Volskigge, named Pinemoon. In Skyrim in the same area and with the same name we found only a cave full of vampires (Maybe they are the reason of the town disappearing?)
- another one (maybe only a small guard point) just north of Volskigge, named Pinefrost. In skyrim there is a fallen tower with the same name.
Those are my info and my opinion on some placement. Also i think that there are plenty of reason for some settlements to disapears in the times, first of all the Oblivion Crisis, but also Great and minor wars, and other magic or natural events (for example 1 or 2 of the Arena settlements maybe were coastal towns near Winterhold, and the same waves that destroyed half of the capital of the hold end up deleting entires smaller ports from the map)