I originally started this map in 2014, and the latest version was released in late 2024. The aim was to combine 25 years of worth of contradictory cartography into one map that represented Tamriel in the time of TES5 as completely and accurately as possible. A secondary desire was to ensure that the map would be easy to update (the whole thing is vector artwork) and easy to read, prioritizing a “google maps” look versus something more stylized.
While the map was relatively easy to create from an artistic standpoint, attempting to reconcile dozens of contradictory maps and in-game information was a challenge. Below is an explainer of the choices I’ve made and the thinking behind them.
The Landmass
I chose the Anthology map as my starting point for terrain and city locations. It matches up almost exactly to the PGE3 map as wells as the in-game maps from the last three games, and is the latest official, lore-based map of Tamriel. The game maps for Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim were overlaid and used for additional detail. ESO, however, posed problems. Its in-game world map (red) is drastically different from the anthology map (blue). This gets even worse when we get down to comparing individual regions, as illustrated by Hew’s Bane when overlaid with the Anthology outline.
To account for this, I had to do a lot of stretching and warping of the maps from that game. ESO provided me with a lot of names and waterways, as well as a fair bit of coastal detail… but was rarely utilized directly due to how much editing had to happen to match things up.
The worst example of this is undoubtedly north-east Skyrim and Bleakrock. ESO’s map completely ignores the existence of the western Morrowind mainland, and moves Solstheim just off the coast of Windhelm. Bleakrock is them placed east of Windhelm, south east of Solstheim, and due west of Gnisis. Since TES5 already gives me accurate geography for the province of Skyrim I was able to ignore ESO’s distorted depiction entirely, but Bleackrock appears nowhere else in lore or in any other game. In the current iteration of the map, I’ve chosen to place it towards the mouth of the White River, a little north of the Morrowind mainland. There’s an island there in there on the anthology map, and it makes some sense as far as a Nordic colony. (Sidebar: I believe this section of ESO was actually developed before TES5 was fully fleshed out, back when the ESO was intended to be more inspired by World of Warcraft than the viking heavy metal look of TES5. In that way it’s an interesting look at an alternate Skyrim we could have had.)
Also a special callout to the Systres. The island chain existed previously on the West Tamriel map, but way away from Tamriel. ESO moved the archipelago close to Summerset and made it much larger. I favored ESO’s size, scale, and appearance on my map, since this was the first time the islands were appearing in earnest. Other ESO-specific islands (like Khenarthi’s Roost or Norg-Tzel) were also preserved as they are in that game, since they did not cause any other issues (unlike Bleakrock).
Rivers for Vvardenfell were taken from TES3, for Cyrodiil from TES4, and for Skyrim from TES5. Everywhere else used ESO’s waterways. When adjusting the landscapes I did my best to try to make the ESO rivers a little more logical (flowing downhill into a bay/sea/ocean), but there’s no saving Craglorn. In the latest version of the map I also included little dots to symbolize marshlands, which clarifies that the waterways of places like Black Marsh aren’t elaborate rivers as much as they are just wider, more connected lakes and puddles in the middle of the swamp.
locations & Names
The locations and names of cities were another big point of conflict between ESO (the only game to depict most of Tamriel) and the Anthology map or older games. When things conflicted, I prioritized how often a name was used (like Elinhir, from everywhere except the Anthology map, which spells it Blinhir) and how recently it appeared in both the chronology of the games and in real time. TES1 names were never used unless they were found more recently in lore or in games. Likewise, TES2 location don’t appear unless they’re in other games or mentioned as existing in the 4th era: the scale of that game is completely different from everything else, which would have lead to an incredibly cluttered High Rock.
Conflicting locations likewise prioritized the Anthology map. Naris, for example, is located to the west of Mournhold in ESO, but to the south-west in every other map. When resolving discrepancies like this, I tried to keep relative positions of cities and geological features, like rivers, intact. This was especially tricky because ESO’s cities are so huge compared to the landmass: Necrom, for example, encompasses the entire peninsula on which it sits, despite it being a tiny dot on the map in “reality”. In the case of Mournhold and Narsis, I ended up moving them both closer to the center of the province and relocating Narsis to a south-westerly position. To resolve issues of city scale, I tried to keep in tact important city features (e.g. if a city has a port, it should sit on the water).
There were also other sources used for the geography and settlements in each province, listed below. The distinction between “large settlement” and “small settlement” came entirely from the Anthology/PGE3 maps – if a city appeared large in the game it was featured in, but wasn’t marked down as a major settlement in either of those two maps, it got a small settlement marker instead.
- Skyrim – Based on almost entierly on TES5, with the exception of Granite Hill (mentioned but not shown in game) and Hroldan (only an inn in game, but an important lore location I chose to include)
- Morrowind – Vvardenfell was based on TES3, the mainland on a combination of heavily skewed ESO and this pre-TES3 concept map. To account for the destruction of the Red Year, the ashlands have been expanded, several cities destroyed (based on dialog and books in TES5), and Vivec is a crater.
- Black Marsh – The general shape is from the Anthology map, but interior detail is from various zones in ESO, including the never-released version of Murkmire that was a high-level Adventure Zone. The name Oliis Bay is from the Greg Keys novels.
- Elsweyr (Anequina and Pelletine) – Based entirely on ESO, with adjustments to locations to better match the Anthology map.
- Valenwood – Recreated entirely from ESO. A notable oddity here is the Xylo river. In ESO, “Xylo” is the same river as the one I’ve labeled, but in PGE3, that name is used for the river between Valenwood and Elsweyr, instead.
- Summerset Isles – Auridon is entirely from ESO. The landscape of the main island combines ESO: Alinor content with the Anthology map, and the labels are from ESO and from the West Tamriel map that accompanied TESA: Redguard.
- Hammerfell – The north is primarily from ESO, while much of the rest of the province references the West Tamriel map.
- High Rock – This one is a messy patchwork of ESO (for geography and some small settlement locations, Daggerfall locations (those that were mentioned in lore – TES2 had too many settlements to add to the map), and even a bit from Arena in the form of Dunlain, which was referenced in TESV.
- Cyrodiil – Almost entirely taken from TESIV. Ione, the only addition, came from the Greg Keys novels and is speculatively placed based on them.
I’ve also chosen to include a few important places where the exact location is not known, or disputed. Take for example the Halls of Colossus, which appear in TES1 and in ESO on the southern coast of Elsweyr, but lore has them located near Rimmen. Or the newest iteration of Orsinium, which we know from TES5 loading screens is “located between Hammerfell and Skyrim,” but have never seen on a map. In the latest iteration of this map, I’ve prefaced the names of these sorts of locations with an upside down question mark.
Since the map compresses 25 years of place names, and Zenimax/Bethesda often (but definitely not always) renames older names when they get to doing new areas, there’s plenty to debate about whether a new name is a retcon of an old name or a totally separate thing. For example, it’s very possible that Russafeld (ESO) is actually the same place as Rosfeld (West Tamriel map). Or that ESO’s Sailenmora is the same place as Salen Vulgate (MW concept map), despite them being located in different places. There was no single standard I applied when resolving these sorts of issues, and just went case by case about what felt most logical in terms of location and chronology.
Political Boundaries
Quite possibly the biggest bit of guesswork on this map. The political landscape of the 4th era is quite different than that of the 3rd, which is where most of the previous maps are placed. Hammerfell and Black Marsh are independent, and Summerset Isle (now named Alinor) has founded a new Aldmeri Dominion with Valenwood and Elswyer (now split into Anequina and Peletine). The Mede Empire definitely includes Cyrodiil, High Rock, and Skyrim, but whether or not it includes Morrowind is a huge point of debate with no definitive end in sight. I chose to go with what’s in The Great War and list is as part of the Empire, with the dialog in Dragonborn indicating people’s opinions on the Empire’s level of (un)involvement, rather than the political reality.
Where the borders between all of these states and nations lie is completely unknown, so I’ve split them roughly along 3rd era province lines, with one exception: Morrowind/Black Marsh.
A key point of the Red Year was the Argonian invasion of Morrowind. We know that the initial waves reached all the way up to Sadrith Mora, and that around 4E 50 there were still Argonians roaming near the crater of Vivec. But that’s 150 years before this map. During Skyrim’s time, we know that Mournhold is in Dunmer hands (To Milore from Nilara), but also that Argonians still live within lands that the Dunmer consider theirs (Dreyla Alor’s dialog in Dragonborn), and that they patrol the border with Skyrim (Delvin Mallory’s dialog in Skyrim). Without a definitive map from Bethesda, I chose to move the southern border up a bit, but not a ton. (Sidebar: Skyrim does feature a few maps of Tamriel… but they’re all identical to the 3rd era borders)
Topology
About half of the topographic data is directly based on extracted files from TES3, TES4, and TES5, and the other half painstakingly hand painted and collaged together from real-world heightmaps. In the image below, the green sections represent areas pulled directly from ingame data (Skyrim and Cyrodiil). The orange sections are border regions, based largely on the heightmaps from the games, but also blended out into the new terrain. The purple (Vvardenfell and Solstheim) are combined from the data in TES3 and TES5, and, in Vvardenfell’s case, accentuated with hand painted elements to account for the rather rudimentary height data in TES3. The gray sections were done entirely by hand, using a combination of lore knowledge, ESO depictions (accounting for the need to wall of regions with artificial mountains), as well as real-world geological requirements.
In the 2019 version of the map, I used this version of the heightmap directly. Unfortunately it made the overall map pretty hard to read, and was not scalable or editable (the heightmap is a jpg, the main map is vector). So for the current edition, I turned the grayscale heightmap into a more simplified height fields. It’s not as detailed, but it IS a lot more scalable, and also easier to read.
Other Random Notes
Although the Foyadas in TES3 aren’t lava filled, I chose to represent them as lava on the map. Red Mountain is more volcanically active in the 4th era, so it’s more likely that they’d be more often filled with lava. Similarly, although the lava flows around the Tormented Spire and Ash Mountain on the mainland aren’t permanent features, I felt it was worth including them in their active state.
The Thir river label is based on the Morrowind concept map, where it is unfortunately a totally different shape from ESO. The Xylo river is labeled for where it is placed in ESO, which unfortunately contradicts the 3rd Pocket Guide saying that it forms the border between Valenwood and Elsweyr (in ESO, the Crescent River does that, which is what I’ve gone with on this map).