MAP OF TAMRIEL 4TH ERA UPDATE
MAP OF TAMRIEL 4TH ERA SOFTWARE

Summerset Isles - Auridon is entirely from ESO.

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.

Valenwood - Recreated entirely from ESO.

Its division into two provinces rather than one is a 4th era change.

Elsweyr (Anequina and Pelletine) - The north-west corner and Khenarthi's Roost are from ESO, the rest from the Anthology and PGE maps.

The name Oliis Bay is from the Greg Keys novels.

Black Marsh - Its northern bit is from ESO, the rest, from the Anthology map.

The Red Year was also accounted for with Blacklight being the new capital, several cities being destroyed, and a large crater where Vivec used to be.

Morrowind - Vvardenfell was based on TES3, the mainland on a combination of heavily skewed ESO and this pre-TES3 concept map.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. There were also other sources used for the geography and settlements in each province. This is one of those things that I might revisit in the future. 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. Resolving conflicts like this is an imperfect science, especially when trying to keep things in tact relative to geological features like rivers. Naris, for example, is located to the west of Mournhold in ESO, but to the south-west in every other map. Conflicting locations likewise prioritized the Anthology map. When things conflicted, I went either with the most recent (like Sharnhelm, taken from the Anthology map) or with the most frequent (like Elinhir, from everywhere except the Anthology map, which spells it Blinhir). There was another point of contention in the city names and locations. but wasn't really utilized directly due to how much editing had to happen to match things up. ESO provided me with a lot of names and waterways, as well as a fair bit of coastal detail. To account for this, as well as for the huge city-to-land ratio in ESO, I had to do a lot of stretching and warping of the maps from that game. This gets even worse when we get down to comparing individual regions, as illustrated by Hew's Bane when overlaid with the Anthology outline. Its in-game world map (red) is drastically different from the anthology map (blue). The game maps for Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim were overlaid and used for additional detail. 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. I chose the Anthology map as my starting point for terrain and city locations. With the ethos decided, I set about making the thing. While I love a map that looks like it belongs inside the universe, they are often harder to read than something like Google Maps. This meant prioritizing clean contours and simple fonts over beauty and visual detail. The map had to be easy to read and understand.

MAP OF TAMRIEL 4TH ERA SOFTWARE

I created it in Adobe Illustrator, a vector software which allows everything to be edited, moved around, and scaled with greater ease and precision than pixel-based editors.

I wanted this to be a living document, especially since Elder Scrolls Online frequently adds new areas.

MAP OF TAMRIEL 4TH ERA UPDATE

The map had to be easy to update and correct.

Most names from that game are not only out of step with modern naming conventions, but also end up being ignored when the modern games cover those areas. I made the decision to exclude any Arena information that was not collaborated in later sources.

The map had to incorporate all the latest information about Tamriel, both in terms of in-game chronology (taking place during the time of Skyrim, rather than the late 3rd era) and in terms of the real world.

The very first thing I did is to lay out what exactly I wanted to acomplish: Other maps mostly suffered from the same set of problems. It also had a number of errors from an incorrect reading of the West Tamriel map, such as 'Hnes Rax' in place of Hew's Bane, and some very speculative information presented as facts (such as the distance to Akavir or shape of Pyandonea). By 2014, however, and even more so now, it was woefully outdated, relying on Arena information for most of its geography and placenames. It was a thorough geographic and political piece, and served us well for many years. The most comprehensive map at that time was Arthmodeus' masterpiece.

Map of tamriel 4th era