For years, it has been suggested that Hammerfell and High Rock will be the setting of The Elder Scrolls 6. In the series' lore, the region is geographically and culturally diverse, allowing Bethesda to show off a breadth of environments, architectural styles, armor designs, and more. Many felt these suspicions may have been confirmed at E3 2021 when eagle-eyed Elder Scrolls fans spotted a symbol resembling a map of the region in Starfield’s trailer.

This wouldn’t be the first time an Elder Scrolls game has taken place across Hammerfell and High Rock. The Elder Scrolls 2: Daggerfall saw players explore an enormous version of western Tamriel. The game’s story saw its region’s factions fighting over control of the Numidium, a giant golem, to assert their dominance. With so many different possible outcomes, Bethesda established all possible endings as canon in Morrowind with the use of an event known as a “Dragon Break.” The potential impact of the Dragon Break on the setting of The Elder Scrolls 6 is huge.

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When The Dragon Broke In The Elder Scrolls 2

Daggerfall itself didn’t contain any references to Dragon Breaks. They were born of necessity, devised after the fact to tell future stories in the setting without Bethesda having to establish a canonical choice for the second game’s player character in a series already known for its roleplaying freedom.

Dragon Breaks are named after Akatosh, the dragon god of time in the Elder Scrolls universe. They are moments when multiple events take place at once before different timelines eventually come back together. People who live through Dragon Breaks come out the other side with a hazy understanding of the experience, forced to get their bearings in whatever new world the Dragon Break defined.

In "Where Were You When the Dragon Broke," The Elder Scrolls’ loremaster Michael Kirkbride sums up the experience of surviving a Dragon Break: “Every culture on Tamriel remembers the Dragon Break in some fashion; to most, it is a spiritual anguish that they cannot account for. Several texts survive this timeless period, all (unsurprisingly) conflicting with each other regarding events, people, and regions.”

Daggerfall: The Warp In The West

green dragon representing the daedric prince peryite in the elder scrolls 2 daggerfall

In Daggerfall’s case, the Dragon Break known as "the Warp in the West" – or sometimes "the Miracle of Peace" - was triggered when the Numidium was activated by whichever faction the player supported. Suddenly, there were multiple Numidiums, one for each faction the player could have supported: Daggerfall, Sentinel, Wayrest, and Orsinium. The Empire and the Underking also gained control of their own Numidiums. After the chaos that ensued, the forty-four kingdoms of the Iliac Bay had been reconciled into just four kingdoms.

By the Fourth Era, the Warp in the West meant that the eastern Iliac Bay was controlled by Wayrest, the south by Sentinel, the west by Daggerfall, and Wrothgar by the Orcs of Orsinium. These will likely be the kingdoms players will encounter in The Elder Scrolls 6, but while the event is known as the Miracle of Peace, it seems unlikely that Daggerfall’s Dragon Break will have kept the Iliac Bay’s rival factions from each other’s throats for long.

When the Daggerfall Dragon Break took place is, unsurprisingly, hard to pin down. Technically the events of Daggerfall take place in 3E 405, around 30 years before the events of Oblivion and 230 years before the start of Skyrim. However, according to the in-game book The Warp in the West, the Dragon Break took place on the missing 10th of Frostfall 3E 417 — a day which only people who directly experience the battles seem able to remember at all.

Whatever the strange circumstances of the event itself, the Warp in the West saw a once divided land emerge with newly defined borders. By the time Skyrim takes place, these have been undermined by the Aldmeri Dominion’s occupation of southern Hammerfell, the release of Hammerfell as an Imperial province, and the destruction of Orsinium against the wishes of the Empire. Assuming The Elder Scrolls 6 takes place after Skyrim, the Warp in the West is likely to be an even more distant, hazy memory.

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Dragon Breaks In The Elder Scrolls 6

After Morrowind, The Elder Scrolls has generally avoided the weirder parts of its lore. Concepts like CHIM, Zero Sum, and Dragon Breaks that characterize the pulpy metaphysics of the series’ earlier lore are now mainly referenced via in-game books. Now they work mostly to make the setting’s distant past seem strange and unknowable, as opposed to the pragmatic reason Dragon Breaks were first introduced.

For this reason, it seems unlikely that the next game will use a Dragon Break to, for example, claim that both the Empire and the Stormcloaks won the Skyrim Civil War. With the assassination of the Emperor by the Dark Brotherhood during the events of Skyrim probably canon no matter what, it seems more likely that Bethesda will simply state the Empire withdrew from Skyrim by the time the next game takes place, or finding another more grounded way to avoid defining canonical player choices.

However, the history of the Warp in the West and its long-term effects on the Iliac Bay region are far more likely to feel meaningful in The Elder Scrolls 6’s potential setting. Although it reconciled the warring kingdoms into four major states, it will likely be another reminder of just how precarious the political situation is in the western side of Tamriel. With the rise of the Dominion, the slow decline of the Empire of Tamriel, and the rebuilt Orsinium in the Dragontail Mountains, the setting’s present day will probably reflect that highly volatile past as well.

The Elder Scrolls 6 is in development.

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