General:Michael Zenke & Tom Murphy 2023 Necrom Interview

This interview with Tom Murphy, Zone Lead for the Necrom Chapter, and Michael Zenke, Loremaster for The Elder Scrolls Online, was conducted in-person on April 12th, 2023 at the Elder Scrolls Online Celebration event. It was a casual interview, held in the HyperX Esports Arena, Las Vegas, in the same room as the rest of the event. The UESP members present during the interview were Alarra, baratron and Wicked_Shifty, and the following is a transcription of the audio recording of the interview.

This interview focuses on Elder Scrolls Online Lore, and the Necrom Chapter.

---

Michael Zenke and Tom Murphy

Guar Lore and Tiny Stories

baratron: Will there be any new guar lore in Necrom?

Tom: Sorry, any what?

Shifty: Guar lore.

Tom: Guar lore?

baratron: Because everybody knows guars.

Tom: We have a special guar that you can find right outside the city, let's say, in a very adorable position. We have a team – their technical name is the citification team. They really like the nitty-gritty details that make the cities feel alive.

baratron: Citification?

Tom: Yes.

baratron: Isn't that a wonderful word?

Zenke: Yes.

Tom: And what they do is, though, once world building has built these wonderful palisades and interiors, is populate all these people and the behaviours that the people do. And of course, it's not just people, but animals as well, right? And so there's a laundry list of things that we want people and animals to be able to interact with.

baratron: We all loved in the previous DLC the Achievement for being able to pet them.

Tom: Exactly! Right.

Zenke: So special shout out to – her name is Miranda Horner [Senior Writer-Designer at ZOS], she's my partner-in-crime. Like, she is an editor on the game, and she is the one who takes a lot of special [inaudible], and helping to get that stuff set up and organising it. Obviously that was the, it's a collaborative effort across a lot of different disciplines to make that stuff work. So having folks pushing for that kind of interaction in the game world? Yeah, it's amazing stuff.

Tom: There's a lot of, like, mechanical importance, right? Like you have to have these things set up so that you can Blade of Woe people, or you can pickpocket people.

baratron: Yeah.

Tom: They also have – I love it – there's a section of the work they do that's called Tiny Stories. They're these small vignettes that you just walk up [to]. Sometimes it's a specific conversation, you're over here. Sometimes it's a busker that has a - you know, we have guards, obviously – but sometimes they do performances that aren't necessarily musical. They set up all these things.

So this is very tangential to your original question about the guar, but there is a guar tiny story. So it's an awesome opportunity for folks to, you know, we're making games, right? Like, we should have fun every once in a while, right? So much of the work we do is so focused and so specific. Like these certification things. It's like an opportunity for – I just had this cool, tiny character and I want to see that brought into the world. So often it's a huge scope of Daedric Princes and things, and you're like what if this guy plague infected this dog?

A Brief Intermission

Interruption while raffle winners were announced from the stage.

[Jessica (on stage): So what you're going to do is spin this wheel. We have absolutely three Alliances here. They are corresponding with these bags.]

Tom: AD? That Empress needs a new pair of greaves.

[Jessica (on stage): Here's these bags, and there's only one correct... Aldmeri Dominion.]

Zenke: YEAH!

baratron: Alright, so it sounds like you're a big AD fan?

Zenke: Very much so.

baratron: Is that allowed to be known?

Zenke: Oh yeah, absolutely, I'm a big bananas fan.

Referencing Existing Lore

baratron: In general, how do you negotiate taking existing lore and deciding what to reference or not?

Zenke: Oh, sure. So at a very high level, we look for opportunities where the lore is just sitting on the table. As you are well aware, there are a lot of hanging threads in Elder Scrolls lore - loose unconnected bits. One of the things that makes it so exciting, because all of the lore in Elder Scrolls games is diagenic, it's people in the world. Like writing in books versus spouting opinions out loud, right?

It gives us a lot of really fun opportunities to, er – frankly, make stuff up. Like great together – you know, there's a cool idea over here from Arena, mentioned in passing in two sentences. Then there's a really cool idea from Skyrim which ended up being part of a quest in one of the, one of the holes, right?

baratron: Yeah.

Zenke: We bring these things together and stitch them together into new storytelling. That's very much Necrom in a nutshell, I feel like you jumped into the deep ends of the world.

Tom: Yeah, we had very discrete ideas about things you want to do in Telvanni Peninsula and things you want to do in Apocrypha, and there was a lot of stuff that was reaching towards each other. And basically when we started it was about taking those two and making them hold hands and finding the ways that they weave in and out of each other. Both thematically and literally.

Zenke: Right. I mean, we mentioned in the livestream, Mora and the Telvanni as a house feel like natural bedfellows. And so as the narrative progressed, is the [inaudible] came together like yeah, let's get these two crazy kids to hangout the same way. So simple.

The Telvanni Peninsula Map

baratron: You're probably aware that there's a lot of controversy over why the zone is called Telvanni Peninsula when it doesn't cover the entire peninsula? Especially bearing in mind all of the space that each of the houses had in the existing ESO universe.

Zenke: Absolutely. So actually, we do love these questions, right? You know I mentioned earlier the idea that all the lore in the game is inside the game. So my personal response is that maps all have ulterior motives. I think in the Loremaster's piece that they have up on the website , I had to [inaudible] about when you look at a map, you have to remember that the mapmaker didn't make it for fun, they made it for a reason, right?

So, for example, like the House Redoran controlling territory there, there's two bits. The first is like a lot of those maps are from a different time, they're from a different game. So time and distance would make changes there.

Hey, it's not the [whole] Telvanni Peninsula! Well, that's a certain point of view. The fact that the in-game map calls it the Telvanni Peninsula is the same thing again. It's a viewpoint into the region and a viewpoint into... like I said on the stage, House Telvanni has really good PR, these guys really know how to work it. And so the fact that they're - we're choosing to portray it as the Telvanni Peninsula says a lot about what our narrative goals are and what House Telvanni's goals are. I feel that's a good lean into where Telvanni as a house is politically.

Tom: So it is maybe overextended in certain ways, and I wanna... Blank spaces on the map are exciting, knowing that we have more spaces to tell more Telvanni stories in the future, Firewatch, and wondering what's going to happen. I think that's something that we should be looking forward to.

Zenke: Hell, yeah!

Tom: You are also getting a huge swathe of Apocrypha, and we have to decide where we want to build. A certain amount of stuff that we want to build, and are capable of building by a certain time, we do have to do a bit of calculus about where we're going to focus our energy.

Zenke: So it's a blank area of the map. The sky's the limit. Maybe, someday.

Tom: We have not – we have not nearly plumbed the depths of the stories we can tell about the peninsula. No way.

Where to Go After Tamriel?

baratron: I know this is something that comes up a lot – have you thought about – not necessarily you two as individuals, but ZOS as a company, the ESO team as an entity - what to do when all of Tamriel is fleshed out?

Tom: Yes! We've talked about the future quite a bit, right? We love where we are and where we have been, but we want to keep delivering great stuff to players for years to come. I am not really able to say anything concretely there, but like the Systres Archipelago, the Year of the Bretons content, was a really great toe to dip in the water for getting off the continent. But it's not like, oh my gosh, Akavir 2025! You know Necrom has a toehold into Tamriel and then the [inaudible] stuff in Oblivion. There's so much more of Oblivion we want to explore.

Zenke: I think I mentioned on stage that constraint breeds creativity, especially when you're talking narrative. Having to have some boundaries to the way that you explore. Like regionally, there's places you've been and places you haven't been. And having to grapple with that makes for better stories and better concepts. It's one of those weird things when you're a professional creative, especially making a product, for everybody to enjoy having that focus, to go "We want to do this and not this" is super helpful.

Yeah, I see them. You want me to say that we're coming up on the edges of the map in terms of fleshing out the content? I think that's just an opportunity. Like what the heck are we going to do then? It's awesome.

baratron: We were talking about when there was the Bethesda event at the last PAX West, four years ago now – Jeancey from UESP was talking to some of the guys, and people were saying even then that you're very interested in going back to Oblivion and exploring more of the Daedric Princes' realms.

Tom: Lore and philosophy... these are philosophies incarnate, you know?

Zenke: The writerly way to describe it is that Daedric Princes are "story engines". They have such specific goals and focuses that it lets us set up, like... Mora wasn't a given in the narrative. He wheeled his way into the scene.

baratron:That's fascinating. It comes back to what CJ was saying to you and Brian Wheeler about the Arcanist, that it didn't actually have to be a Mora-related plot.

Tom: Right.

baratron: It was just that you [the dev team] were starting to talk about secrets and things, and I don't know at what point it got tentacle-y, I guess after Mora. I guess it wasn't that the Arcanist made tentacles and then it became "Guess we'd better include Mora!" I think it's fascinating that it wasn't necessarily from the beginning going to be a Mora class.

The Northern Part of the Telvanni Peninsula

baratron: Right. Is it possible that we'll see the northern part of the Telvanni Peninsula "real soon"? I'm not sure what that means, how soon is "real" soon?

Shifty: I think they want Blacklight. That's generally what they want, the rest of the area. Like in Morrowind they skipped Sheogorad, and [the fans] are always asking for Port Telvannis and a couple of other towns.

Tom: I want to see Firewatch. "Real soon" is relative grace, right?

Shifty: In the next decade.

Zenke: Like we were just talking, anything's possible. But as to times? We literally can't tell you what we don't know.

baratron: So of what you're allowed to tell us, we cannot confirm.

Wombats?

baratron: Okay. So this sounds like a Lore question. One of the books in Daggerfall mentions wombats. Whereabouts in Tamriel would I find one of these wombats?

Zenke: [laughing very hard] So the wonderful thing about Tamriel is that all of the creatures, both mythical and real, that we experience in the real world – there are opportunities for them to show up in a lot of different places. I have to be totally honest with you, I am a human man with a human brain and I don't remember there being a book about wombats.

But I'm on the same page with you. I'm not sure where in the biomes we would fit that. But one of the things we were talking about earlier was the stuff we sell in the [Crown] Store, right? And what I think is super exciting about the Store is how we can add, sort of, quasi-Lore variably from item to item. Hey, every one of them is a new opportunity, right? Hey this is really cool! In particular I know Miranda and I got really excited about hey, we added a new bat. What biome, what ecological niche does that bat fill? So maybe some day we'll see wombats in Tamriel. I don't know when that is.

Tom: So consider who is writing that book and what their agenda was.

Zenke: That's very fair. Maybe they were drunk, right? They were writing, and they were like...

Tom: Hammered by Sheogorath!

Zenke: Entirely fair.

Shifty: I was listening to the talk earlier and I was wondering if Mora has a Lore section of vvardvarks. All of the types, catalogued in Apocrypha. And you could just fall into it some day and you were like "What the heck is this place?", and it's just vvardvarks.

How Official is Crown Store Lore?

baratron: I know there's always been a question from fans about how official the Crown Store Lore is. Way back we talked to Todd Howard and he has this idea about the relative order, like what you actually experience is the highest level of Lore. And then what you read is like the second level of Lore. And then what people in the game are talking about, that you don't see, is like the next level. And then what's on official sources like the website are all the way back. So where does Crown Store lore fit in Todd Howard's order?

Zenke: That's a great question. I would say maybe second or third tier in that thing, right? Obviously, when you're walking around in Tamriel, you see a guy riding a giant cat. Like that's a thing you experience, but like I say to the Crown Store folks all the time, Illusion magic covers a variety of sins. There's a way of interpreting, I would say 90% of the things in the Store could be a very talented wizard casting a spell to make you think you saw something.

That said, every in-game Store thing has a cool little tooltip that we spend - Miranda and I will spend a considerable amount of time [inaudible]. Yeah. And those are like I was saying before, those are an opportunity for us to take a peek into the Lore in a part of the world that otherwise we might not get to [inaudible]. When else will you talk about a bat on the edge of Valenwood except in a tooltip?

Tom: [inaudible] I do really like the spore pony.

baratron: Oh god, I hate that thing.

Devs: [laugh]

baratron: I have that, uh, trypophobia, so I don't like holes or certain repeated patterns.

Shifty: They have it in for the trypophobia people.

baratron: They do because there are those corals by the shore, and then there are the barnacles on the ships, and then there's some enemies have them too.

Shifty: A bunch of mudcrabs have them.

baratron: Yeah, yeah, the giant mudcrab with the coral coming out of its butt. I can't even look at it! And now they've made this THING.

Alarra: And there was the bug where everyone was riding around on an invisible horse.

Tom: Yeah, that's the Illusion magic. [inaudible] He asked me what in the Crown Store is my favourite. From the Lore point of view.

Zenke: The mycoturges, right.

Tom: You're trying to make that stick.

Zenke: No, no, this is a thing that's in the Lore. Mycoturges are in the lore.

Tom: I believe you, but it doesn't all stick. [laughs]

Zenke: That's fair. It's M-Y-C-O in the spelling. I love this thing! Mycoturge.

baratron: Oh, mycoturge!

Zenke: Yeah, yeah. Good stuff.

baratron: In a previous life I did biological chemistry, so I'm familiar with fungi.

Tom: Anyway, you see someone riding a spore pony, and you're like [in a pirate accent for some reason] "There's regular horses you know. You didn't need a mushroom one except to show off". Why? Because you can.

Zenke: This is part of why the Telvanni have too much power.

Tom: They were so proud with whether they could that they didn't stop to think about whether they should.

Telvanni Towers

baratron: What order do they go in? Do they grow houses first, or do they start by growing ponies because they're small? Or are ponies harder because they're living?

Tom: It's like hermit crabs. I think that a lot of towers are taken over and added to, like the foundations are probably ancient. I'm sure there are...

Shifty: We got a few complaints because when Vvardenfell came out, the Telvanni towers had rock bases. And people were all like "They start with a mushroom, why do they have a rock base?"

Tom: So in Vvardenfell there was this idea that those were Velothi structures and the masters used that to scaffold their mushrooms. Not OSHA compliant at all.

Shifty: Do you remember in Morrowind you had to have levitation magic in half of the towers?

Tom: Yeah, I wish... like the one thing we missed that I wanted to do was have its [inaudible] be like "Hey, what if we got rid of all these stairs?"

Zenke: [laughs]

Tom: You know, what if they had to be magic?

Shifty: And then in Oblivion when they outlawed levitation magic, it was just the other end of the circle.

Zenke: [in a funny accent] Only plebes need stairs.

The Bal Sunnar Lorebook Typo

baratron: Oh, we do have some Lorebeards and they're very, very concerned about Bal Sunnar – the book that says "35 thousand years"...

Zenke: Oh, that's straight up a typo. Actually, the writer and I were talking about that a couple of days ago and it's fixed.

baratron: It's fixed?

Shifty: Yeah, we've got a couple of those, and Leamon used to get a couple of those from us too. We're like "Is that right? Or is it something like the Nine Divines?" Wait, no.

Zenke: Yeah, this is the other side of we as developers are human too. Right? And I, you know, when I was reading through it, I was reading quickly. I missed it, the writer missed it, it's just how it goes sometimes. Great callout, hope people keep doing it.

Arcanist Runes and Enchantments

baratron: Do Arcanist runes have anything to do with the runic enchantment language?

Zenke: Oooh, that's a great question. Orthogonal. Obviously runes are just fancy letters. And the way that we envisioned the Arcanist is drawing their power source directly from Apocrypha. And as Tom was talking about during the thing...

Tom: Hermaeus Mora is the miser of Oblivion.

Zenke: It's so good.

Tom: Like, he's sitting there on his pile of books. Of all the Daedric Princes, he's the one who has the hoard, that keeps growing, pulling stuff in.

Zenke: And so the Arcanist then draws from the hoard, he or she draws power directly from this Oblivion realm. And so the runes that make up an Arcanist's power are emblematic of the realm itself. So the symbology of the runes, the internal logic of the runes, entirely exists within the mind of the Arcanist and their connection to [inaudible].

You're going to see coming up in the incredible art panel, but we did this – Joe, who did the concept art for the Arcanist did this incredible piece.

Tom: It's so cool.

Zenke: He used to be a tattoo artist and you're going to see that all of the runes that make up the Arcanist spells with their particle effects are actually one holistic form, one rune. And it's incredibly detailed, very finely managed, and they broke off parts of those runes to make some of the particle effects for the spells. So if you took all of the runes from all of the Arcanist spells and put them on a page, you could reassemble that rune that Joe put together. It's freaking awesome.

Shifty: You guys should make all the books in Apocrypha interact with us so we have something to do, but what you should do is just one letter in a Daedric script in each book and just make us figure out how to put them back into order.

Devs: [laugh]

Is Miraak in Necrom?

baratron: Alright. Miraak.

Devs: Okay.

baratron: Is he getting mentioned?

Tom: I can neither confirm nor deny.

baratron: You can neither confirm nor deny but you knew who I was talking about.

Tom: Of course. I mean, he's like that dragonborn from Dragonborn.

Zenke: He's the first dragonborn.

Tom: I thought he was that guy at the 7/11. Different story.

Stone Statues and the Flavor of Healing Potions

baratron: Sometimes when battling a stone statue enemy, they may drink a potion to heal themselves. What are these potions?

Tom: [laughs] I think they're cement.

Zenke: Yeah. Yeah. These are like ancient Ayleid statues that do stuff. Like coloured cement.

Tom: It's grout actually.

Zenke: And then the grout travels down their cement oesophagus. In my headcanon, by the way, I don't know if this is true of everybody, but all healing potions are cherry-flavoured.

Shifty: Cherry, berry, and lime are the usual game ones.

baratron: I do know that you still get to have your own silly headcanons despite being the Loremaster. You can be like, "This is the Lore, and these are all the silly headcanons that I have."

Zenke: But now I'm going to write a Lorebook about what potions taste like, because that was actually a lot of fun.

Tom: I was like, I saw the statue, it pulled out a bottle and it chugged it down, and what was happening?

Zenke: I love that image, like the guy, he got small from his adventure, he sets his pack down, he's just staring at a wall, just like... Like that was a lot. Why did that happen?

The Arcanist Tome

baratron: We've just got one more serious question for you. On a stream, one of you – sorry, I don't know who, someone from ZOS - mentioned something about your book being made of the amazing knowledge you find on adventures. Is that an actual mechanic or flavor text?

Tom: It seems like flavor text. Can you say that again?

baratron: Sure. So the Arcanist's book that they draw the spells from, something about it being made of knowledge that you find on your adventures.

Zenke: No, no, yeah, no. Mechanically, each book that the Arcanist holds is the same. From a roleplaying perspective, if you want to say that's what the tome does... The only thing that's like quote, unquote, canonically true is that the Arcanist draws their knowledge from the plane of Oblivion. That's the only thing that we communicate unambiguously.

Do you want to be a weird Hermaeus Mora-worshipping [inaudible]? Right, go for it. Do you want to be like super duper trying to overthrow Mora and claim the realm for yourself? Don't forget, you could do whatever you want. Because that's what this is all about.

Tom: That would be Miraak-cu-lous.

Zenke: That would be miraculous. That's true. What an interesting choice of words.

baratron: A terrible pun. Okay, so we're going to end with a terrible pun.

Shifty: Alright, so who makes the quest journals for the characters to walk around with, because they are so powerful? They record everything you do and every outcome.

Zenke: Now that's a handy magical.

Shifty: So who is making these things and why doesn't anyone else go "Those are really complicated"?

baratron: That was really helpful. Thank you so much for your time, and let's just grab a photo.

Notes

1.CJ Grebb, ESO Art Director.

2.Brian Wheeler, ESO Lead Combat Designer.

---

We are extremely thankful to Michael Zenke and Tom Murphy for giving up so much of their time at the ESO Celebration event. As you can tell, they are a hilarious double act.