Skyrim is a gigantic, open-world game with a library of The Elder Scrolls lore to back it up. Released in 2011 to universal acclaim, the game has been re-mastered and re-released for new consoles more times than most people can keep track of. It’s been over a decade and this game still captures our imagination. This naturally means there are tons of things to know about both Skyrim’s game mechanics and its lore.

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Tamriel is far from a boring place and there is always something to see, do, and learn about. There are some interesting things that the most hardcore Skyrim player may not know about the game, even if they have played through the game hundreds of times.

Updated January 30, 2023 by Brandon Hansen: Skyrim is practically an eternal game at this point. Even now, you can return to the world of Tamriel and the story of the Dragonborn and find new and interesting things about them. We've updated this list to include a few more tidbits you might not have been aware of the first time you played through Skyrim. Read on to discover more facts about the game's lore.

14 Tamriel’s Moons Are Actually A Corpse Of A God

Skyrim Moons Masser Secunda

Skyrim’s night cycle is one of the most beautiful we’ve seen in the series thanks to its Northern Lights tickling the horizon and not one but two moons. Most people would assume Tamriel is set up just like Earth with normal planetary physics. But that most certainly isn't the case.

The two moons, Masser and Secunda, are believed to be the remains of the God of All Mortals, Lorkhan, which was cut in two after his destruction. Masser is the largest of the moons and is similar to Mars in both color and look. Secunda is smaller and looks more like the Earth’s moon. If the Elder Scrolls series ever goes into space, maybe we can see if these moons are made of rock or corpses of a god after all.

13 You Can Visit The White Gold Tower In Cyrodiil

White Gold Tower Cyrodiil Skyrim

The previous Elder Scrolls game Oblivion portrayed the province of Cyrodiil as a lush, green setting with grand Imperial buildings. Skyrim, being set in, well, Skyrim means that the setting was more rugged, with smaller cities, towering mountains, and snow-blasted areas. However, you can still experience Cyrodiil from Oblivion a little by rotating Skyrim's map to the south. The White-Gold Tower is visible on the map, which is actually just a less detailed version of the entire game world.

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Now if you get into the console commands and disable the invisible borders in the game, you can actually walk to Cyrodiil and see a rather poorly textured version of the Imperial City's main landmark.

12 Skyrim's Map Isn't The Largest In The Elder Scrolls Series

Skyrim Overworld Map With Icons

One would think that Skyrim, the most modern Elder Scrolls game, would, by default, have the largest map. Shouldn't modern computers be able to render larger areas than those 486s from the 1990s? Nope. Daggerfall, released in 1996, has a map 4,000 times larger than Skyrim's map. At 62,000 square miles, Daggerfall's map is roughly the real-life size of Lithuania. It's no wonder why some consider the second Elder Scrolls game one of the best in the series with depth like that.

11 College Of Winterhold Holds Lectures On Magic Every Day

A large, stone college stands over a frozen crater.

Skyrim and really any Elder Scrolls game are expansive RPGs where the game designers have gone to impressive lengths to make a living, breathing world. While not as dynamic as Oblivion’s NPCs which had much more detailed schedules, most of Skyrim’s NPCs do have routines to follow.

The College of Winterhold has plenty going on at its location. The most impressive is the fact that each Master of Magic at the College of Winterhold will hold a lecture in their area of study between 1pm and 3pmin the game world. If there is some kind of danger, say a dragon attack, the lecture will not happen for 24 hours. So go and get an education!

10 There Are 337 Books In Skyrim

Books on Bookshelf Skyrim

You don't have to play any quests in Skyrim if you don't want to. That is the point of loading up the game, but there are so many things to do in the world - it's easy to get sidetracked. With 337 books around the world totaling 316,000 words, you could get some reading in instead of preventing the end of the realm or picking a side in the civil war. For reference, Lord of The Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring is only 187,790 words, and the entire LOTR series is 576,459. Bethesda likes its lore. You have to give them that.

9 You Can Kill Forsworn Briarheart By Pickpocketing Their Hearts

Forsworn Briarheart Skyrim

If you run into a Forsworn encampment, you can run across Forsworn Briarhearts, who are both magic-casters and melee fighters. In Skyrim, these are highly regarded members of the Forsworn who have had their hearts cut out and replaced with a briarheart. It’s a creepy type of body horror, but it’s also a weakness you can exploit as a player.

If you’re able to pickpocket the briarheart from one of these enemies, they’ll die instantly. If you target the heart with your bow, you can do more damage than normal. The moral of this story? Don’t leave your briarheart exposed during combat or lying around in your inventory.

8 There Is A Headless Horseman In The Game

Headless Horseman Skyrim

Skyrim has plenty of undead creatures, but it also has a classic ghost that you must try to encounter. The Headless Horseman in Skyrim is entirely harmless and can be seen riding around the world between 10 p.m. and 4 a.m., usually near Hamvir's Rest and its cemetery. It's a bit scary to see, but considering you've battled with Dragons, it's more of an oddity than a threat. Just another item to make the world of Skyrim feel alive.

7 When NPCs Say They’re Going to a Location, They Actually Walk There

Ulfric Stormcloak Speaking Skyrim

It would be a simple game dynamic to have the NPC teleport to a different location when you leave a room, but Skyrim doesn’t do that. The game actually sees NPCs walk to different towns and locations when they say they are going there.

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Since Skyrim doesn’t have an efficient public transportation system set up, you can actually run across NPCs important to the plot hoofing it. You can follow them all the way to their new location. Sometimes these NPCs will even get in fights with hostile animals along the way. We can only imagine what an annoying pain Ulfric Stormcloak is to travel with, since he is kind of a weird dude.

6 Grelod The Kind Has Just Two Hit Points

Grelod the King Dead Skyrim

You might think that killing an owner of an orphanage is a somewhat evil quest but not when that owner is Grelod the Kind. Grelod is considered by many Skyrim players to be a child abuser and is overall just a really heartless woman.

The game awards her just two hit points, making her ridiculously easy to kill - but that shouldn’t be a surprise, since the player is the Dragonborn and Grelod is old and frail. Some players have even claimed they have killed her by throwing cabbage at her.

5 Skyrim Was Almost Set In Westeros From Game Of Thrones

Game of Thrones Promo Poster

When Skyrim concepts were starting to come together in 2006, a year before HBO got the television rights to Game of Thrones, Bethesda Studios almost set the game in Westeros. The company was in talks with George R.R. Martin’s people about setting its next game in the brutal and politically complex world of Game of Thrones.

Both sides apparently liked the idea, but in the end Todd Howard and Bethesda had second thoughts about setting such an expansive game in someone else’s intellectual property. Luckily mod makers did make a Westeros of their own within the game of Skyrim.

4 The Ebony Warrior Shows Up When You Reach Level 80

Skyrim The Ebony Warrior

How is this for a "Final Boss": When you reach Level 80 in the game, you'll be approached by the Ebony Warrior in the first city or town you enter. This Redguard warrior will challenge you to duel as he hopes to finally be beaten and reach Sovngarde and thinks you're a powerful enough warrior to do it. His armor, shouts, and spells make him tough to kill, but you'll get to loot all his gear if you finally send him to Sovngarde. We will give the warrior credit: Ebony Armor is one of the coolest-looking things in the game.

3 Skyrim Has A Room For All Dead NPCs

Dead Body Cleanup Cell Skyrim

The Dead Body Cleanup Cell is the closest a video game has ever come to including its own actual hell or heaven. It is a cross-shaped room where the killed NPCs go. The cell has two hallways crossing each other with cobblestone textures lit with purple and green. At the end of each hallway, the player can fall through a door frame into darkness.

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The reason for this room is the game's engine, the Creation Engine. NPCs that can’t respawn cannot be deleted from the game, so they get sent to the Dead Body Cleanup Cell. Yep, it’s a virtual afterlife with an actual purpose. The player can access this area by using console commands to get there.

2 Haming Survived Aldiun’s Attack And Can Be Found At His Grandfather’s Cabin

Haming Aldiun Attack Skyrim

In the opening scene of Skyrim, you pass a child, Haming, that gets told to go inside because of an impending execution: your execution. Then Aldiun attacks the village, kills a bunch of people - including Haming’s father and mother - and allows you to avoid the chopping block and start your adventure in Skyrim.

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If you go to the southwest edge of the Ridge, you’ll find a cabin on the side of a mountain. Inside this cabin is Haming and his grandfather Froki. Thankfully this little guy didn't get caught up in the chaos and got to move in with his closest relative after the attack.

1 Skyrim's Engine Contains Code From 1997

Aldiun Battle Skyrim

Previous Bethesda games like Morrowind, Oblivion, and Fallout 3 all used Gamebase’s Gamebryo engine which was first created in 1997. For its 2011 release of Skyrim, Bethesda unveiled its Creation Engine, which it proceeded to use for Fallout 4 in 2015 and Fallout 76 in 2018.

Since the Creation Engine is still based on the Gamebryo engine with a bevy of improvements and capabilities, there are a ton of weird engine quirks and workarounds in the engine (see the Dead Body Cleanup Cell). For the next Elder Scrolls game, Fallout 5, and Starfield, Bethesda is using Creation Engine 2, but there’s no telling how much original DNA from the 1997 engine still exists.

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