As reported by Eurogamer (opens in new tab), Zenimax Online has started up the hype machine for the coming year’s storyline in The Elder Scrolls Online. Various influencers and members of the press received a mysterious letter that, when viewed under blacklight, contains the symbol of the Daedric prince, Hermaeus Mora (opens in new tab), The Demon of Knowledge, Master of the Tides of Fate, The Gardener of Men, Lord of Secrets, the… you know what, you get it. He was one of the main characters in Skyrim’s Dragonborn expansion, and you may remember harvesting some souls for him (opens in new tab) to get a skill book in Oblivion.
The letter (opens in new tab), signed “Leramil the Wise,” addresses the reader as “proxy” and kinda just does the usual epic fate quest business: there’s a “crisis most perilous,” “the fate of two worlds hangs in the balance,” and the reader “must be the thread that keeps reality itself from unraveling.”
Leramil the Wise isn’t a known quantity in Elder Scrolls lore yet, but that’s an elf name or I’ll eat my Colovian Fur Helm. Putting the letter under a UV blacklight reveals Mora’s symbol, an eye with streaks below and above it, but as the Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages (opens in new tab) points out, this could be an even more oblique clue about ESO’s 2023 plans.
There’s a city in Morrowind called Blacklight (opens in new tab). It’s in the northwestern corner of the province near the border with Skyrim and just across the water from Vvardenfell and Solstheim. The Redoran capital has yet to be officially explored in an Elder Scrolls game since the absolutely primeval Arena in 1994, so it’d be a fairly blank canvas for Zenimax Online to do with as it pleases. I don’t think anyone would mind if it wasn’t lore accurate to the blurry jumble of polygons in that oh so hard to play at all first Elder Scrolls game.
Whatever the case, whether we’re going to Blacklight or some other forsaken nook or cranny of Tamriel, that Hermaeus Mora guy can’t be up to any good. I expect Zenimax will further elaborate on its 2023 plans for ESO in the coming weeks.
Did You Know: The recent letters sent out to tease the upcoming content coming to ESO had a symbol of Hermaeus Mora hidden on the letter, revealed by blacklight? Notably, one of the remaining major locations ESO has not visited is the Redoran capital city, Blacklight. pic.twitter.com/TcP0f3ZBMGJanuary 18, 2023
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