The release of Starfield's E3 2021 trailer seemed to confirm the suspicions of many Elder Scrolls fans. A small symbol spotted inside the player's ship resembled an outline of Hammerfell and High Rock, long speculated to be The Elder Scrolls 6's setting.
Although Hammerfell and High Rock have yet to be confirmed as the next game's setting, many fans waiting for The Elder Scrolls 6 are now taking it as a given. If they're right, the region could be one of the strangest settings in an Elder Scrolls games so far. The Elder Scrolls 2: Daggerfall was also set around the Iliac Bay. The ending of that game introduced one of the most bizarre events in Elder Scrolls lore, and returning to the region could see the series confront some of the weirdest events to ever take place in the world of Nirn.
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In The Elder Scrolls 2, the player character comes into possession of the Totem of Tiber Septim from the Castle Daggerfall Treasury. The totem is a powerful magical artifact used to control a giant golem known as Numidium. The quest "Totem, Totem, Who Gets the Totem?" sees the player, known as the Agent, choose which major faction to give the Totem to, essentially ensuring their victory against the others. The Agent can bring it to Queen Akorithi of Sentinel, King Eadwyre of Wayrest, King Gothryd of Daggerfall, Gortwog gro-Nagorm the Orsimer king, Mannimarco the necromancer, the Underking, or Tamriel's Emperor Uriel Septim himself.
In order to deal with the vastly different implications of the player's decision, Bethesda introduced one of the strangest events in Elder Scrolls history. Canonically, the player's activation of the Numidium caused a Dragon Break, a temporal event which let every single major Daggerfall faction achieve their goals simultaneously. This Dragon Break was known as the Warp in the West.
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As a result of the Warp in the West, also known as the Miracle of Peace, the forty-four battling kingdoms of the region were reformed into four major kingdoms. The in-universe book The Warp in the West does its best to summarize the phenomenon, explaining that the "formerly war-wracked Iliac Bay region was transformed overnight from a patchwork of squabbling duchies and petty kingdoms into the peaceful modern counties of Hammerfell, Sentinel, Wayrest, and Orsinium."
The book goes on to describe several of the "contradictory and paradoxical accounts of the event." Former Elder Scrolls writer Michael Kirkbride expanded on the lore surrounding Dragon Breaks with Where Were You When the Dragon Broke, which appears in later games in a slightly abridged form. The piece attempts to explain what it might have been like to experience a Dragon Break from the perspective of someone in an affected area. "To most it is a spiritual anguish they cannot account for. Several texts survive this timeless period, all (unsurprisingly) conflicting with each other regarding events, people, and regions."
The lore surrounding the Warp in the West and Dragon Breaks in general is intentionally ambiguous, skirting around solid answers by explaining that it was just as confusing for characters in-universe as it is for fans trying to wrap their head around the lore. So far, Bethesda has been able to avoid addressing the full implications of events like Dragon Breaks directly, with The Elder Scrolls 3, 4, and 5 leaving Hammmerfell and Daggerfall behind.
Returning to the region, however, could see the player explore a part of Tamriel which is still living in the aftermath of one of the most inexplicable events in the lore. Assuming The Elder Scrolls 6 is set roughly around the same time as Skyrim, there could easily still be plenty of characters who were alive during the events of Daggerfall, with Elves living several centuries. Players could easily meet NPCs who have completely contradictory accounts of that time, too. Bethesda shouldn't shy away from this – it's The Elder Scrolls' weirdest lore, from Dragon Breaks to CHIM, Zero Sum, and the godhead, that help make the series' setting stand out.
The Elder Scrolls 6 is in development.
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