History Literature / TheElderScrollsInUniverseBooks

* TortureCellar: An extremely nightmarish one shows up about halfway through ''Horror of Castle Xyr'' after being discovered on the other side of a hidden passage. [[BodyHorror Its description is pretty brief]] [[CruelAndUnusualDeath but still quite terrifying all the same.]]

* SurpriseCreepy: ''A Gift Of Sanctuary'' is an in-universe example. It starts out like a common children's book any parent might read to their child but takes a really dark turn at about the halfway point.

* TortureCellar: An extremely nightmarish one shows up about halfway through ''Horror of Castle Xyr'' after being discovered on the other side of a hidden passage. [[BodyHorror It's description is pretty brief]] [[CruelAndUnusualDeath but still quite terrifying all the same.]]

* AcceptablePoliticalTargets[=/=]SelfDeprecation[=/=]SincerityMode: InUniverse example. ''The Horror of Castle Xyr'' notes that the Clavides' response of "As, I hear, are all Telvanni," to the line "We're loyal Imperial subjects," should not be read sarcastically. It is also noted to get a laugh out of any audience, regardless of local politics. It also happens to be the trigger for a murderer to attack you when you step in for an actor in the ''Morrowind'' expansion ''Tribunal''. The director of the show apologizes and says the original actor was targeted due to banging a Telvanni diplomat's daughter.

* TortureCellar: An extremely nightmarish one shows up about halfway through ''Horror of Castle Xyr'' after being discovered on the other side of a hidden passage. It's description is pretty brief but terrifying all the same.

* BawdySong: Both ''Rude Song'' and ''A Less Rude Song'' are all about how much fun it is to have sex and engage in various perverted activities with others. You'll find in all in Morrowind ''indeed.''

* UltimateBlacksmith: Haman Forgefire from ''Legend of Haman Forgefire'' was stated to be the best blacksmith in the land and would forge for many great rulers and nobles. [[spoiler:Unfortunately, his widespread fame and renown inspired plenty of jealousy in his rivals... leading to one of them making a pact to murder him to steal his spotlight... which proceeds to go very poorly for the both of them.]]

* ShaggyDogStory: ''Of Fjori and Holgeir''. [[spoiler:Holgeir is bitten by a snake, and his lover Fjori journeys to Akavir to find a cure. As she brings the cure to Holgeir, ''she gets bitten by the same snake'', and the combination of venom and exhaustion kills her as she uses the antidote to save him. Holgeir orders the construction of a tomb for his lover, and [[DrivenToSuicide takes his own life]] in the deepest chamber so he can join her in the afterlife.]] And then, in ''Skyrim'', [[spoiler:their corpses are turned into Draugrs by an insane necromancer.]]

** 36 Lessons of Vivec. 'Nuff said. There are 36 volumes of this holy text.

* UnreliableNarrator[=/=]UnreliableExpositor: Sorting fact from fiction is a little hard here.

** Interestingly, thanks to ''Online'', ''The Sultry Argonian Bard'' actually predates ''The Lusty Argonian Maid'' by 800 years, both based on a traditonally female stock character, making ''The Lusty Argonian Maid'' an InUniverse {{Subversion}}.

* NoManOfWomanBorn: Andas in ''The Hope of the Redoran'', according to an omen read at his birth, is immune to blades, magic, disease, and poison, and not a drop of his blood will ever spill on the ground... none of which helps him when his cousin Athyn beats him to death with a club.

** The author of ''Sacred Witness'', Enric Milres, claimed to have been personally granted an audience with the Night Mother, and by her own accounts, she started out as a low ranking member of the Thieves Guild who strangled her marks to make robbing them easier, and left to found her own guild when she decided that murder was a more profitable than theft. He was found dead shortly after the work revealing this was published.

* BalefulPolymorph: The evil wizard in ''A Tale of Kieran'' turns the princess and queen-to-be into a loathsome grub. The only way to switch her back is to have someone perform an incredible act of kindness.

** Ynir Gorming's ''Fire and Darkness: The Brotherhoods of Death'' proposes that the Night Mother is an aspect of Mephala, Daedric Prince of Strife. When the Morag Tong were banned from practising her worship, she engineered a schism that caused the Tong to split into two, with those still willing to worship to her becoming the Dark Brotherhood.

** Interestingly, thanks to ''Online'', ''The Sultry Argonian Bard'' actually predates ''The Lusty Argonian Maid'' by 800 years, both based on a traditonally female stock character, making ''The Lusty Argonian Maid'' an InUniverse DoubleSubversion.

** Interestingly, thanks to ''Online'', ''The Sultry Argonian Bard'' actually predates ''The Lusty Argonian Maid'' by 800 years, both based on a traditonally female stock character, making ''The Lusty Argonian Maid'' an InUniverse DoubleSuberversion.

Tropes that apply to any ShowWithinAShow in ''Franchise/TheElderScrolls'' verse. Some are pure fiction, others tales based around historical events, while a select few are historical documents. Some people mentioned actually exist in one or more of the games, often as high-level skill trainers.

** Pellarne Assi, author of ''The Brothers of Darkness'', believes the Night Mother to be a LegacyCharacter - there is no one immortal Night Mother from the Brotherhood's origin to the present day, rather it is a title passed from one leader to the next regardless of gender.

* ImmortalsFearDeath: The Dremora interviewed in ''Spirit of the Daedra'' claims that even though daedra just resurrect in Oblivion every time their physical body is killed, the process of resurrection is apparently quite horrifying to go through and so they would prefer to avoid it as much as possible. He also claims that daedra simply cannot comprehend how it's possible for mortals to be aware that their deaths are both inevitable and permanent but not [[DespairEventHorizon constantly be in despair]] because of it.

* MultipleChoicePast: There are at least three different versions of the Night Mother's back story across three different works:

** In "The Argonian Account", Decumus Scotti is hired to overhaul the infrastructure of a trade network in Black Marsh, but his survey of the area shows him that Black Marsh is unsuited to his Imperial backers' ideas of modernisation. So he quietly embezzles the stakeholder's investment for himself and leaves the network to collapse, and the Argonians return to their traditional methods of transporting goods which are more efficient and suited to Black Marsh.

* TwentyFourHourArmor: Hallgerd's Tale (see below)

* FancyDinner: ''The Feast of Saint Coellicia'' describes how an emperor famous for his DecadentCourt antics decided to commemorate a saint who died of starvation with a huge feast that lasted a full twenty-four hours and included 40 exotic dishes, such as birds drowned in fortified wine and eaten whole while the diner wears a cloth draped over their head (ostensibly to trap wine vapors, but really to prevent all the juices and viscera from spraying everywhere)[[note]][[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ortolan_bunting This is based on a real life French dish and the only difference is the name of the bird]][[/note]], swans stuffed with so much filling that some ''exploded'', beehives roasted whole, pottage with duck eyes (the emperor is said to have only them about this until ''after'' they were done to invoke IAteWhat), and bread rolls stuffed with some sort of surprise, like huge pearls or a live dove.

* ProfessionalGambler: ''Banker's Bet'' features an old lady named Petuva Smethworthy who makes her living off strange bets. She makes one with a banker where she bets twenty-five hundred gold that in 24 hours, his balls will be covered in feathers. [[spoiler: Despite his paranoia, he manages to keep his balls feather-free and proudly allows the old lady to inspect his testicles for any feathers. Ultimately, though, while he has won the bet, she has the last laugh, because she made a even larger one hundred thousand gold bet with her son that she'll have the banker by his balls.]]

* KilledMidSentence: Three of the authors of ''Exposing a Terrible Evil'' were killed by a [[MurderInc Dark]] [[ReligionOfEvil Brotherhood]] assassin while writing about the group. The first author condemned them as the worst of the worst in his city's WretchedHive and managed to at least get their name down before getting killed. The second author was his brother, who was not so lucky; [[HisNameIs he was murdered mid-word while writing down the name of assassin cult's deity.]] The third was the brother's wife, and this time around, the killer tries to complete the passage she was writing, attempting to convince the reader the group doesn't exist.

* FancyDinner: ''The Feast of Saint Coellicia'' describes how an emperor famous for his DecadentCourt antics decided to commemorate a saint who died of starvation with a huge feast that lasted a full twenty-four hours and included 40 exotic dishes, such birds drowned in fortified wine and eaten whole while the diner wears a cloth draped over their head (ostensibly to trap wine vapors, but really to prevent all the juices and viscera from spraying everywhere)[[note]][[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ortolan_bunting This is based on a real life French dish and the only difference is the name of the bird]][[/note]], swans stuffed with so much filling that some ''exploded'', beehives roasted whole, pottage with duck eyes (the emperor is said to have only them about this until ''after'' they were done to invoke IAteWhat), and bread rolls stuffed with some sort of surprise, like huge pearls or a live dove.