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In Bethesda Softworks series of Role Playing Games entitled '' The Elder Scrolls '', Black Marsh is a swampish southeasterly region of continent of Tamriel . It is presented as the homeland of the Reptilian Humanoid race of Argonians and a race of sentient trees known as the Hist . An alternate name, '''Argonia''', is also used by the Mer races of the ''Elder Scrolls'' series, following the name of an obscure ancient battlefield, and to avoid the negative connotations of the term "Black Marsh". As described in the series games, Black Marsh is lush and threatening, profuse with poisonous plants and violent predators. The region possesses a tropical climate, lending its plants the tendency to overgrow all attempts to tame them. Foreign agricultural, colonial, and commercial ventures beyond the slave-trade have met with abject failure. The native Argonians organize themselves on the tribal level with success and efficiency, and are only loosely integrated into the ruling Empire of the series. Black Marsh appeared in '''' also contained a travel narrative concerning in the voice of a reluctant Imperial bureaucrat, which is also the first substantial account of the region from the series. A game titled "The Eye of Argonia", which would have involved the province, progressed through some early planning stages at Bethesda in the wake of ''''. ROLE IN THE ELDER SCROLLS SERIES Black Marsh plays an admittedly small role in the ''Elder Scrolls'' series, outside the scope of every game following ''''. In ''Arena'', the player's goal is to gather up the various shards of the Staff Of Chaos , piece them together, and use the completed staff to defeat the usurper Jagar Tharn . One of the shards lies in the Black Marsh region of Murkwood.1 ''Arena'', ironically, is not the main source of information about the region, lacking, as it were, the exhaustive literature and game dialogue of later games. Black Marsh may play a small role in '''' as a cultural influence on the Argonian populated23 towns of the southern Nibenay basin, Leyawiin and Bravil , who border the region, but such influences remain unmentioned both in in-game description and external commentary. '''' holds the greatest additional material, providing the four-part novella ''The Argonian Account'', an eyewitness account affording the only contemporary description of the region in lore, and covering aspects of ecology, geography and the modern history of the region. For the most part, however, the land remains a mystery, with much information privy to the developers yet to be revealed. The Eye of Argonia Prior to the development of ''Morrowind'', Bethesda began work on a direct sequel to ''Redguard'' in the ''Elder Scrolls Adventure'' series featuring Black Marsh, "The Eye of Argonia," but ''Redguard's'' lackluster sales caused them to drop the idea. In an interview ''Morrowind's'' project leader Todd Howard suggested that there was potential for the game to be developed on the PlayStation , where action-adventure games are seen in a more favourable light, but this idea doesn't seem to have gone anywhere.5 The game would presumably have had the same Third-person Action-adventure elements of the ''Redguard'' game, but would focus on the quest for the mythic jewel, the Eye of Argonia, which would lead the player to the Lost City of the Black Marsh. The jewel's location was known to the character Dreekius, who refers to it as "the priceless king's jewel of ancient Black Marsh" and to its seeker Tobias as "another softskin {Link without Title} all sword and swagger."6 The Eye is also mentioned in a retelling of an archaeologist's travels, where it caps off the tale as the subject of the archaeologist's next destination.7 The Eye was further referenced in an easter egg for the ''Morrowind'' expansion pack '''', where a player who describes himself as "Looking for the Eye of Argonia" is congratulated for "providing an original and entertaining excuse."8 The Eye of Argonia remains an in-joke for the series, but hasn't been developed any further than the above mentioned fragments and remains extremely obscure. HISTORY Merethic Era Within the ''Elder Scrolls'' '' game book, ''The Annotated Anuad'', a Bosmer i creation myth, the region presently known as the Black Marsh was once part of a much greater landmass within the domain of the Hist, but the greater part of the region was flooded during the wanderings of the humanoid Mer races. "The Hist were bystanders in the Ehlnofey war, but most of their realm was destroyed as the war passed over it. A small corner of it survived to become Black Marsh in Tamriel, but most of their realm was sunk beneath the sea."9 According to The Imperial Library's ''History of Tamriel'', based on information once held on developer Michael Kirkbride's now defunct website, Argonians came to inhabit Tamriel in small, preliterate communities by the Early Merethic Era.10 The common companion to the collector's editions of the series games, the ''Pocket Guide to The Empire'' holds that the term "Argonia" originated as an appelation by the games' Elves , for whom it refers to an obscure ancient battlefield.11 First Era Canonical information for the period in-between the mythic origins of Black Marsh and the latter part of the Third Era is sparse. Most in-game fragments occur in various parts of the extensive literary corpus of the series. Ted Peterson's12 lengthy '' Morrowind '' novellas, ''2920, The Last Year of the First Era'' and ''The Wolf Queen'' respectively state that the major Black Marsh city of Soulrest had an Argonian battlechief by 1E 2920,13 and that Lilmoth had an Argonian priest-king by the first century of the Third Era.14 The Third Edition of ''Pocket Guide to the Empire'', shipping with the collector's edition of '''',15 gives the only example of Argonian territorial expansionism within the series. Argonian armies from Black Marsh are described therein as having come into conflict with the neighbouring Cyrodiilic Imperials. The last of these Argonian armies was defeated by a Cyrodiilic force in 1E 2811.16 A possible contradiction ensues with an earlier account from '' Morrowind '', which states that "No army of Morrowind or Black Marsh has ever threatened the security of any other Imperial province, let alone the security of Cyrodiil itself,"17 but this particular passage could be explained in any number of ways, particularly given that the book in question is generally Polemical . Black Marsh was eventually to be incorporated within the , [http://til.gamingsource.net/pge/index.shtml The Pocket Guide to The Empire |
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