Bugs of TES

[thin drift]

It's not what you think! With a certain, other game releasing recently, we figured this might be a good time to focus on the type of bugs that don't get a ton of attention in TES. What are your favorite (or least favorite!) insects, arachnids, and other bugs in TES games? Perhaps you have a memory of a bug creeping you out? Maybe even one that's way too friend shaped for how mean it is?

<@&1011584455019872266> new entry is up! personally I think shellbugs are kind of cuties, shame the only interaction we have with them is killing them while they just... Sit there...

[waxen wave]

My least favourite bug is game crashes I'd probably say Kwama or Chaurus. I like seeing the bugs quality being used in some what realistic ways. Chaurus armour and poison or Kwama farms. Kwama did creep me out when I realized the interesting stages(?)/forms they have.

[thin drift]

Btw, non-Skyrim bugs are perfectly allowed! Talk about elytra and Mephala's Daedric monstrosities all you want

[real osprey]

Hate, Hate HATE doesn't describe how I FEEL towards the Chaurus. This comes from a WHILE BACK, from FALLOUT NEW VEGAS AND MY HATE TOWARDS CAZADORES... So when I saw chaurus, I knew. I knew that I had to exterminate them just for the sake of it.

But in a more serious light, I find them interesting, more so their relationship with the falmer and how they are possibly related to their religion and every part of their lives.

[thin drift]

I do like the chaurus-falmer relationship

That's part of what's cool about shellbugs even

[fast crane]

Favourite. Silt-Strider.

Unique design, cool use of them by local Dunmeri as a method of travel, and their sounds are alien in a majestic way.

[real osprey]

Oh yeah I agree, My favorite must be the Silt-Striders.

Either that or dragonflies for no particular reason.

[tulip linden]

Chaurus are a pain in the arse but fuck those Chaurus Hunters specifically

Kwama are just chill little guys though besides the biped ones

[thin drift]

Kwama 🥺

[thin drift]

Silt-Striders are dope

I also love dragonflies, just generally speaking, they, mantises, and stickbugs are my favs

[real osprey]

I find them incredibly disturbing.

Albeit useful and mostly harmless.

[errant widget]

i like shellbugs, big passive guys

[thin drift]

Ikr!

[errant widget]

i remember stumbling across one of them in the Forgotten Vale, said hi and left him be

[thin drift]

But the worm :(

[thin drift]

I realized while typing this that you can technically harvest their chitin without killing them, you just won't get all of it

But then I was like "is that really that much better? "

[errant widget]

yeah lol

[thin drift]

I doubt it's like sheep and wool where harvesting it is low-key good for them

I do kinda wish you could make more stuff with their chitin tho, from a game mechanics perspective

[errant widget]

agreed, it would make their rarity all that much more enticing

[thin drift]

[vast knoll]

When this appeared while playing Skyrim it scared the heebie jeebies out of me

[hearty cape]

Spider Daedra's be 🔥 🔥

But, Seriously though. The Ash Hoppers in Solstheim were pretty neat, I found it disappointing there wasn't more, since it made it difficult to craft the armors, without relying on buying the materials.
Also, Silt Striders and Shell Bugs also get a vote for coolness/cuteness.

[torpid river]

i hella fw the scrib

[thin drift]

plus they're kind of just a cool encounter!

(ash hoppers that is)

[hearty cape]

Yeap, they are fun to fight.

[velvet timber]

A lot of the Solstheim insects are really fucking cool imo, but my favorite would probably have to be the Netches. I could watch them all day they're so cool looking.

Least favorite is the Chaurus Hunter. The only way a Chaurus could be worse is if it could fly, and THESE MFERS gave it WINGS

[waxen wave]

Had to much red bull

One day when I’m 80 and they finally put out a main series blackmarsh game it’s gonna be fire.

[plucky granite]

There is no bug that is "friend shaped"...in TES

Nuh uh

Nope

[waxen wave]

This could have been yours.

Who doesn't want to be followed around by a hulking, armored Daedric bug with steel mandibles and a venomous stinger? It eats nothing but the cries and lamentations of your enemies, so it's an easy keeper. Friendly, too—in its way.

[unborn lynx]

Mine's Ancestor Moth.

Like, when you can go glowy glowy lovey dovey while scrying the fragments of creation on a piece of paper, they must be protected at all costs

[plucky granite]

That is horrifying

[real osprey]

wdym, it's friend-shaped.

[plucky granite]

No it isn't

[terse gale]

No bugs are friend-shaped

[velvet timber]

Except maybe Ants

[terse gale]

You wouldn’t say that if you had played Grounded

[velvet timber]

😇

[terse gale]

As for an answer to the question, I'm gonna go with silt striders. Their sheer size still freaks me right tf out and I still think they’re creepy-crawlers, but their sounds make me feel all sorts of nostalgia

[thin drift]

Weevils!!!!

[errant widget]

true actually

[terse gale]

If they have mandibles and too many long legs, then no

[thin drift]

They have snoots

[terse gale]

Oh right! They were pretty cute in Grounded. Still too many legs though

[thin drift]

They just sniffy lil guys

Some weevils don't have snoots and they're not so cute

[fast crane]

Another answer for bugs I like (if they can count) is Megalomoths

Big moths being used as spaceships is peak fiction

[thin drift]

They are cool, I agree

[fast crane]

Me likey

[thin drift]

I generally just love all of the "giant animals being used as mounts or vehicles" stuff

[fast crane]

Would be cool to see an out-of-commission one in-game in some way. Like half sunken in the ground in the middle of nowhere like it was an ancient crash site of unknown circumstances.

[thin drift]

That'd be so cool

Or like an exoskeleton of a decommissioned and now dead moth, kinda like um

The crab

[fast crane]

Skar or whatever it’s called

From Ald Ruhn

[thin drift]

Yeaaah

That'd be sick

[terse gale]

Concept is cool. Like silt striders but used as spaceships instead of buses

[fast crane]

Could be also a cool spot to drop some Mananaut lore or reference, whether by leaving behind some documents or devices which is connected to or explains something regarding this Megalomoth and perhaps whoever was on board. With perhaps even an old worn out set of their gear lying around, whether by themselves or on a skeletal corpse.

[thin drift]

That'd be so cool

Mananaut lore at last!

[fast crane]

Best protection? Probably not. But imagine the drip.

[thin drift]

I could even imagine like an Adamantia-style "inaccessible vault" containing it! Not literally like the vault in Adamantia ofc but in the sense that it's kinda anachronistic, yet ancient, and easily misinterpreted as a result

[fast crane]

Considering how gigantic megalomoths are, it would really work well in-game as an unmarked site on the map that you wouldn’t be guided to or have any quest marker to and at a very remote part of the map. Making coming across it only for someone who’s actively exploring the nooks and crannies of the map and shock them with such a find out of nowhere and in such a desolate state that you feel like you’re really finding something that almost feels removed from the rest of the worldspace, which to some degree, given their nature, it is.

[fast crane]

Bethesda really should be hiring us smh

This is fire

[thin drift]

Nah I'm fine

Fuck an NDA

My joy with the series comes largely in the form of interacting with other fans who are also excited about it, as much as I enjoy the process of working with stuff in TES, I wouldn't sacrifice getting paid to do that for getting to do the part I really enjoy

I would not love TES lore so much without being able to interact with the community the way I do

It'd still have a place in my heart, like it did before I joined this server and started getting more invested in it, but it wouldn't be as enjoyable

They should absolutely steal our ideas tho

[fast crane]

I casually slide the Uberlore doc under Todd’s door

[velvet timber]

Idk what googler is on about lemme direct the TES TV show It won't be trash trust me bro just give me complete creative freedom I won't abuse it I promise

/s

[thin drift]

This sounds like someone who's about to rewrite narratives more than Talos

Yo wait speaking of gods

Isn't there an insect god

[velvet timber]

Namira, technically

:)

[thin drift]

No like an old one

There is!

https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Insect_God

Weird...

[fast crane]

Let me make a TES anime about the rise of Tiber Septim, I swear imma cook, from the Zurin yaoi to the [NUMINIT]

And Hiroyuki Sawano will be the composer

[sly oasis]

https://tenor.com/view/hollow-knight-silk-song-silksong-hollow-knight-silksong-hornet-gif-9486712578214888028

[fast crane]

^ doesn’t understand anything

[velvet timber]

If the Tiber show does not have Hjalti on Zurin action I will riot that's gay erasure 😔

[fast crane]

Siege of Alinor but it’s just the Third Impact

https://youtu.be/yRkAjlsec90?si=fSoNsEyQaGummdJE

This playing as Numidium ancestroscythe’s through the Mirror Logicians

Anyways, back to bugs

Nix-Hounds are a 10/10

[velvet timber]

We already have the Numidium soundtrack 😔

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5sQfEQR8MI&ab_channel=LizKatrin

[velvet timber]

Tuuuure

[thin drift]

Maybe we should have an Arcanaeum about like TES movie/show ideas

[velvet timber]

[real osprey]

scary

[fast crane]

Numidium Spotify playlist but it’s just 52 tracks of static

[real osprey]

I would really like an Alessian rebellion show or Anime.

or a dawn era one.

or a Nerevar one

[velvet timber]

(Same, I literally can't stop thinking about how I'd do it 😭)

[real osprey]

or an

honestly there's a lot-

[fast crane]

Numidium: This gotta be my favourite SoundCloud rapper

https://youtu.be/t0I4mTEdAf8?si=KIDhQ__AWADS1r3p

[real osprey]

if the show doesn't have the Dagothwave then I'm out.

[thin drift]

What I was just thinking about that made me go "maybe this should be an Arcanaeum entry" was a movie in Hammerfell inspired by Kurosawa films n shit cuz I'm on a samurai kick again

[real osprey]

In Yokuda!

[fast crane]

Alessian Rebellion movie but it’s something in between the style of Prince of Egypt and EPIC: The Musical (dark, with song numbers and beautiful animation)

[thin drift]

That'd be sick

[real osprey]

Pelinal singin while-

[velvet timber]

(Lowkey THIS close to just... Writing my own script )

[fast crane]

The Plagues song but it’s just Pelinal and Umaril

“I WILL NEVER LET YOOOOUR PEOPLE, GO.”

[thin drift]

I mean C0DA was a comic script with the intention of reimagining TES through a completely different medium soooo

[velvet timber]

"DIE SCREAMING BIRD ELF "

[thin drift]

These things have precedent in the community

[real osprey]

where's the comic though...

[fast crane]

I’m surprised some people haven’t. Alessian Rebellion is a top tier playground for writing since we only get the mystical cliff notes from just a few books.

Also like, every character there is baller

[velvet timber]

Yesss, I had a few flashback scenes in my fic and it's honest to god SO FUN to write

[real osprey]

We should get a Reman show (no, yes, no)

[fast crane]

Alessia, Pelinal, Morihaus, Umaril,

Devious lineup of awesome characters

[real osprey]

Post-credit scene with Marukh-

[thin drift]

I think it got some art, but my point is you can do storyboarding and scripting for something that doesn't ever become the finished product to explore the universe in a different light

[fast crane]

To be continued in…

THE MONKEY TRUTH

[real osprey]

[velvet timber]

For sure if I ever end up finishing my fic I'll do a quick like ten chapter prequel of that story with how I've characterized Pelinal so far

[fast crane]

Me wanna read the rough draft

[velvet timber]

I can dm you some of it if you want

[fast crane]

Yes please.

[torpid river]

do emperor crabs count? a crustacean is just a big bug isn’t it?

[hearty cape]

Crabs are in the Arachnid family. So.. Technically not bugs, but...?

[unborn lynx]

Bro I kinda want to see a two-guys-and-a-girl epic-Romcom hybrid show between them

[unborn lynx]

BLACK MYTH MARUKH

[fast crane]

Seinfeld theme music plays

[unborn lynx]

I am more on the
Morihaus explaining to baby Belharza
And that... is how I met your mother.

[fast crane]

Haaaave you met Mor? — Pelinal, probably

[unborn lynx]

Legen—wait for it...—dary - Morihaus talking about Pelinal, probably

Speaking of bugs

I also want to add torchbug. little guy is essential if you play Skyrim with the lantern mod.

[sly oasis]

Crab ppl are in Silksong so id say yea

[hearty cape]

Mudcrabs, my favorite thing to train my armor in the early part of the games.

[grand whale]

im pretty much late in this but im glad to find a topic where i can ask about what ive been so curious about, and hopefully i can ask in this forum.

that bug(?) in a cage in saints and seducers quest, what is it exactly? why can it follow and help us? why do they have that thing?

[real osprey]

these ugly shits?

[grand whale]

yeah?

why are they glowing as well what are those?? 😭

[real osprey]

"Elytra Nymphs are the juvenile forms of Elytra, which are large mantis-like creatures indigenous to much of the Shivering Isles. The two different breeds are marked by their distinct coloring, with the golden variants being native to Mania and the purple variants being native to Dementia."

[real osprey]

"Some Elytra secrete a glowing green substance known as Felldew, prized as a powerful, addictive drug."

[waxen wave]

https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:An_Elytra's_Life

[grand whale]

thank you!! what i still wonder though, as gentle as they are, i'm still curious how they seem to be able to become a pet(?) right away after we free them, following our commands as if they're dogs, even to the point that they can carry things for us, gameplay wise?

[real osprey]

We are just that charming

[errant widget]

they must be incredibly loyal creatures, after we free them they must hold us in high regard

an honour, really

[grand whale]

that's very interesting