They slaughtered orcs and Bretons that they found there, although it seems they took over the cities they found there, rather than razing them to the ground and founding new ones. The Ra Gada who went straight on to Tamriel apparently landed at Hegathe, on the Westernmost tip of Hammerfell’s peninsula, and swept north from there. My thanks to Ur-Quan on Twitter for digging those out for me. This second wave primarily settled on the southern coast of Hammerfell, and almost three millennia later their structures can still be found jutting from the coastal dunes.” If you have a poke around southern Hammerfell in ESO around Hew’s Bane, there’s lots of bird architecture, literally jutting out from the dunes, as the quote says. The Redguards of Herne, if I can call them that for now, were also allegedly led there by Tava, and ESO’s Yokudan crafting motif notes that “the Tavans’ arms and armor are replete with bird imagery.
The city distribution, with most in the south where the Crowns stayed, seems to support this, but we don’t have detailed enough figures on the population to see if that’s entirely the case. If this were the case, we’d also expect the Crown lands of Hammerfell to be the most densely populated. Some of them stopped at Herne, the bulk of the people if the First Edition of the Pocket Guide to the Empire is to be believed.
The movement from Yokuda to Tamriel wasn’t one smooth transition the Ra Gada was a multilayered thing. Elements of the ancient Near East and the modern Middle East has permeated the Redguard aesthetic, and bits of their history. Keep that flavour in mind as we look at the rest of their history. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. The treatment of the Book of Circles in this way reminds me of a passage from the book of Deuteronomy chapter 6, verses 6-9: The practice of storing things in alcoves in the house for ritual purposes is common in many places in the real world, but in particular this is a similar practice to that of a real-world culture that has striven to remain set apart from those around them: the Jews. Part of me thinks the ESO team has just paraphrased this. There’s similar wording to that in the Hammerfell section of the New Emperor’s Guide to Tamriel, but not quite as explicit. In honor to Hunding the great warrior prince, each household in Hammerfell has a place by the hearth an alcove really, just a niche, big enough to hold the scroll – The Book Circles. In honor of their final battle, they named their new land Hammerfell and adopted the name Redguards. To adopt a new name, but to honor the past. This is particularly the case when you look at the Book of Circles, which is treated in a very specific way by the Redguards, according to A Compilation of Redguard History: This is clear when you look at how they treat heroes from their history interweaving things into their daily lives. In particular, the Redguards, particularly the Crowns, have strived to maintain their own identity as distinct from Tamriel. Maintaining a Distinct History & Culture is Hard While that text was being designed for in-universe publication, it feels to me like the two are pretty much inseparable. The main text we had last time on Yokuda was called Redguards: Their History and Their Heroes. Redguard tales are often focused on singular individuals, and are often designed to establish the person the piece is about as someone of a worthy reputation, rather than necessarily give an accurate representation of history. This, and the general habits of Redguard storytelling, meaning that we have a bit more of an extension of mythic times here. Frandar Hunding and his son Divad are some of the biggest figures here. The Redguard carried with them a whole bunch of their heroes, and some of the biggest names in Redguard history are tied in with this event. Today we’re asking, what is the culture of the Redguards about?Īs we discussed last time, the Redguards arrived on Tamriel in waves, the Ra Gada warrior waves for which they are named, following the defeat of the Hiradirge in 1E 792. All this while possibly having the most complete understanding of a timeline outside of Mundus that we know of. Today we’re talking about the only race to have successfully invaded Tamriel, who have both tried to integrate and stand apart. Subscribe: Anchor | Apple Podcasts | CastBox | Spotify