A real-life tall tale about the in-game tall tales

[ArynChris]

In 2010, I was visiting my parents for a bit. One day, my dad came into the kitchen and announced to me and my brothers that, some time in the year prior, he had been approached by "one of the guys working on the new Elder Scrolls game" about using his short stories for it. Presumably, the readable book items.

But wait. My dad wrote short stories? When? What? Where? And if all this happened a year before, why was he just now telling us?

Well, he wrote them for fun and posted them on the DragonRealms forums (he's been an avid DR player for years, so okay). The stories were just parodies of a book of scifi short stories (the volume has been on his shelf forever and seemed well-read, and my dad can write nonfiction, so okay). And we couldn't read any of them unless we played the new game coming out-- whatever they were calling it, whenever it came out-- because he had never saved a copy to his computer and the forum posts were long since deleted (which makes sense if he was asked to take them offline, so that there'd be no ownership confusion, but this it still iffy). And there's no clear reason why he'd wait a year to tell us, especially since the "new game" didn't even have a release date yet.

It was Skyrim.

The volume of scifi short stories is called Tales from the White Hart, and it's a collection of tall tales told in a space tavern. My dad claimed that his collection was called "Tales from the White Yurt" and was a series of obvious parodies, set in a D&D-type setting, which I can see being easily shoved into the Elder Scrolls world. Like all tall tales, his claim has just enough detail to be plausible, but is difficult to prove... unless there are, in fact, Skyrim books that are clear parodies of the White Hart stories.

Has anyone read through both the Skyrim books and Tales from the White Hart? Is there any way to find out who writes the text of these things, or whether they solicit writers vs. do all the writing in-house?






...Fun fact, Tales from the White Hart was itself a parody of the real-world White Horse pub, where scifi writers in London hung out. And then wrote this silly book together.

[legoless]

Nothing about a White Yurt in Skyrim. Feel free to look through the major books in Skyrim, but a good deal of them are just taken from older games.

[AKB]

Looking at summaries from White Hart, nothing really jumps out at me as being in the game. But I have an easier solution to this, if your father worked on the game, especially in this major way, he would have been in the credits (either under writing or special thanks). A moderator of the official forums was put in the credits section because he allowed the Bethesda staff to take models from his horse for Oblivion. Ratwar was credited on FNV for just being a moderator on the official forums. I have yet to be credited for anything, the jerks.

To answer who writes the books, it's a mixture of any staff member available, and a few specific contractors, I've read this in a few interviews I read years ago and would not be able to dig up at this point.

[Dark Spark]

... I have yet to be credited for anything, the jerks. ...

As neither have I. But there's probably a reason for that.

The more time I spend in the Falkreath Sanctuary, the more I begin to suspect that Gabriella was influenced by my Casandra. On this forum I have made talk of Cassie's frequent inclinations to wander along shorelines (both on Lake Rumare and the Gold Coast).

Removing Gabby's hood, one will discover she wears her fair hair rather short, a physical characteristic Cassie has shown since her genesis in Oblivion. And to top it all off, she will make conversations in the Sanctuary with other members about her power of divination— her ability to see the future and the inevitability of her death. I named my Dark Brotherhood character in direct reference to the legendary Cassandra of Troy, who had the power to foretell an unchangeable future (but that was because I'd played through much of the game half a dozen times by then).