Daggerfall:Easter Eggs

This page is for Easter eggs only. Easter eggs include inside jokes, pop culture references, and any similar reference to something outside the Elder Scrolls games. For other points of interest, please see the appropriate pages.

Easter eggs are secrets that the developers put in games to give people a laugh when they find them (provided that they understand the joke or reference). Daggerfall has a large number of such jokes. Easter eggs differ from in-game references in that they have been clearly hidden from the player and are unusual with regards to their surroundings; references are often integrated into the rest of game and no attempt is made to keep them secret.

If you think you have found an Easter egg please post your idea on this article's talk page before adding it to this article.

Easter Eggs

Names of the Divines

Seven of the Eight Divines were named after beta testers or programmers (The exception, Kynareth, had previously appeared in Arena).

• Akatosh was named after beta tester Lawrence Szydlowski, who liked to sign "also known as the old Smaug himself" (the first letter of each word forming the letters "Akatosh").
• Arkay was named after one of the original beta testers, R. K. Deutsch, who died in 1998.
• Dibella was named after beta tester Mary Jo DiBella.
• Julianos was named after Julian Lefay, project leader of Daggerfall and several other Elder Scrolls games.
• Mara was possibly named after beta tester Marilyn Wasserman.
• Stendarr was named after beta tester Daniel Starr.
• Zenithar was named after Stephen "Zen" Zepp, an Arena beta tester.

Names of the Daedric Princes

• Boethiah was named after Roman senator Boethius.
• Molag Bal was originally named Moloch Baal, named for the Canaanite deities Moloch and Baal.
• Sheogorath was named after Ted Peterson, Lead Designer of Daggerfall and writer on other Elder Scrolls games, based on his full first name "Theodore".

Names of minor deities and characters

• Ebonarm is the alter ego of beta tester Raymond Whit Crowley, who wrote The Ebon Arm.
• Ephen (God of the Wild) and Phen were possibly named after beta testers Stephen Korejwo and Stephen Wilkinson.
• Gyron Vardengroet is based on Gary Vandegrift, and is the main figure of The Sage.
• Jephre was originally named "Jeh Free" and was named after beta tester Jeff Greulich.
• Q'Olwen was named after beta tester Larry W. Olson.
• Jone and Jode, the moons of Tamriel, are named for testers Joan McKeown and Judy Weller (Joan and Judy = Jone and Jode).
• Nesmyt, a character featured in The Daggerfall Chronicles official game guide, is most likely named after designer Bruce Nesmith, who provided additional writing for the book.

Skakmat

The name of the dragon Skakmat is a reference to his role. "Skak Mat" is Danish for "Checkmate". The dragon facilitates the death of a king on a battlefield like a chess piece being part of a checkmate on the chess board.

Cultural References

Name Generation

The name generator may appear random, but many of the part-names are there because of references to other works and history. For names already present in Arena, see Arena:Easter Eggs #Name Generation. Daggerfall adds the following:

Greek history, legends and mythology

Maced-onia (Argonian)

The Book of Five Rings

• The Book of Circles is an allusion to The Book of Five Rings, written by historical Japanese swordsman Miyamoto Musashi, famed as the victor of dozens of duels from an early age, he wrote the book late in his life as a practical guide to combat and continued the Way of the Sword. Musashi eventually settled down and lived on a lord's estate later in life, but retired to a mountaintop shrine in his final years to write and meditate, similar to Hunding's time as a hermit after thirty. The Redguards' reverence of Hunding is not unlike Musashi's popularity in Japan even centuries after his death as his Niten Ichi-Ryu style is still taught in schools, not unlike sword-singing.

Henry Mountains Paper

• The false notes in the quest Research Notes contain the phrase "The end result is a quasi-horizontal chonolith composed of anastomosing ductoliths, whose distal ends curl like a harpolith, thin like a sphenolith, or bulge discordantly like an akmolith or ethmolith." which describes a geological feature called a cactolith, and this description first appeared in Geology and Geography of the Henry Mountains Region, Utah: A Survey and Restudy of One of the Classic Areas in Geology book by Charles Butler Hunt, notable among geologists for coining that phrase.

The Madness of George III

• The book The Madness of Pelagius shares many similarities to the play The Madness of George III in terms of both the name and content, and Pelagius III's madness mirrors George III's madness in many ways. Pelagius living out his final days in the Temple of Kynareth is reminiscent to George living in Kew Palace.

Nulfaga's Literary Quotes

In her dialogue, Nulfaga quotes various lines from classical literature:

"United thoughts and counsels, equal hope / And hazard in the once glorious enterprise / Joined with me once, now misery hath joined / In equal ruin!" is part of a very well-known longer line from John Milton's Paradise Lost.

"Choosing out few words most horrible, let none them read! Verses, verses frame which with and other spells like terrible curses" is cribbed from The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser.

"Say, what strange motive, Goddess! could compel..." is from The Rape of the Lock by Alexander Pope.

"We are only like dead walls or vaulted graves..." is from The Duchess of Malfi by John Webster.