Preface : everything I say here is a simple brain dump, not a serious design document. Nor is it a feature request of any sort. I merely hope to inspire far more talented designers who may be looking for new avenues to explore. I am certain that many of "my" ideas have also been explored in one war or another by the developers of TR, but here we go anyways.

I recently went down the rabbit hole of TES lore and following up on the marvelous progress of TR and found myself more than a little obsessed with the latent storytelling potential found in the Inner Sea.

After all the Inner Sea is the main large body of water that the player will be likely to interact with. But the vanilla game tended to treat it a bit more like a boundary : a shallow-ish littoral zone with a few grottoes here and there but mostly leading into nothingness and certain death the further you went away from the shore.

Given the history of Resdayn / Morrowind, there is an opportunity to make this more than a simple waterway.

As we all know from the lore, the Inner Sea, or 'Vvardenfell rift' was created by the eruption of Red Mountain.

To quote the UESP wiki :
'some of the landmass of Vvardenfell sank lower than sea level.'

For the water of the Sea of Ghosts to rush in that far inland and around Vvardenfell, the land along the fault line must have already been lower in elevation. I'm imagining it as a a long and serpentine, deep river valley that is now entirely underwater with some of the old hills and cliffheads poking out of the surface as rocky escarpments and small islands.

The team behind TR has done such a great job already with the geography. I particularly love how the shorelines of both Vvardenfell and the mainland suggest they were once bridged in many places. One such place is the now very obvious geographical link between both Old and New Ebonheart.

What I'm mostly interested in is what can be found underwater, and how these elements can be used to thematically link both sides of the Inner Sea through a common history.

Before the War of the First Council, the land that would be later lost in the flooding would no doubt have been populated, even if only sparsely. The long strip of land could be considered a buffer between important neighbouring geopolitical regions and/or an extension of said regions, and would have featured a mix of their respective geographies and cultures where they meet.

A couple of examples :

- The sunken area between Baan Malur and the West Gash could once have been a river delta / bay area leading into the Sea of Ghosts.

- The Bitter Coast and Askkaedh Coast could have long ago been a bona fide forest linking western Vvardenfell to Roth Roryn and perhaps continuing uninterrupted all the way to the foot of the Velothi Mountains,

- Firemoth would have been at the top of a higher mountainous area overlooking the entire forested region (an akward triangle between Seyda Neen, Kartur and Baan Malur) which would explain how it remains above water level currently

- The Ascadian Isles would have been a chain of rolling hills extending from the foot of that mountainous area and tapering off into the centre of Vvardenfell. Not unlike Roth Roryn.

- Absent the eruption of Red Mountain, everything about the Inner Sea suggests a former valley or hinterland. Along such a region, we would have seen a string of settlements, trading outposts, minor farmsteads, maybe even an old chimer fortress or two still tenuously linked to the propylon network. Non-argonian adventurers would have a nasty surprise if they found themselves teleported underwater in one such sunken fortress.

Underwater location ideas and brainstorming :

- the underwater ruins of a trading outpost and the barely-visible vestiges of the old paved roads that once led to and from it. Perhaps the basement holds a limited cache of salvageable goods and artifacts.

- a recessed ancestral tomb miraculously protected from the flooding, either by some quirk of geography or magic

- a series of ancient sewers tunneling deep into the area where the ruins of the city of Khalaan would have been under Old Ebonheart. The city was banished to Oblivion, so the clipped remains of ancient tunnels would no doubt have been repurposed over time, turned into secret passageways going to and from the city above, known only to the tongs, thieves and smugglers.

- former farmsteads of which only the foundations remain. Buildings that have their ceilings caved in and walls collapsed by water pressure. Sand and ash would have partially filled in the foundations. Items of interest would include lost family heirlooms, items of archeological interest to imperial scholars, lost ancestral shrines, hidden stashes of gold coinage from previous eras, the skeletons of those unlucky caught in the flood, including, tragically, those of hapless slaves who were kept fettered by their masters.

- a sunken Chimer fortress ruin harbouring a small 'colony' of escaped Argonian slaves. Questlines and interactions would involve the choice between revealing their presence to their former masters or agreeing to keep their secret. There may be desperate requests to make supply runs of rare and essential goods unavailable to them, or they may ask the player to relay personal messages to Twin Lamps agents or faraway family members, etc. (why hello there, Eye of Argonia devs)

- evidence of numerous small velothi dwellings "downhill" of Firemoth's southern flank

NOTE : I deliberately avoid mentionning Dwemer ruins since we already have Mudan near Ebonheart

Thanks for bearing with the wordiness. Hope this serves as a jumping point for discussion and as a source of inspiration :D