Bloodlines of Tamriel

Your Race’s Gift

Every people has one gift of its own, always with you and nothing to switch on. The server applies it, so it counts in every fight, against players and creatures alike. Beside it, every people learns one skill faster and can call on a Racial Power once a day: both are explained below.

One Skill Learned Faster

Every people also learns one skill 15% faster: the same work moves that skill 15% further. The hourly and daily limits stay the same, so you get there sooner, but no more work counts in an hour or a day than for anyone else (see The Wheel of Skills). Study and classes before you choose your school of magic, and smithing skill books, count the same for every people.

Racial Powers

Every people has a Racial Power to call on once a real day; the Khajiit’s Night Eye comes with a later update of the game. Open the Profile tab of your journal (F3) and, in the Racial Power box, press the button with your power’s name (Call on Highborn for a High Elf). A countdown shows on your HUD while the power lasts, and the box tells you when it returns: a full day after you called it. The wait is kept on your character, so a relog neither resets it nor ends a power that is running. A power cannot be called in werewolf or Vampire Lord form.

Melee means a one- or two-handed weapon or your bare hands. Physical blows are every hit that is not a spell, a staff or a scroll. Roaring Tempest’s ward soaks up the damage of spells, staves and scrolls that hit you until its 60 points are spent or the power ends, and you are told when it breaks.

Faster recovery. A power that speeds a bar’s recovery takes the place of your gift’s for as long as it lasts; the two do not add up. Highborn’s 50% stands in for Aldmeri Blood’s 25%, and Adrenaline Rush’s for Yokudan Endurance’s.

Beast forms. Gifts and powers rest while you are in werewolf or Vampire Lord form, and come back when you return to your own shape (the Maormer still swim faster); a running power’s time keeps counting meanwhile. A vampire keeps their race’s gift, faster skill and power.

A cap on protection. Your Defense skill, a blessing, your race’s resistance and a power work together, but however many you stack, together they never take more than three quarters off a single hit.

Recovery in a fight. Magicka and stamina come back more slowly while you fight, as they always do, and the extra from a gift or a power slows down with them. Health does not come back on its own mid-fight, so the faster healing of Hist-Blooded, Histskin and Voice of the Emperor starts once the fighting stops.

The old racial powers. The racial powers of the base game are replaced by these server powers. Several keep their old names, such as Highborn, Histskin and Voice of the Emperor, but what they do here is the server’s, as listed above. The old ones may still sit in your list of powers; casting one does nothing, so call yours from the journal.

The Maormer

The sea elves of Pyandonea are the eleventh people you can play. Their home lies far to the south of Summerset, hidden by mists, and they ride great sea serpents to war. For ages they have raided the Summerset coast, and they are the sworn enemies of the Altmer and of the Aldmeri Dominion.

Choose them in the character creator. They have pale, blue-grey skin, with sea-blue and sea-green colours to pick from as well, and stand a little shorter than the Altmer. A Maormer made before the new colours came can choose one with /appearance (500 gold for a changed look, once a day).

Their bars match the Altmer’s: 190 health, 220 magicka and 140 stamina, with the same regen and carry. Their gifts are their own, not the Altmer’s: shock hurts them half as much and they swim faster (Seafarer), they learn Blade 15% faster, and their Racial Power is Roaring Tempest, a storm-ward against magic.

The Thalmor take only the peoples of the Aldmeri Dominion: High Elves, Wood Elves and Khajiit, vampires among them, and only a High Elf can be First Emissary or Justiciar. They will not take a Maormer, for the Maormer are the Dominion’s enemies (see the Holds & Factions Guide). Their faith is the Deep Serpents, and they pray at the Serpent Stone on the lake shore north-east of Bruma (see the Religion System).

Why these numbers

Every character is born with the same 400: 150 health, 150 magicka and 100 stamina. The blood adds its own 150 on top and decides where it goes. That is why the Imperial line sits at 200, 200 and 150, and why every figure on this page is the whole of what you start with, not a share of it.

The spread starts from Imperious — Races of Skyrim, one of the most carefully balanced racial overhauls the community has produced, with a few races retuned for this server.

Character levels come on top: each level you earn, up to level 5, adds 10 to health, magicka or stamina, whichever you choose.

Khajiit and Argonians fight with claws. A bare-handed blow from a Khajiit starts at 14 damage and from an Argonian at 10, against 4 for every other people, before armour. A Khajiit’s Claws of the Moons add 8 more, so their bare hands start at 22. Claws count as fists, so the Martial Arts skill grows them like any other fist.

Every bloodline sums to exactly 550. That is the rule the whole table is built on — points move between a race's own three stats and the total never changes, so no bloodline is simply better than another, only pointed somewhere else.

Your People’s Craft

Gear is made where it belongs, but a people can always make its own. The styles on each card above can be forged by that race anywhere, and by anyone of any race inside that people’s home province. The Bretons, the Argonians and the Maormer have no style of their own in the game yet.

A style is not a free pass at the forge: every smith still needs the craft tier and the technique for what they make. How smiths climb the tiers and learn techniques is in Crafting and Trades.