5 Elder Scrolls 6 Fan Theories That Should Actually Happen In Sentinel

3 hours ago 10

Published Nov 4, 2026, 1:04 PM EST

Will the Dwemer appear in Hammerfell?

Elder Scrolls 6 theories list image featuring a boat, a dwarven centurion, and a Redguard

For its 40th anniversary, legendary developer Bethesda gave its fans the best possible gift: another The Elder Scrolls 6 tease. Yeah. But wait, this time, we got a title! One that the community had already guessed years ago. But beggars can’t be choosers. At this point, the Elder Scrolls series has garnered enough goodwill from players that we can happily eat this new breadcrumb and keep waiting for the game. Just a little bit more.

Meanwhile, fans have new material to feed their theories about The Elder Scrolls 6: a title, Sentinel, and a juicy quote from a Moth Priest. Since the game was announced in 2018, theories have proliferated (there’s nothing else we can do, after all!). Some have been proven true, some will quite likely be proven true, and some are just absurd, but we still would like to see them come to fruition.

Let’s start with an easy one. Speculation that Hammerfell will be the setting of the next game in the series began with the first teaser shown in 2018. The geography and environmental features pointed to the Redguards' homeland, and the Nov. 3 reveal confirmed it. Sentinel is a major city in Hammerfell, also present in The Elder Scrolls Online, and the quote shared with the teaser is attributed to a Moth Priest serving High Queen Iradne of Hammerfell.

However, it’s not a given that the game will take place only in Hammerfell. There’s a chance that High Rock, the northwestern-most region of Tamriel and the home of the Bretons, will also be featured. High Rock borders both Skyrim and Hammerfell, and it’s relatively small compared to the other two, making it perfect for a DLC (just like Solstheim appeared in Dragonborn), or even to be included in the main game. After all, with an expected 10 years of development, there’s no telling just how big The Elder Scrolls 6 will be.

While Bethesda primarily drew inspiration from Middle Eastern and North African culture and geography for Hammerfell, High Rock features Arthurian vibes, as the name of its inhabitants, the Bretons, suggests. So if you loved the Blood and Wine expansion for The Witcher 3, a trip to High Rock in Sentinel could be just your cup of tea, as the region is heavily inspired by medieval Western Europe.

4 The Elder Scrolls will play an important role

If you don’t know what the Elder Scrolls actually are, buckle up. Without going too deep, they are ancient artifacts that contain knowledge of the past, present, and future. The lore gets a lot weirder than that: Apparently, the Elder Scrolls are sentient, do not exist in a countable form, are indestructible, and no one knows where they come from. They play a role in almost every game in the series, either as the source of a prophecy or as an important quest item that the main character needs to progress in the story.

However, the Elder Scrolls have never been the true center of any game’s plot, which is odd, considering their power and that the franchise is named after them.

“The scroll offered only a shimmer, a veil thinly lifted to my eyes. A future lost. A victory undone. Sands of time scattered by fate.”

This quote, which accompanied the reveal of the name Sentinel, seems to come from an Elder Scroll. Moth Priests are members of a cult who dedicate their lives to studying the Scrolls, using them to divine the future and offering counsel to powerful rulers, in this case, the Queen of Hammerfell.

The quote could just be part of a prophecy that kickstarts the game (a prophecy is also the premise of both Morrowind and Skyrim’s stories). Alternatively, The Elder Scrolls 6 will let players explore the mystery of the series' namesake artifacts in depth, finally revealing their origin and true purpose.

3 Sentinel will feature boats

One of the oldest rumors surrounding The Elder Scrolls 6 is that the game would feature some form of sailing. There was never any proof behind it, but it’s a feature notably absent from the other games in the series, and fans would love to see it implemented somehow. Now that it’s confirmed that the game will be set in Hammerfell, one of the most prominent features of the region is the Iliac Bay, which separates the provinces of High Rock and Hammerfell, and was also the main setting of The Elder Scrolls 2: Daggerfall.

The bay includes many islands, leading fans to speculate that the player character in Sentinel could use a boat to reach and explore them. If the game expands to include High Rock, then crossing the Iliac Bay would be the fastest way to travel from there to Hammerfell.

Adding sailing to the game would be a massive technical challenge, but if Sentinel is coming out in 2028 at the very least, as it’s rumored to, then the game will have to compete with some of the most ambitious titles of this generation, including GTA 6 and Crimson Desert. Todd Howard has never been afraid of a challenge, so I wouldn’t be surprised to set sail with The Elder Scrolls 6.

2 The Dwemer will finally appear

A Dwarven centurion in the Elder Scrolls 5 Skyrim in a dwemer ruin

The Dwemer are the Elder Scrolls franchise’s version of the dwarves, and they are one of the biggest mysteries in the series. Like most other non-human races, they are an offshoot of the elves, but this tribe enjoyed living underground and building complex (and often deadly) machines. If you’ve played an Elder Scrolls game, there’s a good chance you have explored a Dwemer ruin at some point.

In Elder Scrolls lore, the entire Dwemer race suddenly disappeared from the world as a result of their meddling with a powerful artifact known as the Heart of Lorkhan. No one knows what happened to them, and there is only one survivor: Yagrum Bagarn, a lone Dwemer who was visiting other planes of existence when the big vanishing happened, who appears in Morrowind. Fans have been speculating for decades about this, and many agree that, at some point, the mystery of the Dwemer will be unveiled, and the lost elves will play a major role in the game.

Sentinel could be that game. The Elder Scrolls Online developer, ZeniMax Online Studios, wanted to explore the Dwemer mystery in its game, and Todd Howard stepped in personally to forbid it. This led many fans to speculate that the Dwemer are going to return in one of the mainline games. An entire nation of technologically advanced people appearing in the middle of Hammerfell and going to war with the Redguards would surely make for a compelling plot in Sentinel.

1 The Thalmor plotline will be resolved

A group of Thalmor in The Elder Scrolls 5 Skyrim

In Skyrim, players learned that some big changes had happened in the world in the 200 years that had passed since the end of Oblivion. The most important one was surely the Great War between the Thalmor, the supremacist Altmer organization of the elven Aldmeri Dominion, and the Empire of Cyrodiil, which ended with the White-Gold Concordat. This agreement imposed high demands on the Empire, including the surrender of large parts of the Hammerfell province to the Dominion. That enraged the Redguards, leading to Hammerfell’s secession from the Empire.

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While the Redguards were able to kick the Thalmor out of their lands in the year 180 of the Fourth Era (4E), the scars of the war should still be evident in Sentinel, which, based on the quote shared with the latest trailer, takes place around the year 4E 206.

The Thalmor were present in Skyrim, and while they had a marginal role, some in-game dialogue teased that the Dominion could be preparing another big war. Perhaps we will see that conflict unfold in The Elder Scrolls 6: Sentinel.

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