Where Do Skyrim's Rivers Come From?

I started playing Fallout 3 for the first time. It’s good.

Somewhere out there, an environment artist is weeping for joy that someone took an interest in all the little streams & tributaries they designed.

"let's find the source"- immediately heads downstream

Someone made a mod to create a source at Ivarstead and used this video as their inspiration. You're changing lives my dude

The reason I find this kinda stuff interesting is because someone made it. Skyrim was a mix of generated and handmade landscapes. And it's a pretty safe assumption that someone on the land sculpting team was in charge of making rivers make sense. So it's interesting to see how far someone's design will take that. How far until they think nobody will pay attention so they stop worrying about it. They didn't model holes in the mountains so clearly they didn't think people would examine them too closely, and only see them from a distance. Those areas in video games always intrigue me. The very edge of the designers' imagination.

I love the idea of a forest ranger mapping the local waterflow and getting interrupted by a dragon to which they sigh and slay it with the same enthuasithsm of moving a stubborn duck out of the way of their car

As someone who models groundwater flow for a living, this is the best meal you've ever prepared.

I studied Hydrology in University, and might have an answer for why that little river at 8:30 turns into a massive one. Every stream/river is either "gaining", "losing", or "at equilibrium" (with other subcategories of course). It's possible that the ground underneath quickly becomes more permeable, allowing groundwater to seep into the river (given a high water table). This increases the amount of water in the river. Skyrim has lots of fractured, rocky terrain which often leads to the amount of groundwater seepage being varying heavily from place to place.

"I'm still dealing with object permanence on an emotional level" Same. I find it really calming to go on Maps, find a new place, and then drive there to see that it actually exists. Anybody else?

you know we’re deprived of a new elder scrolls title when we’re trying to decipher where water comes from

Chuckled heartily at the idea of the dragonborn taking an intense interest in river cartography and having to look up from water saying "Ugh. God dammit" to kill a whole dragon before staring back down and pondering the weird videogame river split.

Whiterun: How does it feel to have our power sources interlinked? Interlinked. Ivarstead: I N T E R L I N K E D .

The environmental artists for this game don't get enough credit. If you check out the types of potions you can make with just the reagents you find in a zone, those alone can tell you a lot about the zone itself. There's a lot of Persuasion and Thievery related stuff near Riften, Antimagic near Whiterun tying in with the hall being used to bind dragons, all the battles and mass graves in Falkreath have the area saturated with deadly ingredients. It's also neat when you start to figure out where specific ingredients can be located like Fly Amanita spawns where a guard would take a piss, White Cap where ppl drop a deuce, Milkthistle grows outside a lot of houses and barns and is often used to settle stomachs irl...shit like that. I was curious how water even has a chance to form rivers with something as big as Blackreach beneath all the mountains. You'd figure structures like that would severely limit the space for aquifers.

this video makes me feel so valid for having once spent several hours drawing up a detailed map of routes and sources for a fictional river network in my own fictional world

"The game just admits that it can't justify everything and sometimes it just has to make a big river and that's just the way it goes" is the most real, adult thing I've ever heard in my life.

Nice! Love this. Former hydrogeologist here. Technically, I guess all the issues with say, the big lake at 8:50 all of a sudden getting huge can somewhat realistically be explained by the lake being fed groundwater (so it is a "gaining" lake). The water literally comes into the lake through the ground below it. Same goes for all of the rivers that don't seem to have a legitimate visible source. Gaining streams (and losing streams) are a natural hydrogeologic phenomenon, all a part of our real world.

I think an additional possible reason why you found this interesting to do is because it's a small little game you've made out of it. You set a goal for the game, with various rules, and along the way to the finish line you found a multitude of interesting pieces of information, such as the underground rivers becoming spontaneous waterfalls. There is also the side factor of just being able to enjoy the scenery in a leisurely pace. You're not off to save (or doom) the world. You're just on a little hike, and sometimes that in itself is fun. Sometimes. Anyways, 'twas fun for me to watch, so thank you for the video! :D

A dragon attack being little more than a nuisance to our hydrologist dovakin had me stitches

7:49 As an avid paddle boarder, I can tell you that this is also found in nature. I have been paddling upstream and then came across a second current pushing in the opposite direction. A spring boil is responsible.

water is often thought of as either moving (ie rivers, streams) or stationary (lakes, ocean). however, water works on a spectrum from stationary<---->moving. When the smaller river originating in Ivarsted suddenly became wide without any additional streams feeding in, its because the geometry of that area needed water to pool up in excess before it could spill over and continue flowing. Essentially, there is a river flowing on top of a small lake or pond.