Races of The Elder Scrolls

Races Of The Elder Scrolls

The Hist were originally the trees of Argonia, though the term has mistakenly been used for the Argonians. During the great war between the Ehlnofey, the Hist were bystanders, but most of their realm was destroyed as the war passed over it. A small corner of it survived to become the Black Marsh province in Tamriel, but most of their realm was sunk beneath the sea. According to the Monomyth, the Hist acknowledge Sithis in his role as the original creator. The Hist have been tossed around quite frequently on The Elder Scrolls Official Forums, all due to one dangerously mislaid sentence. In the PGE, Argonians are said to never have left their homeland "except for a relatively intelligent strain called the hist. " This statement, implying that the Argonians are a type of Hist, left quite a bit of fallout, but was resolved by a clear statement by Mark Nelson that the whole thing resulted from ignorance on the part of the editors of the Guide.

Hist are, in fact, great sentient trees worshipping the eternal, immutable, god of chaos, Sithis. Unfortunately, it is difficult to find many canonical statements about the Hist in game lore. The Annotated Anuad gives us some information, telling us that the Hist are one of two races to survive the "twelve worlds of Creation," along with the Ehlnofey, and that the Hist had a great homeland sunk beneath the sea by the wars of the Ehlnofey. It is never certain how much credence one should give to a creation myth. Any statements regarding the Hist's survival of the twelve worlds of a Creation should be treated with due suspicion.

Argonians are known to have deep connections with the Hist, calling themselves "people of the root," and licking the leaking sap of their trunks in religious rites.

In Oblivion, if the player chooses to embark on the Fighters' Guild faction quest, they will eventually come to a mission in which they must discover the source of the Blackwood Company's power. The player discovers that the Blackwood Company is using the sap of a Hist tree. They succeeded in smuggling a whole Hist tree from Black Marsh in order to have a constant supply of the illegal sap.