Skyrumour: Dragonmounts, Morrowind Locales?
Look at you, hackers. Rummaging through Skyrim's files and turning up references to what might - but only might - be the game's next and perhaps most ambitious DLC. If the details revealed and shared hold weight, the next pack could be called Dragonborn, and could include FLYING ON THE BACK OF DRAGONS plus new locations that fall tantalisingly close to the hallowed province of Morrowind on the atlas of Tamriel.
This was allegedly turned up as a result of exploring allegedblahblah files in the Skyrim 1.8 beta, with Bethesda forumites then sharing their nuggets of potential truth.
Of particular interest were these animation-related files:
DragonMountedDualMagic.txt
DragonMountedDualStaff.txt
DragonMountedMLhSolo.txt
DragonMountedMLhStaff.txt
DragonMountedMRhSolo.txt
DragonMountedMRhSolo_ShieldOrTorch.txt
DragonMountedMRhStaff.txt
Lummee. Imma gonna ride me a dragon, son. Though let's hope those references are to player animations, not merely NPC ones. That'd be a kick in the teeth.
Also allegedly in these files are references to the following new locations: Raven Rock, Miraak Temple, Castle Karstaag. Telvanni Tower and Solstheim. I'll point you at the Wiki page about the latter, as I'm not personally familiar with it [edit - doh, I thought it sounded familiar, but I was having a brain wobble - it's where Morrowind's splendid werewolfy expansion Bloodmoon is set, of course. How embarrassing!], but Elder Scrolls loreheads are frothing about the fact that it's technically within Morrowind.
There are whole lot of Dunmer, refugees from earlier conflicts in Morrowind, living there, so that could provide a bunch of both new lore and ties to Morrowind - and of course there's the werewolves element, although we've seen that done in the Companions questline in Skyrim already. But who knows - this is mere speculation, and even if snowbound Solstheim is in this apparent new update it might just be as a convenient extension of the map that doesn't require too much in the way of new art assets.
There's also mention of new craftable, dragon parts-based armour, which pleases me (I ran out of things to craft all too soon).
Follow the ongoing exploration here.