Back in autumn 1994, a budding illustrator named Mark Jackson was hired on to a primeval Bethesda Softworks to create character artwork for The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall. For the project Jackson authored up the aesthetics for all sixteen of the Daedric Princes (as well as various other characters) under the direction of series creator Julian LeFay and game designer Ted Peterson—this included everything from concept illustration to all of the digital sprite work. His artistic designs proved to be quite popular, and incredibly almost all of his Daedric Prince work translated directly from their appearance in 1996’s Daggerfall to 2006’s The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion—including the key antagonist of that game, Mehrunes Dagon.
Jackson decided to depart Softworks after Daggerfall to pursue other work more conducive to his development as an artist, but was asked back on a contract basis for Battlespire by LeFay. This time around Jackson served only as a concept artist for all of the monsters and non-player characters to appear in the game, while art lead Mark Jones adapted his drawings into 3D animated creatures and character sprites. And having created the original Daedra for Daggerfall previously, it’s no mystery why he was chosen to create the Daedra for Battlespire. According to Jackson, artistic directions from Julian LeFay usually came in the form of a very short sentence teasing the general theme and vibe of the character to let an artist run with—visual descriptions such as “superhero-looking chick” (describing Zenaida Nacarra) or “old mad wizard” (describing Clarentavious Valisious) can be seen in the game’s dialogue files and provide a decent idea of what these directions were like.
With the permission of the LeFay Family, Mark Jackson himself, and Bethesda Softworks, we share never before seen photo copies of Jackson’s original sketches created for Battlespire which were recovered from the personal archive of Julian LeFay. See also our wiki gallery for extra concept imagery.
Special thanks to Mark Jackson for hosting permissions and for providing the creator commentary from above. If you wish to check out more of his art, please take a gander at his professional portfolio: Stone Age Robot—The Art and Illustration of Mark A. W. Jackson.
Note: Some of these images contain partial nudity
Avimael Storm 
The Clannfear 
Dark Seducer 
The Dremora 
Faydra Shardai 
Fire Daedra 
Frost Daedra 
Jaciel Morgan 
Morphoid Daedra 
Old Man Chimere 
Rishaal Tamir 
The Scamp 
Shade Daedra 
Spider Daedra 
Spirit Daedra 
Sumeer Jabran 
Type VIII Daedra 
The Vermai 
Wonshala Keriayn 
Xivilai Moath 
Zenaida Nacarra
Author’s Note: All text content was hand written and researched without the assistance of any GenAI.
