The Elder Scrolls game series has been around since 1994 with the release of The Elder Scrolls: Arena, but the series has gone through a number of story and graphical transformations since then. Arguably, the most important change came when The Elder Scrolls games started using actual Elder Scrolls as the driving force behind the story.
The most notable use of Elder Scrolls in a story came with The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim; however, it isn't the only one. The Elder Scrolls Online and The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion both have direct interactions with Elder Scrolls outside of lore dumps from characters and books in game.
What is an Elder Scroll?
Elder Scrolls are extremely rare objects in The Elder Scrolls universe. These magic scrolls are said to precede the Aedra and Daedra which means the Elder Scrolls were not created by the gods of Tamriel, yet they still exist. The contents of each scroll varies wildly because each reader of any given scroll will recite different events that may have happened or have not happened yet. These past and future events typically surround a prophecy represented by the Elder Scroll. Once the prophecy has come to pass, the events in the Elder Scroll are set in stone and will be consistent to each reader afterwards.
The Cult of the Ancestor Moth is a group in The Elder Scrolls franchise whose members, known as Moth Priests, devote their lives to studying the Elder Scrolls. There is a Moth Priest named Dexion Evicus featured in Skyrim who is a thrall of Harkon in the Dawnguard questline. These Moth Priests must perform a ritual that involves attracting Ancestor Moths in order to give the priest the ability to read the scroll. Unfortunately, reading an Elder Scroll exposes the reader to an unstable magic that will over time cause permanent blindness or even insanity. Most Moth Priests do not remain active priests for long because of how frequently they read Elder Scrolls, while the Dwemer were able to construct lexicons to transcribe the information from Elder Scrolls to circumvent the consequences of reading the scrolls directly.
How Many Elder Scrolls Are There?
According to The Elder Scrolls lore, the Moth Priests stored their valuable Elder Scrolls in the White-Gold Tower. This is the same tower featured in the Imperial City of Cyrodiil which many players remember from their time playing The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion. Sometime between the events of Oblivion and Skyrim, there was a break-in at the White-Gold Tower's library that resulted in the loss of all known Elder Scrolls. This loss caused the Moth Priests to venture out into the world in search of the missing Elder Scrolls.
As far as exactly how many there are, it is important to know how many can be found within The Elder Scrolls games. There are 11 Elder Scrolls that the player can come across in The Elder Scrolls franchise. There is one in Oblivion which the Hero of Kvatch steals for a quest in the Thieves Guild, 3 Elder Scrolls can be found in Skyrim which appear during the main questline and the Dawnguard DLC questline, and the other 7 are all encountered while playing The Elder Scrolls Online. 6 of these Elder Scrolls function as capture the flag objectives in the online game's player versus player mode. The last Elder Scroll gets featured as part of a questline surrounding a Daedra that attempts to steal one for Molag-Bal.
According to a book found in The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim, there were attempts by the Cult of the Ancestor Moth to quantify the number of Elder Scrolls. What they found was that every attempt to count the scrolls resulted in a different number. Due to the mystical nature of the Elder Scrolls, they appear to exist in a state of quantum flux where any attempt to measure them would change their quantity. This finding makes the quest of the Moth Priests all the more intriguing as they understand that there is no way to tell if they have collected all the scrolls.
Perhaps the upcoming game will shed more light on the subject of the Elder Scrolls. There may even be more information given on who and why the Elder Scrolls were scattered across Tamriel in the first place.
The Elder Scrolls 6 is currently in development.