#entirely normal

So the only cannon appearances of Zurin occur as the Underking, which has made it pretty difficult to discern what he may have looked like when he was, you know, not a rotting undead wizard. (no Wulfharth arguments accepted. We know Daggerfall Underking is Zurin.)

But both in official art and additionally official Bethesda Daggerfall anniversary post art, there's two reoccurring features: red eyes (which may just be a product of the time and trope of depicting 'villains' with red eyes (while Underking isn't really a villain)), and seemingly long white / blond hair.

Race wise, some people would argue he's a Breton, but in reality we just don't know. Nothing has ever stated his race before, and here's my thoughts on the matter. Being stated in lore as being the most powerful mage to ever exist, likely being inhabited by Magnus (a Cyrodiilic legend. Again, more on this later) or closely associated with him, having his power probably means that race/racial bonuses really wouldn't matter (not that powerful mages have exclusively been Mer). He's also the only Grand Vizier to be referred to as the Cyrodiilic Grand Vizier as far as I know, which could potentially be linked to (as seen in Morrowind) people referring to Imperials as: Cyrodiil, Cyrodiilic, even Cyrods. Now to the out of lore comments: 1) an interview states 'Arnand the Fox' (A name Mannimarco refers to him as) as a name Breton's call clever people (not necessarily that 'Arnand the Fox' = Breton race), and 2) Lawrence Schick referring to Zurin as "that mad creature" (interesting choice of words. Does race even apply to him in his eyes?) when speaking of how he wanted Abnur Tharn (an Imperial) to turn into Zurin Arctus (An idea which I will heavily stress wasn't allowed nor made cannon or 'half cannon out of game post' cannon. He is not Abnur Tharn, nor has any relation to him), but while he is not Abnur Tharn, the thought process implies he could be Imperial like Tharn is?? A stretch, but also the only two characters with Arctus or similar in their name are this guy in Skyrim and the imperial spymaster who wrote this, both Imperial seemingly.

Basically, there isn't a clear answer even if considering out of lore content, so I really try to depict him as racially ambiguous even if I think he's maybe Imperial or just his own thing, with a bit of plausible deniability with his ears (I do also like how ESO Bretons specifically have slightly pointy ears). But also, I genuinely don't think he's a normal man, maybe like a not-man in a trench coat cosplaying as a normal man.

Now onto Magnus and his connection. Cyrodiilic legends say Magnus can inhabit the bodies of powerful mages, and the one person he seems to have done this with is Zurin. Really don't know anything about the extent of this, if he's just using his power or if he is acting and using Zurin's body as a vessel. Who knows? Magnus clearly likes him. Anyhow, even if only a subtle reference to this relationship, I try to reference this in my design, which is where the mark under his eye (A divine script character) in my design comes from (Magnus has a thing with eyes: case 1, case 2, arguably case 3 and notably case 4. So the placement seemed significant). Side tangent, a sort of headcannon I have is that Zurin has some degree of poor eyesight, even if just while using magic. Magnus is blind (and is probably related to the blind god who guards the mantella from TES2 Daggerfall if we're not retconning him out of existence), and Zurin also has red eyes, which cannot be good for his eyesight.

Anyway, we don't have a cannon appearance of not-undead Zurin, so even while I have a design for his face, I prefer to cover his head with a mages hood to obscure most of his face from being seen, as perhaps he just didn't like being seen much. Clothing wise: MK did once tease in a reddit post when someone asked about Zurin's appearance (aside from Underking) that he did once draw him, but either never found it or got around to posting it. But in this post, someone asks if he's the figure on the left in this image:

To which MK said he didn't know who that was, but said 'maybe we retroactively all just say it was him'. So this is basically what I've just decided to go with in terms of armour, even though it's an Imperial Guard Uniform (as stated in Redguard's concept art), because there's just nothing else. But with red robes, of course, a trademark robe colour of the Underking.

So here I dump breakdowns of my design 🤷‍♀️ can't wait for Bethesda (or MK) to finally depict him and throw all of this out the window. Apparently, my sketching style leaves a lot up to interpretation (and not in an easy way, I hear), so uh, hope this is somewhat clearer!! If you want more of a cohesive (and coloured) ref, go check out this post I guess? Design only just came out of the oven

Typical clothing, referencing both TESA Redguard era imperial guards and ESO Nibenese court wizard style set

With some references / side by sides. In old works, I gave him more traditional mage robes instead of pants, but in this I gave him pants. I go between both. Multiple iterations were made (I've not done ref sheets before so have very segmented refs)

Face breakdown I made for someone and that I am shoving here after minor edits to it. Didn't colour this, but again, red eyes & white hair is what I give him

Height? Idk, I drew him in the back of this old Dram fanart, and then we found out roughly how tall Dram was. Was the height in this fanart exaggerated for composition effects? Yes. Did we decide to stick with the height and keep him some as tall lanky mage? Also yes.

Hand of his I drew when going through my hands phase. And finally, months later, I explain ring variations I drew after a discussion on how many rings Zurin would wear, and how the second variant was later featured in a certain art piece by a dear friend. I go with the first one, though. Although, it would be funny if I drew him at the start of the wars with minimal rings and with many rings at the end of the wars.

Anyway, various cryptic scribbles that were probably not meant to be made sense of 's prototype and what I actually turned them in to (Tumblr hates long vertical images so you're getting a horizontal one)

For the bottom of the robes/pants, I decided to use Akaviri script to highlight the influence of Akaviri culture on Cyrodiilic culture as stated in Pocket guide 1st edition because I really love the old Cyrodiil lore even if it's annoying to draw that much detail. It is currently gibberish, which is one of the unfortunate things about the state of languages in TES.

For the staff design, I'm just reusing the Daggerfall version of the staff of Magnus (with a small recolour) just for a little nod to his Magnus association, and because it’s a neat low-key staff design and after like 3 years I have discovered I cannot design cool staves to save my life. The staff in question:

I'll put out a full body shot at some point, but the one I was making was beyond salvaging

Now have some other random ideas that I'm currently not doing anything with

black hair from an akaviri theory

first concept ever I think, but it was as an elf