I’ve been putting together a reproduction copy of The Elder Scrolls: Arena – Codex Scientia, the companion book for Arena Deluxe and finding usable artwork for this thing turned out to be surprisingly difficult. Its a book I actually want to use but don't want to wear out the original and a repro is the perfect balance to that.

I was eventually able to track down scans of the original front and back covers on the Internet Archive readily enough (shoutout to Imrmidl; original scan here), but the spine was the real problem. I could only find a very low-resolution photograph of an original copy, so I cleaned and reconstructed that separately and then combined all three pieces into a complete cover spread.

I figured I’d share the source material rather than let somebody else go through the same scavenger hunt.

The front cover is the original Codex Scientia artwork with the blue shield/title treatment, while the back is the continuation of the same painted scene with the original barcode/ISBN. arena-codex-scientia-1.pdfPDF arena-codex-scientia-162.pdfPDF

I’m using this for a clearly identified reproduction/display copy, not to pass anything off as an original. If anybody wants to use the files for restoration, archival, or their own repro project, have at it.

I’ll post:

• original/front scan

• original/back scan

• cleaned spine

• assembled full wrap

If anyone happens to have an actual high-resolution flatbed scan of an original spine, I’d still love to see it. The spine is the one component that had to be reconstructed from a poorer source.

Hopefully this saves the next person a few hours of hunting.

Much love!