The Red Year was one of the greatest "natural" catastrophes in the history of Tamriel, so many lives of all varieties were lost. Despite this, anyone in this field knows, nature always reasserts itself, even where Men and Mer struggle. That is why I deemed it necessary to perform this survey. While many on the mainland consider the smoking ruin of Vvardenfell lost, in the 200 odd years since Red Mountain erupted, life has persisted on the island in new and unique ways. First, I must thank my associates, Edra Oril, and his partner, Thoronor, without their veteran expertise this project wouldn't have been possible.
THE VOLCANIC WEST
The most striking region of modern Vvardenfell is of course, its western regions, where almost everything was destroyed in the wake of Red Mountain's eruption. While historically only a small region of the island was known as "the Ashlands", now that title is often used refer to its entire western coast. Once full of a variety of life, it now mostly only home to many varieties of shalk, newly migrated fetcherflies, and the occasional netch. Shalks, being well adapted to volcanic environments (being able to survive even submerged in magma) naturally took over the ecosystem after the Red Year, outcompeting the less heat resistant arthropods, such as nix-hounds and kwama.
THE SCATHING BAY
What was once the great city of Vivec is now a massive crater. The city was crushed by a giant floating rock, once one of the wonders of Tamriel, suddenly fell. Now the region is known as the Scathing Bay, a body of water that is mysteriously still boiling hot to this day. Due to this there seems to always be large amounts of dead sea life and scavengers on its shores. As it may horrify some Dummer to hear, swarms of cliff racers have returned to Vvardenfell, though thankfully they never seem to stray far from the shore. Perhaps they still possess some ancestral fear.
While the Scathing Bay itself is mostly lifeless. We observed a strange behavior in the Dreugh of the area. Periodically, a Dreugh would swim from the Inner Sea as far into the Scathing Bay as they could and they remained motionless until they could no longer bear the pain of the boiling water. It is hard to determine what could have caused this behavior, as it even proved fatal for some Dreugh. However before we had a chance to make contact, we were attacked by a group of salt golems, created by some rogue mage. As such we had to abandon the temporary research camp prematurely.