Battlespire Easter Egg Unlocked: Julian LeFay Papers Reveal 1997 Bethesda MS-DOS Secret

A nearly three-decade mystery in An Elder Scrolls Legend: Battlespire has been solved after documents from Julian LeFay’s archive were donated to the Strong Museum of Play in Rochester, New York. The discovery, shared by Andrew Borman, director of Digital Preservation at the Strong, explains how to trigger an Easter egg first documented by community researchers decades ago but never reproducible in-game—until now. Battlespire, developed by Bethesda Softworks and released for MS-DOS in 1997, began life as Dungeons of Daggerfall: Battlespire and was led by Julian LeFay. The title was originally conceived as an expansion for 1996’s The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall before growing into a standalone project after work on what became Morrowind was postponed. Battlespire’s action-adventure focus and reduced scope led to mixed critical reception and it performed noticeably less well commercially than other Elder Scrolls entries at the time. Redguard followed a year later in 1998. The community-maintained Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages Wiki had previously cataloged an in-game Easter egg showing a team photo and two text lines: a greeting from the Elder Scrolls team and a note stating “Battlespire rules” followed by developers’ first names. Until the LeFay collection surfaced at the Strong, how to display that image in the running game was unknown. According to Borman’s documentation of the find, the activation method is embedded in the game code within the donated papers. The steps are straightforward: start a Battlespire session, hold down the number 1 key, and type the word Spire. The team image and accompanying messages appear while the key remains depressed; release the button and the Easter egg vanishes. Borman emphasized the need to keep the key held until the image is visible to reproduce the effect. The Julian LeFay Collection arrived at the Strong after Christopher Weaver, Bethesda’s original founder, contacted LeFay’s family on the museum’s behalf. Borman described the donation as primarily LeFay’s game work, including his post-Bethesda contributions (such as work on Skullgirls) and historically valuable Dungeons & Dragons campaign notes that influenced the Elder Scrolls lore. The collection also contains personal materials—photographs and a Kurzweil K2000 digital synthesizer—that help present both LeFay’s professional output and the person behind it. The Strong plans to make portions of the archive available to researchers, though digital access will take longer because materials must be curated for privacy and copyright reasons. Some items from the collection are already accessible through the Imperial Library. For fans and historians of Bethesda and the Elder Scrolls series, the find not only resolves a long-standing curiosity about Battlespire but also enriches public records of the franchise’s early development.