#1st era

[kb-p2730]

[simsabelhudos]

e essa eh a segunda filha, jaci guarany, que ate o presente momento eh um bebe de colo verde e o unico traço dela é agitada kkkkkk

[kagrena]

VYRA

When you come to, it's after four thousand years of being stuck while the whole world's been spinning around you, and you barely recognise a thing. They don't recognise you, either. You're not the half-wild dwemer bastard daughter of some Telvanni wizard-lord, nor are you the architect formerly known as Rzarak, fallen from grace. You don't know if you can go back to being Vyra Rzarak Demnevanni. Maybe some clans can continue on like nothing happened, go back to their workshops where the tones stopped singing so long ago, but you -- you were determined to go your own way, to make something of yourself without the choirs and the clans chiefs trying to figure out what to do with you, without the acolytes who wanted to rip out your throat and the bell towers ringing your name and the half-dozen mentors who scratched their heads because you, Vyra, you could be something brilliant -- when you weren't being difficult, which was all the damn time. You'd taken one good, long look at that world -- and you'd left it all behind.

But not without having it all first. It was the Brass Architect herself who'd gotten through to you, after all, who'd seen you as more than 'trouble', and whipped you into shape. She'd taken one look at the engine in your big old brain, fed it the nuts and bolts of tonal theory, and got it to work, got you to work, got you to love, got you to hunger, and you grew. You grew until you towered over everyone else, one of the brightest minds of your generation, right until you were shining at the top of the spire. Introduced you to the big names, to the players and shakers, to Chief Architect themselves, who picked as one of their favourites - and they did pick favourites among acolytes, that was no secret. Yes, you were good. And once you realised exactly what you were reaching for, you wanted none of it.

The Numidium Project would ruin you all.

You had told people - you'd yelled your damn lungs out - that it was all no good, that it was all was rotten to the core, years before anyone else did. You brought it to the Grand Debate, where you were scolded like a child, and got ousted from Grand Chamber by the Chief Architect herself, who'd carved you up into little pieces and served them up to applause - but by the grace of the very same Chief Architect, you had not fallen fully from your previous stature. No, you'd been offered some write-off tonal engineer position in a minor outpost where you couldn't cause any more 'upsets' nor rouse any other 'upstarts'.

'She didn't want this to happen, Zakya. She's already overcome with grief,' you were told, by the woman you'd considered more than a mother, like you were already dead.

So you left.

You left the only world you knew and you spent forty years being raw and furious with the open skies and roads before you. You cut your hair and shaved your beard, threw out every precise instrument you'd ever touched for netch leather and a well-oiled crossbow. You cut yout hair and ran a caravan from Nchumzel to Tel Enora to half-way across Tamriel that you stashed with knock-off brass implements and any runaway who could pull their weight on your pathetic, wretched father's guilt money and you hated everything and everyone you saw along the way. You cut your hair and it always grew back long and thick and curly, no matter how savagely you cut it. You cut your hair and rode out your rage, tear up the road and everything on it, until the end--

-- until the Call came --

And 'I was right,' turns out to be no comfort at all, not even a bitter one, when the world's rolled on past you, and you haven't changed a bit.

Except that your hair's grown back.

You've realised you miss your grandparents. Even though they died fifty -- four thousand and fifty -- years ago. And you'll never see your cunt of a father again -- more's the fucking pity -- nor your half-brother, unless you waste half a funeral at an ancestral -- shit, what's the word for those things? Shrine?

Your hair's long past that feeling of fresh-cut grass and is beginning to curl around your ears. It itches.

You on keep counting their names. Lyr, the stable kid sweetheart who liked your guar -- you'd let her name them, Mistymuck and Needle and Calamity, that last one you both had a soft spot for -- she'd liked them far more than she ever liked you. She's gone. So is Knocks-on-Wood, the drover your father hired to spy on you, the only person you'd ever considered taking an arrow for. You'll never catch sight of Melyn Drels and his dimwit brother again, nor Shady Jade, nor the Alessian nuns, nor the Tel Enora cornerclub crew nor ---

Kagrenac would never speak to you again.

Kagrenac is still missing. You half-wonder whether she'd thrown herself into Red Mountain in spite.

But Bthemetz might. Bthemetz--

You learn that Red Mountain still smokes in the distance in Ald Resdayn, but the trees are now younger than you are. You only recognise half the road signs in Ald Cyrod. The traders on the high road gawk at you. The route is the same.

You miss them. You've always missed them. You'll always miss them. Your life will always be missing something, and you think you'll have to live with that. You're not happy, but you're no longer so furious you don't know what to do with yourself. The old world you wanted to tear up with you is missing. And you're what's left, Vyra--

When you get enough coin together to get a good look at yourself in a looking glass and not a muddy lake, rough stubble's coming through along the length of your jaw. You decide not to touch it. You pull your hand through your hair. Strange, how its length feels like a comfort now, when it had felt like a wound before.

When you raise a knife to your scalp--

When you raise a knife to your scalp, you think better of it. You finish your tea. It's the fourth era of some empire you've never heard of. Dynasties, what are they good for? You sign the guestlist with VYRA. You give no family name.

[gronglegrowth]

Serjo Indoril Nerevar Mora, circa 1E 582. Here he wears his war mask, holds a ceremonial Chimer spear (a design which would go on later to influence Muatra, whose design in turn would influence other spears), and wears ornate robes. On his right hand, though it is not visible, he wears the ring One Clan Under Moon and Star, a symbol uniting all of Resdayn.

[hashbrownswift]

[kagrena]

(CW: direct references to in-universe slavery)

-------

From the diary of Knocks-on-Wood, Caravan Drover to Vyra Demnevanni: Midnight. 20th, First Seed. 1E 655. Trade Job: Seventy-Two. Route: Tel Enora -> Kemel-Ze. Progress: 34km. Wind: North-West, 309°. Weather: light ash. Lunch: Jellied nix-eels and mushroom assortment (Kemel-Ze style), with shalk egg. Progress Report: Conditions calm. No sickness. Decent spirits amongst the crew – all gotten paid on time. Caravan made good progress despite ash. Cargo all accounted for. Vyra did not yell at Drels, or any of the crew today. Ahead of schedule for once. [Scrawled in the margin: She's not as green as she was once. Almost competent now.] Miscellaneous Notes: Breakthrough. Finally, Vyra's talking again.

Had thought I'd fucked it thoroughly. Vyra, being Vyra, the former pride of Kemel-Ze, hadn’t even given me a sideways glance for weeks since she found out.

[Scrawled in the margin: Can't blame her much. What kind of fucked excuse for a father does she have, employing some schmuck to spy on his favourite bastard?]

Had expected I’d have to talk sense into her, but she approached me first. Sat with me at the start of the night watch. I'd told her to get some shut-eye. It would be her turn in four hours, she needed all the sleep she could get.

“You’re on Sydras Demnevanni’s payroll,” she had said in response. First words to me in weeks.

Told her then, bluntly, that she wouldn’t like what she was going to hear.

“This isn’t about what I’d like, Knox—” [Scrawled up in the corner of the page: But she’d end up getting her way in the end, wouldn’t she?] “—You've been on Sydras' payroll. Since the beginning.”

“Vyra,” I’d told her. “Don’t.”

“Don’t you fucking ‘don’t’ me, Knox. You owe me some fucking answers.”

[Scrawled in the margin: Don’t owe her anything asides from what’s on the dotted line.]

“Demnevanni,” she continued. "Does he know about the Tel Mora shitshow from last year?”

Put my head in my hands. [She's like a battering ram when she gets riled up.]

“Answer the question, Knox. Does he know what really happened up en route from Tel Mora? What really happened with that job? Does he or doesn’t he?”

“Vyra, I'm his damned spy, you know the answer—”

“Don’t fuck with me. Does he know about that job? Does he know about Trade Job Fifty-Nine?”

[Should have lied. Should have just fucking lied.]

“No.” It came out so quiet. You could barely hear. “No, Vyra, he doesn’t.”

And she hadn’t expected that. She’d stepped backwards. She looked at me like I was something new.

“You didn't... so does he also know, then, that I now know—?”

“No, Vyra. He also doesn’t know that you now know about…”

“The fact you’re spying on me. That I know you have been spying on me for years. He truly doesn't know? I-- Why?”

Couldn’t bring myself to squeeze out a lie to that one. Couldn’t bring myself to say anything. Vyra might be a half-dwarf heretic who hadn't tried to even like the chimer she now lived among, having left her brass castle, and still, couldn't think of anyone except her damn self – [Scrawled in the margin: Who are you trying to kid, Knox?] – but she'd been wronged, well enough. And when you travel with someone for years, you also learn their tells. And Vyra – she saw straight through mine.

“So… what, Knox, you don't care? You don't fucking care?”

That, I just shrugged. What was left to say?

"I don't. I don't actually give a damn about Sydras Demnevanni."

And that was when she laughed – threw back her head and cackled. Laughed like the whole world had gone mad except her, echoed through the crags.

[Scrawled in the margin: Girl's fucked in the head.]

[Scrawled in the margin, directly underneath: No more than you, Knox.]

“Fuck me, Knox,” she’d told me. “I'd spent the past hundred days wondering if you were somehow loyal to him.”

“Loyal to Demnevanni?”

What had he ever done to deserve loyalty? That old wizard-lord wouldn't dare stand within five feet of a guar, not for his life.

[A note scrawled in the margin: He pays damn well. It’s the easiest damn coin you've made since you left the Marsh. You send a packet of coins home every month, don't you forget it.]

“Don't say it like it's fucking implausible," said Vyra. “I know he's a cunt, but—” Hist be damned, should have seen the grin on her then – Vyra was beaming. “Knox, you should have said. Would have made trusting you a damn sight easier.”

“Didn't know you trusted me one bit, Vee.”

Vyra huffed and crossed her arms.

“Knox, has it ever occurred to you that I have to trust you? The rest of the crew can go back singing up with the tones for all I care but this – this right here? Doesn't work without you. Besides—”

[Scrawled in the margin, somewhere: Think that was a compliment.]

[Scrawled in the margin, somewhere: She's called everyone but you incompetent. Keep your guar steady.]

"Besides what? Where's this going?"

"I want to do more jobs like Fifty-Nine again."

[Scrawled in the margin: Trade Job Fifty Fucking Nine]

“Vyra.”

“Which means I really have to trust you.”

“Vee.”

[Scrawled all along the margin, in rough strokes: Why, in the name of all the damned gods and beasts and things unholy, does Vyra, a bastard merchant who's never given a shit about tearing anyone else down to get what she wants, give a damn about what happens to Telvanni slaves? Is it guilt? Is it something personal? It couldn't be out of a sense of justice – she knows how this world works, she's too damn smart for that. Can't figure it out.]

“Knox, I've thought things through. I think we can minimise the risks—”

“There's no playing safe with that kind of cargo. Telvanni—”

“You think I don't know what the Telvanni do to them?”

[Scrawled, in larger and larger letters: Why does she care? Why does she care so much? What does this mean to you, Vyra?]

“Not so loud,” I snapped.

She dropped her voice to a fierce whisper.

“By all the fucking tones on this fucking plane of existence – Knox – Knox, please—”

“Please what?”

[Scrawled in the margin, somewhere: First or second time Vyra had ever said please in her life, I reckon.]

“Think about it. Just think about it. I – I can't just do the same-in same-out for another five years, pretending like nothing is wrong with this damn world. I'll actually kill someone.”

“Vyra, you can't—”

“Shut up. This will be more fucking important than anything we've ever fucking done in our sorry lives.”

I’d given her a hard look.

[Scrawled up in the corner of the page: What the in the four corners happened, Vyra? What happened in that little clan of yours, that raised you and fed you, where you never wanted for much, that you'd toss yourself out with the nix-hounds?]

[Scrawled up in the corner, directly underneath: Hate it when she's right]

Then I’d sighed.

“Shit, Vyra. You've really thought about the risks of taking on wanted folk as travellers?”

“I know the risks.”

“And when we get caught?”

“I know the risks.”

“And you’ve thought about the rest of us? What getting caught might mean for the likes of us? A Marsh exile, two Ashlander vagabonds, and a half-deaf sewer rat you've made out to be a stableboy—"

“Lyr isn't—”

“—I know she isn't – Let me finish.”

She halted.

“Jade's already got a price on his head out in Hammerfell. I can’t step foot in half the kingdoms of Argonia else they’ll have my head. You know what will happen to us?”

“I’ll take the fall—”

“But they’ll blame us. We're the leftover scraps, the dregs, the scum they've raked off the bottom—”

“You're not scum—”

“—But we're scum to them. And they're the ones that matter. They're the ones with the noose, Vee. Think about that.”

Vyra looked at me like she wanted to tear me apart. But didn't say anything.

Things got real quiet, after that. Didn't have much else to say. Vyra, reckon by the way her hands twitched, she started counting the stars. New moons, plenty of them out.

[Scrawled up in the corner: Know it's her favourite sky. Know she's sentimental for it, despite the fact that she pretends she couldn't give a damn. My theory's that she likes to count to keep it all in check. Always stock-keeping.]

It got comfortable after a while.

[Scrawled all along the margin: If I close my eyes, it’s not too far from the cornerclub days again. Trading stories about old jobs gone wrong and things gone sour like we could have been friends. Back when Demnevanni was still bank-rolling his favourite bastard daughter’s scheme to fleece all the other wizard-lords to Oblivion and back when we spent every coin of his dirty money after pay day on Flin and Wildgrass. We’d pour our hearts and guts out, then head out of town, gaze up at the stars, and smoke in a ditch somewhere. She’d count them, tell me shit about magnetic fields and constellations. Always surprised me that. On the worst days, I forget she’s anything other than a Caravan Master. The damn thing she refuses to call herself. Vyra, call me Vyra, she says— gets short with you otherwise. Like a Caravan Master might.]

She stood up suddenly. Held my gaze.

“I won't go ahead with it unless you’re on board, Knox."

"That's bullshit, Vee."

"No. No it's not." She looked me dead in the eye. “And you're not scum to me, Knox.”

Didn't say anything to that. [Scrawled at the bottom of the page: Hate it when she's right.]. Simply watched her walk off, shrinking from big to small as she moved up towards the horizon, up towards the smoke still billowing from the campfire. Still smouldering. Tried to look away. Looked up instead.

[Scrawled in the margin: Burnt silver, that colour – she'd say the tone, wouldn't she? – where she'd been looking, her patch of stars up in the sky. Pretty. But not much else to note.]

The rest of the watch was uneventful.

[kagrena]

“... Is everything alright?”

There's a stuttering silence. The machines whir and hiss and turn and clatter behind you. Dozen of stunned faces – architects and academics in tall hats, aghast – turn towards you, and they stare. (Despite your efforts, it has proven impossible to find her alone, unaccompanied by a whirl of acolytes and experts and engineers and entourages orbiting around her, who follow no matter where she goes.)

She, however, does not mirror the horror dripping off every colleague’s face – she looks at you intently, keenly, but beyond that, there's barely any recognition of the gravity of your question at all. As she watches you, you feel this faint, almost clawing sensation behind your eyes, and you can't help but wonder if she will snap them out like a tired hawk – but it's just a feeling. One, you think you'll question later, and wonder if it was her reputation speaking for her that made you assume she’d do any such thing.

She answers, finally, while you're lost in your pondering.

"I am fine. Is that all?"

You snap your head up. And feel something constrict in your throat, just looking at her stare. And you feel yourself nod, deferentially, and then shake your head, shamefully, and then spin around and out the door before someone can wave you out.

It's not like she looks any different. If anything, she looks more polished, rather than less. You're well aware that the grand gilded Kagrenac of the Debate Chamber is half-fiction, a romance of academes. In the heat of the workshop, in front of the forge, in the midsts of a lecture for her most dedicated acolytes where passion is fire, you'll catch hairs flying out of place, sweat on her brow, dirt on her cheek, rumples, mistakes, folds. It wasn't too long ago, when you were still an apprentice-in-training yourself, that the running joke was that you couldn't single Kagrenac, Chief of Tones, out from sight alone in the workshop din, you'd tap the wrong person's shoulder twice before you'd find a small, simply dressed dwemer with tired eyes and an even more weary tone, and tell yourself: ah, this is Kagrenac.

Kagrenac, now, however? There is nothing out of place. Not a single strand. It's exactly the thing that tells you something is wrong. You’re not close enough, though, to be within reach of the answer. You wonder if anyone truly is.

[simsabelhudos]

tainá chamou os espíritos de sulani pro lote dela pra ver como tavam as coisas no outro plano, eles acharam tudo mais ou menos e um deles ainda deu um fora nela

não estão fáceis as coisas por aqui no momento