Made some Hades style study of my Altmer. Of Course Background is credited to ESO Official Splash Artist. Just did the char work.
His name is Ervien, A runaway Ex-Sapriach Apprentice who followed his Sapriach mentor to Elswyr to escape Thalmor after questioning eligibility of their claim of Crystal Tower being the reason the Oblivion Crisis ended and Thalmor being responsible with it. He's Also the characther im using for Delvebound system Oneshot center around Elswyr and investigating what actually happened in Dissapearance of Two-Moons.
“If there is one advice this one could give you regarding true love, it would be that it will never be as you expected. When Khajiit was just a kitten, he imagined true love as romantic walks on the beach, watching the sunset and living in a great house where we would enjoy life one day at the time. Little did this one know, his real true love would actually involve treading in a dark, damp elven ruin filled with traps and very, very angry ghosts. Still, all of the trouble was worth it when Khajiit saw his partner’s smile as we found the hidden library…”
– Extract from Sa'jidarr’s diary as he recounts an expedition with his partner Amulneesh.
I sided with The Stormcloaks on my initial Skyrim run, and always found the insistence by the majority of fans that they are objectively wrong a bit annoying. However, over the years I have realized that was a bit short-sighted of me and I understand other fans feeling that way a lot more. However, I've noticed a lot of Empire fans doing the same thing with The Stormcloaks. Which I find interesting and I want to explore a bit.
I've noticed for a while now that the discourse surrounding The Stormcloaks vs The Imperials has gotten a lot less black and white online. A lot more positive things are said about The Stormcloaks, even if a lot of it is memes. Meanwhile The Empire gets a lot more flak for being... well... imperialist.
Initially I kind of worried this was a rise of the alt-right in the fanbase. Especially given the pro-Stormcloak posts often come in the form of that "Of Course I'm Racist" meme. The one where the racist has a diverse friend group. However, that meme has clearly escaped its alt-right roots and plenty of cool and woke folk have used it in the context of Skyrim's Stormcloaks. So, I think that the alt-right are only a small part of the Stormcloak rise.
The other reason I think this debate has become more gray is the further education people have had on the lore and how complicated Tamriel's racial politics are. Skyrim was the first game for a lot of fans, myself included. Many of us walked into Windhelm and saw a drunken nord harassing a dunmer woman and immediately took her side. We further went on to ask Ulfric about this injustice, and he gave a very dismissive answer. This would naturally raise some ire. However, many of us then went on to play Morrowind and our perspectives on Tamriel race relations got an adjustment as we realized the dark elves were not quite the perfect, innocent, victims we assumed.
Just to be clear, this post isn't meant to make fun of those who initially sided with the dunmer. I understand why many fans would see a majority population of Scandinavian looking motherfuckers picking on dark skinned minority and immediately side with the dunmer. However, this narrative has been dropped so hard recently. I think this is indicative of how much the general fanbase has changed their attitude towards the dark elves. Especially since I remember one of the most popular Skyrim posts on Tumblr being a comic of someone's dunmer girl LDB OC melting Wuuthrad down. Then many learned that this comic could be interpreted as a dunmer (a race of slavers with legal assassination) destroying an artifact of a bunch of immigrants who were almost genocided by the Snow Elves. Also, the dark elves were never especially kind neighbors to either the nords of argonians. Plus, it seems to be implied the dark elves are why the argonians are forced to live outside the city walls, not the nords.
Ultimately though, I think the reason we as a fanbase have gotten more gray on the civil war is simply that a lot of us have matured after all these years. I was 12 when I first played this game. Not long after it came out. I'm now 27. I initially sided with The Stormcloaks because the game's opening made it seem like we were supposed to. Between the first guy who talks to you being a Stormcloak, and The Empire being the ones to try and take your head off. So, when I saw people getting weirdly antagonistic about it and saying "siding with the Stormcloaks is racist!" my pre-teen to teen brain got to me and I got defensive about it.
Now, if someone said that to me... I could only give them this look...
These are fictional factions of a fictional world. If someone told me "Ulfric Stormcloak is a racist and a fascist!", I'd simply tell them "So is the president of the United States. Frankly, I'm more concerned about him becoming king of the US than Ulfric becoming king of Skyrim".
Sorry to get a bit political at the end there, but I felt it needed to be said. Does anyone in the general fanbase feel the same way, or do you guys think the rise rise of Stormcloak sympathizers is for a different reason? Also, nowadays I kind of side with whoever I think my dragonborn would depending on how I'm playing them (race, play style, and backstory). Do you do the same?
the sky is full of smoke, but the fire's all burnt out.
"I have this recurring dream. But I don't think it's a dream, actually."
you're in bed together. it's funny – neither of you needed to sleep. she's made of wires and salvage and you're made of ash and light glued together all wrong. but you liked the facade, on occasion.
"What happens?"
"Well... I meet her again."
you try not to tense up. all you know is scraps and what she's told you, in moments like this, but you've told her before - you can only imagine Kagrenac as someone truly giant. a colossus of a woman, a tower of her own making (even though, as Bthemetz has told you before, she was no taller than 165cm).
"And...?"
she squeezes your hand. stay with me.
"It... um, well it's a bit of a disaster, actually." there's a laugh. there's little humour in it. "You'd call it - what, a right old shitshow? A clusterfuck. A flaming shitheap."
"Wouldn't say 'right old'. But go on. Big fan of shitshows."
"Oh, you're such an ass," and she kicks you in the knee. but it's a game - you can't feel that kind of pain anymore (like, literally. your pain threshold is totally shot. thank you head trauma) and you're not about to let go now, so you hold her loose as she breathes into you, tries to open the cavity where her heart should be but instead there's an empty drum, and takes a deep breath.
"I mean – it's like nothing happened. Nothing at all. Nothing. It's the same damn argument, Kas. Ugh." she slumps back against your chest. "She's still trying to take me down like there's a fully-fledged choir watching her, demolish me, dismantle me, brick by brick, until I'm rubble, and then she'll grind me down into dust, and then put me in a smelter to make a knife out of, because she just doesn't know when to stop." she takes a weary, weary breath. "And you know, it used to - I mean, I was never scared, you know, Rena was... well, Rena until right up at the end and she wasn't my... I guess I saw what she was to others. And I used to find that... disquieting? Overwhelming? Like my chest was going to cave in, which doesn't even make sense, Kas, it's... am I making sense?"
"You're making sense, Bthem. It's alright."
"Okay. Okay.... well. It was... that, but it's... now... now, you won't fucking believe this, but it's just tiring. I'm just tired of it. I've grown bored of the same damn argument. It gets tedious – traitorous, treasonous, treacherous, all those darling ts she just loves to tick off as she tears into me, grinds me up to pieces, again and again, all the while, I'm standing there just thinking... can you please tell me something I don't know? Really, where's the novelty?" there's a laugh, that could be a cry that's been strangled. "And the thing is, the thing that gets me, is that I've tried pushing past that, I've tried... I've tried saying, Kagrena, open your damn ears, put your head to the audioscope, by the hearing-brass, just listen to where the world is! It's still live and kicking! It hasn't ended just because you're gone. Everything has changed and gone and it's still changing and going and.... and she's stuck in that moment. She's stuck there."
you think of Kagrenac, the colossus, entombed in her throne of singing metal. it's a false image.
"And it's... not as if she doesn't know. That's the thing. She's..."
she points to where there's a space.
where she told you, once, how the scholar-priests, sapiarchs, who thought their secrets the domain of their selected few, decided to carve a false god out of a woman's body. where the beat comes from.
you still struggled to get your head around that.
"She knows what year it is. She knows who's a candidate for the contested spot of High King and who's a puppet for the Empire. She knows... the Grandmaster of the Tong, she knows her name. She knows all of this." a deep breath. "And it does not matter to her in the slightest. Insignificant, in comparison. It pales." Her fingers curl slightly. "To what? To our arguments? To our impassioned debates over a dead machine. It's all dust, Kas. Dead pages. And even what's left of her, still caught up in the beat, it's... I'm talking to a relic. She's stuck. And she can't move on."
and she's rattling. closest she can get to the shakes, in this body.
"Bthem," you say, steady.
"I'm scared for her. Does that make any sense? Does that make any sense at all?"
you don't think you know the answer to that question. you never knew this woman. putting aside - as you've learnt to do with everything Bthem - all those nasty children's tales you were fed about the dwemer, faithless heretics who spun their own demise, you've pieced her together through wistful stories about her demolishing her opponents that Bthemetz finds funny for reasons lost in time and then late night crying fits Bthem refused to talk about for the first ten, twenty years. you know it can't be the whole picture. you know Bthem loved her once, loved her utterly. even if you can't fathom how.
"It sounds complicated."
"It... yeah, it is. I'm really worried."
you have to word the next question carefully.
"You think something's bad going to happen there... wherever she is?"
"That she's at the root of? No. She's too gone for that." something breaks in her voice. "But... Kas, she's trapped there."
you feel something in you tighten.
"She's trapped there of her own volition," you say evenly.
"She was backed into a corner," said Bthemetz. "You know this."
you did know this. you have put to memory every bitter detail of the account she gave of the most important event in Morrowind's history. you remember how much it hurt for her to tell.
"I know. But then she chose not to move on. She was pushed, sure. But you say she's still there, still stuck, still lashing out. But she doesn't have to be like that, you know?"
"Kasmei, she lost everything."
"So did you."
you moved on, you don't say. you lost thousands of years. twice. and you still find reasons to live.
"For what it's worth," you add. "I don't wish her eternal torment. Nobody deserves that. I just..." you scratch your head. "This is hurting you, you realise that, yeah?"
"Of course I do."
"So, forgive me, but I find it hard to sympathise with the person who's causing you hurt."
she's quiet, for a moment. you suspect she doesn't agree - that she brought this on herself, that this was deserved, somehow, and would bristle, if you pushed the point further - but you've given her something to consider.
and you almost - you almost draw her in tighter than you should. you want to hold her tight to her chese even though her heat tank is still half-functioning and she's hot and cold in all the wrong places.
if you were a normal person, you'd have scalded. if you were a normal person, it'd have left a mark.
but you remember, at the last moment, that she needs space to breathe.
"Hey, Kas?" she says, after a moment. "I'm not a complete relic yet, am I?"
"No," you say, without hesitation. "You're still kicking, aren't you?"
"I guess, yeah." her voice isn't as heavy. "I'm still kicking."
I love you, you'll tell her later, after you've brewed a pot of her favourite tea. you'll nip out, when the sun's still orange and she's still trying to catch some not-actually-necessary sleep, and pick the dark stemmed leaves you know she likes, from the highest point of the mountain where the air thins, gets herself giddy over. it takes a lot out of you to visit her in person these days - you feel layers of you shedding every time you have to phase somewhere, like the world wants to yoink you back to the void like a naughty child. stay here says the universe. no, you shout back. you suspect there might come a day where you can't do this, anymore. where you'll actually be dead. wouldn't that be funny, you've told Bthem, and she always tells you to shut your trap, because it's better that you're here. it's better, so you'll keep on struggling. you'll keep on swimming, until they tear you down.
"Good," you say to her. "It's a good thing, you're still here. A really good thing."
Morndas, 2nd of Sun’s Dusk, 4E 208. Brynjolf, my Bryn, the love of my life, fellow Nightingale, husband, and partner in crime. Where do I begin? Should I even be writing about the secret life of a criminal overlord? He lies sleeping soundly next to me in our soft wide bed at the Tiber Septim Hotel in the Imperial City, the thick white scars across his shoulders and chest rising and falling as he breathes. He mumbles something in his sleep, and rolls over to face the nightstand. Diary, I think I’m safe to confess the story of the life of this amazing man. I shall start from the beginning.
Brynjolf was born in Ivarstead, to two poor parents who made their living bringing supplies from other parts of Skyrim to the Vilemyr Inn or all the way up the Seven Thousand Steps to High Hrothgar for the Greybeards. As such, Brynjolf was mostly raised by his retired grandmother, and from the time he could walk was always up to mischief in town. One of his earliest memories is of a practical joke, sneaking behind a patrolling guard and undoing his belt so that his greaves dropped to the ground, right in the middle of town. He quickly squirreled his way up a drainpipe and over a roof, and never got caught. Already, sneaking was in his blood.
By the age of six, Brynjolf was helping his father carry food to High Hrothgar, and his mother with the inn supplies. He was known as the master prankster of Ivarstead, and things always seemed to go missing whenever he was around. Still, he helped his parents with their honest hard work, until the day they set off with their horse and carriage and were never seen again. A couple of weeks later, a courier ran panting into town, passing a letter to his grandmother. She sobbed and broke the news to Brynjolf. Bandits had intercepted their carriage loaded with supplies on the way back from Riverwood, and had killed them both before making away with their coin and loot. The Riverwood guard had managed to track the bandits down and kill them, but it was too late. Their bodies were brought back to Ivarstead under a bloodied white sheet soon after the courier’s visit, and they were buried in the local graveyard. Through the entire course of events, Brynjolf never shed a tear, as an overwhelming numbness and anger had taken over him.
Working hard on the menial jobs he could around town to support himself and his impoverished grandmother, he scrubbed floors, cleaned chimneys, and served customers at the inn. At night, he would sneak out of the house to secretly practice fighting with a town guard who had taken pity on him. They practiced archery and swordfighting, as well as a rigorous exercise regime that left Brynjolf sore in the morning. But his anger fueled his concentration, and soon he was a fit and capable fighter at a tender age. Soon he was spending his days risking his life at the nearby caves and ruins, slaying whatever enemies he faced with ease and making his way out with as many coins, jewels, and other treasures he could find within. Of course, he always got a caning when he finally got home, but now there was always a guarantee of three square meals on the table and wood for the fireplace.
At the age of nine, Brynjolf’s grandmother passed away in her sleep. The rest of the town was either too busy or too poor to look after him, or had heard of his increasingly bad reputation as a problem child. He was far too young to live on his own, so a town meeting was called and it was decided that Brynjolf would be sent to Honourhall Orphanage in Riften. He left without protest, and a few days later was dropped at the doorstep of Grelod the Kind. Within a day he discovered that the woman was anything but kind, frequently beating and berating the children. Considered to be one of the older, less adoptable children, Brynjolf knew that he would most likely be stuck there until the age of 16, which he absolutely would not do. One night, he pickpocketed Grelod’s key to the front door, and made his first foray into Riften.
He stole some goods from the market under the cover of darkness and pawned them off the next day in exchange for a tankard and a woolen blanket. With the orphanage being too close to the marketplace and worried about getting caught and brought back, he made himself a corner on the planks along Beggar’s Row and wandered through town trying to find jobs. Of course, nobody wanted a ten year old, and with despair, Brynjolf was left with no choice but to either beg or thieve. He worked at night, picking the pockets of guards and whoever happened to be around, breaking into houses and shops, and keeping whatever he could find just for a hot meal at the end of every day. He grew bolder, and started working during the day when people were at work and too busy to notice the sneaking shadow of a child behind them.
One day, as he was making his way past the Jarl’s Palace, he noticed a Breton man in interesting armour walking around the corner. Brynjolf’s eyes were fixed on the blade he carried at his waist, polished and glinting in the sunlight. He followed him inconspicuously, until the man stopped by the door to the Ratways, opposite from the path where Brynjolf had made his home. As the man was busy trying to find the key to unlock the door, he found his chance and snatched the blade, quickly leaping into the filthy canal and swimming away before the man could do anything. Unfortunately for him, he suddenly felt his entire body freeze and was lifted straight into the air and onto the planks, as the man had cast a spell of some sort on him. Unable to move and fearing he would be killed right then and there, Brynjolf was surprised when the man commented on his audacity and skill, that was good but could use some polishing. He introduced himself as Mercer Frey, and told him to bring back two jewelled flagons within 24 hours. He would be waiting at the other end of the Ratways.
Unsure of what to do but sensing some sort of opportunity with the mysterious Mercer, he decided to take him up on the challenge. Taking advantage of the empty houses while everyone was working for the day, Brynjolf easily found the two jewelled flagons within a matter of hours and made his way towards the Ratways. Unfortunately for him, not being a Riften native, he had no idea what to find in there. Upon sneaking in, he bumped into a trio of bandits, whom he cut down with pleasure (his hatred for bandits since the death of his parents continued to haunt him for the rest of his life). Skirting his way around traps, skeevers, and crumbling walkways, he finally made it to the end of the gauntlet and found Mercer at the end, talking with a girl named Vex, a young man in his 20s named Delvin, and a teenage boy called Molgrom. They all sat down at a dingy table in The Ragged Flagon, talking about the murder of former Guildmaster Gallus Desidenius by the traitor Karliah, and how to restore the Guild to its former glory. Brynjolf was officially the youngest member of the Thieves Guild in the 4th Era, and was invaluable for his ability to crawl into tight spaces and his innocuous, childish appearance.
This was the beginning of the Riften branch of the Thieves Guild as we know it today. In time, Mercer Frey left Brynjolf in charge of recruiting, and they wanted only the best and brightest thieves for the Guild in order to maintain their crumbling dominance across Skyrim. Maven Black-Briar was the Guild’s number one client, and as their loyalest patron, was extended the Guild’s protection, though it meant less and less by the year. Over the next few years, Brynjolf learned the art of stealth, picking locks, honing his fighting skills, and finding sensitive information he could use against the Guild’s marks. Despite constantly being scoffed at by Mercer, rumours that the Guild had made a pact with the Daedric Prince, Nocturnal, swirled through the cisterns, but were brushed off whenever it was mentioned. Delvin was convinced they were somehow cursed because of it. Brynjolf was sent across Skyrim to work on jobs that were doled out, yet somehow, the Guild began to slip further into irrelevance. Its formidable grip across Skyrim began to weaken, and slowly their private alchemist, blacksmith, traders, and even trusted fences and members left.
Mercer claimed he did everything he could to keep the golden age under Gallus together, but the fall to obscurity came hard and abruptly. Brynjolf was intrigued by the story of when the three leaders set out on a secretive heist mission, while the rest of the Guild were instructed to remain where they were for fear of endangerment. Weeks later, Mercer came back, dishevelled. The heist had gone horribly wrong and Karliah had turned her back on the Guild and assassinated Gallus. She disappeared, and was never brought to justice. Mercer was now the sole leader of the Guild, and when Brynjolf turned 22, he was named second in command.
This leads us to the story you know. Two years later, desperately trying to recruit new members in Riften and bring back the Guild’s luck, Brynjolf spotted me in my rags at the Bee and Barb. The rest, as they say, is history.
'Blood may wet my fangs forever more, but it'll never wash the taste of you from my lips...'
-- Stops-His-Heart, laying his head down on the table beside a drained goblet of blood, his eye peeking out from his crooked arm as he stares at the painting of Bloodies-His-Face on his wall.
A gift to the Last Dragonborn from one of the last Ayleid Queens. It is warm to the touch not unlike the first breath of spring, but not nearly as benevolent.
Kothringi and Argonian blood was once offered to the Malada on high from its honed Welkynd edge. It was justice, then, that the same edge ended the life of the Ayleid witch who unleashed the Knahaten Flu.
-- Description of Anyavar, also named Souldrinker by Kothringi texts
