4E 149 - Born the only child to two older Nords in Solitude, Skyrim under the sign of The Mage.
4E 154 - (Age 5) A curious, energetic handful. Begins exhibiting a natural talent with magic.
4E 155 - (Age 6) Traditionally schooled while tutored by a hired mage at home.
4E 162 - (Age 13) Encouraged to take work around the city to burn energy and put his own coin in his pocket. Befriends others around the same age, including Ana.
4E 163 - (Age 14) Craves more intellectual stimulation. Starts avoiding jobs, instead finding new and interesting ways to get into trouble. Exhausted parents finally agree to send him to the College of Winterhold, where he puts most of his focus in the school of Destruction. Here, he excels.
4E 166 - (Age 17) Starts hanging around old friends again during extended stays back home in Solitude. After having shown considerable promise and enthusiasm, he is guaranteed a position on staff at the College if he continues at the same rate.
4E 167 - (Age 18) Starts falling for Ana quickly during another trip home. They write letters back and forth. She tutors him in alchemy when they aren’t kissing in the stock room of her family’s business.
4E 170 - (Age 21) Marries Ana and settles back into Solitude. Happily married.
4E 172 - (Age 23) Madeline is born. The couple decides they will make their way to Falkreath so they can raise their daughter in a less crowded place and start their own businesses.
4E 173 - (Age 24) Enters a period of denial and mourning when Ana is killed on the roads to Falkreath by bandits. Spends almost all of his waking hours near Ana’s resting place. Madeline develops a serious ear infection from neglect, and is removed from his care.
4E 174 - (Age 25) Lashes out and shows no sign of improving. Defaces a shrine to Arkay and is removed from the city with a bounty. Leads himself to believe necromancy is the answer, and so dedicates himself completely to the craft in secrecy.
4E 176 - (Age 26) Years of moral decline begin. Neglects health, but finds that he is perhaps better at necromancy than even destruction. Becomes addicted to the feeling of power over death.
4E 180 - (Age 31) Sneaks back in to Solitude to resurrect Ana, but finds he can’t carry through with it. The benders begin.
4E 181 - (Age 32) Begs for a place back at the College of Winterhold, and (mostly out of pity) is allowed the occasional room and board in exchange for running errands etc. Receives word that his parents have passed within a few months of each other. Continues to study necromancy and extending his lifespan, with stolen bodies or bandits used as primary test subjects.
4E 191 - (Age 42) Learns about a valuable resource in the form of an undiscovered book penned by an acolyte in the Order of the Black Worm that defected to begin his own cult.
4E 197 - (Age 48) Finally locates the book in a tomb after several years of careful searching. Curses/burns his hands in the process.
4E 201 - (Age 52 - The events of TESV: Skyrim begin) Formally expelled from the College of Winterhold for stealing. Attempts a blood ritual from the book he acquired to extend his lifespan with a captured bandit, but is nearly killed in the process. Sheogorath saves him in exchange for his soul, whisking him off to the Shivering Isles.
4E 202 - (Age 53) Returned to Nirn. Carries on with necromancy with renewed vigor.
4E 202 - (Age 55) Kidnaps Oljort (age 4), his grandson, with intention to raise the boy as his own and use him in place of a stranger in the life-extension ritual, as well as make him into something of an assistant. Leaves for the Imperial City and renames the boy Barnan.
4E 207 - (Age 60) Begins researching organ transplants, vampirism, heart stones etc. as a means of extending life. Makes some shady underground connections, but all while putting up a front as a successful mage and doting father.
4E 216 - (Age 69) Perfects the ritual, giving it a test that slows aging down considerably, but Barnan discovers the truth and leaves to be reunited with his actual parents. Mental breakdown and existential crisis follows.
4E 217 - (Age 70) Runs into Guillaume Syltieve, who employs him at The Minervae, a brand new magical school that is starting on the border of Cyrodiil and Skyrim. He is offered a chance to turn his life around, and so confesses to his crimes, relinquishes the book, and agrees to stop necromancy to pursue the career he originally intended.
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Year tbd - (90′s) Confesses his love for Guillaume after nearly twenty years spent working as an instructor of offensive/defensive magic at The Minerave. At one point, they discuss plans to marry.
Year tbd - (late 90′s) Sheogorath re-appears, informing him that his time there is up, and that if he does not leave and avoid any and all future contact with Guillaume, the staff and students will suffer with the belief that Brynvald poisoned them. He steals one of Guillaume’s rings (coincidentally, the Ring of Hircine), and leaves. Separated not once, but twice from the love of his life and all semblance of normalcy, he spirals.
Specific dates and events get a bit murky from here, especially with little insight into 5E. Necromancy once again becomes a staple, various false identities are assumed, and it becomes clearer and clearer to Bryn that the events of his life have been orchestrated in such a way that it continually pushes him to the brink. This is not just for Sheogorath’s personal entertainment (I mean, that’s a good chunk of it), but because of a bet the Prince of Madness had made with Meridia.
Eventually, through Barnan, a distant descendant of Bryn’s is raised within a Meridian cult: Silas Cartier, whose sole purpose in life is killing his shitty necromancer grandpa after time hopping to different eras. This ultimately fails, but the damage done forces Bryn into lichdom to stay “alive”.
Eventually, the White Lich retires to a hidden cave in Skyrim and remains dormant. All around him, an army of skeletons spend most of their time carving elaborate, but surreal depictions from his memory and subconscious into the walls as he sits covered in cobwebs. Sheogorath then allows him to return to the Isles for eternity in the same state he originally arrived in, but with no memory of his life on Nirn or what he had done.
I might do clean lines for this in the future, but for now this will serve as the most up-to-date hair and beard reference for Brynvald over the years.
