An age ago, a cult of Elves left the Summerset Isles, abandoning their kin to follow Veloth, a pathetic tool of Boethiah. Trinimac confronted Boethiah for this trespass and was challenged to battle. Trinimac was about to strike a mighty blow when Mephala appeared and stabbed him in the back. As Trinimac kneeled, wounded by Mephala's treachery, Boethiah gloated and cast a terrible ritual to scar and twist his appearance, then cast him to a place of choking air and ash.
"Every tale has an end. Every end allows a beginning to set hold. It is a balance, tenuous though it seems to be. Z'en's presence fades from this world as Mauloch grows stronger."
--Spinner Sandaenion foretelling the end of Z’en worship.
Widowed Goddess/Queens and Missed Opportunities...
While General Tullius is a hundred times more competent than 95% of Skyrim’s NPCs or so, there is one glaring mistake he makes as a military governor (though he would have to convince High Queen Elisif to get onboard, which shouldn’t be too difficult):
He does not restore Old Nord Faith to Skyrim (which is not outlawed, and perfectly compatible with being Imperial), and use it as propaganda against Ulfric and his Stormcloaks.
If you are familiar with the Old Nord myths about Shor/Lorkhan’s death, I am just going to summarize it as this:
For those less versed in Elder Scrolls mythology: Shor was the God of Men who made sure the mortal world was created, he was later killed by the Elven gods Trinimac and Auri-El atop the Adamantine Tower in the Dawn Era, and Kyne, his widow, became the chief deity of Mankind according to Nord folklore (not Alduin/Akatosh or Ysmir/Talos!).
It’s like the perfect base for pro-Elisif propaganda (Kyne is the beloved mother goddess of the Nords who breathed them to life atop the Throat of the World and bestowed them Voices and made them hardy against the cold), that would also undercut Ulfric’s claims of restoring the TrueNordFaith(TM)... And it would make getting Whiterun on the Imperial side with the Temple of Kynareth, Gildergreen, Skyforge and windy plains a bit of a Big Deal to prop up the Elisif-Kyne connection...
Yes, this would religiously fracture the Nords a bit away from Imperial Cult (which is an evolved hybrid of Nordic and Ayleidic faiths, though both those faiths recognized the other), but it would be less of a schism than between Hammerfell and the Empire, and not at all unbridgeable.
It also would have given the Old Nord Faith a spotlight in its homeland instead of being tucked away in a shack with an old man...
Seriously, this game had sooo many missed opportunities...
That’s what I’m talking about, I fucking love this.
That bit at the end about Akatosh? See, that’s straight from Michael Kirkbride. That’s why his writings aren’t equivalent to people’s headcanons about Ulfric’s sex life, ala fanfiction.
This is from years ago actually, and I love the addition, it always seemed to fit in really well with Nord lore.
Mauloch had gathered his best warriors for raiding Windhelm. By reports from his scouts he knew that this was a night of holiday, with people drunk and celebrating in the streets praying to whatever heathen gods the Northmen revered. The raid would be simple: charge through the open gates, slaughter, burn, and loot. Windhelm’s bounty would become Mauloch’s people’s. There would be no suffering or want this winter.
His scouts were right: it was a parade. A military parade.
His warriors would not rout. Neither their nor Mauloch’s pride would allow it. And so they were slain by the guards and soldiers of the city.
The smoldering ash of Mauloch’s spirit sparked with the death of each of his men, until he was alone, surrounded by Northmen, shouting in their cold arctic tongue. Then it was an inferno, and the men who dared charge him were mutilated by Vosh Rakh.
It seemed he had slaughtered hundreds when the entire city was shaken by a clap of thunder shaped like a word: “OBLAAN.”
The sound froze the fighters in their tracks, including Mauloch. His eyes searched for the origin, finding it at the top of the stairs to the palace.
“I will handle this one,” boomed the man, his voice rattled the bricks of the plaza. He cloaked in furred regalia and topped with a jagged crown of horn and bone. In his hand was an ebony straight-sword, long and vicious, but in his throat was a dragon, unforgiving and powerful.
Mauloch did not know this man-king. By appearances there was no reason to fear him. But in that Voice, Mauloch remembered, and his heart shivered with doubt.
“Who are you?”
“I am High King of Skyrim, Ysmir Wulfharth of Atmora.” The Nord warriors made way for his approach, and knelt in deference.
He steeled his resolve and clenched his fists on Vosh Rakh’s handle. “That crown will belong to me,” he shouted, trying (and failing) to match his challenger’s presence.
“This crown,” spake the king, quiet and then loud, “belongs to no one.”
Ysmir seemed too old to be so fast. He spoke in cut-stroke and throat-throw, a poetry that penetrated the entire world. Mauloch struggled to match with parries and hold his ground.
But for all his might, today marked Mauloch’s second defeat in combat since he was born. Ysmir disarmed him with a shout, and held him at sword-point. Mauloch paused for a moment, paralyzed with a fear he refused to remember. Then he jumped away from Ysmir, towards one of the Northmen, and wrested an axe from him with the crack of bone.
Ysmir smiled faintly. To Mauloch it seemed the apparition of something long dead. But in an instant he was disarmed again and laid out on his back by a powerful word.
Gasping for air, searching for an opportunity to strike, to retaliate, to retreat, anything, Mauloch cried, “What are you?”
Like an echo of creation the king became larger than his body, filling the clear sky with cloud and thunder, wind whipping the walls, helmets from soldiers, hair from faces. A proclamation that felt like an accusation roared into Mauloch, pressing him into the stone relentlessly, refusing his rising.
“I am Wulfharth of Atmora, Dragon of the North, Shor’s Tongue, Breath of Kyne - and the High King of Skyrim. You will not return here. BO NOL VUS.”
With the last word, Mauloch was pressed into himself, and all was blackness.
- - - - -
In the beginning there was nothing, a complete numbness that the mind was barely aware of. Then there was falling, deep into something, something not-there but always-there. The mind fell into it, buffeted by whirling thoughts and concepts and fears and desires, all fleeting, just like the mind.
The mind was afraid and so it grasped the first fear it could: emptiness. To satisfy this fear it opened widely, an expansion of space to corners unknown and infinite. In the emptiness it found an infinity, and so it knew there was something there.
The mind tried to open its eyes to look for the something that was there. To open eyes, it needed eyes. To open eyes, it needed eyelids. To open eyes, it needed eye sockets. To open eyes, it needed a head. To open eyes, it needed a face. To open eyes ..... This continued until the memory of a form became a form. Then ..... To open eyes, it needed something to see.
The emptiness was now less empty, containing two things: a remembered form that could perceive forms, and a vast sea of grey. Light and dark were forced apart and at the edge was the ash that remained. The mind felt heat (pain?) in the soles (souls?) of the form (body?) that it had remembered (made?).
The heat brought questions (answers?), and the questions wanted (needed?). So the mind focused on the heat, on the parenthetical. The heat was pain. The mind was soul. The form was body. The remembering created. The questions needed answers.
The next question: Which question should I answer first? The question after that: “I”?
“Mauloch,” the mouth of the body of the mind said. With this sound, the emptiness left with a smile, content that the mind could accomplish the rest.
- - - - -
Mauloch found himself in a pit of ash floating in the void. No, not the void. This was Oblivion. How did he find himself here? He couldn’t remember. He thought very hard.
There was a storm. There was cold stone pressing brick-shapes into his back. There was immense pressure, and the pressure was shaped like words, and the words were ...
“Breath of Kyne?” That was what Lorkhan liked to call his wife. Had Kynareth brought him here? No. Her name was only invoked.
More words floated to him through the sea of grey. “Shor’s Tongue?” Shor ... That was what Kynareth called Lorkhan. Had Lorkhan done this to him? Had Mauloch finally found him, and been judged for his betrayal?
Mauloch could not remember more. The cold, the stone, the storm, the name ... Shor. Shor. Shor. Lorkhan ... a face. A man, draped in fur, crowned in bone, using stolen words wreathed in scales. A new shape for a dead man. A dead man who’d finally had his revenge.
Revenge. Mauloch’s mind remembered in turn the face of every orc who had died there for him. His eyes blinded white with wrath. He had to get back. He had to destroy those Nords who had destroyed his men.
He marched through the ash, seeking an exit, a portal, something to free him from this place. Long he searched and found nothing but more smoke and soot. He cursed and swore and beat his chest. Then for a while he sat paralyzed, defeated, hopeless.
- - - - -
His anger and despair wore him to sleep. He dreamt of a palace, elegant and resplendent, pure and untainted. He wandered its halls, not recognizing them but not unfamiliar.
As if by design he made his way into an open courtyard, a garden blooming with life. Noble trees stood guard over verdant grass separating plots of radiant blossoms of every shape and color. Pride swelled in his chest. But it was accompanied by longing and regret.
The longing pulled him towards one flower, a golden rose. When he reached out to touch it, the regret turned it black. It crumbled under his fingers.
Instead of falling, the ash jumped onto his hand, spreading its heat across his skin, climbing his arm to his chest and enveloping his entire body. He was captured in a burning stasis. He opened his mouth to scream, but no sound came out, and the ash came in, choking him and filling his soul.
He was a smoldering grey statue, paralyzed, forced to watch as the palace caught fire and spread, scorching the ceilings and torching the walls, charring everything black like hands, pulling something grey from something timeless, and changing it forever.
- - - - -
When Mauloch awoke, he was standing in a garden he did not recognize. Its trees and flowers were haunting, but held no meaning to him.
The garden was contained within walls of bright steel and dark iron. Mauloch examined his hands. They were burnt black, smoldering with residual heat. His entire body was like the remains at the bottom of a forge.
He left the garden and took a moment to explore the rest of the structure. It was a vast stronghold, punctured by colossal towers and littered with impervious fortresses. But everywhere there was extra space, room for expansion and improvement. The smoke and soot that choked the air throughout seemed to dance in the suggestion of shape, ideas for growth. At his whim the smoke became stone, the soot became steel.
He looked behind him in one of the open courtyards. Rising from the ash in the distance was a tall thing, taller than everything else. It was a backbone, a tower that held this place together. He knew it would be a beacon for the lost, for his people. They would start coming soon.
So Mauloch made ready for those to come. He filled the fields with spacious barracks and brutal palaces, filled racks with weapons and carved arenas into ash. They would need things to do, to always keep ready for battle.
As the Ashen Forge grew, so did the Ashpit. It began to glow dimly in Oblivion, stretching its arms like a net. The mind expanded beyond the body, beyond the plane, and stepped into a new place in the Aurbis.
Orcs use Mauloch meditation mirrors in daily affirmation rituals.
Mauloch's Meditation Mirror: A silver mirror of Orcish design, featuring Mauloch's Hammer on the non-reflective side and used in daily affirmation rituals.
