I arrive at the outskirts of Satakalaam in search of the final Ansei Ward only to find the entrance to the city barred to me. The Seventh Legion of the corrupted empire have somehow managed to cross the Dragontail Mountains from Bangkorai in large enough numbers to overrun the city, and hold out against the outlying forces of the Redguard General Thoda.

The city’s main entrance from the Tigonus wastes is well fortified with high walls and palisades, whilst the surrounding mountains provide natural barriers preventing incursion, so our only course is to infiltrate the city by subterfuge and loosen the legion’s grip from within. And so just past midnight I enter the city dressed as a Seventh legionnaire with orders to free any hostages, discover how the legion managed to capture the seemingly impregnable Satakalaam, and prevent any more reinforcements from joining the invaders.

Named after the Yokudan god Satakal the Worldskin, the city is also the location for the largest burial ground in the desert, the Motalion Necropolis. It is here I suspect I will find the necromantic cult of the Withered Hand who hold the final ward. Are the Seventh Legion really now working with this death cult? Their invasion is just too well planned to be but opportunism on the Withered Hand’s chaos.

Oh how far the morality of the empire has fallen, where now is the famed integrity of the legionaries? Is it not true even the most august warrior with a thousand noble victories, losses all honour in the scrolls with but a single ignoble deed.

As dawn arrives and the desert sun blooms over the mountains, Satakalaam’s minarets shimmer like golden petals upon the wind, and the city is ours. With tensions continuing across the sands between Crown and Forebear kin, I wonder, will the future bards of the desert even recall that it was a Forebear force that liberated this most devout of Crown cities.

S.K

Spare a thought for the treasure-huntress Tharayya, who spent months delving the darkest depths of the harsh Alik’r in search of a long-lost relic. Along the way she was betrayed, poisoned and left for dead, all for the promise of what? Gold coins that are to easily spent, reputation that is so swiftly forgot, or a lost treasure that she was never fated to hold.

Perhaps one Frostfall evening twenty years from now, she will be sitting alone by a log-fire, where she might close her eyes and be back again in the Guardian’s chamber in Volenfell, but was all this worth it just for memories?

Perhaps when we nowt but dust and bone, our memories we be all we own.

S.K

Finally in a grand chamber deep within the ruins of the Dwarven city of Volenfell, we find what we came for, the resting place of the esoteric artefact known as the Guardian’s Eye.

Whatever function it served, whatever power it held, the Dwarves obviously feared its loss for they saw fit to protect it with three imposing sentinels, a trinity of mechanical Centurions duty bound to stand dormant watch over the artefact centuries after their builders have disappeared.

Dormant that is until I approach the relic, at which point the trio seemingly wake in unison, steam hissing, joints and pistons all creak, grind and chirr as one, a malevolent mechanical overture perhaps not heard echoing through this chamber for hundreds of years. Slowly the three giants converge around the relic, preventing me from getting any closer.

Perhaps the harboured relic was once a weapon of terrible potency, maybe it is the key to how the Dwarves powered all the machines of their desert cities, or mayhap it is a vital clue to the greatest mystery of them all, the disappearance of the Dwemer people themselves.

Whatever its worth or purpose, I have not come so far to baulk at such a blaze of bellicosity, and so as I unsheathe my sword and raise my shield, I ask of life once again… what more does a soulless man have left to lose?

S.K