It is with a twist of irony that the crows of Mournoth, those black spies of the Reachmen, lead me willingly to the Hagraven’s lair; there is an old Bosmer adage that goes, ’there is nowt so treacherous as the caw of the crow’.

The lair of Uela the Hagraven is a dark, dank hole, filled only with the roots of those vile Reach vines upon which even insects dare not crawl. Detritus and old bones litter the broken stone floor, and near the far wall stands an ill-fashioned alter from which the crone commands her crows. Her black spies do not alert her to my arrival and so she does not sense my presence until I am already upon her.

There are few more hideous creatures in all Tamriel then the Hagravens of the Reach. Grubby gray hair, pallid skin stretched taut over bony limbs, beady black eyes and beaked-noses, talons for hands and feet, with straggly black feathers growing from every open appendage.

The ‘old magics’ of the Reach have twisted and corrupted the Hagraven’s body, mind, and soul so that it can feed freely upon the old crones hatred and barbarity for the world about. The only way to cleanse the Hagraven’s turpitude influence over this land is with the blood of the Hagraven herself, to feed nature with her life essence just as it fed the ‘old magics’.

For the dark magics of the Reach are as much a part of Tamriel as all the splendour and beauty of nature, because for all Nirn does to sustain us, we in turn must do our part in sustaining her.

S.K