From a military perspective the Improvised Garrison seems to me to be strategically worthless. Being an isle in a sea of daedra it cannot be supported, it does nothing to impede enemy actions, and offers no clear path to the White Gold Tower. It is just as Caudex himself describes it, ‘bricks, old ledgers, and broken chairs’. Some may point to the garrison as a symbol of mortal defiance, a warning to Molag Bal that not a brick of Tamriel shall we surrender without fight. But when that symbol is eventually torn-down, then how quickly it becomes forgotten; for only the heroes and martyrs of the victors of battle become lyrics for the bard. Yet this night I choose to risk my life, and to risk my duty in support of the Drake’s quest, to aid the soldiers of the garrison in defending their doors against the deadric storm.

From the first moment I walked through the old forum doors I sensed there was something more to the survival of these eight soldiers then can been seen with the mortal eye. Perhaps it is because the scroll that Caudex later passes to me for the Drake. He claims it dates back to St. Alessia herself and credits it for bringing them back from the dead when they fell in battle. He says some priest, a Father Egnatius, was obsessed with it. It’s funny how when the dead are resurrected for their cause priests proclaim it is some sort of divine intervention, yet when it is not in their favour it is decried as foul necromancy, Reach magic, and devilry.

Call it providence if you will that these eight soldiers have survived so long, but surely not solely for a scroll, for it could have been manoeuvred by a much quicker and safer route into the hands of the Drake. Perhaps then for distraction, for the distrustful eyes of Molag Bal are certainly now fixed upon the garrison, searching for reason and comprehension as to their unnatural resilience.

Even with the scroll gone I believe the story of the Immortal Eight at the Improvised Garrison is not yet done. I recall the Elf Neramo when we first met upon Stros M’Kai telling me that the Dwemer automatons were full of cogs and wheels, and that if you could stop but one of those wheels, then you stop every wheel because they are dependent upon one another. I believe these soldiers are part of something bigger, a wheel in something we cannot yet see. That is why I was guided here to stand with them tonight, and to risk everything, and as others will stand with them on other nights, because there are many things that will depend upon this one thing. You see providence is the Divines sowing the fields with their seeds, but it always requires mortal hands to till the land for those seeds to grow.

S.K