It is often during times of deepest strife that bandits and brigands will seek to exploit the lack of law, order and honour for their own gain. But exploitation of the weak is not the only reason people turn to banditry when lands are in turmoil. Many peasants turn to thievery because sometimes people have to make a rational choice between suffering and survival. For others left all alone and disaffected, bandit gangs can offer a kinship, a solidarity reinforced through brotherhood and adoption. Whilst seditious veterans have also been known to roam war-torn countrysides in predatory groups.

I don’t know why Lliae the Quick first turned to banditry, fate often greets one on the roads you take to avoid destiny, but it hasn’t turn out well for her. She is now the last living member of the Quickstep Bandits, and seeks revenge against the Black Daggers for their part in the killing of her friends. The Black Daggers have plagued the northern Colovian countryside for years, but with the onset of the war they have expanded their organization to other parts of Cyrodiil. To expand so rapidly however these bandits would need an underwriter or two, so it would not surprise me to discover they are but puppets for a far greater menace, an alliance or prince perhaps attempting to undermine the province for some strategic gain.

Usually I would not consider taking a bandits coin for honest work, but when honour and the law no longer stand on the same side, a bandit’s coin is as honest as any other. Thankfully much of what Lliae asks of me indirectly benefits the people of chorrol as much as it does her. From thinning the number of flame atronachs that plague the town, eliminating the bandits who have overrun the nearby village of Hackdirt, to putting down an ill-tempered spirit haunting the ruins of Narsinfel.

When she has no more tasks to offer, her life a little more safer, her thirst for revenge a little more sated, I wonder at her next endeavor. Of course it shows strength to get back up and start again after one has been knocked down, but sometimes it shows more character to move on. One must accept that at some point in everyone’s life, the withered leaves of autumn will not grow back in spring. Whatever road Lliae the Quick takes next, I hope fate greets the lonely bandit a long, long way from Cyrodiil.

S.K

Even in war-torn Cyrodiil, not all the heroes wear armour. Not all heroes are trained to fight, siege forts, or cast spells; be them destructive or restorative. The unsung heroes of this war are ordinary people. The people who suffer, often against great hardships inflicted upon them by armed and armoured ‘heroes’, and yet they endure. It is these very people that hold this province together, despite the invading outsiders attempts to rip it apart. It is upon the fortitude of these people that the foundations of empires are built. It is these people who are the everyday heroes.

It is evening when I arrive in Chorrol, a small town set amidst the rugged Colovian Crags. In the Imperial City we had heard the troubling news of what happened here, the earthquake that devastated the town and the resulting fissure through cutting its heart, a direct ramification of the Worm’s betrayal. What I did not expect to find four year later however is that the town is suffering from quakes still. It’s buildings are slowly crumbling and sinking into the ground. The fissure glowing bloody red in the dusk light splits Chorrol like an open wound from which fetid smoke and gases rise. The broiling lava has attracted flame atronachs in sinister number. For the townsfolk, simply crossing from one side of Chorrol to the other can be a perilous undertaking.

What more, Chorrol has been plagued by bandits, food is scarce as their crops are regularly pillaged, and yet the armies of the alliances who regularly pass through offer the people no aid. Even the Covenant guards patrolling the streets I see seemingly turn a blind eye to the open desecrations of grave robbers.

Despite their suffering and loss, the years of famine, the daily injustice of crimes unpunished, the monsters in their fields, and the churlish invaders, the people of Chorrol refuse to bow to their sorrows. They remain admirably resolute, ‘In spite all this we stay’, they tell me, ‘because it is still our home.’ Despite their obvious need the people refuse my offer of aid and tell me their inns are full. I cannot blame them for mistrusting a stranger, especially one dressed in Imperial armour. In fact the only work I am offered in Chorrol is from a solitary bandit hiding in the dusky night.

S.K