The North Weald and it’s surrounding area in southern Cyrodiil was thought a dangerous place to travel even before the alliances brought their Banners War upon our lands. But now, with no Legionary patrols or other support from the Imperial City to protect it, and with the Banners soldiers displaying little to no empathy towards the innocent peoples of the Heartlands, this area appears to have fallen completely under the control of bandit gangs.

One such bandit gang has completely overrun the village of Pell’s Gate. It is said to have started with a few threats against the most vulnerable villagers, followed by a few night raids upon their livestock. And when their wickedness went unanswered, the pillaging only got worse, until one night a large group of heavily armed bandits descended upon the village from the ruins of old Fort Homestead, killing what villagers they could catch, before ransacking and destroying their homes and farmlands. Now it is but a carcass.

A little further to the south the Grey Host bandit gang feels so emboldened that they have built their own fort to operate out of. These bandits are little more then rats and skeevers plaguing the unprotected villages and farms, and picking at the bones of the Banner’s battlefields. It is a travesty that the innocent citizens of the Heartlands, the only group of people in these Divine forsaken lands who are not fighting, not killing, not burning and pillaging, the only group of people who are trying to keep life going in the midst of a war, shall perhaps be the only group who will not survive it.

S.K

It is inevitable that all Kingdoms rise and fall. From the great continent spanning empires that rule the masses, to the resilient city states that endure the changing ages. From the unseen subterranean kingdoms of nature and beasts, to the smallest of the green skinned tribes. They all have their rise, their pinnacle, and their fall. But whilst the annals of the great empires and cities of Men and Mer are all recorded for posterity in great historical tomes, the histories of the smaller kingdoms, often pass unknown, unseen, and thus forgotten.

For them there are no tomes gathering dust in a mages college, or spinners stories spun, bards songs sung, or campfire tales told. But that doesn’t mean that their lineage never existed. For any form of society to survive, be they tribes, prides, packs or herds, they all need a leader. Although we may never know who reigned or for how long, or how they rose, or what was to be their downfall. And because their history is not recorded, or indeed cared for by the ‘enlightened races’, then even the all seeing golden eyes of Hermaeus Mora, neither sees nor records their rise and fall.

So here within the Bloodmayne Cave of Southern Cyrodiil, for the sake of ‘He Who Records All Knowledge’, I hear-by report the existence of a kingdom of giant insects, led by a Spriggan queen Acanthia, Chosen of Nirn, and her downfall by my blade. It will be for others to record if she is replaced and the kingdom rise again, or forever fall and to history forgot.

S.K

Found deep within the Great Forest of Cyrodiil the Pothole Caverns were thought to once be used as a mausoleum by the curious Ayleids. Now it is but another hole full of wicked necromancers of the Shadowed Path Cult. Here again they laboriously search for that nameless relic which they believe will enable them to finally conquer the Imperial City and all of Cyrodiil in the name of Molag Bal. That is some lofty ambition for a cult which nobody had heard of before the falling of the Dark Anchors upon our realm.

So how has this Shadowed Path Cult grown so swiftly to become such a threat is such a short span of time? Why have so many seemingly flocked to join a cult which values them little more then disposable tools. They willingly sacrifice their own personal ambitions and stories for those of this cult. Surely when these people were growing up they had the same ambitions as the rest of us? Perhaps they were idealistic and wanted to change the world. Or mayhap their aspirations were a little more modest and they just wanted to get married and have kids, perhaps learn a craft or open their own stall. Yet now.

Somewhere along the line these cultists discovered that life was in fact harder than they thought. Perhaps they felt like flightless birds out in the wilderness, looking back and realizing that none of the trees behind them were getting smaller and none of the trees ahead were getting bigger, they sought an easier story to follow, one being written by another’s quill. In life there is always the right path, and there is always the easy one, but there is also always the downright foolish one too.

The truth is that if you are being approached, or invited to join a group of people who are intent upon destroying the world, they aren’t calling on you because you are brave or special, but because you are stupid and gullible. They know that you are foolish enough to believe their highly reductive, easily expressed, definitive sounding phrases, that reduce you into a primitive, mindless tool whose thoughts are easily and directly converted into deed. Soon enough you’ll forget what is right and wrong, and become capable of any evil, whilst at the same time being incapable of seeing it as evil.

Men weigh other men by their ambitions, the cult weighs men on their lack of it; the Divines however will weigh us all solely by our stories.

S.K

The town leaders of Vlastarus have one final request for me before I move on. A former friend of Nelerien’s now walks amongst the undead at a nearby Aylied ruins. Captain Juras, of whose demise the ruins at Juras’ Fall have seemingly been renamed, is said to pace the outer ruins, restlessly looking for passers-by with which to re-enact his final battle; perhaps hoping that in victory he might repeal his fate.

Alas that I am not the first, and shan’t be the last whom Nelerien sends to these ruins to lay his friend’s bones to rest. For Juras’ peace is never long. Forever haunted by his unfinished quest, too soon his bones will rise again.

I wonder if interned within those bones there is still a conscience, and whether his conscience knows what he now is, or indeed remembers what he once was? Does, as is does for the living, his conscience change his memories from villain to hero, ignominy to glory? Does his conscience still give life to those that have also passed? Or did his conscience cease to dance with the beating of his heart?

S.K