Talking to the dead is something most of us do at times in our life. Whether it be to a lost parent, a pet, or a friend, often because it is easier than talking to the living, or we simply have no one living to talk to.

At an isolated estate in eastern Cyrodiil, I find a lonely necromancer, Jaretius Illvina, tending six skeletons arranged on benches around a fire. He moves between them with a godless calm conversing with his ‘friends and family’ as if they were still alive. Meanwhile back at his house I discover another skeleton, but this one is animate, obdurately cleaning the house paying no heed to myself or anything else around her. This mannequin was apparently once his wife. I presume only lack of talent has prevented him from reanimating his whole family.

I can find no explanation for this lurid scene, and am left none the wiser after speaking to Jaretius himself. Perhaps his macabre madness is a mercy, for he obviously finds some sanctuary within his own insanity. It is perhaps callous of us to expect the grief stricken to remain sane. Some of us choose to live alone because we are not comfortable with the living, but others cannot, and in their need for company sometimes resort to desperate, insane measures. The saying goes that it is better to have lost love, then never to have found it at all. I wonder. Sometimes I think I am the lucky one never to have found it.

S.K