Wrothgar is a land that promises fresh hope and opportunity limited only by ones ambitions and abilities. But as with every frontier, each tacit opportunity is oft shadowed by native threat and indigenous peril. The adventurous, gallant, and just plain foolhardy who pass the great gates separating Wrothgar from High Rock venture not into a brave new world, but an ancient untamed one.

Yet the greatest threat to those bold and ambitious is not the barbarous land itself, nor the savage beasts that wander it’s picturesque hinterlands, but Mer and Men. Reachman raiders, bandit gangs, and Orc tribes unconvinced by the Stone city’s ‘many tribes, one nation’ writ. All seek to waylay the many caravans trundling the rough unlaid roads before they can reach the high stone walls of Orsinium. What care they for Stuga’s letters of commendation or Orsinium merchant permits. Indeed, what care they for the bold and ambitious, for they oft leave them for the untamed land to feed upon.

Yet still we cross the frontier in numbers, just like the first primordial hunters and gatherers in search of better hunting, and more fertile soil. For the peoples of Tamriel, no matter their race, share an intrepid nature’; it is in our blood, it is in our shared mortal spirit. We began as wanderers from Aldmeris, Atmora, Yokuda and beyond, and we are wanderers still… many tribes, one spirit.

S.K

We recover the stolen crates from the raiders, but alas the supplies themselves are nowhere to be seen. It appears the Winterborn have employed harpies to fly the goods up to the Reachman’s camps, although I doubt once in the talons of those insatiable monsters much of the food would have survived the flight.

Further along the pass I meet with Chief Bazrag, predictably he is about as friendly towards outsiders as a Nord maiden who finds you still in her bed the morning after. I guess such strong distrust and dislike of foreigners can be forgiven when your tribe has lived under the boots of Breton and Reachman for so long. Our only recourse now it seems is to follow the trail left us by the Reachman’s discarded communications, specifically a possible contact within Orsinium itself known as the ‘Vulture’. Bazrag suggests to close the rasping beak of this betrayer I begin my search within the inns of the capitol.

It is here on the pass that I get my first glimpse of the great stone walls of Orsinium, standing almost as tall as the mountains from which they are hewn. I am reminded of the Bosmer Greenspeakers who are said to have grown their cities from the Graht-oak trees of the Valenwood; only the Orsimer grow their cities not from trees but from mountains. Perhaps if the obstinate Orsimer had learnt to build bridges as well as they build their walls they might not have had to rebuild their capital so often.

S.K

The pious believe that destiny places us in the right place at every single moment, neither a moment too soon, nor a moment too late. To them I did not arrive through the Merchant’s gate too late to prevent the Winterborn’s ambush of the supply carriage, but at just the right moment as to not end up another corpse being slowly buried by the mountain snows.

The survivors of the attack on the caravan recall that the Reachmen didn’t just fall upon them from the mountains, they ‘leaped out of the damned snow’ like they knew they were coming. A flighty wood-elf named Eveli Sharp-Arrow, is perhaps the only survivor talking sense; although her peculiar manner of speech is starkly at odds with the pragmatic Wrothgar mountains that overshadow the pass. She tells of an Orc chieftain and his patrol who arrived soon after the attack and headed up the pass to try to retrieve their vital supplies. Did they too not arrive too late?

You see that’s the thing about destiny, it can never be proven wrong; interpreting hindsight often proves the wise most foolish, and sometimes the foolish most wise. For my part I believe destiny not to be a matter of Divine providence at all, but chance caused by choice. For destiny is not a moment to be waited for, but is a moment that waits for you.

S.K