One might think it would be easy to hide within a growing city, to get lost amongst the constant stream of visitors and migrants. But the bigger the city the more eyes are open to spy you, and the more loose tongues are willing to betray you. There is little honor amongst thieves, and less still amongst drunks and skooma fiends. It does not take long to track the Vulture down between the taverns and bathhouses.

Gulug the Vulture helped steal food from the rural tribes to buy medicine for the city’s poor. He boasts fortune, proclaims benevolence, and finally brags self-righteousness. I, like Gulug, am neither a good nor a bad man, but unlike Gulug, I am an honourable one, in that I wilt stand and look my consequences in their accusing eyes.

On the steps of Scarp Keep I am greeted by the radiant High Priestess Solgra. A little while ago I bemoaned rather cruelly that no Breton or Redguard would take an Orsimer to their bedchamber to secure the Covenant. How ignorant I am, how blinded by bigotry. For though Solgra may stand taller then I, her shoulders may be broader, her skin tougher, her tusks… inconvenient. It is into her illimitable eyes that I have fallen.

Windows to one’s soul they say, nay, they are windows to one’s everything. One’s feelings, be-it happiness or grief, and one’s health, both physical and cerebral. One’s wisdom, bravery and pride, or lack thereof of one or all. One’s intentions, one’s aspirations, and one’s dreams and nightmares. And of course the very beat of one’s heart and hue of one’s soul. But it was in my reflection within them that I was to discover their beauty. For when I looked into Solgra’s eyes, I felt a peace and serenity within my own heart I had not felt since my soul was so cruelly rent from my body by the bodkin of that insidious Worm King.

Oh wretch that I am, that my heart were not so burdened that I might have the courage to look deeper into her eyes. Perhaps I am not so honourable after all, for why does peace and serenity make me feel such abrading guilt… and yet the Vulture felt none?

S.K

It is oft said of the Orcs that they cannot pass by a pile of stones without either building a wall, or chucking them at something. The Orsimer seem to share an innate instinct to either build or destroy; sometimes they will build something with the sole intent just to destroy it… usually with a rock.

The stone city of Orsimium towers up from a rugged, inhospitable terrain; it’s very walls are wrought from the mountains that surround it. The silhouettes of it’s soaring towers and turrets pierce the sky, casting dramatic and intimidating shadows across all of the landscape. It’s sturdy foundations right up to it’s monumental ramparts upon which stand catapult and ballista, are built to endure weather, spell, missile and ram. Walking through the winding streets within these seemingly insurmountable bulwarks one is struck by the skill and pragmatic beauty of their architecture. The facades of even the most sturdy, functional dwellings and public structures are decorated with elaborately carved doorways and stone work. The wooden scaffolding all about also tells of a city yet half complete, the finished construction will no doubt be a stunning testament to the strength, will, and skill of its Orsimer builders… if ever it is allowed to stand.

Since the Orsimer first escaped the binds of the Camoran Dynasty and laid claim to their harsh Northern realm, great Orsinium, the seat of all Wrothgar, has been sacked and rebuilt more times then Queen Ayrenn’s virtues When the walls finally fell for good, and the Orsimer tribes were scattered, the idea of Orsinium, a monument to the strength and potential of the Orsimer, endured in their hearts. So when Ranser attacked Wayrest in 2E 566 and Emeric came crown-in-hand to Wrothgar, he promised the return Orsinium to the Orcs in exchange for their aid. Kurog gro-Bagrakh answered his call.

Kurog however surprised everyone when he chose to abandoned the ruins of Old Orsinium and rebuild the city in eastern Wrothgar, near the mountainous border with Skyrim. Not every tribe was to follow him however, for although Kurog forbade any army from High Rock or Hammerfell from entering Wrothgar in his terms, many saw this new Covenant as just consenting to Breton hegemony, and his new city not a symbol of Orsimer potential and freedom, but a betrayal of Wrothgar’s founding tribes.

No other city embodies, and yet divides a people more. Because for most of us our memories are like stones that only time erodes, but not for the Orsimer. For the stones of Wrothgar remember every day of the 30 years siege of Orsinium like it were yesterday. They recall the name of their fallen gates of the old city, Smelter, Hammer, Temper, as clearly as they remember the names of their warrior heroes, or the regions founding clans. This is why for an Orc there is little more frightening and unnerving then to watch a stone wall crumble. And why Wrothgar remains, many tribes, one nation… protected, and yet divided, by the new walls of Orsinium.

S.K