Whilst searching through the Bonerock Caverns I was to discover a lone Khajiit apparently looking for his lost cat; surprisingly it turns out that he was also a member of the Orc hunting party for whom I was searching. The young Zhasim was apparently raised by the Orc tribe after being found forsaken in caverns as a cub. As we talk I begin to suspect that perhaps it was neither a lost cat nor the viscous Riekrs that led him here, but serendipity. For we were soon to discover that these were in fact the very caverns in which he was found abandoned.

My first thought was to send the Khajiit back to the safety of the camp, but sometimes even the most stoic of us reluctantly cede to empathy, for at some point in our lives we all suffer from a conflict of identity or loyalty. For me it was in the wake of the great anchor falling upon the City Isle that I, like many Legionnaires, was forced to choose between my vows to the Ruby Throne and my loyalty to the people of the Heartlands. Whilst others I have travelled with include Bretons who, whilst living in Rivenspire, were forced by Rancer to choose between King or kin. Redguard’s whose familys must choose between Crown or Forebear, Elves of Summerset who chose between nationalism or Alliance. The point is whether human or mer at some point in our lives we all make a choice of who we are.

I recall an old tale from Skyrim of a Nord hunting party who came across an Elven toddler who had lost his parents. After some discussion, they decided to take the toddler into their village and raise him as they would one of their own. Being raised as a Nord naturally the Elf grew up mistrusting others of his own natural race. But of course he always knew he was different from the family and people that raised him and eventually, once he’d grown to maturity, he set out into he world beyond the village to discover his identity for himself. He was soon to meet with other elves and when he told them of his strange upbringing, they informed him that his parents had been killed in a Nord attack that had wiped out his entire village. Feeling angry and betrayed he was persuaded to join up with an Elven guerrilla group who used his unique knowledge of the Nord territory to raid, pillage, and raze to the ground every rural Nordic town along the coast, including the one that raised him, killing everyone there. It was only later he was to discover that he had been lied to, and that in fact his parents had been killed during a Maormer raid.

I don’t know whether this tale is true or but propaganda or bard’s baroque, but there is a Bosmer saying which goes, ‘people without the knowledge of their past are like trees without roots.’ Whatever we discover together in these caverns it will be for Zhasim, and Zhasim alone to discover, and decide, who he really is.

S.K