After a battle it is often impossible to distinguish the victorious camp from the defeated one, for the torches of victory are overcast by the shadows of loss. It is in this most sorrowful aftermath when the soldier questions the price of companionship, for when we lose our friends, the hurt is oft far worse than the emptiness before they came.

Darien never made it back to the light. Throughout my journey, from the low streets of Camlorn to the crest of the Doomcrag, from the liberation of Northpoint, to the conquest of the The Endless Stair, Darien has proved a most staunch and trustworthy companion; his loss will forever be felt as a knot in my heart.

And now Dynar, a true, true champion who sacrificed his final breath for the future generations of Tamriel whose words of thanks he never will hear, for history already chronicles his people as tyrants. Yet I shall forever remember him as noble Laloriaran Dynar, the last Ayleid king, perhaps the last Ayleid, perhaps even the last noble King in all Tamriel.

S.K

For centuries scholars and mages have been brusquely picking apart anything that people of faith once claimed were miracles. They preach that the more they understand of the fixed laws of the Mundas, the more they can prove that what we once called miracles are no longer contrary to those laws, but only contrary to what they know about those laws.

And yet they live in a world where simple grass can be a million shades of green. Where the sun rises every day and moons every night. Where flowers that are sustained by the sun and rain turn into fruit that in-turn sustains each and everyone of us. Yet it impresses them not, for they claim they can recreate these elements with ritual and spell.

But for those of us that fought at the battle for the Planar Vortex, just to be alive at all is proof of miracle enough. For what truly is a miracle but a spark of light when you are expecting only darkness.

S.K

If we are to put a final nail in the coffin of Molag Bal’s Planemeld then it must be hammered from the inside out; we must enter into the Planar Vortex itself.

Stepping through the portal we enter into a world between two realms, that hovers betwixt night and morn upon the edge of the horizon. In this addled realm forlorn hope weighs most heavily upon our weary spirits, for we know that even if we are to achieve this most improbable undertaking we are sure to lose our freedom here, for there is no place to escape to. And if you do not believe the sun will rise, it is hard to stand and greet the coming night. And that is not even the rub of it, for Molag Bal itself has come to crush the last best hope of mortal Nirn.

Nirn, that world of so many banners, many more then just the three that dance the wheel of Cyrodill. It is a world of disparate peoples, that even when faced with horrors invading from Oblivion choose to fight each other rather then stand together as one country against the outer darkness. If it were that the stars should appear but one night every hundred years, mortals would be justified in cowering. Yet the stars do appear every night, just as the Dark Anchors fall upon our homes every day, and the daedric princes have plotted our demise ever since mortals took their very first breaths.

So like our ancestors before, and our kin yet to come, we here shall stand in resolute defiance. For hope is the mortals chief strength, it is in every breath we take, and it lights up the entire Mundas and for that the daedra hate us. Every mortal knows hope, because every mortal knows that after winter comes the spring, after night comes the dawn, and after every storm, there comes clear, fresh skies.

The stars do appear every night, and the sun does rise every morn. Hope is the trait that makes heroes of ordinary people. And the measure of a hero is to stand and say no to the tyrants and accept with calmness the consequences of our resistance. Because it is far better for us to die today on our feet than to live the rest of our lives on our knees.

S.K

With the outer portals of the Endless Stair secured, we now make our push into the Labyrinth complex without fear of becoming cut-off. The first chambers we discover however stop us dead in our tracks.

We enter the most enormous library I have ever seen. Hugh walls and columns bricked with thousands upon thousands of books from ceiling to… seemingly bottomless floor. It is enough to turn even Hermaeus Mora green, it certainly made my mage companions giddy with greed. Libraries are said to be the energy that fuels imagination, indeed, one can sit in a library and be almost anywhere in Nirn in but the turn of a page. I dread to think however what nether realm of Oblivion one might end up in whilst reading these dark tomes.

Beyond the library, supposedly a place of enlightenment, we enter chambers utterly devoid of illumination. What little magical light the mages can conjure barely disturbs the blackness. In fact, it only serves to rouse and agitate the strange featureless statues that inhabit this perpetual darkness. As ever it is Gabrielle who proves to be a ray of sunlight, leading us to the very portal of the Planar Vortex, guarded by that most mighty of daedric titans, Telkor the Unforgiving.

And one more surprise awaits us, a familiar face appears who had always seemed to be more then her semblance, turns out to be so much more then any of us could have imagined. Who can we really trust in this abominable realm, a truthful enemy or a deceitful friend?

S.K

Our forces gather at the gateway to the Endless Stair, Molag Bals most northern citadel, where we hope to find the Planar Vortex and put an end to his wicked Planemeld once and for all. The plan is for a small vanguard to push ahead into a daedric fortress full of Coldharbour’s most terrible and deadly denizens, and prepare the way for our main forces. I’m pretty sure I would have maybe considered volunteering perhaps… had I not already have been picked.

One choice I do get to make however is for who is to accompany me on this mortiferous assignment. My obvious choice for a companion would of course be the arch-mage Vanus Galerian, but alas he is fully occupied with co-ordinating the main force. So I asked the ever reliable Gabrielle Benele to support me, for ever since we first met in Glenumbra she has never let me down, but she believes it best I have a fighter at my side if I am to succeed. Perhaps she is right, and the best fighter I know is Darien Gautier.

With what we have been through together on our journey I consider Darien a friend and would trust him to stand resolute at my side in the darkest night. But to be honest of late his talk of dreams and premonitions concerns me. Perhaps it is well that I shall be able to keep a close eye on him, for my experience in Stormhaven with Vaermina’s plague of dreams taught me that you should never ignore your dreams when they involve Oblivion.

So together a formal Imperial legionnaire and a former captain of the Camlorn Guard, who might one day have crossed blades on the fields of Cyrodiil had not the thieving elf’s insidious worm cult picked me off the street and stolen my soul, push forward, side by side, comrade by comrade, into Brutality’s citadel and most likely death. Fate it seems can be one sardonic bitch.

S.K