Wherefore the darkness, and yet wherefore the sun;

When I fall will I sleep, When I sleep will I dream?

Of battles I fought in life, of deeds I have done;

Is it better a soldiers death, or to die an old man?

These desolate wastelands, are the last lands he’ll see;

Wardush’s final wish, is for honour reprieved.

The bloody helm of an enemy, to rouse his company;

‘I smell the Ashen Forge’, were the last words he breathed.

Mazrahil the Sly Scarab, has but one final fling;

Before sands swallow his legacy, and bury his name.

For all but the few of us, no songs are there sung;

For old soldiers die lonely, heroes of none.

The Old Tower’s shadow, veils o’er their fates;

Tis scorn of providence, mocks their shared doom. 

Nowt awaits but nightfall, their adventures done;

What use now honour, to the dead and forgotten?

Wherefore the darkness, and yet wherefore the sun;

When I fall will I sleep, when I sleep will I dream?

Of battles I fought in life, of deeds I have done?

Is it better a soldiers death, or to die an old man?

S.K

From the southern gates of the Bangkorai Garrison, High King Emeric looks out across the Fallen Wastes. Still the lust of battle bestirs his blood and he is eager to push forward into the desert to find Septima Tharn and liberate the rest of Southern Bangkorai from her Seventh Legion’s choking grasp. Emeric’s forces however need time to regroup, so I am sent to scout the road ahead to Hallin’s Stand.

It is not long before I see the first devastating consequences of the Seventh Legion’s occupation. The Damar Farmstead has been burnt almost to the ground and nowt but daedra now roam the fields about.

Scorched Lands; a military tactic all the Legions know, but rarely talk about.

In the event of retreat we were taught to destroy anything that might be of use to the enemy. To burn the fields, supplies, and bridges. To tear down the buildings and scatter their stones so not even rubble remained. It is a shameful policy, but seen as a necessary one.

Emeric must muster quickly, lest all that will be left for him to liberate will be sand and corpses.

S.K

As the Battlemage Papus fell to my blade, the abyssal voice of Molag Bal thundered threats and menaces through the Royal Crypts. There can no longer be any doubts that Septima Tharn and her Seventh Legion are but minions upon Nirn for the Lord of Brutality.

I made my return back up to the courtyard just in time to hear the dread horn bellow and witness the mammoth metal chains of a Dark Anchor crashing into the very heart of the Garrison. When the dust and smoke settled I expected to see a horde of daedra awaiting us, there was however but one solitary figure, a Xivilai by the looks of it’s horns and azure skin.

So instead of a battalion of daedra to crush our weary troop, Molag Bal sends a single champion against us. It is clear this is to be a challenge, a duel, a champion of Coldharbour against a King’s champion. For such a dishonourable prince, it is a strangely honourable challenge, and one I feel I am honour bound to accept. As I make my way down to the dolmen below, I begin to wonder just how I came to this?

Despite what that blind old man in the cave claims to have seen in his scrolls, I do not believe that I am slave to destiny. I was never born to be a champion, especially for a King in who I have no faith, a country that is not my home, or a Covenant I cannot in all good conscience fight for. it’s all just… utterly inexplicable.

I was raised by my mother and father to spend my days in Cyrodilic fields and Colovian markets. I joined the legions, not to become a champion or a hero, but to escape that fate; the recruiter after all promised that I would see the world.

In training I was never the best recruit, I never stood out at any particular discipline. I just fulfilled my duties to the best of my abilities and it proved enough for me to earn my place as just another spoke in a wheel of the Empire’s legions.

And my eventual demise in the Imperial City was not through any heroic sacrifice, nor any grand act of martyrdom against the invading daedra. I was doing little more then my expected duty when I was ambushed on the streets by cultists, and died on that cold stone slab to the ritual bodkin of that most villainous Mer.

And I remember well that anarchic night in the prison when the pale Argonian freed me from my cell, for it feeds my nightmares still. I saw hundreds that night just like me, scrambling blindly about the forge and Undercroft like panicked guar fleeing from a Black Marsh storm. And who knows just how big the Wailing Prison truly is, I saw hundreds, but there may well have been thousands, all desperately trying to escape that underworld and find a way, any way, back home to Nirn.

And though it has been through deed that I have earned the title of King’s Champion, it was not because I posses any special skills or talents, but through sheer bloody mindedness, and from fighting alongside and learning from some of the greatest warriors in all of High Rock and Hammerfell.

I shall indeed meet this champion of Coldharbour in single combat, and I shall drive my blade through it’s neck and send it back home to Oblivion in pieces… and by my victory shall Molag Bal know our measure.

S.K

With the Evermore Guard preoccupied by the Reachman invasion to the North, and Emeric’s Lions still mustering beyond the Bjoulsae River, Septima Tharn jumped rashly upon the back of opportunity, and yet won a remarkable victory.

We are at our most vulnerable in the twilight of our greatest achievements however. and her Seventh Legion failed to hold onto what they had achieved because they overreached and could not reinforce the battlements in time with fresh soldiers or supplies from the south. For all her reputation as a ruthless tactician in battle, Tharn’s ambition, like so many would be conquerors before her, fell to the seduction of that most cruel of sirens, vainglory.

We may have secured the main courtyard but the battle for Bangkorai Garrison is not yet fully won, for the Seventh still hold the Royal Crypts from where they are preparing their final stand. King Emeric urges us forward hoping to catch Septima Tharn before her inevitable retreat, but also fearing what the Imperial necromancers may have planned, for this is also where fallen King Eamond’s corpse was set to be laid to rest.

The Seventh’s final charge is of but green conscripts who fall quickly to our blades upon the bridge, and beyond we meet their final line of defence, daedra summoned from the shadow realms. Whilst not enough to stop our advance, they prove enough to slow us, and alas, I arrive too late to capture Septima. Instead I find one of her officers, a Battlemage named Papus, performing debased rites upon the corpse of the late king.

What wretched crescendo this conductor of insidious rituals has planned I know not what, only that his vile coda must be brought to an close upon the thrust of my sharp baton.

S.K