Trust is much like a mirror in that when it breaks you can piece it back together, but you will never again be able to look at it’s reflection without first seeing the cracks.

The wards to the Apex Tower in Elinhir have been broken and now Minerva Lauzon begins her ritual to breach the tower doors. Lauzon is a former apprentice to Yamanu-ko of the Blackcaster Mages Guild, but unlike Leta and Avys, she realized that life is a price too high to pay for knowledge.

She believes that defeating Yamanu-ko may be enough to break the cycle of the Serpent’s savage spell. But Yamanu-ko has grown ever more powerful in her tower feeding upon the magicka drained from her fellow mages in the city below. I have faith though that we can overcome, for just as wielding a blade is not strength, knowledge is not power. Those to whom knowledge is gifted, no matter how hard or long they have strived for it, oft prove little wiser than they were before.

Elinhir was once a city built upon faith and trust. For centuries its people put their trust in the mages to keep their city a safe bastion in the wastelands of Hammerfell for those who sought refuge from empires and wars. The mages were eventually to betray that faith however, by putting their own trust in the words of the Serpent’s envoy.

The city of Elinhir now lies in ruins and the people may never again want to put their trust in Lauzon and the mages, but this city cannot possibly be rebuilt without them. We all make mistakes, do wrong things, things that sometimes have bad consequences; it does not mean however that we can never be trusted ever again. But if the people of Elinhir can not ever see beyond the cracks in the mirror then perhaps they should let this city, the City of Mages, fall into dust.

S.K

Daedra have a nasty habit of appearing in Tamriel where we least expect them, perhaps the thing for us to do is to always expect them.

I discovered that the Eastern apprentice tower in the besieged city of Elinhir is full of Clannfear. The quarrelsome little beasts are by their very nature aggressive against all but their masters. Swift and nimble, a single Clannfear is more then a handful, but when they hunt together in packs, which they oft do, they can prove to be quite deadly.

Mortal troubles and strife seems to attract them like a Breton noble is attracted to gaudy cloths, but these particular beasts seem to have been deliberately summoned by the Blackcaster Avys Areleth to protect his tower. The High-Elf mage favours the use frost magic, presumably to slow down his adversary giving his daedric pets time to encircle and overwhelm.

The trick to fighting a sorcerer however is to imitate the aggression of the Clannfear. Jump on them quickly, stay on their chests throughout the fight, never let up, and never allow their summoned beasts to come in-between you and your prey.

S.K

As I cross the malignant streets of Elinhir I spy what appears to be a portal aglow in a particularly dilapidated corner of the city. Back at the Crossroads Tavern in Belkarth, many a caravan driver and wayfarer had warned of rifts appearing across Craglorn, but this was the first I had encountered. At my approach six figures emerge from the fulgent light, their eyes ablaze with the purple glow of magicka, their faces twisted by delirium.

The scholar might measure six on one as somewhat unfavourable odds, but to the warrior one on six is a noble challenge. Besides, the true risk would be to leave this rift unclosed, for more of these spell-fiends could swift overrun the city and I may never make it through to the Apex Tower.

My shield crushed the skull of the final spell-fiend just in time for me to see the broiling flames and turbulent squall of atronachs stepping through the luminous portal. Soon they were joined by an enormous flesh atronach that damn near took my head off my shoulders with an arcing swing of its brutish clubbed arm.

The atronachs that have been attacking the region of late were thought to have been summoned by Craglorn mages to defend against the Dark Anchors of the insidious Planemeld, only to turn against their masters when the constellations disappeared from the sky. But these that are arriving through the rift appear to have ingressed from another realm entirely, and the atronachs patrolling the streets of Elinhir seem very much still under the influence of the Blackcaster Mages.

When the gods lash out at Tamriel, they scourge us with a whip of many tails.

S.K

During the strangle of Elinhir, a rogue member of the Blackcaster Mages Guild led a small group of citizens to seek sanctuary in the sewers beneath the city, unbeknownst that just a feet from their shelter a far more sinister ritual was being enacted by the Lost Aspect.

The city itself will be forever lost if the leader of the Blackcaster mages is not overcome, but the Apex Tower in which she skulks is warded by macabre Nedic totems cloistered in the towers of her apprentices.

I battle my way through the wounded city streets until I arrive in a town square before the westernmost tower. Here I begin to skirmish with a seemingly unending tide of spell-fiend and atronach; eventually I am grudgingly forced to seek my own refuge within the tower itself.

I am surprised by how meagre the protection for the archaic tower is within. Perhaps the apprentice had too much confidence in her ambush, or maybe it is that she welcomes the rouse of battle herself. Either way, whether it be complacency or hubris, she appeared somewhat confounded when I swiftly put down her zombies, and equally perplexed when I sunk my blade deep into her gut.

S.K