Skyreach Pinnacle is the final district of the ancient Nedic city still accessible today. Outside its doorways I am approached by a scholarly fellow who tells me he believes this was once a prison of sorts, for creatures the Nede’s could neither control nor destroy. He requests my aid in restoring the prisons wards as Scaled Court cultists have somehow inadvertently managed to release the inmates, and now they roam the Pinnacle unbound.

After fighting my way down through a dark winding corridor I find myself in a vast chamber. Barren except for a few curious runic circles around its perimeter, and what appears to be a ceremonial circle engraved at chambers centre. A huge opening in one wall provides a view into the night sky, empty now of course apart from the two moons and the shadow of a huge flying beast seemingly paroling the Pinnacle.

As soon as the scholar undertakes his ritual the celestial creatures begin to materialise around the summoning circles. The beasts, both natural and daedric in nature, agitate with magical energy. The scholar claimed that the Nedes experimented in imbuing these creatures with incredible power, perhaps to defend themselves from the invading Yokudans, or perhaps just for experimentation sake. Spiders and Crocodile, Scamps and Clannfear. Ogrim, Lamia, Snakes, and Scorpions. Even a daedroth, harvester, watcher, and spider daedra, the Nedes were meticulous in their research it seems. But none so these were as formidable as the giant celestial titan that arrives through the aperture.

Mederic Vyger believes these imprisoned creatures may have been the Nede’s failed experiments, and suggests that their successes may have become the Celestials themselves. To most this extraordinary claim will sound like the former Scaled Court cultist is trying a little to hard to justify his prior misplaced allegiance. It is worth noting however that his supposition echoes the claim made by Exarch Arnoth in the Hold below, that the Celestials were once mortal creatures that were somehow transcended, or elevated to the heavens. And indeed the Lich ruling over the Skyreach Catacombs certainly ascended into something more then he was when he was mortal. And need I recall the Dark Elves Tribunal, and how they seem to have elevated themselves to be something… more. And finally some even speculate that the sudden disappearance of the Dwemer was also a transcendence of some kind.

Whilst Mederic’s speculation may just be adding deadwood to an overgrown thicket, more and more of the Serpent’s allies seem to be coming to the same conclusion, that these Celestials are not quite the divine beings of Aetherius they claim to be.

S.K

Pride is an eccentric thing. On the one hand it can be the progenitor of evil, the root of sin, and yet conversely it can also be the only thing that keeps a warrior going forward against seemingly insurmountable odds.

The necromancer Virmeal was once advisor and friend to the Nedic high king Durac. Yet when the tempest of the Ra Gada began crashing against the walls of Skyreach, he betrayed him. Before the high king’s council he promised to raise an undead army to repel the invasion, yet instead he slaughtered all, and enslaved their corpses with his necromantic powers. This heinous act alone assured he ascended/descended into lichdom. Without the leadership of their king or council, the Nedes of Skyreach were doomed. Legend has it that it was Durac offering the hand of his daughter to another that provoked the High Elf’s betrayal. But it wasn’t a broken heart that sparked the High Elf’s treachory, rather it was wounded pride.

The necromancer Virmeal, bristling with prejudice and vitriol, motivated solely by pride and arrogance is convinced in his ability to overcome this mortal before him with his necrotic magics, runes and crystals. But when he had thrown the best of his worst at me and I was still standing, his faith in himself wavered, and he began to summon wave upon wicked wave of apparitions to his aid. If I were forced to face the necromancer and two or three ghosts I might have swallowed my pride and retreated. Yet as I stood alone affronting an oncoming horde, my pride had me stand my ground against seemingly insurmountable odds. Pride is eccentric like that.

S.K

Beyond the gouge and waterfalls I delve to the deepest chambers of Skyreach Hold from where Exarch Arnoth holds court. His chamber is bare but for the ornately carved pillars and piles of grounded nirncrux. It is either as a result of inadvertent overexposure, or via deliberate consumption, that the Scaled Court leader appears to be glowing with a peculiar scarlet radiance.

Through necessity of fate, we battle, me with sword and shield, him with storm and fire. It is not long before I learn that Arnoth’s consumption of Nirncrux is indeed with intent, for as we battle he summons glowing orbs of crimson energy that seem to imbue him with an ever increasing strength. They say that power attracts the worst and corrupts the best. Now I am not saying that Exarch Arnoth is either of these, but the measure of any man is what he does when he first tastes power. Like a Nord’s first flagon of mead however, it is not that first intoxicating taste that corrupts, but the fear of never tasting it again.

Eventually the nircrux seems to overwhelm Arnoth’s last shred of mortal wit, and he abandons his magics and begins to attack wildly with fist and broil, all whilst ranting maniacally. Inevitably in the end Exarch Arnoth fell to my blade, because no mater how much nirncrux he imbued, and how powerful he felt, he failed to comprehend that power should never be an end in itself, only a tool to be used to reach an end.

Most of his ranting and raving was that of an intoxicated sot, but there was one thing he said that has stuck with me, “Like the Celestials before me, I was mortal and am now something more.” Was he truly claiming that the Celestials were once mortals that somehow transcended, or were elevated, to the heavens? Were it not for the Dark Elves outlandish, yet vehement claims about the legitimacy of their “Tribunal”, I might have felt safe in dismissing his rant as but reverie.

Would it be at all surprising that the greatest truths of Tamriel are found not in books, but in the ravings of a madman?

S.K