Upon my return from the discordant realms of Oblivion I chose to make a home in the High Rock city of Daggerfall. I purchased a modest house and attempted, with little artistry or varnish, to make it feel like a home. I filled the shelves with the many books and tomes I have collected though-out my travels, and planned to idle my evenings away by the fire, adrift in poetry and literature.

Since the fall of the Imperial City and my subsequent escape from Coldharbour during the uprising at the Wailing Prison, I have been somewhat of a vagabond, a drifter in body and soul. Of all the towns I  visited during my travels through these Covenant lands, it was Daggerfall that felt the most familiar, and comfortable.

Perhaps it was the refuge I found in her crowded streets, bustling market place, and busy harbours, after so long spent in the desolate wilds of Coldharbour. Perhaps it was the sanctuary I felt behind her high gates and stone walls, insurmountable even to the great army of the Black Drake. Or perhaps it was the reassuring shade cast by the castle and her twin towers standing sentinel, ever watchful and alert from atop the hill so her citizens need not be.

Alas… though there is so much to interest me here, nothing seems to hold me. The restlessness of my soul grows by the day and casts an invisible blanket between my will and ambition. And whilst in the past I was ne’er so lonely as when in a crowd, it is the creak of the floorboards in this empty house that is the loneliest sound I have ever known.

I must go somewhere, see something, find something; yes, I need to find something.

I recall Merida’s offer to see the world from the perspective of the other Alliances… now wouldn’t that be a thing. But no. I am done being a puppet of Daedric Princes, no matter their painted hue.

I do remember however that there was a man with a cart outside the Cloudy Dregs Inn in Wayrest offering passage to Craglorn to the east. I believe he called himself a Star-Gazer, and babbled something incoherent about the stars vanishing from the sky. Proper sugar-glazed that one. But it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve joined the voyage of a soused captain. Anyhow, every mercenary worth his purse will tell you that if you are searching for something, be it trail, adventure, coin, or even yourself, then the town of Belkarth is the first place to look.

S.K

In the ancestral crypts beneath the ruins of the Abbey of Blades, we are ambushed by the treacherous Mannimarco, who appears before us in the form of cloud and mist. Once threat and wit are dutifully traded, the duplicitous elf begins to raise the corpses of the most lauded sword-singers who ever walked the sands of Hammerfell against us.

Now, in these cramped tombs, against the mightiest of undead, shall I discover the worth of my companions, and they in turn discover mine.

In truth I already know how formidable a warrior Lyris is having on more then one occasion fought our way out of Coldharbour together. And if Abnur Tharn be but half the battlemage his reputation claims him to be, then he will prove a mighty ally indeed; although I strongly suspect like most Tharns, he is the author of his own repute.

My only questions are of Sai Sahan, can he be truly fully recovered from his years of torture in so short a time, and even if so, what use the Redguard against his ancestors anyway? For Sai Sahan is no Ash’abah, he is a Redguard nobleman. In the desert of the Alik’r, I witnessed far too many a redguard nobleman who would rather die on their knees in the sands praying to their gods, then fight against their honoured dead; and Sahan is perhaps the noblest Redguard I have ever met.

Thankfully he is also a pragmatist who realises that sometimes hands that swing weapons can be far more righteous then lips that pray.

S.K

The Chamber of Agony at the heart of the Halls of Torment.

One thing has puzzled me since we first arrived at this prison, what does the Duchess of Anguish have to fear so much that she hides away in a fortress such as this?

Is it all just to keep her prisoners inside? Unlikely, for even if they could escape their bounds and their jailers, where would they run to in the middle of Coldharbour?

Is it to keep someone else out? Are there conflicts and disunity within the tribes of Coldharbour itself that we could never have imagined? Perhaps not, for who would dare attack such a favoured minion of Molag Bal’s in the Lord or Brutality’s own realm?

Or is it to protect the Duchess from something that goes far beyond her own understanding of reward or punishment, the one inevitability of all existence and that one thing that all evil fears… consequence.

S.K