As I watch the legendary arch-mage and mad dedric god stage a show of bluster and bravado, I look about myself and realize that I am their only audience.  How ironic.  I wonder how their egos cope if I were to tell them just how unimpressed I am by their act, and how little their vanity show means to a man without a soul.  Perhaps one day I shall tell them, but not now.

Let them have their stage, and let them think that their performance matters.  I will watch their play, and I will play their prop, till the time comes when I have learnt all that the mages guild has to teach me.  Hopefully by then, I shall have discovered whether this is a farce, melodrama, or tragedy.

S.K

The arch-mage recounts a tale of a sanctuary lost to a mad God, and soon I find myself agreeing to step through a portal back to Oblivion… my second home it would seem.

They say that those who seek power through knowledge must keep ajar the door that leads into madness.  When one steps through that door however, they will no doubt end up here, the Shivering Isles, realm of Sheogorath, the Daedric prince of all that is lunatic.

So far the only difference I’ve noticed between here and Tamriel is that the madness afflicting Tamriel appears at least to have some reason.

S.K.

I return the book to the Altmer at the mages guild and inform her of the phantom.  She knew his name by reputation, an Arch-mage of the first era whom she held in high revere and spoke of as if I should know his name.  I was never an ardent student of the histories, especially when it concerned mages.  It’s not that I don’t respect mages or the powers that they wield.  It is just that from experience I have found many to lack the self-control, and discipline to be counted on as reliable allies upon the battlefield. 

I have witnessed first-hand a mage use nought but sorcery and spell to single-handedly rip down the wall of a stone keep, only to be skewered moments later on the pitchfork of a farm hand because he was all spent.  Self-discipline is as important a trait to a mage as it is to a front-line foot-soldier, and upon it an army will either stand or fall.

In the end without self-discipline, even the most powerful of sorcerers will eventually be just an old man with a stick.

S.K

I find maps, charts and letters in Silumm to suggest that the Dominion presence here might not be the isolated incident I had first thought, but a part of a much larger incursion into Glenumbra.  Whilst I still stand by my sentiment that as a man of Cyrodiil this is not my fight, there is money however to be made in war, and right now Breton money feels a just little less sullied then Altmer.

Meanwhile, as I retrieved the tomes I had originally come for, another phantom appeared before me.  This conjurer’s parlour trick could get real tiresome, real fast.  Speaking with heavy Nordic accent, this apparition gave instructions on how the tomes might be read.

Before returning them to the Mages Guild however, I shall venture north along the coastline and survey for myself just how substantial this Aldmeri threat really is.

S.K