Count Hosni talks of righting wrongs, of making amends, and of driving out the cultists.  I wonder though what price his conscience sets for his atonement.  Is it one good deed for every bad, one life saved for each death caused?  Whatever his tariff, I have to believe in the possibility of the redemption of Count Hosni Et-Tura; because I have to believe that a man might find peace despite the darkest of circumstances.

Besides, if Hosni can stay true to his word and turn from smuggler to benefactor, from thug to protector, then we can say there is at least one aristocrat in the whole of High Rock who is worthy of the title Noble… and a Redguard one at that!

S.K

Whether the Lady Adima was a cultist who gave herself over willingly to this deception or just another innocent victim of Vaermina’s Omen may never be known.  It is unfortunate that her only release from this puppetry can be death.

But is that not what death is?  A release from the restraints of our mortality; the shackles of our senses, the chains of our conscience, the mercuriality of our emotions, and the service to our flesh.  Is life nothing more than playing the marionette for the mundus?

I fear my lack of soul begins to mark my outlook … I fear that by and by I am becoming the monster I must fight hardest against.

S.K

“Smile, you fool.  Nod your head and laugh a little.  Act like you’re enjoying yourself.” – Countess Gisele Phien

The Countess Gisele Phien, like every other guest at the Count At-Tura’s betrothal party, is unable to leave for fear of her life.  The Count’s father is being held under armed guard at the guest residence, whilst his mother is locked up further away in the estates summer house.  And yet I soon discover that it is the Count himself who is the prisoner.

The Lady Adima, his betrothed, has used alchemic potions to induce the Count into a deep dreaming sleep and, in much the same way as the Supernal Dreamers, seduced and subjugated him to the point where she now dominates his very disposition.  It would appear that the master key to unlocking this elaborate prison lies deep within the Counts subconscious, and I must make myself a part of it if I am to free the captives of the At-Tuar estate.

But just as I am about to drink the potion that will allow me to slip into Hosni’s dreams, I hesitate, as my conscience flashes a memory into my mind of a poor destitute wretch, curled up, shivering and whimpering in the corner of a prison cell, staring blankly, neither seeing nor hearing the panic and barbarity that is happening all about him.

It was during the manic chaos of the prison break from Coldharbour that I came across this fellow inmate paralyzed by shock.  I wanted to wake the poor man from his hysteria, to rouse him to at least die with a weapon in hand.  But as I was about to shake him, I stopped, at that very moment I become lucidly aware of our plight, and that no delirium, and no nightmare, no matter how frightful and incapacitating, could be as dreadful as the horror which surrounded us at that moment, and to which I was about to recall him.

It’s funny, but when life seems too difficult to endure, and I wish nothing more than to hide my face from the unkind judgement of the sun, my conscious feels lighter for leaving him be.  Yet when I taste hope upon the morning breeze, and I yearn for a cloudless sky once again, my conscious weighs heaviest, and I can bear my reflection the least.

Sometimes you must first free yourself of your own fetters before you can free others from theirs.  For most of us it’s about finding a cause greater or more deserving then our own.  The cause that I need to inspire me is the freedom of the Countess Gisele Phien, and as I drink the potion and enter the strange beauty of the Counts dreamscape, I begin my fight to reach her jailer.

S.K

The At-Tura Estate is the home to the Redguard leader of the Midnight Union, Count Hosni at-Tura, and his wife, the Lady Adima.  The Union are an ill-famed band of smugglers and petty criminals tolerated by the Wayrest authorities; Indeed, the noble houses of Stormhaven are believed to make frequent use of their services.  All that changed recently however when members of the Union brutally attacked the Spirit Wardens of Pariah Abbey and stole a Dream Shard which has potentially left the whole of Stormhaven vulnerable to the growing iniquitous insurrection of Vaermina’s cult of the Supernal Dreamers.

Every good Guar tamer in Morrowind will warn that the longer the rein you allow a Guar, the more likely they are to buck their rider; and the richer the food you feed them, the more likely they are to bite the feeder.  This is as true of bandits as it is of beasts.

One need only look at the history of the noble houses of High Rock to learn that this is a land whose Kingdoms are bargained for between bed sheets and bloody bodkins, and its outlaws are rewarded, not with stocks and chains as in other civilized cultures, but with coronets and crowns.

There are no nobles left in all High Rock, just those with greed and gold.

S.K

The story of the Soulshriven Tower as related by the Priestess Pietine is that this area was once the site of a beautiful gardens belonging to Princess Violetta, a daughter of the house of Gardner.  The Gardner’s were once the ruling family of Wayrest prior to the rule of the present King Emeric Cumberland.  It was the last King Gardner who, along with several other Breton Kingdoms, signed the first Daggerfall Covenant, uniting High Rock to repel the Reachman invasion back in 541.  The family’s legacy was destined not to endure long after however as the King and his entire family fell victim to the Knahaten Flu, bringing an end to their auspicious dynasty almost 20 years ago.

The flower gardens of the Birdsong Tower, as these crumbling ruins were once known, were said to be a place of such pure beauty, tranquillity, and enchantment that it was whispered that the Mother Goddess Mara herself tended to every bloom.  When the Daedric prince Molag Bal, the lord of brutality, discovered a landmark of such purity and grace subsisting unsullied despite the tumult and disorder of the world about, it enraged him.  And in an act born of pure malice and spite, he sent his necromancers against the tower, to raise a legion of Undead that would corrupt the utopian gardens forever more.

It is an intriguing story, and one worthy of a bards supper; but perhaps what is more salient to note is that the tower offers an excellent outlook over Southern Wayrest and, more importantly, her docks.  One who has control over such a vantage point might gain vital strategic intelligence of ship movements to and from the capitol of the Daggerfall Covenant.

Or perhaps on a more base level, in a land where the drudges of Vaermina hold sway, claiming such a prized landmark for Oblivion may be little more than a notch in a perverse Daedric game of one-upmanship.

Whatever the true story behind the corruption of Birdsong tower, there is but one fact about this legion of undead of which I am certain…

They stand in my way.

S.K