One might think it would be easy to hide within a growing city, to get lost amongst the constant stream of visitors and migrants. But the bigger the city the more eyes are open to spy you, and the more loose tongues are willing to betray you. There is little honor amongst thieves, and less still amongst drunks and skooma fiends. It does not take long to track the Vulture down between the taverns and bathhouses.

Gulug the Vulture helped steal food from the rural tribes to buy medicine for the city’s poor. He boasts fortune, proclaims benevolence, and finally brags self-righteousness. I, like Gulug, am neither a good nor a bad man, but unlike Gulug, I am an honourable one, in that I wilt stand and look my consequences in their accusing eyes.

On the steps of Scarp Keep I am greeted by the radiant High Priestess Solgra. A little while ago I bemoaned rather cruelly that no Breton or Redguard would take an Orsimer to their bedchamber to secure the Covenant. How ignorant I am, how blinded by bigotry. For though Solgra may stand taller then I, her shoulders may be broader, her skin tougher, her tusks… inconvenient. It is into her illimitable eyes that I have fallen.

Windows to one’s soul they say, nay, they are windows to one’s everything. One’s feelings, be-it happiness or grief, and one’s health, both physical and cerebral. One’s wisdom, bravery and pride, or lack thereof of one or all. One’s intentions, one’s aspirations, and one’s dreams and nightmares. And of course the very beat of one’s heart and hue of one’s soul. But it was in my reflection within them that I was to discover their beauty. For when I looked into Solgra’s eyes, I felt a peace and serenity within my own heart I had not felt since my soul was so cruelly rent from my body by the bodkin of that insidious Worm King.

Oh wretch that I am, that my heart were not so burdened that I might have the courage to look deeper into her eyes. Perhaps I am not so honourable after all, for why does peace and serenity make me feel such abrading guilt… and yet the Vulture felt none?

S.K

It is oft said of the Orcs that they cannot pass by a pile of stones without either building a wall, or chucking them at something. The Orsimer seem to share an innate instinct to either build or destroy; sometimes they will build something with the sole intent just to destroy it… usually with a rock.

The stone city of Orsimium towers up from a rugged, inhospitable terrain; it’s very walls are wrought from the mountains that surround it. The silhouettes of it’s soaring towers and turrets pierce the sky, casting dramatic and intimidating shadows across all of the landscape. It’s sturdy foundations right up to it’s monumental ramparts upon which stand catapult and ballista, are built to endure weather, spell, missile and ram. Walking through the winding streets within these seemingly insurmountable bulwarks one is struck by the skill and pragmatic beauty of their architecture. The facades of even the most sturdy, functional dwellings and public structures are decorated with elaborately carved doorways and stone work. The wooden scaffolding all about also tells of a city yet half complete, the finished construction will no doubt be a stunning testament to the strength, will, and skill of its Orsimer builders… if ever it is allowed to stand.

Since the Orsimer first escaped the binds of the Camoran Dynasty and laid claim to their harsh Northern realm, great Orsinium, the seat of all Wrothgar, has been sacked and rebuilt more times then Queen Ayrenn’s virtues When the walls finally fell for good, and the Orsimer tribes were scattered, the idea of Orsinium, a monument to the strength and potential of the Orsimer, endured in their hearts. So when Ranser attacked Wayrest in 2E 566 and Emeric came crown-in-hand to Wrothgar, he promised the return Orsinium to the Orcs in exchange for their aid. Kurog gro-Bagrakh answered his call.

Kurog however surprised everyone when he chose to abandoned the ruins of Old Orsinium and rebuild the city in eastern Wrothgar, near the mountainous border with Skyrim. Not every tribe was to follow him however, for although Kurog forbade any army from High Rock or Hammerfell from entering Wrothgar in his terms, many saw this new Covenant as just consenting to Breton hegemony, and his new city not a symbol of Orsimer potential and freedom, but a betrayal of Wrothgar’s founding tribes.

No other city embodies, and yet divides a people more. Because for most of us our memories are like stones that only time erodes, but not for the Orsimer. For the stones of Wrothgar remember every day of the 30 years siege of Orsinium like it were yesterday. They recall the name of their fallen gates of the old city, Smelter, Hammer, Temper, as clearly as they remember the names of their warrior heroes, or the regions founding clans. This is why for an Orc there is little more frightening and unnerving then to watch a stone wall crumble. And why Wrothgar remains, many tribes, one nation… protected, and yet divided, by the new walls of Orsinium.

S.K

Wrothgar is a land that promises fresh hope and opportunity limited only by ones ambitions and abilities. But as with every frontier, each tacit opportunity is oft shadowed by native threat and indigenous peril. The adventurous, gallant, and just plain foolhardy who pass the great gates separating Wrothgar from High Rock venture not into a brave new world, but an ancient untamed one.

Yet the greatest threat to those bold and ambitious is not the barbarous land itself, nor the savage beasts that wander it’s picturesque hinterlands, but Mer and Men. Reachman raiders, bandit gangs, and Orc tribes unconvinced by the Stone city’s ‘many tribes, one nation’ writ. All seek to waylay the many caravans trundling the rough unlaid roads before they can reach the high stone walls of Orsinium. What care they for Stuga’s letters of commendation or Orsinium merchant permits. Indeed, what care they for the bold and ambitious, for they oft leave them for the untamed land to feed upon.

Yet still we cross the frontier in numbers, just like the first primordial hunters and gatherers in search of better hunting, and more fertile soil. For the peoples of Tamriel, no matter their race, share an intrepid nature’; it is in our blood, it is in our shared mortal spirit. We began as wanderers from Aldmeris, Atmora, Yokuda and beyond, and we are wanderers still… many tribes, one spirit.

S.K

We recover the stolen crates from the raiders, but alas the supplies themselves are nowhere to be seen. It appears the Winterborn have employed harpies to fly the goods up to the Reachman’s camps, although I doubt once in the talons of those insatiable monsters much of the food would have survived the flight.

Further along the pass I meet with Chief Bazrag, predictably he is about as friendly towards outsiders as a Nord maiden who finds you still in her bed the morning after. I guess such strong distrust and dislike of foreigners can be forgiven when your tribe has lived under the boots of Breton and Reachman for so long. Our only recourse now it seems is to follow the trail left us by the Reachman’s discarded communications, specifically a possible contact within Orsinium itself known as the ‘Vulture’. Bazrag suggests to close the rasping beak of this betrayer I begin my search within the inns of the capitol.

It is here on the pass that I get my first glimpse of the great stone walls of Orsinium, standing almost as tall as the mountains from which they are hewn. I am reminded of the Bosmer Greenspeakers who are said to have grown their cities from the Graht-oak trees of the Valenwood; only the Orsimer grow their cities not from trees but from mountains. Perhaps if the obstinate Orsimer had learnt to build bridges as well as they build their walls they might not have had to rebuild their capital so often.

S.K