Welcome to my attempt at running a quest about restoring the Falmer from their state as wretched monsters to proud residents of skyrim.

I'll go more in depth later, but for now just some OOC stuff.
I'm going to try and put out the first few posts quickly in the next few hours, first to three is fine so I can get some momentum going and clear "character creation".

After that I want to make a post every 2 days.
And I didn't draw that art, so don't expect any drawings of mine.

>>6379610
>He rises again, the first breath of royalty breathing out makes the world tremble, the blessings of the soul of The Fixed Center weave and flow through this new body and with understanding comes the understanding of the power of the Tongues.
>Nilibor
It is WE who shall upend the Nordic usurpers, WE who shall make right their ancestral wrongs, WE who shall turn their speech against them so utterly that they are left as less than dust.

>>6379610
>Vythis
>He rises with a spear in hand, gleaming with unearthly white light. The spear of Encroaching Frost, a relic of bygone days that bites with the chill of winter and renders those it strikes more vulnerable to the cold.

calling in 20 minutes and doing a coin flip.

Rolled 1 (1d2)

>>6379642

Nilibor, Prince of Snow. Herald of Dynasty, Great storm-throat, You are so charged; Mend what has long laid asunder. Repair my Temple. Rebuke the long death that is almost complete. In this you are Ours.

The great words wash through the dark room like a physical weight that pushes you to one knee in reverence, the mandate of your task brings a gust of air which sweeps up dust from the flagstones which make up the floor. It is cool here, that of a tomb rather than a cave, the distinction doesn't fill you with any great comfort. Taking a breath, your eyes flicker closed and you speak.

"Liz Drun Krah"
The specks of dust and sand ice over and fall to the floor, stone covering over in hoarfrost as the temperature of the room drops to a comfortable span below freezing, your bare form feeling nothing but the nostalgic embrace of the northern glaciers of Solthsiem. The imagery is almost real in your minds eye as you speak, the understanding fueling the illusion until it is reality.
The power of the Tongues, the arts of the butchers who sundered you and yours from hearth and home. The sting in your throat is enough to temper the thought of the great displays of city shattering cries, You have time yet to improve.

Your body straightens as the light fades, your eyes opening and they are unhindered by the absence. Gleaming sapphire orbs cut through the dark, picking out the stone and the carved insets for the nordic dead to sleep, all thankfully empty due to times careless advance.

As you look to begin scavenging for some clothes, the air shimmers again in a haze of memory and twinkling star light. Alongside some fine travelling robes, Another of the pantheon has deemed fit to provide you a tool to your uplifting.

>Pick 1

>Sacrifice of Syrabane and Xrib, a ritual using the soul of a Feral and a mix of their poisoned mushrooms to remake another into a Reforged Falmer. The cost in blood is high, but it requires ritual rather than talent and reagent rather than power. Suitable to all whom you can teach it too, but your heart rends to those miserable souls that must be sacrificed to enable another's rise. Of benefit, the ritual lasts only an hour.

>Honoured Crown of Trinimac and Phynaster: A crown of wrought ivory and gold embedded with a ruby over the brow this artifact is clear in it's divine craftsmanship. From it's touch flows knowledge, there is nothing honorable in slaughtering your people to benefit a fraction but neither can what is utterly ruined be made clean, and with a spell of godly complexity that flee's from your attempts to comprehend it you may make something pure. The cost is a good chunk of your magical strength, perhaps a tenth per use, and the spell may only be performed while wearing the crown but it will transform the children and the teenagers of the Feral into Reforged Falmer over a day of sleep. Of benefit however is that they will be of improved magical and physical aptitude.

>>6379683
>The Shrine of awakening, Magnus and Xarxes give you the words, the secret words, that rend the world but once. In it's place there stands a familiar yet altered form of a wayshrine. This great structure leads to nowhere, but those of the Feral that step inside are remade in an instant, their forms unwound and Reforged with the speed of a master conjurer summoning forth a daedra from the still waters of oblivion. Alas the stars fuel this great edifice and it's capacity is limited, a mere hundred souls may be reforged before it requires time to recharge. Every feral reforged costs a day and a night's worth of energy. And of course, you only have the one.

As you take in this great gift and it's ramifications, you ponder long on the fate of your people. You are an exemplar, the finest example amongst the Ancient Falmer and named for one of the great pilgrims who became one with The Fixed Center himself. Like all your people, your talent for Ice magics and destruction is nearly unparallel and in conjunction you are- were one of the foremost mages of your age in matters of destruction, your spearwork well regarded as veteran expertise. How can you handle it if your people are even worse than you are led to suspect?
Though you do not know what exactly has befallen them, you know that your people have become base Feral creatures, and though you love your kind you. . .

>Pity them, that they will have never known the crytal spires of Kethwish, or the great bridge of snowflakes.
>Hate them, for they are ruined things that you must right. The very idea of allowing their parody of self to remain is intolerable.

Falmeris muttering comes easy to your lips as you clothe and bind yourself in comfortable sky blue travel robes, sans shoes and gloves with your hood drawn up high. Stepping forwards and pushing open an ancient cheddar wood door, the cold behind you is replaced by the relatively warm air of the rest of the first city of Atmoran's. You stride in silence, your footfalls muted and your senses peeled, the faint echo's of the scrape of wood on stone is enough for you to map out tunnels ahead, the seismic sense of vibrations meeting your foot from movement ahead painting a picture of something stomping around up ahead, heralded by the reek of chemical preserves. Hearing, touch, smell, these in tandem form a mental image as clear as any divination spell of the Draugr about to step around the corner to investigate the noise you had made.
And with that pre-warning, you saw out the next few seconds in just as clean a detail. The white light of cold forms upon your left hand, and as the thing's head moves around the corner

>>6379684
THUNK.

The undead corpse slams backwards into the wall, adhered by the frozen ice spike through it's throat as it's own glowing eyes fade away into dust filled eyesockets.
And then there are the Atmoran's and the Dwemer. You had thought the Dwemer allies, cousins at the very least, but they had betrayed your people and their covenant? You ponder the matter as you step past the corpse, senses straining. The deep elves had ever been strange, valuing alien values but why would they turn upon you all? You had met and entertained many of them in matters of diplomacy yourself!

>What are your feelings on both of these races, Free write in.

>Which field had you studied and mastered/traded with the Dwemer.
>Farming: You had advanced the field in several ways. Food always flowed whenever your attention turned to the fields and the underground city states had always been appreciative of new ways in which to defeat the killing frosts or multiply the bounty of arcane reagents.
>Construction: You were a city builder and fortress designer, your command of the ice refined to such degrees that entire castles could be conjured from the perpetual snow squalls that blew over the sea of ghosts. You shouldn't be surprised if upon returning to the surface you find one or more of your creations still holding strong against entropy.
>Tonal architecture: A quick wit and quicker study, the mysteries of Dwemer engineering were not half as mysterious as many thought. At least for you, and your skill may have only been average with it but that was more than enough to be exceptional for a non-dwemer, the principles of harmonic metallurgy and steam powered resonators had made you a close confidant of several high ranking ambassadors. Or so you thought.

>>6379683
>Honoured Crown of Trinimac and Phynaster: A crown of wrought ivory and gold embedded with a ruby over the brow this artifact is clear in it's divine craftsmanship. From it's touch flows knowledge, there is nothing honorable in slaughtering your people to benefit a fraction but neither can what is utterly ruined be made clean, and with a spell of godly complexity that flee's from your attempts to comprehend it you may make something pure. The cost is a good chunk of your magical strength, perhaps a tenth per use, and the spell may only be performed while wearing the crown but it will transform the children and the teenagers of the Feral into Reforged Falmer over a day of sleep. Of benefit however is that they will be of improved magical and physical aptitude.
A raiment most righteous, most pure. With this, the resurrection of our race is yet possible. Given time. Ruinous, gnawing time.

>>6379684
>Pity them, that they will have never known the crytal spires of Kethwish, or the great bridge of snowflakes.
How far are we fallen? How distant are those ancient days? Our race, once beautiful and brilliant beyond compare, now lays scraping in the dust and hissing at shadows. An affront to ancestral memory, one that is our burden to amend.

>>6379686
>Tonal architecture: A quick wit and quicker study, the mysteries of Dwemer engineering were not half as mysterious as many thought. At least for you, and your skill may have only been average with it but that was more than enough to be exceptional for a non-dwemer, the principles of harmonic metallurgy and steam powered resonators had made you a close confidant of several high ranking ambassadors. Or so you thought.
The Dwemer. Oh, the Dwemer... their secrets were strange, their proclivities moreso, and now, they are gone. No matter. Their age-old secrets will find new use with us.

Another anon should come up with the racial relations. It has been years since I've played Skyrim and I'm not versed enough in the lore to make a call on it.

>>6379704
the Intro gives most of the tale, albeit in an attempt at dramatization.

But to cut a long story short, as Nilibor Knows it.
The atmoran's come from Atmora, a distant land across the seas and they settled in the north of the continent where the only eternal constant is Ice and Snow. [I'm gonna use those two words a lot this quest, Like skyrim in the mythic era was just all snow, all the time, with weird magical storms. If you remember winterhold from the games? multiply that over everything except the reach.]

Anyway, the nord's ancestors settled there and for rumour that they had recovered some world rending prize, the Snow elves attacked and wiped out their settlements to reclaim whatever was being held there. Only 3 men escaped the slaughter and fled back to Atmora.
A few years later the survivors come back with 500 buddies and they just start killing. And they lay waste to the thousands, hundreds of thousands die to 500. Ysgramor, first great chief of Skyrim and his companions spend a few decades killing every falmer he can find in revenge, cutting their ears into trophies, burning their homes. He is still historically like the 2nd greatest killer of elves in history.

they eventually corner the last army of the falmer in Solthsiem, A then-part of the mainland, in the battle of Moesring Mountains and the two sides maul eachother.
The Snow prince, the last hero of the Falmer, almost turns the tide before a 12 year old girl threw her dead mothers great sword and it slammed through his breast, killing him and routing the falmer. Those who stayed were slaughtered, those who ran died tired.

The rest of the race either took refuge with the dwemer or got mopped up later.
And we all know what happened to the one's who sheltered with the Dwemer.

>>6379686
>Honoured Crown of Trinimac and Phynaster
It also makes for a fine symbol of the snow elves return and our divine right to rule.

>Pity them, that they will have never known the crytal spires of Kethwish, or the great bridge of snowflakes.
It's not their fault they're all ugly bastards.

>What are your feelings on both of these races, Free write in.
>The Atmorans, as brutish and repugnant as they are, were merely foes. We warred with them and lost but I cannot pretend we would not have done the same to them had we won. Still, Aedra willing, we will reclaim our home from those savages. As for the Dwemer? It was foolish of us to trust such a godless and arrogant race to begin with. The only thing worse than those who revere daedra, are those who think themselves above the divine entirely.

>Construction
The irony of us using the dwemer's science and technology to resurrect our own dead civilization atop the corpse of theirs would be funny. But we're a SNOW elf.

>>6379746
I support this

>>6379683
>Honoured Crown of Trinimac and Phynaster: A crown of wrought ivory and gold embedded with a ruby over the brow this artifact is clear in it's divine craftsmanship. From it's touch flows knowledge, there is nothing honorable in slaughtering your people to benefit a fraction but neither can what is utterly ruined be made clean, and with a spell of godly complexity that flee's from your attempts to comprehend it you may make something pure. The cost is a good chunk of your magical strength, perhaps a tenth per use, and the spell may only be performed while wearing the crown but it will transform the children and the teenagers of the Feral into Reforged Falmer over a day of sleep. Of benefit however is that they will be of improved magical and physical aptitude.
>Pity them, that they will have never known the crytal spires of Kethwish, or the great bridge of snowflakes.
Ultimately, their fate was due to betrayal by the Dwemer.
>Tonal architecture: A quick wit and quicker study, the mysteries of Dwemer engineering were not half as mysterious as many thought. At least for you, and your skill may have only been average with it but that was more than enough to be exceptional for a non-dwemer, the principles of harmonic metallurgy and steam powered resonators had made you a close confidant of several high ranking ambassadors. Or so you thought.
As much as I want to stick with elvish specialties were are going to be grossly outnumbered and most of our brethren are degenerated savages. Even when restored they'll eventually reclaim our old specialties. Until than using the dwemer tools and ruins will be required to keep a low profile and rebuild. Except for a certain fat Dwemer in Morrowwind its not like anyone can challenge us for control over those mechanisms.

Racially wise the pain of being betrayed by our fellow Mer hurts more than the war against Man. After all, we ultimately picked that fight and lost against mankind. Fair is fair in a any war, much less one between races. Getting betrayed by our own kin however is a VERY different story, especially for what they did. Also, we don't yet know about the fact that Man has been divided into different subspecies yet, and technically speaking our grudge's closest bearers are the Nords otherwise it would still be with the Atmorans. While the dwemer are gone and the humans we hate/warrged against most are also long dead.

So honestly, we are quite the pickle in terms of racial views and vengeance. The ones we could avenge ourselves on are long dead. In terms of race enough time has passed that we cannot even consider Man of all beings the same as the old Altmorans, either that we were familiar with. Not even the Nords would qualify. Also the connection to Altmora has also been lost. The last people who went there were an Imperial family member and a certain Morrowind protagonist. Meanwhile the Dwemer also drove themselves to extinction for their own hubris too. So who is left to blame?

>>6379825
So racially tension-wise...I can easily see our protagonist being deeply DEEPLY confused and bitter when he finds out what happened to the Dwemer and Altmorans. It's impossible avenge the snow elves anymore, goddamn it. Punish the Nords? The Nords are no Altmorans as much as they like to claim to be the most pureblooded descendants of theirs. While the Dwemer are extinct from their own hubris. We cannot claim vengeance unless we somehow rediscover the route back to Altmora itself.

The bigger problem would be the Imperials, Altmer, and those dragons.

The best we can hope for is trying to rebuild and restore the snow mer. Vengeance...we lost our chance for revenge unless we find Altmora.

>>6379704
Racially, all those we hold grudges with are long extinct. So we are very much caught with our dick in hand with nobody left to fuck over. The closest we have to blame are the Nords(still not Altmorans) and maybe the Altmer as replacements for Dwemer, with how much of an asshole they became. I wouldn't be surprised if we note their similarity to Dwemer especially when we find out what they have been doing to other people. That would bring back some very bad memories and comparisons to us quite easily. Other Mer we would still be fine with but probably sad about what happened to the Adaleids who also bit the dust but maybe they also have a failsafe like us?

For Man I imagine we may have some dislike for them on account of our grudge against their ancestors. Particularly the Nords who like to claim they are the closest to Altmora making them easy targets for us to make fun of because we actually DID know the Altmorans and can easily tell the difference between them for insults.

No reason to feel anything different about the beast races. So neutral? Dragons do be trouble, though.

>>6379829
>>6379825
Thalmor not Altmer. I forgot how to spell.

File: Altmer.png (18 KB, 527x594)

18 KB PNG

>>6379825
>>6379829
>The last people who went there were an Imperial family member and a certain Morrowind protagonist.
Nah both Uriel V and the Nerevarine went to Akavir not Atmora. Nobody has been to Atmora since very early in 1st Era when a final wave of Atmoran migrants arrived in Skyrim. It was likely destroyed or otherwise rendered uninhabitable somehow like Yokuda was and all the Atmorans fled to Skyrim. Maybe some ASoIaF white walker invasion type shit? Who knows.

>Vengeance...we lost our chance for revenge unless we find Altmora
As I mentioned, it's very likely that Atmora was completely abandoned. Even the giants fled to Skyrim with the Atmorans. So revenge is impossible unless we decide the Nords are close enough to our ancient foe for us to really hate them.

>maybe the Altmer as replacements for Dwemer, with how much of an asshole they became
The Altmer were always assholes. Not much has changed there.

>Other Mer we would still be fine with but probably sad about what happened to the Adaleids
The Falmer were devoted to the Aldmeri pantheon so I don't know if they'd be too torn up about the extinction of the hedonistic daedra-worshiping Ayleids who did all sorts of fucked up nonsense like injecting daedric spirits into people to get high off their blood, setting children on fire for fun or displaying tortured and mutilated slaves as living art pieces.

>For Man I imagine we may have some dislike for them on account of our grudge against their ancestors
If I recall correctly, not all Men are actually descended from the Atmorans. The Nedes (ancestors of Imperials and Bretons) were in Tamriel during the Merethic era and were possibly native to Tamriel alongside the beastfolk, but were definitely living all across Tamriel long before the Atmorans ever stepped foot in Skyrim. Nilibor would have only known the Nedes as tribals, reavers and slaves. The Redguards meanwhile are descended from the Yokudans who sailed from the west after they blew their homeland up and started committing genocide on everyone who wasn't them the moment they arrived.

>>6379683
>>6379684
>>6379686
>Honoured Crown of Trinimac and Phynaster: A crown of wrought ivory and gold embedded with a ruby over the brow this artifact is clear in it's divine craftsmanship. From it's touch flows knowledge, there is nothing honorable in slaughtering your people to benefit a fraction but neither can what is utterly ruined be made clean, and with a spell of godly complexity that flee's from your attempts to comprehend it you may make something pure. The cost is a good chunk of your magical strength, perhaps a tenth per use, and the spell may only be performed while wearing the crown but it will transform the children and the teenagers of the Feral into Reforged Falmer over a day of sleep. Of benefit however is that they will be of improved magical and physical aptitude.
>Pity them, that they will have never known the crytal spires of Kethwish, or the great bridge of snowflakes.
>Farming: You had advanced the field in several ways. Food always flowed whenever your attention turned to the fields and the underground city states had always been appreciative of new ways in which to defeat the killing frosts or multiply the bounty of arcane reagents.

While tonal architecture offers an alternative, generally all energy comes from food --> muscle power, or from nature e.g rivers or wind --> wind/watermills. If we're gonna rebuild our people, we'll want a strong foundation. Machines are obviously more efficient, but you need a lot of prerequisite things to be capable of producing them and sustaining those who do produce them.

>>6379857
Been forever since I checked the elder scroll archives and these days I don't trust it much thanks to how shitty the Elder Scrolls Online 'lore' was. To be honest my favorite lore period was pre Oblivion. We lost out on having a giant jungle full of dinosaurs and amazon tribes being the heartland of the Empire instead. That would have been far more awesome but nnnooo. We had gay ass Ayleid European medieval analog 2030442nd instead.

Been 20 years and I'm still mad about that. Ruining my alien fantasy world damn you Todd Howard. Morrowind is still the best Elder Scrolls.

>>6379704
>>6379746
>>6379793
>>6379825
>>6379875

Unanimous votes for Honoured crown of Trinimac and Phynaster, and pitying your degenerated kin, for it isn't their fault.

Tonal architecture: 2
Construction: 2
Farming: 1

I'll let the vote run for another hour and 15, then flip a coin.

Rolled 1 (1d2)

>>6379895
1= Tonal architecture
2= construction

The divine crown weighs heavily upon your brow, the responsibility it represents like a millstone about your neck. Hope was a powerful thing made all the more precious by the harsh edge of knowledge that it is the only hope left to your people. Your steps carry quickly towards the distant promise of freedom, a sharp whistle or the slamming of a magical gale into the chest of a draugr warlord helping to map your way out from doomed and ruined Sarthaal, It's clear by the inhabitants that Ysgramor had at least returned to inhume his dead once he finished removing yours. At the very least you have some idea of where Auri-el has placed you, the north east of the country near the sea of ghosts by the city state of Afltand, your memory straying to the time where you had spent there amidst the glacial spire.

Deep, bone shaking resonant tones had run up and down the stone structure like a small earthquake, disorienting for you in particular who had far more exact senses than the greyish-blue skinned betrayer you had called 'teacher' who stood beside you. A flat headed hammer swung in rhythmic humming flow upon corrundum sheets as flame salts are tossed inbetween, handful after handful. The process was not akin to the smithing you knew or watched being craft before by the court artisans, it had a different kind of significance that only became stronger as you took up the humming song, hammer in swing at precise and obtuse angles, always hitting perfectly flat and making the ground sway while it stood as solid as it always is. By the time the moon rose the final notes had faded and there lay a flat expanse of dwemeri metal, cut and slot into decorative slabs by composition alone. It wasn't the first or last or most advanced lesson you had there, but it still held the greatest effect on you.

After what felt like an hour, finally your seismic sense revealed a crag threading down a collapsed corridor's roof and squeezing through it with hands and knees, it's only your knowledge of the way forwards that stops you from abandoning the way as an ignoble form of suicide. Cold, fresh air! The first stirrings of snow! you struggle faster, breathing in to get past a cramped S turn and then-

Your hand punches up through a quarter foot of snow, compressing it into ice with a quick and dirty application of magic before hauling yourself up. The Snow Prince returned in a small flurry of white, standing atop a glacier in the early morning sun. The wind feels good on your face and the crunch of snowflakes under foot is as reassuring as the eye of Auri-el above you which is all the comfort you can truly draw from the vista as a strange uncanny sense of wrong permeates it. The air seems. . . warmer than it had before while to the south east there rises a giant statue of Moon and Star among the mountain range, Had the Ayleid influence spread so far north?

>>6379916
The sky is overcast but clear rather than entangled in a storm of sleet and flakes, allowing you to see that the sea of ghosts is a few hour's trek north over the steep rises and falls of the ice shelf. If memory serves you right, north east is the atmoran landing post and while you cannot bring yourself to hate the barbarians for their actions both because they are long dead and you would have scoured them to the last if the roles were reversed, there is a possibility they have a settlement there which might make for uncomfortable questions asked as to why a Falmer would so brazenly walk amongst them.

Of course then there is west towards where your memory of Alftand is, a vast and open plane of white like the trek north but you couldn't see anything out there. While you don't feel hungry and water is everywhere, the prospect of finding the city-state erased from the face of the continent and having no supplies does not fill you with confidence.

>Where do you go?
>Towards the statue of Azura, it is a daedric shrine and they are not to be trusted, but they are probably not malicious. Plus it gives you a better view of the country from a mountain top.
>North to the Sea of Ghosts, it's a few hours away but from the coast you can catch some fish and get your mind in order. The terrain is what your people were made to thrive in, it'll be relaxing.
>North east to Hsaarik Head, at risk of finding a settlement of Ysgramor's descendents. A settlement is still a settlement.
>West, try to find Alftand. The dwemer city states are hardy things, though there's the risk of it's presence being gone like it's makers.
>West, strike out into the wilds and try to find something else.
>Write in

>>6379917
>West, try to find Alftand. The dwemer city states are hardy things, though there's the risk of it's presence being gone like it's makers.
Dwarfcraft will serve us well. We must be sneaky, lest the men overwhelm us before we can reclaim our homeland.

>>6379917
>Towards the statue of Azura, it is a daedric shrine and they are not to be trusted, but they are probably not malicious. Plus it gives you a better view of the country from a mountain top.
Maybe we can convince these lost souls to embrace the light of magnanimous Auri-El over their bitchy blue goddess. If not then we can at least gather some information about the state of Tamriel. I wonder if the Crown's power could undo Azura's curse and turn a Dunmer back into a Chimer?

You know, I doubt anybody would recognize us as a falmer and if they ask about our race then we can always just tell them that we're a maormer. Most people won't be able to tell the difference and it's easily more believable than the truth.

>>6380023
I think the last maomer was seen some time in the southern parts of the continent about 520ish years ago.
So really just slightly more believable

>>6379917
I'll admit I'm really torn between finding out about what happened to the Ayleids and what has changed over the three eons for info as we are quite literally flying blind or rush to the dwemer ruins for refuge/a base and to find our degenerated kindred.

I think finding out some info from the Daedric cultists on what has changed will be better. It will be far safer to acquire info and supplies from them than to head into a human settlement unless we find an orc clan. I would imagine we very much don't trust humans very much atm since we have no idea what has changed exactly right now. Plus, they might even know about the Dwemer ruins and the things that lurk in the caves and ruins.

>Towards the statue of Azura, it is a daedric shrine and they are not to be trusted, but they are probably not malicious. Plus it gives you a better view of the country from a mountain top.

>>6380023
I'm more curious about any Ayleid failsafe since ours got triggered but only the Daedric Princes or Gods would know that we might not be the only one.

Good idea on the obscure disguise. Only a history buff might notice something is off but Snow Mer is a very obscure topic given how long ago they went extinct. Still better safe than sorry. We'll just claim to be maomer when asked.

>>6380037
Oh, wait. We could just tell people we're a high elf with albinism.

>>6380050
>I'm more curious about any Ayleid failsafe since ours got triggered but only the Daedric Princes or Gods would know that we might not be the only one.
Meridia brought Umaril the Unfeathered back. He failed but that's just what happens when you piss off the Nine by sending daedra to murder their followers in their temples.

>>6380052
The Daedra aren't about to give up the Ayleids simply because the Ayleids made the golden age of Daedric cultists. So there is no way they are about to give up that easily. The Ayleids, unlike the orcs and Dunmer got actual results.

>>6379917
>>North to the Sea of Ghosts, it's a few hours away but from the coast you can catch some fish and get your mind in order. The terrain is what your people were made to thrive in, it'll be relaxing.

>>6380069
I don't think most of the daedric princes really care as much about being worshiped as the aedra do. Azura and Meridia might be the most eager to be worshiped since they're both petty, egotistical assholes. For other princes, fucking with mortals is usually either just a means to an end, a transaction or a fun hobby.

>>6379917
>Towards the statue of Azura, it is a daedric shrine and they are not to be trusted, but they are probably not malicious. Plus it gives you a better view of the country from a mountain top.

>>6380118
test, are we back?

Well!

That ruined my schedule something chronic.

>>6379974
>>6380023
>>6380050
>>6380087
>>6380118

Statue of azura: 3
Alftand: 1
Sea of ghosts: 1

Closing the vote now, Time to see how the Daedra got into your country.

Your eyes rake the land and it's pristine coat of white as you consider your options. Banking on the permanence of a betrayer was foolishness and you discard it out of hand, you need facts and certainties, and turning your gaze back towards the rising mountains, if there is one certainty that has lasted the ages it will be the vanity of the Daedra.

You do not see anyone on your hike from Sarthaal, each footfall earning you another step closer to the crags with only the wind for company devoid of an ice wraiths chime or wolves howl. A brief working of ice magic firms up powdery snow into hard blocks for you to climb, and after a mere hour and a half, you have passed an odd post with a bare corpse on it, scaled a sheer incline of sloping snow and now you come to the base of the statue.

It's even larger up close, some 40 meters from toe to crown, and as you crest the lip your eyes see that it has a plinth carved from mountain rock. And this Plinth is surrounded by tents of fur and fire pits, a small settlement that your mind takes quick to grouping and counting, returning some 34 or so.

The inhabitants are what make this truly odd, wrapped up in thick clothing rather than embracing the caress of the mountain gales, what you can see of them are like Mer, standing as tall as any Chimer but these beings had skin as grey as paper ash and eyes as gleaming red as rubies. Curious though they are, careless they are not.

A shout goes up from a short one, The pitch suggesting a child's voice, and 4 men emerge from the cover of the tents, flames flickering in the palms of one while the others bare axes and a bow. Defensive, Wary perfectly in keeping with expectations thus far.

"Greetings friends, I offer no harm"

The four look at one another in confusion, and some small hope you'd had that Falmeris was still surviving in some way is extinguished. Still what else could you use other than your own tongue-

Dark elf 1: "What do you want?"

>>6380237
Decades of practice keeps surprise off of your face, these words are strange and chopped rather than rolling and flowing, yet your mind parses them simply enough. Realisation is quick to manifest, Praise Auri-el and his foresight of your needs! In the span of two breaths, your tongue works the unfamiliar syllables with a natives fluency.*

"My apologies, I am a traveller and it seems that greeting is not in favour here. I was passing by and saw this great shrine, and wished to examine it further, I meant no offence."

The excuse is smooth and practiced, suspicions dimming slightly at your affable demeanour that you help along with a guileless smile. Another of these dark elves, Dunmer to use the usual convention of aldmeris naming, lowers their axe and waves you off.

Dunmer 2: "he's not a nord, and look at that Crown. Probably some kind of wizard, let's just leave him. He can't mess with the ceremony now."

Your interrogators demure amongst themselves a moment longer before flames gutter out and weapons are lowered.

Dark elf 1: "If you want to talk about the shrine, The priestess is up those stairs."

Curious and suspicious eyes remain upon you however you have made your way inside their perimeter. As directed, there are steps leading up to the foot of the statue that you could take to speak with the Priestess, but on the other hand that second Dunmer has wandered off back to a large bonfire with some of his kith and kin. Perhaps the lower levels of this cult would be more pliable to your questions.

>Speak with the priestess, She is doubtless to be shrewd and powerful if she is worth the title but she is also likely to be well informed.
>Speak with the lay members, they are suspicious but curiosity is a trait that can be applied both ways. And even common knowledge is more than you have at the moment.
>try and barter for some food [with who? With what?]
>write in

>>6380238
>Speak with the lay members, they are suspicious but curiosity is a trait that can be applied both ways. And even common knowledge is more than you have at the moment.
I don't want to listen some priestess of Azura start rambling on about fate and prophesy.

>>6380238
>Speak with the lay members, they are suspicious but curiosity is a trait that can be applied both ways. And even common knowledge is more than you have at the moment.

>>6380238
>Speak with the priestess, She is doubtless to be shrewd and powerful if she is worth the title but she is also likely to be well informed.

>>6380238
>>Speak with the priestess, She is doubtless to be shrewd and powerful if she is worth the title but she is also likely to be well informed.

Rolled 1 (1d2)

>>6380380
>>6380472
>>6380499
>>6380502
and a fifty fifty split.

rolling.
1= layity
2= priestess

The stairs leading higher hold your attention for a long moment. Azura's Priests were powerful seers by reputation and that would leave you on the back foot of any contest, so turning your attentions back to the bonfire you considered the people who were more likely to give you the answers you seek. The Dunmer huddle close to it's uncomfortable heat with a few of them even dipping their bare hands into the pit without any apparent discomfort, so you try and mimic their behaviour and sit next to the man who had waved an axe in your direction.

"So what's your name then friend?"

The dunmer looks at you with wary surprise, then nods back into the fire. "Morvane, I figured you would have gone up by now Stranger."

"Nilibor of Summerset isle is fine, I Just wanted to enjoy the fire for a moment, the heat isn't something I'm accustomed to but it is enjoyable." There is a muttering of agreement from your new interlocuter and you press forwards. "What's the celebration that I've missed? It must be an important one"[.i]

"Aye, Hogithum has just come and passed, most of us are from the Grey-Quarter of Windhelm so the trek is a long one-"
And the words start to flow with little more encouragement. Morvane is a dour cynic and once you have it figured out, you just need to nod and commiserate the foolishness of the Jarls who rule this country, their rumoured indiscretions, the fault of the merchants for their prices and amidst it all come the rumours that the High King has been Murdered, the building tension around a rabble militia in 'the rift and eastmarch', The man has many many complaints and he lacks all of the training and fortitude of a diplomat to defend himself against your gently provocations and guiding insinuations.
By the end of the matter you have a good grasp on the various holds Jarls and their exports [and the dissatisfactions Morvane has with them] but the two most interesting tidbits you manage to pry are that there has been a built up city co-opted over, Nchuand-Zel and this Jarl Igmund has put out runners to every corner of Skyrim that they are seeking brave sellswords to work on an eradication crusade of the reachmen. Some things ill change it seems. You don't ask further about the reachmen, there isn't an opening without revealing the ignorance of one who claims to be well travelled.

The conversation has been going for an hour by this point, and the fire has begun to grow dim.
"So then Nilibor, Since you've seen the statue of our Lady where's too next?"

"Oh here and there, what did you have in mind?"

>>6380541
"About half of us are taking two days travel down the mountain and roads back to windhelm, you seem like a capable sort. If you can handle yourself then 20 septim for working protection and breakfast and dinner for it, what you say?"

>Travel south to Windhelm with the convoy, it will earn you some money and take care of your meals for two or three days.
>Haggle, you don't have much reference for the value of a 'Septim' but your protection can command much greater prices if you reveal your mastery of destruction. How much these people can pay is of another consideration.
>Refuse, travelling in a convoy will just slow you down and make for a target of brigands [Go where?]
>Do something else [Write in]

>>6380543
>Travel south to Windhelm with the convoy, it will earn you some money and take care of your meals for two or three days.

>>6380543
>Travel south to Windhelm with the convoy, it will earn you some money and take care of your meals for two or three days.
Perhaps it's best to learn a bit of this world before we reclaim it.

>>6380543
>Travel south to Windhelm with the convoy, it will earn you some money and take care of your meals for two or three days.

>>6380543
>>Travel south to Windhelm with the convoy, it will earn you some money and take care of your meals for two or three days.

Unanimous for windhelm
Locking, post up in a few hours.

Currency was a boon regardless of the age and while you never had much need to handle it personally, dim memories of the comforts it brought as well as the lessons of the court had tutored you on the avenue of power that an economic nation could wield. None of it held much prominence in your mind beyond the basics though, your interests in steam and steel holding your passions.

"Travel in good company is travel much improved."

Morvane: "Good mer. We will be moving off after breakfast, so you can help yourself."

The rest of the afternoon passes without incident, being introduced to Morvane's family and neighbours you would be shepherding down the mountain. 40 souls with 6 and yourself who know what they are doing with their weapons or queer affinity for flames acting as guardians, were this a caravan of any value beyond their lives you would be concerned about banditry in the political instability that a potential civil war brings. Instead your concern is that an ice wraith or blizzard atronach will bear down from the snow for some target practice.

Well there's no use worrying about it until it happens, and as the many dunmer return to their tents to rest, you take a seat near the edge of the peak and doze. The landscape sprawled before you is the unfamiliar of a pet spider left in the care of another for some years, the mountains' shape altered by wind and rain, sections of the sea so many miles away curving along unfamiliar coasts. . . and far in the distance, enough that you might be mistaken with the clouds, the dull smear of browns and greens that say the snow may not tresspass beyond the north.
The winds sing you into sleep, until the camp stirs with the rising of the sun anew.

The Dunmer fare is simple and easily carried, crusty berrybreads and jams that the cold doesn't freeze while the restoked fires are tended to heat a rather strong spiced drink that you find more bitter than pleasant. Breakfast finished quickly and tents collapsed into portable rolls, the Cultists of Azura bid their fellows fare well and your group begins to descend the mountain, treacherous slush and steep inclines mitigated by the use of walking sticks and slow, careful placement of their feet. At several points you have to help members of the caravan, your seismic awareness giving the impression of omniscience as you pull a man away from a powdery drift that sat lightly over a deep hole, another time saw a woman lose her balance over a rock and her pack send her the rest of the way towards careening down the slope which you managed to halt after a mere meter of skidding.
Still, while theoretically dangerous, the trek down the mountain side was done in the day, without a storm and with conditions like that you don't lose any of your passengers. Morvane even sees fit to make a jape about Azura's favour fating for a smooth journey. Your good fortune ends soon after reaching a pocketmarked and line of cobbled stones that an Atmoran may call a "road".

>>6380970
The blizzard starts quickly with fat snowflakes the size of pebbles and only escalates in the intensity until your effective range of sight has shrunk from hundreds of meters to 2. Your feet slap on crunching snow as often as stone or ground up slush, your connection to the ground and fine sense of hearing allowing you to make up for the deficit of your eyes, but the situation isn't looking good for the dunmer.

Their inexperience as a group shows, the brave and the stupid are powering on up ahead while those with families are bunching up in a tangled mix of hands and securing rope, while those elders who are alone are flagging further. The tight group of 40 is beginning to turn into a long line of 2's and 4's, and making matters worse the "guards" other than yourself are allowing the defensive parameter to shrink as they prioritise staying close to those they can see or their families while the rest float away.
Unless something is done, several lives are going to be lost.

>What will you do, Nilibor?
>Find a nearby empty cave and herd them into cover until the blizzard passes over. It'll take some unknown amount of time but it's the safest
>Gather up those falling behind and those racing ahead, force them together as they endure the blizzard. The going will be slow and the weaker members will be tried harshly but progress will be made
>Let the fools run off, it's their own faults.
>Leave the slow behind, focusing your efforts on those who are most likely to be able to keep up.
>Try and turning your command of ice magic against the storm. Destruction is not the peaceful sphere but even a weapon has more uses than just killing.
>Write in.

>>6380971
>Find a nearby empty cave and herd them into cover until the blizzard passes over. It'll take some unknown amount of time but it's the safest
How did any dunmer ever think migrating to Skyrim was a good idea? It's the polar opposite of Morrowind, climate-wise.

>>6380971
>>Find a nearby empty cave and herd them into cover until the blizzard passes over. It'll take some unknown amount of time but it's the safest

>>6380971
>Find a nearby empty cave and herd them into cover until the blizzard passes over. It'll take some unknown amount of time but it's the safest
The dunmer are not suited to such conditions.

>>6380971
>Find a nearby empty cave and herd them into cover until the blizzard passes over. It'll take some unknown amount of time but it's the safest

>>6381028
Closing.
Finding a cave!

>>6381028
It was either Skyrim or going to the argonians, or even worse, the mongrel dogs of the empire

>>6380971
>Try and turning your command of ice magic against the storm. Destruction is not the peaceful sphere but even a weapon has more uses than just killing.
Nilibor can't barely see his feet in this circumstance. Unless there is a cave luckily placed a few meters ahead, finding one is going to be impossible at worst, too time consuming at best. For Azura's nipples, he's a wizard, not a helpless traveller, it's time for him to show off a little

>>6381359
So a choice between people you've occasionally warred with over the millennia, overgrown monitor lizards who hate you for enslaving them and people who might give you dirty looks because of your religion but otherwise treat you fairly?

>>6381366
That might have worked if we'd chosen Construction over Tonal Architecture since Construction would have had us be an unrivaled master of cryomancy. Hell, we could have just made our own shelter out of ice.

>Unless there is a cave luckily placed a few meters ahead
Obviously Nilibor wouldn't know this but if we're on the road between Windhelm and Azura's shrine that passes by Fort Kastav then there is actually a cave just up ahead conveniently placed right next to the road. And it's full of falmer :)

My apologies to you anons, The post is going to be delayed. Cold medicine and fatigue do wonders for knocking you out.

>>6381442
>So a choice between people you've occasionally warred with over the millennia
everyone occasionally wars with another every few decades, not something to be angsty about
>overgrown monitor lizards who hate you for enslaving them
yes
>and people who might give you dirty looks because of your religion but otherwise treat you fairly?
imperials came uninvited to morrowind one day, and made themselves the bosses because of the tribunal being the tribunal. some dunmer might hate them in the same way you might hate that uninvited guest who wont leave
>That might have worked if we'd chosen Construction over Tonal Architecture since Construction would have had us be an unrivaled master of cryomancy. Hell, we could have just made our own shelter out of ice.
Oh, well
>And it's full of falmer :)
I see where this is going, with the crown and all
>>6381454
its ok, take your time as needed

The storm is getting uncomfortably strong, though you would be able to endure it as an argonian would endure a torrential down pour, your wards are not so well adjusted. Riding out the blizzard in a cave would do them better than blindly fumbling into a death trap. The first step then was consolidation.

Pushing off at a sprint, you become a pale specter against the white hell that surrounds you, the gale steals your voice when you call for the front runners to slow so instead you grab them by their cloaks and shout against fur clad ears. A few object to your plan but a reminder that they can no longer see the rest of their party is enough to cow them where your personal charisma falls short.

The forerunner so corralled, you find the mage with them and to your great relief he isn't a fumbling novice, cloaking himself in a dervish cloak of fire that should serve as a better rallying point than one without a light.
Leaving then to stomp their feet and shiver, you race back along the road with keen purpose, directing those you pass to head straight on where otherwise they start to drift off the road. But these people do not need your personal intervention, clinging tight to one another as they are, it's some 4 dunmer lagging behind as the cold gets into their limbs who you have to take by the arm and herd closer together.

What was that? Another ghost flickers through the shade, a glimpse of movement in the corner of your eye which the rest of your senses tells you never happened. Seconds pass again without it reappearing, and you can spare no more attention while your charges need help.

Step 2 then, with the group reformed they are bid to take hold of the one ahead and one behind while you think. The earth below feels solid, but there are some hollow irregularities, perhaps a mine of some kind?
So you lead them along towards the mountains again, following the feeling of the caves a few meters below the earth.

>>6381707
The winds quiet for a moment. Jephre's spirits taking a breath before resuming their wailing dirge and allowing for a dramatic scream to echo from the rear of the group.
You can see nothing and feel little more, so again bidding the group forwards you dash back towards the cry. The situation becomes clear as ice in seconds, One of the dunmer fallen on the snow as Morvane swings his axe at half seen tricks of the light, a trio of Ice wraiths circling like wolves about the wounded prey. Your usual tricks will be ineffectual against such monsters but it behooves a master to not focus on one style to the exclusion of all others. Magika flows into your hands and leaves as a precision bolt of lightning, a dull boom of thunder heralding the impact against one's side, raking a tally of ice shards from its flank. Morvane clobbers another with the broad side of his axe, slapping it's biting teeth aside. The last goes to take another bite from the fallen by slipping under Movane's clumsy guard. Bones made of ice leer with more malice than they should be able to express with just teeth and eyeless sockets.

Another dull boom sends a bolt of lightning into one of those sockets and the skull collapses into powder. Residual power arcs up, briefly stunning the other pair enough that the axe claims it's own kill, and you finish the problem with a 3rd and final bolt as the injured wraith tries to make you a meal, ducking low under the lunge and pumping the crackling energy down its throat.

[i]"Still able to stand warrior?[/i]

Morvane grunts, turning to heft up his fallen fellow. There isn't much blood, probably bitten just under the armpit. Proper examination would have to wait.
Morvane: "I got 'im, come on Nilibor"

Snatching some teeth from the snow, you reclaim your place at the head of the train and by the blessing of the pantheon you find a cave.

>>6381708
The first chamber opens wide enough for the group to sit down in, and torches to be lit. To look at them now, if you hadn't hunkered down then you have no doubt some would have been lost to the wraiths and frostbite. Their coats are thick but they shiver, clutching close to one another for warmth. The cave would warm by their presence, but your people never had such an adverse reaction to a light blizzard like that one, so further help you can offer escapes you.

The injured dunmer, as you expected, was bit clean with their grey skin turning purple as flash-freeze had set in. Tch, Restoration wasn't your best skill, so the best you can do is leave it to one of their folk remedies.

The cave entrance is close enough to hear the whistling of wind split off from the gale, and the cave descends deeper. While there is enough space here, now it's just a matter of time.
How do you spend yours, Nilibor?

>Explore the rest of the cave, Alchemy isn't your best subject but you are sure there are more than just mushrooms to find down here. If it is a mine, perhaps there is some gold, equipment or potions to be had.
>Practice your magick, you can keep an eye on the entrance of the cave but the storm isn't as hard on you as them. And you doubt anyone else is going to be there to get hit by a stray spell.
>Mingle, you aren't sure if you intend to stay overlong in Windhelm, but the group should surely have thawed enough to be amenable to you.

>Write in

>>6381709
>Explore the rest of the cave, Alchemy isn't your best subject but you are sure there are more than just mushrooms to find down here. If it is a mine, perhaps there is some gold, equipment or potions to be had.
It is foolhardy to assume we pilgrims are the only ones who would seek shelter here.

>>6381709
>Explore the rest of the cave, Alchemy isn't your best subject but you are sure there are more than just mushrooms to find down here. If it is a mine, perhaps there is some gold, equipment or potions to be had.

>>6381709
>Explore the rest of the cave, Alchemy isn't your best subject but you are sure there are more than just mushrooms to find down here. If it is a mine, perhaps there is some gold, equipment or potions to be had.

>>6381709
>Explore the rest of the cave, Alchemy isn't your best subject but you are sure there are more than just mushrooms to find down here. If it is a mine, perhaps there is some gold, equipment or potions to be had.

>>6381709
>>Explore the rest of the cave, Alchemy isn't your best subject but you are sure there are more than just mushrooms to find down here. If it is a mine, perhaps there is some gold, equipment or potions to be had.

>>6381829
>>6381850
>>6381992
>>6382047
>>6382112
Pretty unanimous, Locking.

Let's see what's under the earth.

Your eyes turn towards the descending slopes of the cave, where the air turned from frigid to merely cold by the insulating properties of miles of stone. There was no reason to assume that you were the first residents to take shelter, or even that the cave was currently uninhabited, the cavities underground you sensed outside were probably a miming operation after all.

The Dunmer would be safe for the moment with their torches and sentries. More than protective or contractual duty ushers you down, brushing aside a pebble as you set off into the dark, a powerful curiosity that grabs hold and asks in brash tone 'what has changed since your defeat?'. You make it several paces before Morvane shouts after you, confused by your apparent destination.

Morvane: "Where do you think you're headin'?"

[i]"The caves are most likely home to many other creatures, it would not due to be caught flatfooted."[/i]

A momentary hesitation crosses the man's scarlet red eyes before nodding in agreement.
"Then I'm coming with you, Can't see an icewraith from a yam down there." The tone brooked no argument so merely nodding in return, a torch was taken and the pair of you continue on with your exploratory venture. Grey stone and patches of moss make up most of the first two descending paths, the close, sloping roof of the cave forcing you to crouch slightly as you walk deeper into the underbelly of Skyrim. Spores hang in the air by the time of the 4th chamber, your nose leading you towards a small pile of white mushrooms growing quite comfortably out of a crevice, which you elect to leave alone after some due consideration, They might be poisoned after all.

On you continue, moving past more moss and trickles of ice water from stalactites above, something starts to wear on your curious spirit. You had suspected that a Mine was to cause for these caves, but you haven't found any evidence of quarrying at all. Perhaps nirn was merely being strange again, but-

>>6382278
You pause mid step, Morvane bouncing off your back with a guttering flicker of firelight over your shoulder. He speaks some words but they are lost with the sudden spike of energy that floods your legs and fingers, your eyes tracing a side path down the caves with great and terrible awe. Long fine silks are spun across meters of the side passage entrance, so thickly matted together that it looks like a pale wall crossed in black in the firelight. The size or number of spiders it must have taken to do that is unthinkable, the size of a mer or as multitudinous as the snowflakes outside, shivers breaking out down your spine like the multiple tapping legs of the little daedra-beasts.

You will not go this way, and you tell Morvane as much, setting no less than three runes of frosty death between you and the threads.

"Are you alright Nilibor? You're pale as. . well, you."

[i]"It's nothing, We just need to find a new way around."[/i]

"Hmm, A spiders brood is hardly the company I want down here either."

[i]"Just!. . Enough, Come on."[/i]

Moving on from that episode, you double back and find another route lazily meandering under the stone, when you sense something new ahead. Seismic senses bring you a peculiar sort of picture with a short, 3 feet wide and 4 and a half tall tunnel, cut through with harsh scraping tools. The stone still has scrapes and pebbles spread out around your feet like crumbs but there isn't yet sign of where the rest went. So crouching, you went forwards into the tunnel, hunched and moving at the speed of a sedate stroll into the gently twisting tunnel. The torchlight behind you marks the progress of Morvane as surely as his hissing exertion, but he has been a good sport about your exploration. Perhaps he too has an adventurer's soul in him.

It's with some relief that after an indeterminate amount of time you are able to stand up again, cracking your back and looking across a pleasant underground stream of water, about knee deep.

>>6382280
The whole area glows with a dim blue, your night eyes reading it as well as sunlight when you notice two very interesting things. The first is the area expanding out into a cave cavern of good size, enough that you could fit the pilgrims in it with room to spare and the walls were crowing these glowing blue fungi, mushrooms spreading like some artist's mad slashes over the canvas. You step through the water to get a better view and mount the edge of the stone that forms a shore, when your hands touch the stone the feedback sends your eye flicking to the other side of the cavern.

And the second interesting thing is a 4 legged scuttling insect appearing down the other end of the stream. It's a large thing, the size of a dog, with thick slick looking segmented carapace and two large clicking mandables shaped like curved daggers. You turn your head fully, and behind it, you spy a hunched gaunt figure with a bow, an arrow already drawing taunt while the insect prowls forwards with the faint and almost silent 'tic-tac-click' of it's feet on the stone. The feelings of pity spike like a dagger twisted in your chest, but this situation is about to turn bloody.

>What do you Do?

Formatting's fucked, damnit.

>>6382281
Hmm... an archer? Normally, a thing to skewer with an icicle, but something odd, something filial stays our hand. I suspect this is one of the falmer. We must of course be stealthy in our reclamation. If Morvane catches on, he'll spread rumours like wildfire. At the same time, he is an innocent that has done nothing to harm us. I have an idea.

>Throw a stone in such a way that it skitters and distracts the bowmer, then sneak back out
>Keep a close eye on the tunnel but watch the caravan until the blizzard is gone and they're ready to leave
>Go with them, and commit the location of this cave to memory

We will be back.

>>6382297
The insect sized like a dog is advancing on you and Morvane is climbing through behind you.

Retreat is a viable route, but that Beastie is going to be nipping on you like a hunting hound.

>>6382299
A fair point. Do we know any enchantment spells? Casting sleep on the beast could be quite useful. Failing that, I suppose the good ol' icicle bug, and scare off the falmer with a lightning bolt trick could work.

>>6382309
Illusion spells, agh. It has been many years since I've played Skyrim.

>>6382309
Nilibor's ability is predominantly destruction at a master level. Throw out a blizzard of your own? Switch it up with a fireball or a lightning strike? Disintegrate something with a touch? Right up your area. Preference given to Ice magics.

But despite that prodigious talent, it wasn't omnipresent.

Next is about "adept" skill in restoration, good for healing, a bit of restoring your Stamina or curing poisons but that's about it.

And the last of your talents lie in some basic alteration, Ice-skin and some transmutation between hard ice and powdery snow which is related to your cryomancy.

The rest of your magical abilities were not very well developed, instead time was given over to spear work, light armour, Acrobatics, sneak and speech.
And naturally, Tonal architecture and it's applications.

You are good at magic, but you didn't have the time or inclination for other schools.
Those being for clarity, Illusion, conjuration, enchanting, alchemy and mysticism

>>6382309
A sleep spell would probably be drain fatigue, which is actually destruction magic.

>>6382328
Closer to "inflict exhaustion" but being careful the effect is almost indistinguishable.

Nice thought

>>6382281
>Pull Morvane through and get him to hold off the insect.
>Intercept the incoming arrow with destructive magic, then counterattack the archer.
>Once we are sure the archer is incapacitated, kill the insect.
>Then go over to inspect the archer, see if he can be restored and interrogated. Or if he is a Falmer.

>>6382281
>Cast Iceskin, send a Blizzard towards the chaurus, and retreat back through the tunnel with Morvane.
>If possible, use destruction magic to collapse the tunnel behind us.
We don't need to clear the betrayed out, we just need to make sure they can't threaten our dunmer charges. It's not like we can save any children they might have with the dunmer present anyways. We can always come back for them later.

Just for confirmation, would it be possible to collapse the tunnel with destruction magic?

>>6382297
Keep in mind that the Crown's power only works on the children and teenagers of the Betrayed. We basically have no choice but to kill the adult falmer. It's really the merciful thing to do.

>>6382419
>send a Blizzard
Meant Icy Storm. That spell that sends an icy whirlwind forward.

>>6382419
Disintegrate is a destruction spell

Collapsing the tunnel will seal off the route back unless the Falmer redig their way again

>>6382543
>Disintegrate
Good call.

>Collapsing the tunnel will seal off the route back unless the Falmer redig their way again
They likely will, they dug the tunnel once already. We and our dark elf acquaintances will hopefully be in Windhelm sipping flin by then.

>>6382281
I'll switch to >>6382419 with the addition of using Disintegrate as the spell to collapse the tunnel behind us.

>>6382297
>Distract the archer and leave: 1

>>6382406
>Incapacitate the archer and inspect: 1

>>6382419
>>6382548
>leave and collapse the passage behind you: 2

I have some kind of consensus here.
Locking

The instincts kick in before your mind realises it has made a decision. Shoving off from the stone river water splashes around your feet, the distant figure's aim adjusts minutely for your centre mass while your left arm raises to shoulder length, flinging your elbow out straight, then your forearm following suit until your fingers release their clench, a whip-crack sling of a quick and dirty ice spike that shatters against the wall.
The archer adjusts aim again and you leap back, the whistling of an arrow cutting a foot and a half from where your ribs had been a few seconds before.

There was nothing to be gained now, Morvane's reaction is unpredictable one he realises what you have found, and neither of the figures before you are someone you wish to smite. A moment to breathe is a moment to shout a warning, flinging another ice spike down range towards the archer's ear, it's shattering forcing the figure to leap back into the corridor from whence it came. That bug is approaching fast.

[i]"Back! Archer and Bug! Back!"[/i]

Morvane answers with 'fletching N'wah' and scrambles back towards the croutched passage you had just left. A rattling click warns you of the beast's interference, it's mandibles clicking as it cocks it's head back like a balista in miniture. Words and gestures pass in practiced speed, pale skin turning frost kissed blackening-purple as the world shifts and your skin becomes ice, your other hand raising up to bat aside a steaming, hissing contact of grey-gunk. Another flick both free's your arm of the caustic infection and unleashes a growing pale-blue orb of ever-frost in reply, the water beneath your feet freezing over while you hop, skip and dash back after the retreating light of the dunmer.

The insect-dog doesn't appreciate turn about, the chitinous hide cracking in places as the flash-freeze bursts ichor out between plates, it's mandables clicking in furious protest as it charges forwards again, eating up distance like a loosed arrow.

>>6382890
An arrow bounces off your shoulder, the ice-flesh spell dulling the impact while a dull splitting pain echo's through your arm. Not enough to interrupt you or your spells, merely aware. Another leap and you are back in the tunnel, stone scraping against your clothes as you slide and roll like an acrobat to make the most of your momentum. One meter, three, a fourth. . should be good enough. Disintegration as a spell is not half as powerful as most would suspect, especially given the limits on range, focus, mass, the spiralling cost when you try to push the boundaries of any of those categories. It was not a blunt hammer of desolation or the unending blows of a blizzard, rather a Scalpel to be used with exact intention.

And in your own humble estimate, you know something about exacting calculations.

Your hand raises to the roof, the angle rising up towards the surface world and with a pulse of magika, the rocks shift, but do not collapse. Your hand lashes out again, pushing the blurry grey-white beam half a meter to carve another furrow in time for the insect to round the corner and push it's way into an area it held a decisive movement advantage in-
The defensive act you were about to engage in is lost in a momentary confusion, for a shimmering cloaked wraith floats through the stone, a foreign straight sword in it's hand as it glows with unearthly light and strikes the beast across it's mandables again, a wail of deathly challenge keening through the air and providing you the last chance you need to cast the spell for the third time. The walls rumble and the roof collapses, on ghost and insect both, while you scramble backwards like a sp-. . insect yourself, not stopping until both you and the dark elf are standing clear and free in the warm dark of the cave's more habitable walkways.

For a long minute the pair of you don't speak, simply breathing and looking over your injuries.

>>6382891
[i]"Was that Ghost yours?"[/i]

Morvane: "It was my great Grandfather Nisath, I'll hear some respect for his aid. Much as your spellcraft anyway."

[i]"Of course, but I didn't take you for a-"[/i] The words stop short, reading the furrowing brow and rising offense on your companion's features and pivot gently away from the topic of Necromancy. Perhaps the laws are different in this era, or he has a secret to hide. [i]"Man so blessed with enduring and watchful relatives. Nor unlucky enough to be shot at by a bow underground."

Your ploy worked well enough to smooth out his frown into a terse smile, and the pair of you start to walk back the way you came. Radiant yellow energies snake down your arm as you start to mend the flesh back as it was, the insect's corrosive poison had partially bypassed the ice-flesh spell and left you with a rash across your arm. "It was a Snow Ghost, I'll swear before Azura. I didn't know they lived below the ground in truth. I'd claim a vampire but they like the water."

Ah so they still existed. Unfortunate but there is nothing else to be done for the moment. After another hour or so you return to the caravan, quite assured that the only beasts who pose a potential risk are quite happy in their nests, and settle to wait for the blizzard to pass. It's near sunset when the winds finally die down, 4 feet of snow now resting primly across the ground and erasing your groups tracks completely. Ill at ease in the cave, a sentiment you can half agree with, the group pushes on down the road towards Windhelm. You take note of the caves location and what you suspect was your degenerated Kin and move on.

The rest of the travel was less hectic. You passed a stony fortress named 'Kastav' which was apparently filled with brigands, and it was the flaring of fire magics from some of your number which convinced the bandits to seek easier prey than a 40 strong group of presumed pyromancers.

>>6382892
Then the group set camp on a flat expanse of stone with four pillars between them, a design you found no use or purpose in, and slept away the night to the sound of distant wolfsong. The morning brough a mill buissness with a small hamlet growing around it further down the road though in the interest of time and apparently safety the convoy kept on walking through. Your first view of the descendent Atmorans up close, fair of skin and fair or dark of hair, they carry the bulk of their ancestor's frames and their tools are of fine quality steel, rounded ears covered by caps and furs. The only disturbing feature is the familiar look of disdain in one of the men's eyes, sharpening his axe with an intention.

Nearing the Evening of the second day of travel, you sight Windhelm. It's an Impressive place.

Great walls of block stone rise up over a bridge that has endured since just after your first death, the stone that old that it seems to sing with history in the whistling of the sea-bound winds under it's arches. The upper walls on the bridge are well manned as well, with pale-blue and brown padded armour and anxious gripped bows dotting every few meters, trying to assail this place would turn the bridge into a bloodbath.
As you are about to step past the first fifth of the bridge, Morvane grabs your arm and pushes a purse into your hand.

Morvane: "For your help, Dram would have had more than a terrible bite if not for you. You might want to wait for us to go through before you join us, the guards are going to be antsy with this many of us and they aren't friendly at the easiest of times. They aren't fond of non-nords. I'll wait inside to meet up with you though."

What do you do, Nilibor?

>Go in with the Dunmer
>Go in yourself, alone
>Leave

If you are entering Windhelm, Do you intend to be high key or low key? And keeping your guise as an altmer traveller or another?
If not, whence do you go?

Qm note: My computer is messing around, So phone posting is go. Formatting will not improve until computer is fixed.

>>6382893
>Go in yourself, alone

>High key
>Altmer traveller
An elf trying to avoid notice would just draw more attention. Anyways, we should buy a map of Skyrim now that we have some gold and sell those ice wraith teeth. Maybe head to Winterhold next unless something comes up.

>>6382893
>>Go in with the Dunmer
>High key
>Altmer traveller

>>6382893
>Go in yourself, alone
>High Key
>Altmer Traveller

>>6383262
>>6383162
>>6383092
Consensus is Going in alone High Key.
Surely the nords will be welcoming

Interesting quest thus far, QM! Will be watching with much curiosity.

As for some advice, the reason why your formatting isn't working is because your ID has changed. Only the original ID that posted the thread gets formatting privileges, so posting from a different location usually results in formatting being sent in as raw text instead of actually doing its job.

>>6383162
Test

Your eyes flick from Mer to Man, thumb running over the outline of coins in the leather sheath of the purse. It has a good weight in your hand however that is something to check with less eyes on your actions. Taking shorter steps the distance between you and the caravan grows, the long nature of the stone bridge working in your favour to have them meet the inspection patrol while you are only half way across. The purse and crown vanishes into your robes and you square your shoulders, rising to your full height and affect an easy interest in the stone you pass, your tutors could perhaps tell the materials and implements by sight alone but to your intuition it is left with guesses and whatever marks are scored so deeply that 3 era's has not worn them smooth. Further ahead over the great gate that would bar further ingress when it slammed shut, the stonework continues. Great slabs and blocks of hard mountain stone like granite the size of horses all slid in together. Perhaps the Tongues had a hand, or word, in it's creation? Though the style changes somewhat towards the eastern curtain wall, the stone's colour shifting to a faintly lighter grey that spills down the side of the steep hills and out of sight towards what you think was a harbour. Different builders? different time period?

The mystery keeps you occupied well until the Dunmer Caravan has entered the city anew. Regaining your long stride, it's some 7 paces before an authoritative voice rings out;
Warhammer: "Halt! State your Business!"

The voice is rough and cold as stahlrim, emerging from the faceguard of an all encompassing steel helmet, dull blue mannish eyes staring from the eye holes and with a steel warhammer protruding over his shoulder, brutish things. You pull up short of your new interlocuter and his five friends, drawing your eyes down to meet each of them head on.

"Good evening, I've an intent to secure some broth and shelter from the weather in your fine walls."

>>6383520
"And what's a high elf got to secure that shelter? You seem real interested in our defences here." The words stir a certain tension amongst his colleagues "Planning how many of your bastard brood it would take to overrun Windhelm hmm?"

"Nothing of the sort, I simply have a passing fancy in early Atmoran designs and Dwemer architecture. This bridge is a true credit of the builders to have lasted this long without apparent repair, though it's a shame about the eastern wall."

"What?"

Your smile becomes irritatingly chipper and animated, capitalising on his confusion to take two steps forwards and point over the lip of the bridge walls.
"Do you see how the colouration changes, and is off beat with the rest of the wall? It's the weather and wear on the stone, and notice the much smaller blocks that make up it's defensive outline? A different builder some time in the past 800 years, I don't quite kn-"

"Alright, alright! Shut up Elf! Do you even have enough coin for any of this you want?!" The harsh bark turns quickly to a quiet glower, trying to find some other angle by which to trip you up or turn you away, a growing frustration adding fuel to the merrily kindled disdain of 'high elves'. Good to know the Altmer are still kicking around. You raise your hands outstretched in a sign of helpless fortune.

"Enough coin to replace my boots and get something to eat, but then I'm sure I will have to bank on the kindness and hospitality of the city. I'm afraid that bear attack to the west of here took much of my dignity and funds with it."

"Pfhah, Sure. Vagrancy is an offense, so either stick to the Grey Quarter with the rest of your elvish ilk or it'll be in the Bloodworks for you."

He sounds positively pleased at the prospect, as do the approving grunts of his merry band of allies. So with a nod and a confident stride you pass through the open gate and into a snow swept square.

>>6383521
Ahead and up some steps is a place marked "Candlehearth Hall", as well as a few small stalls which seem to be offering some local fare, fish, preserved meats, a drink from a cauldron hoisted over a brightly burning flame. A small market for the apparently quite central foot traffic hub. You spy a sign and it's on the second reading that again, you utter a prayer to Auri-el that this peculiar tongue is known to you in script as well as sound. The market is held in the direction of the "stone quarter", an unhelpful sign pointing right gives a general direction to "The Grey quarter" and looming north like a great guardian is "Valunstrad" which appears to be the Jarl's residence.

Luckily, your guides have not run clear off, Morvane and his family have stayed behind. Greeting his wife and son who's names you haven't yet managed to learn, all 4 of you start walking towards 'the Grey Quarter'.

Morvane: "Were they rough on you?"

"I gather the impression they aren't overfond of me alas."

"Well they let you in and without a ridiculous tax. You're welcome to our home for a week while you gather yourself, but I need to get back to work tommorow and our hospitality can only go as far as our means. Ambarys might have some work at the New Gnisis corner club."

The steps slope downwards, the buildings behind you rising higher and higher like a great maw closing it's teeth over the sky. You pass another open gate that you are told leads to the harbour, past some beggars, and into a cramped, overbuilt and definitely overpopulated slum. It's the first time you've ever been in one though it reminds you most clearly of a Dwemer steam room. The air is hot with radiated heat from the close built stone, Dunmer move down the streets with a hunched walk and in such numbers that the snow is as slush rather than frozen proper.
Things don't much improve once you find the apartments that Morvane lives in, going up two sets of switch back stairs to a small trio of rooms.

>>6383522
Once you all take a load off, it is truly night outside and a fire in the hearth chases away the winter's touch. Rather than let them waste firewood, you tend to the fire and with only one log and some creative destruction magic, the fire should still be burning by tomorrow morning. Sitting by the fireside, you take stock of your inventory.

Three sets of ice wraith teeth, of unknown value.
Your robes.
A coinpurse with 30 coins, each marked with a stylised dragon on one side marked 'Praise be Akatosh and all the Divines' and on the reverse must be their leader, who's head is denoted with 'The Empire is Law, the Law is sacred'.
Your crown, which you return to your brow.

A proper bag may be useful to help carry anything else you find and a map to find your way around. You do possess a lead on work with this 'corner club' which just sounds like a tavern by any other name, and the market should be open tomorrow to sell these Ice wraith teeth. Shame you don't know the market rates for them. But you're here for at least a week before you must make new accommodations for staying.

>>Pick your primary goal and your secondary goal for your week.
>Market time, get the best price for your teeth and find a better price on a map and essentials.
>Get an understanding of Windhelm and their people, Nords and Dunmer both.
>Find more paying work, either with this Ambary's or something higher paying.
>Try and socialise and ingratiate yourself with someone [Who/whom?]
>Look around for rumours of "Snow ghosts"
>Look around for rumours of Dwemer.
>Write in.

QM note: Windhelm is an old city of like, 8 to 12 thousand people. It's really fuckin' big. You can use Skyrim's map for a "condensed" version but this one I will try and angle more towards the "lore" side of things. Such as the Bloodworks being slang for both prison and Arena.

>>6383338
Thanks, Computer has stopped being a shit so I can use this ID again.

>>6383524
>Market time, get the best price for your teeth and find a better price on a map and essentials.
We have absolutely no idea whatsoever what the economy is like or the price for things. Something that will be painfully obvious to everyone else. At least try to fix that.

>Look around for rumours of Dwemer.
As much as I want to dig for info, doing so much at once will be too obvious. Besides, we need a base of operations anyway. If we stick around too long, people aren't going to keep thinking we are just albino mer.

>>6383524
>Market time, get the best price for your teeth and find a better price on a map and essentials.
>Get an understanding of Windhelm and their people, Nords and Dunmer both.
We need to learn more about the new age and the people who live in it. And of course, the Windhelm hate triangle.

>>6383524
>>Get an understanding of Windhelm and their people, Nords and Dunmer both.
>Market time, get the best price for your teeth and find a better price on a map and essentials.

>>6383531
>>6383533
>>6383646
Bit late today, but we have something like consensus.

Market time for primary goal,
Learn about the city as a secondary goal.
Locking.

The teeth rattle in your pocket and that sets your course.

The next several mornings you are out and wandering the Stone quarter, the market district warm in a seperate way than the tight slums of the Grey quarter. The streets are wider and well maintained with overhanging lips of the roof catching snow rather than allowing it to settle into ice at ground level. The foul reek of a smelter hangs around the area, burning metal and whatever new means are being used to forge atmoran steel. Crude and inelegant, but effective. The smithies all grew up in close proximity to one another, by way of concentrating their unpleasant nature's.

Other businesses hung about near them, Tailors, Tanners, a few stout hearted brewers and tavern proprietors to cater to them, they are all small buissnesses and most greet you with a suspicious disdain. This is a city of Nords and Dunmer, anyone else is an oddity and your crown and lack of proper boots mark you as odder than most. So dismissing most of the buissnesses run by Nords, you focus instead on alchemists and healers in the grey quarter. There are vanishingly few, even among the hundreds who fled 'the Red Year'. Apparently the Red Mountain erupted about 200 years ago with the vanishing of their Living Gods, on the heels of a full borne daedric invasion called the Oblivion Crisis. Windhelm is close to Blacklight, house seat of House Redoran and by result became where many refugees settled, forming the start of the tensions between the natives and the immigrants. The story is teased out in bits and pieces, many not happy to relive old history, but a pleasant word and a compliment buys you minutes of company among the dour dunmer. It's on the 4th day that one of the healers, specialised in restoration rather than alchemy, gives you a lead back to the market.

Finding the largest stall market space, right against the curtain wall, you find a sign reading "The White Phial" and enter.

>>6384138
A gruff altmer leans over the counter, the air hanging with heavy particulate and the smell of citrus and bitter burning. You spin your usual charm and pose as a traveller and survivor of an ice wraiths attack, the old man is unmoved by your tale and it quickly becomes clear he is waiting for the point to arrive. 20 minutes later and a few caustic remarks about your lacking comprehension of alchemy, he plants the usual rate at 30 gold for a set. You dither back and forwards, playing ignorant and the danger and the relatively intact quality, and taking into notice that he is doing rather well as an alchemist enough to have a full shop, the alchemist named Nurelion was willing to part at a total of 102 gold.

He wasn't the most forthcoming man, so you turned to his assistant. If he was apprenticed to a altmer he probably wasn't that likely to blow you off. You struck gold, metaphorically speaking, as the young imperial was quite happy to chatter in-between his prep work and sorting out your coin.

From him you gleam that the nords of the city are bristling under the empire of cyrodil's overreach into their faith. The current Jarl Ulfric is a radical element and has been for twenty years, and the anti-cyrodil and Thalmor, the new government of Summerset isle, sentiment has filtered down from the Jarl to the citizenry. Through the clause of a treaty these Altmer are enforcing a zealous inquisition against "Talos". You don't know the name, but the description of "men who attained Godhood" triggered some of your own theology. Shor whom fought against Auri-el and Trinnimac, and had an irritating habit of being summoned back amongst the Atmoran forces. Perhaps their titles were boasts and awards amongst the butchers of Ysgramor, but Kyne and Shor were patrons of your enemies.

Back to the present and more practical matters, you ask about maps and bags, and he directs you to a few who do good work and are less likely to gouge you for their works. You thank him and depart.

>>6384139
As the week comes to a close, you settle against a thick wall and fold your arms in thought.
You had found a comfortable bag for 45 septims and bought that outright, leaving your funds at 88 gold and then a problem. You found a very fine cartographer, A nord man named Sjurvin. Broad as a barn and stinking of garlic and beef broth even from a food away, he cut a memorable figure. But here is where you met with an issue. A very nice map with the holds, roads and various recognised settlements and danger points was going to set you back 200 septims.
Bartering down from thst to a basic map of roads and hold capital's is 100. And he was not at all willing to take credit either, which is most unfortunate.

There is the option to do without, but the lack of a map feels like it will seriously impede any future planning and long range travel. Still, you are not without viable options.

The ice wraith teeth were a good chunk of money, over saturation in the market may cause their price to drop but getting lists of alchemy ingredients to harvest from the enviroment around the city could be one step forwards.

The other idea you have has to do with the cities other major form of stress relief. The Bloodworks, an arena in the oldest part of the city, where criminals of certain severity are made to fight for their lives against glory hungry and battle tested vollenteers. There Is a serious betting operation in place. Perhaps you can tempt Sjurvin into a profitable bet, though this does put you at risk of personal injury and into a bloodsport.

How do you raise some money?
>collect alchemy ingredients
>Join the arena [To make the coin, or to bet the map against a 50 gold bet on you.]
>Some other way [what?]

To summerise the social knowledge you have gleaned, The city is a melting pot of refugees and radicalising Nords who chafe against an outsiders meddling with their customs. "Old ways" are slowly being revived and that's turned caustic against newcomers and outsiders.

>>6384140
Not helped in the slightest by rumours of murders in the Stone quarter of pretty and young nordic women which are being blamed on "a Butcher" with shifty eyes on the dunmer.
There are few who care for the other, and fewer still those who speak of reconciliation. The Jarl is beloved by his kin-people and cursed by his kith, there are embers of resentment but little odds for a dark elf rebellion without some tangible catalyst. For the nords themselves, Ulfric may be that catalyst, though the rumours say he has returned to the Palace of King's a month ago and the tension in the city has only grown more terse.
Soon the land of this country are due for more excitement, or the Jarl will lose his seat.

>Does Nilibor have any particular feelings or thoughts about the news of the wider world or local affairs?

>>6384140
>>collect alchemy ingredients

>>6384140
>collect alchemy ingredients
Blood sports are barbaric. It's the kind of thing the Ayleids delighted in.

>>6384141
>Does Nilibor have any particular feelings or thoughts about the news of the wider world or local affairs?
Ok I'll give it a go again.

>While the worship of this "Talos" and his status as a Man turned God are distasteful, abducting people and doing Gods know what to them seems like a severe overreaction to such a non-issue. These Thalmor sound like a treacherous lot but it might be wise to learn more about them.

>Perhaps most surprising is learning that the Ayleid's former slaves built a great empire in the Heartlands that once ruled all of Tamriel and that they worship some strange admixture of the Aldmeri and Atmoran gods. It is strangely heartening to know these Imperials are able to recognize the greatness of Auri-El through their worship of Akatosh and that Lorkhan has fallen out of favor somewhat.

>Mehrunes Dagon's invasion of Mundus is very alarming. If it happened once, could it not happen again?

>>6384140
>collect alchemy ingredients
We are no Ayleid or Daedra worshipper.

The idea of a human God this 'Talos' Joined the Aedra...is most intriguing. However, the fact remains that clearly, this Talos was also accepted by them as one of their own. Otherwise, he never would have become a God. This indicates that, despite how we feel as Mer, ultimately we are mortal and thus have no right to intercede in Godly affairs. So our foolish cousins, these Thalmor are actively disagreeing with the decisions and very decrees of the Gods, which is extremely foolish and one we cannot agree with, no matter the grievances with mankind. Ultimately, despite our feelings for it Man is right NOT Mer in this case. Plus its beyond stupid to meddle in godly affairs. The fools.

As for our Ayleid cousins and these new humans honestly, their fate is hilariously poetic. We always disagreed with them on religious grounds and the fact that their fall came at the hands of Man and not Mer is the only thing we find disappointing about it. A damn shame that.

As for this 'Empire' clearly their power has waned and they lost to the Thalmor, who definitely remind us strongly of the family resemblance. The Thalmor are insane and fools for daring to disagree with the Aedra. Ultimately, if what the Nords are moaning about is true, the future of the Empire is doomed. Although we ARE curious about this...Dragonborn in the Imperial Dynasty? The Empire, while certainly annoying, clearly isn't as dangerous as they were. Thalmor, while Mer arguably is a bigger problem with their insanity to challenge and oppose the Divine.

Truly tragic what happened to our Dunmer cousins, we can sympathize with them truly but what the fuck happened to the Chime? Didn't they also live in that region?

As for the Oblivion Crisis. This is why Aedra will forever be more trustworthy and reliable than the Daedra. Look at what they tried and even nearly succeeded! A real shame that it took a Man's sacrifice to stop it. Gotta give the Imperials props though, first taking down Ayleids, starting a continental empire, AND stopping a Daedric invasion? We might have a certain distaste for Man ESPECIALLY certain humans, given our history but we aren't about to deny their achievements or hold real disdain for them. We aren't some sore loser after all and we learned our lessons the hard way personally. These...Imperials were truly worthy, as much as we are loath to admit it. Unlike the Nords, who obsess over their ancestral achievements of now extinct Atmorans instead of aiming or new achievement. Imperials are clearly far superior. Still, it IS a fact that it is NORDS of all Men who are standing up for Talos and against the Thalmor madness rather than the Imperials. Have the Imperials truly disgraced their ancestry and past achievements so?

Even we find that truly pathetic. Even with our disdain for Nords, if they truly do follow through with Talos to the end. That would honestly put us in quite a conundrum...

>>6384437
On one hand, it's Nords. The direct descendants of the Atmorans but on the other hand, it's the Aedra who decreed that we and our people would be given another chance. If not for their mercy, the Snow Mer would truly be doomed, and we have personal experience of that, having been saved by them and brought forward in time. Why couldn't it be those Imperials standing up for Talos instead? If that were the case, we wouldn't be nearly so conflicted. Deep down, though...we understand that our decision is preordained and MUST stand for the Aedra's decision as we have personally been favored, saved, and blessed by them. They decided to accept Talos as a fellow God. So as much as it bothers us to admit it, the Nords are right and the Thalmor are insane fools threatening to drag down the Mer with their madness. So we are obligated to stand with Talos and damn the Thalmor. Their madness threatens to doom us all. Also fuck the current Empire for forcing us to consider having to side with NORDS of all things for the sake of the Aedra...

>>6384437
>Talos
I'm pretty sure most people in-universe aren't aware of the fact that Talos possibly showed up in Ghost Gate under the name Wulf (might have been Wulfharth instead, considering the name and location you find him in) to slap the Nerevarine on the ass and wish them good luck with killing Dagoth-Ur or that his blessing was vital to ensuring Umaril the Unfeathered died in both flesh and spirit or that his blood was used in a ritual as the "blood of a god" component to open a portal to Mankar Camoran's Paradise.

Nilibor only has idle talk with complete strangers who already believe Talos is a god and the apostate Dunmer to confirm his divinity, not exactly concrete evidence. I don't think he'd immediately accept Talos' divinity like that. It wouldn't even be the first time a dragonborn emperor was posthumously declared divine, the exact same thing happened with Reman. I think he would be intrigued by the existence of the dragonborn though, especially Saint Alessia who directly formed a pact with Akatosh who, as far as Nilibor might know, is just a rebranding of Auri-El.

>The Thalmor
Nilibor would naturally be wary of the Thalmor but I doubt he'd so quickly develop such a deep disdain for them when he knows barely anything about them.

>Dunmer
I think Nilibor is smart enough to put two and two together and realize the Dunmer are descendants of the Chimer.

>Oblivion Crisis
I bet Nilibor would be interested in visiting the Imperial City someday to see the Avatar of Akatosh in person.

>>6384459
The Knights of the Nine and their exploits are a niche part of old old history, and their resurrection was both 200 years ago and half a continent away and poorly documented.
The last crusader wasn't sitting down for an interview.

And for the other guy talking about Ascension, acceptance by an aedra isn't needed for Ascension to their ranks. Nor are all aedra of the sake pantheon.
Auri-el and his court killed both Shor and Tsun, despite both being Aedra.

Anyway,
Going Berry Picking.
Locking

>>6384140
>collect alchemy ingredients

>>6384551
>acceptance by an aedra isn't needed for Ascension to their ranks
Yeah that too. Mannimarco is an example. Hell, Mannimarco might have even used the same method of apotheosis that Talos used.

>>6384459
I figured given our unironic closeness to the divines and being personally saved by them. The topic in general would be EXTREMELY sensitive to Nilibor. Plus, we, among have all mortals in all likelihood have the easiest time personally communing with the divine and confirming it for ourselves. Especially at the idea that a Man became a God. It's not like we have any idea about Dragons or what Dragonborn is much less care. Talos on the other hand while not directly personal, would also be regarded as high importance when it comes to the truth of the matter. As anything Divine related would be.

The problem with the Thalmor is their disagreement with the Divines whom directly saved us and gave our people a second chance. The mere fact that the Thalmor seem interested in directly influencing divine matters would be profoundly offensive to us. We wouldn't care about the war or much else but the divine fuckery? Oh boy.

Yeah, but he doesn't know the details, even if he does likely suspect their ancestry.

I would imagine so. Especially given how sensitive he would be for divine matters on account of literally being resurrected by them, brought forward in time, and allowed a second chance to save his people. Anything Divine related would have his keen interest. After all, compared to most mortals, he would hold a VERY different view on things regarding the Divine from personal experience alone. So a matter like Talos would have him deeply intrigued and sensitive towards. The only other sore spot I can imagine on Nilibor is his grudge with the Atmorans and especially Dwemer, along with his hope to save the Snow Mer.

After considering both options, It wasn't really a choice. The arena offered blood and gold but there was little self respect in that place, it was not where the glory of Auri-el would shine and stank rather distantly of the feathered wretches in the south. A small smile blooms across your lips as the thought manifests fully, the Alyeid's southern empire, usurped and replaced with that of their slaves and their odd patchwork of gods and false faces. Perhaps the march of time has some positive changes in the books, but this talk of inquisition and war on the divine sits ill at ease with you as an act of hubris and spite against those whom are so far above even your head, and your smile curdles into a frown.

Spending no more time to think about it, you set off to the White Phial and engage Nurelion with what plants he was missing and ingredients he would desire for use and then spend a few more minutes enduring increasingly ridiculous requests like; a daedra heart, the shadowblooms of the evergloom, sap of the hist and something called Cannon powder of the Redguard. The old timer had his fun and you cut in with a few easier suggestions like more Ice wraith teeth or berries and recommenced the negotiations. You did eventually get redirected to his apprentice Quintus and he is somewhat more helpful with what in specifics were needed and where to look as well as diagrams of their appearances.

Ice wraith teeth were to be accepted of course, at the going rate of 34 per set up to a maximum of 5 sets.
More common ingredients he was after were mountain flowers, at 10 septims per bundle of 5 of similar colour.
A brilliant yellow-orange plant named dragons tongue, 20 per bundle of 5. They grew freely to the south in the glades near the site of the Eldergleam's cavern.
and various species of fish in rivers and ponds at 15 per head to a maximum of 10 each.

Naturally Nurelion expected all peices to not be half rotten when they got back to him, but you think you can manage.

>>6384735
You've almost got most of an idea together, when Quintus then looks around the room and leans in closer and flips his demonstration book to an interesting set of diagrams. . . Atronach salts.

Quintus: "If you need good money and think you can handle it, We can never have enough fire, frost and void salts. 50 gold for the first, double and then triple for second and third respectively AND there are rumours of necromancers and vampires taking up the old fort down south. It'll be dangerous, but it would do the hold some good."

Playing at your nature as a heroic wanderer and a jaded mercenary in one then, he still has some years to go before such tricks are able to evade your notice.
Taking an hour to inform Morvane's wife of your plans, you leave with some tough bread and a flaggon of ale and head out south from the city. The cold air and unkind glares quickly fade as you distance yourself from the city, replaced with the unpleasant notes of sulfur on the wind and the bubbling banks of steam from volcanic hotspots. . . and truthfully it is the first time you feel true discomfort upon seeing your homeland. The ice and snow has faded almost completely and you step over hardy grasses struggling for life between rocky, sulfurous outcroppings that make up this stinking unpleasant mockery of your homeland. Why could you see clouds that bore no chill, or enduring slush and hoarfrost clinging tightly to the volcanic channels that should by rights struggle in great white plumes against the biting air of the north.
Was it the Tongues of ancient past that did this? this violation of the sovereignty of the snow?

You carry on, and after some hours you are in the thick of the fields, and already you were making some decent pickings. Dragontongue grew in clumps of 3 and 5, so were quickly bound and stuffed in your bag with some leather wrap to avoid damage in their storage. You sweep along the road and then westwards, avoiding a giant camp as you go.

>>6384737
You do not bother these big folk as they tend to their mammoths, keeping your distance and making an old greeting in the dwemer tongue as you depart. The waters here are poor for drinking, and worse for fishing, so you mostly pick up mountain flowers and the tongues until night falls. The change in lighting bothers you little, continuing to walk and gather well until Massa and Secunda are high in the sky above you before taking a break to sit on the shores of a great river that you presume trails all the way back to windhelm.

Checking your haul, gleaming saphire eyes like daggers through the gloom, you count up your scores and find that with good delivery it should make you some good coin, 6 bundles of mountain flowers and 8 bundles of dragon tongue will place you firmly in 220 gold which is enough for a decent map! And with the space you have left in your pack from taking out the flaggon to wash down your bread, you could probably try your hand at fishing to round out a nice surplus of extra. . .

Your eyes then go from the river, towards the north, following it's winding, meandering way back towards the cold and think again of Quintus' words. A fortress of those who practice the clever craft and vampires, if the rumours of what inhabits it are even slightly accurate. There was doubtless the atronach's Quintus spoke of there, as even in your era the ability to conjure allies to your aid was a useful one, but you were hardly going to be deprived with some hundred less gold from your assembled wealth.

Your eyes close, falling into meditative prayer to the Divine, the great Fixed Center and his court and the saviors of both you and your people .

>Turn your hand to fish, it will be quicker and simpler once you figure out the right spell that doesn't ruin their flesh. On your way back you can avoid the fortress and get the map you need. Your people call out to you, and you already have a foundation for this era. Your people need you Now.

>A fortress so close to a Capital city must be dangerous if it hasn't been dealt with already. Probable Warlocks and possibly vampires, to leave them alone will only embolden them and their predations. Trinnimac would never countenance leaving such beasts free, the mere principle of the thing compels you. Your People will have your aid, but you have more than enough to share.

QM note: I have been placing out a rather decent amount of "thought/outlook" votes in recent updates, mostly so I can get a grasp on what kind of Prince and Saviour Nilibor is meant to be. This should be the last big one for a while.
Though I'm always happy with discussion about things.

>>6384738
>>Turn your hand to fish, it will be quicker and simpler once you figure out the right spell that doesn't ruin their flesh. On your way back you can avoid the fortress and get the map you need. Your people call out to you, and you already have a foundation for this era. Your people need you Now.

>>6384710
Nilibor doesn't revere all the aedra, he would naturally favor the elven gods above all others. So why would he care about the Thalmor's hatred for Talos and view their actions as an affront to his gods without learning more about the Thalmor and their goals? At most, right now, he'd just think the Thalmor were a bunch of lunatics.

Honestly, I can't even blame the Thalmor for wanting to snuff out Talos worship considering Tiber Septim unleashed the Numidium on the Summerset Isles, that was probably the moment he ascended to godhood using the Numidium and the Mantella too. Tiber Septim was actually a real piece of shit.

>>6384738
>A fortress so close to a Capital city must be dangerous if it hasn't been dealt with already. Probable Warlocks and possibly vampires, to leave them alone will only embolden them and their predations. Trinnimac would never countenance leaving such beasts free, the mere principle of the thing compels you. Your People will have your aid, but you have more than enough to share.
Whether undead abominations born of savage rape or a coven of depraved hedge wizards, they gotta GO.

>>6384738
>>A fortress so close to a Capital city must be dangerous if it hasn't been dealt with already. Probable Warlocks and possibly vampires, to leave them alone will only embolden them and their predations. Trinnimac would never countenance leaving such beasts free, the mere principle of the thing compels you. Your People will have your aid, but you have more than enough to share.

Been reading the quest since it started and i'll occasionally vote but this is a good quest so far Qm

>>6384862
Sorry about the delay folks.

Locking, Nilibor is a Hero of Rightious good, not merely his People

The hour passes in silent respect for your prayers, and through them time and again your mind wanders between the comforting mantra's to your Lord of light, His great warrior paragon, the scribe of all history and his wife, the wandering hero and the Earthbone, the cunning apprentice and Wise will worker and when your prayers run short new one's spring to your lips as the shrouded wisdom of the secret god which has watched your people in their degradation.
You beseech each for clarity, and each again for wisdom and guidance in how to proceed. Your people are your purpose in this life, their return is what your return is predicated upon.

Your arm twitches, your eye aches and your arm aches to act.

You are [b]Nilibor, Snow Prince, Champion of Auri-el and blessed of his court[/b].
You will not stand for the predations of monsters to fall upon the undeserving, least of all when it does not conflict with your duty. Opening your eyes to the bright curtain of blazing star light, you rise and stowing the flagon begin to walk along the river north with a purpose.

The mouldering ruins of the castle are as fitting for the rumours as any you can imagine, ancient fortifications from a bygone age weathered from endless weather and infrequent assault that still stand strong and proud. Stationed on the high edge of a cliff face it commands the view of the roads that bypass it and to the north and west it is covered in a mountain's protective embrace while the south side hosts the only readily accessible entrance at the top of a hill. . . with 2, 3, 5 shapes shifting about on watch. The air has gone chill in the early morning and you crouch walk along the dewy grass towards your enemy, slipping unseen through the shade towards the wall.
Pressing your back against it, seismic sense tells you of the ways in which the men and corpses above you intend to herd an intruder: Down a contained corridor that is filled with traps and triggers, and perhaps out into a kill zone.

>>6385298
For most, the 4 meter high wall would be impassable and a dangerious thing to try and climb anyway with the defenders at the top. Age has made it weary and your foes don't notice you yet, So taking a few steps back, you spring like an acrobat and your fingers find crevices as surely as your toes find points to spring off from, bouncing and crawling up the wall at a record pace afore aligting atop the wall in a crouch.
Those who never explored the limits of their bodies are truly deprived to never know the joy that comes with watching the world be moved about you, or the short gasp of surprise that passes over a flat faced human's lips, split seconds before an ice spike the size of your arm impales through his eyesocket and dashes the skull against the stone.

Surprise is spent when a second voice starts to shout, an icy spear lashing out with a reflexive whip of the arm on another eye based target while the rest of you springs up and out of a skeletal archers line of fire.

The flow of violence begins to pick up as you set down again, an arrow bouncing off hard stone where you were a second ago, a crisp shattering of glass, sound and feeling creating a picture of the rampart through which you can act.

The mage behind you had thrown up a ward that blunted your magical assault, "Intruuu-" spilling over into the air while ahead you face three skeletal undead, the work of novices in how slow they move and how shoddy the splints are. The bowman is drawing anew and the other pair jostle forwards with iron shields and axes, trying to avoid pushing the other off the wall with the archer between you and them.

They are no threat in comparison to the mage, One hand casting Ice-flesh and the other conjuring a lightning bolt, the power arching out from the ribs of the archer to strike his compatriots through their metallic shielding. Another sends them tumbling back in a pile of wood and burning calcium.

"--uuuderr!"

>>6385299
You turn back to the last look out and immediately throw yourself forwards into a roll under the flaming bolt that ripples overhead, striking at where your chest had been rather than where you now were, racing to close the distance with him. Stillness is death to a lightly armoured warrior and you were more lightly armoured than usual, meeting his next two hurried bolts by juking to the left and then left again to run along the edge of the wall and flinging off a Blizzard spell, the shrieking winds and razor ice they carry with them an intimidating and obscuring prospect.

Others were rousing now, reenforcements shuffling then running along other walls to reenforce their fallen allies. A rune is marked below your feet with a hand sign and you finish closing in on the wizard, his ward shattering under the frigid cold and his throat collapsing to the magika sapping spell you laid over a hard punch.

----
The next few minutes had proceeded in a similar fashion of frantic, energetic Acrobatics and exacting application of destruction, your markedly inferior opponents replying with spells that range from the barely passible and poorly aimed to the lofty heights of well executed and too slow to hit you from across the field.
7 remain, perched across the fortress as they are like terrified skeevers taking pot shots with their summoned help and you hunker down atop a tower that looms over the front entryway, your reserves of Stamina and magika both drained to half in the battle. While you are taking a breather, someone kicks open the main door further into the fortress and emerges into the open.

He shouts at his incompetents as a living thunderstorm emerges from the fortress at his back, followed swiftly by two walking chunks of ice and a floating feminine glob of magma.

An icy spear flies to punish his lack of care, and the figure's ward rises in time to intercept the blow. The ward cracks but holds, and in reply you leap clear as the lip of the tower wall explodes

>>6385300
A lightningbolt as thick as your arm scores the stone by way of preparing for the trio of fireballs that turn the air to flame and leave you feeling warm.

The head warlock then, if these outside examples are anything to go by, and a capable wizard besides.

How do you persecute this battle Nilibor?
>climb down the outside of the tower and walls, it will be tiring and gives them time to move but you then have leave to maneuver without being harried [Whom do you flank?]
>you have been fighting as conservatively as your style allows, but this seems like a dire enough situation. Use the most powerful destruction magics you can while you have cover, it will render this whole fortresses grounds lethal to your foes. But if they endure or can outlast it, you will be left without your spells against a warlock of capable skill.
>You have yet to practice but you know the power of the Tongues. A shout can do as much as any great spell it's just a matter of doing and figuring out how. [You know words related to Ice, Cold, Blizzard, Faith and Spear well enough to shout them. All shouts come in 3 word structure.]
>Another plan [Write in option]

>>6385302
>You have yet to practice but you know the power of the Tongues. A shout can do as much as any great spell it's just a matter of doing and figuring out how. [You know words related to Ice, Cold, Blizzard, Faith and Spear well enough to shout them. All shouts come in 3 word structure.]
>Blizzard Cold Ice
I'm not sure what this will do, if anything, but the hope is that it summons an actual blizzard.

>>6385337
Sounds fun.

>>6385337
+1
Sounds like a Blizzard of Supreme Cold and sharp Ice will fly around.

>>6385861
>>6385597
>>6385337
Time to use the Thu'um.
Locking.

The calculations are made. No matter what spell you use, it will not be enough to wipe them all out in one go and whichever Atronach is best tuned to defeat your spells would be left against you, To say nothing of the head warlock, you simply don't feel confident with only your ice-flesh, robes and experience. Nor would you be able to move down the tower quick enough to matter, ceding the initiative to your enemies simply gives them the space they need to encircle and entrap you. Stillness is death in combat and you have only had this much luck due to your foe's obvious lack of experience in pitched combat against a superior but isolated foe.

Then all that is left open to you is a gift you have not had time nor inclination to practice. Great Auri-el has bestowed on you a measure of his own grace, the soul of the world who is the soul of all things and thus knower and first changer. You take a deep breath and release it, reaching out to the words you do not know how to speak but understand so intimately that it doesn't matter. These are not things of flesh and stumbling pronunciation, they are the world made to change.

The shouting of wizards is tuned out as you remember your first snowfall. It was a heavy thing, snowflakes the size of your childish fist that rippled down from the floating isles of storm that heralded the greatest of these whiteouts. Architecture kept the cities from being clogged up by the build up of white, clever crafts that drove the gale winds down into chosen parks and fields to mount and grow, adepts of alteration and destruction did the rest to keep the stray drifts from becoming hazards, but what did you care? The sky rippled with Blue, great floating beasts like the ice wraiths you have slain wrought in giant form dancing across the horizon, shedding their snow down upon all that you could see. You inhale, a sound rippling in past your lips.

"Lizstrun"

Your bodyguard had helped you outside, out past the gates and their watchers.

>>6386942
Out into the city the wind had bit at your skin. Water froze when you spat but that merely made it a game. Your skin had turned pale-blue like a nede caught far from their hearths, it punched through your clothes and sunk into your bones. A chattering sapping hunger that now only lived in the echo's of your spells, your people had known and loved this cold possessive hunger since the times of Auri-el Himself, it is nostalgic and the air around you stills in commiseration for the heating of the sun. Your land is no longer yours, the storms of your memory are now but the apocalyptic folktales of fearful peasantry 2 era's removed from their awesome power. You do not want this pathetic immitation of memory, you do not want this uncomfortable humidity of volcanic sulfur pits, This is Keizaal, Your home and it shall be as you demand. The air mists with your indignation, snarling a sound that paints hoarfrost, painful ice across your windpipe.

"Krah!"

you open your eyes and you don't quite remember when you had closed them, raising your chin the last concept comes almost simply. The feeling of forging starlight into solid ice, the flow of a frost spell, the terrible ferocity of your tutor's demonstrations. Ice is the hard counterpart to snow, the bone to your art's flesh, that which all else comes back to when you need strength. Ice, one of your most reliable allies, you his it's name and bid the world to bend to your declaration with a last, violent exhale.

"Liz!"
There was once a fort with a battlefield pitched with wizards against the Snow Prince. Now there is the Blizzard and it's victims.
Your throat thrums with the power it has just channeled, a sick feeling of coughing your throat raw, you bend forwards almost in half, coughing in truth up a mouthful of blood. It freezes into red rubies under the howling winds, rocks and spear's of unwrought ice starting to fall from above as the land is made to remember the storm's of Era's past.

>>6386943
You turn from your place and dive back into the tower, for once feeling the chill on your exposed skin from the dropped temperature and the hoarfrost starting to coat every exposed piece of rock in the tower. So this was the power of the Tongues wielded by a Snow Elf, Praise be Auri-el!
You try to pray, but even breathing feels like you are swallowing broken glass, so instead cast a healing spell as you drop out of the tower window onto the top of the wall that you had climbed to enter the fort in the first place.

As you recover from the meter and a half fall, you cannot claim to see how the warlock's are handling your summoned storm, given you cannot see more than 3 meters away with your eyes. But you can hear perfectly how giant head-sized blocks of ice crash into bone and the distant sound of an explosion as you assume the flame atronach goes up in smoke.
Your aching throat demands your attention, but it will wait. It waits as you follow your memory of the fortress wall and come upon the first holdout of the wizards and you plant an ice spike into the man's frostbitten form, putting a merciful end to the unmerciful scum. It waits as you repeat the action twice more. And you would look for the rest of them if not for the sounds of a second explosion, and approaching at speed, you both take notice and are noticed in turn. Beneath you the Head warlock has blown the door open to his fortress and retreated inside, taking the storm atronach with him.

It is the pair of Ice atronach's you now contend with, who like you do not use their eyes to trace their prey. You weave around the Blizzard like second nature, the memories of play and light armour training making the effort noticeable but manageable. These incarnations of winter are no more difficult, lightning sparking through them with light jabs to poke and goad them forwards. You dodge one's swipe and sidestep anothers overhead smash, leading them towards the corner of the wall where you left a rune.

>>6386945
BOOM!
The stone becomes flash-boiled and cracks by the differential in temperature, a sturdy bolt of lightning to one's shoulder shoves the briefly stunned pair back into eachother, and then into open space, crashing down into the earth like an avalanche in minuture. . and still they feel less consequential by comparison to the events already in motion.

None the less, another bolt confirms their deaths, and you note their locations for harvesting later. Hopping down from one level to the next, you slide into the warlocks fortress and pause. It will be a hunt now, but you don't know the disposition of his forces, only that they know you are both coming and deadly.

>How do you go about flushing this rat out, Nilibor?
>By stealth, stalk and hunt down the halls. Kill those you find quietly with touch spells. You are quite good, but there's always the risk of giving yourself away in a poor spot.
>By bait, There must be something here that they value. Threaten it and you will be able to dictate where the battle is held. You'll probably know it when you find it. If you find it.
>By Study, disable those you find and interrogate them about their leader. It will be slow and risky, both to disable without killing and to question without being ambushed, but it will give you the best lay of the land.

QM note: Hmm, apparently my computer only likes connecting to 4chan at this hour or so. I'll apologise for my delay.

>>6386949
>By bait, There must be something here that they value. Threaten it and you will be able to dictate where the battle is held. You'll probably know it when you find it. If you find it.

>>6386949
>By stealth, stalk and hunt down the halls. Kill those you find quietly with touch spells. You are quite good, but there's always the risk of giving yourself away in a poor spot.
Even if we only get a few before being discovered, that's still a few less warlocks slinging spells at us.

>>6387036
>>6387059
Gonna leave the vote open for another 12ish hours to get consensus.

>>6387036
I'll change my vote to >>6387059 to break the tie.

>>6387582
>>6387059
Locking for Stealth.

The cowards do not, at this moment, know your position and only have an inkling at your abilities. So there was little reason to give up that advantage. Your eyes turn to the large open space you find yourself in, ahead and to the left an open door with guttering firelight appears to be some kind of kitchen area by the smell of smoke and cooked meat and you resolve to check there for supplies later. To the right of you are two more rooms, one open and the other behind a thick wooden door.
A stairway led further down into the ruins and you took a peek down from the top before testing the waters with a smaller variant of blizzard, something like a snowball that crashed into the stone. . . and the rock flares into flaming inferno, a rune hidden above the doorframe evidence of your quarry's hurried flight.
Establishing that way held traps and entrenched preparations, you turn to the two entryways further on. The left reveals nobody in the room, a forge that shows signs of having been abandoned mid-use, tongs and a bar of steel left to trickle down and melt further into the forge as useless slag metal. The right door however stymies you, locked and bolted from the other side to keep the area secure, this would have stopped many and been a very loud thing to try and dismantle for those with the body strength to tear it down.

A touch against where you suspect the hinges to be, a flexed disintegration incantation later and half a foot of wood is erased from existence, the metal hinges with it. Twice more the spell is cast and then the door is sloping forwards and into your hands to settle the thick slab down gently allowing you to crawl under the restraining bar which still futily tries to keep you out.

This fortress' age has been even less kind to it's interior, wherever you look there are collapsed passages and ruined rooms, patchjob frames holding the walls up and the air tasting of ozone and damp.

>>6388022
You find your first victim with the sounds of shuffling feet, and you pick up your pace to get into position before the chance is lost. Rounding a corner are a pair of the warlocks, men by the sounds of their fearful mutterings, both tall enough in your siesmic sense to be nords and so you wait. They talk about the door you have unhinged, how to reenforce it or place wards and traps. . . two steps from the corner, you move.
Springing forwards like a lunging wraith, your left hand collides with a crackle of power on the man's face, thumb digging into an eye and palm to his nose as the drain magika spell triggers, slamming the first nord into a shorter one behind him and the pair stumbling backwards into the centre of the walkway. Your next motion flowed from the first, the right hand flaring with electrical discharge over the first man's heart and jolting through the body into the next man, shoving again to allow them to crash into a tangle on the floor.

At least that was the theory, for while the first warlock dropped like a sack of flour, the other kept his feet by shoving aside his former collegues corpse, the sparks of lightning running over his robes like water off a duck's feathers, the shorter imperial-looking figure already drawing a dagger and bringing a glowing blue flame to hand.
Green eyes meet Sapphire Blue, a wordless understanding passes between you in an instant and the starting mark is made as the necromancer turns his eyes down to his ally to cast. You lunge forwards, crossing the intervening meters in two steps and side stepping the first waist high slash, and dodging back from a thrust to the chest.
A body moves beside you both but in another two moves it is over, catching the necromancer's wrist with one hand and slamming another lightning touch into the man's throat, putting him and his connection to oblivion down forever.

>>6388024
You do not encounter such resistence again, most of the warlocks offering you a polite and dignified way to end their infestation of this mortal coil by exposed backs. The smell of burning cloth might have given you away if you didn't take steps to put out the fires that come from lightning scouring the necks of villains through their hoods. Instead you add 6 bodies to your count, including the two who you took out together. Your last victim held a blue potion that glowed with a dull light, alongside several other mushrooms, trimmings and various alchemical paraphernalia. You pocket the potion and move on.

The main ritual chamber of the coven could truely be nothing else.
In a large right angled triangle room, you emerge from the shortest side near a raised set of stairs.

Pillars obfuscate line of sight, and dragging your hand across the stone you can feel your senses muffling the further inside you go. The Skien of the world is pulled tight and thin over this area, and each step sends the air rippling with motion.
The Head warlock is here somewhere, but you just don't-

Another step carries you beyond the cover you thought existed, materialising in the middle of a cleared position in the middle of the ritual center. Three brazier's burn with purple smoke with what look like soul gems further afar on some of the pillars tops glowing a pale rose pink.

Further analysis is rendered impossible, a great hungry force slamming into your back like a drop kick that sends you rolling forwards to recover from.
Movement is. . Reduced, Your speed exactly the same yet the distance you cover reduced by 3/4ths as you try and leave the circle of smoking braziers.
The Storm atronach behind you takes advantage again, and again your dodge isn't quite good enough, your magika reserves taking another battering as sparks run down your arm.
Your throat aches and somewhere that accursed wizard is laughing maniacally.

What do you do Nilibor?

>You can see the Atronach, try and kill it to get some breathing room, if you leave it alone it will just cook you alive.
>The atronach is a distraction, that the warlock doesn't show himself says he is preparing something else. Disrupt whatever effect binds you and be free again.
>You aren't sure what can disrupt the ritual effect, But you're fairly confident that another one requires focus. Throw random fireballs around and see if you can trigger a backlash for the warlock
>The Thu'um is power, no matter what it can probably help you escape this situation. But you doubt your throat is prepared for another shout so soon. [What do you shout?]

>>6388025
>>The atronach is a distraction, that the warlock doesn't show himself says he is preparing something else. Disrupt whatever effect binds you and be free again.

>>6388025
>The atronach is a distraction, that the warlock doesn't show himself says he is preparing something else. Disrupt whatever effect binds you and be free again.

>>6388025
>The atronach is a distraction, that the warlock doesn't show himself says he is preparing something else. Disrupt whatever effect binds you and be free again.
He's cooking up something nasty.

>>6379610
Looks interesting, I'll start reading over the week.

>>6388179
>>6388158
>>6388146
Unanimously breaking the ritual

>>6388485
Hope you enjoy

>>6388508
testing
Testing
Testing

The Warlock was laughing. Your ears, so normally tuned to location and direction, couldn't place where he was hiding in this distorted ritual space, but he was laughing. And that meant that to stay in the middle of this circle was to be exposed completely and utterly.
Sparks leap from twitching fingers, a low intensity spell which ideally the vile cur wouldn't notice before it came too late. One palm lashes towards the atronach, it's nature eating the hit without much concern as the concentrated beam slides off the shoulder and into the soul gem affixed to the hard stone pillar that entrapped you. A second lashes to the side as the lightning elemental draws it's stony hands back to clap, dropping to a knee drags the beam down a few feet to miss it's own crystal but in turn you manage to turn a chest-strike into a near miss that leaves your hairs crackling with static.
The points angle up again, and after three eternities masquarading as minutes, two of the fixtures explode, the crystalline configuration of soulgems reflecting the magicka in rippling destructive waves. And half a ritual was worse than no ritual at all.

The room spun somewhat, the spell unravelling and another lightning bolt curving up into the roof as you closed your eyes in an attempt to keep your mind right. A daedra was behind this, or some demented genius to make such an infuriating spell.
And with a snap, you are back on a Nirn that makes sense, your steps not bounded in the least and standing halfway up the stair way to a throne. . . The Atronach is facing the distant wall on the far side of the room, apparently as confused as you were but a moment before and behind you, the manic mocking laughter of the warlock has faltered into an outraged shout.

His features are altmer as you turn to look upon the snarling, sneering hateful face. His hands spread wide to channel a great spell that shimmered with wildfire and the words of mockery or condemnation form on his lips.

>>6388529
You give him no such consideration flinging an icy spear at his chest by reflex, and follow it with two more and a blizzard spell with each step you take up the stairs towards him. This spell would not be completed or you would be in great difficulties. The first spear explodes into a conflagration, a rune carved around his feet exploding into a protective shell of fire that flares once, twice more and then implodes itself as the blizzard crashes into his chest, finally ruining the invocation.

The elf's robes catch light and then freeze solid, the fragments of ice and the flash boil of the heat backlash render down the fool into something like an overripe fruit, a screaming overripe fruit that flails around like that will somehow help with the impending shock and heart attack, screaming a dreadful wail of pain that you suspect has graced this hall before from many lips. And it is with a final contemptious ice spike that the man is pinned against the faux-throne, the wooden construct toppling backwards with a crash.
A lesser warrior may be lost in the haze of the kill, and it is only experience that pushes your tired muscles to throw yourself to the side, a second and a half later seeing your former location ionised under another thunderbolt from the recovering atronach.

You are tired, and hurt, and your reserves were running lower by the minute so turning on the last of this vile place's inhabitants, you allow the beast to approach the bottom of the steps, and bury it in blizzard spells.
By the time you are done, your limbs feel like heavy lead, as numb as frostbite that bites to the bone, and you slump on the steps like it will be the last thing you do. . . and darkness takes you.

>>6388530
=====

Your Dreams are fractious, confusing things overlaid with a hundred conflicting memories. You stand in a field of snow, a realms of fire, before a throne and Kneel at the foot of a crude idol of the Fixed center and his champion. The Atmoran's have Come, and they come with all their might, what can you do, what could be done at all, the sounds of battle already start to sound, the retreat up into the mountains has already been made plain. You pray again for a miracle and it comes in a simple refrain
Ride Coretar, and My arm is with you
From the air shimmered a bright light and when it vanished, a great warhorse brayed with the temper of Trinimac. And so you rose and rode.

=====
When you wake on the hard stone, your body aches and due inspection reveals your clothes to have burns and holes across the chest and back and arms. The look was not terribly pleasing or professional, to say nothing of the pain that came from trying to roll onto your side. But after a few minutes and some applications of stamina restoration you could walk again, bone deep aches put out of mind as you assess the situation. And this situation called for proper rest.

The limp to the kitchen revealed some bread and salted beef, which went down easily with the hunger which told you that your small coma probably lasted a while. Some waterskins and wineskins followed the salted beef and with a restored sense of energy you checked outside to find that the shouted storm had abaited, leaving two meters of rocky hail and ice coating the entirety of the outside fortress with the first rays of dawn cascading over it which you chalked up to being a future problem rather than a present one.
Back into the fortress' depths, you find a bed and drop into it for a proper sleep.

Waking anew with discomfort reduced to merely unpleasant and your magika reserves no longer straining just to keep your body functioning, you heal some of the more obvious damage and start to gather your loot.

>>6388531
it is a crude thing but you are not left with your kingdom's coffers. Amongst the corpses you find many a trinket and fill your bag with them, and take particular care to gather the salts of your slain foes carefully.
In total:
-you manage to scrounge and collect 88 septims, which you add to your purse for 176.
-4 elemental salts, totalling 400 gold when you return to windhelm. Alongside the 220 worth of plants, you should be flush with Septims.
-3 soul gems filled with petty souls
-8 days of provisions.
-And an assortment of books, which you page through and find mildly interesting to browse later.

Out of some prudent thought, you also take the ears of the dead warlock, ice-flame bitten as they are it will serve as some proof for your deeds if you think to inform the Jarl. It's nearing evening again as you depart the fortress, but one surprise remains for you. Just down the sloping incline from the fortress, a white steed with a long silver mane grazes on snowberries, its eyes lazily following you on your way down.
Coretar whinnies in greeting as your face stretches into a grin, yet another sign of favour for your determination of the Gods. And wrapping your arms around the old beast's neck, the distant comfort of home doesn't feel so distant at all anymore.

>After returning to Windhelm, you will automatically turn in the gold and get a good quality map leaving you with 596 gold. If you would like to buy anything then let me know and I'll price it out.
>Otherwise, is there anything more you would like to do before heading up north? Or would you like to skip directly to trying to parlay with the Falmer.

>>6388532
Turn in any bounties for extra coin and rep. Check for rumors in regards to snow ghosts or dwemer. Otherwise, I cannot really think of anything. Maybe buy some potions?

>>6388532
- Socialize with Quintus in one of the inns of Windhelm. Get to know more about the Imperials and the man.
- Ask Morvane to tell you about the Dunmer in the Grey Quarter (we could potentially use 1 of them has a future companion maybe ? And the rest of them could.... be employed by us has sellswords in the future perhaps? I remember that the Empire has an agent in the grey quarter)
- Hear of rumors on that Kastav fort filled by bandits. If we defeated this necromancers and warlocks, maybe we could do the same with those outlaws ? Gaining the bounties on their heads and any stolen treasure they might hold would be beneficial.

Beyond that....buying. This seems like a potential list.
- Some sturdy travel clothing (or look for enhanced light armor/destruction mage clothing)
- Another pair of clothing
- A cloak
- A magic ring
- Bed-roll
- A sword and a spear (steel should suffice)
- A backpack
- Another bag
- Barding for Coretar ? Unless he doesn't need it.

>>6388619
I'll switch to this sounds better than >>6388570 although maybe stock up on a few potions too.

>>6388532
I like the suggestions from both >>6388570 and >>6388619 but I think a magic ring might be a bit too pricey. Instead, I'd suggest buying scrolls with banish daedra, turn undead, dispel-on-self and silence effects. Just in case we need to do some more witch hunting in the future.

>>6388532
Actually, I'll just make a list too
- Some light armor, leather or chainmail, if we can afford it.
- A set of simple clothes.
- A bed roll.
- A dagger and spear, preferably both steel.
- A backpack.
- A saddle for Coretar if he doesn't already have one.
- Magicka and stamina potions, two of each.
I've reconsidered my idea of buying scrolls. Might be too expensive right now.

>>6388696
Oh my ID changed a couple times. I'm >>6388649 and >>6388179

>>6388619
Clothing of good quality and make for you will be about 4 gold after haggling.
A cloak is 10 unless you wanted something fancy.

Novice Destruction enchanted robes cost 50 gold for marginal but appreciable easing of casting.

You already have a backpack, and another will coat 45.

Light armour, unenchanted, can get you a set of leather; chestplate costs 27, bracers cost 13 and helm costs 18 because you don't need boots. Totalling 58 gold for your new fit.
There are not any enchanting sevices open to you in Windhelm, so getting these souped up will require going elsewhere.

A magic ring, Depends on the enchantment but you are looking at somewhere around the 200 and 250 mark.

Barding could help but you are looking at 2000 septims to give him steel horse armour, you simply cannot afford it. He does come with a saddle and a riders bag.

A bedroll will set you back 15.

Steel sword and dagger and Spear cost 45, 18 and 28 respectively.

Minor healing potion is 17 per bottle, Minor Stamina Is 20 per bottle
Potion of healing is 35, potion of Stamina is 44
You already have 1 potion of Minor magika and it follows the same price guide as Stamina.

>>6388708
Might help to put on my name!

Scrolls you would need to buy from the court wizard, Windhelm does not appreciate magecraft and there are no dedicated shops to its propagation.

>>6388708
Okay, then I'd like to suggest
- 6 sets of clothes. 24g
- A cloak. 10g
- Leather armor. 58g
- A bedroll. 15g
- Steel Spear and Dagger. 63g
- 3 potions of healing. 105g
- 2 potions of stamina. 88g
- 2 potions of magicka. 88g
Total cost should be 451 gold leaving us with 145 drakes. Or more if there was a bounty on those warlocks we can collect.

>>6388718
I like these buying plan i will support it !

>>6388718
Guess I'll support this too

>>6388718
This seems like the purchase price people like.

>>6388619
>>6388570

Socialising with the imperial to build bonds and scope out the dark elves for future uses are things that can be done alongside rumour hunting.

Now I won't be updating today, or probably tomorrow due to life things, so I'll leave the votes running on things to do but check in for any questions.

It's my design that you'll attend to the Feral Falmer on your lonesome, given the apparent hostile reception you can expect and a desire to keep the bloodshed to a minimum. Plus the sensitive nature of your secret and divine charge.
If any have objections/alternative plans then you have two days to make em.

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>>6388906
I think i agree. Going to the Feral Falmers (from what i remember of playing Skyrim they looked to be in a similar development of the Forsworn Reachmen if not higher. Still tribals at the end of the day), should be done alone for now. Nilibor barely knows anyone well enough to trust them enough to partecipate in this task. Doing things alone provide benefits and negatives, but Nilibor is well equipped for a fight even against many foes.

What exactly is his plan here ? Certainly see what the Feral Falmers actually are first, while avoiding being seen. Then attempt to parlay and if that fails.... kill the adults ? I assume he intends to take and then change their children.Though the aftermath of such action, presents many problems that Nilibor might not have yet considered. The Honoured Crown of Trinimac and Phynaster does transform Feral in Reforged, alongside improving their magical aptitude and psychal bodies, but i dont see a mention of their minds and memories changing. And they would have seen their own killed by Nilibor. Then more practical problems come: such has feeding them or educating them. Can they live anywhere but here, when they do not know anything but the underground and their tribal life ? Where do we move them ?

>>6389144
The Falmer are at a tribal level yeah. They farm mushrooms and chaurus, perform raids on the surface and live in the Squalor of ruined dwemer ruins and caves. Their most advanced industry is the production of poisons, I'm fairly sure.

As for the "Plan" you have the most of it. Go to scope out what they are actually like/what the position is at and try parlay. Any kids he finds, he intends to reforge.

All this on the imperative that time is very much of the essence as to what counts as a "child". Plus leaving your people as Falmer is something like an active cruelty.
While I won't say anything about how memories are affected, the ritual for Reforging is intended to do as the name says, Reforge them completely into Snow Elves. So Falmer, while cunning, are not fit for the trappings of complicated civilisation [white souls] and this will change that. The result is similar to a childish High elf.

The Practical problems are for you to solve, reason around and juggle.
I have a few ideas which I will present as suggestions but I'm presuming that others have better.
As for where is a good place to house them, you have windhelm, the wild, whatever settlement you find them in and a charge to repair the great sanctum of Auri-el on the other side of the country.

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>>6389144
There's nothing we can really do for the adults other than offer them the mercy of death. You bring up a good point about what the Reforged will know and remember, I imagine the transformation will feel like waking up from a long dream or something like that. Hopefully the Crown imparts an understanding of Falmeris or communication is going to be difficult at first.

As for where we move them, Blackreach seems like the obvious choice. It's absolutely massive, has plenty of resources, is home to a ton of Betrayed, it's full of dwemer shit, has multiple lifts and exit points to the surface, it has it's own highway, a fucking artificial sun, and so much more. The perfect place to begin the revival of the Falmer race, atop the decaying corpse of Dwemer civilization. Alternatively, we could try to check out the Chantries. Auri-El's is the largest (and possibly the furthest away from Windhelm, also there's the whole Vyrthur situation) but there are supposed to be others dedicated to the other gods somewhere. Maybe they survived the millennia?

>>6389144
Chantries are still a thing and some have hidden snow elf enclaves that have survived. Otherwise, dwemer ruins once we cleanse them of the Falmer and take over their defenses. We are not completely without recourse once we start rescuing our brethren.

>>6389157
Yeah more or less what I remember of them. Plus crafting some tools, weapons and even some full armors. Not exactly too bad, for trying to get something going after what the dwemer cities did to them.

Then we must go there soon. I wonder how much they will remember of being Feral Falmer kids. Knowing about underground mushrooms farming and chaurus breeding could be of use.

I have some ideas of my own for the practical problems. Mainly as you might have already noticed i want Nilibor to start having some social contacts, if not aquaintances or even friends. Those can help us in getting a better idea of modern Skyrim, and also navigate it and they might even help us in other matters.

Right now i don't think I want to travel with the kids right away and settle in a place. I would wait for see if they are okay first after their reforging. We will need to buy some clothing and food for them, from Windhelm first anyway. And we could strike Kastav Fort that way. Having more money on hand is a positive.

We could possibly stay a little with them in Windhelm, let them see some light and civilized life, better than the cave of their tribe. Even if Windhelm has a nordic idiots population problem (while their ancestors regulary got in bed with any race of Tamriel), not everyone is bad. But I wouldn't stay too long, just enough for get prepped to settle a place we decide to go towards, while also developing some of the social interactions we started.

>>6389161
Yeah it will be hard to parlay. Unless they can recognize what we are. But then again if they do, one of them might have a sudden spike of hatred or jealousy in its broken mind. They are not exactly the best for diplomacy.

I hope so as well. If not, being kind should win them over.

I was also thinking about Blackreach for the future. But we will require to prepare for go there, travelling there right away after the kids are reforged would be an hard path. It will not be easy regardless but still.

There is abandoned ancient nord-atmoran settlements or abandoned fortresses but they are all smaller in comparison. Though they have the appeal of the surface.

>>6389236
True those also exist

>>6389161
>You can only offer the adults the mercy of Death

While adults can not be Reforged, provided you can parlay/Diplo with a tribe, Falmer are still clever cavemen.
Engaging in a new genocide of your own [fallen] people is disadvantagous in practical matters beyond moral ones.

>>6389247
Depends on if the artifact in our possession calms them down or not. The Falmer have attacked chantries with surviving snow elf enclaves before and exterminated them before. If we can calm them and if they aren't hostile to their restored offspring. They can potentially be very useful.

The falmer while degenerated cavemen are still good fighters know how to farm mushrooms, tame bugs, even smith with insect parts, and are true masters of poison. Their hatred for the surface is now all consuming and they still remember their grudge against the Dwemer to this day. Albeit now limited to their ruins and machines. They no longer recall who the Atmorans or Nords are/were they just all surface dwellers=hate.

>>6389299
Good to know parlaying with them is an option. Nice to know the Falmer aren't THAT far gone that the only recourse is full extermination.

Been reading some falmer lore, a book in TESV (Ghosts in the Storm) describes being caught in a sudden violent blizzard as the author, an Imperial bard named Adonato Leotelli, traveled with Ri'saad's caravan near Windhelm and was subsequently ambushed by falmer. It's just a random blizzard in TESV canon obviously but I guess that could actually be our fault in the quest's world. Oops, sorry Bhisha.

>>6389304
>Depends on if the artifact in our possession calms them down or not.
I was thinking about that since the crown its divine in nature.

Its true they have great potential, and having their support if not outright allegiance could make establishing a settlement more feasible and also provide a fighting force for protect it early. Especially if its underground.

But at the same time that all-consuming hatred of theirs makes me pause on them.... it would put in peril any attempt of Nilibor to socialize and work with any other races/state (or even invite them for settle with us in our settlement), and while the daedra dont seem interested in the Feral Falmers yet i could see some of the minor deities of Oblivion wanting to put their talons on them eventually. All that hatred would be noticed.

>>6389382
The only thing they remember is the Dwemer. The Falmer never forgot about the betrayal and what they lost. While their hatred for the Atmorans expanded to the surface in general and they stopped differentiating entirely(given how they went blind is somewhat understandable). If we are to use the Falmer its best not to do so not within ruins of the Dwemer that we can reprogram. We must also keep them away from our allies. Since it's possible to parley with them, it should also be possible for them not to hate the snow elves or their offspring either.

In terms of what to do with our allies. Honestly, that depends on if they know we are a Snow Mer and if they know we know about Dwemer technical expertise. If they know we are a snow mer, introducing them to the Chantries won't be a issue and vice versa for the Dwemer ruins we reprogram. Otherwise reclaiming some ruins might be better but honestly using the Falmer to protect their restored offspring would probably be better as those are their children after all and allowing them to regain their lost glory. I can only imagine how fanatical the falmer guardians would be in that case.

The fact that we were brought back and sent to redeem the Falmer indicates that the Aedra have taken an interest in the Falmer and if the Aedra are getting involved. It's a safe bet the Daedra will not be far behind. The Falmer are a much easier target for them than the Snow Mer.

Calling it now, Should be posting in 8 hours, all going well.

>>6390392
Your spirit was burning strong as you rode into Windhelm, Coretar tearing up the five hour walk into a much faster half hour's gallop. The rugged leather under you and the almost accommodating pace of bouncing made the trip as smooth as a trip down a placid river, even if you would take a little while to get used to the sensation of your lower half being beaten numb. Coretar didn't enter the city however, pulling up shy of the bridge and snorting for you to depart. a gold to the stablehand found a fresh apple for your companion's teeth and you left him to roam and romp in the snow.

You were stopped again on the bridge, the guard questioning you just as suspicious as the last but you also managed to wring out from him where one would go to speak to the Jarl's steward, though his mocking jibe made the idea of getting a speedy audience seem like a bad joke. A concern for another time, you had Money to make. And what a haul it was! Nurelion's eyebrows raised fractionally as you laid out your haul, mountain flowers, Dragon tongue, it was as he went for a barbed remark that you laid out four examples of freshly harvested salts, and meeting your smug eyes with begrudging candor, he closed his lips again.

620 gold, joining your purse of 175 makes for a comfortable 795 septims and by the Center were you going to spend it.
A whirlwind of haggling and store hopping, patronising the Dark elves where you could, their crafts of good quality and even better for the charming stranger who aided their kith through the storm and drops gold like fistfuls of snowflakes. A Camping set and a large cloak, some hours with a tailor to match with 'respectable' and 'ominous' and a few other moods you may need to take should a court ever become an issue again. And almost as long with the Blacksmith, specifying quite exactly how long and heavy you need your spear to be, the Nordic man appearing at first irritated to be so dictated too, and only barely putting up with it in the face of Coin and your obvious experience.

>>6390649
By the time the day is truly drawing to an end, You make another stop at the White Phial and it's with a dismissive bark that the old Altmer bids Quintus to "Deal with the self-satisfied fool, I'm going to bed". And deal you do. Despite your attempts and his good will, The imperial is not one to be taken advantage of in a deal and you come away with 7 more potions, adding your total to 8. And with the merry bond of a happy merchant and his customers still growing healthily, you invite the man down to the Candlehearth hall for a flaggon and with only a little cajoling he acquiesces after promising to close up the shop.

It's a bright and cheery place, the Candlehearth Hall, fitting with both name and theme very well. The atmosphere is only made chilled by the stares that drink makes harder to conceal, every 4th man or woman staring with an unsubtle disdain which washes over you without notice or care. Indeed, it is hard to care when the drink is good and the company better! And Quintus is good company, easily falling into the pattern of singing over the bard and teaching you the words to join in his revelry, speaking of Cyrodill to the south and it's counties and the Grandure of the imperial City.
Quintus is apparently a "columbian" from the western section of the province and hails from a minor family of wealthy merchants in a city named Kvatch and Nurelion's fame as an alchemist drew him halfway across the continent to study at his knee. He speaks of custom, he speaks of fashion, even jokingly claiming that the nordic roots of the west made the barren winters easier to bare which even to your broad understanding of the city seems like it would offend many. But he does not speak more of Nurelion as he is, reluctant to broach the topic in favour of past exploits over the old altmer's many long years. You don't press the point, content to drink and be merry.

>>6390650
The next day finds you with a minor headache and a prayer of thanks for learning a few restoration spells against poisons, or this minor headache could well have been a major. Checking your purse and the 344 you should have, has been replaced by 250, and you dig yourself out of the snowdrift you were comfortably sleeping under, recalling something about. . generosity and tolerance with your imperial drinking partner? Probably not of the citizenry's politics.

Instead you go about your buissness with Morvane and while passing along 20 for a few nights and dinner, get him to talking about the rest of the Grey quarter. You don't tell him about any planning you have, mostly because this is about scouting potential for future plans, but your word on only meaning well for the knowledge is enough to placate him. Many are of House 'Redoran' as you already found out, but there are some still who have kept up their mercenery ways. Most who stay here have no means or ability to leave Windhelm but that hadn't stopped some being bound by family or duty. . . If you put the effort and the gold down, he could perhaps have as many as 50 old veterens and twice again that many younger or eager men seeking a way to leave answer you using his own name for validity. Other crafts are in lesser demand, while you know the Grey quarter is heaving with people smouldering under a resentment of the nordic rule. You thank him and depart, pondering the idea, It'd be a source of men but if you want to dig out the gems from the muck on a more permenant basis they'd be bringing some baggage with them.

To call your attempt to meet the steward a farce would be kind, kinder than these men deserve. You are stopped at the palace's doors and told in no uncertain terms that your presence is unwelcome. Attempting to pass a massage along you inform them that you have cleared out the fortress at Morvunskar and are laughed off with chuckles that hold no laughter, and you cut your losses.

>>6390651
the number of guards had begun to increase and there is a dull anticipation about the place that sent warning bells ringing. Now was not the time for such violence, but it would come, you think. No instead the next few days are merely spent in leasure, speaking with the dark elves, the shopkeeps and Quintus until you can pick up your spear and dagger. Of good quality and craft, along with your new leather armour and you finally felt like you weren't blundering forwards protected by fate, the divine and your own sheer audacity. Leather isn't much, but it is a start.

You trawl through the bars and the rumour mill once more before you go, and find yourself among the topics speculated about. Your odd nature, propensity for drinks and friendship with those of the Grey quarter making you both notable and unpleasant to the sensibilities of the nords and pleasing to the Dunmer. You also note a number of impediments along the route, tales of banditry and reprisals from the hold militia that do not speak well of the lands of Windhelm, you'll just have to be careful.

-------

Once again, you are below the earth Coretar grazing and rooting around back outside, it's multiple days in the wilderness apparently unphasing the white stallion. You creep along paths you remember and past the daedra-spawned hell corridoor to find as you suspected, the way that you had collapsed has been re-burrowed.
It's almost impressive given their rate and how many days have passed. Back into the darkness which hides nothing from you, past the chamber you had fled previously, through a winding natural cavity deeper into the stone you walk in silent steps. Your helmet chafes slightly at the crown's grip, faint squeak of leather against metal all that could give you away.

And then you stop dead.

Through your feet you can feel a chamber some meters below, down a spiralling geode vein that had been mined and widened clear. Erected walls, the chittering and many legged step of the Chaurus. It was a small chamber, like a farm or rearing pen with some half a dozen tenders, and you would be upon it soon.

So this leaves the question, How do you wish to handle this? How will you open the way to restoring your people?

>Try and draw away one of their number to engage in private, at risk of sounding the alarm.
>Address them all openly, trusting in your falmeris to mean something to these long fallen people.
>Sneak past them, for they do not hold the authority you need to be tending livestock.
>Write in's encouraged.

QM: Eh, 8 hours and a half.

>>6390652

>Sneak past them, for they do not hold the authority you need to be tending livestock.
Realistically our best bet would be whoever is most educated and most intelligent among them. They are the most likely to best recall Falmeris tongue so...a shaman or mage? Doubt they have scholars. Hopefully one who won't stab or shoot us either.

>>6390652
>Write in
>Attempt to stealthily observe them to determine if they speak falmeris and learn more about them.
I think it would be better for first impressions if we approach them openly but first we need to know more about them.

>>6390691
I'll switch to this. Its a better idea. We don't even know what language they speak.

>>6390652
>>Address them all openly, trusting in your falmeris to mean something to these long fallen people.

>>6390691
>>6390652
I support this plan of action

>>6390650
>"Deal with the self-satisfied fool, I'm going to bed"
Kek sorry Nurelion
That was a good talk with Quintus and also Morvane

>>6390651
>If you put the effort and the gold down, he could perhaps have as many as 50 old veterens and twice again that many younger or eager men seeking a way to leave answer you using his own name for validity.
Very promising. Though we would need to be able to pay them. But taking them under us would not be bad at all. The Grey Quarter seems to have more potential recruits has mercenaries but its clear both Morvane and Nilibor, would need to see what kind of men they are.

>Other crafts are in lesser demand, while you know the Grey quarter is heaving with people smouldering under a resentment of the nordic rule.
This is also a potential source of friendly settlers. No matter how many snow elves kids we create from Falmer kids, we would want a population for when we settle. Unless we want to stay isolated for a while ?

>To call your attempt to meet the steward a farce would be kind, kinder than these men deserve.
A real shame. Their loss. Who else should we meet in Windhelm or in the Eastmarch ?

>>6390682
Probably a shaman/mage.
I guess the closest thing to a scholar they would have is a very old Falmer that cant fight or work anymore, basically the tribe elder. But I am not sure Falmer tribes can even afford to have someone like that in the underground. But at the same time.... they are tribes with multiple roles (the ones that craft their housing, make their weapons, armors and tools etc...) in them so that means there is enough food to go around. Maybe the largest tribes could afford something like a tribe elder.

>>6390682
>>6390691
>>6390696
>>6390903
>>6390926

Counted, Locking the vote.
Time to do some observational investigation

>>6391009
The dunmer might be useful if/when we want to delve into and secure Blackreach but we'd have to tell them the truth eventually or they're gonna start asking questions on their own and grow suspicious of us if we don't. There's also the issue of them being daedra worshiping heathens. Even if they're decent people, they're still apostates who've denounced our gods.

>>6391200
The other options are power tripping Altmer, a decaying Empire, or Men. I guess we could hit the Orc Holds or try to convince the Foresworn but uh well still heathens. While the local humans are Nords. Not to mention no matter what they'll end up finding out about the Snow Mer, Falmer, and likely our hijacking of Dwemer tech/ruins. Honesty, our best bet would probably be tracking down the Chantries or whatever Aedra fanatics we could find from the temples. Assuming we can prove our Divine backing anyway.

The issue is even if we recruit the Falmer they are gonna be a bunch of bloodthirsty enraged savages while the restored snow mer will be children or teenagers at best. Even if we somehow reach out to the Chantries, their populations are dismal.

>>6391200
Those are fair concerns.

But eventually we will have to ask ourselves what kind of settlement we want to have. And what kind of realm will be born from it.

Do we want to work with other mortal races for it ? Or with some of the states and lords of Skyrim or further afar ? Do we want other races there with us ? Part of what we will make ? Would we want to convert them (say like the dunmer) ? Or are we merely tolerating their existance/opinions, and paying for what services they can give us before letting them go on their paths.

>>6391247
I feel like we can manage to convince at least some Aedra worshippers of different races to join us. Not aligned politically to say jarls or the civil war, just people in search of a new beginning. Nords are not all hateful of elves and some of them could like the idea of a new life.

Chantries i dont think will have many survivors, we can convince them and have them join us but its no large number. The Falmers are a diplomatic problem if we want anyone else beside Snow Elves, and we have a long road ahead for civilize them. And the Snow Elves kids/teens will demand our attention for educate/tutor and protect them.

The Empire in its decaying state, still attempts to stands. Even if the Thalmors are poisoning it. The Legion is a good example of it, and its also a good example of being able to integrate in his ranks different races and cultures. They would definetly want our help once they learn of our existance (inevitable).

The Thalmor want the civil war going and they want Skyrim to bleed. They would probably want to us for make Skyrim bleed further, and to submit us.

The Jarls of Skyrim have different views even if most dont like outsiders in general. Working with some of them might not be easy, but they aren't all like Ulfric.

>>6391247
Allying with the Dominion is out of the question, the Thalmor will want us dead for one reason or another because they're just hilariously evil assholes. The orc strongholds won't help us at all, at best we might be able to recruit a few of them. The forsworn are both heathen savages and somehow more primitive than the Betrayed falmer.

The Empire are the least likely to be openly hostile towards us and they at least worship some of the elven gods (Akatosh/Auri-El, Arkay/Xarxes, and Mara). We're probably better off aligning with the Imperials eventually, they should be happy if they can gain another ally against the Dominion but I'd still be wary of them. You never know when some glow-in-the-dark Penitus Oculatus hoondinger is watching.

If the remaining Chantries still have small enclaves of living snow elves, they can care for the Reforged and teach them what they know. Maybe even train some of them to be knight-paladins. Depending on how our talks with these Betrayed works out, maybe it's possible for us to help them find some peace.

These poor wretches do not hold the authority you seek and part of you wishes simply to pass them by to search for more senior members of this outpost. But a few steps closer, a new thought occurs to you, the faint scrape of stone on skin and the clicking of chitin on bone quite evident that sound will travel far this far underground. There were but a few here, and if you trusted your skill there was little chance of detection, so why not learn what remained of your people in these dark and dismal caves.

You advance more steps until you come to the curve in the rock that would bring you to the breeding pen and stop to listen. And listen. Settling yourself into a kneel that you may rise quickly from, your ears strain and your mind focuses on the sounds that emerge from the room some six meters away, closing your eyes to fully focus you wait and listen.

It is hard to keep track of time beneath the earth, but you think it can be no more than half an hour before you manage to hear more than a muttered word or quiet movement that seems to serve no function but a reminder of their presence. There is an ornery clicking from the pen and two of the Chaurus are engaged in a fight, over what you do not know from both lack of vantage and lack of knowledge in their rearing, but a handler turns on a dime, Seismic sense radiating rapid footsteps and a degenerated string of falmeris that takes you a moment to parse. Degraded, faint trappings of your tongue remain in the commanding screech of the beast breeder, lashing something in his hand forwards with some meaning of 'Submit'. A larger chaurus dogs the breeders heels, entering the pen and subduing their feuding wards with a combination of hard strikes to the shell that echo out with cracks and the larger insectiod dragging the other away with it's mandibles.

Despite the apparent beatings that echo out with the sound of wood crashing against hollow metal, neither of the insectiod juveniles seem any the worse for wear.

>>6391638
The Breeder and his partnered beast, for the large Chaurus was too attentive to be a mere farming commodity, skitters back out of the pen and into conversation with the other Feral kin who haven't looked away from their tasks. Indeed, few of them look around at all unless walking. . . You peice it together, Their motions and the pointless noise making and the use of the Chaurus together, all together speak to their vision being reduced to a handspan or worse. With your races fine ears, it might make stealth easier or harder, especially after they have lost so much of their eyes to the ages.

This melancholy thought is pushed aside to focus on their voices, a new heart ache suppressed to gather the meaning from the hissed and guttural snarling. You catch every 4th word and deciphered another every 10, there seeming to be some back and forth over what caused the commotion and the appropriate responses. You listen until the conversation dies, and wait again.

You follow this pattern for something like a day, listening, observing, Refining your voice with their words, retreating some ways back to the caves to eat and avoid your meal giving you away with its scent. Twice a Feral passes you, coming within meters as you carefully pressed into a nook of the wall and watch as he passes further with a mining pick to work on the walls.

A day in the earth and you feel that you can learn little more, so you take a gamble and when the chaurus seem at their most sedate, creep into the breeding pen. The stink is of sweat and fungus, the stink of fertile droppings along the fences made of chitin and bone. Small mounds of blue egg sacs dot in your sight as You creep past like a leather clad shadow, your tread leading deeper into the caves. More tents and constructs of bone and Chitin, weapons and clothes are made in similar fashion and peculiar ragged textiles that must be raided from somewhere above.

You follow the small caves until it expands out into a wide glowing cavern.

>>6391640
Many meters wide and with a small ice melt waterfall coming down from the ceiling to form a wide pool from which sprout dozens of seams of glowing blue mushrooms. You can make out a sense of order in the arrangement of tents, larger and more elaborate as they approach the water feature. There are less Chaurus here, but these specimines are small, the size of small dogs where they chitter and wander about, making fine detail difficult to arrange without being caught.

Your eyes manage to pick out some figures though. You have a good grasp for the language to use, but it's a matter of the angle to take. You spy nearest to the water a figure with twisted horns growing out of their head, a headdress or ceremonial change you do not know, instead recognising the ornate staff as a crude echo of a memory of a Priests scepter, an elder or a Medicine woman. You can perhaps angle upon spiritual authority, Your divine mission to these people who have lost so much, God's that even now they may have forgotten but that odd ever persistent Xrib.

A bit further back, There is a man in approximation of Heavy armour, his every plane of skin covered in chitin and fungal paint, His head cloaked in the glittering many eye'd faceplate of a war helm made in the image of his insectoid companion. Their great warrior, a war chief and master by rite of arms. He should hold great sway over their violence, but it is a risk that his will be spilt in your direction foremost, especially if his partner notices you before him.

And the last is far, far and away on the other side of the lake, another elder but one lacking horns, he is garbed in a ruined tunic with a pick upon his hip, and tending to a smaller cave of cocoon like structures, a few furs nearby for his bed. You would not associate him with power or respect given his distance from the pool and the poverty of his sleeping arrangements. But this Chaurus arrangement seems to be almost a mythical thing.

>>6391642
With what you have heard from the lesser breeders and in the respectful distance their tents kept that you had first taken for fear or outcast status, you find instead takes a certain figure to manage.
You could perhaps lure him further away into the caves without being noticed, his would be an argument of tradition and personal respect. . In a setting like this, it could be more than the rest, or it could earn you nothing. An old keeper's reputation has to be earned but it's power and credibility can be spent as surely as any coin.

>Who do you try to speak too, and what tact do you take?
>Appeal to the Shaman and medicine woman, the Authority of Magic and Healing who all must respect.
>Appeal to the Warrior and war leader, the authority forged in plunder and battle.
>Appeal to the Keeper, an old figure of esteem and certain skill, the fragile Authority of a respected introduction and ally to weaken the resistence.

>>6391643
>Appeal to the Shaman and medicine woman, the Authority of Magic and Healing who all must respect.
We know of Xrib so that provides us an opening. We only don't know of anything else about them that is applicable besides the Betrayal with the Dwemer and that will only incite their rage which is contrary to what we are after.

>>6391643
>>Appeal to the Shaman and medicine woman, the Authority of Magic and Healing who all must respect.

>>6391643
>Appeal to the Keeper, an old figure of esteem and certain skill, the fragile Authority of a respected introduction and ally to weaken the resistance.

>>6391643
>>Appeal to the Keeper, an old figure of esteem and certain skill, the fragile Authority of a respected introduction and ally to weaken the resistence.
A decisive but fair tact i think will do here

>>6391669
>>6391699
>>6391756
>>6391889
Gonna roll for the tie breaker in 12 hours if nobody comes up.

>>6391669
changing vote to >>6391756
for tiebreaker.

>>6392169
Locking, Keeper.

It would be the keeper, you decided. The Shaman had some authority as a life preserver but there was more to be had from one who had built their own reputation and built their way into a position of influence. Such a fuel could only be expended once without repeated successes, so you'd merely have to make the first strike work.
The humid air stinks worse than the breeding pen when you prowl through the tents, noting the absence of children and babes with a mild concern, but keeping a healthy distance between you and any chaurus you notice, you manage to cross the cavern to another branching tunnel by the Keeper's alcove, feeling the harsh touch of a pick along it's stone that reveals it's artificial nature. Walking it reveals a few meters and turns that open into a wider area chock full of glowing mushrooms over the walls and a small, crude shrine of bone and chitin. It would do.

Creeping back to the entrance, the next part of your plan is to lure the Keeper away. A few loose stones are hefted, and you draw a pinch of hardy bread from your pack, closing it quickly to avoid the smell of salted meats being picked up by keen noses.
The first stone bounces off his right leg, prompting a sharp turn and a grumbling snarl at someone he can not see.
The second bounces off his arm, and the pick is drawn in threat as he hobbles towards your direction, head swivelling and ears twitching for a place.
The third is dropped at your feet as you withdraw, the sound enough that he can follow while flames emerge from your fingertips, toasting then burning the bread to create an unfamiliar smell they can follow to where you bid, rather than where you are. A mer's senses are less likely to be keen when they have a trail to focus on, and you place the burning bread atop the shrine and creep back amongst the mushrooms.

>>6392559
The Keeper enters the Garden-Shrine, flames dancing in his left hand and pick twirling in his right, age not robbing a raider's skill with an axe apparently despite it's heft.
Suspicion, rising agitation, these things read easily in his stance as he focuses in on the shrine and it's burnt offering.

"Hail my Brother, I come with glad tidings." The words are guttural and harsh, stumbling rather than fluent but the speech is enough that the flames aimed in your direction do not leap to devour. Instead his grotesque features pull back into a scowl and his stance does not drop.

Keeper: "I am no Brother, You are not of Ice-claw. Explain or by all of Stone, Die."

"Keep Peace, I am here to aid. I am not of Ice-Claw, I come with Auri-el, Trinnimac, Phynaster, Magnus, Syrrabane, Xarxes and Xrib, I am of the Before." The keeper sneers without words, disbelief and a generational hatred rising in his breast.

Keeper: "You know nothing of Tender Xrib, Deceiver and Surface Dweller, herald of old tales and absent things!"

Your body tenses, crouched as you are you will be able to leap and dodge the flames that are sure to grow from his palm, but the next move will be a murder stroke. Your terse stand begins to boil over, and words whisper in the buzzing of wings and the clack of mandibles. You both freeze as the tapping clack of hard tipped steps drag a large insectoid hound around the tunnel to stare at both Keeper and Intruder with baleful, slightly too intelligent eyes.

The tense stand off continues, frozen in the susurrus of wing beats and dull chitin on stone, until the Keeper lowers his weapons and you stand up to your full height, calmer for the strange anomaly. The keeper speaks, his voice low and cautious.
Keeper: "You wish to say something. . . say it and be gone, while you have permission."
Glassy, hostile eyes turn from one to another with the unerring weight of expectation.

>>6392560
"I will not depart, for I bring the rebirth of the Snow Elves. I bring the will of reconstruction that will see us remade. Auri-el and Xrib's will is that of renewal, I cannot help you or the old, but with this gift of a crown, I can forge your youth into those from before the Dwemer." There is a hiss of primordial loathing at their name.

Keeper: "You want our children?!"

"They will see, and they will walk upright, and they will wield the favour of the Ancestor Gods, and in all this they shall live better and longer than you unharried by age. Would you deny them this!?" Your voice is tinged in the desperation of one who is fighting to save another from drowning as they slap away every helping hand. An earnest and sincere voice rarely heard in the years since their enslavement.

The words are a poisonous beast, and it is clear that the keeper's attempt to grapple with them is going poorly. An offer too grand and awe inspiring to be true, but if refused out of some stupid principle of pride or caution? And the adjudicator has not moved to interfere.
Another moment passes in agonised indecision, then the Keeper kneels in the direction of the Chaurus with a prayer of thanks. . . and the cave quiets, your arbiter slinking away back out into the underworld with the faint impression that this was the only opening you would be granted so easily.

Keeper: "You are vouched for, and I vouch further. But my word alone is not enough, Tender Stone-Ears can not convince alone. . . I bring a child and you seek a clutch of a great Reaper along the Dwemer roads, the largest eggs to prove to the others your favour. If done, others will believe."

>Do you Reconstruct a child now, leaving it in the care of the Feral until you return. It would prove your words clearly and provide a solid time frame for the concept to become normal-ish before your introduction.
>Or Reconstruct them upon your return, impressing on the tribe your Divine mission. Of course, you would also be able to attend to them yourself and understand how the ritual functions better.

>You may also ask any questions you would like of Xrib and his divinity, as he is a God that you only know by his intercession in your ressurection.

>>6392561
>Or Reconstruct them upon your return, impressing on the tribe your Divine mission. Of course, you would also be able to attend to them yourself and understand how the ritual functions better.
I am not fully sure how the kids will act. Best be there.

Well that did go well enough for talking with a Falmer. I am not sure how the tribal warlord or the shaman would have acted in comparison. Thank you Mr.Chaurus for breaking the mexican stand off with old man. Anyway i don't remember a thing of Xrib from Skyrim. Like i remember there is a location with its name, but i don't remember quests related to it or anything written. But the Falmer do have a sense of tribal-spiritual decorations from what I remember of their settlements. Mostly simple or brutal stuff. Whoever this Xrib is, its a tribal deity spawned by a desire to keep going after what the dwemer cities did to the Falmer or a deity already existing using another name.

>You may also ask any questions you would like of Xrib and his divinity, as he is a God that you only know by his intercession in your ressurection.

>Write-in
>"I, Nilibor, Prince of Snow, Herald of Dynasty, accept this task."
>"Keeper Tender Stone-Ears, before i depart for this task, do you have time for answer some questions of mine about Xrib ? I will make an offering to his shrine before going*."
>"Was Xrib manifesting its divine will in that Chaurus ? Or is that Chaurus just intelligent ?"
>"How do you commune with Xrib divinity ?"
>"What do you offer to him when you make a prayer ?"
>"What aspects does Xrib holds domain over ?"
>"What blessings does Xrib give ?"
>"When i return would you be willing to tell me of Xrib birth myth ?"

>Write-in
>Before going give a small offering of food to the Shrine. Observe the small, crude shrine of bone and chitin. Look at it properly. What story it tells ? What worship is given here ?

*we have plenty of supplies with us, so a small offering should be fine.

>>6392623
>Do you Reconstruct a child now, leaving it in the care of the Feral until you return. It would prove your words clearly and provide a solid time frame for the concept to become normal-ish before your introduction.
Kinda important to prove that we aren't full of shit first and foremost. Start with a young one but not too young so they are still easy to care for and won't get themselves into much trouble yet.

Oh boy Xrib...that wiki tells us literally nothing about besides that he likes the Falmer and apparently has a knack for necromancy and resurrection...okay that last part is starting to explain a lot come to think of it.

>Write in
We know of the edicts and directives of the other Aedra however we do not know of such for Xrib and would like to be enlightened so we may act accordingly.

>>6392561
>Wait until we return to Reconstruct a child.

>When did the Falmer begin to worship Xrib?
>What does Xrib demand of his followers?

So I will save some questions for the update but given the lack of anything written about Xrib, I'm going to use the chance to just fill out the broad strokes.

>Did Xrib just manifest in that charus?
The sound of clicking insect parts and buzzing wings came with no obvious sources so something fucky is going on. Tender Stone-ears believes it is a Portent and treating it as such. Chaurus are cunning but not sapient, so it's good odds that the intelligence you saw was unnatural

Tender is his position, one who tends, rather than Tender Stone-ears, stone ears that are sensitive/hurt.

>What are his divine Domains
Xrib according to Stone-ears he is the Lord of Chaurus, they are the master of the understone and caves and waters, The lord of ruined, lost and thrown away things. Somewhat surprisingly the Falmer don't regard him as a patron god directly, instead existing upon sufferance of their insectoid companions.

>What are his demands/edicts/directives
Paramount are that tribute given is that of the interloper, the ruined [typically a scrapped part from a dwemer construct], or the stolen [surface raids typically accomplish this].
The Falmer are tolerated as effectively pet sitters, in exchange for caring for and breeding the Chaurus they may take of the shedding's, the poison and the bounty of the underworld.
Fertilised chaurus eggs and those of a prime Reaper [the reapers which get to be the size of a horse] are not to be used for food or poison.
Intertribal conflict cannot be resolved with gifts nor returning of wergild, Xrib is of lost and ruined things and generally frowns upon the returning of stolen items or giving things up to a rival.

>Prayers/Blessings
Prayers are mostly for avoiding displeasure and do not entail tribute, the blessings are mostly for prosperity of both mushroom crops, finding new underground rivers and the growth/hatching of new chaurus.
It's somewhat logically believed that the larger your herd, the more you would be favoured, since it's both harder to do and takes more resources to manage.

>When did they start worshipping him
When He crawled out of a Dwemer's throat, tore out an ancient falmer's eyes, and then did the same to their noses in exchange for escape into the earth

>>6392960
Okay Xrib is not be fucked with. We learned some stuff. So

- Domains : Underground, Caves, Underground Water, and "of the Ruined, Lost and thrown away things". And of course Chaurus.
- More war-like than diplomatic
- Specific type of tributes
- Can be a brutal deity

Ok i think he might be a new deity, decently powerful even if young. The whole Ruined, Lost and Thrown away things fit with the Falmer suffering to the T and he sounds tribal to the core. Thankfully he seems to like us.

>>6392960
I wonder why Xrib would help us. He's obviously not a benevolent being, so what's he getting out of this?

>>6392985
I don't think Xrib is a young god, it's more likely he'd simply been forgotten until the falmer began paying tribute to him.

>>6393164
>what's he getting out of this?
Maybe he wants this falmer tribe to get stronger and he sees Nilibor has someone, that could lead it to victory and unite more tribes together ? Or for our reforged snow elves to accept him as another of their deities ? He could have more than angle. Maybe he realized the Falmers are fundamentally a broken race, and that they cant be better than what they are now (a bunch of tribes underground).

Could be. Though who would worship a god like this. Maybe he was a deity of something else before? And then he had a fall from grace (might be way Xrib is patron of Ruined, Lost and Thrown things).

>>6393241
Xrib had a hand in Nilibor's resurrection which means he's working with the ancestor gods, so it can't just be personal ambition. The gods wouldn't resurrect a long dead elven monarch and give him the power to revitalize his fallen race unless it was necessary. Not to mention the fact that Nilibor's ability to Shout might imply Kyne is in on this too.

I remembered there being an insect god mentioned somewhere and looked it up. There's an offhand mention of an Ayleid king sacrificing a whole tribe of Nedes to an unnamed insect god in the Adabal-a. Same god, maybe?