Expanding on the new lore added by Craglorn. The whole thing with the star-worship and the Nedes opened some new possibilties wide open.

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This epic poem is an excerpt from the famed Redguard poet Weltan's collection of old tales that lay hidden in the oral traditions of the Iliac Bay. The tome, which he named 'The Unabridged Memories of the West' is famous for chronicling the stories of the various ethnic groups of the land with little bias in its transcription. Most notably, however, was the inclusion of what may be the only surviving example of Nedic myth. At least, what little of Nedic myth survives in the half-Yoku savannah tribes. The bold text is Weltan's personal foreword.

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In my travels across the Cortem, I found a dying wise man of the Bushmen, who told me he knew the old stories of the Nedes, who were slain when we Redguards made way and settled Hammerfell. For many days we spoke of these old stories and their meanings. Sadly, he passed away as he finished the last story he could remember. I hope that through this text, he and the star-gazing Nedes may live on forever.

To the heavens above, we raise our eyes, our hands, and our hearts. For our people were born under the stars, in the heart of the stars, in the dawn days. So far back that time hadn't straightened out from the last world, so we wandered around the world to find ourselves a home. Then we looked up at the stars, and we realized we could sail away from the heart, and they'd still be there to guide us back, no matter how curly time got. Wherever we went, the stars would make sure we weren't hungry or thirsty. When we grew cold, they kindled a fire in all our hearts, and it gave us the strength to persevere through all hardship. It gave us the strength to overcome, and light the way for others to follow. It is a strength that may only be described with lost syllables that belong only to ruling kings.

Everywhere we went, a few of us would stay put when the rest wandered off. When we sailed to the north, where it was so cold time froze, a few of us froze. When we left them behind, they started shouting for our help, but we had to leave.

When we sailed to the west, where the last time was still going, a few of us stayed to sing with their old friends. When we left them behind, while they weren't looking, they got angry and started singing about how'd they get us back. By the stars, we should have listened.

When we sailed to the south, we found nothing. So then we sailed to the east, where the next time was just about to start, and a few of us wanted to see what it was like. When we left them behind, they forgot who we were.

After a thousand generations of this sailing, some of us wised up, and followed the stars back to the heart, and we sailed back to where the first of us were born. We stopped complaining about finding a home, because home had always been in our hearts. If you have love, you are always a home, and in your heart is a new star-heart.

We Nedes were the only ones who remembered that when time started going the way it should have. The dawn days were a test, and in a way they never really happened. But we were smart enough to remember, and that is why we worship the stars that guided us back home.

The elves, however, had forgotten the lesson...

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After this point, little that is not already known about the Merethic Era is detailed. This section drags on for nearly a hundred pages. It is not of much scholarly interest. Many elven interpretations of the work state that this story is a fabrication or the ravings of a sick old man for the most part, and its claims that all people came from Tamriel and that Aldmeris does not exist have made it a favorite target of book-burnings. As such, many recent publications have omitted the Nedic histories completely.

However, it is the mythic history of the 'Nedes in Hammerfell', the final story the wise man had to tell, that has made Weltan's book famous throughout the centuries.

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It was so, in the long days when our people were fleeing from the Ayleids, that we found the Deathland. We called it so because so many of us had died to make it there, so many of our people still lay buried in the Colovia. In truth, the Deathland was a place where anyone could live. From the mountain reaches of the east and north flowed a mighty river that we called the Alik'r, and where it flowed out to sea, in the west, was fertile river-plains and dense flood-jungle.

The Ayleids didn't like the jungle, they'd already chopped up Cyrod until it was a big lawn and burnt every log of it. But we had star-fire in our hearts, and so we worked tirelessly for three generations to make it our nation. The Alik'r became our road, and we moved with the ebbs and flows, which we found mimicked the paths of the stars. We lived and breathed with it, and so we prospered and our nation became great. Elves from Summerset tried to settle our lands, but soon they found themselves as nomads on the endless flood-jungle, as brothers in our cities, or fled to Ur-Tower.

We built our cities so that the map of our nation would form a star-map, and their names were Umelez, Zletek, Zendenl, Blinhir, Rayjaad, Aegaf-Kylen, and Medeshet-Abaz. We built them from stones from the Craglorn, where we were closest to the stars, and where sometimes their tears would strike the ground. It was a holy land to where yearly pilgrimages were made by all to pay homage to the stars that guided us and gave us knowledge of love in our darkest times.

For centuries we Nedes flourished in the Deathlands, but our nation was damned. First came the Ayleids, who took our eastern lands and enslaved all who lived there. During the three generations when we warred to retake those lands, we lost pieces of the lessons from the stars. Our culture was lost to war, and our faith distorted into the worship of the three guardians, and the other stars who guided us were forgotten.

Next came the Reachmen and the Nords, who crept out of Skyrim and made a contested place of the holy Craglorn. Our people's faith was sundered in a single century of war, and though us Nedes grew mighty, the star-fire in our hearts grew dim, until only heroes felt it in them. With their power, they made themselves rulers, and divided the waters of the Alik'r up amongst the city-states. In their hubris, they tried to carve territories out of the stars themselves!

Angered by this, they sent the last curse upon us: The Dwarves of Rourken. From high above a hammer fell, and as we tread through Cyrod to find this land, so did they. In secret they built their great city around the hammer, and when it was revealed the river-nations sought to take it for themselves.

But the Dwarves were mighty and cruel, and their queen, Mudan Rourken was an architect of tones and a sorcereress, who used a great spell to throw Volendrung. The river-nations of the lost star-children crossed the Alik'r and made war on Volenfell under the stars that they had betrayed. The Dwarves and their wicked machines destroyed their armies and then took their nations, and Mudan took many of our girl-children and star-priestesses as her concubines. She flattened our cities of holy stone, and dreamed new ones of metallic make into the places where they once stood.

Many of us, already corrupt, renounced our faith when Mudan demanded we did, for the Dwarves had no gods but themselves. And they made no question when she forced them to make for her a tower of brass, to rival that of her brother's in Resdayn. In continued blasphemy against the stars, the Dwarves demanded it be taller than Ur-Tower, and be adorned with a mechanical star. When it was complete, it loomed over the horizon, and blotted out the sun. For this reason, its only name is Dead-Star, tower of the star-children.

Soon, a time came when Mudan ascended to the very peak of death-star and made it active. By then, a war had descended upon her people in Resdayn, and she believed the weapon could turn its tides. But it did no such thing, and instead a horrible music rang across the star-heart and marred it forever. First went the great river, which in an instant became vast desert, and our memory was lost. So, in that instant, it always had been desert.

Next went the Dwarves, who in an instant vanished, and so had never been in the first place. Mudan alone remained, and when she exited Dead-Star and realized what she had wrought, she locked herself in Volenfell to weep for them until they returned.

And third went Yokuda, which in that instant sank beneath the waves, or was destroyed by its own people, or was reshrouded in the dawn days. But either way the Yoku-men crossed the sea, singing songs of their pankratoswords.

But last to go was us Nedes. For in us, in that instant, the star-fire went out in our hearts. We fled to Craglorn to seek recompense, but our pact with the stars had never been. There was no home for us anymore, and so we Made Way for the Red Guard.

Thus ends the histories of the Star-Children.

With these words, the wise man died. He told me the stories in a dialect of Old Yoku, in which every word is sing-song, and so there is a duality and humor that cannot be expressed in writing. Before I heard his tales, I thought of the Nedes as barbarians who had earned their place as a forgotten people. But now, I realize the Star-Children's history shall never end, for it is written in every grain of sand that was once and never was fertile mud, written in every sunset where the stars twinkle in the colored sky, written in every act of love we ever share.

So I ask only this: that you remember the lessons of the Nedes, and bring love and brotherhood with you wherever you go, and rekindle the ancient star-fire.

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Though Weltan took the messages of the wise man quite seriously, many believe that this final request shows that the so-called 'Nedic Myths' were his attempts at writing an epic poem, or simply broadcasting an anti-war message, during the Alliance War.

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