Blessings of the Triune upon you. From beholding Anu's light, and from far beyond the bogs of Padhome, there is derived this tale. Taken from the Scripture of the Mace, blended in with the Sign of the Scarab, a prelude to messiahs, the World of Words, the L turned affront. Let It and Its follower grasp you with an ease of preciousness. The verbose and the line of burning tulip roots that follow it intersect vividly. And, before the tale off the Falling Land, before the Love Letter and the Blood Letter cadencies, atop the sacred Velothi festivals, the miraculous gates of Azura's gazes took a premonition of these words, and as such she was silenced from speaking them by MUATRA, the Guild of Skin, the Inverted House of Atrophy, or, more simply put, the Spear of Vehk. To what coincidence this action held, it is uncertain. As a silver and sapphire studded stepping stool, a latter, or perhaps a summit of gleamed pearls, Azura, the Prince of Dawn and Dusk, of beginning and ending, of gratitude and horror, was banished by the man-god, Vivec, for what she saw and what she knew. In the dimming embers of the Empire, the words have been recorded by Vivec himself. And to the shimmering glass eyes that gaze upon these words, let it be known as a sacrifice in silence. ?Anonymous

He walked onto the temple court, held high in his name with banners of silk and brush woven in simplistic ways. The men from the north had come and gone, taking Redoran and Telvanni with them, the remnants of Indoril bruising together and forming a final homestead at the mouth of the Ascadian cape. The battle was worn, the Nordic thrashers booming hordes of blessed fighters. One who slew thousands of razor-edged feathers from is open mouth; named Gorbjorn the Inquisitive. One who ate mud and expiated men made of clay, wielding bows and staves and brightly colored plate mail; named Phogien of North-Walking-Tragedy. One who could move mountains with the clicking of his tongue, the Cursed-Throat; named Indojegon the Tower-Mender. One who spat a fiery glaze from his eyes that burned for days; named Ygruffi of Madwells. One who could swallow up Blight from Red Mountain and caress it against others, turning them into casted models; named Hesvald Wind-Warder. There were numerous devils within the Nords numbers, but none were as beseeched as the one they called Ygfre. His name means 'Father of his Father', and he was the most fearsome beast that had ever landed upon the shores of Resdayn. The men called him in at the final stand in the arches of the West Gash. There was a great roar from the Dunmare, who had all but driven the Nords from the land. Though Redoran was far gone, and the Telvanni had driven great masses of magic furry into the relentless waves of Nords before loosing themselves as well, the Dunmare were fruitfully optimistic.

The men had been pushed back towards their long wooden ships, covered by bear and deer hides, and the coast was reddened with their blood, the flourishing opaque sky was deafened by their cries of pain. Ramardt Invallen, the general of the Indoril campaign, confined and sutured with his men and with the men who wore the Red Diamond Dragons on their chests. They had formed a plan that would be the final blow to the Nordic oppositions, a box formation. One of the few great Telvanni sorcerers left in tact made a pact with I'Nogtal, a demirep of the Sload kingdom. He would rise up six hundred of his warriors who were skilled with swords made of sharpened salt and pikes made of refined sand. In return, he offered his life, a noble treaty that none would have expected of a Telvanni. The necromantic conductors from beneath the water were pleased to have such a magically provoked body to distort, and just below the surface of the water, blending in with the grasses and mud, they awaited. On Ramardt's signal, an arrow cast aflame, they would rise up and attack from the rear, while the Dunmare retained from the sides and front. The warriors from the North ran towards the Dunmare, and after they had been pushed back just far enough, Ramardt looked out towards their ships. He dipped his silvery arrow into Guars blood and traced it over a torch, letting it burn brightly for a moment. He aimed at the largest ship, one with small red arches lining its sides, a three-tiered ship that held both men and supplies, and let it loose. It roared right over the Sload warriors, landing on a barrel of Mead. The ship lit up and some Nords ran towards it, many standing their ground to continue fighting. The Sloads rose up, and they were christened with outstanding coral armor, their pauldrons barbed with the thorns of Atmorian seaweed stalks, the pink-orange sheen on their protective shells blinding the Nords. The battle seemed won, the head ship burnt, the Sloads and the Dunmare fighting side-by-side. But, out of the darkness, a horn rang out, billowing its shrill tune up towards the moons. He was brought out, gagged with a golden scroll and blindfolded by silk from the wolf-like spiders from Skyrim's forges, where the men bent steel and iron and silver and imbued their metals with indignant laughter. In the middle of the battlefield, he sat. Krothaag of Snow-Throat, the chief of the war party, watched as the Velothians and the Sload dropped his men, Ygfre at his side, silent, unmoving. He first pulled out a wreath made of troll bones, black and green jewels crowning the tips of each bone. He placed it atop Ygfre's skull, and he unraveled the scroll, murmuring the words that were written on it. The scroll fell out of his mouth, yet he did not stir at all. He then took a handful of the muck from the bottom of the sea and marked beneath Ygfre's eyes. The silk untwined and his eyes were free to look about. At the moment he took in the scene, Snow Throat blew out a gust of wind ridden with petals from the stomach of Nirn, cloaking the northern skies for seven days and six nights, the petals shadowing the sun.

Ygfre was the shaker of worlds; his eyes were the discs of Saktal and A-Skatal, the two diluted gods of His Father and the New Father, the original world and the remains of it, which bound the living gods to the new. His mouth was the pillar of Snow Throat, the epicenter of That-Which-Falls-The-Moon. He opened his mouth, and that left the Dunmare where they were today. And though the Nords were pushed away, it can be seen as an act of pity on their part, for they had done what they came to do. In all this time, Vivec had watched from his House of Provisions and was intrigued at the sight of Ygfre, who he had not known of until then. He simply had the power to fall down all of Tamriel, and yet was solitude to the Nords. As Vivec walked to his temple home, the people fell to their knees by his side. He thought to string them up with goldenrod threads, but he had something else to attend to. He entered his abode and sat above his pedestal. Five days later, he emerged and took leave under the cover of The Shadow, late at night while the waters were still. Over Skyrim there was a vortex of clouds, each holding a slate of ice between the other. Over the center of the clouds, Vivec could look down the eye and see the forbidden regions of Skyrim. He smiled as he dropped a silver seed into the eye, letting it sprout for several months. In this time, it is said that his feet began to perish, but Vivec had many other tasks to do in and out of AE. He came back, and what he saw bore him great awe. It was a willow tree that had grown, its weeping branches frozen in place. He took it from the eye of the clouds and they vanished, the ice that had been between them falling down to the ground, landing in a symbol of revulsion. He took the willow with him to the Alik'r Desert, and there he and three lesser desert gods taught it how to bend and move in the wind. Before they left, one of the lesser gods, Taruashi, bit into its trunk, leaving a mark of the desert. Vivec then took it to the plains of the Wrothgarian Mountains in Highrock. There he watched it shiver in the wind, and another lesser god of the mountains came forth. They both taught it how to take root strongly, so that even in rocky and rigged terrain it could stand tall, for it was tall. It had grown since Vivec first plucked it from the sky. It reached up to his chest, and it was as wide as he. Before they left, the lesser god noticed the mark of the desert on its trunk.

'And, by what right is this,' it scoffed, 'for there are only bones in the desert. The mountains are the skin of the land. They are the beauty marks, the structure.'

And he bit into the trunk as well, the sign of the mountains being left behind. They traveled again to the ruins of Yokuda. In the flats near Noni, near the ruined temple of Anaosa, they took in the air. It was desolate air, and it turned the green vines of the tree to red. Vivec sat and stared at the color, seeing the history of time unfolding down its long, linear vines. A lesser god of the forbidden Yokuda came to them, Yanodama, and she was clothed in rags. They taught the tree about the misery that waited in all things, even the air itself. Before leaving, Yanodama saw the marks and smiled.

'Of which clarity are the elements? I have no teeth to bite with, as they were removed along with the braziers that burned at my altar. But I can carve with my womb, the only clarity left in this land.'

And so she did, and for many hours Vivec thought to stop her, for the trunk was far too powerful for her to jostle. But she had known this, and before melting to the ground, she left the mark of the sea on the trunk. Vivec then took the tree to the Summerset Isles. In the underground of Cloudrest, where glass stalagmites meddled and sung as the dirt spread away from them, they sat. There, Vivec taught the tree how to reflect upon itself, much like the glass spires did in the caverns. Before they left, Vivec took one of the glass stalagmites and shattered it into the reddened branches of the tree. With this left the mark of the underground to stay with it forever. He took the tree to the groves of Valenwood, where he and twelve lesser gods taught the tree to grow with ease and sway in harmony with its surroundings. They each brought branches from the different types of trees there and laid them down in a circle around it. One of the lesser gods, Tuan'Chiena, noticed the marks on the trunk of the tree.

'The desert is a significant canvas on which the wind etches its woes. The mountains act as deterrence to the summits, which are only places where the sun lights first. The sea is but a harlet, one who relies on the rivers to live, and one who engulfs but does not indulge. The underground is too afraid of itself to be seen, and there is no room for sunlight there. But the forests are the caravans of life, they house the rivers and the beasts and they capture the wind in their treetops as to spread it down to the ground so everything may breath. They hold the sun up in the sky with their branches.'

And he took a branch of from his hair and carved into the trunk the sign of the forest. The tree grew into a structure of such heights over the next few days that Vivec had to accost himself with his ever-diminishing feet just to carry it. They skipped over Elsweyr, as Vivec forbid the teachings of any of the Moon-Shifters, and they went to Argonia. In the swamps there, Vivec sat the tree in the muck as he watched the moss and the fog moved away from it. A lesser god of the Argonians emerged from beneath the bog and danced around the tree. Vivec clamped on stones with his hands and made a clicking beat that was in tune with the sounds of gridlocked warriors. The dance lasted for four days and before digging back beneath the swamp, the lesser god bit the mark of the bogs and swamps and quarries into the trees trunk. Vivec told the tree that what it had just learned was the most important thing it would ever learn, and with that knowledge, the trees roots turned a frosted white and its vines shed their redness for a dark, deep green. The red color poured out into the swamp, and all of the animals in the murky waters began croaking and swooning and clicking and groaning in a symphony of honor. They left and headed to Cyrod, where Vivec took the shape of a sky spirit and cloaked the tree in clouds, as to ride it, and they went to the Imperial City. There they saw the gondoliers strolling the waterways; they saw the monks of Temple Zero preaching in front of the grand fountains that lined the inner city walls. They approached White Gold, but dared not to get too close.

'You see, this is the tomb of the Twice-Snaked King, the Red Army Pennant. In here he once congregated and planned and wrote and read and dreamt and ate, yet in here he could not think. These walls are lined with unjust barbs of conquest and endeavoring, and they soak up any selfish thoughts. We were careful not to end up such as this. We were careful to build only in an orderly fashion. We took from our thrones the thorns and the weeds, and we burned them. You are from the north, and from all these sights I have shown you, you still bare your cold heart. This is what lies in wait for those who live their lives with such dramatic scriptures. See how the spokes extend of from the hub? He is mimicked by the foundations of his city, for he knows not the atrociousness that comes with the Wheel. This is a mockup of what you stand for, and for what you will soon become. Though he is now dead, he must still burn through the fires of the One, and he will forever do so until the end of days, when I will be vanished but yet again return to make my people and your spectators remember. '

The wind picked up, and Vivec floated away on the tree until they landed near Red Mountain in Vvardenfell. They walked towards it, Vivec crushing up Fire Fern petals and sprinkling them on the monastery stone that bore the Triunes faces. In the now-dormant crater of Dagoth Ur, they sat. There Vivec taught the tree about the cycles of life, how the tree was no different from all morals, living then dying, and living again. He then prepared a veil of ash and Blight, for it was still thriving around the volcano, and threw it around them. Hidden from the rest of the world, he pierced the tree with MUATRA. In its trunk he left the three marks of the Tribunal, the mark of the Middle Air, the mark of Star Fire, and the mark of mystery and knowledge, all of which would unfold in the trees branches soon. After they were finished, Vivec pulled back the veil to reveal that they were near Skyrim, in a grove full of hardened figs and thyme bushes. Vivec told the tree that they needed but one last symbol of manners, and then they would be able to embark on their journey. They walked into the frigid lands where steam rose from Vivecs mouth and nose and feet, and inside a glacier called Nawomaniut. There were circular holes in the roof, and there was a crack on the ground that changed shape every time Vivec stepped. He shoved the tree onto the center of the crack, which never changed, and waited. For eleven months they sat, Vivec not taking his eyes off of the willow, his limbs tightened in the ways of the spirits of the mainland. Finally, the lesser god he had been awaiting came to him in the husk of a tundra flower, thick and pale. The lesser god was named A-Shor, and he was long forgotten. The lesser god nodded as quickly as he appeared and he showed a truce of lattice by reorganizing himself to be in the shape of a Nix Hound, then into a feathered serpent, one with the egg of a Kwama in its stomach. Vivec nodded in agreement, and the lesser god spoke.

'Of all the catalysts and drummers, I would have figured a valuable crescent as my patronage. But I see that you are far wiser than that, a man from Vvardenfell, Resdaynia, overeater of SIN. The Nordic men, they give ritual to the standing gods, but they forget that the ones who came first are still here, in every manifestation and in every waking snowflake. But am I to be judging the half-blood of men? AT EALA SKELTON, HOON DUANA SKAN, AK EN SOON, AT EALA OCNAK, NUIT UNGADA, AT EALA FRIST FAN, EN SUT MASH HALA, AT EK TRIBUN, AE HYAET MOR GHARLUK, SITHISIT AT ENCE LKHAN AE NIRN NUIT.'

Before leaving, the lesser god, now He-Who-Was-Once-The-Father, struck the tree with such force that the glacier crumbled down, yet there it was, still swaying gently as the wind settled, with the mark of the ice on its trunk. The symbols all sat in perfect harmony as Vivec smiled. His feet had almost all but disappeared, but with his last few hours, he wrote in black scrolls, then headed out of AETHER one last time, to place the tree in the voided space between IS and IS NOT. He saw that the glass shards he broke in its branches began to drip down, much like the watery tears of a willow are meant to do, and within each shard he saw an infinite possibility, a universe, a beginning and an ending, one without the other and both fused together in the most simplistic of ways. He whispered one final thing to the tree before leaving.

'The Nords are mighty in the ways of Greed, and the Dunmare are mighty in the ways of Thievery, and the Altmer are mighty in the ways of Dignity, and he Argonians are mighty in the ways of Practice, and the Bosmer are mighty in the ways of Secrecy, and the Khajiit are mighty in the ways of Guile, and the Yokudans are mighty in the ways of Finesse, and the Imperials are mighty in the ways of Law, and the Bretons are mighty in the ways of Denial, and the frozen kings of the North were mighty in the ways of Planning, the Chimer were mighty in the ways of Faith, the Dwemer were mighty in the ways of Knowledge, and the gods before gods were mighty in the ways of all of these things, and as such they were revived to walk this plane again, and come the chiming of the third bell on the third hour of the third day of the third month of the seventh year after a delusional renewal, you and I will be mighty in all of these ways plus three more, which are the ways of Remembrance, Romance, and Riddling. Or perhaps they are not; such is the nature of I. The Nords will fight again, Snow Throat swollen shut, WALK CITY burned to the ground, and the Atmorans will be disregarded for their mockery of Towers, all in the coming days. AE LKHAN, AE HOOM, DOOM, AE JYL, AT EA VHK, AT ETA NEMB SITHISIT, GHARTOK PADOME GHARTOK BOETHA. AT CHIM, LKHAN, DOOM, EACE HOOM, AE I.'

With a small kiss of his air, Vivec left the tree to dwell on those words for an eternity until needed.







The end of days is numbered, and His new millennium is to be a waking dream of a walking scream.
Heed forth, and realize that Seven is the number of sins, of paths to the living Hell, the upward slopes, the bloodied hopes, the burning fires, and the sacrificial desires horded by all men, and the seventh trumpet blown by the men of the north, the Nordic End-Bringers!!!

Walk silently in the sands of devotion; AE SITHIS, IT to be reclaimed.

I'm no lore buff by any stretch of the imagination so I'll leave those type of comments to those who are. As far as the style and body of your work, that was one well written piece in my opinion, whether it be yours or that you go by another name normally. Bravo :goodjob:

I don't think this person cares. I'm pretty sure he's someone who posts stuff like this every now and then in the Lore forum. I could be wrong though.

about what?

About feedback and whatnot. I think he is someone who goes around posting this kind of stuff every once and a while. But like I said, I'm not sure. I can't remember what exactly it was I heard. :shrug:

Ah! Yes.

Well, generally stories like this only receive feedback if the mods let them stay in the lore forum, as is usual. Did the OP ask for it to be moved?

No.

Is it weird that this post made me chuckle abit?


Sorry I don't have a comment on the big block of text that is the original post, at the moment I don't have the motivation to read through large texts that I don't know to be dev-made...

How are you to know if a developer made it or not if you don't read through it?
Perhaps there are even more extensive things on the way, because as of now, all you know is that a few gods and a few Nords got together one day. But what about what happened in the years before the coming of this disc?

Well reading through it wouldn't help me very much in the direction of figuring that out now would it, unless there's some magic wording style that only devs use I'm not aware of...

Slightly oversimplified than a few gods and Nords in my opinion, wouldn't 'creation' be "before the coming of the disc"? We've got lots of stuff on creation, or, kalpas and whatnot... just saying...

Only the creation of this world.

Kalpas are a nice way to look into that past.

But skimming through it would help in hinting towards what happened towards the end of that creation, and what the elves were left with. Or, to say, what the elves, and men, worship now.

Giving this a nudge up top, in light of some discussion in the Lore forum today.

Ker-bump.

After a secluded amount of time, this piece deserves a new bump.

And, I'm also going to ask it be moved to the Lore section.

I'm going to give this a run in the Lore forum. Constructive criticism only, please.

This piece failed to draw my interest in the first 500 words. I can't discern a particular background or origin of the story. I think the author made the mistake of trying to imitate rather then create his own tone and setting.

Well I liked it a lot, especially towards the end. I'm not sure if it's imitation of certain dev styles or if it actually is one of them in disguise, though. That account may be a gimmick thing, leading up to the release of TES V.

I enjoyed the subtle dis of the cat people, too.

Thank you.
I enjoyed it as well

Remembrance, Romance and Riddling....

Yes please.
I'm feeling more confident I will enjoy TES V

I would like to follow Proweler in suggesting that the text above seeks to emulate the style of a particular writer. I will add that it does so quite obviously and that in doing so, it fails to convey an original narrative. It is a piecemeal combination of narrative and stylistic elements and phrasings from a rather limited amount of literary sources, applied to a number of vaguely related images and anecdotes.

Also, I would like to indicate that I find it in rather bad taste of the author to deliberately suggest an alleged relation to official game developers. Along with the stylistic mimicry described above, it would seem to denote a certain intention to ride on the coattails of those persons.

I read through it once. In the first few paragraphs the setting seems to be in the Chimeri-Nordic war, just before the creation of the Dwemer/Chimeri kingdom of Resdayn. The rest is about Vivec roaming through Tamriel. The writer creates some pretty images with his writing, I especially like the part where he describes Sload weapons - however, I have a lot of trouble even imagining Sload who fight at all (and not let fight). There are some blatant errors regarding lore in my opinion, for example, it's not Vivec's House of Provisions but "Provisional House", which has an entirely different meaning. Another example would be the passage where Vivec seems to talk about White-Gold Tower - that's not what (I think that) Vivec thinks of it and its inhabitants (the Empire, not the Ayleids) (see http://www.imperial-library.info/forum_archive/index.shtml (Vivec is admiring and respecting the Emperor as fellow master and knows what he represents).

I'd agree with Proweler, it's more trying to copy a style and unfortunately, to me, it failed in that regard. Nontheless, there are some pretty imaginative elements in it which I enjoyed reading. However, regarding it from a lore perspective, I find it somewhat lacking.


Seconded.

*Sigh.* The day we get interesting lore to bicker over an area not from Morrowind, but still regionalized so that we can begin to get over this big stiffy for Vivec will be a great day indeed.

Dont be so hard on him, he's probably just trying to walk like them until they walk like him...

Read the first sentence, saw that you spelled "Tribune" wrong, and stopped reading.

Nah JK, I'm still interested in reading, but fix that error in the first sentence lol :poke:

^(Actually, he spelled 'Triune' and did so correctly.)^