» Fri Jun 24, 2011 12:28 am Edited & Translated by Henri de la Craie
Editor’s Note: The following is a transcription from a waterlogged fragment of the ‘Canticle of Cyrod’, the holy scripture of the Adamant Katechon, an early 4th era anti-millennialist sect dedicated to the worship of a deified Martin Septim. They were renowned for their bloody persecutions of Daedra-worshippers and sweet-roll fundraisers.
Original copies of the text are all written in old Nibenese, the language of Alessia, which went extinct during the Akaviri potentate and by the Oblivion crisis was totally unknown outside of Academic circles. Its use is indicative of the Temple’s conservative, ultra-nationalist politics and should therefore come as no surprise that the extant legible fragments are grammatically disastrous, a scholastic negligence characteristic of all zealots with pens. I have tried my best to reconstruct the author’s meaning.
-Henri de la Craie
Magister Emeritus
College of Whispers, Chorrol
Jeelius Xylhysstrxa, a [devotee] of the Nine-in-One1 by the will of the Dragon Eternal, and Thurindil our brother,
To the Chapel [of Mara] in Bravil, together with all the faithful…Nibenay,
…Think yourselves secure under the vile aegis of Oblivion, free to frolic in the fifteen-bodied-carousel of Dagon’s iniquity, but know that the Destroyer and his servants cannot hope to prevail against the new dawn2, our lord’s glorious parousia. Kvatch is but righteous testimony. Her people are true martyrs, spectators of…[nummit]…Adamus’3 adamant [heart-like?] radiance, uncoiling the dragon’s throat…
Umarilites4…[untranslatable]…attempted to tread against the [current of the] dragon-flow and snatch up the red-heart-of-the-mundus, ensconcing it in the deepest daemon-womb of the Daedra. Crimson Umarilities, Scamps, Spiderbrood, and all the multiform and ugly kin-of-padhomay tried to cut the jill-jewel, but found their razors sundered, crushed utterly unto dust, by the diamond.
Nor could they arrest our Lord as he harrowed ten-fold hells…Dragon-born, fire forged, he harvested his birthright from the gardens of iniquity, plucking his [true] heart from crooked briast of elfin slime.
I myself am sacred witness to The Day of Reckoning, Red Middas, when the hungry razor-maw of Oblivion was forever bound with the bloody heartstrings of the dragon.
Verily, I, but a humble presbyter, stood with the iron host of Talos to guard his capital on that fateful day when the firmament marched [wounded]. Our lines across the Temple-ward cobbles barely held. The demon-kin were weak, fear-driven dogs, they crashed against our arms and were cut to pieces. But where one fell, ten score bled forth from those putrid Aurbis-wounds to replace them, and they were Legion…the hopeless[shadow] loomed…Dagon, Baleful Destroyer, may he[forever]swim5, leapt the pomerium to defile us with his presence.
The Prince of Destruction was taller than a tower and wider than a gate, possessing six arms6 possessing six [weapons]. He wore a diadem of crooked horns, cradle of unmaking, his red skin was etched with a library of runes telling the story of our doom, and his face was [the masque of?] Sithis. He set his eyes upon White Gold, hungrily, and we fell into great fear and great agitation.
…[the deluge] ebbed. The Daedra retreated for the portals of white gold had parted, and Adamus, our lord and champion of Cyrodiil, Talos Perfected7, The Dragon Emperor had reclaimed his birthright and now stood on the altar of the One, red dragon coiled around his brow and the red diamond set on his heart, to thwart the Archfiend in his career.
The Enemy raged and tore the dome off the temple. “Pitiful Cyrodiite” he boomed “ Does thou not knowest that thou and thine prideful nation are damned? Father Padhome has judged you offensive and written your doom in the stars: Dagon Malah-El8, the Great Destroyer shall tear down The Dragon’s tower and sink the mundus back into the waters of Oblivion! Are you blind to starlit truth? Look and you will see that your time is at an end!”
“Oh, Verily, I have scry’d the heavens, oh Great Destroyer” The Son of Dragons replied “seen the signs, read the missives in [Magnus’] lament, though perhaps my art is not as keen as your own, most noble Prince, for my result [is that] Time is Mother Cyrod’s boundless, un-ending, fortune, and so long as her children are faithful and true, they will not know an hour without the Dragon’s smiling approbation. This is moth-truth, as whisper’d by our star-made ancestors and woven, silk-law, in the Aurbis. ”
The Foe of [All] Children raged at our Lord’s greater [poetry?] and flailed his six arms like a Khajiiti [dervish] such that it seemed he might scraqe the vault of Aetherius. But Adamus [was] silence and resolution; he would not allow the Falsifier to pass. Then a thousand blasphemies came pouring out from the maw of Dagon the [son of] Excrement, ineffable curses and petty hexes against the beloved nine [faces] of The Dragon
Yet still, our Lord did not falter and was as adamant as it [the jewel] on his briast.
His foul speech thus proven without [teeth?], Dagon, king scamp, finally endeavored to assault our Lord Adamus. He rained down wicked ebony, fang’d scimitars the size and dental shape of Akaviri sloops o’war.
I admit, brothers and sisters, that I was [overcome] with fear and agitation. My blood went milky. I trembled, for as the mighty Fellblade licked the altar I though the Flame of Dragons, the Light of the Mundus would be extinguished.
I was and am now and shall for ever after bear the shame of doubting that Time was our loving, enduring Father.
Truly, the man, mortal Martin Septim died then, consumed in fire. Dagon leered. He danced and leapt about. He giggled, his mouth bubbling…poisonous [well] “Hehehe! Look upon your savior, your Dragonborn: Smote’d by Dagon! Now look upon me as I pull down the tower and know that your gods are dead; TAMRIEL AE DAEDROTH!”
But lo, the diamond endured. The Destroyer ceased to jest and cursed its light, true heart of Nirn, and willed his wicked tools to shatter it, but where shattered utterly upon its ten facets.
Thus…fulfilled with the earnest blood of self-annihilate Shezzarine [love?], the jewel became like a star and ascended to stellar climes.
[Untranslatable]
Then the mundus trembled. The starry filigree [parted] and all the faithful fell to bended knee as The Dragon uncoiled9, great effulgent artery, burning umbilicus. Time flowed [glacially?], for at his full height one could see the eternal circuitry in its entirety , knew intimately the pulsing along the lattice vein-work in the tree and feeding spring of creation. The lesser Daedra that survived the [first] revelation receded, for they now knew in whose realm they trespassed.
But still the Archfiend was insolent, incorrigible by plain sight. He screamed horrible curses in ugly old black tongues, but dared not to attempt combat.
Then The Dragon himself spoke, with the throat of the world, Kynareth-song, declaring TAMRIEL INVICTUS EST10. Thus the second revelation was laid bare under Aetherius and even the Destroyer relented, begged for quarter, for now he knew that he was sinning against destiny.
But time is relentless, and thus The Dragon, so that he smote prideful Dagon for his transgressions with the hallowed [fire] and sent him to dwell in the bitter bosom of Sithis.
This is truth, revelation, [witnessed by] my own eyes. Damnable and hard-hearted are those that cannot, will not accept it.
Faithful children of Cyrod [in the] Nibenay, do not be taken in by those who would deny Adamus’ true nature, [those] vile heretics who point out the vacant throne and bleat like vapid beasts that the Dragon Empire Is Forever Sundered, The Enemy Is Victorious After All, The World Is Ending. They are crude Dagonites, pvssyl-to-Daedra, and damned by their own impiety.
Time is eternal. Adamus will return, as he does in all [generations?].
Footnotes—
1 – The Katechon were monotheist and believed that the Nine were but aspects or faces of single, greater god, finally realized through Martin.
2 – Most likely a “take-that” reference to the Mythic Dawn sect that ultimately claimed responsibility for the assassination of Uriel VII and the ensuing Oblivion crisis.
3– The Katechon’s posthumous epithet for Martin, it refers to the central gem of the Amulet of Kings, and informs the cult’s own name, obsessed as they were with diamond-qua-heart imagery in poetry, prose, and all other arts.
4 – The author seems to have conflated and/or confused Camoran’s Mythic Dawn and the contemporaneous resurrection of ancient Ayleid king, Umaril the Unfeathered.
5 – An interesting curse that seems to reference the common belief that upon its apparent “death”, a Daedroth’s vital essence must return the water’s of Oblivion until such a time that it can reconfigure its physical body.
6 – All extant depictions of Dagon represent him with no more than four arms.
7 – The Katechon are believed to have subscribed to Shezarriphysitism: the theological notion that Talos, the ninth divine, is none other than the lost creator god, Shezarr, attempting to reconstitute himself via the dragonfire ritual. Here the author seems to be suggesting that Martin Septim was the “final piece in the divine puzzle” as it were.
8– Southern Ayleidoon: ‘The Great God’
9– The Katechon seems to have considered Akatosh’s name to be prohibitively sacred, and thus avoiding repeating it speech and in print.
10- Left untranslated from O.N. for effect; it means, roughly, “Tamriel endures for all time”
