This is the beginning of a little TES (mainly Daggerfall) novella I've been knocking around for a few years. I've decided it's finally time to try to move it out of my inbox and post it on here--I welcome comments and criticism.

I was originally going for a kind of old-fashioned 20s-30s pulp horror vibe with it, so the pacing is a little slow, and like everything I write it gets long, but hopefully it remains readable. Let me know what y'all think!

Journey to Aetherius
Chapter OneThe Dragontails

I know of an old tale, told to children around every hearth in every corner of the Dragontail Mountains. Arkay, the story goes, the God of Life and Death, was once a merchant in our very mountains. His desire for knowledge caught the attention of the Great Mother Mara, who, so impressed with his comprehension of the living and the dead, granted him a place among the immortal gods.

For some, the tale is easy to believe. No man was ever so close to the meeting place of life and death, it is said, as when he stands at the foot of our mountains, contemplating the spot where the peaks vanish into the clouds. It is in the Dragontails that the base substance of earth begins its rapid ascent to the distant heavens. Travelers from the lesser regions of the Empire often stop short in wonder on arriving here, rendered speechless by the timeless beauty of the mountains. Even the air is different here, sweetened by the altitude and the immense pines that jut out from the rocky ground. They say we of the Dragontails speak differently, think differently, breathe differently. There are those who have no trouble believing that we are all of us descended from Arkay himself, that the mountains are where gods are born, that in their lofty peaks life and death meet and become one.

Most of these wide eyed storytellers have no inkling that they tell variations of that same story in every corner of the Empire, that every rat infested hovel on the side of the road claims to be the point of origin of some deity or hero. In truth the Dragontails are gray, lifeless scabs rising from a dull, desolate landscape. Mountains in Skyrim are bathed in white, in Morrowind they sing with fire; but the Dragontails? The Dragontails are rocks.

No point in this gray expanse was grayer than Dragontail, the city where I grew up. Unimaginatively named and unimaginatively built, the city is a sprawling combination of over a dozen earlier settlements surrounded by rough hewn walls of massive Dragontail stone. Buildings here are built for the cold, for keeping things out: Wind, snow, and most of all guests. Practicality was the sole concern of our architects, and to this day there is unlikely to be found a single statue or monument in our city’s streets. It was an unwelcoming place for a child to come of age. Worse, it was one without prospects for advancement.

There are frequently two paths to follow for the young of the Dragontail Mountains. The first is to enter into the service of the omnipotent Cult of Arkay, perhaps rising to the rank of Master in a local community temple, or, more ambitiously, becoming an Adept in one of the larger temples. If that illustrious existence fails to tickle a young man’s fancy, he can always become an apprentice to a local merchant, and hope to get rich skimming profits from the traders forced to travel our mountain roads. Some of the luckiest among us join the emperor’s legions in the hopes of traveling to shining cities beyond our mountains. For most, that early promise of lifelong adventure yields little more than a lifelong post as overseer in one of His Imperial Majesty’s grain warehouses.

In short, those of us born in the Mountains die in the Mountains, having gone from cradle to grave without a single accomplishment to attach to our names.

This was a fate I could never stomach. In defiance of my practical minded Dragontail parents, I attempted to live the life of a scholar. From a very young age I soaked up every book I could, exhausting the limited stock of the Dragontail Lyceum and later the Dragontail University. It was in those years that I began to conceive of our gray, closed in world as a mere accident of the gods, a trick of Lorkhan, a spiritual as well as physical dead end. I studied the accounts of travel to Oblivion, but even Oblivion paled in comparison to the idea of Aetherius.

Like Arkay in the children’s story, I fell in love with the idea that with study, with devotion, with understanding, we could move past the mountain wastes to a life beyond. We could, even as mortals, pass through the prison of Mundus and reach the realm of the gods, become as the gods are. My instructors, humoring a precocious but pretentious youth as best they could, suggested that the local Mage’s Guild might hold some appeal for a mind like mine.

The Dragontail Mages' Guild, like so much else in our mountains, does not operate like the guilds in the rest of the Empire. Membership is limited, usually passed down from parent to child. Outsiders are seldom permitted entry and when they are it is only after rigorous training and trial; in contrast, I am told, more prosperous guilds offer membership to practically anyone who walks through their door.

Yet with all their secrecy and status, the guild in Dragontail does very little practical magic. There are no missions to capture rouge wizards, no quests into dark dungeons. They spend their time instead cataloguing spells and debating the finer points of magical and metaphysical philosophy. It was a perfect fit for me. I had no interest in spell casting or potion making. I did and do consider them gruff and baser aspects of magic, a far less noble calling than the complicated subtleties of Mundus’ inner workings.

The Dragontail Mages' Guild rejected me outright. The small bits of knowledge I’d gained in twenty years of study impressed them little, but after a great deal of arguing with the guild magisters, they agreed to pass my name and credentials along to the archmages of one of the smaller guilds that dot the mountains.

Months passed before I heard a single word of response. Then, when I had all but given up hope of a life beyond the walls of my own city, I received a small, impersonal note by courier. The missive offered me the position of a clerk in the small guild in Ellakania, a trading outpost on the far side of Ephesus at the intersection of the roads to Sentinel, Skaven, and Dragonstar. Menial though the position was, I hastily scrawled out my acceptance notice and made preparations to leave Dragontail behind. All the city had to offer me was a lifetime of imprisonment behind bleak walls beneath bleak mountains. In Ellakania there would be a guild, a library, and maybe one day, with careful study, the pathway to Aetherius itself.