OoC: So this is my first fanfiction... I was a little angry when Martin died the first time I played Oblivion and this is an alternative scenario which shows how Martin SHOULD have done. It will then continue with the lives of Martin, Berrelius, Baurus and perhaps one more person.
I am not sure if she is to join too, she is seen in this chapter though. :disguise:
Constructive critique is very welcome! Wish me good luck!


The New Fourth Era:
Turdas 17th Frostfall, The Imperial City, Talos Plaza District:

It was midday, the sun was standing high in the sky and most citizens were eating lunch inside their homes.
Martin, knowing that there was no time to lose quickly rode on.

The few citizens of the Imperial City who saw Martin pass by were suprised; according to the Imperial law horses should not enter the Imperial City unless by the permission of the current Emperor and the penalty for dis-respecting that law was a hefty sum of Septims!

On Martin′s right side Jauffre rode and Martin′s close friend Berrelius Lierus was riding on his left side. Behind Martin Baurus rode, they were all clad in full Akaviri Armour except Martin who was wearing the ceremonial robe of the Emperor. Baurus looked behind his shoulder, just as he thought, three Mythic dawn agents were riding behind them in their usual conjured armor.

"Brothers, do not let them escape!" A hoarse Dunmer male voice could be heard shouting from the agent riding in the middle.

"Martin, find the gate which leads to the south-east, it leads to the Temple District from this district! Take Jauffre with you and light the Dragonfires! I will stay here with Baurus and cover you!" Berrelius said to Martin who nodded silently. Berrelius then quickly turned his horse around and drew his Akaviri Dai-Katana, it shimmered in a red colour.

Baurus also stopped and turned around to meet the fanatics. He drew his Akaviri Katana.

The Mythic Dawn agents continue to ride forward and were closing in fast.
Berrelius clapped his hand on Baurus shoulder as a signal and they began to ride.

"For Lord Dagon!" The fanatics shouted.

"For the Dragonborn!" Baurus and Berrelius shouted.

First it seemed like the Dunmer agent was going to pass in the middle of the two Blades with the other two fanatics taking the flanks. Just when it was almost too late Baurus and Berrelius turned to the right. Thereby they were coming between the Dunmer and the agent riding on the right side and by that evening out the odds.

The Dunmer wore a mace which was noticeably too short to be to any use in horse to horse combat.
Baurus swung his sword and slashed the Dunmer in his unprotected armpit. The enemy screamed in pain and leaned over his horse, dropping his mace in surprise, trying to stop the bleeding.

Berrelius had meet another foe, a Nord from the sound of the deeply sounding mad laugh coming from his mouth.
Nords were known to be fearsome warriors, but ofcourse that does not always apply. He was coming in full speed with a longsword held straight out in the air as if he was trying to chop the head of Berrelius.

Berrelius leaned backwards under the sword and cut the Nord′s arm off while doing it. The armour and meat was cut off easier than scrib jelly.
"Mishaxhi′s Cleaver tastes meat once again!" Berrelius screams smiling to Baurus while straightening himself up on the horse.
They stopped their horses beside each other and looked over the situation.

The Dunmer had fallen to the ground and had propably fallen unconscious when he fell of his horse. His armor was fading away and was being replaced by red upper-class clothing. The Nord was bleeding to death on the ground with his other, dead arm being right in front of him. He seemed to be half-conscious and was only wearing some grey rags now when his armor had dissapeared. It was interesting how he had remained conscious without his right arm compared to the situation of his Dunmer companion who couldnt keep conscious after the less bloody cut. The last fanatic had dissapeared away into some alley during the fight, propably understanding that it would be impossible to do anything important on the own. The masterless horses had continued to the Temple District, they had propably been the first best horse the fanatics had putten their eyes on at the stable. It was clear from their reaction of the fight that they were not warhorses.

"Ulen Athram? Hm... so THAT was what he was doing in Chorrol, he was meeting his colleague ofcourse..." Baurus said to himself while looking at the dead Dunmer.

"Did you get Ulen Athram? You always get to kill the most interesting persons! You even killed Raven!" Berrelius said to Baurus while looking a little dissapointed.

"Just the first time, Berr!" Baurus said while laughing.

"Well I just got some random Nord guy!" Berrelius said while trying to look like a little boy who didnt get the candy that he asked for.

"You better have a darn good explanation to this, young lads!" An old Imperial sergeant said to the backs of Berrelius and Baurus. With him he got 5 younger guards.

Baurus and Berrelius both began to laugh hysterically.

Berrelius turned around while smiling, the guards had their swords drawn and they were pointed towards his throat.
"Old man, we have an Emperor again! Long live Martin Septim!" He shouted while waving his sword in the air.

"A new Emperor? And who in Oblivion are you? And why has there been a massacre here?" The old veteran asked, he didnt seem to be very impressed.

One of the other guards whispered something in the ear of the old veteran. He seemed to be more and more suprised by every second.
"Berrelius? Is that you? By the Divines, you have grown up! Where have you been?" The old man asked Berrelius while him too smiling. They quickly forgot about the dead fanatics.

"Oh, I have been a little everywhere, Ben... You know... saving the world and stuff like that!" Berrelius said and shrugged. "Why not come with me? The Emperor needs your protection, uncle!"

"I guess I will have to believe you... lead the way, Berrelius!" Ben said while looking with proudness and a slight bit of disbelief over his nephew′s maturity

While they had talked two more guards had appeared. They were ordered to clean up the mess after the fight. Berrelius and his companions then marched to the Temple where Martin was standing waiting for them. A little crowd of people where standing around Martin looking excitedly at the man who had dared to ride into the city without any permission in sight. Most of them thought that he was some rich noble or something since he wore very fine clothes. The Amulet of Kings was hidden inside the robe, unseen by the crowd.
Berrelius and the guards following pushed a way open for Martin and the guards began to form a wall around the Emperor against the crowd. The spikes on their shields were detached to make sure that no-one would get hurt by accident.

Then Berrelius declared with a voice which could be heard by all the persons standing in the vicinity:
"This is Martin Septim, the son of Uriel Septim the seventh! He has lightened the Dragonfires and the Daedra are now stopped! Anyone who doubts my words can look for themselves inside the Temple of the One where the fires are burning clear!" The crowd began to push and fight to see through the open doors and see if it really was true. After a while everyone was convinced that it was true, the Dragonfires were lit and hope was restored.

Martin then continued the speech while taking the Amulet of Kings up from under the robe so that everyone could see it.
"For two months have the Daedras of Mehrunes Dagon plagued Tamriel, killing, murdering and bringing chaos to the Empire! In two months they fought Cyrodiil in all ways they think of!
But they never took our freedom from us! Even in Kvatch where the whole city was destroyed did they ever lose hope! In that city I meet an Argonian who did not surrender to the forces of evil! She fights on and she is determined to rebuild her beloved city from the rubble that it is now! Let her courage be a guiding light through the darkness! We have lived through war! But today that ends! Today a new era begins! The fourth era! An era of prosperity, peace and justice for all!"

The crowd had steadily been growing bigger and bigger. The streets in front of the Temple of the One were full of the citizens of the Empire. There were beggars, soldiers, guards, thieves, merchants, heroes, villains, farmers, vampires, nobles, labourers, everyone was standing there. And they cheered. They applauded. They began to laugh. It was a time of happiness. The crisis had been looming over them like a cliffracer over a poor defenceless pilgrim near the Red Mountain. But now they were safe from Mehrunes Dagon and no-one was thinking of the other dangers in the world. They had an Emperor to watch over them, what could possible happen now?


Martin and his guards immediately began to move to the Palace to make sure that the traditional formalities were respected.
As soon as they reached the palace Martin′s guards stayed outside waiting to make sure that the Emperor was protected from any outside threats, two palace guards continued to escort the Emperor to the High Chancellor.
When they entered the Palace they were led through the big door and into the Council Hall. The two Palace guards flanked Martin so that no fighting would happen there, however unlikely that would be.

There inside Ocato stands in his exquisite red silk robe and rolls his thumbs. He stops the rolling when Martin enters.
"Martin Septim, I presume?" Ocato says, with a perfect stable voice and his facial expression full of calm even though his eyes seems to scream out... nervousness? Fear?

"You are correct, High Chancellor." Martin answers.

"Good, I have been expecting you. The full council have already considered your claim to the throne in detail." Ocato said. He now bowed down to Martin. "Martin Septim, on behalf of the Elder Council, I accept your claim to the Imperial Throne. We should arrange the coronation ceremony as soon as the details have been sorted out, it should take a week for it to be done."

"That quick? Most coronation ceremonies does commonly need a month or more to be prepared!" Jauffre said while looking suspicously upon Ocato whose eyes now began to nervousely flicker in every possible direction save for where Jauffre was standing.

"Well... to be completely honest, sir Grandmaster, the provinces are breaking away from the Empire, especially Elsweyr and Black Marsh seems to have gathered thoughts of independance!" Ocato said.

"What have been done to stop this?" Martin asked in his normally calm fashion.

"My Lord, we have sent diplomats to negotiate with the rebels..." Ocato answered, unnerved by the unnatural calmness of Martin.

"Why havent the legions done anything? Or why havent any spies or assasins been sent to disorganise the rebels?" Martin said, still in the same calm voice...

"The legions are stretched to the limit and the empire has before relied on the Blades to be the spies and agents of the empire! They have been the eyes and ears of the empire! Without an emperor the eyes and ears are lost!" Ocato said, in Berrelius ears it sounded so... dull. As if Ocato hadnt really tried to do anything.

"There must be spies and agents who are not a member of the Blades, true?" Martin asked.

"Well... yes... but they are not as reliable and you cant trust that they will get the job done!" Ocato said, almost panicking before the eyes of the emperor.

"Well then, we are done here for now. We can talk more about this later, High Chancellor." Martin said calmly.

"Yes, my Lord... Is there anything else my Lord wishes before I leave?" Ocato said now regaining some of the former calm.

"Yes, we will need to assemble the council here! How long will that take?" Martin asked.

"In the best of circumstances... that should take around 4 days if I am not wrong, my Lord, but I would guess that 6 days is more likely if everyone is going to attend." Ocato said, now swimming in areas free from the slaughterfish, so to say.

"I guess that you are using communication and transport by magical means in most cases, High Chancellor?" Berrelius curiously asked.

"Ahem, yes... mostly. Now if you excuse me..." Ocato said. He bowed quickly to the Emperor and then fleed to his private quarters to do his tasks.

Baurus and Berrelius exchanged a quick glance before Martin turned to them.

"Berrelius Lierus and Baurus Ravenbane, for your loyal service to the Empire during the Oblivion Crisis I will let you request one thing from me each. As long as it is plausible I will try to make sure that your request will sooner or later happen. Think through your alternatives and then tell me what your request is when you are ready." Martin said to the two Blades.

"My Lord..." Baurus began.

"Not you too! Call me Martin!" Martin said a little irritated.

"Martin then, as a Blade my only wish is to serve you until my retirement!" Baurus continued while smiling slightly over the interruption.

"That wish I am more than happy to oblige, I will need experienced agents in the Blades for the plans I have." Martin said.

"Plans, Martin? What plans?" Jauffre asked Martin now looking slightly suprised.

"You′ll see, Jauffre, you′ll see..." Martin said with a mysterious smile. "Now, what about you, Berrelius? Have you decided yet?" Martin asked.

"Ehm..." Berrelius wanted to say something like `I want to become the Count of Kvatch after it has been rebuilt by others, ofcourse′ but he didnt want to sound greedy and selfish... In Berrelius mind a battle raged, one side told him to ask for permission to become the Count of Kvatch or perhaps get a position in the Elder Council, the other side told him to be as chivalrous as Baurus... "Martin, I want to..." COUNT OF KVATCH, DAMMIT!!! "...serve you... as a Blade... until my retirement!" Berrelius chivalrous side got a facepalm from the more greedy side of him.

"Good, I will call for you when I have need of your services, for the moment you are free to go wherever you want in the Imperial City, including the Waterfront. How or where can I contact you?" Martin asked Baurus and Bellerius.

"I would be happy if you could give us some more... normal clothes than this armor we are wearing now... and give us some of the armor which your legionaries are using. This armor we are wearing now can be transported in crates to the lighthouse tomorrow. We can pick them up there and hide them until they are needed again. The legion armor will be handed over to one of the watchtowers, you can find us by contacting... Adanrel. Tell her that to say `The Blade is warming up′ to the new fences. She will live in the Waterfront district." Baurus explained.

Martin turned to Jauffre. "Do you remember all that, Jauffre?"

"Ofcourse, Martin. After all a forgetful grandmaster is like a blind scout!" Jauffre said to Martin.

"Then you are dismissed, guards please make sure that those two persons get the things they requested and... remember that they where never here..." Martin ordered the guards.

Baurus and Berrelius bowed and began to walk to the guard quarters.
The two Palace guards had silently stood beside them all the time and they now escorted the two Blades up to the guard quarters.

The new era had truly begun. The fourth era.

OoC: Gods... Now to the critique...

Thanks to:
Ghostpaw for correcting some of my bad gramma and commenting in an encouraging way!

Not bad, though I'd suggest working on grammar a little bit. I like "What if" stories, it'll be interesting to see what you think should have happened

Thank you for being merciful in your critique! :bowdown: Please name some examples where my gramma could have been better too, that way I will hopefully not repeat it.
Glad you liked it!

lol, you asked for it:

1. My English teacher would call this "parallel construction," all the verbs in a sentence should be in the same tense or else it doesn't sound right. Simply change "are" to "were" and you should be good.

2. This one can be fixed by just placing a comma in the middle of the sentence.

3. This seems like it should all be one sentence, but for some reason you have it as two. Might not hurt to try rewriting it all together.

4. "Drew" not "Drawed."

5. This one's slang, I wouldn't advise calling them "Mythic Dawners," when you're talking about them, it'd be okay grammatically if it was a character saying it, though.

6. This is a run on, I'd advise breaking it up into multiple sentences.

7. "Noticeably too."

8. These sentences need cleaning up, lol. If I were to rewrite them, I might do it like this: "Baurus swung his sword and slashed the Dunmer in his unprotected armpit. The enemy screamed in pain and leaned over his horse, dropping his mace in surprise, trying to stop the bleeding."

And that, my friend, is the tip of the iceberg. I'd like to help more but I've got other things to do atm. Maybe I'll make some more suggestions later. Of course by then, the other forum ravens may have descended to feed I MEAN help

Edit: I'm apparently hardly the one to be giving sound advice since I can't write a critique without numerous typos myself :facepalm:

Edit2: BLAST!

Thank you very much for helping me with this! I shall immediately edit it with better gramma and thank you for your help in the opening post!
I may have added a little bit extra stuff in it...

Awwwwhhhh. This is such a happy piece in comparison to the game events, I know, but the knowledge of the game events makes it bittersweet nonetheless. Which I like. Conflict of my emotions is something I can get high off of.

That being said, critique-wise (and I'll switch now to the best professor-mode I can give) I think it goes without saying that you definitely don't have to take or incorporate everything I suggest since it's largely a matter of opinion. I opened a notepad and bullet pointed a few things that came to mind though:

• avoid exclamation points
  
• vary structure (dialogue)
  
• similes --> metaphors (especially when mentioning specific elder scrolls things)?

The first and the last are particularly opinion based. To be quite honest, I am biased against exclamation points and similes, and you did not use either especially often. But I personally avoid exclamation points because I believe it sets up an expectation in the reader for whatever proceeds the punctuation to be absolutely fantastic. Often it might be that awesome, but then you can never really guess what your individual readers' expectations are and so it makes me nervous to use them. Similes I tend to shy away from because they often feel forced to me; metaphors, in my ears, do not carry this pressure. Especially at points where you use a simile with elder scrolls creatures or references, you'd want to avoid the feeling of it being forced. Then again, the way I percieve the similes (and the same for exclamation points) are largely mine and others may not share this perception. It may just be something you might want to consider though.

Moving on then, I would more solidly suggest that you vary your structure in your story--dialogue in particular. After a while it became a little repetitive: he said, he said, he replied, he asked, he said. It's probably harder with more than two characters (I usually work with two per scene so this is easier for me to say) and all of them male. But I'd suggest incorporating the conversation in other ways just to keep any hint of repetition at bay. Make it indirect, or identify the speaker before the dialogue comes, convey it through narrative (he told them ...), or identify the speaker by an action or gesture rather than "he said" etc.

And now it's lunchtime for Lo.

Thanks for the critique... I am too lazy to continue this tho... Got a chapter "ready" but it needs some fixing before it is good enough to be posted.
One day or another I will maybe get back to this story, if you yourself (this "you" stuff is to whoever reads this) wants to continue this story then you are allowed to do so (and even ask me for chapter 2 and the idea I had in my head while writing this if you are interested)... But I am sure that you got much better ideas on your own which are better thought through than this one.

Pretty good...I like the direction you are going with this. I have to say I prefer your future over the real one....

My main critique is why is this to be considered the start of the Fourth Era? The Septim bloodline is still in power. I think that is something you should expand on as your story continues.

Well, there was a daedra invasion before Martin stopped it after all... Not every day that happens (;)) so Martin propably thought that this was like a new start for the empire and a time to fix what had gone wrong before (for example that Mehrunes Dagon so easily could open up stable portals to Tamriel).