Once, long, long ago in a tiny fishing village on the shores of Vvardenfell called Seyda Neen, there lived a poor
Dunmer named Thadas.
Thadas was the son of a powerful Telvanni lord, but the Four Corners conspired against the lad,
and he was born with Stunted Magicka. This caused much embarrassment to his father, and at the age of six he was sent
along with the other Telvanni children to study at a private school for mages in Sadrith Mora.

Oh, Thadas could conjure a fireball sure enough, but sooner or later his spells would fizzle out, often with
disastrous results. One such incident involved Thadas foolishly attempting to summon a Dremora. However, Thadas only
had enough Magicka to summon the beast's head, which plopped onto the ground, and promptly began cursing Thadas' name
and biting his ankles in a blind rage, before it thankfully winked out of existence and was reunited with its body,
which just so happened to be caught in the midst of a bloody battle, and was almost immediately beheaded by another
Dremora Churl, whose exploits so amused his Prince, Mehrunes Dagon, that he was allowed to keep the head as a trophy,
which still curses Thadas, even to this day!

By the time Thadas had come of age, he had become so entirely fed up with the taunts of his fellow students (and even
the Telvanni lords themselves), that he ran away from home, cutting off all ties to his family and becoming a
fisherman.

However, despite Thadas cutting off all ties to his family, his father the Telvanni lord still loved his estranged
son very much, and decreed on his deathbed that Thadas would inherit his most favourite slave, a Khajiit by the name
of Ma'Qi, who happened to only be ten inches tall, on account of being a Khajiit of the Alfiq-raht persuasion,
and to most observers appeared to be no more than a normal housecat, albeit one of tan colouring and patterned
with the spots and stripes common to all Khajiit.
So, you can imagine Thadas' surprise when, after many years of ignoring his family, our hero would, early one morning,
(though the sun was not yet up, and was only barely past midnight) hear a knock on his door, get out of bed to open
it, glance around and see nobody, and go back to sleep.

Not two seconds after going back to bed, Thadas heard another knock on the door, which caused him to utter words which
would be inappropriate of me to reproduce in a children's tale, and open the door again.

However, before he could close the door, Thadas heard a voice.
"Down here, sera", said the voice.
Thadas looked downward, and to his surprise, he spied what he belived to be a housecat, staring back at him.
"I am Ma'Qi", said the cat, "I am afraid your father, the Telvanni lord, has passed on. It was his dying wish that
I should seek you out to be your servant."
Thadas was dumbfounded! "My father is dead?" he asked.
"I certainly hope so, master", Ma'Qi replied, "otherwise his cremation and addition to the family ashpit would
have been a most uncomfortable experience for him."
"At any rate, the cremation would surely have killed him", replied Thadas dryly.
"Probably, anyway", countered Ma'Qi.
"True. But surviving that sort of thing... almost never happens", agreed Thadas, and then quickly changed the subject.
"So, Ma'Qi, was it? Why don't you come in out of the cold? Would it be inappropriate of me to invite you to sleep
at the foot of my bed?"
"Possibly," replied Ma'Qi, "many Alfiq and Alfiq-raht consider it a grave insult to be treated like a common housecat.
I however, believe that these Khajiit are fools who do not see the up-side of the whole situation. On that topic,
a saucer of warm milk would be most welcome!"

And with that, the Telvanni lord's son-turned-fisherman and the Khajiit slave forged a friendship that rivals that
of our beloved Emperor, Uriel Septim VII and his trusted Battlemage Jagar Tharn, may nothing stand between them
lest Dagon himself appear and raze the Empire to the ground!

Anyway, back to our story, some years later Ma'Qi was shopping at the local tradehouse for his master when he saw
a pair of the most comfortable netch-leather boots he had ever seen, and after much begging, coersion and a little
blackmail, Thadas finally agreed to purchase the boots for his friend, despite his kind generally being unable to
wear footwear designed for Dunmer feet, rather than Khajiit paws.
After some ever-so-slight modification, Ma'Qi donned his new boots, only to have the weight thrust him onto his hind
legs, giving the slave an awkward and somewhat wobbly gait, but also making him appear like the kind of roguish,
swushbuckling hero you tend to read about in stories like this.

The next morning, Ma'Qi (in his shiny new boots) and Thadas were wandering the muck-covered streets of Seyda Neen,
when they witnessed a beautiful Dunmer woman step off a boat, and nearly into a puddle of the most horrible,
greyish mud you can imagine.
"Miss, allow me!" said Thadas in the closest approximation of a sophisticated voice he could manage, as he covered
the mud puddle with his own shirt.
"I thank you, you horrible peasant," replied the woman as she wrinkled her nose in disgust, "now kindly leave
me be and get back to your dirt farm, for I am the daughter of a powerful Hlaalu noble, and to be perfectly frank,
I'd rather be murdered horribly by the Morag Tong than be seen speaking with the likes of you!"
"What an n'wah," said Ma'Qi as the woman boarded a nearby silt strider, "Thadas. Hey, Thadas. Are you listening?"
"I think I'm in love", swooned Thadas.
"By the mane of Sheggorath", groaned Ma'Qi.
"I must have her", announced Thadas.
"You heard what she said," said Ma'Qi, "she thinks you're a dirt-farming commoner! You don't stand a chance."
"Then I will prove her wrong", said Thadas, not realising that if you ever want a woman to love you, the last
thing you should ever do is disagree with her on anything.
"And how do you propose you do that, Thadas?" asked Ma'Qi.
"We, Ma'Qi, not I," he replied, "and we'll do it by travelling to Sadrith Mora, where I shall become a respected
Telvanni wizard, like my father always wanted!"
"Disregarding your Stunted Magicka, of course", said Ma'Qi dryly.
"Of course", replied Thadas absent-mindedly.