» Sat Feb 19, 2011 5:25 am In anticipation of Skyrim, I started thinking about my main character's backstory, and it occurred to me that I would like to hear, briefly, what kind of stories other people have invented for their characters (I assume I'm not completely insane, and other fans have also had similar thoughts).
First, I'll show you mine:
Embittered and ancient, Mephalus is beginning to forget. He remembers the library in the Nerevarine’s manor at Odai; the gold kanet that grew along the river. He remembers making a kind of pilgrimage in the years after the Nerevarine left, treading in his master’s footsteps through the frozen wastes of Solstheim and the halls beneath Red Mountain in search of some kind of meaning- and finding a terrible silence.
His name is a bitter joke he no longer understands. The original is gone. While awake, he remembers little of the terrors that befell his home, nor of his friends and family- though he recalls searching for them among refugees on Solstheim. If he dreams, he remembers only the moons. From long years of travel across Tamriel and the planes of Oblivion, he retains only scars, the memory of countless corpses, and the lessons imparted by dubious characters and desolate trails: a sharp blade, a light step, and devious magic. Yet he weakens. Memory continues to recede; skills fail him as darkness fogs his mind.
Mephalus recalls having been a scholar, and the lessons of history and the arcane are what remain most clearly. Having for years pored over the documents amassed in the library at Odai while he waited vainly for his friend’s return, Mephalus has had occasion to think on the meaning of the past. With his ancestral lands destroyed and the survivors yielded to the tender mercies of Aedra, Daedra and N’wah, he has reconsidered the wisdom of his master’s harsh judgement of the Tribunal. Gripped by a personal hatred of the false gods, the Nerevarine none the less pitied- perhaps even admired- the Sharmat Dagoth Ur- and Mephalus feels he understands.
Mephalus remembers a name, one scattered through his master’s rare Dwemer and Nordic manuscripts, and in the notes of the Nerevarine and the dead Sotha Sil. An answer to silence; a tool to cut the knots of fate. He has a scholarly inquiry.
Bearing his vast nothing, he has trod north from Bruma, through the mountains, and towards the throat of the world, in search of the god the heathen call Shor. He does not know what he will find, but he is ready to awaken, and to dream.
