So, hullo and welcome! Some of you may recall this from a long time ago. Sometime last year or something. Either way, BSparrow helped me edit the Hell out of the last version, but on rereading it, I can't help but think about how terrible it actually is. In some places, terribly written, and in others, terribly out of character--not at all a piece of work by some detatched ex-alcoholic ex-murderer. So, I've gone back to correct these things. Anyways, I'll stop rambling.

This is the autobiography of my character from TES III: Morrowind. Allow me to present, Untitled, An Autobiography.

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My name is of no real importance, though I guess my heritage is easily guessed by the locale of my birth. I suppose I’m writing this as a way to reach some peace with my own past, though how I don’t know. Maybe writing this will give me some respite from the dreams and the nightmares, and perhaps even dredge up the beautiful faces I’ve long since forgotten, buried under years of alcoholism. I don’t really know how to begin—I guess that’s why I’m writing this—I’ve hidden from my own past for so long… But, with my lover standing over my shoulder as I put my pen to paper, I guess I have to have something to show her.

I was born in Alinor, and I suppose I cried like every other child born in the history of our world, but I was different from those of my heritage. I wouldn’t know this for some time, but three years really isn’t that much to those with longevity on their sides. And to be honest, it would be the first thing I actively remember.

I was seated upon my father’s knee, my mother watching us keenly from across the room. There were books, though my memory barely registered them, and a table behind us. What I remember was excitement, coursing through my every being—the kind of happy anticipation that pervades all thought, like the anticipation just before your lips lock those of another for the first time.

I cannot truly remember what my parents were saying, though my mother was scared—I could register that much to memory, and my father was stroking my head, his bold courage made aware to me by the way he held me, by the way he stroked my hair as my mother talked on. This would be how it always went during my early years. I was a bright child and my father thought the world of me. My mother, however, knew me only as a little ruffian, acting more like my brothers than like my sister, and it was her duty to keep me out of trouble.

We were here because my father was going to introduce me to the art of my heritage—introduce me to a world of magic, of wonders unseen and unparalleled. It was like a dream, the excitement boring away all of reality and leaving room only for visions in my memory—imaginings of all the things I could do, the wonder and adventure of manipulating the very world around me, but it ended abruptly, my father stopped, his words falling off into silence. He gently lifted me from his knee, setting me upon the floor, and walked away, leaving my mother to deal with me. I was confused, completely and utterly, and so I did the only sensible thing a three year old could do. I cried.

Four years passed after that, and I was quick to ask my father if he would drive me in to town so that I could finally apply for tutelage with the Mages Guild, just as my brothers and my sister had. He smiled at me and patted my head. I longed to be like him—to use magic. He agreed, after some time, and we rode in to Alinor together, watching the people pass by, but I was again in my own fantasy world.

Displays of fire and lightning ricocheted through my head, and it took our arrival at the guild to wake me. It wasn’t an impressive building—I can distinctly remember a tinge of disappointment as I stared at the doors of what should have been some grand temple, with towers and spires growing haphazardly yet beautifully from its roof. My opinion of the drab little four story building changed quickly when we entered. A number of winged little monsters were scrambling through a bookshelf, eagerly tearing apart books when they realized they had grabbed the wrong one, until a passing student witnessed their behavior and chased them away with a broom quickly snatched from a nearby closet—he never once set his hands on the broom, either. As we passed through the main hall—which was doubling as a study, though my memory could have fused the two rooms into one—we witnessed more displays of magical prowess—apprentices dueling eachother with fistfuls of sparks, the more adept forming full fireballs to the dismay of their opponents.

I knew I had a sister, but I could not remember having met her before this. She was a fair bit older than I, and had been living at the guild for as long as I had been living. She recognized my father as soon as she saw him, rushing over and hugging him. Outside of this, I don’t remember much of my initial meeting with my sister, though I remember touring the building with her. What pervaded my memories was an insistent desire. A desire to be like my father—to use magic as these people did. To think, all I had to do to live there, with my sister and my brothers, to learn all these things, was show the slightest aptitude, a tiny glimmer of potential.

The blow to my hopes and dreams was so sudden, I couldn’t even cry. I didn’t cry until long after waking up the next day.

I am an Altmer, and I am incapable of using magic.

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Certainly a promising start. You paint a vivid picture of the protagonist's dreams and desires- esp. in light of his crippling ailment. The most interesting characters are often flawed in some way- and they (or the writer or role-player) then have to figure out alternate ways to achieve their goals. And that can make for excellent story-telling- much more so than the story of "Leet the Uber," who never has to work for anything...

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After spending all of last night bent over a desk with a quill, it’s hard to imagine I’d want to continue writing. But I am, if not for some release from the demons inside of me, then for the wishes of my love, or because I can’t simply drink until I puke night after night anymore and forget the horrors I’ve wrought.

My father became distant after that, though by no means did he become cruel. My mother, instead, took up the role of loving parent. I had calmed considerably since infancy, and I practiced simple things like sewing, a skill which I practice to this day, and writing. While she wasn’t my tutor, she was the one who encouraged me in writing and art, where my father simply looked in from time to time, his eyes heavy with some distant pain. It was his pride that had felled him. But his distance wasn’t painful, rather, it was my mother’s comforting. She forced me to acknowledge the fact that he avoided me.

I finally learned exactly what he felt of me when he stumbled home drunk one night. This was itself an unusual event, but his curses were like fire in my ears. To this day, I recall his words. “Abomination,” he called me.

This was not the end of my childhood innocence, however scarring it may seem. Those of my race are purists, with little room for a defected child, so most children born with my condition, or with other hindering conditions, are simply purged of life at birth.

I remember coming across my mother and father one evening. It may have been a week after the previous incident, though I cannot actually remember. They were speaking in the study, in hushed voices, like they were afraid of anyone listening in. I cannot fully remember their conversation, I admit, but for its importance I could never fully purge it from my mind. It was my father’s voice I first heard, rounding the corner off the staris.

“If we had known…” “…that she could never be anything, would we have kept her?”

Then my mother, her voice awkwardly accusatory, “We did know! You kept her.”

That is the extent my memory can recall the words, though I continued listening for several more minutes—I remember staring blankly at the wall in front of me. I cried, I suppose.

I’m sorry. I can’t keep writing.

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…It’s been a week since I’ve touched this scrap of parchment. It’s funny how remembering your past affects you. Especially after a hundred years drinking to forget it. Anyways, I’ll continue before I start rambling.

So then, in time, the subject of my schooling came in to question. Neither of my parents would stand for an uneducated child—even if I was already a blemish on the household’s appearance, they would not have me a black sheep that dragged their name into the gutter. At least, that’s what my father said about it. That also meant that my schooling would not be in town, nor with tutors inside my own house. Though I can’t imagine why they didn’t choose the latter. It wouldn’t have been hard to seal me off in my room with some magical lock…

So I was to be shipped south, to cozy little Sunhold. I had an uncle there, a historian, or so he’d like to think himself. Why people continue to search for history is a question I’ll never answer. It always seemed to me that history is very well documented. Maybe not people’s personal lives, but the general events very much so. But he lived with a variety of other scholars, and that is what was important. They lived in a rather large library—they must have been a part of a religious order.

But the accommodations of my living weren’t really that important. I could honestly skip forward several years and very little of importance would have been lost. What is there to say about schooling, other than “I became educated?” So, I spent the next several years in Sunhold, and became educated. Though my mother wrote often, I never noticed a change in her tone throughout the letters. I did not expect a letter from my father. He detailed in long words that my mother, put plainly, had died.

I came home immediately, by way of guild teleportation, but I was largely apathetic towards my mother’s death. After all, hadn’t my mother always been distant to me, her daughter? She, like my father, had wished I was never born.

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Excellent start here. Very interesting choice for a race (I havent read many fics with Altmer mains). Looking forward to reading some more!

I feel kinda bad reviving this with such a small update, but hopefully I'll be able to give another update shortly. And hopefully, it will be an update of decent size.

Treydog, Master Sam, thank you both for the compliments.

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I feel horrible, with those things as the last I’ve written on this sheet. I realize that this ruins any sense of drama within the pages now, but this is a recording of my life, not a story. I wish so much I had known my mother better. But, allow me to continue with the events as they unfolded before me.

My sister greeted me at the guild. Strange, thinking that the second time I ever saw her was in the midst of such a tragedy. Her eyes were dry, the sockets around them rubbed to a brilliant brass color, nearly bloodied from repeatedly wiping away tears. I could only wonder why she cared so much for our mother. I was dragged into a stagecoach, and we spent the trip home in silence. She had her face buried in her hands for a good portion of the trip.

When we were finally home, she gave me a forlorn glance and asked me why I wasn’t crying. She didn’t wait for an answer, and I didn’t have one.

My father was waiting for me at the door. I half expected him to greet me with a hug and a reassuring smile like any other parent in the world. But why was I surprised when he did? Because another half expected him to slap me and blame me for my mother’s passing? Why was it that now he decided to show me affection, right when the anger in my heart began to simmer and boil with fear? I shoved away his embrace and stormed into the house, heading straight for my room.

I arrived finding my room just as I had left it; my mother had never bothered with cleaning it. She would simply wait for her daughter to come home and clean it and live life as though nothing had happened. There was a dress on the unmade bed, discarded with the rest of a multitude of garments that littered the area. My sister knocked at the door behind me.

“Mother loved you,” she said. I didn’t have an immediate response. She must have wanted one, because she let the silence grow on for a minute before continuing. “Why do you refuse to see that?” I remember anger more than anything, to my shame. She didn’t say anything else, but merely turned and walked out the room, closing the door behind her.

I don’t honestly remember much of the next week leading up to my mother’s funeral, and nor do I remember the service itself. I was afraid—that is what I can remember. What if my sister had been right? I didn’t want to admit it to myself, but I was stuck by my mother’s loss. Even if she hadn’t loved me, she had been there for me when my father stopped talking to me. She had been the one who stopped my tears—it was resentment that I felt. I loved my father, but he had betrayed me. By extension, my mother was guilty of reminding me of that love.

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YES! I read the original untitled, and I thought it was an amazing TES Fan Fic. Im happy to see it back up, and to see all the angst and confusion about the main characters view on life to still be Intact.

Great job Dirk. Now wheres that one fan-fic that really freaked me out? You remember that one with the girl and I talked to you on Guild Wars about it... I wish I could remember the name

The reason you don't remember the name is because it was untitled.

I'm just rewriting this one. And thank you both.

:rofl: I knew I recognized it from somewhere thats kind of creepy. I can't wait for that chapter

Heh heh heh... Your reading it, buddy it didnt have a name. It was Untitled.

Oh, wait, look like Dirk beat me to that Joke