3E 427, Morrowind, Vvardenfell District
Found a journal in a cave today, and Jiub always said that writing down your thoughts can help, so I guess I can start with this.
Imperials suck.
Dunmer suck. Most Dunmer suck.
Guards suck.
And I’m going to run away as soon as I get rid of this stupid package. The end.
4E 201, Skyrim, Winterhold College
Finally found a lead on that amulet I got from Saarthal. Nothing on the one that the Thalmor whelp had yet, but from what I remember of it, it was of similar make and style.
The writ of sealing on the draugr’s body got me a name, Jyrik, and after combing through dozens of history books I finally found something that might be related. The writ mentioned being ‘forgotten forever’, ‘condemned by your crimes against realm and lord’, which considering the magnitude of murdering a powerful wizard who was valued for his counsel and aid by kings and jarls may be a clue.
Heading out tomorrow for Solitude. While the risk of being around a Thalmor hotspot isn’t something I jump at the chance for, there’s no real harm in taking a look. Urag wants a book from around that area anyways.
4E 170, Abecean Sea
I’m surprised that climbing into a crate actually worked. I got loaded aboard a ship heading for Summerset and I haven’t been found out yet. It’s too hot to stay in the crate for too long, though, and if I’m caught in it… It wouldn’t end well. I’ve found a spot in one of the darker corners I can sit unseen, with a path right to my crate for emergencies.
It almost seems to be going too smoothly though, and that worries me a little, but if it comes to it… Well, I’ll find out how good I can swim out here.
My only concern is someone finding Jeer’s spear before I can get back. I hope they forgive me, but I can’t hide it under my clothes like I can with my sword, and I need that. I went with rags this time. Outsiders aren’t allowed in the Isles and I have yet to see an Altmer running around with a tail. Sorry, Jeer. I’ll have it with me again soon, I promise. I just hope it’s cooler in the Isles than in the lower decks of the ship, I can barely breathe down here.
4E 108, Elsweyr
It’s been ten years today. Maarzi probably doesn’t remember the exact day, but I remembered the shift in seasons from the fading spring to the scorching summer when I passed into Elsweyr for the first time, how hard it was to keep hydrated in what felt like a place doing all it could to cook me alive. Ten years I’ve been traveling with her, ten years of contracts and meeting her friends, family, all the good and bad times we shared… It’s incredible when I think back to then, when I had been convinced that the world was my enemy. I’m not sure how I survived living then, so full of mistrust and paranoia. It’s been hard, yes, but hasn’t that how it’s always been?
Of course it still hurts, knowing that I can’t share with her the same as she’s shared with me. My family is either dead or in places too dangerous for outsiders, and my only friends left still breathing are the ones sitting right across from the table from me. She’s all that’s good in this world, through the pain and the struggle she smiles, all fire and fight. Maybe that’s why I felt drawn to her even during that dark time since Jeer rejoined the Hist, left me behind.
Yet even with all that good… I can’t help but think that it can’t last forever. I haven’t aged a day in the last decade, nor will I ever. It hurts to know that, someday, she’ll fade from this world same as everyone else, and I’ll be left alone again. I don’t like to think about it, but I have to face reality and know that it will happen, when, I don’t know. I’m afraid of that day coming too soon, but even thirty, forty years from now is too soon. Because once she’s gone, and if I haven’t gotten the cure by then, I can’t follow. I’m not even sure even with the cure if I could follow, where she’d go. I don’t want to lo
[The last few lines are smeared and unreadable.]
4E 10, Black Marsh
Shadows is dead. He ambushed us, and tried to kill Jeer. I never thought he’d try to
He tried to kill me. He tried to stab me in the heart, and it only just barely missed. I got so scared, for myself, for Jeer-rah… I panicked, and… The wolf took over. I came to with blood all over me, my mouth full of… Hist forgive me. Jeer said that I was defending myself, that it was fine, but I ate him. I ate his heart, and Hist knows what else. I feel sick. I threw up until there was nothing left to come up when it fully sunk in what I’d done. I don’t understand why Jeer hasn’t left me yet.
They haven’t left me be much since it happened. They helped me get cleaned up, and they took care of burying his body under the roots of a tree after their injury was tended to. Jeer says that Shadows isn’t destined for the Hist, that an outsider like him abandoned the Hist long ago. He’ll go to the Void instead, like all Shadowscales. I don’t know what to feel other than horror that
He tried to kill me. After how long we traveled together, after he said we were brothers. I don’t know what to do, or how to feel. Jeer told me to try and get some sleep, but every time I close my eyes, I can still see his face when he saw me start to shift. I can remember flashes of what happened while I lost control. I’m scared that
[The rest of the entry is scribbled out.]
4E 201, Skyrim
Out of those who’ve helped me since first stepping into Skyrim, I think the lass I met today is one of the more agreeable ones. Brielle, her name was. Sharp one, and kind too. She found me in the Rift (thank the Hist, being lost for two days was getting embarrassing) and brought me to the town, Riften, where I was finally able to procure a decent map. I already have plans to whack Markus with the one he gave me whenever I manage to run into him again. Bastard.
Part of me feels a little sad that I have to be so far north (another long stretch of a journey, but that’ll be started tomorrow, and hopefully without any more setbacks), but if work is scarce in Winterhold, then I see no harm in coming to Riften. Windhelm may prove to be a little too risky due to the current political situation anyway. It would also give me a chance to check up on her. I’m sure she’s fine in Riften, she seems smart enough to know how to handle herself, but it would make me feel a little better. Maybe I’ve just gotten too used to people vanishing when I turn my back. Maybe I’m just paranoid.
She reminds me of Maarzi, and not just because of her red hair, lovely though it is. I can’t quite put my finger on it. Maarzi had more of the outward fire, wild and unpredictable, but capable of being comforting, like a hearth. Brielle seems to be more of the hearth type. I’m not sure how else to explain it.
She likes reading, especially riddles and rhymes, and she seems to like horses. If the snows come to Riften, inviting her out to build forts and have snowball fights could be an option as well. I wonder if there’s any bookstores on the way north. I’ll have to check and see what they have in Riften first. But that will have to wait until tomorrow when I’m actually sober enough to stand. The Bee and Barb is owned by a pair of Argonians and Talen-Jei makes incredible drinks that remind me of home. I’m still trying to decide which I like the best. The Cliffracer certainly has me stumbling over my words the quickest.
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4E 98, Elswyer
Finally got a horse today. Apparently some Khajiiti caravaneers had bought him up, having been told that he was gelded, but obviously they were lied to or misunderstood. It was a pain to try and speak to them. My Ta’agra is terrible, and their Cyrodilic was even more so.
He’s a pain in the ass and he’s apparently only a year old and hasn’t been properly saddlebroken. Considering I’ve walked enough through these Hist-damned sands and badlands long enough to fill my boots several times over, trying to keep on his back seems like paradise in comparison. I hate how dry it is here, and I’m still a ways from Dune yet. Hopefully there I can find a corral and a shop that actually has horse tack for sale once I get there. I’m going to need to train him if he’s going to be sticking around for a while. Having a chance to refill my skins would be nice too.
The caravaneers told me that he responded to a name that I still can’t pronounce. Apparently it was Ta’agran for ‘little whirlwind devil’. I have no doubts as to why. The closest translation they could give for a Cyrodilic name was ‘Windviper’, which I’ve started to call him in the apparently vain hope that he’d listen to that name instead. He’s wild and finicky and everything that a good horse isn’t, except that he seems completely at home in the sands and arid air, and he’s fast.
But at least once he tires enough, he’s a blessing to ride rather than trudging through the endless sands. Already I’ve traveled twice the distance I had walking for an entire day.
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3E 429, Solstheim
I thought that after a few years, my nightmares would’ve let up a little. They’re only getting worse. I’ve only recently been well enough to visit Nibani, and she seemed concerned that my nightmares have continued even after the death of Dagoth Ur. I left out the part about the lycanthropy, but what else could I do? It’s bad enough Shadows knows about it. He still sleeps with a silver dagger in his hand, like I’m going to murder him in the middle of the night and go feral.
This last one was different, though. Instead of the Heart Chamber and Ur and Akulakhan, I was standing on the edge of a rocky cliff looking over a molten landscape. I could see spiky structures in the distance, almost like Daedric shrines, but…much more massive, and too smooth to be stone. The air was cold, enough to get me shivering, and there was lightning crackling across the hellish red skies. I felt so afraid, like something horrible was about to happen, and then the cliff crumbled underneath me. I woke up when I hit the floor of my room.
Nibani said it didn’t sound like any place she knew of, and I’ve been all over Vvardenfell, and there weren’t any massive lava fields like in my dream to be found. I want to brush it off as nothing, but…it sticks out so clearly in my mind, and it scares me. I’m not going to risk it happening again tonight. Shadows can go sulk all he wants, I’m not going to go to sleep until I’m piss-drunk and can barely stand.
—-
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4E 201, Skyrim
Why can’t I get magic to work? I know I can do it, I used to make fire come out of my hands all the time when I was a hatchling. But ever since I was allowed to do magic again…I can’t do it. I’m doing exactly what I’m supposed to do, but it’s not working and it’s frustrating. What am I doing wrong? If I don’t master even the simplest of fire spells, then I’ll never have the chance of becoming a mage. It’s the only thing I’ve wanted to do with my life since I was a hatchling that I could still achieve.
I could ask the professors about it, I guess, but I already look like an ignorant idiot to Tolfdir I’m sure. He seems nice enough, but after that Thalmor brat and I fought in class and the fetcher nearly set him on fire, I don’t know if he would help me. I don’t want to talk to Colette any more than I have to. Or maybe I could ask…
Maybe not. I don’t know if he’s still irritable with me, and I still want to ask him about that crystal he used. Damn it.
—-
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[It’s less of an entry initially, having two groups of tally marks with a line dividing them, then short words and phrases, too smeared and scratched to make out, still with a line between them, then a short…’entry’?]
Start over. Forget and start over. Thalmor are never safe. No matter how ‘nice’.
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4E 201, Skyrim
I still can’t sleep in my quarters here. I know that it should be safe, so long as no one snoops around in my room, but I still can’t keep my eyes closed for long. I know that bringing my sword with me was a risk, but what could else could I do? I had been given this blade for a reason, and it’s all I have left of the days when everything still made sense, least for a little while. A smarter person would’ve hurled it into the ocean and fled, but every time I tried, I lost my nerve. Martin had given me this blade himself, and it would disrespect his memory, his friendship, and his trust to just throw it away.
I know that a lot of Blades hid their swords, some even cast them aside like the burdens they are after the Great War ended. The Elder Council had thought that the Blades were but dogs loyal to the Empire, and maybe some were, even back then. But others were only loyal to the Dragonblooded Septims. I was loyal to Uriel VII and his son, Martin. The first was by deed, even with its implications, and the second by friendship. The Blades were divided, at least until the stirrings of danger from the pieces of the Empire arose, the Thalmor crawling from the crumbling fragments of what had once been the Summerset Isles.
I wonder if those two Thalmor even know what happened back in those days. I’m sure the elder mer knows. Ancano…who knows? I tried to see it from both sides, like Sees had taught me, but Sees themself had also said that sometimes, there was only one side worth reasoning with. Hardly anything is clear-cut, black and white laying side by side, but rather, it’s smeared into varying shades of grey that continually shifts and mixes.
When the Thalmor started hunting us down, they didn’t care whether or not we believed in Talos, they killed us all if they could. It wasn’t until later I suspected that they did so because they saw the Blades as a threat, and sought to take us down. They didn’t distinguish, so eventually, neither did I. And now…I still wonder if I’m doing the right thing.
Sometimes I wish I had been born normal. Just a normal, regular person. My worries wouldn’t cross over centuries and maybe I would’ve never gotten mixed up in all of these messes… I just…I want to start over. Clean slate. But even if I threw my sword into the Sea of Ghosts, it wouldn’t change anything. Even if I just chose to keep out of it…it’s too late for me. I’m too entangled in it by now.
I’ve defaulted to hating the Thalmor, killing them if they became a threat, avoiding the Empire and Stormcloaks alike. I don’t know what’s right or wrong anymore. All I know is survival and protecting those who can’t protect themselves.
But even the lines for that have smeared.
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3E 427, Morrowind
It’s been…I don’t even know how long it’s been. Too long, too late. I’m so cold, so, so cold and I can’t get warm even sitting right next to a foyada. I’m so scared and I don’t know what to do. I had been hiding out in a Dwemer ruin, waiting out the ashstorm so I could find my brother again, and…and then they came, so fast, so strong, so fierce and terrifying…
I had been kept in a cage with the others. Living people, but…their eyes looked so dead, like… It was like being in the slave market at Tel Aruhn all over again, except we were hardly ever fed, and we were beaten if we didn’t submit to…
It makes me feel sick remembering it. The bites on my neck and shoulder still haven’t healed yet, and I’m so thirsty and scared and even more scared that I don’t feel hungry anymore, just so thirsty. I can’t even cry anymore, and I’m shaking and cold and just so scared, I don’t know what to do or where to go. I know I’ll have to find a cave or something come sunrise, but…
My hands are shaking so much, I can hardly write. I’m terrified to do anything. If I went to the Temple, I could be killed. If I went back to those… I’ll never go back. I can’t. Clan Berne, that’s all I know about them, but they said after the attack that if I turned, they would kill me. I can’t get help anywhere. I need someone to help, but I’m afraid that if I get too close to anyone, I’ll kill them and drain them dry and I won’t be able to stop it.
If anyone finds this, I won’t blame you for killing me. But if you know of how to cure me… I would be forever grateful for your help. Please help me.
vvardenfellcat 