Hey guys! I'm writing this as I play it out in-game, so feel free to comment suggestions and obscure spots to visit. They may show up in future chapters. I rated this M because of some themes later- we all know how Molag Bal makes vampires...
To discourage any unneeded confusion, I would like to clarify that I am a vampire. It's a perfectly normal presumption to make of a well versed author, they can write, and eloquently too, so they must be a mortal unfettered by bloodlust and savagery. I was once a beast quite like that, but over the years, I have learned to control my urges. You may have even heard of me, if you are a fan of Porbert Lyttumly's work. But no matter, this is not a story of my past, this is a story of my future, of a journey yet unborn.
I suppose a small amount of backstory would not be amiss…
I was imprisoned long ago, when a group of rather unpleasant men caught me and sold me to another very unpleasant man. His name is not important. He took me to the city of Bruma and locked me in a room with silver walls and a strange retractable ceiling. This was about thirty years after Bruma had been built. I stayed there for a long while, used as a way to force unfortunately ungifted lock picking students to either unlock their talents and escape the room, forgive my wordplay, or to dispose of the undesirables. I admit, I was not yet a mature, controlled being. They left me in that damned room for long years between students, and I did not have the willpower to stay myself. I regret their deaths, and I will always be burdened with their faces and pleading words…
Eventually, the institution seemed to become famous for its thief-craft, and I had companions as often as thrice a week. I started to learn to control the uncontrollable, to silence the burning hunger vampires have harbored since Molag Bal cursed us. I expect my mastery of myself is connected to my origin, for I am no piss-blooded thrall. But all this is just for your understanding, I was in that room until the Fourth Era reared its mundane head. It was no different from any other era, I was still locked in that detestable prison.
I slept in a wooden box, something that kept the slivers of sunlight away from my starving skin. I have a resistance to the energy of the sun, but only when I have fed. It was daytime, so I was in a kind of trance, waiting for the cool embrace of night to stretch out my legs. A girl was thrown into my lair, and I watched as she chose a spot to sit far opposite me. The day dragged on, sun winking and smirking until finally dropping below the walls of the room. Quite lonely, but knowing full well the girl would not appreciate my approach, I simply slid out and sat down on top of the box.
"Hello," she said hesitantly.
"Hello," I replied, a bit nervous myself. I have always battled a certain social awkwardness unbefitting to an ancient creature of the night.
"You're not the deadly creature I was expecting," she said.
I paused and looked at her. She was scared, but determined not to show it. Her light blue eyes stood out bravely against her dusky skin. "What am I supposed to be," I asked.
"I was expecting something a little more… ancient looking. I don't know, maybe wrinkled flesh, sunken eyes, long fingernails?" she laughed shortly, then looked up nervously to gauge my reaction.
"Sorry to disappoint," I said.
Suffice to say, that encounter and many more after is why an ancient and powerful vampire is now traveling to Skyrim to find a frail, yet strangely impressive, human girl. We had escaped together, and yet I lost her to slave traders that trolled the city streets for victims. The men who attacked me were not so lucky, and while I took the time to disable the fools without killing them, the others escaped with my friend in tow. I tracked them to a stinking skeever-den of a hideout, and convinced their leader to spill everything he knew about where she would be. On the way out, he got the bright idea to order his cronies to attack. I was not as kind as I had been on the streets.
So here I am, riding along the Silver Road to Skyrim. There was a stables near the eastern gate of the city, and I was able to buy a beautiful blue roan paint stallion with the gold I looted from the slavers. Horses generally do not appreciate me, but he is no coward, and seems to tolerate my presence atop his back. I hope the creature's generosity lasts.
As we approached the border, a group of imperial soldiers swept out of the mountains on shaggy brown beasts nowhere near as powerful as my steed. They were swaddled in fur up to their eyeballs, yet the imperial brooches pinned to their cloaks flashed and demanded the world acknowledge their presence. I was barely wearing a cloak and yet, being a vampire, did not feel what must have been bone chilling cold. I would have escaped through the pass, but a stray arrow lodged in my beast's shoulder and he fell. Flying through the air, I plowed a trough into the snowy gravel and hit my head on some malicious rocks. Everything became fuzzy.
