A Thief's Companion:
The destruction of Mzulfarik
The moons shone with a pallid glow upon the mess of wood and stone that was Riften, home to the Thieves Guild, gleaming across Lake Honrich. Riften had once been a trade centre for the entire province, rivalling Whiterun in it's affluence. And, it's corruption. But those days were long gone. Now, Riften was the plaything of the Black-Briars, and had been for centuries. The city had a troubled past, ever more so now, with the resurgent dragons growing bold with the Last Dragonborn's passing. It had been burnt to the ground on four separate occasions in the last seven years, and only three of the fires were started by the dragons. In recent years, the city had become a jumble of hastily cut stone and bare logs, each time rebuilt from the only thing that survives: the Ratway, an ancient sewer network built in the early days of the city. This was the territory of the Thieves Guild, who had quickly risen to prominence in the city as the Black-Briar's only opposition, by charging the townsfolk for sanctuary from the flames underground. P'riiju was one of the few who had joined in the midst of this crisis, a dark-furred Khajiit standing out from the Nords and Dunmer that comprised Riften. She had come to Skyrim with a trading caravan when she was still a kitten, orphaned when the caravan was attacked by frost trolls amongst the tumbled ruins of Labyrinthian. The only reason she survived was that she was riding in the saddlebags of her mother's horse when it bolted. The horse ran back to their last stop, Whiterun, where a merchant by the name of Ysolda found her lying by the side of the road when the knot holding the bag came undone, and cared for her until the next caravan came. The leader of this caravan, a trader by the name of Ri'saad also cared for P'riiju for a time, until they arrived in Riften, where she was handed over to the Honorhall Orphanage, run by the sadistic Grelod the Kind. P'riiju would often sneak out, learning the arts of pickpocketing and thievery, and then selling the trinkets she stole to her friend Brynjolf in the marketplace. Then, only a month before she was free to leave the orphanage, P'riiju discovered the rumours were true: Aventus Aretino was calling the Dark Brotherhood, which she discovered when Grelod's corpse was found floating into the lake with an arrow in it's heart. After this, she rushed back to the orphanage, now run by a young woman called Constance Michel, collected her meagre pile of belongings, bid farewell to the others, and left to ask Brynjolf for a place in the guild. Now, she is the Guildmaster, and is richer than anyone on Tamriel. This is her story.