AN: This is written in the style of Journal entries; 'Editor's notes' are intended as part of the story, from the person(s) collecting the journals together for a form of publications. I started writing this because Skyrim poked my desire to write something in TES, and frankly, Morrowind was/is my favorite game, and the Nerevarine needs some decent fanfiction out there starring him.
((()))
16 Last Seed, 427, Third Era.
I don't usually dream, unless it's a nightmare, but even so, I was quite glad of it when Jiub shook me awake.
"Stand up, you were dreaming," The scarred Dunmer says in his gravelly voice, "You were dreaming. What's your name?"
He's a bit addled, but he means well.
"Bill Hawker," I say, still a bit hazy from the dream, "My thanks for waking me."
"No worries," He says, "Not even the storm could wake you, once the dream began. I hear we've arrived in Morrowind, I'm sure the guards will let us go-quiet! Here one comes now..."
Like I said, a little addled. We've been cell-mates, effectively, for the entire journey from the Capital, and he's been friendly, but impossibly optimistic, the whole time. Also not good at remembering names.
"Hopefully," I say softly, as the guard approaches, giving Jiub a thankful nod.
"This is where you get off," The guard, an Imperial, says, "Come with me."
Oddly, he's addressing me, not Jiub. Considering where we are, I would have expected the Dunmer to be dropped off here, not myself. Not so strangely, the guard is armored, but carries no blade; these men were briefed on me. I follow him through the underhold and then the main hold of the ship, all the way to the hatch to the deck, where the guard stops and turns to face me.
"Get yourself up on deck," He says, "And let's keep this as civil as possible."
Friendly way of saying 'please don't go on a murder spree.' I resist the urge to either smirk or scowl at him, and ascend to the deck, where unsurprisingly, there's another guard waiting for me, this one a Redguard like myself, wearing heavy armor, and armed. He's probably the ringer they put on the crew to make sure I didn't kill everyone and take the ship for myself. We eye each other up and down, and it's not hard to see that I'm right.
"This is where they want you," He says, "Head down to the dock and the guard there will show you to the Excise office."
I disembark onto the small dock, and sure enough, another Imperial guard is waiting there for me, this one armed, though clearly nowhere near so competent as the Redguard behind me. I glance over my shoulder, and the ringer is watching me warily, though he does not leave the ship. More honor than most blades for hire; unless I'm greatly mistaken, his contract won't extend to covering me once I'm off the boat, but he's still keeping an eye on me
"You've finally arrived," The Imperial says, drawing my attention again, "But our records don't show from where."
"Imperial Capital," I say harshly, turning back to glare him down, "What's it to you?"
"Have to keep the records straight," He says, raising an eyebrow, "With that attitude, you'll fit right in around here. Follow me up to the office and they'll finish your release."
He turns and walks up the dock; I'm almost too shocked to follow. My release? I'd say that obviously, they're unloading me when they should be unloading Jiub, seeing as this is his homeland, and he probably was incarcerated for hugging some poor little girl who he mistook for his niece and scaring the spit out of her, but there is no mistaking me for that man. And they've been ordered to release me, without even knowing where I've come from, much less who I am. There's something fishy going on here.
"Head on in," The guard says when we reach the door, and I realize he doesn't even intend to follow me in.
When I enter, I find a single guard, and an old man serving as a clerk. One guard, carrying a longsword and tower shield; and one defenseless old man. I give them both a second look-over to make sure I'm seeing things clearly. No, that guard, while definitely competent, isn't skilled enough to be dangerous to me, and the man is no mage.
I will never again in my life fail to recognize the signs of a competent mage. These men clearly have no clue who I am, or else there'd be another half-dozen guards here, and they'd be equipped with clubs or axes, not swords.
"Ah yes," The old man says, approaching me without a hint of fear, "We've been expecting you. You'll have to be recorded before we release you. Would you like to fill out the forms yourself, or will you be needing assistance?"
As tactful a way as any of asking if I can read.
"I'm functionally illiterate," I say flatly, "I can sign and recognize my name, but it'll take me half of a damn hour to read those forms, much less fill them out."
"That's a shame," The old man says amiably, "I am Socucius Ergalla, and you are?"
"William Hawker," I say, and force myself to be a little less hostile, considering how friendly he's being, "Pleased to meet you."
"Very good," He says with a smile, "And what is your profession?"
"Warrior," I say evenly, not exactly surprising for a Redguard out of High Rock.
"And what sign were you born under?" He continues.
I freeze at that question. That is not a normal question. Only a sparse fraction, one in a hundred I'm told, are born under a sufficiently precisely aligned sign to gain a boon from the stars. So they were told something about me, just not much.
"The Atronach," I say warily.
"Interesting," He says with only idle curiosity, "Now before I stamp these papers, let's run through that briefly again to make sure this information is correct."
He goes back over what I've told him quickly, and then stamps the papers, and hands them over to me.
"Show these to the captain on your way out," He says, gesturing to the only exit from the room aside from the one I entered by, "It was nice meeting you."
I head out, moving through a small dining room to leave the building, which exits into a small walled courtyard, that has only one other exit. I almost just pass straight through it, but something nudges at the back of my mind, and I turn to look at the barrel beside the door I was about to pass through. I've got a hunch that I should have a look through it, and my hunches have a tendency to pay off. I'm a lucky man, a very lucky man, so I pay attention to my hunches.
I take a look in the barrel, and within, I find a couple of pieces of crockery, and a small engraved ring that's clearly out of place. I take the ring, but leave the crockery. No need to get into trouble over something so worthless. Hunch taken care of, I head into the building to have a chat with 'The Captain.'
Shit. He's wearing Imperial Templar armor. This man is a Knight, and of some rank too.
"Greetings," He says, regarding me sternly, "I am Sellus Gravius, Knight Errant of the Imperial Legions, and commander of the small garrison here in Seyda Neen. I'll need to have a look at your identification papers."
I fork over the papers.
"Thank you," He said as he perused them, "Word of your arrival only reached me yesterday, but I am here to welcome you to Morrowind."
He spends a little bit looking over the papers before looking me in the eye and speaking again.
"I don't know why you were released from prison and shipped here," He says seriously, "And I don't care. The authorization for your transfer and release came directly from Emperor Uriel Septim the Seventh himself, and I don't need to know any more than that. When you leave this office you're free."
My heart nearly stops beating in my chest. By the order of the Emperor himself. Free. I don't know how to handle this.
"Before you go," Gravius presses on, "I have instructions on your duties. Instructions from the Emperor. So pay careful attention."
I nod sharply, shaking off the mental freeze, and focus tightly on the Knight.
"This package came with the news of your arrival," He continues, handing a bound, lightweight package to me, "Take it to Caius Cosades. Go to the city of Balmora, find the South Wall Cornerclub, and ask for him there, they'll know where to find him. I also have a letter for you, and a disbursal to your name."
I accept the letter and small pouch of gold he hands me, before speaking.
"Where is this 'Balmora,'" I ask.
"North," He says, "You can follow the roads out of town, but I'd recommend you take the Silt Strider, it's faster and safer. Not many bandits this far south, but there are some mildly dangerous wild animals, and while you look like you know your way around a fight, you're going to need better equipment than you can afford yet."
I nod sharply. Not because I agree about my chances in a fight, but because I do need equipment.
Even if less than he thinks.
"Thank you," I manage to grind out, though it goes against hard-learned habit to express gratitude,
"I'll be going then."
"Fare well," He says, nodding sharply, "May the Nine Divines watch over you."
I turned and walked out of the Census and Excise offices, a free man.
((()))
Standing in the warm afternoon air of Seyda Neen, my mind and heart roiled with confusion. Released. By the Emperor himself.
I didn't know how to handle that; it shattered one of my fundamental beliefs about life; nobility was inherently evil. The degree of evil might vary, but the evilness itself was not up for question. Literally every single experience I had had with the ruling class up to this point made that abundantly clear.
But now the Emperor himself had released me.
Why?
My mind unclogging just a little, I retrieved the letter Gravius had given me, and pried it open.
"Excuse me," A Bosmer interrupted, "Have you perchance seen an engraved ring?"
I fished the ring out of the pocket I'd stashed it in without thought, and passed it off to him, my own attention still firmly fixed on the letter in my hands. He babbled something happily before trotting off, but I didn't really notice what he'd said.
The letter from the Emperor was extremely brief, and to the point, not surprising considering my near-inability to read, but it still took me a good few minutes to work out what all it said.
Continue to stand for Justice, it said, But also learn discretion and temper your anger with restraint.
It bore no signature, just the Imperial Seal. As in The Imperial Seal, of the Emperor himself.
That, did not help. My hands trembled, and I carefully stowed away the letter as my emotional turmoil rapidly devolved into what it usually did these days, anger. Cold, hard, implacable anger.
I needed a sword in my hand, and something to use it on. Turning my focus outward, rather than inward, again, I surveyed the sleepy town around me, set my sights on the largest visible building (aside from the guard tower) and made my way towards it. It would either have what I needed, or provide a lookout point for me to find what I needed.
Once I reached the primary entrance I saw that Arrille's Tradehouse was painted over the door; almost certainly what I needed. The layout was blessedly simple; directly inside the entrance was a counter, behind which stood an Altmer that was almost certainly Arille; wares of just about every sort spread about him.
"You Arrille?" I asked, keeping a tight reign on my tone of voice as I looked over the weapons and armor he had in stock.
"Yes," The Altmer said, looking me up and down appraisingly, "That would be me. You wouldn't happen to be the Redguard that found Fargoth's Ring, would you?"
Ring? Oh.
"Excitable little Bosmer?" I asked.
Arrille nodded.
"Yeah, that was me," I said, "How much for the Iron Cuirass, Longsword, and Shield?"
"For a friend of Fargoth," Arrille said, "One hundred and ten Septims."
"And just the sword and shield?" I asked.
"Sixty," Arrille said, a hint of surprise in his voice, but I didn't really care.
"I'll take them," I said, counting the gold pieces out from my small money pouch and dropping them on his counter, "Any bandit infestations that need rooting out?"
"Er," Arrille said, "There's a group of smugglers that hole up somewhere north of town, there's a small Imperial Bounty out for them, but..."
"Thank you," I said, hefting the sword and shield, then turned and walked back out.
I needed to go blow off some steam.
((()))
The cave was damn close to town, just on the other side of a small swamp that only took me a few minutes to slog through; the entrance wasn't really even hidden. Either the Imperial Garrison at Seyda Neen was crucially understaffed, or the commander was incompetent, leaving something like this to sit by. Considering the Knight I'd met, my money was on understaffed, not incompetent.
I tried to make my entrance to the cave stealthy, but I've generally focused more on hurting my foes than hiding from them, and the Dunmer in the first chamber of the cave spotted me entering. He rushed me, moving up the rough-hewn ramp that circled the vaguely spherical cave's edge, and I charged down to meet him. He had a dagger. A chitin dagger. I had a steel sword, shield, and more than adequate sword skills, though my time in prison had dulled them slightly.
I slammed into him, shield first, the steel bulwark easily turning aside his dagger, then hacked him open from shoulder to groin while he was off balance, before reversing the blow to finish him with a jab through the face, into the brain pan.
He had attacked me, without bothering to see who I was, or even warning me off, but I still saw no reason to make his death any more painful than it had to be. The noise of our fight attracted the hideout's other inhabitants, and I rushed for the gate separating the rest of the hideout, intending to meet them there. My plan half-worked; one of them came crashing through the gate just before I reached it, slamming the gate into me, and stunning us both.
I'm a big man, and though I took the worst of the impact, I put more force into the gate than he did, slamming it shut again, and buying me a moment to shake off the shock of impact. Just in time to raise my shield against the spell someone on the other side used to blast the gate open; mostly protecting myself, though a few splinters raked my legs.
Roaring as the adrenaline truly hit my veins, in a way that only other Redguards can ever understand, I forced my way through the explosive blast, slamming someone I could not see aside with my shield. Once I was through the doorway itself, I lowered my shield enough to catch sight of the mage, who was directly in front of the doorway, just as I had expected. He was already in the middle of another spell; I cut it off with my sword to his throat; then spun to my left, raising my shield to block as I did so.
The Dunmer I had forced my way past to reach the mage was more skilled than his dead ally that had been guarding the door, and managed to score a slash along my ribs with his shortsword before I finished my turn, and immediately pressed his offensive as I completed my turn to face him. He moved to his left to force me to meet his attack with my own blade, attempting to mitigate the advantage my shield lent me. It was a clever move, but against me, it made no difference.
I blocked his first blow, parried his second, and riposted against his third, taking his sword arm off at the elbow; he threw his head back and screamed, clutching at the wound. I took the opportunity to separate his head from his neck. As his body fell to the floor, I twisted in place, raking my eyes around the cave, searching for other foes. I saw no one, however, and heard only the dying gurgles of the mage whose throat I had slit.
I finished him off, then moved on to search the rest of the cave. It didn't take long to find out that the stiffs had been Skooma smugglers, moving a little Moon Dust on the side; the stuff's harmless enough for Khajiit, but it's hard shit for Men and Mer (I had no idea how it affected Argonians). Unfortunately, that meant that most of their booty wasn't something I was willing to carry; it's illegal everywhere outside of Elswyr, I'm not selling that shit to non-Khajiit, and trying to sell it to Khajiit wasn't worth the trouble of getting caught by the law. They did have a couple of random scrolls and bits and pieces of gold laying around though, the scrolls weren't anything particularly special, but they should fetch enough gold to get me to Balmora. There were some basic provisions floating around as well, so I looted some Saltrice and Kwama Eggs to serve as travel rations.
A more detailed exploration revealed that the place was a damn labyrinth, with half and completely-submerged tunnels running deep underground. One led to a Rat's nest, and no, not the kind that most city-folk deal with, these are the big rats, that are the size of your whole damn torso, and will eat grown men if you're sloppy. I wasn't sloppy, and I chopped up the only one in the nest right smart, before kicking it off into the underground stream I'd been wading through when I found it. The damn thing's nest was filled with bones, some of them human, and all picked clean, as well as some shredded leather armor. Picking through the armor revealed that pretty much everything except the 'pauldrons' (I refuse to recognize anything made out of leather as a pauldron) had been destroyed, as well as some pieces of gold the dead had little use for.
I also found a dead fisherman's skeleton underwater off in the ass end of nowhere in that labyrinth. I have no idea what he was doing down there with a basket and a fishing pole, but a chest nearby had three dozen Septims and a high-quality restorative potion in it, so I counted it as a good find overall. That was also about when I realized that I was probably unhealthily desensitized to seeing dead bodies.
When I explored the (relatively) small upper cavern of the cave, I nearly went into the blood-rage again, in spite of still being somewhat strained from the earlier fight, and seriously considered going back to mutilate the smuggler's corpses.
They weren't just smugglers, they were damn slavers.
I HATE slavers.
I went back to loot the bodies (I have no respect for the dead if they're N'Wah Slavers), searching them until I found a key for the slave pen and shackles, taking their gold and weapons as I did so. There were only three in the pen (though it had space for a lot more) two Argonians and a Khajiit. I can only remember the Argonian's names because I make a damn point of remembering the names of those I've met unfortunate enough to suffer slavery, Okaw and Banalz. Baadargo though, I'll always remember him, because unlike the two Argonians, he'd never resigned himself to life as a slave.
"Who is this, who kills the slavers and frees Baadargo?" He asked, gleaming gray predator's eyes locked on mine.
"I'm Bill Hawker," I said with a nod fishing around in my improvised pack for the three daggers I'd looted from the dead smugglers, before passing them out to the freed slaves.
"You have Badaargo's thanks," The Khajiit said, nodding to me gravely, "Badaargo will not forget you saving his life, and his friends will not either."
"I wish I could offer you more help," I said with a grim nod of my own, "But my friends are all dead, and I've been sent North on a mission from the Emperor himself. I can't take the time to help you get out of Morrowind, but I can do a little."
I gave them the rest of my gold, and helped them drag the smuggler's rowboat out into the swamp before I headed North towards Balmora.
((()))
Editor's Note: Though Lord Nerevar was kind enough to provide us his journal from the very beginning, he did note that these earlier portions were transcribed after he became more proficient with the written word, and as such, some details may be slightly inaccurate. He did insist that he does remember every slave he has encountered since he came to Morrowind in 427 3E, even if other details may have faded with memory's lack of freshness.
When asked, he did mention that he sold the 'loot' he retrieved from Addamasartus at Arille's Tradehouse before he set out for Balmora. He also claimed that the words recorded in the section hereafter reflect his thoughts as best he recalled at the time, stripping out the 'boring' parts. Certain members amongst the priesthood and scribes suspect that he was deliberately withholding his actual thoughts as a matter of principle, given his well-known lack of regard for decorum. The lady Indoril refused to comment when this suspicion was raised in her presence, though she was noted to have smiled.
((()))
17 Last Seed, 427, 3rd Era.
Caius Cosades is probably going to be pissed at me for this, but this woman is going to get herself killed out here if I don't help her. I hope she's got some damn good endurance, because if I'm going to protect her, I'm going to push a hard pace. Glad I didn't pick up any other heavy armor yet.
((()))
Met a second crazy woman on the way to the damn lake. Promised her something, probably stupid, in order to get her off of the damn roads when there are bandits about, especially a comely young woman like her in noblewoman's garb!
((()))
First woman I met was called Nevrasa Dralor; she was a pilgrim headed to some place called Kummu Fields. I met her last night, and she was lost, looking for some place called Lake Amaya, and offered me a hundred and fifty Septims to help her find the place. I agreed, because after I'd already been attacked twice by the wildlife on the road up from Seyda Neen, and considering she was unarmed and unarmored, I was damn sure she'd get herself killed if I didn't. We camped together that night, and I set a hard pace East towards the Lake today; she said it was Northeast of Pelagiad, and I had passed it last night on my way up.
She wasn't very fast, but damn did that woman have endurance; she didn't slow down the entire way, jogging right alongside of me. I'd heard the people of Vvardenfell were hardy, I guess this is my first time seeing it for myself.
Along the way, I found another(!) woman on the side of the road, and I am not making this up, she was too busy sighing over the bandit who had just robbed her to get to somewhere safe! What the hell was a noblewoman doing on the road without escort in the first place? Are all women here in Vvardenfell nuts?
She wanted me to find the damn bandit and give him her glove as a token of affection! I agreed on the condition that she get off the damn road and to someplace safe. You know, where she didn't already know there was bandit activity, and the next one decided to rape her rather than have a friendly chat with her.
Anyways, after that, I pressed on to Amaya with Nevrasa, and her endurance kept it from being too much of a chore to get her to the shrine she was looking for, after which I scarpered back towards Balmora. She did pony up the 150 Septims when we got there, why she didn't spend it on a damn map in the first place, I have no idea.
((()))
Ran into a Cliff Racer on the way past Fort Moonmoth; I can see why we've heard of them all the way out in Hammerfell, they're a bloody menace. I was glad I'd picked up a full-sized shield, otherwise the damn thing's hit-and-run attacks would have done me in, messed me up pretty good as it is, scoring a nasty wound to my side. I'm going to press on to Balmora tonight, I don't trust sleeping in the wild with a fresh would leaking the smell of blood to predators.
((()))
Got to Balmora, went to South Wall Corner Club, got room for the night (more day at this point). Bacola, the owner told me where to find Caius, I'll hunt him up tomorrow.
((()))
Editor's Note: Bacola Closcius was contacted as an external reference, and he confirmed Lord Nerevar's story. Not that the Royal Historians wish to cast aspersions upon his word, but Lord Nerevar himself instituted the policies that require secondary sources being consulted where possible. Readers may wish to keep that in mind when they read the next morning's entry.
((()))