The characters Feast-on-Flesh and Valfar aren´t my own creation but that of DnkProductions and Omesean respectively on the Nexus. Whatever else you recognize also doesn´t belong to me and a lot of things you probably won´t recognize also don´t belong to me.
Season Unending: Kings of the Arena
"Chapter 1": Unknown Shores
Begin of holographic-water audio-visual-save, Biography entry number fourteen:
Once again, the following account is based on my research made in the halls of stories underneath Windhelm.
3E202: Ulfric Stormcloak was crowned High King by the Dragons in the ancient city of Bromjunaar with a Greybeard, the Jarls, Thanes and countless people as witnesses. Afterwards Skyrim undergoes several heavy reforms; several new holds are formed to better defend the kingdoms borders, by putting great pressure on the outlaw mercenaries, which dabble in banditry when unemployed, he forces them to flee the country or conscript with his army, resulting in Skyrim having a severe decline in banditry and a huge standing military.
(Though many among them were just more or less uniformed ruffians. And still are.)
Which saved Skyrim´s economy from collapse, as he utilizes them for public projects aside from war.
(While the Cyrodiilic scholar Severus Leppidus, argued in his 3E 282 published: "Thesis on the economics of warfare" against the positive aspect of war on a countries economy, Ulfric Stormcloaks total militarization of Skyrim, apart from being the only way to keep the new/old nation from sinking into anarchy, indeed did achieve positive results. The countless Landstriders who had lost their homes and occupations during the civil war raging over Skyrim´s suzerainty after the death, note to myself: be careful to remain neutral in my work on that matter! even nowadays all those glorifying the former empire get all touchy when you don´t call it murder and the Nords get all loud when you do so, of the former High King Torygg, needed to be employed less they all join outlaw organizations to keep their necks beneath water, whose number was rapidly cut down in the years to follow.)
Autumn 3E203: The Nordic Kingdom of Skyrim sends an ultimatum to the Elder Council in White-Gold to recall their legionnaires garrisoned in Northend, the sole fort-port-city on Roscrea far in the north-east of the Sea of Ghosts, north of Morrowind, on the Border of Stillness.
An expected move, as Roscrea was traditionally a fief of Solitude. Following King Thian's alliance by marriage with MacallaQueen of Dawnstar, they had sought to expand their influence further by annexing several former imperial fiefs, such as Roscrea, which had been ruled directly by the Emperor since Uriel V, who conquered it in the 271st year of the 3rd Era after 4 bloody years of war against the native Ros, savage kin to the Nords.
As we all know the Elder Council rejected the ultimatum, or rather never even bothered discussing it, also as expected, as the internal disputes over the imperial succession following Emperor Titus Mede II´s assassination by the Dark Brotherhood in 3E202 eclipsed any concerns they could have had about a few hundred legionnaires and a fief they could not even reach anymore.
That the new High King would want Roscrea to annex did not really come as a surprise to many anyway, nor did it seem to have been a matter of importance to Tamrielic powers as no one really cared for the icy island unreachable from any harbour but those of Skyrim and Morrowind. To Skyrim however it would provide an ideal fall back point should enemies threaten to decimate Skyrim´s people and eliminate an Imperial bastion in their backs. Furthermore the colony would serve as a forewarning system against an eventual invasion from Akavir, Argonia (I don´t believe that his Highness ever had any interest to let his troops get frostbitten tails, but whatever the Hist say), the Empire or the Dominion should they use the eastern sea-route.
The prevention of further winter raids on the northern shores of Morrowind and Solstheim by the Ros ever since the decline of the Empire would furthermore gain the High King the approval of House Redoran as well as of the East Empire Trading Company.
(How by the roots of the Hist could a trading organization connected to the then Emperor by blood-ties still trade with a rebellion leader? I will have to research this more in depth. Did Vittoria Vici perhaps have a grudge against Titus Mede II?)
On Stormcloak´s orders the still living hirth warriors of the defeated Jarls had joined Rahgnarok´s fleet of 300 longships, now manned with roughly 12.000 warriors gathered from across Skyrim. The close cooperation and voluntary mixing of Stormcloak loyalists and Empire loyalists on the ships was planned to create companionship between the former enemies as they would fight and die beside each other in the shield wall and on the ships. And sailing seems to have been a great way to create camaraderie and discipline at the same time since time immemorial in Nord culture. The defeated warriors, part eager to prove their loyalty to the new High King, part still bitter about their losses were a boon and a risk for the expedition at the same time. For while the former Solitude guards had vital info on the island and its defenders there, a risk existed of them changing sides to the Empire once again. On the other hand the other inverse possibility, of them making the Solitude guard contingent on Roscrea join the Nord fleet was also possible. The combined pressure of the famed Stormblades leading the fleet and the superior numbers of the Stormcloak soldiers should diminish that risk. This strategy had already been discussed at the kings-moot in 3E202 in length for various scenarios.
Additionally, this would also be the first major military campaign were Skyrim´s repeat crossbows were used, for while the fleet´s troops were relatively badly equipped, compared to the well rounded equipment of a legionnaire, the supremely-commanding Stormblade as well as Jarl Vignar Grey-Mane of Whiterun, had paid from their own pockets to equip the troops with the new weapon model first presented to the gathered Jarls and the High King by those two at the kings-moot.
However while these pre-war preparations looked like a conventional invasion of Roscrea, Stormblade Valfar Rime-Tongue had been sent as a vanguard to the main fleet months in advance. His orders were to unite the giant-Nord tribes, commonly known as the Ros, on the island. Whose ruddy facial skin matched the dawn and starkly contrasted with their pale hair. Their hulking stature is taller than an Aldmer and as broad as an Orcish warchief. He did so by defeating their chieftains in honorary duels and effectively taking over the island while rousing their spirits with tales of glory on distant battlefields to come.
Finally in the beginning of winter of the same year, a point in time well chosen as m foreign power wanted to wage war on Skyrim´s soil in that season, the main battle fleet leaves the harbours of Solitude, Dawnstar, Windhelm and Solstheim. When Skyrim´s fleet then finally arrives on Roscrea´s shores they did not have to fight a single battle against the Legion, which had fortified the single city of the island previously, Valfar already had subjugated and rallied under him most of the native tribes, who then appeared inland from the fortified Imperial position with the fleet besieging them from the sea. Receiving offers and pleas to surrender themselves from friends and family members in the Nord fleet, the Solitude guards quickly capitulated, seeing the hopeless situation the Imperial commander Tomeo Arrovant followed their example and also laid down his weapons afterwards.
After Roscrea was seized by her fleet, a loyal but freshly recruited ready to be bloodied Stormcloak host is left behind in Roscrea under the command of Stormblade Frorkmar Banner-Torn, former Stormcloak commander of the Pale forces during the civil war, to defend the new hold and subjugate the last remaining independent Ros tribes on the island. The conquest that took Uriel´s Legions 4 bloody years to complete was performed by Valfar Rime-Tongue pretty much in less than a year by himself if one can believe the stone-bound vocal-memories. Stormblade Rahgnarok then gave the new Jarl of Roscrea, Valfar Rime-Tongue, command over most of the combined forces from Skyrim and Roscrea, now roughly 400 longships, the Ros having joined the fleet in their longships made of frostwood, which does not grow weak even in extreme cold temperatures or after being dumped in water, their ships are thus famed for being able to work as ice breakers, for no matter how many pieces of ice hit the ship would survive, to launch the assault on Cathnoquey, which seems to have been a target since the beginning. It appears as if handing overall command to Jarl Valfar Rime-Tongue seems to have been a necessary step to ensure the loyalty of the Ros, who would not have taken kindly to taking orders from a to them unknown warrior, even if their own Jarl told them to do so.
In the meantime, based on information gained from the Ros Stormblade Rahgnarok led an expedition into the north, with the goal to locate and establish an outpost on Atmora. It is known that upon reaching the outer ice-shelf she send most of her escort ships back to Roscrea and Valfar Rime-Tongue. Her personal ship however continued on, now airborn due to her own magiks and alchemy so as to pass over the ice shelf. Of her actions in Atmora, or if she even found the legendary continent no official recordings exist.
(And if I don´t get to meet some contemporary of her I will never know. Perhaps I should hire a necromancer´s skills?)
Without any clever schemes for the conquest, or rather liberation in hindsight, of the Cathnoquey archipelago, Jarl Valfar Rime-Tongue first send out some scouting ships to the east of Morrowind far in the Pandomaic Ocean and then used the cover of the night to establish a beachhead on a outlying island. From there he delivered the Imperial forces an ultimatum to surrender themselves and their fortifications to his warriors.
The local military commander was at first confident that the foreign climate, nature and so on would take their toll on the Nord hosts and thus rejected the offer. Valfar Rime-Tongue however realised the dangers as well and thus reacted quickly before these disadvantages could endanger his army. He then quickly gathered an adequate force to take the nearest fortification of the empire and then continued to shout one Imperial stronghold open after another with the Quey mostly staying out of the fight as they held no love for either group after the cruelties the Empire committed against them after Uriel V conquered them in 276 after several short and brutal campaigns within a fortnight. For some reason they however did still supply both sides of the conflict with food and other raw materials.
(Well, all of Nirn knows the Quey are strange beings.)
Without any reinforcements coming either from Yneslea or Tamriel itself, the local Legion officers quickly decided to cut their losses and take their chance with escaping to Yneslea. Apparently the Nord captains had accounted for that possibility and had laid ships in ambush for an escape, yet severely underestimated the naval combat capabilities and experience of the Imperial war galleys, trireme and dromons and their crews. Due to these factors several ships could escape the patrol ships, with quite a bit of dead among Skyrim´s warriors moved down by ballista, the military governor Decimus Scipio among them, and make their way to Yneslea to reinforce the troops there, who had already been warned by carrier pigeons.
High King Ulfric´s motivations for the conquest of Cathnoquey seems to have been securing the lucrative trade with tibrol-based wasabi produced on the archipelago, a spice which grows on a trickle of shoals and small islets and is liked a lot by the Nords, so lucrative in fact as skooma is to the nations of Morrowind, Argonia and the former Elsweyr. With the added benefit of actually being legal. He feared that the Empire would deprive Skyrim of the product or charge them exorbitant payments thus further damaging their economy. Other reasons was the unique ability of the archipelago itself and to cut off the Empire from its Pandomaic Ocean colonies, Cathnoquey being a colony formally reorganized under the terms of the Veto of Charter and Decree of New Lordships [3E307], was pretty much kept only because of the wasabi growing there I must add, and thus further securing Skyrim´s occupation of Roscrea.
Jarl Valfar Rime-Tongue immediately set sail to pursue the fleeing Imperials, leaving diplomatic matters on Cathnoquey with Stormblade Arrald Frozen-Heart, former commander of the Hjaalmarch Stormcloak forces, and some not specified diplomats and stewards accompanying the fleet for such an occasion. When they reached the purposely location of the twin islands of Yne and Slea, which were conquered in 3E 279 by Uriel V before undergoing civil unrest, they found exactly nothing and nobody. Not having properly resupplied on Cathnoquey, the fleet had no choice but to return to friendly harbours. From the records kept by the Imperials on Cathnoquey we can gleam that Yne and Slea are islands on an unique time stream. This is the reason for the occasional vanishing of the twin ilses. Luckily for the fleet, a time table of Yne and Slea´s appearance and disappearance was kept on Cathnoquey and thus they knew when the islands would appear again.
While the fleet impatiently waited on the Yneslean lanes shifting back into the right time phase, Stormblade Rahgnarok appeared on the northern horizon. Apparently she arrived with Atmoran warrior hosts, still half frozen, and a newly made flying fortress of ice, named Gramrelraald by her, and stone pulled by dragons and pushed by storm whipped clouds.
(The meaning either forgotten or so obvious to the Nords they did not bother recording it.)
Apparently the ice made fortress had been necessary to escape Atmora in the first place from some antagonistic force there which besieged the position of Stormblade Rahgnarok´s expedition, so she just took to the air, and was not made with much of an intent aside from travelling and rejoining the Nord fleet. The implications that this first aerial fortress would have on global warfare and how the warriors of Skyrim would make use of the discovered technology were still unknown even to most of those knowing of the fortress itself. Soon the College of Winterhold, having learned of the technology via airpojection crafted sub-limnal communication, would sell the kingdom of Skyrim several of such fortresses to guard their northern coast. Though the size of these second generation fortresses was lessened, their abilities and battle qualities were increased and that generation remains in use until this day.
While certainly impressive both in size and battle strength, it could not land in the seas surrounding Cathnoquey as its maintenance personal feared the ice to melt in the tropically warm waters.
(I should add that the Nords seemed to suffer quite a bit under the climate, especially the Ros)
Thus it is recorded that Stormblade Rahgnarok descended on the archipelago on a dragons back, a honour normally reserved for the Last Dragonborn of myth, and the Quey and Ros were awed at the sight, in equal measures of fear and respect.
Jarl Valfar Rime-Tongue was send back, his ship hulls filled with plunder, political Quey hostages headed for Windhelm and a medium contingent of Nords and Ros to Roscrea, so as to spread the tale of their exploits and secure his holdings in the north. He managed the week long voyage without incident. The returning warriors spread their tales of triumphs on distant shores to the people of Roscrea and Skyrim and Skyrim´s citizen were caught in a wave of euphoria.
Having finally set their sights on Yneslean lanes as they shifted into the current time, the fleet made the voyage in record time due to favourable winds made by Ros throats chanting themselves dry, only to have to face the fact that the Imperials had packed and run, deserting their fortifications and harbours. They anchored in the shallow waters around Yne, fearing an ambush by the Imperial navy, but upon nightfall the native Moche revealed themselves to them for discussion.
Proving to hold little of interest to the Nords, except for the mages and Stormblade Rahgnarok, as they were very interested in the Moche sound based magic arts the Nord fleet left the desert and rock twin islands as fast as possible, rationing their supplies so that they would not have to return to Cathnoquey before going to and having conquered their last goal sitting in the middle of the Pandomaic Ocean, Esroniet, conquered when Prince Bashomon surrendered his entire kingdom to the Septim Empire of Uriel V after a war in the years 282 and 284 pretty much bled his people dry, was the last island nation before the mysterious Akavir.
The week long voyage went by without notable incident, also due to the weather magics of Stormblade Rahgnarok the Ros and the Atmoran Nords, but none of the strange phenomenon caused by the meteorological matrices of Akavir were witnessed. Finally the island of Esroniet emerged before the keels of the invasion fleet, now roughly 2200 nautical miles from the eastern coast of Tamriel.
Stormblade Rahgnarok apparently feared that the Empire´s dromon, trireme, quatreme, quintreme and war galleys would take a huge toll on her own longships.
(Which simply were more for sailing and amphibious warfare than naval battles unlike the Imperial fleet)
Thus, using the same technology she used to make her expedition ship airborne, she created the first flying fleet of the 3E. Though at that time of the expedition it had not been planned to use the technology invented by the College of Winterhold so soon on a whole fleet, still roughly a third of her longships were thus converted into aerial bomb dropping and archery ships. But even such a tactical advantage together with a host of near invincible dragons was deemed insufficient when confronted with whole squadrons of warships, which did not even stray far from the coastal defence outposts, opting for a defensive battle strategem, armed with scorpions, siege towers, ballista and catapults. For while Skyrim´s fleet did not lack in warriors nor ships, the few ships and crew send back together with Jarl Valfar Rime-Tongue hardly mattered nor the warriors left behind on Cathnoquey, what they did! lack in comparison to the Imperials were long ranged ship against ship weaponry. For while they did have some ship to ship weapons installed on the longships, their number simply could not compare to that of the Imperials. Furthermore the waters around Esroniet were, rightfully, also deemed a danger and thus any large scale manoeuvres to try and break up the Imperial fleet´s formations had to be discarded.
The strategy born between the Stormblades Rahgnarok and Yrsarald Thrice-Pierced, former commander of the Eastmarch Stormcloak forces, could simply be described as mad waste of resources or unusual scheme to preserve the lives of their own warriors. In 3E 207 the airborn fortress of Gramrelraald was dropped from high above in the skies on the gathered Imperial fleet, which had been lured together there by quick raids. This move would completely shattered the moral and cohesion of the Ruby Fleet, not to mention destroyed most of the ocean side buildings on the east of Esroniet, which were washed away in the resulting tidal wave together with the ships that had survived the initial drop, the military governors Gaius Crassius, Decimus Scipio and Accursius Selen within them. The Nord fleet suffered no real casualties from the strategy only due to the massive use of magic to hold back the tidal wave by freezing it or bypass it altogether, though it left their mages depleted and overtaxed for weeks. The Atmoran host which had formerly occupied the fortress had been stealthily flown down over the course of days by dragon transportation and taken over military compounds in the center of the island. The remaining scattered Imperial forces were then assaulted one after another and the island officially fell before Stormblade Rahgnarok´s fleet not two weeks after they had left Yneslea. However, several pockets of resistance still existed throughout the large island because differently from Roscrea, Skyrim simply lacked the full backing of the native population, differently from Cathnoquey and Yneslea the Legionnaires did not desert their positions to rally their forces either. The situation for the Imperial forces however was bleak, though they had contacted White-Gold through battlemages, no reinforcements would be coming to their aid and the chance that Cyrodiil could diplomatically force High King Ulfric to recall his fleet was nearly nil. As long as no political upheavals back in Skyrim would forc the fleet to return, the legionnaires were bound to lose their lives in the coming weeks or would have to surrender.
What further aggravated the position of the legionnaires was that High King Ulfric Stormcloak, advised by Stormblade Rahgnarok and his court, decided that neither Cathnoquey, Yneslea nor Esroniet could be held by Skyrim´s military without bringing the military and economical situation of Skyrim and Roscrea into jeopardy. The vast distances between the three island nations and Skyrim made it impossible to hold them in the kingdom. Especially as Yneslea was sometimes in other time lines and Esroniet suffered under violent monsoons in the winter storm season, a climate which drifted to them from Akavir every decade or so. Nor if the Argonians or Dunmer decided to raise a fleet and conquer Cathnoquey. The invasion had already served its purpose of destroying any possible footholds the Empire had in Skyrim´s back, the eastern sea route was already secured with the conquest of Roscrea unless the Dunmeri suddenly decided to attack them via the sea. Thus while Roscrea was truly integrated into the Nordic kingdom, Cathnoquey, Yneslea and Esroniet became only vassal states to Skyrim and regained their independence after centuries of imperial occupation, even though the initial plan was to annex Cathnoquey as well and only leave the other two autonomous. Stormblade Rahgnarok however, perhaps to sweeten the deal for her High King back home, managed to bring the newly born nations of Cathnoquey, Yneslea and Esroniet to pay Skyrim yearly tribute from then on.
(Her turning up in a flying fortress and effectively squashing a whole armada in a single attack probably helped.)
Their newly found independence lit a fire in the Esri, and suddenly the legionnaires found themselves hunted by the natives, rendering their previous advantage of knowing the land void.
This arrangement, with Skyrim pretty much having a monopoly on trade with the three islands of the Pandomaic Ocean, saved Skyrim´s economy, after the kingdom´s treasury was nearly emptied for the naval expedition. For while the troops had not drained too much from the economy and treasury due to many of them being former outlaws, the gathered resources and ship building did. Ransoming the captured legionnaires back to the crumbling Empire in fact worked, as the Elder Council no doubt wanted to gain intel on Skyrim´s conquest from them, but the ransom money paid to Skyrim was inconsequential in the face of the expenditures. I can only speculate that if the conquest of Roscrea would not have happened so cleanly that the expedition would have been ordered to sack Cathnoquey and finance itself out of the plunder. Similar fates could have befallen Esroniet and Yneslea, a possible debacle could have followed should either island had the power to withstand the Nord incursion. That the three island nations were liberated instead of turned into spoils of war was probably due to the initially weak resistance of the legionnaires guarding the former Imperial fiefs.
After having established themselves as allies to the island nations the major part of the Nord fleet returned to Skyrim laden with the riches of the tributes given and plunder from Imperial sources under the leadership of Stormblade Yrsarald Thrice-Pierced to northern waters, hunting down marauders and establishing outposts in the far north in the Sea of Ghosts, their purpose unknown to most at the time.
Another part of the fleet was transformed into a true aerial fleet on the orders of the High King, this new class of war-tools were patrolling the mountain ranges of Skyrim using the tactical advantage that flying granted them to more easily survey the hardly accessible regions. The dragons took offense at that, it is also recorded that several trigger happy captains had the notion to have found an easy way to fame by slaying a dragons from their new ships, so a few hostilities broke out until Ulfric ordered them back or to move around only in larger numbers and not to aggravate the mighty beings, nor to hunt the legendary snowwhales, as either was a waste of manpower. Instead the Archmage and Stormblade Rahgnarok donated the plans for aerial defence platforms for the defence of cities and wide range recognisance work. Those platforms were attached to the underneath of hot air balloons magically fuelled and connected to the land´s surface by leather-pipes hiding string ladders within them. Supplies were transported up via a system of pulleys. This new platform should be able to defend cities and other military installations from aerial attacks. The system however was in fact so easy to reproduce that the other nations also quickly adapted it.
The dragons having accompanied the Nord fleet from Atmora either returned to the frozen continent or settled somewhere in the Nordic Kingdom, their fate and names remain largely unknown.
(Though I suspect the hall of stories in Bromjunaar holds a detailed account of them.)
Curiously, Stormblade Rahgnarok remained with a small fleet of 20 longships or so, filled with more Nord, Ros and Atmoran voluntaries than advisable on such ships, moored in Esroniet´s harbours. Their goal turned out to be the legendary Akavir.
End of holographic-water audio-visual-save of Biografy entry 14.
Recorder: Feast-on-Flesh
The holographic-water will be packaged in a sealed standard handle with care item packaging for fRahgnarokile contents after being frozen for transport by Horsa Cruel-Sea.
Designation: Stormhold delivery-office, Kindgom of Argonia.
Code: 00716839
Begin of holographic-water audio-visual-save of Biography entry 15.
The following account is based on research made in the halls of stories underneath Windhelm as well as many other sources I am too tired to recall here ... oh, Jarl Serana Volkihar of Northshore also contributed.
(I need some skooma!)
...
Immediately after the raspy voice stopped to be recorded did the green scaled Argonian busy himself with the stone shelfs again. He was searching, searching after the ancient tomes containing the stone-boung memories of the Nord fleets first encounter with the Ironborn, and how great wars were waged acros the eastern continents. All for the glory and honour of the Nords, for Skyrim.