To the Bitter End: A Story of the Snow Elves
Credits: Bethesda owns it all; I own nothing except my OC's.
This story attempts to explain some of what might have happened to the Snow Elves during the 4,000 years between the Battle of Moesring and the beginning of Skyrim. This is only one point of view on what happened to the survivors. While others have chosen to explain what happened to the "Betrayed" I am exploring what happened to the one's that chose to flee and hide rather than accept slavery. Celenthry is my Bosmeri Dragonborn in game. She is really a Snow Elf and being Bosmer is just her cover story for what she is really doing in Skyrim.
Chapter One: The End
It was over and we knew it was over. Our prince had fallen and our armies had failed. The Snow Prince Altenal's widow Celenthry stood in front of us, tears pouring down her face as she wept for the husband she could not bury. The only debate was over what we would do next. Would we continue to flee until we were pushed to the very borders of Tamriel itself? Would we continue to fight until the last of us died? Would we seek shelter in our ancient abandoned strongholds and temples? Alternatively, would we accept the offer of the Dwemer to exchange our lives for our eyesight and our freedom?
These decisions would shape the future of our people. While many including Calcelmo, Altmer Mage and Court Wizard of Markarth have written of the fate of those that chose blindness and slavery, few have explored the stories of the other survivors. This is our story, the story of those of us that chose to hide in our ancient cities, temples and strongholds, waiting for the day when our people would be renewed.
Some wished for the safest option and sought shelter with the Dwemer. The toxin they were fed robbed them of their eyesight. The males and females separated and, enslaved. Males were condemned to working in the mines for the Dwemer, mining the ore for their dreaded animonunculi from the ground 20 hours per day. The women were forced to become concubines to wealthy male Dwemer. They were raped, tortured, and forced to bear children for their slave masters. The Dwemer did not care that some of the women were elders, and others were married. The children were killed as they were of no use as either mine slaves or concubines.
The genocide of the Snow Elves that began with the Nords after the elves killed 250 Nedic settlers at Saarthal over the Eye of Magnus, ended with the Dwemer who oppressed tortured and enslaved them. Eventually they would become twisted deformed monsters who hated the world they could no longer see. They would attempt to rebel against the Dwemer only to find that the Dwemer had been tinkering with things that ought not to be tinkered with and had disappeared (other than one sick crazed Dwemer in a corprusarium in Morrowind). A shadow of their former selves they would overrun the caves and abandoned Dwemer, Ayleid, and Falmer ruins of Tamriel. They would become known as Falmer, except by the survivors who did not go into slavery who would call them the Betrayed.
Some continued to fight the humans being driven further and further from their native lands in Skyrim until they were forced to merge with the Chimer, Altmer, and Bosmer populations of the Summerset Islands, Valenwood and Morrowind. Many were slaughtered and those that remained were no longer considered pure Snow Elves. They merged with the other Mer and human populations and that was their price for survival. This group went down in the legends of their people as the Refugees who would never return home to their ancestral lands. They would intermarry and integrate with every other race on Tamriel and not even remnants of their historic cultural traditions would be remembered by their descendents.
We are the ones that chose to flee. We fled to our ancient cities, abandoned long ago. We fled to the temples of our Creator and chief God, Auri-el, he whom the human races call Akatosh, Lord of the Dragons. We fled to caves and secret grottos. Eventually, some of the Betrayed who managed to flee the Dwemer shortly after being blinded and enslaved would join us in the secret places. We would survive but we were a broken society. Our leaders were dead, our families broken apart, our public institutions destroyed, and our armies depleted. All we had when we fled was a sad princess in black mourning a husband that she was never allowed to bury.
We did the only thing we could do. We rebuilt our lives piece by piece. However, we never stopped weeping for what we had lost. Celenthry was stronger than any had given her credit for and she proved to be a wise and courageous leader. Soon after giving birth to the only child she and Altenal would ever have, she was up and involved in healing the Betrayed who had escaped slavery, and leading our people to rebuild our temples, schools, economy, and armies. She fought for our survival in the years of our exile, all while mourning her dead husband, and struggling to raise her son, Devenry alone.
We fought against incursions by the Betrayed. They were violent but it seemed as if they remembered "something" about what they had once been. Otherwise, why would they appear to be deliberately seeking out Snow Elf settlements throughout Tamriel? Our mages began seeking a way to communicate with them, and in the meantime our Paladins and mages did the best, they could to protect the populace. This brings us to the year 4E 201 when our Princess Celenthry set out on a journey to Skyrim.
Why Skyrim when it was the place where our great culture had died out, where so much of our blood was spilled? Celenthry was traveling to our old strongholds and temples to see if any had survived the repeated onslaughts of the Betrayed, attacks by the human populations and other disasters that could have occurred in the 4,000 years since our downfall. Little did we know that Celenthry was embarking on an adventure that would make her not only the hero of the Snow Elves (which she already was) but also, the hero of all the races of men and Mer on Tamriel.
We knew of course of the Dragons, the older children of Auri-el and how Auri-els eldest son had rebelled against his father's teachings and sought dominance and power over the other races but, we had never been part of their religious cult. We knew of the powerful humans and Mer that could speak the language of the Dragons.
We knew that they fought against the Dragons and we knew that every race on Tamriel had those gifted with the voice amongst them. What we did not know is the Celenthry was descended of one such individual. As she mounted her horse to cross the border into Tamriel, we felt that change was coming. We just did not know that the machinery of Time was turning and that our people would be freed of 4,000 years of hiding and oppression by her actions.
Cerevinial, Archivist of the City of Gilded Glass
4E201, First of Frostfall