Doomed Prayers
Cinders of sky fall upon us in this day. Nothing new, not for the gods of this realm. Terrible hours for our bodies, yet safe for our souls.
Suffering is the key to our world; in the Isles, sadness is the voice of the wind, and our misery is the intense flow of tears that rains down on the ocean. But to accept it from him – from another king, just come to impose his law – we cannot learn.
We know madness and murder. We don't remember war. We want to be at peace, lost and afraid, all closed alone in our thousands of minds.
We die in handfuls on our beloved ground. We are slashed by knights who will never forgive us, sinking their swords in the core of what we are.
We see them advance, forged in sharp lines, shaped and polished by the noblest rules. Our reflection is slaughtered on their bright armour. How do they ignore, then, what mercy is?
They were made in ancient times, in the eternal project of a crystalline mind. He, whose intelligence has the purity of water and the light of morning winds. Nothing is farther from our essence than Him – yet we have colours, and we feel our hearts.
How can they find the treasures of our Lord? They never will – our blood will tell for us,to the thunderstorm raging in his soul. In Sheogorath we believe and trust, for our Lord would never abandon us.
Even though we always forget, it is written in our destinies. When the Greymarch rages, death lets us know again – no matter what happens, our souls always came back afterwards. They always will.
This is how our Lord loves us. And we can't help it anyway – time after time, through the millennia, we are returned to ourselves. That is the fair price he pays us for our folly. All of our wishes, none of our memories.
From here, all we can do is watch our brothers die. The ones who still live do not know yet, and come to us in a worse misery.
Their beings are drained away with their blood, just as the colours of the Isles fade to grey. What the purpose of this may be, we do not know, as long as we still breathe our life and our fears.
The dead know your truth, and await your return in patience.
This is a good dimension. It donates wisdom to everyone, even to us, with a new foresight. We stay silent while you pay for your destiny, Lord. You are another, and they are not us. We hope you will remember again.
Not now, though.
For now, we will let you go ahead, mighty Lord Jyggalag. Rule us in chains, watch our cracked skulls; listen to our blood-soaked prayer, in the middle of the devastation you brought along.
Your reign is ill with laws, for it has no imagination. You know nothing of us – nothing of the embrace of eternal anguish, nothing of true awareness, nothing of how artists and madmen shake each other's hands.
Laws, once they are made, must never change their balance. That is just why you will never learn like we do – we, who have the power of changing.
Eternity will find you destroying our realm; eternity will witness our rebirth, endless and invincible as madness is. Hopefully, eternity will bring you back to us, in your true form.
Behold now. The earth is grey, the water burning silver. You have erased life from us; the only colourful shade is blood. But remember, Lord Jyggalag, and do not forget until next time.
Whatever you do, whoever you send against us, we will get our colours back. We and you. One day, sometime – or yesterday already.
I'm done with Shivering Isles. And my feelings... I felt so empty in the end. I felt sorry about everyone - literally everyone - and still was utterly amazed at how Sheogorath's character is complex and well-played all through the game. I mean - I could picture as he was from the very beginning and can say with pride I was right.
He has a wonderful personality, distorted and brilliant in its very own way, and does meaningless, often cruel things; yet he has, and treasures, that thorough part of sanity and responsibility that a well-loved ruler must clearly have. You can read in his eyes the sadness and the pain he feels, being aware he'll have to destroy his own realm.
I described one of the Greymarches from a peculiar POV, that of the dead inhabitants of the Isles. I want to believe that Sheogorath's people always return to him, and forget everything when they are reborn. My Shivering Isles go on living as they are and grow on their own path, with the inevitable changes that devastation brings and that are always slowly forgotten in time. If this is a good hypotesis, well, I leave it to you.
I'll write more about Sheo and his destiny, especially to explain what happened between Oblivion and Skyrim. If you enjoyed, stay tuned!