"But most recently, during the Oblivion Crisis, Ka'Raska requested small numbers of Imperial Legion troops to be moved to cities in Elsweyr, something unheard of since before Elsweyr's rebellion from the Septim Empire. Though the attention was obviously focused on the Daedra during the Oblivion Crisis, the Legion remained during the aftermath to ensure security in badly damaged areas, and later became a counter to the internal forces of insurgency..." - The Elsweyr Conflict Today, "The Battlefield's Shift"
Sun's Dawn 24, 4E2
Storshaven, The Great Forest
We were finally headed out, our late breakfasts of omelets and sausages finished. We were dressed in civilian clothing because this was a secret operation (I in a brown shirt and linens, Soch-Eena in a quilted doublet and black pants, and Jeelen in a black shirt and breeches, and Deechana in unremarkable, blue attire), our feet tapping the stone floor of the dusty halls.
Though I had not slept well last night as there had been a lot on my mind, at a time like this the feelings sleep deprivation brought on hardly seemed to matter. I was, today, heading for Elsweyr.
Jeelen, Deechana, Soch-Eena, and I were all near the back the rough line, throwing out random lines for each other to build off. Soon Soch-Eena and I would separate, but that didn't yet seem to make a difference in how we interacted.
"Glad we're going to Elsweyr in the winter," Jeelen said, "hot as hell the rest of the year!"
I knew that well. The heat was so intense during summer there was literally a threat of fainting on patrol if not well-hydrated.
But would my unit be going to the desert, or the southern jungles? It did not much matter to me, it was the same cause, but I'd originally assumed we were heading for the desert...yet the south was more violent...and the jungles would be a lot better for keeping our base of operations secret.
Only a superior officer would know, though, and none of those were near the back of the group with us.
We turned the corner and began up the steps. Outside would be the wagons. They would take us to our awaiting deep, grandiose adventures.
"Did you guys have to deal with any imps on your way here?" Jeelen asked.
"I had to kill one," I said.
"Guess I got lucky for once," the Nibenean Argonian replied huskily.
About half way up the stairs, it would not be long before we entered our transportation. Soch-Eena and I had shared the entire mission in Black Marsh, but we'd be heading to two very different worlds next, the Argonian left in mundane Cyrodiil while I headed to the surreal Khajiiti homeland. Would there be an ideal time for a good-bye? If there was going to be any special "goodbye" moment, it would have to come soon. I wondered if she...
"Hey Densius," Deechana said, breaking my line of thought. "Have you been getting a lot of highwaymen up north?"
Sergeant Brolus' squad hadn't been patrolling the roads, but from what I remembered there were many.
"There were a lot before I went to Black Marsh, but I'm not sure how bad it is now," I said. We were approaching the top floor, daylight and bird-chirps spilling into the crass stone hall.
"Oh, it's really bad by Leyawiin," replied the Argonian as our feet reached the uppermost level, "my cousin's actually considering moving to Summerset Isle to get away from all the crime here."
Summerset Isle. It was a bit embittering to think of them taking away another one of our people, since the only reason they managed to keep such tight order in their province was-
"This unit will split into its respective groups now," called Colonel Orius, who had now turned to speak to all of us. I refocused on the present. There were covered wagons ahead, more than three, surprisingly, all with varying amounts of equipment. It seemed like some of them already had men inside.
"Long-Tail and Soch-Eena will go to the left-most vehicle." That was it, the split between us. What should I say?
Soch-Eena broke from her place behind me. This was the last time I would see her. I decided to let out a "Bye, Soch-Eena."
She lifted her hand as if in a subtle wave. That was our unceremonious separation.
The wagon Orius was talking about was already occupied by two people, one of which was the Wood Elf Captain. There was also at least one metal vat (identical in design to the ones the Argonian Royal Court had used in the Hist sap experiments) and some boxes. The vats brought back some unpleasant memories, but putting weight on such was childish; they were going to be used for great things.
"Steel-Eyes, Jeelaha, Aruiz, Weetum-Ja, and Geetun will proceed into the wagon right of the one just entered."
They broke out of their respective positions to head for their ride to an alien mission in an alien province.
All the soldiers who were heading to Morrowind or Cyrodiil had now been assigned wagons. Were the remaining four all for Elsweyr? But one looked to have quite a lot stored in it (as well as two occupants already), so maybe it was headed for Morrowind too but not to be boarded by any additional personnel.
"The vehicle farthest to the right is to be occupied by Jeelen, Deechana, Hal-Seeus, Reesaka, and Collects-Rocks."
Jeelen and Deechana left our formation.
At least I'd be able to fight alongside those two in Elsweyr. I got the sense we three were going to become tight-knit as our work in the Khajiiti homeland progressed.
"Fidelis, Sala-Keesh, and Jilheen will proceed to the one to its left."
That was my calling.
This human got out of the formation, Lieutenant Sala-Keesh emerging ahead of me too (though it was strange to think of him as such as we wore civilian clothing). I began heading for the vehicle that would take me to Elsweyr, just like I'd dearly hoped.
The transportation I was to occupy already had the Redguard officer Rizzani, wearing an olive vest, in it, as well as some vats (again identical to the ones the Argonian Royal Court had used) and crates. It would take me to the bizarre yet familiar province, where giant talking cats were ridden like horses and the male nipple was a private part.
From the directions we were walking, Sala-Keesh looked like he was going to sit across from the mustached Redguard, and I next to the Sala.
A strong breeze blew as the Lieutenant began climbing his way in. After that, he squeezed his way through boxes and tanks to get to his spot.
I then climbed in.
There were only two vats in here, but many boxes, as well as some miscellaneous clutter. It would take some effort to find a spot where my feet would have a comfortable amount of room. A place, however, became evident. The area would put some distance between the others and I, but I assumed they would take no offense.
I got there and sat down.
This was where I would sit until the arrival in Elsweyr. Elsweyr: such exciting, inspiring prospects! A clearly righteous fight and chance to shape the drives of the new Era awaited me.
Where were we headed in the country exactly, though? I'd forgotten to inquire. I looked towards Rizzani and asked.
He responded, "Right outside Torval, the deep south."
"Thanks," I replied, also glad I wouldn't be the only one here with a Colovian accent.
A jungle setting wouldn't be anything like the last place in Elsweyr I had been stationed, tactically. It might be more difficult transversing terrain in one, but at least it would have plenty of shade.
Then Colonel Orius shouted, "Drivers, you may proceed with your journey as discussed!" Here came the departure, the start of a ride out of Cyrodiil and back to Elsweyr, the place where my friends' blood has been spilled. It would have different aesthetics and obstacles, but the same cause.
Rather than clapping off all at once, only one set of horse feet could be heard (we must have been ordered to move in single-file).
Then another. So soon after the mission in Argonia, I was again involved in something very empowering, adventurous, and almost childishly self-centric (being only one out of the less than twenty of Cyrodiil's first super-soldier wave); unlike the quest in Black Marsh, however, there was little fear of not coming back. We were staring into a new horizon, a vast unknown with many opportunities for glory and discovery: but, differing from most adventures, there was a chance to help right some serious wrongs too.
Another set of horse feet trotted onward. Would ours be next?
The driver coughed.
And then ours began moving.
That was it. We were heading towards Khajiiti province, just like I had hoped for. Late in the day after tomorrow, we'd likely be in Elsweyr.
I would be much more powerful than last time, able to use the technology this human helped procure. It had all come together perfectly: Elsweyr, arresting Soch-Eena, Black Marsh, the Argonian Royal Court Hist sap project, Elsweyr again as a super-warrior. I had become the heroic opener of Black Marsh, and now I would be the vanguard of a powerful super-soldier project, taking vengeance on the forces of disorder in a the Khajiiti homeland.
As our wooden wheels went down the rough path, I wondered what composed the miscellaneous clutter on the floor I'd only glanced at. I looked down at the items nearest my feet:
There was a small pile of books: recreational reading, it seemed. I decided to look at the titles.
The Guilty was on top.
Moving that, below it was...
The Sinners
Was there a running theme here? I checked the next one:
Dance in Fire
No, that was about some guy going to Valenwood to commission a road or something like that.
3E692
A sadly naive title.
The Art of War Magic
The Art of War Magic. I'd always been interested in that book, but never had had a chance to read it. My life'd become about war magic, after all. What better book could there be for a man like me?
I decided to pick it up.
It's cover was simple, scarlet with gold letters. I opened about a quarter through.
Master Arctus said:
1. The moment to prepare your offense is the moment the enemy becomes vulnerable to attack.
Leros Chael: Knowledge of the enemy mage's mind is of the foremost importance. Once you know his mind, you will know his weaknesses.
Sedd Mar: Master Arctus advised Tiber Septim before the battle of Five Bridges not to commit his reserves until the enemy was victorious. Tiber Septim said, "If the enemy is already victorious, what use committing the reserve?" To which Master Arctus replied, "Only in victory will the enemy be vulnerable to defeat." Tiber Septim went on to rout an enemy army twice the size of his.
2. The enemy's vulnerability may be his strongest point; your weakness may enable you to strike the decisive blow.
Marandro Ur: In the wars between the Nords and the Chimer, the Nord shamans invariably used their mastery of the winds to call down storms before battle to confuse and dismay the Chimer warriors. One day, a clever Chimer sorcerer conjured up an ice demon and commanded him to hide in the rocks near the rear of the Chimer army. When the Nords called down the storms as usual, the Chimer warriors began to waver. But the ice demon rose up as the storm struck, and the Chimer turned in fear from what they believed was a Nord demon and charged into the enemy line, less afraid of the storm than of the demon. The Nords, expecting the Chimer to flee as usual, were caught off guard when the Chimer attacked out of the midst of the storm. The Chimer were victorious that day.
3. When planning a campaign, take account of both the arcane and the mundane. The skillful battlemage ensures that they are in balance; a weight lifted by one hand is heavier than two weights lifted by both hands.
The advice was disappointing, like it had been treasured only because it managed to survive for four-hundred years. It was either infantilely basic and obvious, or would only apply well in very unlikely circumstances. Nothing provided any genius insight I was hoping for. Like many old things, it was overrated. A shame.
With the tome set down I got back to looking.
All Aboard
Initiative
Economenons
Brothers in Blood
The Criminal
Under the last appeared to be some pamphlets. I lifted the book to see their covers...
The first leaflet was a plain white with bold black letters:
Basic Guide to Khajiiti forms for Imperial Military Personnel:
Back in Dune our camp had those pamphlets. I'd had them well enough memorized once, though I might refresh my memory on the breeds later.
Below that was a thicker pamphlet, and the words on it were, in a more stylized font on a blue-green background:
Ahzirr Trajijazaeri
This stood out from the rest of the titles I had read. The language sounded Ta'agran (the Elsweyri tongue). Interesting...and somehow forbidding. I picked it up, wondering what this odd pamphlet could be.
"That's old Renrijra Krin propaganda from back before the Oblivion Crisis," the Captain startled me, apparently seeing my grudging curiosity. No wonder it felt a little forbidding, my intuition was even more useful than I expected.
Know thy enemy. To keep oppositional propaganda with him, the Captain (assuming he had made the decision) said something about his character. I was not sure what, but something.
I looked at it with slight apprehension and slight enticement, wondering whether to open and read it. Enemy propaganda would probably steam and unpleasantly captivate me (even if it was from a time when the war politics were quite different), and this wasn't a great time for that. Perhaps I'd save it for later.
Yet it was still alluring in some way...like much oppositional political writing...
But no, an inexplicable temptation to look at these sorts of works was how my entanglements usually got tied.
I set it down.
With the propaganda back on the floor, I looked up again, now feeling a little self-conscious.
"So, guys think we might actually win this war?" said Jilheen non-chalantly, perhaps triggered by the pamphlet I just laid to rest.
The right side of our wagon went over a bump.
"So long as the people see the Renrijra Krin's ready to knock down our doors in the Trans-Niben if we don't do something, things will work out!" the Captain replied, though no one would expect him to say 'no.'
But didn't such an answer imply the other unpopular war wouldn't succeed? I decided to ask, "But what about Morrowind?"
"That's not our struggle to worry about, Fidelis!" he replied. From a Captain, that seemed like a flaccid confidence, unsettlingly.
Could the Elder Council really get behind a recall again?
The question of why had had so much trouble gaining support for the endeavors in Elsweyr and Morrowind had been on my mind. In both conflicts the enemy could hardly have been more rotten: one supported slavery, the very thing the Alessian rebellion had been fought against, and the other (while originally more sympathizable), would now murder their countrymen for getting the wrong hair-cut.
It was an inquiry I had largely kept to myself. But we in this wagon would probably ask each other nearly everything eventually, so I decide to pose the question:
"Why do you think people are so reluctant to support the wars in Morrowind and Elsweyr, anyway? I mean, casualties were a lot worse in previous conflicts, and we're not even trying to get any more power over anyone." I'd been told foreigners hated paying taxes to fund the Legion and the missions and that they hated having resources extracted from their homeland, but these two wars would enable none of that.
"We had a divine emperor back then, Fidelis," Rizzani said, sounding a hint jaded in that sentence. I'd heard that argument before, but still didn't totally understand it. It was quite expected people would be reticent to have a common-blooded elf running the show, but for it to effect their perception of self-contained issues was a different story. Was I missing part of it?
"But that doesn't make all the things the enemy is fighting for right all of the sudden, so why does that make a difference to them?" I could already feel the topic touching some tender areas in me, though had little idea where it was going.
"A lot of people think good and evil only comes from the gods, Fidelis. Without a divine-blooded man...ordering the attacks on 'evil'...'evil' is just a victim. They see themselves as defending a victim from a victimizer."
That was a pretty powerful, and maybe presumptuous, theory. It did not seem like I could digest it immediately, yet that didn't mean it was a good time to end the conversation.
"But the people the Renrijra Krin murder, the freed slaves that are being recapture, aren't they victims too?" I felt tracely like a child trying to understand something from a grown-up, since it seemed a simple minded question, but my ignorance was genuine.
"I'm not condoning the philosophy, Fidelis," he said, and I knew that, "but to those people...a common man like Ocato declaring and fighting 'evil' is blasphemy, or 'arrogance'...bigotry maybe even..."
It was quite a hypothesis, but it didn't sound like it was from comprehensive observation so much as from personal experience. What kind of people had he associated with?
It seemed like the mood had sunk. If Rizzani was right, that meant grim things for the future...
The driver cleared his throat, probably in his own world.
"Well," the Argonian accented Lieutenant then chimed in, more energetically "it doesn't matter either way. We're not them! We've been assigned to kick tail in Elsweyr and that's what we're going to do!"
Though I liked spirit like that (especially from a native Argonian), he, probably inadvertently, got across that he did not firmly believe the Elder Council would stay supportive of the Morrowind mission. Such attitudes coming from officers sapped hope, energy, and eagerness.
Jilheen probably hadn't meant to start such a heavy (albeit brief) conversation.
Could support for our efforts in Elsweryr die down too if there wasn't another attack on Cyrodiil in a few months?
We went over another rock.
Sala-Keesh cleared his throat.
It seemed the discussion had ended, now.
I looked back at my leather shoed-feet, entering my own world of thought: Would the Elder Council really make the same mistake again in either theater? That didn't seem right. Surely there would need to be a lot more Imperial military and local deaths for them to do so, but...
What Rizzani had said still seemed worth reflecting over:
Anyone who thought like he'd claimed was clearly illogical: they didn't believe in common-blooded people condemning others as 'evil' but were willing to do so with Ocato. Of course, just because a philosophy was illogical didn't mean it was rare: war would not exist if so.
However, if memory served, Empress Katariah (a Dunmer) didn't have divine blood in her, and she didn't have an extremely hard time getting support. Although she might have come under an unusual amount of criticism, she didn't have protesters at her speeches and Diamond and Dragon banners ripped at home during her reign. At least I hadn't heard of anything like that, but I was not a history expert...
Ludovicius Ocato was not under any criticism for going to war with Thras after the Sloadic plot was discovered, though. Did that invalidate Rizzani's theory?
Yet maybe that didn't count as a 'declaration of evil' to them; defending one's self from an immediate threat, such as the Sload, was simply animal instinct.
Could Rizzani's radical idea, which had simply popped up during idle conversation, really have been right? It wasn't often I took someone else's words to heart.
But...whatever the rest of Tamriel's reason, they were still wrong. Our fights were righteous. Elsweyr awaited us, and whether we won or lost would be crucial to the definition of the new Era: one of appeasement and pseudo-nihilism, or one of conviction and heroism. Elsweyr, the place that had done so much to shape me, was waiting for us to shape it, and itself to shape the mind of the rest of the Era.