Blood and Silver I

Falrielle opened her mouth to scream, but no sound came from her throat.

The sellsword gasped and fell from somewhere high with a thud. There was blood on her lips. When she tried to spit, she realised she was lying face-down on the floor and everything hurt.

She writhed, remembering the last she saw before everything went dark.

She was hiding under the wain when the first arrows whistled in the air and- No. It couldn't be real, could it? She saw fur-clad savages who gibbered like madmen, dragged her out and pinned her down. They held her head in place to watch as one of them, who wore a headdress of flayed skin and a belt of skulls, tore her chest open like the shell of an oyster. They then reached in to pull out her still beating heart before she finally went out.

Was it a dream? A nightmare?

Yes, there was more. She-they were walking along the Misty Ravine. Falrielle told them not to but they wouldn't listen. 'A shortcut,' they said. 'No need to pay the tolls,' they insisted. 'It'll be safe.'

The sound of Ivar's horn rang hauntingly in her mind.

One by one, they were cut down from where they stood. Carlotta died almost instantly when an arrow buried deep in her eye. Khargol held two of the savages back until a third speared him in the side. They then tore him apart like wild dogs feasting on a still living cat. Falrielle remembered how terribly Talon begged for his life as blood spurted from his stubbed knee. Ivar was one of the last to fall. Before they split his head open, Ivar was killed at least three and even then, his corpse was still swinging his axe. And Faerin…

Faerin was calling out for her name when they gutted him like a fish. He fell to the ground and laid there, unmoving. Watching Faerin die was like staring into a mirror. He was her twin brother, and the Gods be cruel that the last she remembered of him was the smell of him shitting himself in his final moments.

It finally hit her. They were all dead.

And she lived.

Tears trickled down her face as a new pain blossomed – shame. It was little comfort when she told herself that the others who died, died a death worthy of Sovngarde. But she? All she looked forward for was a coward's end.

Falrielle couldn't move her body, not even a finger for the pain was paralysing. She could however move her tongue…

She stuck it between her teeth, feeling her heart beat a little faster. Then, she bit. A pool of blood formed beneath her as she bit harder, fighting the instinct to release. She closed her eyes and saw only Faerin's final moments. His eyes, dull and glassy yet they judged her. Coward, they accused.

A door opened. Then a scream. A pair of thin shoes ran towards her before pulling her off the floor and up to something warm and soft.

'By the Gods,' a voice cried, it belonged to a woman. 'Vigilants! Get in here!'

A pair of boots stomped in.

'Many thanks, Matilda,' the new voice said. This one belonged to a nun, Falrielle guessed. The words were modest and it had a calming quality. Falrielle felt a finger traced along her forehead and the voice whispered a gentle command.

'Sleep.'

Vigilant Stendarrism is a denomination of the Cult of Stendarr founded in Cyrodiil during the Oblivion Crisis of 3E 433. According to folklore, the faith began with Areldur, Warrior Priest of Stendarr (? – 4E 26) received a holy vision while on death's door from wounds he suffered fighting the Daedric Hordes. In his vision, Stendarr himself spoke to Areldur, warning him that the Oblivion Crisis is but a taste of what has yet to truly come. He then instructed Areldur to be his watchmen, his herald, and his keeper of this warning. When Areldur recovered, the Warrior Priest poured many hours into the surviving libraries and archives eventually compiling not only the canonical scriptures such as Stendarr's Light, the Testaments of Stendarr, and the Compassion of All Mortals, but also apocryphal texts like the Meditations of Corbyn and the Song of the Faithful, into the Codex Vigilas, the never finished tome of the faith.

Orthodoxically, Vigilant Stendarrism differs very little from its parent religion, the Cult of Stendarr. Like the Cult of Stendarr, Vigilant Stendarrism accepts the Three Laws, the Four Precepts, the Nine Sacraments, the Universal Brotherhood of All, and the Divine Liturgies, the details of which can be referred to in their respective entries in The Cult of Stendarr. Vigilant Stendarrism however condemn paintings and statues of the Divines, viewing the practice as vain idolatry, reject the veneration of saints, dispute the Omnes Fidea, and hold to the coming of the Second Oblivion Crisis. Thus, it is with the final two disagreements that shape Vigilant Stendarrism's militant orthopraxy doctrines.

Omnes Fideaas ascribed by the Cult of Stendarr affirms that the right of worship as a universal right no matter the faith or deity worshipped, within reason, for all of mortal kind are worthy of the grace of Stendarr. Hence, the Cult of Stendarr promotes Anti-Impetum or nonviolence and thusly condemns religious violence. Vigilant Stendarrism on principle agree with Omnes Fidea as a commandment of Stendarr but also believes in the principle of Praeveni-Impetum or the prevention of violence. Therefore, Vigilant Stendarrites cannot ignore violence or the potentiality of violence being performed against an innocent, and must as demanded by the first of Stendarr's Four Precepts proactively end the danger before it even begins.

As a result of the Oblivion Crisis, Vigilant Stendarrism holds Daedra worshippers as the ones most responsible for the existential threat. While admitting to the contradiction of Omnes Fidea, Vigilant Stendarrites guided by the principle of Praeveni-Impetum see it as moral duty to pre-emptively stamp out Daedric cults before they trigger the Second Oblivion Crisis.

~ Excerpt from Cults and Religions of Tamriel by Thelonius Finn, Imperial Scholar