The Black Horse Courier
SPECIAL EDITION!
DRAGONBORN: THE WOMAN BEHIND THE LEGEND
By Aeolia Bostrid
Let it be known that the renowned Black Horse Courier of Cyrodiil, once thought to have faded into extinction after the Oblivion crisis, is here once more and with no less than a special maiden edition in Skyrim, frigid land of warm mead, drunken brawls, (and rather lazy, unenthusiastic city guards).
To commemorate the launch of the Black Horse Courier in Skyrim, this edition will be about the Dragonborn, living legend and the subject of many a song in the inns that dot the land and beyond.
However, how much do we really know of the woman herself? Risen to fame from complete obscurity, a woman who outranks so many a man in the highest station of his life, saviour of Mundus, liberator of the downtrodden, and explorer of Aetherius and the wretched Daedric Realms. A Dark Elf with the voice of a dragon, but not a connection in the world to the once great houses of Morrowind? How long has she lived? HOW does she live?
These are the questions that this writer seeks to answer in an exciting series of unadulterated meditations with those in her outer and inner circles. Read it all now, in this exclusive edition of the Black Horse Courier!
I: Viola Giordano, Windhelm, Resident (and busybody)
Ah! So wonderful that you would come to me first. I assure you that I know anything and everything about the Dragonborn. I will have you know that she is a personal friend of mine. In fact, I was the one who helped her solve the murder case of the Butcher in Windhelm. Yes, it was my pamphlets and warning notices that gave her the clues to help her catch that eccentric old collector, Calixto. I always knew him to be crooked and vile. A man without a wife? A recipe for evil!
Of course, at first, she got it rather wrong and went for the court wizard, but that is hardly my fault, is it, how she chose to interpret the clues? All that matters is that the women of Windhelm is safe from violation and it is all thanks to her, with the help of my attentions.
She has a house here, you know. That's right. Took up in Hjerm, Calixto's own murder house, right after the Imperials took Windhelm during the civil war. The steward and housecarl assured me that all traces of the murderer's necromancy are gone, even gave me a tour of the house while I was there on an estate visit. The secret room has been done up into an enchanting room. Respectable. However, I am not sure about it being harmless. These dark elves and their sorcery—who knows what really goes on, but it is not for me to say. She is our Thane, after all, and I am sure she would not let any harm come to us. Right?
RIGHT?
II: Nirya, College of Winterhold, Sorceress
Oh, the Archmage is positively delightful! Of all the Archmages that we have ever had, she is by far the best. I cannot speak highly enough of her: her competence, her grasp of all the schools of magic, her attention to the preservation of precious and ancient tomes which I am sure our chief librarian could fully attest to, her grace and beauty, her sense of style—oh! who needs to wear robes these days when you have heavy enchanted daedric armour?—her kindness and generosity…
She has my personal attention and there is so much that I can learn from her.
When you see her, do let her know everything that I have said, won't you?
III: Farkas, Whiterun, Member of The Companions
Uh…she is very brave. I taught her how to wear heavy armour.
What? What is a you-fe-mism?
IV: Maven Black-Briar, Riften, Owner of the Black-Briar Meadery, Newly-appointed Jarl
She is competent enough. Do I know of her fame? Of course, I know of her fame! It is the only thing I ever think about these days. First, hero of the people and then what next? Empress of the whole of Skyrim?
This…meditation is over. Maul!
[At this point, this writer is forced to take herself away in the interest of her own personal safety.]
V: Erdi, Solitude, Maid at the Blue Palace
Oh! You wish to talk to me? How exciting!
I am only a maid in the Blue Palace, so I don't know her personally. We have spoken a number of times and she always asks about how I am whenever she chances to have an audience with Jarl Elisif. She seems really kind. Gentle and though always with a look about her, like she is far away from everyone and everything in the court. She is rather soft-spoken for a woman so important. I do not see many elves, so pardon my ignorance, but when I first saw her, her appearance was absolutely frightful. I cannot say if it is the red eyes, dark skin or the horrible scars on her face.
Yes, scars. Really red and angry, crisscrossing all over, like she had been mauled by a sabretooth cat. All the adventures must be really exciting and… dangerous. I don't know if I can survive like she did.
She has a house here in Solitude, Proudspire Manor, just down the path from the palace. You cannot miss it because she planted these sweet-smelling, iridescent flowers near the door on the ground floor.
I have seen her a number of times in the market plaza, playing tag with her own children and the other town children. I suspect they enjoy her company immensely, from the way they laughed and shout. I think it is all rather sweet. It is something, isn't it? To behold a woman in a full suit of armour running around like it weighs nothing.
I understand that she married an Argonian from Windhelm. I am sure he is a nice fellow, but I have never spoken to him before. I see him at the market stalls sometimes. Argonians have something of a poor reputation here after what Jaree-Ra did. He must be so uncomfortable in the city, poor thing.
VI: Aicantar, Markath, Conjurer and Researcher
My uncle is extremely busy with his research, so I will be taking his place for this interv—meditation. Might I interest you in a tour of the Dwemer museum and perhaps tell you a little bit about my research on the Dwemer spider workers? Oh, all right, perhaps another time then.
Based on the few encounters that I have with her, she seems rather nice. Quite intense, actually. I understand that she is responsible for recovering valuable notes from one of our research teams, the one that had gone missing in one of our excavation sites.
Between you and me, my uncle should not have tried to cut corners with the funds when it comes to hiring security for our research and expedition teams. Of course, one cannot speak much of any security teams when two women were able to navigate ruins full of Falmer and Dwemer machines without so much as a collective scratch on them. Then again, one of those two women was a Nord the size of a bear. Lyria, Lythia, Lydia…or whatever her name was. Did not speak much but had a bad habit of standing about in doorways and blocking people's paths.
Again, this is off the record. There was a time when I had my suspicions about her. Things went missing right after my uncle gave her the key to the Dwemer museum—a puzzle box, some gold here and there, soul gems and cheeses from our pantry. Nothing too important, like my uncle's then unpublished manuscript on the history of the Dwemer or anything. Perhaps a few rolls of parchment. And a sweetroll or two. Always sweetrolls with this place.
I have no evidence it was her, but there is something about her that I cannot put a finger to. I make copies of all my notes now and keep them in a strongbox under my bed. I am sure my fears are unfounded, given all that she has done for us. Still…
VII: Serana, Member of the Dawnguard
She is a dear friend of mine and has helped me…in more ways than you can imagine. That is all I am willing to say. The sun is really hot today and I don't much care for the heat.
VIII: Adelaisa Vendicci, Former Imperial Soldier and Member of the East Empire Company, Present Steward of Lakeview Manor
The mistress is a delight! Strong and competent. I joined her after she helped bring the East Empire Company back on its feet in Windhelm. When she needed a steward for this place, I volunteered immediately. I manage the manor's household and any other business that comes this way, make sure everything runs smoothly and that as little as possible need the mistress' immediate attention. She has so much on her mind.
This is more of the family's summer home really. Somewhere to get away when it gets too cold up north. The manor gets its name from the gorgeous view of the lake. Come! Let me show you!
We have several apiaries out in the back to supply the family with honey. The children have a huge taste for it. Sure, bandits come through from time to time. Good exercise, really, seeing how I have developed a gut from the languor of this place.
The family's main home is Windstad Manor, in Hjaalmarch, about north of Morthal and east of Solitude. Master Scouts-Many-Marshes feels more at home there since it is wet and marshy. They stay there for most of the year and the girls go to school at the Bard's College in Solitude, just a carriage's ride up.
Following weeks of meditations with a number of characters within the Dragonborn's rather poorly demarcated circles it would seem, this writer was finally able to gain an audience with an individual who is as close to the Dragonborn's person as her soul is to her body: her spouse.
Taking the lead from Steward Adelaisa's direction, this writer is able to get a carriage ride to the marshes east of Solitude, to the Dragonborn's family home, an unassuming homestead almost completely obscured from view by a line of gnarly trees. The home seems to be self-provisioned by a single dairy cow and three chickens, allowed to free roam when they are not in the small pen, and a modest garden in which grows cabbages, potatoes, gourds and leeks. A short way down from the manor is the edge of the water. The marshes, so highly favoured by the master of the manor, encloses the manor's grounds.
At first glance, one will think the manor rather poorly protected for such an important family, however, a closer look will reveal that the manor is watched over by a few very powerful-looking personages: the doorway-blocking steward and once-housecarl of the Dragonborn, Lydia, and a battlemage named Valdimar, with the bard and carriage-driver bolstering the ranks as capable sorts.
This writer has hoped to be granted an audience with the Dragonborn herself, however, her ladyship is at the time away from the manor on business.
Master Scouts-Many-Marshes greets this writer in the entry hall leading up to the manor's great hall, which this writer is able to access after much lollygagging in the manor's main door, blocked as it is by the tall and formidable Lydia.
The Argonian is warm of demeanour and gentle of nature, and personally brings their best mead to the long dining table for this writer. The hall is decorated in the provincial style favoured by the Nords: an over-indulgence in mounted game, furs, feathers and quaint, woven trinkets. The staircases have no bannisters to prevent the poor children from falling sideways and wood is unpolished, only treated and bolstered to prevent the cold winds from seeping through. A fire burns in the fireplace at all times of the day.
One can glimpse a well-stocked library from the hall, though "well-stocked" is something of a gross understatement. There are stacks of books on the floor and even on the dining table in the main hall, where a manuscript is in the process of being copied.
Master Scouts apologises, appearing sheepish.
"I was in the process of copying accounts from a sedge scroll," he revealed. "My wife has brought home quite a number of them recently and I am helping her with the preservation and reproduction."
The scrolls, he goes on to say, are depictions of ancient Argonian life—extremely rare and highly valued by collectors. The manuscripts would be for the manor's library while the scrolls were housed under controlled conditions in the library of the College of Winterhold.
IX: Scouts-Many-Marshes, Master of Windstad Manor, Husband to the Dragonborn
About Nileronea?
Where do I begin…
We met in Windhelm where the Argonians and Dunmer live in almost similar, squalid conditions as second class citizens. The irony was not lost on me, of course. The Argonians and the Dunmer have a coloured history of war and hostility where our homelands border each other. Many of my people served as slaves to Dunmer masters right up until the eruption of the Red Mountain.
She was not the renowned Dragonborn then, just, so we thought, an impoverished Dunmer clad in leathers and shivering from the cold. The first time I met her was in the Argonian assemblage, where we shared some of our broth and fish skins with her. She slept on some straws on the mat by Shah-vee's bed, if I am not mistaken. The two took to each other like egg-sisters. But of course, we had to tell her that the city had the Gray Quarters, where she could find more of her kind, and food and drink closer to what she would find at home.
"I am not from Morrowind. Never knew what it is like there," she told us. The way she said it, it seemed almost like Dunmer being from Morrowind was such an alien and insane notion.
"Where are you from then?" I asked her.
She shrugged. "I grew up in a lot of places. Where I lived last was an orc stronghold in the Jerrall mountains."
I would only come to know later that she had grown up in far worse conditions. The orc stronghold was likely a warm and kindly experience. It would not last. She made her way to Skyrim to make her own way life and so not burden the stronghold further.
What conditions? I am not at liberty to say. That would be her story to tell if she so chooses.
I figured her for a nomadic sort, travelling from place to place, finding work and earning gold where there was any to be had. She helped the assemblage—found Shah-vee's lost amulet, chopped wood and prepared roast from the game she was able to hunt while we were all at work. Somehow, she was even able to secure more wages for the dock workers. That was a day. I would never forget that. Mead and ale and sweets all around.
She left not long after the East Empire Company was reopened and a number of the unemployed Argonians were able to find jobs. We had become fast friends by then, you see, and wrote each other whenever we could.
I don't know which, but one of the Eight must have a sense of humour because well…I found that I had fallen in love with her. I kept thinking about her and wondered if she ever thought about me.
Then her letters stopped coming and I thought, that was that. A romantic but foolish notion.
Sweetroll?
And yes, Lucia, you and Sofie may stay up a little longer today. But there will be no snacks, do you understand? No, not even that.
Now, where was I? Ah, yes. The war came to Windhelm not long after. Imperial ships were coming up to the docks and we could hear the fighting going on in the city. It must have raged for about a day: fast, took everyone by surprise. Imperials were known to be methodical. But, for us on the docks, listening to the soldiers fighting to keep Stormcloaks from setting fire to the Imperial ships, it had felt like days. We were lucky that the soldiers had no interest in a few, scrawny, poorly-paid Argonians.
Finally, we could hear a war horn being blown. That was when we knew that the battle was won, only not for which side.
She appeared to me among rubble, while we were picking through to salvage what we could—we were looking at some months of unemployment while the city was being rebuilt—darker than she already was with her face covered in soot. Her steel armour bore no insignia but judging by the two Imperial foot-soldiers behind her, I suspected that Ulfric was finally dead.
Perhaps I had been rather presumptuous when I saw the Amulet of Mara around her neck, but…here we are—two children and a busy homestead after.
What sort of mother is she?
She is a good mother, even though in her absence, sometimes the girls do not believe it to be so. But I know her. I see how she would come home with the weight of the world on her shoulders, and a rucksack full of things to show the girls and gift them. She would spend all the time she could with us before yet another courier with yet another missive, or another summons would come to our door.
I see the disappointment in the girls when their mother starts to strap her armour on and pack her bags for the road once more. Then she was no longer just their mother, but a soldier, a warrior—Dragonborn, or whatever it is that people have taken to calling her now.
Me? I choose to love her, every day, just as I had on the day she walked up to Mara's altar in a blacksmith's dress.
[Here the master of the manor broke into laughter.]
The only dress she owned. While the priest read the binding words, I whispered to her, "Did you steal that off a dead blacksmith?"
"Borrowed it," she told me, "for an undefined period of time."
At this point in the investigation, this writer does not know when the Dragonborn will return to the manor and if this writer will ever get a chance to speak to her in person. After speaking to Master Scouts-Many-Marshes at length about the manor and the children, and spending the night on a rolled-out sleeping mat on the floor of the main hall, it is enough to say that the Dragonborn is a woman of many great accomplishments and talents, and who has changed the lives of everyone she meets. She is respected and beloved by many, feared by her enemies.
It is said that she rides and holds council with dragons high up in the mountains. However, this will only be conjecture until this writer can meet with one of the Greybeards of High Hrothgar.
As this writer sits in the carriage driving away from Winstad Manor, she takes a final look at the homestead, wondering at the simplicity of its design for the greatness that it holds. No statuaries, no arbours or gardens. Just the chills from the marshes that surrounds it and the strange calls from the bare shrubbery.
The air seems to chill further at the same as it warms at the appearance of a rider coming up the same path, in the opposite direction of the carriage. The rider is clad in black armour, the metal folded and beaten into curves and spikes through which a red glow pulsates. Red eyes peer through the gap of the cowl that shrouds the dark rider's face, faraway but intense. They move only when the carriage driver calls out, "Greetings, mistress", to which the rider nods. The horse on which she rides is a stallion, blacker than her armour, and blacker than a starless night, its eyes as red as hers. Around them both, black tendrils swirled like smoke from a fire. This writer's every bone seems to freeze even as they rise ablaze, as the rider passes the carriage at a walking pace, both our eyes locking—this writer's wide and awed, and the rider's calmly observing—before the rider turns away, tall in her seat. A cloak, also black and emblazoned with an unknown emblem like a heart-shaped creature about to birth an arrow, clad her shoulders.
"That would be the mistress of the manor, the Dragonborn herself," the carriage driver announces. "Would you like to speak to her? I can easily turn this carriage around."
This writer watches as the rider picks up speed closer to the house and as the door is flung open with an outpouring of its Argonian master and his children, born and moulded by this land. The rider does not wait for the horse to stop or slow to dismount, her cloak billowing behind her like satin wings just taking flight, her boots meeting the ground with force. She pulls her cowl from her face and from that distance this writer cannot ascertain if it is as scarred as the Solitude maid had said, only that the rider is indeed a Dunmer and that her dark hair flows in dreadlocks almost down to her waist.
This writer remembers a song, an old one that can sometimes and very rarely be heard in the inns around the Imperial City in Cyrodiil and sang only by the best, most learned bards. This writer cannot remember the whole of it, just the few lines towards the end, the ones that always had the Nords, Argonians and Dunmer bellowing, mugs of imbibements swinging in the air:
Forged by War the Ebonheart rose,
And drove the Akaviri back to the sea,
When the enemies begged for the mercy they lacked,
Three voices as one shouted "Blood for the Pact!"
This was, of course, before the Great War of the Fourth Era, and before the White-Gold Concordat was signed. During a happier time, a deceptively simpler time. Turning away just before the Dragonborn embraces her family, this writer says to the carriage driver, "No need," before humming the familiar song the whole ride back to the border.
END