AN: This was originally an introduction that I didn't post at the beginning because I thought it might be a bit off-putting. It's the kind of thing people skip past when reading a book (although they shouldn't) but that's harder to do when it's the first thing that's posted online. The main point here is that it gives some hint at more story to come, and the fact that Deirdre is writing this memoir years after the fact (if she wrote them at all!). Also, if I had put this for sale on Amazon, as one other Skyrim fanfic author has done, then Bethesda's warrior-scribes might have indeed come after me!

The Song of Deirdre - Editor's Afterword

The discovery of the collection of scrolls that have come to be known within the Imperial Palace Library as the Deirdre Manuscripts, but which I have chosen to title The Song of Deirdre: A Memoir of Skyrim, has ignited great controversy in scholarly circles. Apparently preserved for decades in several potion bottles adrift on the Sea of Ghosts, and discovered at various points on the shores of Skyrim in and around Dawnstar by one Lars Ice-Beard and other fisherfolk of those northern regions, the purported provenance of the manuscripts raises several questions. Are these authentic documents attributable to the hand of that historical personage known as Deirdre Morningsong, widely famed throughout Skyrim and beyond? Or is this all a clever fake, weaving bits of history and the protagonist's own extant writings with strands of rumor, myth, and outright fancy? None can know for certain, which explains the years-long delay in the manuscripts' publication – and the fact that even now they are being published without the permission of the Imperial Palace Library, and at great personal risk to this editor.

But whatever their provenance and ownership, and whether fact or fiction, this is a story too important to go untold. The central question, of course, is why one such as Deirdre Morningsong should ever have felt the need to scribble her story in cramped handwriting on whatever scraps of paper came to hand, some of them already used and erased many times over, then roll them tightly, stuff them into the largest potion or wine bottles she could find, and finally cast them adrift on the Sea of Ghosts? And, assuming all of this to be true and not some hoax, from whence were they cast onto those waters? (Studies are ongoing of currents in that sea, correlated with the spots where the bottles were found. The research so far suggests a location far north and west of Solitude, which, of course, is absurd, as that part of the sea features nothing but a few uninhabited bits of ice-covered rock.) Then there is the curious suggestion, in Part III of the First Manuscript, that Deirdre was not sharing her bed with her wife, Lydia Ravenwood, at the time she wrote these memoirs. This accords not at all with extant history, for the couple were famously known to have spent but little time apart, from the day of their wedding in Riften to the end of their lives.

Another possibility – to which this editor does not ascribe – is that these manuscripts are indeed the creations of Lars Ice-Beard and the other "discoverers," whether working as co-authors or as co-conspirators in this hoax, with Ice-Beard as the scribe. That Nord, a fisherman out of Dawnstar – a hideously bleak and desolate little burg if ever this editor saw one – does have some small skill with the Common Tongue, having penned the little-known tome, A Natural and Personal History of the Fishes of the Skyrim Coast (Complete with a Dozen Recipes for both Hearth and Campfire). But for that author to go from such a humble volume to the present work? No, it is not to be credited. In the first place, the author of the Deirdre Manuscripts clearly had access to the major libraries of the land, the Arcanaeum at the College of Winterhold, the shelves of High Hrothgar, the Mystic Archives of the Arcane University, even the Imperial Palace Library itself, while there is no evidence that Ice-Beard has ever gone farther from Dawnstar than his tiny feræringr would take him. As well, Ice-Beard and his co-discoverers – the rest of whom are coarse Nords even less familiar with their letters than Ice-Beard – have asked for little in return for passing these discoveries on to the Imperial Palace Library. Indeed, they want no more than the present acknowledgment upon publication. Who ever heard of authors so disinterested in receiving acclaim for their works, not to mention gold?

And now to the work itself. This editor is in possession of the complete First Manuscript, which arrived on Skyrim's shores in four separate bottles, neatly dividing the tale into four separate parts. The second of these is the longest, perhaps not only because the author happened to have a larger wine bottle at hand at the time. (If further proof of the factual nature of these documents is needed, surely an author of fiction would have trimmed some of the more excessive digressions, speeding the story along for the impatient reader. But such license with events is not possible in a factual account. Thus the four parts of the manuscript comprise 750 closely written pages, or some 350,000 words, rivaling the most compendious tomes of our age.) Part II was also the first to be discovered, causing not a little confusion when it was delivered to Skyrim's College of Winterhold and thence to the Palace Library in the Imperial City in Cyrodiil. Eventually the other three parts came to light and all was put in a semblance of order.

A fifth part of the manuscripts exists in a very sketchy state, hinting at further chapters remaining to be found that would comprise a Second Manuscript. Cursory as it is, this glimpse goes beyond the events in Skyrim to those that took place in other provinces of Tamriel, when the one we know as Deirdre Morningsong began her … but no, I must say no more for fear of spoiling the story. Suffice to say, if taken as fact, this account does much to bolster the arguments of the Council for a New Age, which holds that Deirdre's deeds and achievements should mark a new era, the Fifth, beginning in or about the year 203 of the present one.

This editor hopes that the reader has found these pages entertaining, if not enlightening. Otherwise, why have I risked my life to bring them to the public? Even now the warrior-scribes of the Imperial Library are on my trail. I must stay ahead of them, or the next volumes of this story will never see the light of day.

–Laurentius Aaronius

Silverhome on the Water, Bravil

late of the Imperial Palace Library

AN: I hope you'll click to the next "chapter," which is a little preview of what might come next in Deirdre's story, if I ever get around to writing it, and also an update on my current non-fanfiction projects. Thanks for reading!