Upon the Days of the Champion (A Skyrim AAR Tale)

[Jubal]

The Words of Aranea Ienith
Upon the Days of the Champion

Colophon

These are the words of Aranea Ienith, who once had the sight of Azura, and no longer sees truly.

Heed them, and heed Her embrace.

The sight of this one, this humble seer, was lost when the Champion came: and in other texts I have recalled the visions gifted to me by the Light That Is Darkness, the Prince of Twilights, that mortals name Azura. In this text, penned in my old age as even my mortal sight fails me, I wish to set down the deeds of the Champion.

This copy was made by the poor scholar Rhethemus, in the Monastery of Dawn's Song, beneath Her grace, in the fourteenth indiction of the Twilight's Hour that She revealed to the monks of this place. This poor scholar, upon unworthy paper hardly polished, is one enriched only by her divine love, beyond all the treasures of mortal kind. Azura, may this be the love that I bear: from this shaken quill amid all the stars thy supplicant's heart be known.

The First Tale, Of The Coming of the Champion

One month before the visions left me, a storm wracked the body of the oceans north of the land of Mereth, which in these latter days, and since long before I was born, mer and men alike call Skyrim. Thunder smote upon the wave, and ships were broken in the wake.

From one such wreck a survivor emerged, unbeknownst to fate and the eyes of the gods, into. No fate was written for this wretched man, no trace of his weaving could be found in the fabric of time. And yet, I saw his coming. Such is the might of Azura.

The name of the mer who would become champion was Maegvyn, of the family of Dorvayn: he was a dunmer, whose family had once lived in the south of the isle of Vvardenfell. His ancestors had been stewards of the town of Balmora there, before it fell into decay, and Nileno of that house had been named kin to the Hlaalu, who were one of the great houses of Morrowind at the time. Much had been lost to the house since those days, and was lost to the young Dorvayn who emerged half-drowned onto the icy shingle of Mereth. The Hlaalu had been driven out when the power of Cyrodiil's Empire fell, and the Dorvayn fortunes were lost, and the last heir of the house had little left but what little he could gather from a wreck.

Praise be to Azura! For she finds the twilight's flame in the hearts of mortals, and so did she see the cold fire of stars that burned inside Maegvyn, he who was to be her champion. The Champion of Azura is called not for their strength, or their fortune, but their love, their willingness to strive for the grace of the divinity, their willingness to unite the light and darkness in one. All these things this child of a lost house had within him, and this was the gift of Azura, and this was what Azura saw in him.

It was by that grace that the place where he had landed was in sight of Her statue, where she looks out mightily across the northern seas - and, harried by wolves and the winter snows, he clambered up from the shore towards the peaks. What other man would have followed, not the light to a tavern or the hope of food, but the purer grace of starlight? What other man would have come from deep and darkness and known only the will to climb? This was the first test of the champion.

As he climbed the mountain, he came upon a cave, and entered it, and here he fell into darkness. There are places beneath the earth there where the falmer, who in their blindness abhor sun and moon alike, dwell. None could have stood against such reckless, boundless hate, with barely weapon or strength: and yet, held fast like star behind cloud, this heir of the Dorvayn line kept himself preserved, being more of a shadow than the shadows and more of a light than the lights, and though, he passed through that dread place alive, and came once more unto the moonlight of the mountain. He had known when to shed blood, and when not to shed blood: he had known that it is the will to proceed, not the will to the sword, that brings power and love everlasting. This was the second test of the champion.

Though the mountain was yet high, it was then that he came into my presence in body as well as in mind, and there he rested, atop the high peak, for he was weary. I was the last of the flock that Azura had once gathered there, and for two centuries I had beheld Her visions.

I had seen the coming of bleak tides, the pestilences and fires that ravage the world of men, I had witnessed the coming of Kings before their times and the fading of stars beyond the sight of mortal kin. I had warned those who could hear Azura's light of peril, and comforted those who could hardly see the stars as their sight slipped from them.

Perhaps there was some weakness in my love for her chosen, and perhaps that is why this, her Champion, was one of the last of the true sights I was granted. Perhaps she sensed that I feared the loss of Her sight too much, and required me to grow among the love of others before I could meet her in death. Perhaps it was simply the twilight of my own days that had come. I will never know Her mind, only Her grace.

It was then that Azura showed me Her Star, the artefact of Her radiance and Her own hands.

And these were the words of Azura: that in a fortress endangered by water, yet untouched by it, her Star should be found, that it should be cleansed of evil and brought back into Her night sky, to fade only with Her dawn as the ages passed and the next dusk gathered anew.

And these were the words that I told to the Champion, and he left beyond all my sight. And these were the first tests of the Champion, and this is the end of my first tale of his days.