“The heroic Nerevarine, sacrificing all to protect Morrowind from the mad Sotha Sil. But you live! You live! Fear not. I will tell the tale myself when this is done. I will tell my people how with your dying breath you proclaimed your devotion to me, the one true god.”
My piece for @dotzines‘ Boss Rush! The zine can be downloaded for free over here!
I’ve posted my nerevarine a couple of times without talking about them at all so I’m just gonna do that now
Their name is Areni! Their parents are a messenger from Mournhold and the daughter of an outcast Ashlander who’s a scout and hunter in Maar Gan. They moved to Cyrodiil not super long after becoming a couple and adopted Areni as a baby from an Imperial orphanage.
Areni is an archer, they learnt from their mum (I’m an eternal stealth archer oops ) They’re pretty unassertive and it’s easy to push them into doing things that they don’t necessarily want to do, so they’ve got some unresolved resentment over being forced into the role of Nerevarine
So I was embarrassingly excited by the fact that Vilja sings The Blacksmith and The Cruel Sister since I’m a huge folk music nerd, and I was thinking about what other songs I could imagine her singing. The idea of Nordic and Dunmeri variations to The Outlandish Knight/The Elf Knight came pretty easily for uh, pretty obvious reasons I think, but also because irl it has such a huge range and number of variations.
(Some more rambling and lyrics for the Dunmer version under the cut)
I think that in the Morrowind and Skyrim variants the action of the song takes place in the Velothi mountains, whereas versions from Solstheim tend to just refer to the sea shore. I think that the versions from Eastmarch and the Blacklight region are considered the ‘standard’ versions, so they’re the ones you’re most likely to hear bards singing, but the further west you go in Skyrim the more likely you are to encounter versions where the knight character is either just some ambiguous figure or a fine Cyrodiilic lord, and on Vvardenfell the knight is often an Ashlander (though in the Ashland version he’s usually a Telvanni)
An outlandish knight came from the northlands And he’s courted a lady fair, He said he would take her to those northern lands, And there he would marry her.
“Go fetch me some of your father’s gold And some of your mother’s fee, And two of the guar from out of the stable Where there stand thirty and three.”
So she’s fetched him some of her father’s gold And some of her mother’s fee, And two of the fine guar from out of the stable Where there stood thirty and three.
She mounted on the milk white steed, And he on the dappled grey, And they rode till they came unto the high hills Three hours before it was day.
“Light off, light off thy milk-white steed And deliver it unto me. For six pretty maidens have I slain here And the seventh will surely be thee.
“Take off, Take off off thy silken clothes, And deliver them unto me; For I do fear that they are too fine To rot along with thee.
“If I must take off my silken clothes Pray turn your back to me. For it is not fitting that such a rogue A naked woman should see.”
So he’s turned his back all on that maid, To view the hills so high. And she caught up his little pen knife And she’s thrust it to his heart.
Well out then came the thick thick blood, And out then came the thin. “Oh spare me my life, my pretty fair maid, And I will make thee my bride.”
“Lie there, lie there you false hearted man, Lie there instead of me. For six pretty maidens have you slain here And the seventh hath surely slain thee.”
She mounted on her milk white steed And she led the dappled grey, And she rode till she came to her father’s house Three hours before it was day.
(I based the lyrics on Nic Jones’ arrangement of The Outlandish Knight)
Alvivecia: Don’t worry, everything’s under control. We just had a little situation here. Just a little internal situation. My friend just went a little crazy. Happens to everybody. The House of Troubles gets to us all. Just went a little cuckoo in the head.
Oromis, having mantled Sheogorath: Don’t you be calling me cuckoo in the head!
“I got laid off from my job at the pillow factory last week. The market for pillows has really bottomed out in the last few years. Turns out that the average family home doesn’t need 25 pillows per person like we originally thought.”
–Therdon lamenting the collapse of the Morrowind pillow market. The miscalculation of how many pillows the average person in Morrowind owns was likely caused by the market sample including Drarayne Thelas, who was an outlier and should not have been counted.
Today is the 25th anniversary of The Elder Scrolls, and Bethesda is marking the occasion by giving everyone a free copy of The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, today only! They have a lot more planned for the rest of the week, but you can grab your copy here: https://elderscrolls.bethesda.net/en/tes25
Hey, look! It’s the game that inspired me to start writing properly! You should definitely check it out if you aren’t already familiar with it.