Chapter 3: Death in the caves

After the harrowing night I had endured, I took great comfort in becoming involved in a conversation over breakfast in Arille's Tradehose with a tall, golden skinned Altmer woman named Eldafire. She told me a little about the area surrounding Seyda Neen, a place called "The Bitter Coast". One piece of information that particularly stayed with me was the prevalence of smuggling all up and down the coast here. She told me that there was actually a smuggler's cave just outside Seyda Neen.

I'm not sure why I felt such a need to dash off and investigate this cave. Perhaps it was the lure of more "salvage". After talking to a few of Seyda Neen's denizens, the attitude of local society towards criminals became quite clear. Stealing from bandits, smugglers and the like - alive or dead - would not be viewed as theft at all. With this in mind I went downstairs and traded in the things I had managed to bring away from the necromancer's shack for a large pouch of septims and an offensive spell. It was called "Frostbite" and seemed appropriate considering my own name.

The smuggler's cave Eldafire had told me about was very near to Seyda Neen indeed; almost in view of the silt strider stop-off point on the edge of the village. The silt strider is without a doubt the largest creature I had ever seen: tall as a two-storey building, a rough, bug-like carapace perched atop six spindly legs. This one stood in the shallow salt water surrounding the village, swaying slowly back and forth, occasionally sending out a low, piercing moan. I had been hearing that sound all through the previous day and had been wondering what it was: evidently the creature's cry travels a good long way. I was amazed to learn that the dark elves (or "dunmer" to use their proper name) native to Morrowind had long tamed the silt striders and used them as local transport. They were apparently much more at ease striding up and down the riverbeds of Vvardenfell, their feet in the silt: hence their name.



As fascinating as the creature was, I turned my attention back to the smuggler's cave. The local guards cannot be the most enthusiastic bunch around: first the necromancer's shack, and now this; the cave was not hidden in any way - it had an actual door set in the side of a rocky hill. Both within earshot of the village proper. I pressed my ear against the door, but not being able to hear anything, drew a deep breath and slipped in quickly, my saber drawn. Once my eyes adjusted I noticed light coming from behind some rocks: a small campfire. I tried to get a better look without revealing myself, but a woman by the fire had been alerted by the cave door opening, and spotted me immediately. With a shout she sprang to her feet and ran at me, grasping a dagger. I called out to her to stop, but as she came closer I observed an unnatural, disturbing smile on her lips and a faraway look in her staring eyes. She was obviously not in her right mind.

She had a dagger made of chiton; looking like it had been broken off a particularly large and predatory insect. Weak and brittle as chiton is, I discovered that it is still razor sharp. She attempted to plunge the dagger into my chest; the chainmail cuirass I wore caught it before it went too deep, but she still gouged out a painful wound. With a cry of pain, anger and fright, I shoved her away and swung my saber over my head and down into her shoulder, again and again. I found it difficult to force myself to strike her as hard as I could. I had never killed or even wounded someone before that day, and the thought of it bothered me. More than that, actually: it terrified me. On my final swing, the saber cut into her neck. She gasped, fell back against the cave wall and sunk to the ground. For the first time, she seemed to actually see me. Her unnatural smile melted and she began to cry, slumped and bleeding against the cave wall. I looked away, down at my own body. The woman had stabbed me numerous times as I had been raising the saber above my head, leaving my body unprotected. My legs, especially, were bleeding heavily - I had not been able to buy any armour to cover them. My own blood was collecting in my boots.

My legs shaking, I tried to sit down, but they buckled beneath me and I, too, collapsed to the cold ground. I rolled painfully onto my side and vomited onto the cave floor, the shaking spreading through my whole body. Sensing that at the rate I was bleeding I did not have long left, I forced myself to concentrate on my healing spell, a blue glow forming around my hands. I pressed my palms against my chest and the blue glow seeped through the chainmail and into my skin. Almost instantly I felt better: physically better, at least. The healing magic closed all my wounds and made my body reproduce blood quickly to compensate for that lost; all in a matter of seconds. The woman who had attacked me was dead. I got back to my feet, unable to take my eyes off her. Now that she was still I could see something sparkling around her mouth and on her chin. Blood and tears had run across most of her face and dissolved most of it, but there were crystalline specks collected around her mouth, as if she had been eating sugar out of her hands like a small child.

I didn't want to look at her anymore, and I certainly didn't want to face anyone in the village right then, so I continued deeper into the caves. There were more smugglers in the caves: a robed wizard and a fast-moving woman in leather armour. They both attacked without hesitation as soon as they saw me. I don't know whether they were simply that suspicious of strangers in their "hideout" that they would do such a thing, or whether they simply noticed that I was covered in blood and put two and two together. I count myself as extremely lucky that I encountered the two remaining smugglers separately: with the wizard attacking me on his own, I was able to sidestep his spells. He repeatedly cast the same spell, definitely a quite destructive one judging by the red glow and red heat it gave off as it streaked towards me. Eventually the wizard either became too frustrated or expended his reserves of magicka - as I had hoped he would - and he drew a dagger and charged at me, snarling. He fell relatively easily to a couple of slashes across his chest: he was not wearing any armour under his robes.

The female smuggler in the leather armour fell upon me just as I struck the killing blow to the wizard. She stood at the top of some steep, jury-rigged wooden steps, and I at the bottom. She was holding something small in her hand, and flicked it at me as I turned to face her. It struck me in the shoulder, catching in my chainmail. I pulled it out: a flat, spiked throwing star - a cheap one made of chiton. Thinking about how the wizard could probably have easily killed me had he immediately rushed me with his spells, I shoved my saber into its scabbard and charged up the stairs, keeping as low as I could. The woman backed away from the head of the stairs, no doubt hoping to catch me unawares as I reached the top. I focused the energies of my new Frostbite spell into my hands and found as I leapt over the top of the steps that she had done exactly as I had hoped: backed herself into a wall. I grasped her by each shoulder, hooking my thumbs under her arms, and pinned her against the cave wall. She screamed out as the aching cold of the spell passed straight through her armour and into her body, cracking and burning her skin, and almost freezing her blood. The next thing I knew the woman had effectively thrown me off by violently thrusting a knee into my groin, and I again found myself extremely sorry that - excepting some cheap chiton boots - I had not been able to find any armour for my lower body.

The remainder of the fight saw me alternating between swinging the saber with my right hand and trying to plant either my Frostbite spell on her body or my healing spell on my own with my left hand. It was a desperate fight, and the thought that this woman could have easily killed me several times over had it not been for my healing spell was a sobering one. I had eventually won by planting a Frostbite spell directly on the centre of her chest, stopping her heart. At least, I assumed that's what happened. I do not care to relate the particulars of her death; it was just too horrible.

I washed the blood from myself and my clothes in a deep pool of water I found at a low point in the caves, then set about searching the place for valuables.

Chapter 2: Bones

At the tradehouse mentioned by Sellus Gravius I bought some new clothes: cheap and rough, but better than my threadbare prison rags by a long way. At the sight of a squat brown crab the height of a large dog trundling along the shore outside the tradehouse, sifting through the muddy sand with huge, powerful-looking pincers, I also bought some armour and a weapon. I traded in the silverware I had stolen from the Census and Excise building for these armaments, but truth be told Arille, the owner of the tradehouse, didn't have the greatest selection. I didn't fancy myself as strong enough to wear the likes of full plate armour, and couldn't afford it even then. The lighter armour available, such as the leather or dirty white chiton armour (as Arille told me it was called) looked too flimsy to afford much protection at all. I needed something in between, but all Arille had was an old chainmail cuirass and a chain coif. I wasn't complaining too much: my first day out of prison and I was wearing chainmail - however old and rusted it may be. I rounded out my outfit with several pieces of the chiton armour, because it was cheap, at the least.

With some bread, crab meat and bottles of water bought from the small bar in the tradehouse, I took my purchases outside and sat in the shade near the shore, keeping a wary eye on the mudcrab I had seen earlier. The crab meat I was eating tasted extraordinarily good, and I don't think it was only my half-starved state that informed my opinion of it. On a full stomach the mudcrabs meandering about Seyda Neen's shore didn't look nearly as formidable as they had earlier, and I resolved to hunt some that afternoon - both to get some exercise and practice with a blade, and to secure some more food for myself.

Finding a secluded spot along the shore just outside of Seyda Neen, I stripped off my prison rags and had the first decent wash I'd had in a long time, out in the salt water. Donning my new armour and readying the iron saber I had just bought, I set off to spend the afternoon hunting mudcrabs. It's true I was no fighter - and I received more than one nasty nip on the legs from the pincers of those huge crabs. The bleeding and bruising was easily stopped with my healing spell though, and I procured a fair amount of meat (which I packed in salt found on the rocks on the shore) by the time dusk fell.

During the afternoon I had come upon a small stone shack separated from the main village by a shallow inlet. It was still within sight of the village, and when I made to knock on the door, one of the town guard called across to me:

"Stop! Don't go in there - that's a necromancer's house!" He gestured frantically for me to come over to him, and so I did, curious to hear more. He admitted that the necromancer had recently been driven out by a passing paladin, and I gathered from him that no-one had been game to go anywhere near the house since; even to burn it down. Upon hearing that nothing had emerged from the house since that time either - and not knowing anything about the undead - I decided to return later to spend the night in the necromancer's house. It may sound like I was trying to prove something, but in truth I just needed a place to sleep.

In the moonlight the shack did look somewhat menacing: inky darkness in the empty windows. I slowly pushed the door open and let the flaming branch I was carrying lead the way into the house. I almost lost my nerve altogether when I saw the first set of remains: a skeleton reclining on the bed, its head hanging over the side. Head turned towards the door as it was, its empty eye sockets seemed to be watching for someone to enter the shack. I had never seen this sort of death before: the abandoned remains of a thing - a person - who could have once held a conversation with me. There were more, too: entire skeletons, piles of bones, skulls arranged in rows on the shelves. After I got over the initial shock I was glad of my fortitude, as there was some good salvage to be found among the bones (and luckily nothing more grisly than bones).

Eventually I got over my fear enough to be able to drag the skeleton from the bed and place it in a corner, as gently as I could. I did not intend to share the bed with a rotting skeleton. The day's exertions thankfully made me drift off to sleep quickly, and soon I was dreaming... Until I was woken by a loud scraping noise. It was coming from the corner in which I had dumped the skeleton, now pitch black since I had tossed the burning branch into the water near the shack. My breath caught in my chest when the skeleton stood up, its upper body silhouetted by the moonlight from the window. It turned to face me, and stared for a long time. I thought I could see a faint light in each of its eye sockets, and they seemed to bore into me, filling my vision. I was frozen in place I was so terrified. I could not move, even when the thing shuffled over to the side of the bed and bent in close, raising a skeletal hand. It slowly reached out for my face, finally prodding it with an icy fingerbone, then running its freezing grasp lightly across my forehead. Even had I felt capable of movement, I doubt I would have dared to. My relief was unmeasurable when the skeleton, apparently satisfied, abruptly withdrew its hand, and shuffled slowly back to the corner I had originally left it in. I swear I heard it sigh before it collapsed with a resounding crash to the floor.

Needless to say perhaps, I did not sleep at all for the rest of the night, but lay there, heart pounding, shivering despite the muggy heat of the swamp. I would have bolted from the place immediately, but the noisy collapse of the skeleton appeared to wake the rest of the shack's occupants. I was surrounded until dawn by the sound of bones scraping against each other, and the skulls grinding against the wooden shelves as they spun in place to murmur quietly to each other. One skeleton paced the length of the shack for what seemed like hours, never taking its "eyes" off me. As the first reflected light of dawn reached the interior of the necromancer's house, the unintelligible conversation of the skulls died out, and the pacing skeleton took a seat at the shack's small dinner table, where it fell still.

A moment later I was sprinting from the house, clutching my sack with the old weapons and rare alchemical ingredients I had salvaged from the place. I began the day with strong drink at the tradehouse.

Chapter 1: Dreaming of the start

I had a dream just before I arrived. Like most of my dreams, it was muddled, and I can't remember much - but unlike any dream I'd had before, it was not of somewhere I'd already been, but of somewhere I would be. There was a woman's voice... She spoke of the surprising turn my life had just taken: how I had been recently released from the prisons of the Imperial city at the heart of the Empire, but taken under guard to the coast, and onto a ship. I was being taken to Morrowind, to the volcanic island of Vvardenfell that dominates that place - though no-one would - or could - tell me why. In my dream I saw the slopes of that volcano - Red Mountain - a barren land of wind-blasted rocks and spiny, serpentine weeds; though it wasn't until later that I knew that Vvardenfell was what I had seen. The woman's voice told me I was chosen.

My dream of dust became a dream of water; raindrops in a great storm, pummelling the ocean. After a while I realised my dream was merging with the waking world, and that the prison ship was passing through a sea storm. I drifted in and out of sleep until the morning: I was not used to the motion of a ship on the waves, and it was not a feeling I liked. I didn't want to wake up and face the prospect of trying to keep down what little I had had to eat recently. I was shaken awake by the dark elf with whom I had shared the hold of the ship during the voyage. I must have looked a fright, because he actually looked concerned. It was not an expression I had expected to see on a face like his: jutting and weathered, with a great scar down his grey features, from a wound that had evidently put out the red light in his right eye. It wasn't a great stretch of the imagination to see why I warranted pity; dressed as I was in old, rotting clothes that did a poor job of covering my pale and painfully thin body. Prison life had not agreed with me. Still, I must have seemed especially wretched and green from sea sickness that morning, as until that point this dark elf and I had barely exchanged glances, let alone words.

"We've arrived." He straightened up, hesitated, then said: "I'm Jiub. What's your name?"

I sat up gingerly, clearing my throat. "Edward Frost. I..."

At that point a man in full chain mail stepped into the enclosure I had taken to sleeping in. It was one of the prison guards. Sweat was running down his face, and he looked to be in a foul mood. Giving Jiub and I a suspicious look, he levelled a finger at me. "You. Follow me." Jiub remained silent and looked away as the prison guard directed me onto the deck of the ship, into the bright sun and sweltering heat. I understood immediately why the guard had been sweating. I was lead down the gangplank and into the Census and Excise building of the small village of Seyda Neen; which turned out to be a swamp. The air was stifling it was so humid - I couldn't seem to catch my breath.


In the Census building was a Breton man who had to record my arrival - and, it seemed, everything else about me. He smiled when I told him I was also from High Rock, and asked me what class I was. I didn't know what to say at first, and glanced down at the form he had been filling in as he questioned me. His quill was poised next to a list containing names like "Healer", "Master-at-arms", and "Mage". I had never received any formal training beyond the basics of reading and writing, and had never considered myself to follow a particular path in life.

"Night Mage. I'm a Night Mage." I had made it up on the spot. I studied his expression to see if he would accept that. Truth be told I didn't feel like much of anything standing there in my prison rags.

He began to write on his form again. "Ah yes. Things can be quite different in the night. One has to be ready for anything. I imagine then that in addition to various schools of magic, you have studied some forms of self-defence?" I nodded. I couldn't tell if he was being serious or not. I imagined I saw a slight smile appearing on his lips as he spoke. "Very good." He stamped some papers and handed them to me. "Take these to Sellus Gravius near the front door on your way out."

In truth I had told him I was a "Night Mage" because I was a thief. I had bent my magical studies towards two ends: keeping myself alive in the short term through self-protection, and keeping myself alive in the long term through aiding my thieving skills. My instincts in that regard took over as I passed through a small dining room on my way to the exit. This was not the house of a desperate pauper: it was a government building, and I felt no remorse in catching up an empty sack from a shelf and filling it with dusty and uncared-for silverware. As a bit of misdirection I took an old dagger from the table and broke the clasp on the window, leaving it ajar. I ensured the contents of the sack would not clank against each other with movement, then tied it to my back with a piece of cord and carried on to meet Sellus Gravius as if I had in fact arrived on the island with the sack. I was starving and I needed money.

Sellus Gravius made an imposing figure, and I had the feeling he was only in Seyda Neen to pass on some orders to me. Perhaps more to the point, he may have only been there to make an impression on me; to ensure that I actually carried out those orders. His golden armour, gleaming in the bright sunlight streaming through the window, certainly looked out of place in a swamp like Seyda Neen.

"You would be Edward Frost then." He took my release papers, barely glancing at them. "I have orders for you. Now these come direct from the Emperor." He paused, eyebrows raised, letting that point sink in. "You in fact owe your freedom to him - and don't ask me why Uriel Septim himself set you free - and so far from the Imperial city, because by the Divines, I would not have a clue. He does appear to have a job in mind for you, though: you are to report to Caius Cosades in Balmora. Give this package to him." He handed me a sealed scroll, and a large map of the island, on which he indicated the locations of Seyda Neen and Balmora. Finally Sellus gave me something I had definitely not expected, considering the treatment I had received at the hands of the Imperial guard recently: money. Nearly one hundred septims. "So you don't starve on your way to Balmora. Now, I'd recommend stopping in at the tradehouse nearby for some directions and supplies..."

Soon enough I was out of the Census building and taking my first steps on Vvardenfell soil. I opened the pouch Sellus Gravius gave me and looked at the coins within. It had been a long time since I had held any money at all, let alone money I could actually call my own. The prospect of an actual job with (hopefully) a reliable wage sounded awfully good to me and my rumbling stomach. I decided that I might deliver the package to this "Caius", and see if anything worthwhile could come of it. Right then though I needed food, water, clothes and equipment.