Letter to the Seventh Church

This is a letter my Pathfinder character Kivran wrote to her mother, a high-ranking paladin of Iomedae in the Seventh Church in Absalom –basically informing the clergy of her crisis of faith (and also hey, Mom, I joined the Edgewatch).

This resulted in her being summoned to the Church for a “come to Jesus Iomedae” chat with one of the ranking deacons, so: mission accomplished.

I was rather proud of it, so I thought I’d post it here. I was going for an overly formal and somewhat melodramatic tone, and I think I nailed it.

Very minor spoilers for Agents of Edgewatch.

Enjoy!


To Knight-Faithful Ameredine Sulla, greetings.

In accordance with the rules of the Seventh Church, I, Kivran Sulla, knight-acolyte of the Tempering Hall, write to inform you of my whereabouts and intentions.

When I left the Tempering Hall some six months ago, my course was yet unclear. Unlike many in the service of our Lady of Valor, I felt no need prove myself in battle, and I was unsure where my talents might be best put to use. Indeed, my time in close contact with the faithful left me with more doubts than I had when I began my initiation. These doubts I shared with the spiritual counsel of the Tempering Hall, but their words did not put me entirely at ease. I believed I would need to seek wisdom from Iomedae’s own hand at work in the world.

For some months I have been serving in one of the units of the Absalom guard — one whose name I will not speak, but suffice it to say, it is very close at hand to the Seventh Church, and yet in spirit vast eons apart. It has been eye-opening, and has given me an levelness of view towards the faithful of all gods and goddesses, not merely the Inheritor’s own. It will perhaps surprise you to learn that other faiths have as much to teach about how one lives with truth and honor as the Seventh Church itself does.

I soon felt I had grown beyond the walls of the Ascendant Court, however, and when the opportunity to join the Edgewatch presented itself, I jumped at it. Where better to learn about the gods of Golarion and their faithful than at the Radiant Festival?

Four days I have served the Edgewatch with the same fidelity and honor that I showed in my studies at the Tempering Hall. To be quite honest, it has tried me — perhaps further tempered me.

I am sure you will find the sordid details of the affair in Mr. Vancaskerkin’s tabloids, so I will omit them here. But the mere words of a reporter cannot reflect the change written on my heart.

While Iomedae’s justice may be sublime in the living world, what I have come to understand is that her blade does not penetrate the veil of death. For some time I have asked myself: what is honorable, when all crumbles before us? What is loyalty, when our own bodies betray us in the end? What does it mean to rule, when even kings die? What does it matter that serf does not bow before his lord, when his life is mere days compared to the eternity he will spend beneath the earth?

I found no answers, because those were not questions Iomedae could answer. That question is for Pharasma alone, who rules the vast dry land beyond the grave.

And the answer I have received is this: a good and honorable death may be more important than a good and honorable life. 

Did you know? The streets of the Precipice Quarter are built upon the bones of our ancestors. One day my fellow agents and I came across some workers who were battling skeletons — walking corpses, animated by fury. What made them so furious, so desperate, in death? Did they perhaps die without faith in one of the gods of our land? I entered the hole they emerged from, and learned the sad and simple truth. They had been interred alive, due to some terrible accident — a cave-in, a locked door, some shoddy construction, I don’t know.

I could see how they would have lived their last days, close enough to the surface to see light streaming down on them through a grate, but too far to call for help. How must that have felt? How that must have rent their souls, the divine cruelty of it all!

Of course they were furious. Of course they were desperate. They had been abandoned by their gods. I felt sorrow and revulsion in equal parts — sorrow for the mortals they had been and the dreams that had died with them, and revulsion at the twisted abominations they had become. I burned with rage to think how they had been denied Pharasma’s judgment at the last — how even in death they were not at peace.

I felt a duty to end their suffering, to put them to rest. To give them the mercy they had been denied.

Indeed, I have taken an oath to this effect — one many of our temple take, to put the undead to rest. But I suspect my reasons are different.

The Pharasmin priests of the Precipice Quarter have been very accommodating, and have been teaching me their rituals of rest. Despite the hardship of the past four days, and the terrible things I have seen, I have felt peace in my heart from this small power the Lady of Graves has granted me to make the world right.

Perhaps I have found where my talents are best put to use.

This letter has gotten very long, so in summary:

I am well — stronger than ever, and my heart is light. You may write me care of Edgewatch Station in the Precipice Quarter. I will serve both Iomedae’s judgment and Pharasma’s mercy, as best as I know how and as long as I live. 

Your sister in faith and your obedient daughter,
Knight-Acolyte Kivran Sulla


Photo by Nicolas Brigante on Unsplash

Unending Circle

möbius strip test

Inspired by Chris S/Ren’s own bit of 5G Silverfire fanfiction… of course, Ianthe has a slightly different memory of how it went down 😉

It had made Ianthe proud to see the two war banners flanking the entrance to the tavern — the Wing and the Talon on painted silk, glinting silver on blue in the torchlight. Now I am one of them, she had thought, as she had wanted since her earliest memories. She had stood up straighter to see them, thought herself a paladin, a champion for good–

Is war everything you hoped for?

Hush. She closed those thoughts out, watching Ren bundle his throwing blades in his silver and blue tabard. As if it were any other rag.

Last night, she had stood before the Veiled — under the banners, in that same torchlight — and Ren had regarded her, strange, appraising. “You are so much like your mother Eirene,” he had said, with a rasping sigh. He looked as if he had more memories than if he were a thousand years old.

Maybe he did. Maybe he was. Ianthe felt nearly that old, now.

Ren had followed her into the woods last night, too, after they had been attacked at the crossroads by the Bloodred Moon. When she thought she had heard someone cry out, saw the shape of a human form in the shadow of a rock, she had leapt into action, and Ren had stepped after her.

“Do you always run straight into danger?” he had asked her, with a gentle curiosity.

“All I know is that if I were out there, I’d want someone to come find me,” she replied. He’d had no response to that.

Later, in the tavern, Ianthe had asked him, “May I ask you an impertinent question?”

“I don’t see how I could possibly stop you,” he had replied, with something approaching mirth.

“Why does your Order wear the Veil?” She knew it was wrong to ask, even before Rolant set a hand to her arm in a gesture of warning. But she abhorred questions without answers, and took a perverse pleasure in being the sort of person to speak the unspeakable.

He had not answered then, either.

And then… what had happened, had happened. They had stood in front of Baron Kalaris, who spoke the word of the Silverfire King; arrayed at his back was the King’s might. An honor guard, merely, they had thought at the time.

Ianthe had been daydreaming — thinking of the counter-equations she had worked with the Arcane Circle last night, or pondering the ominous words of Selaine of the Ivory Gate, or perhaps just admiring the finely-turned calves of Kein Vyland. The tired platitudes about the great service the Champions had rendered didn’t apply to her; she hadn’t fought in the War, after all. She was yet half a Champion.

When Kalaris said the Orders and warbands were no longer needed, she had thought she’d misheard. When he talked of turning their Power over to the Silverfire King, who would be its final arbiter, she had drawn in a sharp breath. Wasn’t this — wasn’t this the same thing the Ebon Order had wanted?

Kalaris had strode down the first rank of Champions, calling on each of them to renounce their Orders. Each refused, in turn. Ianthe was glad she was in the back rank, as a late arrival; had Kalaris turned that immense presence towards her, she was unsure what she would have said. Others in the back ranks called out that the Ebon Order was still a threat, that they were still needed. Kalaris refused to listen.

Ianthe remembered the moment when he had proclaimed them all outlaws. When the killing had begun. She remembered it most vividly because Rolant had stepped in front of her, wrenched her behind his well-armored back and shield.

The ranks fell apart around her, and Ianthe couldn’t think, didn’t know what to do. These were the knights she had looked up to all her life, and they were slicing through her warband and her newly-made friends. These were the knights whose retreat her mother had died to defend, and now they gave no quarter to the fallen, mercilessly running them through.

In the end, she didn’t have to think. A warrior with a two-handed sword charged her, and instinctively she called on her talent, summoning tines of force. One, two, three, the arrows of air landed in rapid succession, and the man fell senseless. Later, she’d learn that the Silverfire Forge would call him back to life, but in the moment, she might as well have killed the man.

She remembered little of the battle after that. She stayed behind the lines, healing where healing was called for. Wise Nacera Umber, another Arcane Circle healer, gave her guidance on where to go and what to do. But neither could do anything for the fiery death that rained from the sky, or the silver-chased swords that struck killing blows.

Swords, perhaps, forged by the King himself.

The next thing Ianthe remembered, she was running for Rolant, seeking comfort from him, as if she were a girl awakened from a bad dream. But there was no comfort to be found there — he grieved, too, as his friend Nu, a Disciple of the Tempest and another member of the Talon, had been struck dead by the fiery rain. She wasn’t the only one of the Eyrie, either — Jayna of the Wing, a Golden Temple archer, had also died, and only lived again thanks to the Baron Sunderwynd’s own Power.

Nu would live again, too. That was the blessing and the curse of Champions — those whose bodies could be recovered, at least. Not Mother, buried forever under ice and poison of the Ebon Order. Not those who could not pay the toll of the Arbiter of Death.

The battlefield was a ruin of the only life Ianthe had ever wanted. When Tezac, the grizzled Golden Temple warrior from the Wing, found her resting beside the Gate, he had asked, “Is war everything you had hoped for?” She wanted to scream, to fly at him with nails bared. He was older, and wiser, sure, but he didn’t have to be smug.

That was hours past, and a world ago. In the present, Ren said, “I suppose it is time to put this away.” He gestured at the sad bundle of silver and blue and gleaming steel.

“You can always put it back on when this is settled,” Rolant offered.

Will there ever be a time when this is settled? Ianthe hardly believed it — any more than, sixteen hours ago, she could have believed the Silverfire King could betray them.

But…

Magic is an unending circle — Ianthe’s link to Power had taught her that. No, more than that — magic was a moebius strip, a circle turned in on itself to make a single surface.

And magic is life. Preserve me, she added mentally, recalling the words Rolant used when he called to healing.

“We can wear it to reclaim it,” Ianthe said at last, with an optimism she didn’t entirely feel, yet. “They are our colors, too.”

Drinking Greef at the End of the World (fanfiction; Elder Scrolls)

Originally published on Archive of Our Own on January 17, 2014. Reposted here with slight corrections.

Though there was no daylight in the Corprusarium, Yagrum Bagarn, the last living dwarf, knew it was Morndas. Because it was Morndas, it was not Uupse Fyr who brought his breakfast tray and morning medicaments, but one of the nameless servants of Tel Fyr. While Bagarn missed her sweet voice reading to him, the absence was expected, and he resigned himself to reading to himself until she finished her martial arts lesson with Vistha-Kai.

What was not expected was the tremor that shook the Corprusarium at the tenth hour of the morning. Dishes clattered in cupboards, rock ground against rock, and Bagarn found his centurion spider legs skittering beneath him.

He knew what earthquakes were, of course, though he hadn’t lived through one in years — not since Red Mountain had gone quiescent. Even then, such things were rarely felt as far as Azura’s Coast.

The tremor passed, and Bagarn righted himself, panting. Everything was eerily silent in the wake of the shock; even his corprus-demented neighbors had been silenced. After a few heartbeats, the drip of water on stone breached the quiet, and everything seemed to return to normal again.

Bagarn was returning to his reading — considering if this play had any merit, and if he would like it better had he seen it performed — when Lord Fyr bustled into the room, carrying a silver tray with a bottle and two glasses set upon it. The Dunmer wizard was not wearing his usual Daedric armor, but was dressed in loose robes for sleeping.

A social call? Bagarn surmised. An odd time for it, but well, Divayth Fyr was an odd mer. “Good Morndas to you, Lord Fyr,” he greeted his old friend. “I see it takes an earth-tremor to bring you down here, these days.”

Fyr gave a crooked smile. “Rather a nasty one, wasn’t that? Shook all the paintings off the wall in the Onyx Hall.” He set the tray down on the table beside Bagarn. The Dwemer thought he saw a tremor in Fyr’s hands as he did; but in his next movement, he smoothly unstoppered the bottle and poured a liquid into the two glasses with a little flourish, making Bagarn doubt he had ever seen the thing.

“Is Red Mountain erupting, then?” He lifted the little cup to his nose, smelling the bitter, fruity smell of comberry brandy. Greef, the Dunmer called it. He set the cup down again, content just to smell. It was early to be drinking.

“Doubt it.” There was a firm set to Fyr’s jaw, a glint in his red eyes that Bagarn read as mischievousness. Then he switched topics: “Have you ever seen Vivec?”

“The Chimer? Your warrior-poet?”

“The city that bears his name.”

“Ah. No.” Bagarn smiled. “Though I’ve heard it’s an unobliging place to get lost.”

Fyr chuckled. “It is, as that.” He seated himself on a stool that Uupse favored for reading. “I’ve had news from some colleagues there.” He paused, steepling his fingers above his cup of greef. “If I tell you Baar Dau has fallen, that means nothing to you?”

Bagarn shook his head.

“Hmm.” Fyr’s eyes searched the room. “It is a large rock, floating above the city, on which we have our Ministry of Truth.”

“Floating above the city? That sounds infinitely interesting. How is such a thing accomplished?”

“By Lord Vivec’s will, of course. Said he stopped it when Sheogorath tossed it out of Oblivion in a fit of pique. You know something of such things, I imagine, since Vivec’s power derives — derived — from –”

“Ah yes.” Bagarn cut him off, shifting uncomfortably in the seat of his centurion chair. He thought of the Heart of Lorkhan, Kagrenac, the Numidium project–things he hadn’t thought about in years. Not since that Argonian with corprus came to Tel Fyr.

It occurred to him then. “But Lord Vivec has been– I hear he has been in seclusion for many years now.”

Fyr made a snorting noise, and rose to his feet, crossing to the cupboard. “In seclusion, my grey arse. He disappeared. Lost his powers, and then disappeared.”

“Lost his powers?”

The Dunmer was rummaging in the cupboard now, and Bagarn could hear the clinking of metal and glass. “When that slave destroyed the Heart,” he said, over his shoulder. “You remember her. The Argonian.”

“I was just thinking of her, actually. You mean to say… she destroyed the Heart of Lorkhan? How is that possible? Lord Kagrenac himself couldn’t…” He trailed off, not sure what this all meant.

Fyr emerged from the cupboard, holding a Dwemer coin in one hand. His other hand waved dismissively. “It’s all very complex. Damned if I can quite follow it myself.” He stared off into the distance, a look of nostalgia written on his face. “Clever gal, wasn’t she? Didn’t give her a single key, but she opened all the boxes in my labyrinth.” He hefted the coin in his hand. “Sure she figured something out. They decided she was the Nerevarine, did you know? ‘They’ being I don’t know who. Vivec. House Telvanni. Whatever. Fulfilled the prophecies, and all that.”

Bagarn drew in a breath, trying to keep up with Fyr’s stream of consciousness. Luckily, he was well practiced at it —  plus he knew some small amount about Dunmer legend. “An Argonian Nerevarine? Isn’t that… odd?”

“Yes, well. Azura does rather have a sense of humor, doesn’t she? Anyway! Our intrepid slave girl destroyed the enchantments around the Heart, severing our dear Tribunal from it, and causing them to lose their powers.”

Bagarn was well aware his friend was speaking what the Tribunal cult would call heresy. Perhaps he felt safe doing so because he was a four-thousand year-old wizard who could travel to Oblivion. Perhaps, here at the center of the Corprusarium, he simply knew he could not be overheard by anyone who cared about such things. “Do go on.”

Fyr tossed the coin from hand to hand. “Vivec disappeared. But as the legend goes, while the people loved him, Baar Dau would stay afloat.” He paused. “Today, it has fallen.”

He dropped the Dwemer coin, then, into a puddle of water at his feet. It splashed and dispersed the puddle, rolling unharmed to the side. “That coin is Baar Dau. The puddle is Vivec.” He bit his lip. “Was Vivec.” He sat down abruptly and picked up his cup of greef, sipping at it. “One of my colleagues was on the road to Pelagiad when it happened. Contacted me at once. Told me he saw the cantons knocked over like toys under an ogrim’s heel.” Again Bagarn saw that hesitation in his caretaker’s movements. “That was,” Fyr licked his lips, “the last I heard. Lost the transmission. He must have Recalled out of there.” He didn’t sound sure.

Bagarn was silent, shocked. He had never been there, but he knew Vivec was the greatest city on Vvardenfell.

And now it was gone.

“I’m sorry,” Bagarn said, because he did not know what else to say.

Fyr drank deeply of the greef, before continuing. “Well. You know. It’s not just that.” There was a hint of menace in his voice. “Do you remember,” he began, and then cleared his throat, because his voice was gritty. “Do you remember how Red Mountain would erupt and cause an earthquake? And if there was an earthquake, it would conversely cause Red Mountain to erupt? And sometimes, over in Mournhold, the waves would rise high off the coast, smash fishing boats and houses, and…” He trailed off, shaking his head. “Of course you don’t know about that last part. Point is. Nirn and the roots of the mountain and the tides, they are all connected. What affects one, affects the others.”

Bagarn thought he understood. “Ah. You believe there will be… after-effects?”

Fyr shook his head. “Already begun. In another quarter of an hour, we’ll know the full extent.” He rolled the cup in his hands.

Bagarn’s mind moved infinitely slow, as if refusing to accept the gravity of the situation. Was it his imagination, or could he hear a low rumbling beneath the Corprusarium? Was a river of lava already snaking its way right to their door? He felt a thrill of fear. It was an odd sensation, entirely foreign to a mer whom corprus had inoculated from simple mortality.

The first inane thing he said was, “What of your daughters?”

Fyr opened his mouth to reply, but it was a long time before the words came out. “Safe. Recalled to Mournhold. With family.”

“You could Recall, too,”

Fyr laughed. “Bitter irony. Mine is set to Vivec.”

“Or seek intervention.”

“To Molag Mar, which is hardly safer than here.”

“You have that daedric amulet –”

“No. I gave that to the Argonian.”

Bagarn thought. Water dripped. “Look, old friend. If nothing else, you can travel to Oblivion, can’t you? Hardly comfortable, but if you choose the right realm, you’ll be safe for a time.”

Fyr shook his head. “The ritual takes time, and supplies I don’t have. I can’t just pop off to Moonshadow in an instant.”

A sudden, clever thought occurred to Bagarn. “Aren’t your people known for their resistance to fire and heat?”

“Resistance is not immunity. If nothing else,” Fyr said, grimacing, “it will just kill me more slowly.”

That was a frightful picture, but Bagarn was becoming exasperated. Everywhere he offered suggestions, Fyr threw them aside. “You are the single most brilliant sorcerer in Vvardenfell!” Bagarn cried. “At the very least, you can levitate yourself somewhere neither lava nor earthquakes nor giant waves can reach you.”

A thin, sad smile stole over Fyr’s lips then. “And leave the Corprusarium behind? Leave you behind?” He gestured to the Dwemer’s bloated body. “Where I would go, you cannot follow, friend.”

And that was the entire truth behind the excuses, Bagarn saw at last. His shoulders fell.

“Please, drink up,” Fyr whispered. “Hate to drink alone.”

Bagarn looked into his cup, and considered his own death. All things considered, it would be a relief. His body was a twisted, traitorous ruin; even his senses were beginning to fail him.

But it was a funny thing, to have survived so much, only to die now.

To have survived the failed experiments that turned his people to ash.

To have survived Akaviri invasions.

To have survived corprus, which made him this ruin, but also allowed him to live to this far-attenuated age.

To have seen the Nerevarine.

To die, in the path of a natural disaster. A natural disaster caused, however indirectly, by the very thing Kagrenac had tried to do to improve the Dwemer, thousands of years ago.

He wondered if it would hurt much.

He sipped his greef, and felt its numb his tongue.

“I’m sorry there’s not much left,” Fyr said, smoothing his topknot of white hair with hands that visibly shook. “You know how Alfe likes her drink. This is good stuff. Second Era vintage. They were drinking this stuff when Vivec flooded the Akaviri out of Vvardenfell.”

The numbness did not leave Bagarn’s tongue. He licked his lips, and knew suddenly that the Fyr daughters had not gone to Mournhold. They were duplicates of Fyr; what family could they claim?

“This will make it easier,” Fyr said. “I don’t know if the seas or Nirn will take us… but sera alchemy is always obliging.” He set his head down on the table, his breathing heavy. “That is the hackle-lo leaf you taste. To numb the pain. Luminous russula and violet coprinus does the rest.”

A cold stone settled in Bagarn’s chest, and with surprising eagerness, he embraced it. He reached for the bottle of poisoned greef and poured out the dregs of it, speckled with precipitates. “Will this… be enough?

Fyr tried to nod, but didn’t quite manage it. “Yes,” he rasped instead. “Excuse me if I don’t pour for you. My spine — seems to have stopped working.” He laughed. His skin was pale, the color of a Falmer’s. “Terrible old man. Lived far too long. But. Know how to be a gracious host.”

You have always been good to me, Bagarn wanted to say, but the words froze in his throat. He saw the same glint in Fyr’s eyes he had seen earlier, and knew it wasn’t mischievousness, after all, but fear.

Fyr was too proud to ask for his company–he was as haughty as any Dunmer. But he was slipping away, his intelligent eyes dimming, even as the Dwemer delayed. The least he owed Divayth Fyr, Bagarn determined, was follow him into the dark.

He threw back the cup of greef and drank greedily.