Ray of Light Options

[Lucidarius]

This was planned as a prologue to my adventures in Oblivion but then it turned rather long so instead of a complete story about a major plot line, I’ve only finished the prologue up until the prison in the Imperial City. The goal was to understand my character’s motive and background for better immersion in the game.

This is my first try at writing fiction so any comments or thoughts are more than welcome. Thank you for your time.

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12 Last Seed 3E419
As all children living on the Bitter Coast Nienna had learned to swim almost simultaneously with learning to walk. One day they had been on the shore, Lila killing the big mud crabs and her daughter Nienna swimming and diving for pearls. The kollops around the coastline of Vvardenfell in the Imperial province of Morrowind seldom held any pearls. They had already been taken by the abundance of poor inhabitants.

Suddenly Lila realized she had not seen her daughter’s head above the surface of the water for quite a while. She resolutely jumped in with all her clothes on. When she didn’t see her immediately, she began to panic and even forgot to cast a water breathing spell so she had to surface to get air. Then she saw Nienna a good distance away and gestured to her to come back. Nienna complied immediately, swimming all the way back under water before joining Lila on the bank. Lila did not know what to do first, berate Nienna for swimming out so far or quenching her curiosity about how she could hold her breath for so long. First she hugged Nienna tightly, grateful that she had not come to harm. Before she could say anything, Nienna excitedly burst out:

“Oh, mama, I found out how to cast the water breathing spell, it’s wonderful, wonderful to do magic.” Nienna jumped up and down to expend some of her pent up energy upon discovering her new ability.

“I was out swimming as usual and then I saw an open kollop with a pearl glinting rather far away. Instead of just swimming as normal, I pictured my fingers closing around the pearl, daydreaming about buying you a new wool skirt for winter like the one we saw at the shop yesterday and a real doll for me with a dress and silk slippers. Then it happened. My lungs didn’t feel like they were under water anymore, but more like inhaling a very cold, clingy kind of fog. And I could swim, and swim, and swim. It wasn’t until my fingers actually touched the pearl that I felt the pressure of the water on my chest so I had to go up for air.” Nienna smiled happily, dancing about throwing sand and twigs up in the air, reveling in the discovery.

Lila was shocked to hear that Nienna had discovered the water breathing spell by herself – and at such a young age too. She was not even four years old. Normally, children in High Rock were tested for their magical capabilities at the age of six. Lila had been an unusual five years old herself when admitted to the Guild of Mages, but had intensely disliked the stuffy and old-fashioned teaching methods. She ran away when she was seven, doing the odd job for different employers while trying to learn as much about magic and different spells as possible. She was afraid that Nienna was too young to understand the powers involved in magic thus resulting in fatal consequences.

“Congratulations, Enna. This is a big day and cause for both celebration and contemplation,” Lila said in a quiet, serious tone. “Magic always consists of both sides: lightness and darkness, the power to heal and to destroy.”

“Yes, mama, but I didn’t do anything bad, I just swam underwater,” Nienna said, confused about her mother’s serious tone.

“I know, darling, it’s hard to explain what it is I mean. When you cast that water breathing spell, your only intent was to get the pearl and buy something nice for the money. This spell belongs to the school of alteration. Alteration means “change” and that is exactly the purpose of the spell, to change the way you perceive the water, the world and everything in it so that you can breathe longer and don’t have to surface to catch air. Until the spell runs out,” Lila gently pulled her daughter down beside her on the bank; this was going to take a while.

“When we change the physical world around us, we might get to a point where we forget that we’ve changed it but reality will always win in the end. No person can hold a spell indefinitely because the person would run out of either magicka or stamina. Just think about how fatal it would be if you were deep down in the ocean when suddenly reality came back and you had no more magicka or stamina left to prolong the spell. You’d die.” Lila had looked intently at Nienna’s face during her lecture to see whether her words had any effect.

“No, but I would not forget the real world, mama. I wouldn’t go down so far that I couldn’t easily come back up again.” Very little effect, it seemed.

Lila sighed, recognizing her own stubbornness and misguided pride in her daughter. She had been just as confident about her magical skills, and it was not until she had met Turamo and he had expanded her knowledge about magic that she had realized the prudence of humility. Altmers are known for their arrogance, and with reason; the only exception from it is magic. They view humility as the most important factor in successful application of magic as a whole. This means in alchemy as well as in the research and understanding of the six schools of magic: alteration, conjuration, destruction, restoration, illusion, and mysticism.

[Lucidarius]

About the child, I strive to make Nienna hungry for knowledge as I see that as a characterizing trait in her. It's also fun to speculate about how to do magic. Various stories have their own take on it ranging from the need for a wand, a cauldron, a flying broom, a black cat/raven/x to TES where people do some magical things, but not e.g. food by magic.

I never had the patience to try and save Tarhiel but I always enjoyed the crazy programmer's idea of him plummeting from seemingly nowhere with that eerie cry.

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Home Schooling 3E419-421
Over the course of the next years, Lila taught Nienna to read and write, to calculate and about the schools of magic whenever they had the time. When Nienna had to learn calculations by rote, Lila related them to a simple spell so Nienna understood the need for it. Lila stressed that she was not a scholar, mostly self-tutored, and that Nienna might learn confusing or contradictory things when she turned eighteen years and was old enough to join the Guild of Mages for free. Nienna relished this period and blossomed in her mother’s wealth of knowledge.

Lila was very conservative in the spells she taught her daughter for fear of Nienna harming herself or others. When Nienna had learned some low-level spells, she cast them over and over because she thought it was exciting to be able to change her surroundings or affect them, even though her weak spells mostly had very modest effect on the world and its inhabitants.

In the beginning, she had to close her eyes and concentrate entirely on the appropriate magic school and the spell she would cast, saying the incantation out loud. In time, she trained herself to open her eyes and just whisper the ancient words in order to cast a spell. With practice she would be able to cast all spells silently, Lila promised.

The only spell Nienna could cast reliably and silently from the start was the water breathing spell due to the fact that she had discovered it on her own. This spell belonged to the school of alteration. Many people have difficulty with that school because one’s mind needs to be open to any possibility, even those that seem illogical. E.g. to imagine that there is only one moon instead of two or that you can be your father’s father is too difficult to accept for most individuals, hence they will never achieve the same skill level in alteration as in some of the other schools.

In fact, Turamo had had a much harder time doing alteration spells. He had spent most of his life as a systematic, logical scholar that meticulously checked inconsistencies in ancient scrolls and new spells to discover hidden secrets or weaknesses. To him, Mundus was an ordered world and to reconcile two opposites simultaneously was extremely hard for his clearheaded mind to do. Whereas to the playing and adaptable mind of a child, Mundus was wide open for discoveries and wondrous exploits.

The schools of destruction and restoration had come easily to Nienna because she thought their purposes very straight forward, respectively to inflict harm and to restore, heal, fortify, cure, and resist, in short restore. She learned the weak ‘Fireball’ which was only strong enough to light a campsite fire or inflict a small burn on a being. She liked to use that cantrip spell whenever she could, lighting candles for her mother, Teldrisa and Grohen, or making small woodpiles burn when out doing her alchemy.

She was even able to practice it on animals that attacked her as the Bitter Coast was no sheltered place. Quite the opposite with a very high level of aggressiveness in almost all the animals native to Morrowind. The worst had to be the cliff racers, huge and strong birds that attacked anyone out in the open. Nienna would use the fireball spell to deter them for a moment and then run for cover.

Her mother had taught her a medium version of ‘restore health’ since it was an orison spell that heals. It could not mend broken bones only minor to medium wounds, but it cost much of Nienna’s still low magicka reserve to cast. She practiced the restore spell on herself and on animals. Even on a hurt nix-hound, a big, green canine creature normally high in aggression. She encountered the nix-hound in a far off clearing, lying cramped on the side with a broken left hind leg. At first, it had snapped at her with its long teeth and growled warnings when she advanced, but she offered it some water while talking gently and reassuringly. The hound let her have a look at its leg though looking suspiciously at her.

First, she touched lightly at the leg to discern whether it was truly broken. It was not. Then she had used the healing spell on the deep gash until her magicka flow stopped. Fortunately, the repeated spell only fizzled out once. On average they would do this much more often since she was still a novice. Afterwards, she put on a healing salve with a bandage and gave the hound some dried scrib jerky to eat. In three days, he was well enough to limp around and in one week, he could hunt again. She came to tend him twice each day until he could provide food himself, and the nix-hound obviously recognized her and accepted her. They played a little the better he got, and from then on he would join her whenever she came in the southern parts of the Bitter Coast.

The school of illusion demanded more of Nienna than the previous schools.

“Illusion affects the perception and mind of living subjects,” Lila said, mending her well-worn skirt while checking that Nienna used tiny, almost invisible, stitches in her own needlework. “So when you cast the ‘light’ spell which only lasts for twenty seconds, imagine yourself reaching into the surroundings and pull forth the inherent substance of light that lies there already.”

“But how can you walk and talk and think while you have to keep thinking about the light spell, too?”

“The better you get in the school of the spell, the longer the magnitude, duration and general power of the spell will be that you are able to cast. Say, you’re able to cast a light spell that has the duration of two minutes, then you’ll only need to recast it if you need more light after those two minutes,” Lila said in an understanding tone.

“I wish it wasn’t so difficult. I felt spooked being in that old cave, mama,” Nienna thought of the thrill from yesterday’s practice. “I had to recast the spell constantly because the duration was so short. Sometimes the previous spell ended and my new spell fizzled so the darkness surrounded me completely. In those instances, it was like watching a big spider weaving its web, and then suddenly it would fall almost on my nose, but then catching itself and heaving its body back up again,” she added, reliving the experience from a new angle.

Lila smiled upon hearing of Nienna’s comparison of her experiences with a fizzled spell with a spider almost dropping on her nose. She knew how her daughter detested spiders. She was at ease with almost all other animals apart from the need to defend herself from them but spiders would make her jump and run for Lila or into hiding.

“I thought you hated spiders, Enna?”

“Yes, in a way I do, but I’m fascinated with the amazing way they weave an intricate web to catch their prey in. I still don’t like them near me, but now I don’t wish to kill them immediately, only if they advance in my direction or pose some sort of hindrance or even threat.”

The school of mysticism is the study of veils. When you get past one veil, you encounter the next immediately. Philosophers and mystics can study this school and never be done. Each pupil must learn and relearn how to probe this transcendent sphere and draw forth the subtly changing material into their spells. To cast the same spell is never an exact copy of the former.

“The material is constantly changing and each time you probe, you will find yourself going down a slightly different path than the previous time, so to speak,” Lila explained.

“Sounds like fun. To always go the same route is boring,” Nienna said.

“I’ll teach you a spell that detects beings in your vicinity. You’re not strong enough to win over a grown up animal and your fire spell can only kill after countless casting. Use this ‘detect creatures’ spell when you’re out playing or gathering ingredients, then you are able to avoid the dangerous situations.”

Then she taught her daughter how to picture beings in her mind and with the help from the mystic school to give off a pink fog indicating each being, provided the spell detected any in her vicinity.

“This is hard. How can I think of something that I don’t know?” Nienna was frustrated. Her attempts to probe the transcendent material had not been successful in two days.

“You know it’s there; you have to find the material to help show you the animals or people. This is why the probing is so hard. With time and your growing skill the probing will be easier but the school of mysticism is never actually easy or one to do half-heartedly.”

On the third day of training intensely, Nienna had finally had a break through. She had been tired from a long day of helping her mother gathering ingredients and doing alchemy. As she sat looking into the fire, her mood mellow and her thoughts wandering on their own, she had had the urge to try the spell once more. This time, she thought of the nix-hounds and the kwama foragers living on the Bitter Coast, picturing them in her mind’s eye. Then she instinctively reached out with her mind and delved lightly into the transcendent sphere, pulling back some material to shape the animals with. Although her eyes were open, she could see two foggy shapes one to her right and one straight ahead. She concentrated more, seeing the shapes more clearly, then they disappeared like when you blow out a candle with a flicker of pink ooze or smoke behind.

Her tiredness completely forgotten, she raced to the two places where the shapes had appeared and excitedly saw an animal in each place. Now her rate of success went continually up as she practiced the spell repeatedly. Like her mother had said, the detection spell helped her avoid the animals, and she felt much safer roaming through the land. When she remembered to cast it.

It was not until 3E421 that Nienna had finally badgered her mother into teaching her a conjuration spell. Lila held her ground firmly for almost two years but Nienna proved true to her tenacious nature when she wanted something and had repeatedly brought up the subject, backing up her request with a very convincing spell practice in the other five schools of magic.

But after a near fatal incident where Nienna had been beset by one of the ever present cliff racers and her fireball spell only managed to enrage it further, Lila had reached her decision. To let one’s daughter die from cautiousness would be ironic. So Nienna was taught how to conjure a ‘Bound dagger’. Now, a dagger in hand is only the first step to self defence. One needs to learn how to use the pointy end since animals are not deterred by bluff.

As delighted Nienna was for the conjuration spell, she detested the lessons in how to use the wooden dagger replica that Grohen taught her. It was so boring. Thrust here, parry there. Dum-dum. To cast spells, on the other hand, was pure exhilaration. Thinking up new possibilities, using theory, combining thinking and intuition, it seemed much more demanding and elusive to get it right. The challenge was greater and so the satisfaction when she was able to cast a spell. But she only grumbled a little. Ah, to learn conjuration at last – it fully compensated the tedious dagger lessons.

Nienna practiced spell and swordplay for some weeks. Then she felt ready and slipped out of the hut one night and quickly found a cliff racer. The fight had not gone as planned. She was nearly killed as she launched fire spells, fended herself with the bound dagger and even had to resort to kick or use her fists while waiting for her magicka to restore enough to cast another fireball or heal herself. During the prolonged fight she learned three lessons: never underestimate your opponent, always come wellprepared and use any skill necessary.

Although she had had many a run-in with cliff racers she usually hid before they had scored more than one or two hits, but she had grossly understimated how fast the sharpness of its beak or the hardness of its leathery tail could wear her down. She did not even bring some potions of restore health, not thinking it necessary. Now the foul beast was shrieking its goal of butchering her, completely misunderstanding her intent which was supposed to be reversed with Nienna the butcher, not the butchered.

Nienna grit her teeth together over her own arrogance, swearing and fighting while her mind searched for some way of getting out of this alive. Hiding was not an option as there were no trees or houses in the vicinity. In her agitation she did not see the small tree root sticking up from the ground and began to fall over it but caught herself at the last moment and turned. Without thinking she threw a fireball at the bird and hit one wing. She realized that the cliff racer is a strong but not particularly swift bird since it was still hovering over the place she had just stumbled from. She darted backwards and cast another fireball which hit a talon. Slowly she gained back her strength, keeping the cliff racer at bay by dodging its attacks and still inflicting the little damage that each fireball made. Once in a while she recast her bound dagger and used it to poke some small holes in the foolhardy bird that did not know when to quit. It was not the fireballs or even the dagger that left Nienna the victor but the accumulation of the many, many small wounds that finished the cliff racer in the end.

Exhausted and bleeding Nienna sank down on the ground. She was elated that she had killed her first cliff racer. All by herself. She sobered a little when she remembered that it was neither prowess in magic nor swordplay but a lucky stumble and agility that had saved her. Still, she had done it. Nienna smiled, too bad that she could not tell Lila since she knew her mother would be furious with her for her foolish behaviour and might stop further education in conjuration. She dared not risk that. It had taken her two years to convince her mother to teach her, and it would all be undone if she told her. Oh, but she longed to.

Just walking in the swamped terrain of the Bitter Coast was now a treasure chest full of gifts to uncover where she tried to discern the many different forms that each of the objects consisted of. The formerly mundane objects like rocks and furniture were not really “dead” or static since she could trace the slight fluctuations in them, like they were breathing and their forms changing subtly for the trained eye. When she was skillful enough, she would be able to “take” one of the rocks’s other forms and use it for her own purpose, her mother had promised. She was only beginning to learn the infinite ways that she could use anything in her surroundings. Oh, it was exhilarating to dip into the magic of Nirn. Nienna was happy.