A New Sun Rises - Maxical's Adventures, The Truth Behind The Oblivion Crisis Options

[mALX]

*

A New Sun Rises

This story covers the daily events in the two years leading up to the Oblivion Crisis. It begins following the life of a semi-typical Khajiit girl who inadvertently finds herself the pawn of a powerful necromancer just as factions and forces begin moving into position.

When motivations are revealed it drives out the secrets of forgotten pasts, and another Khajiit girl whose life was an intertwined mirror of her own till both were altered irrevocably by the same necromancer in whose power they both found themselves.

The diverse paths their lives took merge once again in an explosive revelation that leaves one wondering how much of her skills and personality were ever her own; the other in a desperate struggle to keep control of her life, keep from being used against the Emperor as the crisis that will change Cyrodiil and the rule of Tamriel forever begins.

Maxical

Prologue

Sun's Dusk ( 3rd Era, year 432 )
Ma�Thjizzrini Qa
15 years after her parent's deaths

Fate is an invincible enemy in a battle you�ll never leave unscathed. It stalks you as prey and strikes regardless of shields or armor. The gods and other realms can find entertainment in manipulating your path on a whim; or ancient vampires dabble with your life, alter your mind without you even knowing it. Sometimes you don�t find out till it is too late.

I�d like to blame the gods for where I found myself, but the truth is that somewhere between the void and the Dreamsleeve lies fate; a place where time and space meet; where even the blackness of the void doesn�t reach, and the gods make wagers on the outcome of lives caught in the �tween.

Wedged into that fold are damned souls, souls that have been marked for paths they can�t change, to destinies they can�t escape. Ancient vampire's eyes see them as beacons, follow them as scents, control their minds without their ever knowing.

They are targets for revenge of an enemy they don't even know exists, pawns in a game they didn't even know was being played; whose contestants their worst nightmares couldn�t envision.


That�s where I found myself fifteen years after the game started. That was the day I found out that everything I�d ever known about myself had always been�her. Amiela.

Amiela was a 137 years old demon of a vampire that thrived on destruction and usurped whatever she could from others. She died a century before I was born, but the wars being fought over her didn�t end with her death. Her soul was marked�and inside me.

For me, fate was my parents bringing me through the heavy forested area of the Gold Road just outside Skingrad at the same time the second worst necromancer of our time was in a battle for the soul of Amiela. And there I was, a convenient hiding spot.

That was the day my parents died. All I ever knew of them was where they died and what killed them. I was twenty years old before I even learned my mother's name. I was twenty years old before I remembered Nisaba. Nissy.

*******



Nisaba

Nissy�s beginning didn�t just match mine, it was mine; though neither of us knew it before we�d both turned twenty years old. That was the year our paths crossed again and we learned the only scraps of our histories anyone was ever able to recover. That's when we learned our destinies were intertwined long before our lives began.

Nissy and I were born within a month of each other in the year 412, both born in the 'no-man's' land of wild mountain passes between Vvardenfell and Cyrodiil. Our parents were traveling together and we were born en route, but our histories began long before that.

From early childhood our parents were owned by Hlormaren, a Dunmer Stronghold on the Bitter Coast of Vvardenfell. Before that they were housed in the same children's slave pen on the mainland. Maybe our histories began long before that, but that was the furthest back any information went that we were able to find.

Nissy�s mother died giving birth to her. Her father dropped her off at the Imperial Legion Orphanage for the un-adoptable when she was two. Three years later a Legionnaire dropped me off there when my parents were killed in a minotaur attack.

Fate once again found Nissy and me four years later in the middle of the night, right there in our room at that orphanage. We were both nine years old when our destinies were wrenched into the hands of the worst necromancer Tamriel has known since the King of Worms. Both of us have been in his power in one way or another since. Dagoth-Malan.

That was eleven years ago, eleven years that Nissy waited for me to keep a promise to save her...eleven years that all my memories of her were stolen by Dagoth-Malan so I couldn�t keep that vow. Until fate brought us together again when we both turned twenty.

Nissy and me, we were both in the wrong place at the wrong time. Fate.

** The Beginning **



Where Memories Begin And End

Legion Office, Imperial City
3rd Era, year 417 (memories of events that occurred when Maxical was five years old)

The earliest memory of my lifetime begins and ends in the Legion headquarters in the Imperial City. I�ve never been able to remember a single moment of my life before finding myself in that office.

It was a coming awake. A dark void of nothingness, and then in a blink my eyes were open and there I stood in that office with no idea where I was or how I got there.

An odd putrid odor I couldn't name seemed to be clinging inside my nostrils and roiling my stomach, even the pungent stench of sweat emanating from the large man behind the desk was a welcome relief in comparison.

There was an odd feeling of having forgotten something important that niggled irritatingly, a barb that probed against my mind to remember, but there was nothing to answer its incessant prodding. Nothing. It was like a journey through a maze with only dead ends at every turn. I didn't know where I had come from, where I belonged, or who I belonged to.

At first I barely understood what they were saying; strange sounding words spoken so harshly and rapidly that it was impossible to grasp even one to decipher. They couldn�t understand me at all when I spoke.

Somewhere deep inside me in a place as unconnected to me as the lost memories of my life before that office there was the oddest sensation; a stirring, as if that part of me was just now waking. Suddenly their words were striking a chord of recognition It almost felt as if I could speak their tongue, but when my mouth opened the words still came out in the only language I knew.

*******

The large sweaty man behind the desk pointed at me. "What is that?"

"Don't know, only that it's the get of some beasts killed by a minotaur up on the big curve of the Gold Road in County Skingrad. Couldn't tell what they were either. The mother was a bloody mess; but the male...fur black as coal soot, and the same flattened face as that one's." He indicated my face, then added, "Too big for a cat, never seen anything like him. Both bore slave tattoos so they can't be from Cyrodiil. No travel papers or identification on either body."

The large sweating man's chair groaned loudly as he leaned over and gave me an intrusive and extended eyeing. "That ain't no Khajiit, not with that white coloring. That face gives me the creeps, you said the male looked the same? This one must be an albino then. No telling what you'll find in those other Provinces, all barbarians." He spat a large wad of brown cud into the urn beside him.

"The male had been looted; they even took his clothes, naked as a jaybird he was. Found this in the brush near the female's body." He held out a blood spattered travel pack. "When I moved her body this silver dagger was underneath her, and this gold locket fell off her neck. Chain was broken, likely in the attack."

The rotund man tossed him a cloth to wrap the items in, then pointed at me. "How old do you think it is?"

"Too small to be very old. Can't be much more than a couple years. It walks well enough, though. And mark it as female, it squatted to relieve itself on the way here."

"Two year old female." The large man wrote something down.

"And a bad tempered one at that. She scratched me up good trying to get her on the horse." That was met with raucous laughter from the men gathered.

"It's that red hair!" Someone called.

The mocking laughter and insulting treatment I understood without the help of that strange place within me that seemed to know this language. I didn't know anything about myself or how I got here, I was confused and up till that moment terrified. But at that moment I learned that I had a temper. I could feel it building inside me like a fire about to go out of control.

In my rage I nearly missed that their odd contortions and rudimentary gestures to communicate were attempts to get my name. My name. That would be important to find out who I was.

�Ma'Thjizzrini Qa.� A girls voice squealed from behind me. I turned to see a Khajiit girl in the doorway staring at me wide eyed.

"Ma'Thjizzrini Qa!" She started running toward me, but one of the armored men grabbed her and pushed her back out the door.

As soon as she said it I knew that was my name, it struck a familiar chord immediately. I repeated it, imitating their miming gestures by pointing to my chest. �Ma'Thjizzrini Qa.�

"Name, Maxical." The rotund man wrote something down, then stamped his seal on the document.

*******

They said I was found beside my parents, was there when they were killed. I didn't remember any of it. It felt like they talked abstractly about strangers. The greatest shock for me that day and so many days since was that I didn't even know my mother's name; wasn't able to bring an image of her to my mind, or even a glimpse of a moment with her or the sound of her voice. It was like she disappeared into the void, taking every remembrance of her.

That day in the Legion office though, that I will never forget. The smell of pipe smoke and tobacco, male sweat and steel; those odors bring back the memory of that day as if it was still alive within me, still happening to me.

It has stayed fresh in my mind all these years; but not because I wanted to remember it. It was that haunting memory that was just out of grasp beyond it, the sheer number of times I�d come to that stopping point in my memory and tried to force beyond it to find something, anything of who I was; of my life before that Legion office. Of my mother.

That day, those men staring at me as if I were an insect as they tried to determine what I was, what I was saying...what to do with me. All through it my mind burned with trying to figure out who I was and how I got there. I'll never forget that day.

*******

This post has been edited by mALX: May 4 2019, 07:13 PM

[mALX]

*


@ Acadian - Sheeeees Baaaaack! Thank you so much Acadian! You ROCK !!
***
@ Zalphon - Thank you Zalphon! She had to come, it was inevitable. You can blame Winter Wolf, who hinted me into it, lol.
***
@ Winter Wolf - Thank you very much Wolf, and I want you to know it was your hints that brought her here!!! I wasn't going to do it, but you got me missing her too badly, lol. Thank you Wolf !!!! You ROCK !!!!
***
@ Destri Melarg - Thank you so much Destri! I just hope she can keep her old friends, but if she makes new ones - so much the better! Thanks again Destri!
***
@ Treydog - (Houston, we have a problem?) - are you equating Maxical to trouble? ROFL !!! Thank you so very much Treydog!!!!




*

The Orphanage

Memories of the orphanage; 3rd Era, years 417 - 421

Chapter 1: The Imperial Orphanage For The Un-adoptable



I learned later that the Legion had listed me as “Two year old female, albino beast of unknown race.“

The Legion made their regulated period of attempts to find an adoptive home for me before I was transferred to the orphanage in the Imperial City Prison Compound. That’s where orphans considered “un-adoptable” were sent.

All the beast races end there, or any human too old to be considered cute. I wasn’t cute, and that “unknown albino beast” stamp on my papers would have scared off anyone who might have thought I was. They could have placed a mudcrab before I would have found a home with that label.

There was a certain look they'd get on their faces before slamming the door, a look I'll never forget. You don't have to understand the language to know rejection when you see it.

The Legion may not have known what race I was, but their attempts to place me are how I discovered that (despite the lack of a kingly snout or thick rug of fur) I was Khajiit. I spoke their language, and understood them instantly. Those were the worst rejections, maybe because I did understand what they were saying.

It was from them I learned that to superstitious Khajiit an albino is considered a jinx. My white fur frightened them. Even walking down the street Khajiit would cross to the other side, chanting “Vaba” under their breath to ward my ill spirit off them. Translated literally it means, “It is;” but when spoken by itself it means “Bad omen.”

I've never known why I looked different than other Khajiit, but growing up I hated being different. I remember as a child rubbing dirt into my fur in an attempt to look like them, to look normal.

Back then it was devastating to know I was hated by what should have been my own people. Looking back now, maybe they were right; because bad luck seems to have touched a lot of lives connected to mine.

Years later while eavesdropping I learned that Ma'Thjizzrini Qa roughly translated means "What the hell did we do to deserve this child." From that point on, I was glad that for all intents and purposes my name was legally changed on the day of my parent's death. I never used my given name again, and only those closest to me know it.

I’m not going to say that didn’t hurt at the time, it did. Eventually anger carried me through that kind of pain; but below the surface, deep inside me the scars remain of that time. Then you eavesdrop at the wrong time and learn the meaning of your given name.

Maybe it distorted my perspective, but sometimes when you hear that kind of label you begin to believe it is true. You either live up to it or get angry. I did both.

*******

The Imperial Orphanage For The Un-adoptable. The name alone strips everything from you, disintegrates hope that your life will ever be any different than it is right now walking through those gates. A chill of fear shivered over me as the gate thud shut and the bars clanged across behind me.

In front of me were cold gray stone walls lined with barred windows. In several were grimy bleak faces peering out. Prisoners. On my left the upper windows weren't barred. No curtains hung, but children were peering out as I was led in. Their expressions were the same bleak hopelessness as the prisoner's, and their faces were just as grimy.

Those gates sealed out all hope of having a life, a family; I could see that in both the children's and prisoner's eyes, and feel it looking at those high sheer walls. They blocked any view that might fuel dreams of a different life.

In this place the orphans were labeled and sentenced just like the prisoners, they shared an identity with them. The apathy and resignation was tangible from both. They'd stopped caring because nothing they did good or bad mattered once those gates sealed shut; they were here till their sentence ended. For us orphans that was when we turned eighteen.

Most ended returning here on the prison side of the compound for stealing food to survive, unable to find work with no skill training. For some the crime was a means to get back here to the only place they understood...the only people that understood them.

What I learned rapidly about being an orphan here at the Compound, they are tightly bound to each other as a family once you are accepted into their fold. They take care of their own. There was a regular swiping of food that was carried out in midnight stealth missions to any of our orphans that ended up on the prison side.

Getting accepted by the Compound orphans was nearly impossible when I first arrived. Not speaking Cyrodiilic didn't help. There was a hierarchy, and beasts were at the bottom of it. Beasts that were also freakishly different than the rest of their race rated even lower than that. Friends didn't come easily at first.

The exception to that was the Khajiit girl that came into the Legion office that day, Nisaba. She very quickly became my dearest friend. Nissy spoke in my tongue, Ta'agra; and was the only one there who understood me when I first arrived. Somewhere deep inside me the Cyrodiilic resonated familiarly, and with Nissy's help I learned to speak it quickly.






***


Nissy either had an amazing memory or was great at making up stories. Although she'd only been a little over two years old at the time, Nissy remembered her own father dropping her off at the orphanage. She said it was a day she would never forget, and planned to search for her father when she was released from the orphanage. She never said what she'd do when she found him.

Nissy also said she remembered me; that we'd been raised like sisters by my mother because her mother had died birthing her. She only had scanty and limited glimpses of memories of my mother, but remembered she and I had shared a straw bed on the floor of a cave; and remembered us playing and tumbling with each other in the grass outside the cave entrance while my mother washed clothes and dishes in the nearby river.

I didn't remember Nissy, or any of the glimpses of memories she shared. She may have been making it up. A lot of us in the orphanage played that game, so badly wanting a family to claim as theirs, one that wouldn't drop you off here and walk away. l did, wanted it so desperately that I clung to Nissy's imagined memories.

"Tell me everything you can remember about my mother, what was she like?"

"Ma'Thjizzrini Qa, how can you have forgotten?"

"I don't know, Nissy. I don't remember anything, not even what my mother looks like."

"Well, all I remember is that she had yellow eyes, and long hair the color of strawberries and wheat."

"What color is that?"

"I don't know, you'll know it if you see it. She cried the day Papa took me away to bring me here, so did you."

I struggled to believe it, wanted badly to believe it. Something to say I did have a life before that Legion office. What convinced me more than anything was that she had recognized me, knew my name that day in the Legion office. I don't look like any other Khajiit on Nirn. I prodded her to tell me everything she could about it.

"Why did he take you away?"

"There was a row, your father and mine were yelling about something. Then my father took me away and brought me here."

"What were they fighting about?"

"I don't know. Papa said your father's soul was as black as his fur." Nissy's face puckered with the memory.

"My father was a black Khajiit?"

"He was black as the night, I can't believe you don't remember him, Ma'Thjizzrini Qa."

I had a sudden memory of the men in that Legion office saying something about a man with fur as black as coal. That moment was the first time I realized that it really was my parents they'd been discussing that day.

The shield of abstractness was shattered, taking with it any lingering belief that by some horrible mistake I'd been in the company of two strangers that day; the hope that my real parents would come for me soon. That was the moment I realized that I was really an orphan. Inside myself it felt like that front gate to the Compound thudding shut again.







***


Knowing my parents were really dead made me that much more desperate to learn all I could of them.

"Tell me about my father."

"He was huge, much bigger than Papa. I remember being scared of him, thought he was a giant. He never smiled, and had a way of looking at everyone that made my insides feel like we'd better obey him."

"What was his name?"

"Uncle S'Van...Uncle S'Vandera...I can't remember."

"What about my mother, what was her name?"

Nissy shrugged. "Maman is all I know. We both called her that."

Nissy and I did become as close as sisters after that. Even after she'd told me every memory she had of that time I continued to hound her to keep repeating it, and absorbed everything she said in hopes it would jog my own memories. It never did.

It was many months before my Cyrodiilic was understandable enough that the other orphans were beginning to talk to me, months of belief in Nissy's stories before they were shattered.

"You idiot, can't you count to two?" One of the older Altmer girls held up her hand with two fingers sticking up. "You see my fingers? This is how old you are. Nissy has been at the Compound three years, since before you were even born. She couldn't have known you on the outside, she is lying to you."

"But she knew things they said in that office."

"Everyone here does. We all know about a minotaur killing your parents, and your temper."

"How?"

"Eavesdropping, idiot. Nothing is secret in this place."

I was crushed. Maybe I should have known all along it couldn't be true. I never told Nissy I knew it was a lie, but never asked her about my parents again after that.

It was hard to be mad at Nissy for those stories when they gave me the thing I wanted more than anything on Nirn, to know I existed before that day in the Legion office. I wanted to believe it all as badly as she wanted a family to cling to. We both needed each other. I couldn't have endured living at the orphanage without her.



*

Shivani (Maxical's Mother):


http://i434.photobucket.com/albums/qq67/Ma...creenShot10.jpg


S'Vandra (Maxical's Father):


http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/images/2...-1252591532.jpg



Nissy:


http://oblivion.nexusmods.com/mods/images/...-1300451881.jpg

*





This post has been edited by mALX: Aug 3 2013, 09:47 AM