Madgod Options

[Colonel Mustard]

Hey everyone.

This has been rattling around my head for a while now, and I figure I might as well get it started with and continued while I've got the drive to write it. As you might have guessed, the following is based off the Shivering Isles, but I'm doing my own thing with it somewhat, so I should probably say now that, while there are bits of this that you'll recognise, there are a lot of parts that you won't; I'm bringing in a lot of new character ideas and so forth, and there will be interesting things done.

Anyway, I'm not very good at this whole introduction business, so I'll just let you get on and read it. Do enjoy!

Madgod

Chapter 1-The Champion

Sing deep, sing low, sing the song
pay the piper to play it on
to his tune you must dance
and slumber in eternal trance
for deep within its secret dreams
madness desperate plots and schemes
the gauntlet breaks the chain of snakes
and its bloody bounty it finally takes
the starving serpent eats the tail
consuming slowly as a snail
but patient, hungry, it awaits
the cyclic feast it anticipates
will we be free or forever slave
hear the siren call of ‘obey’
or will Madgod rise and strike down
mercury tide that would Isles drown?

Do not be here when it will come. It is hungry. It is angry. It has plans. Your nice little world which you’re reading this in won’t be all that nice if they come to fruition. Oh no. You lucky, lucky things. You honestly have no idea. Must I explain?

Very well. Are you sitting comfortably? Then I shall begin.

Let’s step back. Right now, we are at the end. To begin at the end is impossible. Not impossible, no, not here, nothing is impossible here, but to begin at the end here is implausible. Is that the word I want? No. Unnecessary. It is doing it wrong. Sometimes it works, but here it does not. So let’s take a step back from here.



His fished crashed down, crunching bone. A scream rang out.

“Mercy! Please, mercy!”

“Mercy?” he asked, gauntlet raised above his head, his scarred, battered face contorted with rage. “You want mercy? That’s just too good.”



No, not far enough, further back we go. We need to get to before that. No context. That’s too close to the end for what we want.



He and Her Ladyship turned around on the glass platter as it rose above the city, stepping around one another’s feet as they danced.

“See,” she said. “I told you you’d be good at this; it’s all about the rhythm.”

He nodded, glancing down at their feet self-consciously as they moved.

“Relax,” she said, steering a hand gently down his back, guiding him along. “You’re learning fast, my dear.”

The world spun below them as they danced on their rotating glass platform, hovering in midair.



No, further back still. Is this it? Is this the place?



He pulled himself up the top of the ladder, through the trapdoor, into the great glass globe at the tower’s very top. He stared at the figure sitting cross-legged a few feet from him on a cushion, and the eyes of the man stared back at him.

In a voice as thick and rich as Felldew, Sentinel said; “Ah, you’re here. I saw you coming, you know.”



Not here, no. No, no, where is it? Where do I start?



The Angel of Rage slammed down before him in a landing that sent a cloud of ash blossoming around her. Wings of flame and lightning pinned themselves to her back, and a mace of fire materialised in her hand. Her ruined face twisted into a grimacing snarl as she beheld the intruder.

“Why are you here, mortal?” she demanded. “Why should I not destroy you?”



Not yet. She comes partway through. This is all too late, nobody will understand it, you fool!



They opened with a creak, and he saw it spread before him. A twisted landscape of gnarled roots, growing upwards into the air whilst leafy branches clawed at the ground. Rock formations of shimmering, rainbow stone formed bizarre shapes, ones that seemed to gain form as you looked at them, moved, grew, reached towards you. Faces grew from the scenery, hungry mouths and gasping maws, clawing talons.

He blinked and glanced away, setting off for the city in the distance.



No, not quite. Nearly there, nearly there. Here we are. Here, we begin.



He was drinking to the death of his best friend.

He getting slapped on the back, cheered, toasted, hailed as a hero, bought drinks, and all for the simple reason that he had just killed his best friend.

The night was a blur of tankards, one swallowed after another. There were yells of encouragement, the crowd urging him on once more, their favourite, their hero, their champion. He could only remember them being quiet from earlier, when they had all fallen silent right after that moment.

The taste of ale, the smell of smoke, the offensive eye-watering blur of flaming torches. He couldn’t focus his gaze properly, he noticed, and his tongue felt numb. He was getting drunk. Good.

“’nother drink!” he slurred out, swaying as he did so. Behind and beside him, the rest of the Blue Team cheered their approval and assent, ordering another round. He wasn’t paying tonight. He didn’t know who was paying tonight, and he didn’t care. What he wanted right now was noise. What he wanted right now was cheering. What he wanted right now was distraction.

His head was numb, spinning, buoyant. He managed to grin as complete strangers approached him, shook his hand, and grinning was good. Grinning meant he was happy, and he knew that it was important that he felt happy, that everyone expected him to be happy. He thought he was happy, so he was. He had the ale down the hatch, and that was good. That was a good way to get happy, get happy quickly.

“That’s our Carnius. Ain’t that something? Our Carnius, of all the people.”

That was one of the boasts. One of the favourites

“Waterfront boy, he is. Knew him since he were a kid.”

And there, another. He could pick the threads of conversation out as the Waterfront locals boasted about him, their Carnius, who had grown up around here. A real local hero. Something to boast about. Something to be proud of. Just went to show.

He stood, the sudden movement sending him swaying. There was a chorus of questions about what he was doing, where he was going and he answered them with; “Goin’ out back. Be back in a minute.”

He stumbled outside, moving through the inn, the crowd of blurry faces parting before him. He caught snippets of detail, a grin from an admirer, an alluring look from a hopeful wench, a torch burning in a bracket, a knot in the wooden surface of a table. The din of the tavern muted as he entered the back alley. It was a good tavern, that one. Good stories there. That time he and Agronak had nearly got arrested for brawling, only for the Watch to recognise who they were and haul everyone else off but leave them be, shaking their hands as they did so. That was one of the good ones. One of the favourites.

He urinated down the back wall, in the quiet, concentration taken up by the task at hand, before he finished relieving himself. And then, for a moment, in the quiet that followed, he was drawn back to earlier that day, in the hush that had come. The hush that had come when the battered, broken corpse had slumped to the floor of the arena, armour clattering, as Carnius had stepped back from the body of Agronak Gro-Malog, the Grey Prince. The hush that had come as he had limped away, down to the bloodworks. The hush that had come as he had done so without acknowledging the silent crowd, with the cheering only rumbling into his range of hearing as he had splashed chilly water from the Basin of Restoration onto his face.

And for a moment, the clarity and the harsh reality he had been avoiding since then hit him like the blow from a warhammer. Agronak was dead. He had killed him.

Carnius Hackelt, new Grand Champion of the arena, leant forwards against the wall and quietly wept for what he had just done.

[Colonel Mustard]

Author's note: I owe a great debt to the late Adam Adamowicz, lead concept artist for the Shivering Isles, whose unique and inspired visions of Crucible and Bliss influenced my own writing of this chapter a great deal. If you've got some spare time, I'd really recommend looking over UESP's archive of the art, available here; it's some pretty exceptional stuff.

Also, I think I might have fallen in love with Cutter while I was writing this chapter.

Chapter 13-The Forge of Scars

The district of Crucible was quite possibly the dankest, most miserable strip of city that Carnius had ever laid eyes upon. Having lived in the squalor of the Waterfront all his life, he thought he had seen the worst of urban poverty, but Crucible managed to be even worse.

The roadways that wound their ways around the squat, ramshackle buildings were nothing more than dirt and the occasional cobblestone, small bridges of mud and backed clay arching over open streams of raw, stinking sewage. Buildings rose and fought for space, walls pressing against each other as they climbed over one another like a swarm of squabbling rats. Many of them leaned against each other or over the streets, looking ready to topple down upon the passers-by at any moment, while bridges and balconies jutted over and criss-crossed the roadways. Some of the buildings were made of stone, while others were slapped together from mud and half-rotten sticks in a wattle-and-daub construction, managing to tower upwards by clinging like parasites to other structures. The architectural anarchy, combined with the perpetual gloom that shrouded the entirety of Dementia, meant that a twilight was already in effect in the streets, and the only light was provided by braziers and torches that burned with blue flame.

They had entered a square of some kind, its dominant feature a statue of a bearded man cut from dark granite, wearing a set of ornate mourning clothes. Around the edge of it were market stalls, a number of customers moving between them.

“Poxes!” Carnius heard a merchant cry as he and Salyan stepped past a group of people in the ornate, gilded clothing of the upper classes, their finely tailored jackets and ornate dresses all dyed sombre shades of black and grey. “Pestilences and contagions! Diseases of all strains for the connoisseur, taken fresh from the pits of Peryite himself!”

“Nightmares!” another called. “Nightmares and night terrors of all kinds, all available on the cheap! Ones tailored just for you for a low, low price, all made by the best fear-smiths of Quagmire!”

“Rats on a stick!” cried a withered man, holding a tray before him. “Nice and hot! Get them them while they're fresh!”

“One minute,” Salyan said. She hurried over to him, and after a brief conversation handed over a few coins in return for a piece of cooked meat that, Carnius was forced to concede, was almost definitely a rat. The tail was a clue, if nothing else was. Salyan caught back up with him, chewing a mouthful of her meal, and caught his stare. “What? I'm hungry.”

Carnius shook his head. Of all the things he had seen lately, having a rat on a stick for a snack was pretty normal, though the stink of the place had put paid to any thoughts of food that he had been entertaining. He set out into the streets, Salyan following in his wake.

“Where are we going, then?” Salyan asked. “Are you heading to the palace?”
“Place has probably shut up for the night by now,” Carnius replied. “I need to find a smith, and a place to stay for the night.”

“Do we have to stay here?” Salyan protested, with a wary glance at the buildings that pressed in around them. “Can we go to Bliss, please? Bliss is much better than this place. You'll like it there, I'm sure you will, much more than Crucible.”

Deep and sonorous chanting came to their ears, and a few moments a man in drab grey robes rounded the corner. Parchments, most likely from sacred texts, were sewn into the cloth, and he held a banner with yet more words and scrolls upon it. Behind him, more followed, some of them chanting the same dirge he did, others wailing as if in mourning, several members of the procession beating their own raw and bloodied backs with whips and flails. Delicate feathers of frost spread out from where their feet fell, and many of them carried staves tipped with balls of jagged ice.

“Who are they?” Carnius asked.

“The Frozen Brethren,” Salyan explained as they passed by. “They're one of the churches that worship Sheogorath. They're doing it wrong, mind you, but everyone here in Dementia is so there's not much you can really do about that.”

Carnius shrugged.

“Sure they're wrong,” he said. Salyan gave him a look, but he shrugged it off. He didn't particularly care for the bard's prejudices. “Look, do you know if there's a smith around here?”
“There's a better smith in-”

“And there are nearer smiths here,” Carnius said. He raised his hand, to show one of his somewhat battered gauntlets. “I need this fixed.”

“I suppose Cutter is probably the best at repairing sharp things like those knuckle spikes,” Salyan said after a moment. The last of the small parade passed them by, a man swinging a censer that had once been a human skull. “But once we've gone there can we please go to Bliss?”

“Fine,” Carnius relented. “Let's go see this Cutter first.”

Pleased that she had won at least a partial victory, Salyan pointed southwards.

“Her forge is that way,” she said. “I think there's an alley we can cut through just over there.”

She lead the way, cutting through the back street. The stick that had once held her now-eaten snack was discarded on the remarkably clean floor as they headed through. Carnius glanced at the walls, frowning as he noticed triangular shapes beginning to rise from the crude plaster.

“Salyan, what's going on with the walls?”

The bard glanced back at them, and her eyes widened with alarm.

“Run!” she cried. “Quickly, run!”

Carnius complied as she broke into a sprint, the two of them dashing along as the walls behind them erupted into hungry fangs and slammed shut, a solid block of sharp, ravening teeth, closing upon them to crush and chew. They halted only once they were into the street beyond, the alley shutting up behind them in a wave of dark fangs. They closed behind them with a grinding noise, and after a few moments pulled back away.

“What was that?” Carnius asked, staring at the way they had just come. The stick that had carried Salyan's snack had now disappeared.

“Some of the alleyways try and eat people, now and again,” Salyan explained. “Like that one. Usually people put up warnings, but someone must have taken them away. Typical.”

She lead Carnius through a few more streets, making a point avoid of avoiding back alleys, until they found their destination; a large stone building with baleful red light glowing from one wing with a chimney drooling smoke into the air. Metal gargoyles were clinging to its sides, blue flames crackling in their jaws, and a desiccated, half-decayed corpse hung over the door from a large iron hook thrust through the back of its neck and out of its mouth, a placard hung over it with the word 'Thief' written on it in what Carnius hoped was red paint. Next to that was a sign, reading 'Cutter's Weapons'.

After a moment to remove his gauntlets from his hands, he tried the door, the latch clicking and swinging open. He glanced around the stone innards of the shop, seeing the decorations that hung on every wall; weapons of every kind, bows, crossbows, spears and axes, but most of all, blades of all varieties. There were longswords, claymores, daggers, scimitars, katanas, sabres, rapiers, all adorning the walls. Anything that gored or slashed was present on the walls of Cutter's Weapons. Bloodstains were scattered here and there, and his gaze was drawn to the figure at the far end of the large room, by the fires of the forge. She glanced up from where she was sharpening the edge of a sword on a grindwheel, and her scarred face, framed by brown hair pulled back into a ponytail, broke into a crooked smile. That smile extended past her lips along two cuts deep into each cheek, right to where the jaw rose up to the rest of the skull.

“Ah,” she said, leaving her work for a moment and standing. “Customers. I am Cutter, and welcome to my forge. What can I do for you both?”

Cutter was a Bosmer, short like all of her people, her build lean and wiry. Her bare arms, Carnius noted, were even more heavily scarred than her face, coated with gashes and cuts of all kinds.

“I need these repaired,” Carnius said, holding up his gauntlets. “Just had a bit of wear and tear, and need fixing up again. The normal sort of thing.”

“Let me see those,” Cutter said. Carnius handed them over, and she peered at them, intense eyes roving over them, a finger running along the dented and battered metal. There was a quiet purring noise, and after a moment, Carnius realised that it was the smith making it, a rapturous, intoxicated grin spreading across her features. “These are...these are some of the most beautiful weapons I have seen. They have drunk so much blood, ended so, so many lives, even brought about the deaths of friends. They are almost perfect.”

“Almost perfect?” Carnius asked.

“Their construction is good, and the inlay of daedric ebony is a good idea; it gives the steel strength without adding too much weight,” Cutter said. “But for a piece of metallurgy to be truly perfect, it needs madness ore in it; imbue it with the souls of dead heroes, give its steel life, give it hunger.”

Salyan had wondered off, and was looking at a blade that lay unattended on a bench, a straight length of unadorned metal designed to be wielded by two hands, one side edge and the other blunt and flat, the tip a right-angled triangle. The handle and hilt were ornate, dark golden metal moulded around a gem glowing with arcane power, the stone humming faintly.

“Is this made of madness ore?” the bard asked, lifting the weapon up.

“Put that down!” Cutter snapped, the ferocity in the words making Salyan comply in an instant. “The handle is forged from the ore. The blade is of steel and sorcery, one of the strongest I have seen. I am the only smith capable of working with a weapon like it, though that isn't surprising; blades are my speciality, and I make the finest in the Isles. I bless each and every one of them with my own lifeblood before any other wielder uses them.”

That would explain the cobweb of scars running across her skin, Carnius decided.

“Whose is it?” Salyan asked.

“It belongs to a missionary of the Feasters,” Cutter replied. “Normally I'd rather not do work for a Manic, but that blade there is so steeped in viscera and tragedy that I couldn't resist; it is the most perfect weapon I have ever performed my art upon, though I will give your gauntlets the credit they are due, Imperial; they do come close. Unwilling betrayal always gives metal the sweetest of scents.”

“Right,” Carnius said. “So, how much will it be to fix those?”

“Thirty septims, given that the damage done to them isn't too severe,” Cutter said. “And a promise.”

“What's that?” Carnius asked.

“No other smith touches them, especially that gender-confused freak Dumag gro-Bonk,” Cutter said. Neither she nor Carnius noted the angry glare that Salyan shot at her for that comment. “These gauntlets will be mine to repair and mine alone. If you get them fixed anywhere else, I will know, and I will cut your throat and drink your blood.”

There was no jest in the disfigured Bosmer's eyes, but Carnius handed down the coins.

“If they're in a good state tomorrow, I'll call it a deal,” Carnius said.

“Good, good, excellent,” Cutter nodded. “They will be finished in the morning; I cannot wait to set to work upon them. One more thing, Imperial; if you find any madness ore, I can use it to improve these gauntlets of yours, strengthen them, make them perfect. Grummites usually set up camps near deposits of it, and carry lumps of it on them. Bring me some, and I will make these gauntlets into weapons that will crush the life from all your enemies and drink deep of their blood.”

“Hard to refuse, an offer like that,” Carnius nodded. “All right Cutter, if I find you some madness ore, I'll bring it to you.”

“Good,” Cutter said. “You won't regret this, Imperial; I'll make these gauntlets into weapons any warrior would beg to wield.”

“Thank you, Cutter,” Carnius said. “I'll see you tomorrow.”

The two of them left for Bliss, to find an inn and rest, and to hold an audience with a god the next day.