A Conclave of Princes Options

[Colonel Mustard]

A Conclave of Princes

Part 1-The Call

Azura

Tick

Of all of the many secret places of Moonshadow, the meeting chamber that Azura stood in was the best hidden and least-known, so obscure and unknown it was not even myth.

Tock

Hidden from all prying eyes by spell and ward and ancient ritual, the room was built like an amphitheatre, a great tiered circle of white stone surrounding a single raised dais. Behind the dais was the clock, a ring of brass, silver and pearl, gleaming in the silvery light that illuminated the room. An engraved pendulum swung left and right with the passing of every second, delicate hands clicking as they moved, the cunning of its long-dead artificer and the spells he had laid upon it ensuring that it would keep time with perfect precision until Akatosh himself finally passed.

Tick

The chamber was empty but for one person, a woman clad in shining silver-white hooded robes, the garment woven from moonlight by blind seamstresses. Her face was three faces in one; that of a youthful maiden, of a kindly, smiling mother and of a wrinkled, wizened crone, all three of those at once and yet at the same time none. Her name was Azura, the Lady of Dawn and Dusk, and right now she was waiting and listening to the clock.

Tock

The timepiece itself had been a gift to her, made for her long ago by a Dwemer admirer, a clockmaker and timekeeper with skill beyond repair. She had honoured the generous donation by hanging it within this hall and, when he died, by taking his soul to her realm of Moonshadow that he might continue his craft forever more.

Ti-

The pendulum froze mid-swing, caught in the precise halfway point between one second and another. Azura took a moment to glance at it, and nodded. Her sacred time had come, the precise moment when day turned to a night of a crescent moon, a span of time so short that it could stretch to eternity. With a nod, the doors lined around the hall groaned open, and now that they had been invited to Moonshadow and into Azura’s secret eternity, the cats entered.

Untold numbers of them came, an uncountable army of the animals prowling through the doors. Fat, pampered lazy housecats trotted alongside scarred and battered strays who had lived every day of their lives on the vicious gauntlet of the streets, old cats wheezed their way in whilst kittens rolled and played around their paws. Short-haired breeds from Hammerfell came alongside the thick-haired cats of Skyrim and shared space with the elegant stock bred by the Altmer of the Summerset Isles, while the large desert wildcats of Elsweyr loomed over the animals around them. All of them had come by the secret routes known only to cats and the mistress they served, arriving in the time that was there only for them

Somehow, despite the millions of animals that entered the room, there was no struggle for space. The amphitheatre seemed to grow with its audience, expanding with its crowd as the cats went to their seats and waited. One or two greeted each other by tentative sniffing, and a few old friends that could meet only on this day; on one of the rings, a Hammerfell tom met the Valenwood tabby that he had bumped into in the last meeting, and was introduced to the litter of kitten he had fathered for the first time. There was no yowling, hissing or snarling between them, and even little in the way of normal, conversational mewling, the gathered assembly silent out of respect for their lady and mistress.

One by one, the cats began to form a line, and Azura took a knee as the first one approached. He was an Summerset breed, tall, lithe and proud, his white fur groomed with meticulous care, the tufts of hair on his ears twitching as he sauntered forward, as if speaking to a goddess were something he did every day. Azura bowed her head as he stopped next to her, and as she bowed it, the feline told of her of all the secret things he had seen. Once she had listened to his account, she nodded, and the cat trotted away, back home, and the next one took his place. She had the nervous enthusiasm of a newcomer, and her report was stammered out. As with the first, the Mother of the Rose listened to all she had to say, and when she was done, she dismissed it, briefly stroking her spy behind her ears before she went.

So it went on. Each cat gave their report, and each one was given equal time by Azura, and the lowliest of street cats was listened to with the same care and attention given to the sacred cats of the island nation of Laalket, bedecked as they were in their finery and jewels. Everything the Daedric Prince heard, she remembered and digested, and was added to her great libraries of knowledge, the books and shelves filling up as she listened.

Yet one cat, a feline who said she lived in a temple of the Nine as a mouser, told her something that gave her pause. After a moment, Azura instructed her to stay until her council with the other cats was finished, but all of the other information she heard was received with an uneasy frown. Even though the place she inhabited was timeless, the Lady of Dusk began to feel it drag, and she was glad when the final stragglers gave their news.

As the final cat made her way out, herding her kittens with her, Azura returned her attention to the feline that had given the news to her earlier. She asked the mouser to expand on what it was she had said, to give as much detail as she could remember. Azura quizzed her on where she had heard it, how the overheard conversation had gone, asked her to repeat it word for word to the best of her memory.

Finally, once she was satisfied that she had heard everything from it that she possibly could. She permitted it to leave. She watched it scurry out of one of the doors, back to the warmth of its basket by the hearth. For a few moments, Azura lingered in the chamber, debating her options. There only really one to take, she knew, but though it was necessary it did not make it one she wished to do so.

A gesture of a hand and a doorway appeared before her, gnarled oak in a white frame. She turned the knob, stepped through it, and disappeared. There was work to do on this night.

-ck

Behind her, the pendulum of the clock swung into motion once more.




So what's this? A 3-part story, each part divided into 18 chapters, each chapter following a Daedric Prince and one other mystery entity. Each part is a short one, between 900 and 1500 words (so I can hopefully update at a reasonable pace) and if you think of it as something like a shorter version of the Canterbury tales set in the planes of Oblivion you've got something akin to the right idea.

Do enjoy, do leave any comments or critique that you think are useful and do have a lovely day, my dear readers.

This post has been edited by Colonel Mustard: Mar 10 2013, 10:28 PM

[Darkness Eternal]

New story, Colonel? From gladiatorial madmen to the Daedra themselves!

Awesome. Simply awesome. You got us hooked with the main Daedric Prince, Azura. The addition of cats was very interesting in my opinion. She would seem like the Daedra to have them. Khajiit love Azura.

Nocturnal just oozed mystery. The conversation between the two was great!

Hircine. Interesting to see him put focus on the smaller struggles between hunter and prey. Goes to show that not even insects or gellatinous creatures could escape his notice. His new Hunting Ground is interesting to see, especially with the radiation thing going on. Hircine here is painted as a gentlemen/sportsmen rather than the deep-voiced monstrous Horned-god he is depicted to be in the older games.

Fun fact: Some of the Daedra all gathered together to meet up in Molag Bal's Coldharbour, in his Imperial palace, to chat with Vivec.

[Colonel Mustard]

DE(why do the rest of you hate meeee?! ): Thanks!

I always figured that if there was any divine/supernatural figure in TES lore to have an association with cats, it would be Azura, considering how important she is to Khajiit culture, like you said. And whenever I see a cat, it always looks like it's up to something, and I feel that the suspicion that it's reporting back to a supernatural being from outside this reality is a perfectly rational one to hold.

I was actually trying to go for more 'hermit' than 'gentleman' with Hircine, to be honest, hence his keenness to see Azura gone from his realm so he can concentrate on his hunts. He never really struck me as the social sort.

Fun fact: Some of the Daedra all gathered together to meet up in Molag Bal's Coldharbour, in his Imperial palace, to chat with Vivec.

Oh, they've bound to have met up several times before for big events like the appearance of a new pantheon. I imagine they also met to discuss issues like 'what the hell do we do about this unstoppable Jyggalag guy?' and 'seriously, Mehrunes, stop invading Nirn. You keep screwing up and it's just getting embarassing now.'


And now for the next part. Particle physics ho!



Hermaeus Mora

Azura could feel the three pairs of eyes trained on her as she wove her way through the currents of Oblivion. One brushed against her essence, chill and sharp as a dagger’s slice, the second a boring, brazen beam of indignant suspicion, the third an invisible tendril, the tip that followed her clammy and damp.

She continued her course, bobbing and weaving, homing towards the roiling swirls of colour that surrounded the Shivering Isles. Then, she extended a fragment of her consciousness along the sticky, cool thread that could only be Hermaeus Mora’s, as if seeing for the first time, then cut it.

She whirled the currents around her, slicing through the watching segments and darting away. She split her essence, dozens of segments of her being speeding away in all directions, coalescing and partin once more as she went. As one of them drew close to the Apocrypha, she pulled her being back into, and checked for traces; nothing. That brief act of flight had been enough, it seemed; so far she hadn’t roused enough suspicion for the other Princes to put any measure of effort into their traces, and her actions had been enough to tell them that their monitoring was not welcome.

Azura did not enter by the main gate as she had done before. Instead, she shrunk her form, growing smaller and smaller, until finally, she observed the borders of Hermaeus Mora’s realm whilst crouched upon the top of a electron, robes flowing down the sides of the infinitesimally small particle-ring. She flexed her fingers, pushing them into its cloudy surface, feeling the roiling energy that made it up tingling against her fingers, reveling in the sensation of touching the not-matter-nor-energy that was the universe’s beating heart.

She moved, darting from one particle to another, moving at a scale so tiny that to see her was to not see her. She moved around the whirling storm of a nucleus, caught the blazing tail of a proton and rode her subatomic mount forwards. She steered it, the tiny invisible wave-particle looping and weaving into the corridors of the Apocrypha, speeding past the sentinels and wards. Moving at the speed of light, she arrived at the place she wanted in an instant, one of the many shelves of Hermaeus Mora’s infinite library.

Dim light from a guttering lamp cast long shadows around Azura as she increased in size and reassumed baryonic form, the glass orb of light hanging from a chain that rose up into the the darkness-shrouded vault of the ceiling. Her feet rested on empty air, the shelves forming great cliff-faces of books that ran along either side of her, and at the edge of hearing there was the whispering of thousands of pages. The air here was stale and musty, and cobwebs bridged corners. The entire room felt like it had emptied its lungs for eternity.

Azura ran her fingers along the shelves, searching for the volume she wanted. She found it quickly, easily, for Hermaeus Mora was nothing if not meticulous with the ordering of his library. She slid it from the shelf, tucked it into her robe, and drew her form down, snatching a proton’s tail. At relativistic speeds, the ride out of Apocrypha was swift, and Azura burst into Oblivion once more. She checked for scrying from the other Princes, found none, and returned to Moonshadow.

This time, when she returned to the Apocrypha, she did so by the front entrance. With an official visit, there was a certain level of decorum that had to be maintained, after all.

The gate that formed the boundary to the infinite Apocrypha was a huge, forbidding thing, an immense archway of ancient, brown paper over a greenish haze of sorcerous energy, the walls vaulted black stone, cavern with runes of power. Azura stood before it, white robe turned sickly green as it reflected the light emitted from the clawed sky, waiting for the realm’s master to emerge.

A shadow appeared in the archway, a lumpen silhouette, before a hunched mass of tentacles and curved claws shuffled through, swaddled in a black robe, a staff gripped in a protruding arm clacking against the ground as it approached. Acid dripped from the tips of some of the pseudopods, hissing as it bored into the granite below it, and a baleful orange eye emerged from the morass to regard Azura, pupil shaped like a pair of cells forever frozen in mid-split.

“I greet ye, Twilit Lady,” a mouth from somewhere within the robe rasped. “Th’art welcome unto the Apocrypha.”

“Greetings, Hermaeus Mora,” Azura nodded. “Are you well?”

There was a ripple of movement from beneath the robe that may have been a shrug.

“‘Twas a commotion of recent with my champion,” the Prince of Portents said. “But such a matter was resolved swift enough.”

“Ah yes,” Azura said. “Miraak, wasn’t it?”

“No longer,” Hermaeus Mora said. “The Kin-of-Drakes hath taken his place. But come, Midwife to Twilight, enter unto my realm. There we shalt converse.”

Azura followed as Hermaeus Mora clacked his way through the portal. She could feel the power searing along the portal as she stepped through, arcane energy so intense that it would strip the flesh from the bones of all but the most powerful of mortals. For a moment, her vision was obscured by green cloud, and then she was through. She glanced behind her, and instead of seeing a gate could only see the Apocrypha stretching out behind her to a borderless horizon, a twisting maze of parchment, acidic pools, towering stacks of books and immense, vaulted libraries. Before her, an immense circular tower rose upwards to the green sky, and at Hermaeus Mora’s gesture a platform slid down its side, resting on the stone ground to greet them.

“Step aboard,” he said, gesturing to the platform. “We shall converse within mine own chambers.”

Azura did as bidden, and Hermaeus Mora slid after her. A multitude of tentacles and grasping hands reached from a control panel, manipulating the levers that rose from its surface like the short, thin legs of a millipede, and the platform began to rise along a rail of corroded brass. Azura leant on the rail and looked at the maniac landscape below her as it receded.

“I am told by my mortal visitors that such a view is spectacular,” Hermaeus Mora said as he maintained the elevator’s pace. “Tis but routine to me, but if one exists in a mundane state as they are oft to do then it is of little surprise that they are so awed. But of course, even this view is paltry compared to Moonshadow; to look upon it is to strike a mortal blind, is it not so?”

The platform slid to a halt and a doorframe melted from the stone wall it had come to rest by. Hermaeus Mora shuffled through, Azura following as she entered a large, circular chamber. There were shelves laden with glowing artefacts and items of arcane miscellany, and a chessboard cut from dark green and cream stone. To one side, there was a bed, sheets folded with care, and Azura wondered if Hermaeus Mora had ever actually slept in it.

The Daedric Prince’s eye flicked towards the chessboard as they entered.

“Ah, so his move hath been made,” he said.

“Who’s has?” Azura asked.

“Julianos’,” Hermaeus Mora said. “We hath had this game going for some time. When we finish one of them, another is started; he is the only one of my opponents who I would call worthy.”

“So who’s winning your matches?”

“He is ahead of me by but one game,” Hermaeus Mora said. “But victory in this match is likely to be mine. Perhaps in the next one, I shall pull ahead. It is of no import; this game hath been played a thousandfold betwixt us both, and neither one of us hath had a lead of note. But tell me; what is it that brings thee unto the Apocrypha?”

“I’m gathering the Princes,” Azura said. “We must meet.”

“Such a thing has not happened for quite some time,” Hermaeus Mora said. “What calamity serves as this event’s progenitor?”

“I can’t say yet,” Azura replied.

“Ah, of course,” Hermaeus Mora said. There was a deep, rasping bubbling that might have been a chuckle. “Ye cannot trust me. ‘tis of no matter; no secret is hidden from me here.”

“Should have thought of that, shouldn’t I?” Azura said.

There was uncertainty in Hermaeus Mora’s voice as he asked; “Know ye of something?”

“Nothing important,” Azura said. “But in case you wish to talk to the rest of us about it, we will be gathering in Moonshadow.”

“Very well,” Hermaeus Mora rasped. “I suppose that you still must have much to do; do not let me delay you any further.”

Azura knew the meaning behind her host’s sudden brusqueness, but she was unconcerned by it.

“You’re quite right,” she said. “I will see you soon then, I hope.”

“Yes, yes, of course,” Hermaeus Mora nodded.

Azura nodded and stepped from the window, drifting downwards back to the ground. She saw, out of the corner of her eye, the Apocrypha’s master hurrying to his platform. It slid downwards at a speed to send sparks flying, and as it reached the ground, spindly brass legs extended from its underside like those of a metallic spider and it scurried away towards one of the massive libraries that dotted his realm.

She called up the gate and stepped through the ensorcelled haze that veiled the paper archway,, into the boundary-not-boundary of the Apocrypha.

“Thief!”

The word howled through Hermaeus Mora’s demesne, the realm shaking at the rage of its master. The horizon boiled as a great mass of pseudopods and fury thundered towards her, baleful eyes and arcane energy sighting on her, slicked with slime and rage. Azura called up her mirror as the howling abomination closed on her, and as the first of the snapping claws, clenched fists and grasping tentacles closed towards her, she shouted; “Come to Moonshadow; you can have your book back and learn everything you can hope to then!”

She stepped through, into the relative safety of pure Oblivion, as the malleable nightmare that was Hermaeus Mora crashed onto where she had been.