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

[Colonel Mustard]

*Hastily hides tome of black magicks*

Nope, no threadomancy to see here. Nothin' at all. What a silly idea that is.

Lopov: I know you don't seem to be around to read this at the moment, but thanks! Glad you're enjoying it, and the little details I'm putting it; worth doing for when a reader notices and like it

McBadgere: I always imagined Jygallag to be a very 'martial' type of character, so I thought that it would be most fitting with his personality for him to featuer as a general in command of an army. Ebonarm isn't actually a reference to Carnius, no, and instead he's a rather obscure part of TES lore which marks him as a war god with a strong favouring of men and a powerful hatred of all of the Daedra except Sheogorath; it made sense to me that if anybody would try and curb Jygallag's ambitions, it would be him.

Acadian: Thanks very much! I've been trying to capture the spirit of each Prince, and I'm pleased it's been working. I'll be honest, though, Jygallag is the Daedric Prince of Order, and order of the oppression and tyranny type; he might not like Sheogorath but that's far from making him okay


And now, for a brief summary, as it has been absolutely yonks since the last update:
Azura has received disturbing and disquieting news from the cats she uses as spies, and in response has resolved to gather the Daedric Princes together in order to seek a solution. So far, she has visited Hermaeus Mora, Sanguine, Hircine and Nocturnal, and has persuaded them to attend her meeting without too much trouble. She also ran into Molag Bal and Mephala, who both intended to capture and interrogate her in order to find out her secret before the other Princes, who she narrowly escaped when she set them both to fight each other. In the last chapter, she visited Jygallag, Daedric Prince of Order, who is engaged in a long-running war against the god Ebonarm, who hates all Daedric Princes except Sheogorath; in order to persuade Ebonarm into a truce, Azura must now visit Sheogorath in order to see if he can get Ebonarm to agree to a cessation in hostilities.



Sheogorath

Azura came to a halt in the before the gates of Bliss and looked up at the bronze portal, carved with grinning and howling faces. It was the middle of the day, sunshine illuminating the open gates and the people in the main square beyond.

It was a market day, and Azura moved through the crowds as just another stranger, just a woman with silver hair and a grey-white cloak. Around her, people bartered, haggled and hawked wares, some of them arguing over prices. She saw a stall advertising goods from Moonshadow, selling soul gems, alchemical ingredients, quickmercury weapons and armour and jewellery and precious stones. Golden Saints were on patrol around the edges of the markets, the women-shaped daedra scanning for trouble with slit-pupilled eyes of amber; the marketplaces of Bliss were always teetering on the fine precipice between rambunctious and violent.

Making her way through the bazaar, Azura slipped through into the streets of Bliss, the broad thoroughfares between the buildings of golden coloured stone decorated with flowers, trailing silk banners and garish painted frescoes showing scenes of debauchery and glut. On one street corner, the head of a dunmer had been hung from a rafter by its ears and was cackling and leering at passers by, and Azura hurried past it; if there was one thing the people of the Isles were famous for, it was their disquieting taste in decorations.

Her route stopped for a moment as she came to a halt at the Feasters’ temple. The usual fresco of body parts was hung around the temple’s doorway, tributes to Sheogorath, but she ignored those, instead looking at the statue before it, a bronze representation of an elf, wearing the mail armour of Feaster clerics and with an immense blade held in both hands. At the base of the statue was a small plaque saying; St Dranedil, Hero-Martyr of the Feasters. Azura nodded her respects to the statue, having met the young woman centuries ago in the time of the Oblivion Crisis and the Greymarch.

Not long afterwards, she reached Sheogorath’s palace. A wave of her hand gave her a glamour powerful enough to fool the guards, but by now Sheogorath should have seen her coming and he would, with luck, be waiting for her in his throne room. Ignored by the dark seducers and golden saints that patrolled the split paace, she pushed open the doors to the throne room.

There was a snowman on top of the Madgod’s throne, and a note on the footstall in front of it. Azura picked it up, read it and with a shake of her head muttered; “Oh come on.”

Out for lunch the note read. If urgent business, please consult with Count Frostinius. Love, Shoggy

After a moment’s deliberation, Azura threw a fireball at the snowman.

“Assassin!” a voice behind her cried. “Murderess! Bloodthirsty monster! You killed the Count!”

It was Sheogorath, a sandwich in one hand and a goblet of wine in the other.

“It took me hours to make him,” the Madgod added. “Ruined a perfectly good pair of boots in the snow while I was rolling him into shape. Now who’s going to run the realm next time I’m off for a bite to eat?”

Azura bit back her opinion that leaving the Isles unmaintained would do no harm to Sheogorath’s realm that his rule had not done already.

“I’m sure you’ll work out something,” Azura said.

“I should hope I will,” Sheogorath said, taking a bit of his sandwich. “Now are you here for a reason, or do you just want to commit yet more rampant bloodshed and murder? Because if you are, I wouldn’t mind coming along; been a while since I’ve had a good old-fashioned bloody rampage. Ooh, we can invite Mehrunes Dagon too! He loves that kind of thing!”

He grinned.

“Murder party, hooray!” he declared. “There can be wine and cheese and dancing girls!”

“I’m not here about a murder party,” Azura said, doing her best to keep her tone neutral. She had forgotten how exasperating Sheogorath could be.

“Aw, I wanted a murder party. One of the good ones here you can rip out the guests’ innards and drink whiskey and blood from them.”

An idea came to Azura, and she smiled as she thought of it.

“I’m not hosting a murder party,” she said. “But I’m having a different kind of party, which you’re invited to. I’m getting all of the Princes together in Moonshadow for...for a big celebration.”

Sheogorath grinned.

“Wonderful!” he declared, draining his wine. He raised his arms up and pirouetted on the spot. “What an absolutely marvellous idea. Everyone together at last! That hasn’t happened since last Morndas, and even then it was a bit of a miserable affair, I must say. The rain positively ruined the atmosphere.”

“There is one thing I need you to do, though,” Azura said, deciding that the wisest course of action would be to ignore Sheogorath’s last comment. “I’ve invited Jygallag, but he’s still having his little disagreement with Ebonarm. I was hoping, seeing as you’re a good friend of Ebonarm’s, that you might be able to talk him into calling for a break so Jygallag could come.”

Sheogorath’s face fell, and his shoulders slumped.

“Do I have to?” he asked. “Jygallag’s no fun at parties. He’ll just spoil everything. Let’s just leave him to have that silly war of his. We can have our party without him.”

“Now, Sheogorath, it’s not fair of me to let all the other Princes come but then leave Jygallag out of it,” Azura said, folding her arms. “You know that. And he’d be very upset if he couldn't come just because of you being selfish.”

“I...but...fine,” Sheogorath said. “Fine. I’ll go ask Ebby if he can let Jygallag go for a while. But he’ll spoil the party, I’m telling you.”

“It’s my party, and I’ll bear the burden of his presence,” Azura said. “Just talk to Ebonarm, please.”

“Fine, I will,” Sheogorath said. He raised a foot, as if he were about to step into or over something, and then paused with a final point towards Azura. “But I’m holding you to that promise of ice cream, you hear?”

He stepped down and vanished, leaving Azura alone in the throne room to wonder exactly when she had promised him ice cream.