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]

Elizabeth: Yeah, one of Azura's problems is that she doesn't always know when to quit...

McBadgere: I always found the frustration aspect of Mehrunes Dagon to be the most interesting thing about him, and the whole 'impossible-to-fulfil potential' aspect to him made him almost sympathetic and pitiful at points. I'm pleased it worked for you, and that you enjoyed the rest of the chapter.

Ghastley: Thanks! That sort of behaviour certainly felt right for him.

As for the remaining Princes, we have: Malacath, Boethiah, Clavicus Vile, Naemira, Vaermina and Peryite.

H.E.R.: Thank you very much indeed!

Cats felt like the perfect spies for Azura; I'd originally thought of having her getting the information by weaving on a loom, but the more I thought about the more cats felts appropriate means to get the information.

I'm pleased you liked everything else, and I'm dead pleased that Molag Bal and Mephala were bone-chilling; that was exactly what I was going for with those two. I believe there will be 17 parts (the 16 princes figure doesn't count Jyggalag, I don't think) and there may be an 18th part depending on whether or not I decide to include the Ideal Masters or not.

I hope you enjoy the rest



Also, as a quick note to everyone reading this, my apologies for not reading and commenting on your own stories; the rest of August and early September promise to much of the same, I'm afraid.

Malacath

The only sound was that of Azura’s footsteps padding in ash and the sweeping of her cloak against the grey, dead ground. The Ashpit, the dead land of the Outcast Prince, was silent as a corpse as Azura proceeded towards the circle of rolling hills in the distance.

There were no plants or animals here, and no daedra patrolled these inhospitable plains. Nothing moved, nothing lived, and the air reeked of despair and death. More ash floated down from the sky like snowflakes, the clouds that dropped them so thick and dark that no sunlight shone upon this realm, if this place even had a sun. The one feature of the land was a huge spine, an arch of immense bones from which ribs jutted at random to curve into the ground, holding the realm together. She followed its course, to where the huge arc touched the dead soil.

The gloom of this place grated against her, the silence and the darkness heavy and oppressive. Nocturnal would have been at home in this place, Azura could not help but feel, but even then this was not the protective dimness of the Evergloam, a hiding place from prying eyes, but the blackest pits of isolation and despair given shape and geography.

“Our time upon Nirn is limited.” Azura half-murmured, half-chanted the Ashlander funeral hymn; the place and its oppressive, singular gloom begged for a breaking, but a song of cheer would have felt offensively out of place, while the hymn and its talk of death and ash felt fitting to the Ashpit. “Plants wither and livestock dies. We are born, and we age, our birth is but a precursor to our end.”

In her case, Azura reflected as she reached the foot of the ring of hills, such sentiments were completely untrue.

“The flower that is mortal shall wilt,” she murmured to herself as she climbed. “Our joints shall seize, our hearts shall still; we shall leave this world of flesh to join our ancestors. From the lands of ash we come, to the lands of ash we shall be returned.”

She reached the lee of the final vertebrae, and there she saw Malacath. The Outcast Prince, the Cripple Lord, the God of the Maiming and the Chaining, he looked up at her with bloodshot eyes. His face was like that of an Orc, wide-nosed and gnarled, broken and yellowed tusks gleaming dully in the nonlight of the Ashpit. Manacles encircled his wrists, chaining him to an anvil, and the skin around the bindings was reddened and suppurating. His form rippled with muscle, grey skin bulging with constrained might, immense form covered only by a ragged loincloth.

He rose awkwardly on and maimed legs and feet, where the bone had been shattered and had healed imperfectly, leaning on his anvil for support and grunting with painful effort of movement.

“It has been too long,” he said, breaths ragged and gasping. “Since I have been visited by you.”

“It has been some time, has it not?” Azura said “Who do you fare?”

This earned her a deep, bubbling chuckle, one tainted by deep bitterness and remorse.

“How do I fare? How do I fare? Hah! Well, I do not want for company, if you count company...as Boethiah coming to mock me and snap...my legs once more.”

“That still occurs?” Azura asked.

“Of course it does,” Malacath said. “Boethiah hated me in my days as Trinimac, and he hates me now. He will never forget a grudge, ever. So he comes to my realm, with mocking words and sneers, and delights in shattering bone once more. And what am I to do about such a thing?”

“I am afraid I have no answer,” Azura said.

“Pah, even if you did I would most likely...not hear it,” Malacath replied in his deep, wheezing death-rattle of a voice. “Not from the likes of you.”

He slumped against the anvil, struck by a hacking, gagging cough. For a few moments, he convulsed, a wheezing colossus who sent flecks of phlegm and blood spraying into the air around him, before he finally stopped, gasping for breath.

“I wonder, Azura,” he said. “Have you ever seen the statues my...worshippers have erected of me? They are greatly amusing, in some ways. I am shown as strong in them. I wear armour, I carry a weapon. I am the great lie of the Orsimer.”

He pointed a quivering finger at Azura.

“You...you are loved by your people for what you actually are, but me? If many of my worshippers could see...what I really am, I fear they would abandon me. They would not understand me. As all others have done, they would reject me. But do you know which orcs have...seen my true form and still held their faith?”

“Which ones?” Azura asked.

“The greatest. The most powerful warlords and...chieftains of the Orsimer. They saw me, and they were great because they...understand what I am. They understand why I, the cripple, the outcast, the unwanted, am strong. They understand why Boethiah fears me...enough that he cripples me again and again. They know that though I am crippled, I am mighty. Do you know why?”

“I can’t for the life of me imagine the reason,” Azura said.

“Of course not,” Malacath chuckled. “You have never been cast out. You are one of the beloved Princes, after all. One of the ‘good’ members of our ranks, as those limited mortals understand...such concepts. Worshipping you is tolerated even by the church of the Eight, after all. Perhaps not encouraged, but tolerated. What other Prince can claim such an honour? That is why you can never understand. You shall never be outcast. Yet being outcast is why I am strong.”

With a shaking finger, he pointed to his heart, grinning with his broken teeth.

“My heart is that of one who has been...cast out,” he said. “And in it burns the two things that...make me strong, two things that make me feared. The two things that only one who has been rejected, despised, abhorred, repeatedly...cast out by all can have left in all of the world. Hatred and hope. That is why I am strong. That is why my Orsimer are strong. And that is why the greatest of Orsimer can...understand me and know that my hatred and my hope are what...makes my people mighty, for hatred and hope are forces that can...topple empires. That is something you can never know.”

There was something fearsome in the eyes of Malacath as he said this, a light that was terrible in its intensity, burning bright with a long-suffering rage and fury. The other Princes, Azura included, had always spurned him, and any fool could see that those repeated slights had long ago burned a deep, bitter scar into the Prince of Outcasts’ mind.

In the distance, thunder rumbled. Azura glanced skywards, seeing the black clouds of the Ashpit stir and boil.

“What was that?” she asked.

“Boethiah comes,” Malacath said. Pushing himself up with the aid of his anvil and raising his arms as high as the chains would allow him to, the Prince filled his lungs and roared out; “Here I am! Here stands Malacath! Come to me!”

He broke down into another fit of coughing, hunching over himself and laughing even as he hacked blood and mucus onto the ashen ground. After a few moments he recovered, grinning as he slammed his fist on the anvil, a look of mad fury in his eyes.

“She comes,” he said. “And she will find me unbowed.”

“Malacath,” a voice rang out across the crater. “You have a guest, I see. No matter.”

Azura turned, glancing up at the figure who stepped into view from behind the bone.

“Azura,” Boethiah said. “Would you be so good as to explain to me exactly what you have been doing, lately?”