@Acadian - Thanks. I wanted to explore some of the ramifications of a long lifespan in this chapter. While it has obvious benefits, it also comes with a lot of pain, especially for someone like Jane who's mostly lived among humans.
@SubRosa - Yup, second-to-last! Katariah Square is something I made up. Empress Katariah was actually the Dunmer wife of Emperor Pelagius III (the Mad), and she took over as he lost his mind. Katariah's historically regarded as one of the Third Empire's better rulers. The reason I put this in was to show how the more humancentric Mede Dynasty was slowly chipping away at signs of Mer influence. Hence, Katariah Square becoming Titus Square.
Tomal's doing well. I actually did consider having Jane and Tomal married, but I decided that'd be a little too on the nose. Both of Jane's marriages were happy ones, so she has that. They just didn't last that long, either due to humans being short-lived or because of the war.
Perennia will be in for interesting times if she sticks around in Skyrim. Hopefully she keeps her wits about her. Interesting observation on Tacita; she could well be. I don't know enough about ASD to say for sure.
Yes, that conversation will be the subject of today's episode.
@Renee - Yeah, that's Link. He hasn't done as well for himself as some of the others, but he'll at least have the satisfaction of screwing over the Aldmeri Dominion.
Trent never had the work ethic (and probably never had the skill) to really make it as a musician. But this kind of music-adjacent field is good for him, and he's mature enough in his middle age to actually apply himself.
You know, one thing I sometimes like is when the movie takes a radically different approach from the book and almost seems to be arguing with it. The classic example for me is
Starship Troopers. I enjoy both the book and the movie, even though they're taking opposite stances on the issues involved.
Blade Runner/
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is another example of this.
It is tough to make a good adaptation though. Books are more personal, since it's all imagined, and it's not easy for a film to surpass that.
So Kvatch Rising lets you rebuild Kvatch? That's very cool! Sad to hear about Giskard. You do see some pretty extreme personalities appear in modding (and creative work in general), and it's always unfortunate to see someone burn out for whatever reason.
Episode 32: A c0da to Live By
Chapter 18
3rd of Midyear, 4E 15 – Anvil, Cyrodiil Province, claimed by Titus Mede I in opposition to the Thules Regime
Daria sometimes found it funny that she’d crossed an entire continent in her adolescence only to cross it again in her adulthood and end up not that far from the little island where she’d been born.
Anvil certainly had more to offer than Stirk, its gleaming sun-kissed plazas home to bustling markets and a clamoring intellectual life that, on occasion, Daria found tolerable enough to engage in. But like before, she usually found herself to be the best company. The city's airy white streets and swaying palms, bathed in what felt like the light of an eternal summer afternoon, suited her solitary life surprisingly well.
Seated at a small dockside café in view of the harbor's turquoise-blue waters, Daria sipped her muddy black coffee and leaned back in her chair. Her work in the College of Whispers kept her in touch with most of the interesting arcane and Dwemer research (what little that hadn’t been completely derailed by the war, at least) and was prestigious enough that no one seriously pestered her about being a comfortably childless spinster at age 41.
She glanced back down at her papers, another dense dissertation on alteration magic written for the sake of being written and of no real use to anyone. A pretty typical student thesis, in other words. For all its talk of streamlining the half of the Mages Guild it had inherited, the College of Whispers was actually more cumbersome when it came to paperwork, an aspect not helped by the pompous secrecy embraced by so many of the highest-ranking members.
Daria read through a few more pages as a salt-tinged breeze ruffled her hair, her coffee slowly cooling in its little porcelain cup. She occasionally dipped her quill into the inkwell she’d brought with her to cross out a word or write a note in the margin. Age had not made her any more merciful to errors.
The hour grew late. The sun still glowed bright above the western horizon, but its light bore a ruddy tinge that told her sunset was not far off. Finishing her now-cold coffee, Daria waited a bit for the ink on her notes to dry, and then put her writing implements and the deadly-dull thesis in her pack, grabbed her cane, and began the walk home.
She stopped and grimaced at the sudden surge of pain in her right leg. It was a memento of the venomous skyrender sting she'd suffered in the Deshaan salt flats almost twenty years ago. She was lucky to still have her limb after such a wound. It didn’t hurt most days but sometimes flared back up if she’d been sitting still for too long, and lengthy bouts of sitting tended to come with working in the College of Whispers.
Daria ignored the pain and hobbled back to her home, a bright and breezy second-floor apartment that she’d turned into a sanctuary for herself and the tiny handful of people she invited inside.
Judging by the rugged wooden carriage, complete with a driver, two horses, and a lightly armored footman, one of those people had arrived.
The door to the carriage opened and Jane—Baroness Jane Quastius, now—stepped out, resplendent in a moth-silk gown of red and black, her hair in its usual functional bob. It didn’t bother Daria that Jane, the same age as her, still looked like a girl of 25, but it drove Quinn batty, which Daria did appreciate.
“What’s this?” Daria said, raising her eyebrows. “Judging by the apparent age of the person standing outside my door, I’m guessing she's some bratty college kid here to complain about her marks.”
Jane sauntered ahead, hands on her hips. “The kind of bratty college kid with aristocratic connections.”
“Please. I chew up and spit out the spoiled scions of minor aristocracy on a daily basis, and only get mildly reprimanded by my superiors who’ll then apologize and undo everything I did.”
“Good old Tamriel,” Jane remarked.
A moment later they embraced. Daria wasn’t big on hugs, still, but she didn’t mind for Jane. With the moment of contact came a sudden sense of lightness and relief. For the next week or so, things would be fine.
Jane’s footman, an agreeable Breton, carried the noblewoman’s things up to Daria’s apartment, while Daria took her guest to the small balcony that let her glimpse over the bright red-shingle roofs to the tranquil seas beyond.
“Oh, got something for you,” Jane said. She hurried over to one of the bags the footman had brought, reached in, and took out a big clay jug.
Daria’s heart almost stopped, barely daring to hope what it might be. Then Jane smiled and shook the jug a bit. Liquid sloshed inside.
“It’s mazte!” Jane said.
“How in the world did you get that?” Anything from Morrowind was in short supply these days, and probably would be for the rest of Daria’s life.
Jane took on a conspiratorial expression. “Still had some connections in the Thieves Guild. Just had to drop the right word to the right people…”
Daria watched and waited.
“Nah, kidding. I asked my husband, and he bought it from some traders. But the Thieves Guild sounds so much cooler.”
A few minutes later and they both sat at the small balcony table, Jane filling a pair of porcelain cups with the foamy bittersweet drink Daria never thought she’d taste again. Once it was ready, Daria raised the cup to her lips and closed her eyes, drinking deep. The mazte’s flavor and texture, so steeped in the ash-strewn fields and mountains of a land lost to her, brought back all the memories of youth.
But reminiscing never truly made things better, so she didn’t dwell on it. Instead, she and Jane jumped right back into the conversation that had started back in Ondryn’s classroom, one rainy day in Balmora decades ago, and had paused a few times but never truly ended.
“You know, I never thought I’d want kids,” Jane said.
It was evening, the stars jewel-bright in a velvet sky. They’d finished a simple dinner of roasted mackerel, grilled leeks, and thick bread that Jane’s footman had purchased and brought up to them. Not wanting to blow through all the mazte at once, they’d switched to some red grape wine produced on the Quastius estate. The wine was a touch too sweet for Daria’s liking, but she didn’t make an issue of it.
“I gotta say,” Jane continued, “being around Terato changed my mind on that.”
“I’m sure the pressure of a noble line to produce an heir had nothing to do with it,” Daria said.
Jane shrugged. “Hey, Terato said we could adopt if I wanted to. But I think I’m okay with having one of my own.”
“Given that your child would be raised by the most grounded and sane parents in the entire Cyrodiilic aristocracy, I’d say that’s probably a good move.”
Daria wasn’t exactly crazy about Terato Quastius, same as she hadn’t been crazy about any of Jane’s boyfriends over the years. But, like most of those boyfriends, Terato was basically a good guy, though not someone Daria would personally want to spend much time with.
“I am a little worried about the war,” Jane admitted. “Terato could be called up to serve if things bog down in the east.”
“The odds strongly favor Titus Mede. The Elder Council likes Emperor Thules, but nobody else does, which shows how badly out-of-touch the council’s become.”
“How’s the College of Whispers handling all this?” Jane asked.
Daria rolled her eyes. “With their usual obscurantism and obfuscation. The local chapters kept feeding Titus some nonsense about ‘the vagaries of the arcane’ being a reason they can't get involved. Titus finally said he’d leave us alone as long as we don’t help Thules, which we didn’t want to do anyway. Of course, we could have told him that in the first place”
“Sounds awkward,” Jane said.
“Amelia was telling me the Synod had to go through the same rigmarole. I was sent to Stros M’kai this spring to do some work on the Dwemer ruins there, and stayed with her family.”
“Don’t the Synod and the College of Whispers hate each other?” Jane asked.
“Officially, yes. Unofficially, most of us old-timers think the division is stupid and still stay in touch. But the newer members are keen on the division, so the two factions might genuinely hate each other in a generation’s time.”
“Right, I guess the new guys weren’t around for the Mages Guild. How’s Amelia doing?”
“Quite well. She recently gave birth to a third kid, a daughter this time. My ship also stopped at Rihad on the way back, so I got to say hi to Jolda. Political life agrees with her, though I don’t think King Doondana listens to her as much as he should.”
“Since when do kings listen to good advisors, right?” Jane remarked. “Any idea what happened to Maiko?”
Daria shook her head. “Afraid not. Jolda told me that they broke up not long after I left for mainland Morrowind, and that he got transferred to Cyrodiil soon after."
Jane looked disappointed. “Guess I’m not surprised. Too bad, I always thought they made a cute couple.”
“Jolda’s husband seems tolerable.”
Jane snapped her fingers. “Oh, yeah, speaking of old times: did they get your book ready?”
“Uh, yeah. Right over there. That copy is yours, by the way,” Daria said, pointing to a small green book on her desk. She moved to get it, but Jane motioned for her to stay seated, and walked over to save her friend the trip. Coming back to the table, her eyes alight, she sat down.
“All the embarrassments and mishaps of our teenage years saved for posterity,” Jane said, adopting a solemn voice.
“I did change the names, and you said you were okay with what I wrote.” Jane, of course, had read the manuscript before Daria had made any attempt at publication.
“Hey, saving that embarrassment is a good thing! Nobles get too full of themselves. Now, I just have to crack this open and be reminded that I’m not all that great.”
“You come off looking better than I do,” Daria said.
Jane flipped through the book, absolutely pleased with it, and Daria felt a smile come to her lips. She didn’t let it linger long.
“So, how are you spreading the word?” Jane asked.
“I’m not,” Daria said. “You know how much I hate advertising myself. I’m hoping it’ll spread through word-of-mouth.”
“What if it doesn’t?” Jane asked.
“Then so be it. Obscurity suits me pretty well.”
Jane put the book down and thought it over. “I can see the logic in that. I bet people will like it, though.”
“Please don’t give me some spiel about me being more likable than I think of myself as being.”
“Don’t worry, I’m not going to puncture your illusions. But I mean, what the book’s about. There’s a lot of longing for the old days out there. Back when all of Tamriel was under one empire and it didn’t seem like anything that bad could happen.”
The Septims still haunted the world. Most didn’t say it aloud, but nearly everyone Daria knew hoped, on some level, that Titus Mede would set things back the way they were. Quinn certainly hoped so, and was raring to help him out.
“I’m a little surprised to hear you say that,” Daria said. “You didn’t exactly have an easy life back then.”
“Oh, sure. But it’d probably be harder for people in that position now. And with Morrowind ruined…”
Most times, Daria could think about Red Year without feeling much. This wasn’t one of those times. She felt it all at once: the deaths of her parents—the deaths of
so many—and the world she’d lived in now buried under ash and molten rock.
She took a big enough gulp of wine to make her dizzy, put down the cup, and took a few breaths before speaking. “Granted. But I’m not certain that the Empire being great is necessarily the lesson we should be taking from all this.”
“Oh?”
“What people need to realize is that a lot of the problems we face today are outgrowths of the problems we had back then: the corruption on all levels, the deepening inequity, the racism and xenophobia we glossed over and pretended didn’t exist. In fact, one of the reasons I wrote
Outlanders was to show it
wasn’t all that great.”
“Yeah, you didn’t skimp on all the crap we had to put up with. Still, it’s hard to say that things weren’t better.”
“They absolutely were,” Daria agreed. “But no one tried to solve the problems that were there. The Empire never addressed corruption. It never figured out a good succession system, which is a big part of what made the Oblivion Crisis so awful.”
A younger her would have then blamed the Tribunal Temple for Red Year, because it had completely been their fault. They’d let that rock float above Vivec City for centuries as a sign of the city’s namesake god. If they’d chipped it to rubble or used magic to sink it beneath the sea, it’d have never fallen and triggered Red Mountain's eruption. Tens of thousands—including mom and dad—would still be alive.
But she didn’t say anything. Red Year had hurt Jane in more ways than it could have ever hurt Daria. She didn’t want to reawaken that. Pain could be useful if it fixed something, but with the Tribunal long-gone and Morrowind devastated, mentioning the temple’s complicity would be pain for the sake of pain at this point.
“I guess you’re right,” Jane agreed. “Folks aren’t going to see that, though.”
“How do you mean?”
“They’re going to read it, follow the adventures of two smart young ladies in an interesting city and a more-or-less functioning Empire, and think of how great it used to be.”
“Probably,” Daria admitted. “In the end, none of us has much control over our stories. Maybe that’s a good thing. I can’t claim any immunity to nostalgia. Part of me does wish I could go back in time and take Tamriel, circa 3E 426, and keep it safe.”
“That might be an interesting project for the College of Whispers.”
“As if. You’d need...”
Daria had almost said CHIM, but stopped herself at the last moment. She didn’t want to explain that and wasn’t at all sure she believed it, anyway.
“...more powerful magic than they’ll ever have to do something like that. Writing
Outlanders is probably the closest I can come to saving that world. But even then, I want to save it so that people today can learn from it. Looking backward can make things hurt less, but it doesn’t make things better. The only way to do that is to honestly assess the mistakes we made, and take measures to correct them.”
Jane nodded. “Well said, muthsera.” She smiled. “Think you could sign my copy?”
“I guess, but don’t tell anyone I signed it,” Daria said.
Jane got up and walked across the room to take a quill and inkwell from Daria’s desk. “Don’t worry, this one will be a Quastius heirloom,” she said, as she returned it to the balcony table.
Making a show of reluctance, Daria opened the book to the title page, dipped her quill, and then wrote:
To Baroness Jane Quastius (formerly Llayn) –
You made my teenage years intermittently tolerable. So yeah, thanks.
- Daria Morgendorffer “How does this look?” Daria asked, as she passed the open book over to Jane.
Jane looked at it and smiled. “Perfect.”
Satisfied with her friend’s reaction, Daria drank some more wine and looked out to the stars, wondering how much and in what ways her book would really help.
The EndMany thanks to everyone who's read all this way! Writing this series was a challenge, but one I'm glad I undertook. I can only hope that you all got something from it.
Also, for those curious, this is the version of Anvil that I'm envisioning for Daria:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBw3sGsENJIThis post has been edited by WellTemperedClavier: Oct 1 2023, 06:31 PM