Subrosa: Thank you! Vivec is one of my favourite video game cities, and I wanted to try and capture the atmosphere of it which I loved so much. I find this period in TES lore a really intersting time to read about in Destri and H.E.R's fics, and I wanted to try it for myself, and I figured I'd try combining this time period with the setting. Ta'Varda certainly has a point on how she could have been conquered by worse, but Dela also has her own limitations of perspective beyond her culture.
Thanks for picking up on those nits. That's what I get for proofreading whilst riding a massive caffeine high.
Destri MLAAAAAAAARGH!!: That post. That post there is why I like you
Thanks for the critique and nitpicking, and it's always nice to have that kind of encouragement too.
As for Dela 'whining' about Talos' victory, she does a) come from a culture that is currently in a social/theological crisis what with the treaty and
has her own reasons why own perspective and objectivity would be severely compromised.
Acadian: Yep, yet another story. I'm terrible, I know.
Thanks for the kind words, and for the nits. Again, this is what I get for proofing while hyped up on coffee.
H.E.R.: Thank you!
Like I was saying to Subrosa, the emergence of the empire is a really interesting time in TES lore, and I really like these stories where the events around the characters are as big as, or even bigger, than the characters themselves.
I'm glad you're already liking the relationship between Dela and Ta'Varda; that's going to be a major part of the story.
Grits: Thank you! Ta'Varda definitely has more she could say, but she's smart enough not to; she's used to surviving within a slave-owning culture, and that requires a good measure of brains. Glad you like this, and I hope you enjoy the rest
Recommended listening -
The Sole Regret, by Darren Korb
Chapter II – False Gods Vivec had always been a trial for Ta’Varda’s sensitive nose.
The city stank of spices and sweat and roasting meat, trapped by the heavy stone ceilings of the Redoran canton’s innards. Slipping through crowds of dunmer, past stalls selling silks or books or food, Ta’Varda found herself being assaulted from every angle by the city’s pungent, frenzied scent, as if the canal-bound metropolis were in heat.
Perhaps in heat was the wrong word to describe it, Ta’Varda reflected. The city felt tense, coiled. There was a slow-building energy rising in the crowds, and with the usual stenches she was reminded of a bull mastodon in musth, spoiling for a fight. As a foreigner and a slave, she made a point of sticking close to the Ordinators that patrolled the streets. They would protect her from anyone trying to vent their frustrations, duty compelling them to keep her safe in the same way they would stop a mob from pitching stones through a shop’s window. The guards were imposing in their golden armour and callous in their metal masks, and frightened her a good deal, but at the very least they should keep her safe; her collar gave her a shield as much as it made her a target. As if it might served as a shield, Ta’Varda held the satchel she carried close.
On a corner of the Redoran Canton, Ta’Varda came across a crowd. She stuck to its edges, out of the gaze of the group, but the effort was unnecessary. The attention of the gathered dunmer was pointed inwards at a lone figure stood right at the very edge, just next to one of the city’s many canals. For a moment Ta’Varda stopped, curious of the spectacle.
“We’ve been betrayed!” the dunmer in front of the crowd declared. “We’ve been sold off to foreign invaders, and we’ve stabbed in the back by liars. When this war began we were promised victory, we were promised that these Imperials would be driven back to their borders. What happens? Our so-called gods lose Mournhold and then they surrender our home without a further fight.”
Normally, such a slur against the Tribunal would have had this mer pelted with stones for his blasphemy, but today the crowd were silent. They were listening, something which worried Ta’Varda.
“The Tribunal lied to us,” the speaker continued. “They lied to us about victory and I ask, what else have they lied to us about? The god there-” He pointed south, towards the Palace of Vivec. “Is a trickster and a charlatan! A false god!”
“Citizen! Quiet down at once,” a voice rasped from the edge of the crowd. Ta’Varda glanced towards its source, seeing a pair of Ordinators. One had his sword drawn and was already pushing through the crowd, and the other was stood at its perimeter with a nimbus of arcane power crackling on his open palm. “Stay where you are.”
The crowd parted before the Ordinator, not angry enough risk a fight with one of Vivec’s guards.
“You can’t silence us forever! Give us back our nation!” the orator in the middle of the crowd called. For a moment, Ta’Varda thought he was going to stand his ground, but after that final statement he hopped down from his impromptu pedestal, trying to get away. He was too slow, the pursuing Ordinator catching up to him and laying a hand on his shoulder. The fleeing dunmer spasmed and yelled, jerking like a fish on a hook before he slumped to the ground with a groan. The Ordinator who had caught him hauled the unfortunate dissident up and glared about the crowd.
“Go about your day,” he ordered. His mask lent his voice a metallic timbre that made it seem as if some dwemer automaton were speaking. Ta’Varda took that moment to disappear into the Redoran canton’s innards. In retrospect, she shouldn’t have been surprised by such a commotion; the Armistice may have marked the defeat of Morrowind’s armies, but it would take more than a treaty to triumph over Redoran pride. She just hoped that the arrested man had been taken in by the Order of the Watch instead of the Order of the Inquisition; the Watch would likely slap him with a fine for disturbing the peace, while the Inquisition might well take him to the Ministry of Truth for the crime of blasphemy. Ta’Varda shuddered at the thought, knowing too well the frightening rumours that originated from the rock that floated above Vivec’s palace.
The innards of the canton felt far more cramped than its balconies, the crowds here thicker and more overwhelming. Ta’Varda was glad of her natural talents for quick movement and dexterity, and she slipped around the edges of the crowds before following the trail that three porters left as their bulk let them bull through the press, clutching the satchel she held. From somewhere nearby she could hear music, and she passed a musician with a tall
Yavarnis flute braced against his feet where he sat cross-legged, a hat laid before him with its cheap cloth lining studded with coins.
Ta’Varda bowed out from the crowds, ducking into a doorway from which the hot smell of fresh bread roared. The bakery that she had entered was already full, crowded by customers. Many of them were khajiit or argonians who wore slave collars or bracers, all on their morning errands. Like Ta’Varda, they paid with money that was not their own. The dunmer behind the counter took her money without comment, and the khajiit turned without further ado; she did not bother getting a receipt, knowing Dela would trust her enough.
“Ta’Varda,” an argonian rasped as he reached the doorway of the bakery. Ta’Varda’s gaze flicked over to him, recognising Property-of-Olmas. “Kazell see you are well.”
There were, Ta’Varda realised, fresh bandages wrapped across the chest of Property-of-Olmas, or ‘Kazell’ as he called himself in his one small act of rebellion. Her ears flattened in sympathy.
“Olmas didn’t take the news well?” she asked, nodding to the injuries.
“No he did not,” Kazell replied. “Kazell is not surprised, but the whipping was far from the worst.” The argonian bared his teeth in a grin. “The people of this city will see my injuries and they will hear Olmas’ name with my own, and the shame that that will bring will be my revenge.”
“Loosen your shirt a little more then, Kazell,” Ta’Varda said. “Bring the old thijzz much embarrassment.”
“How fares your own mistress?” Kazell asked.
“She is quiet. She spends much time in thought.”
“When does she not? At least Olmas does real work.”
Ta’Varda shrugged, annoyed at the slight against Dela.
“I’ll leave you to your day,” she said. “I’m sure you have much to do.”
It was a strange thing, the khajiit reflected, how often slaves would reflexively defend or elevate their masters, even ones belonging to tyrants and sadists. Property-of-Olmas was whipped regularly, despite the fact that most Vivec-dwelling dunmer considered the act distasteful, and had even had his name taken from him in a spiteful play on the conventions of Argonian naming. Even then, he defended Olmas over Dela, and Ta’Varda had in turn felt angered on behalf of her mistress.
Such was the case with every slave that Ta’Varda knew; their master might be a petty despot who whipped them, starved them and forced them to sleep in the cold, but they were invariable better people than the owners of other slaves. Their owners were richer, of higher social standing, of more refined tastes. Ta’Varda had seen fights break out between slaves over such subjects before, born from some bizarre loyalty that, when examined rationally, no slave could really explain. The minds of mortals were strange things, she reflected.
Still, she decided, her own loyalty to Dela wasn’t founded on such tenuous ground. Dela, and to a lesser extent Odanris, were good to her. She had her own bed, she never went hungry and her mistress had never struck a blow against her; Ta’Varda reflected that the artist would never be able to do such a thing. The generosity of her mistress even extended to a day off every week and a small stipend of money was given to Ta’Varda to spend on what she wished, though that generosity met its limit before giving the khajiit true freedom. All that said, Ta’Varda knew she had been very lucky when rolling the weighted dice of slavedom; when she was enslaved, taken all those years ago, she had been deemed too skinny for the fields and not pretty enough to be a brothel’s exotic fare. Instead, the slavers had advertised her as a house slave and she had been bought by Dela, then a young dunmer woman just married and expecting a child. That had been over twenty years ago, and Ta’Varda knew that other slaves had not even been lucky to live that long.
Her final stop was in the foreign quarter. Here she could see signs of trouble, where the canton had been hit by the first convulsions of civic rage. So far it was nothing more than a few smashed windows, and a wall where ‘
nwahs get out or die’ had been scrawled, but Ta’Varda knew that that would not be the last of it. She could see ordinators on the corners, more than usual, and their stance suggested that they were expecting trouble. Ta’Varda didn’t blame them.
Rounding a corner marred with the declaration of ‘
Our nation not yours’, Ta’Varda came to her destination,
Aldano’s Artistry. As she pushed open the door, she noticed the paintings that usually adorned the shop’s walls were gone, and the start that the altmer behind the counter gave when she came in.
“Oh, Ta’Varda,” Aldano said as he realised who it was. “It’s you.”
“Long night?” Ta’Varda asked. Aldano looked worn out, his eyes shadowed and his hair, usually kept with meticulous care, mussed and lank.
“You could certainly say that,” the altmer said. “There were angry gangs marauding the streets all last night, looking for anyone who might give them a fight. I barely slept at all. Of course the Ordinators didn’t do a damn thing and I was lucky nobody decided to loot the place.” He shook his head. “I spend years making an honest living and paying my taxes like any good citizen and they just stand by and do nothing.”
“They seem to be out in force today,” Ta’Varda pointed out.
“That they are,” Aldano nodded. “I don’t know if that means they’ll actually do anything or not, but seeing as the Imperials have an embassy here I don’t think they’ll get away with turning a blind eye for too long. I hope.”
“If you’re worried, khajiit is sure Dela and Odanris would be happy to let you stay at the house,” Ta’Varda said.
“I appreciate the offer, but I should stay here and look after my shop.” Odanris gave a wry smile. “Besides, those mobs have got to buy paint for their graffiti from somewhere.”
“Speaking of paint, Dela sent khajiit here to pick up some pigments,” Ta’Varda said. “You are still selling them, yes?”
“Oh, it’s business as usual,” Odanris confirmed. “I just decided to put some of my more valuable stock in the back, in case I had the bad luck to be hit by looters with an appreciation for the finer things. How is she taking things, by the way?”
“She isn’t looking to join any mobs, if that is what you worry.”
“Well there’s a relief. What were the pigments you needed, then?”
“Ochres, I think,” Ta’Varda said, reaching into her satchel and pulling forth the scrap of parchment. “I’ve got a list of everything on here.”
“Let’s see.” Aldano took the list and scanned the paper. “Yes, I should have everything here.” He disappeared under the counter, pulling open draws and rummaging within the innards, emerging with several glass vials filled with fine powder. “Here we are.”
Pigments in hand, Ta’Varda made her farewells to Aldano. She left the foreign quarter, crossing the bridges and canals of Vivec on her way back to Dela and her home.
This post has been edited by Colonel Mustard: Oct 19 2014, 10:21 PM