2nd Hearthfire

'Why are we skipping a day?' asked Lalaine. 'I thought we were on the first day of Hearthfire, not the second.'

'You're not missing anything,' Phane explained. 'The orc left Markarth, killed some forsworn in the hills, saw a dragon that wouldn't fight back... and that's about it.'

Drelis nodded slowly. 'He's not far off I'm afraid. Although I would have tried to illuminate the story in a more exciting manner.'

'Let's not waste any more time. Our ale won't last all night, so tell us what happened on the second day of Hearthfire.' Phane took a gulp of the bright beverage.

'Ah yes, well the important events of that day were the slaying of the forsworn in a place called Broken Tower Redoubt, as per the jarl's bounty notice; passing through the village of Rorikstead; and investigating the barrow of Rannveig's Fast.' Drelis leafed through the three documents he had. 'The jarl's steward did not write details on what happened at Broken Tower Redoubt, and I'm sure we can imagine that for ourselves. A pity though, I would have liked to know how Khargol dealt with overwhelming odds when facing the forsworn.'

'Wait a moment,' said Lalaine, pointing at Drelis. 'You have a copy of the jarl's steward's report?'

'Well... yes. It's only a copy though, it's not the original.'

'How did you get your hands on something like that?'

'There are so many marvelously mundane books that end up in the library,' Drelis explained. 'Travelers, adventurers, merchants, many different people visit. They know that we will take anything and everything, regardless of its origins. I spoke to a khajiit, once, who sold me the records from a Telvanni stronghold in Morrowind; he was quite brazen and frank about having stolen them. At the time he had thought they would have been useful as blackmail material, but when he discovered otherwise he simply hanged onto them and left Morrowind, hoping they would come in useful elsewhere.'

'You actually buy books and documents from thieves?' asked Phane, amused.

'Don't get me wrong, I don't act as a fence to these people,' Drelis held his hands up, warding off any false assumptions. 'I'm not commissioning thieves to grab the personal diary of the king of Daggerfall or anything like that.' The others looked at one-another, eyebrows cocked. 'Let's just get on with Khargol's story shall we?

'Rorikstead was a small village named after the man who founded it. Rorik had fought in the Great War and had earned a large plot of land on the border of The Reach for his service to the empire. There he had founded Rorikstead. The villagers had worked hard to turn the cold soil into arable farmland, but once the initial effort had been put in, the crops of Rorikstead were growing successfully and the farmers even had surplus food to sell at Markarth and Whiterun.

'Rorik worried about his people during the civil war in Skyrim. He had already seen the horrors of war when the Imperial City fell to the Thalmor. He could only pray that the same barbarity would not find its way to Rorikstead during such troubled times. And, of course, on top of the civil war we have dragons returning to Tamriel. Times could not be more uncertain.'

'Did anything important happen in Rorikstead?' asked Phane, impatiently.

'Not much,' Drelis admitted. 'The records I have of Khargol's movements there come from the journal of a young man named Erik. Erik was tired of a farmer's life and wished to be a sellsword, an adventurer, a mercenary for hire. His father ran the Frostfruit Inn and had forbade him to leave Rorikstead. Khargol offered to pay for the lad's first sword and set of armour, leaving the choice entirely in Erik's hands.'

'Did he become a mercenary in the end?'

'He did. And more than just a mercenary, but that comes later. Lydia's diary goes over what Khargol told her about his journey back to Whiterun from Rorikstead. He hiked over the damp, mossy rocks, patterned with lichen and shallow pools of rainwater. He met a legion soldier waiting in ambush for a stormcloak courier, but never saw the legionnaire's mark. With the rain unrelenting, and the sun sinking behind the mountains,Khargol looked for shelter by the northern mountains. It says here that he saw a dragon flying between rainclouds; a dim silhouette against the darkening grey sky.

'That is when he found Rannveig's Fast, one of the ancient nord burial grounds. He knew that there would be shelter inside, but likely draugr as well. The chance of encountering the undead was, however, weighed off with the chance of finding one of the word wall murals that would teach him a new shout.

'Rannveig's Fast was unlike many other barrows in that its draugr were already slain within. Searching the ruins, Khargol encountered ghostly warriors who assaulted him. His weapons was, fortunately, enchanted, and he was able to defend himself from the spectres' attacks. Even as they slashed at him with their phantom blades, they cried out that they did so against their will - that someone else was dictating their actions.

'In the gloomy word wall chamber, a chest stood unlocked and inviting. Khargol was wary of such easily-gained treasures, however, and so he avoided walking straight towards it. There was a trapdoor on the floor before the chest; stepping on the trapdoor would have sent Khargol plummeting to whatever doom awaited below. He used the word wall, and then explored further, intent on finding the secret behind the ghosts and the trap.

'The trap had been set by a cruel and wicked man named Sild the Warlock. Sild had fashioned the trap to attract and imprison adventurers and treasure-seekers who he would then torture to death before using their spirits as his ghostly guardians. His workshop was filled with the tools of death and pain-bringing. I should imagine he found himself on the receiving end of both pain and death when Khargol unsheathed his axe.'

'How horrible!' Lalaine exclaimed. 'Why would anyone do that? Torturing people to death, keeping their souls trapped as ghosts, it's awful.'

'I agree, certainly,' said Drelis, putting down his documents and taking up his tankard. 'But there are cruel people in this world, whether driven to evil because of their nature, or greed, or something worse. We will have to take solace in the swift and brutal justice that Sild met when Khargol discovered his lair.'

Phane shuddered.

1st Hearthfire

Phane nursed his drink, throwing the occasional glance at a pretty redguard girl at the bar. Lalaine was not coming to the tavern this evening, she was visiting her mother or something, and Drelis had left him alone at the table to catch a student he knew and ask him about some book or another.

Drelis had left a few volumes, including Lydia's diary, on the table. Phane almost put his tankard on it before recognising and picking it up. 'I'll bet Lydia was a comely lass,' he idled to himself. 'I could do with a housecarl like that. Someone to follow me around and beat the snot out of any thugs who dared to cross me. Someone to watch the house for me.' He looked around his empty table. 'Just someone to talk to would do right now.'

He opened the diary and flipped through it to find where the story had left off. 'Well, old Drelis certainly wasn't telling the story verbatim was he?' It took him a while to get used to the way the entries were sorted, then found that Lydia's personal thoughts were separate from her documentation of Khargo gro-Mashnar's feats and movements. It wasn't the original diary, that much was certain, so why it had been laid out in such a hard-to-read manner perplexed Phane to distraction.

'1st Hearthfire,' he began, piecing the puzzle together himself. 'A courier delivered a letter to Khargol on the road. It was sealed, but signed "a friend." Very mysterious. The letter suggested finding a place called Lost Tongue Overlook.' He looked over at the redguard girl again, but she had left while he was distracted with the book. No one was watching so he carried on. 'Presumably it was one of the lost word wall murals that would teach him a thu'um.

'A mining community is hard pressed to make a profit thanks to the constant interference of the forsworn. The hills are full of eyes, and the forsworn are a constant threat. The journey back to Whiterun is off with a bang as a glimpse of a dragon is caught amongst the rocky crags. It circles and swoops, roaring, but not attacking. Khargol scales a steep rise of rock to swing at it, but the dragon keeps its distance, bellowing rather than getting involved in a confrontation. Eventually, it flies off. Strange...'

Drelis was still chatting away in another corner of the tavern. 'When the echos of the dragon's calls have finally died, Khargol returned to the road. He found a mine that smelled of death, the owner claiming that dead things had driven his workers out. Khargol entered to investigate nonetheless.' Phane shook his head. 'Madness. Why would you do that?' He read on. 'Khargol encountered draugr in the depths, slaying them until the only way forward was to jump down a sinkhole. In the crypt revealed inside, the draugr wight lord used his own thu'um to disarm Khargol, blasting his warhammer from his hands. Both test the power of their voice against one-another until Khargol, hoarse and exhausted, is the victor.

'The miners help haul him from the pit, but they have no reward to offer him. Khargol encounters forsworn in the hills, swamped by them and praying that his newly-forged dwemer armour will stop their arrows before they pierce something important. The forsworn have a camp on the exterior of an old barrow. With the forsworn dead, and the bodies moved to one side of the encampment, Khargol spends the night at the top, hoping that the broken bones he places around his bedroll will wake him should any scouts return and seek to cut his throat while he sleeps.'

Phane put the diary back on the table and finished his drink. 'Well, when you read it like that it is certainly a lot less exciting.' Drelis was still talking with the student in the corner, so Phane picked the books up off the table and walked over. 'Here you are Drelis,' he said. 'I'm off home, maybe we can continue from the second day of Hearthfire when we get back into the story tomorrow.'

31st Last Seed

'So where did the conspiracy lead?' asked Lalaine.

'And how was it a "conspiracy" in the first place?' added Phane. 'When I think of conspiracy, I think of the intrigues of Daggerfall, not a smelting town in Skyrim.'

Drelis nodded and smiled, allowing that it certainly sounded ridiculous on the surface. 'It was the public murder of the woman in the market that got Khargol on the trail,' he explained. 'She had been from Cyrodil, but Khargol managed to do some digging and found the room she had been staying at in the Silver-Blood Inn. Her diary revealed that she was more interested in the city's prison than shopping for jewellery.'

'What's so special about its prison?' asked Phane, impatiently.

'Perhaps it's not the prison itself, but whom it contained,' Drelis suggested. 'Markarth's silver mines are owned, largely, by the Silver-Blood family. Instead of sitting out a term or sentence in a cell, prisoners are put to work mining silver ore to pay their way out of incarceration. The murderer in the market had been a miner, not a prisoner, and had never been connected with the forsworn before now.

'After more poking around, Khargol ran afoul of a mercenary by the name of Dryston who attempted to intimidate him away from his investigations. Of course, Khargol's heavy fists made short work of the sellsword, and Dryston revealed that he had been sent by a man named Nepos "the Nose".

'Investigating the Silver-Blood family, Khargol found out from Thngvor Silver-Blood that Ulfric Stormcloak, the rebel who had killed high king Torygg, had saved Markarth from the forsworn using his Voice! This must have been very intriguing, but unfortunately that was all Khargol discovered, the specific shout or shouts that Ulfric used were not revealed.

'Khargol visited Understone Keep, the seat of power in Markarth. There he met an orc smith by the name of Moth gro-Bagol who taught Khargol smithing techniques he had learned in the Imperial Legion. Khargol put the theory to good use and fashioned some armour from dwemer metal he had found on his travels. He must have looked a strange sight, wandering about in dwarven-style armour.'

'What about this Nepos character?' Lalaine insisted.

'Well, Khargol might have been an orc, but he was not one to rush blindly into complex situations. He approached the jarl and asked about forsworn in the city. Jarl Igmund dismissed his questions, claiming that there were no forsworn within sight of the city walls, let alone within them. He asked Khargol to route camps of forsworn in the Reach instead, but it was not enough to dissuade our orc hero.

'He visited Nepos and, after a brief parley that revealed Nepos to be forsworn himself, killed him. The Silver-Bloods had the forsworn "king", a man named Madanach, in the prison's mines and had been using the forsworn as their puppets with the leverage provided to them. Things had, however, taken a turn for the worse; now the Madanach was distributing his orders through Nepos, a powerful man in the city.'

'So it really was a conspiracy,' agreed Lalaine.

'Indeed,' said Drelis. ' But that is the end of Khargol's activities in Markarth for the moment. With Nepos dead, it was safer to disappear that night than stay longer to root out more forsworn agents. Again, I cannot say why Khargol appeared in Markarth in the first place, but he disappeared just as quickly.'

30th Last Seed

This time it was Lalaine who was last to arrive at the tavern. 'A late delivery,' she explained. 'I had to wait for it to arrive before I could leave. Where were we?'

'Drelis says that we've skipped a day ahead,' Phane complained. 'Our orcish smith is returning to Whiterun from Falkreath.'

Drelis held out his hands to pacify his friends. 'You aren't missing anything, I assure you. Khargol has trekked around Lake Ilinalta looking for more barrows. The word wall murals within each teach him the words of those powerful shouts the dragonborn can use, so he has tasked himself with finding as many as possible.'

'Did he find any then?' asked Lalaine, taking her seat.

'I'm afraid not, at least not as far as Lydia's records show.' Drelis had some new books on the table, books that Phane and Lalaine had not seen before. 'These are journals and copies of official records from Markarth, the western-most town,' he explained. 'It is the seat of power in The Reach, home to the barbaric forsworn.'

'Who are the forsworn?' asked Lalaine.

'That is a question that Khargol himself had to answer for himself,' Drelis revealed. 'You might wonder how Khargol came to visit Markarth in the first place. Well, I can't quite explain that myself. Lydia's diary says that he returned to Whiterun after questing for the hidden word walls in barrows and tombs, only to disappear that same night without warning or explanation. He had paid for Breezeholm's renovation, traded in the town, worked at the forge... but he did not return from the tavern that evening.'

'Did Lydia go looking for him?'

'She writes that she wanted to do so. Her thane had disappeared in the dead of night without a trace. Should she abandon Breezeholm to go looking for him, or remain in Whiterun like she had been told to? She was his representative to the jarl and the townsfolk in his absence, after all. It must have been a difficult decision.

'But, like I said, Khargol turns up in Markarth the very next day. And it is not a short journey by any means.

'Markarth is a town built into the mountainside. It is rock and stone, unlikely to be burned down by dragonfire. Still, it had its share of problems, including corruption, daedra worship, the Thalmor, and the forsworn. The town had a shrine to Talos, but it was cobwebbed and dusty. No doubt the Thalmor ambassador that paced the halls of the jarl's court was petitioning to have the shrine torn down and replaced. The town is famous for its mines, smelters, and smithy. But Markarth's wealth was not counted solely in silver; there were expansive ruins of dwemer origin beneath the city, deep and mysterious, not to mention dangerous.

'The forsworn, it turns out, are nords who are dedicated to "the old ways". They dress in animal furs and make pacts with the dark denizens of the night. The Reach was littered with their camps, and they had no love for the nords of Markarth and the other towns, let alone outsiders. Khargol witnessed a forsworn agent killing an imperial visitor to Markarth in plain sight. He found himself being pulled deeper into the conspiracy of these forsworn assassins living within Markarth's walls.'

'What do you mean "conspiracy"?' asked Phane. 'You said that the forsworn were barbarians. How can they have a conspiracy if they all live in the hills, baying at the moon?'

'Ah, well that's just what Khargol was about to find out.'