Many Faced, Part 1

My mother was a Nordic woman, born and perished Elga Gjurinsdottir.  She was a lowborn waste of the Bay, without clan, title or even a kenning, not that the manmer knew the tradition.  If I were to give her one in death... if I were generous, and in good spirits, I might call her Rime-Veins, for the lovely way blue cracked and speckled across her alabaster skin.  But a cutthroat is not generous, and my recollection of her is not a gleaming one.  It is one of drunken filth, ambitionless whoring, and a wooden spoon which cracked against flesh more than it ever found itself stirring a stew.  Better to title her Gutter-Sow, and leave her unmentioned oft as possible.

Father... he was probably just a sailor, coming into port and into her as well, as was routine.  It was always her adamant declaration that he was a nobleman and even a knight, with fine jewels on his fingers and linen garb blue as his blood, and even a painted suit of plate to enter battle in.  On my most romantic and yearning days I believed her, but even if true it is of no use.  She was certainly not a whore to the wealthy, and any hypothetical Sir that might come to her was surely there for the vices the direly desperate might perform for coin.  Knighthood is worthless, anyways, at least in this day and age.  Half are bumbling nobleborns, with muddied and nonsensical notions of quests and adventures that take them nowhere, and the other half are brutes, thugs given steel and authority to kill for their mass and unwavering loyalty alone.

Regardless of what portrait I might paint of him, I concede in reality he is a question unanswerable, absent and irrelevant.  A man who wrote himself out of my story before I ever needed to.

My birth was accidental, or better yet, unminded- a thing produced without the care or intention to be thought of or seen by those who produced it.  Father did not obviously care to see the aftermath.  It was not romance or the need to be a sire that made me, but just thoughtless casting of his mettle, washing his hands of the affair not but a moment after conceiving it.  The Gutter-Sow merely forgot contraceptives- or more likely, in drunken stupor she mistook tincture for elixir.  It's poetry, really.  My origin would be the image of my life, existing unwanted and without purpose, yet existing anyway.  The world thought to push itself against me, and so I held it down and stole my destiny.

Without kenning or clan, I bore patroynm.  And without a father, my patronym became matronym.  And so it was I was called Elgassunr, written Elgasson in Breton census.














































notes: rough it up a little further, maybe a swear or two.  contract a bit (least in--> least'n?).  Drop a g here and there.  Aside from more direct language, this pattern will be relevant later during events like slitting Cuhlec's throat at the foot of the tower, rumination of the meeting with Vivec, new convention that births Talos, and in the final bit of the new 'Lorkhan' speaking of how he's the next big thing, convention 2.0



further outline

PART 1: HJALTI

origins- parentage, birth into purposelessness [done]

youth and young adulthood- young rat of the city, petty thief, drunken beatings, silver tongue and wit of june, his kenning, a talent to scam and read a man, cut-throat mugging, theft, thug-work, loathing and dissatisfaction

mid-20s- setting out as a sailor on a less than legal ship, seeking *something*; encounter with man he couldn't read, curiosity and enamorment with the nohotorgha, short-lived monkhood, deep conflict between his notions of purpose and their teachings of peace via nymic obliteration, which in the end he finds disgusting, leaves with the knowledge of wearing another's name and refuses further teachings

late 20s and early thirties- aimless wanderings, northward travel, odd jobs, eventual mercenary work in the Falkreath in conflict against the reachmen, awe at Cuhlec's divine bellowing and desire to follow Cuhlec in what he assumes is a way towards purpose; his replacement of Tiber Septim, getting him drunk and talking on himself and his past, then slitting his throat, tossing his body in a shallow grave, and wearing his neonymic, adopting his name, face, and superficial personality.  'My name was once Hjalti Elgassunr, also called Early-Beard.  But from that moment on I was always Tiber Septim, too.


PART 2: SEPTIM
Brief origin, quick witted general, son of a minor colovian war-baron/Halrik (be very brief on them- Hjalti did not know much about them), of the hilltown burg of Septunhal, also known as Septimum and Sept.  As his younger brother and fellow lesser prince/Halkuny Agnorith had inherited the Hal, through respectful combat that ended in Tiber's yielding, he would go elsewhere to serve his legacy as master of war.  And it was in the north in Falkreath that he went, to the northernmost reach of the old estates, to serve Lord Cuhlec, to whom Septim became devoted and loyal, confident in his righteousness.

As conflicts grew with Reachman tribal neighbors, it came to confrontation- where Septim sees Shor and Akatosh within Cuhlec and the Nords see Ysmir, and as well Talos.  In aftermath Cuhlec is called forth by Greybeards to Hrothgar, and trusted general Septim travels with, by his insistence as a blade to keep his lord safe.  On the way up the mountainside the Ash-ghost manifests, Wulfharth coming together out of blizzard, a piece of Shor's soul woken from death by Cuhlec's thuum.  He had previously risen to the voice of the greybeards, assuming himself the one they called for; proven wrong, he realized this was Ysmir, seeking him out.  Making covenant with Ash, the three continue onwards, meeting with greybeards; Cuhlec is taken up to meet their master, while the old Shezzarine and the colovian General are made to wait.  The shezzarine is told by greybeards uncertain warnings, prophecy they themselves cannot explain.  When Cuhlec returns, he returns with purpose and destiny, with declarations of being the one to reform Reman's empire and bring long-lost prosperity to Tamriel.  His soul is that of the dragon, and his blood burns with the potential to satisfy Alessia's compact.

Rallying, the armies of Falkreath march south, led with the wit of Septim and charged onward with the spear of Cuhlec and the axe of Wulfharth.  Sancre Tor falls, Chorrol is taken, many baronies are captured.  The western floodplains and their harvest are siezed from a Nibennium without emperor, a weak and feuded for city ruled in that moment by patrician families and powerful cults who far from agree who is genuinely in charge.  Charging the bridge the city falls, and soon the whole of the isle is under his hand, and the eastern floodplains too were captured.  Celebration begins, and the to be emperor begins to plan with advisors including the ash-ghost and his general, on the path to conquest and the glorious vision of a united tamriel that dances in Cuhlec's head.

At the base of the tower, and the center of the world, the cut-throat is restless.  An end has come to the waking celebrations; the advisors have gone to claimed quarters within the palace, Cuhlec sits alone in the throne room, eyeing maps.  Glory has come to Hjalti; he has seized destiny, guiding the new Reman to empire.

It is not good enough.  It is there he slits his lord's throat, every will in mind to take his name like he did with Tiber a year before.  But at the base of the tower, he sees more.  In a moment that last hours that last eternal, he stares down the protonymic as though it was something physical.  His dagger has become a razor, and with the smell of brimstone and glowing heat he cuts the neck with both surgical precision and a gashing blow slicing not just at his terrified lord's neck but at who and what he is, trimming and slicing the meat of his name and carving it like a ham.  It is not just ruby red blood that pours from his neck while he sputters and gasps, but his ruby red nymic, his ruby red destiny, his ruby red life, all harvested in a ruby red betrayal.  His accomplishments, his purpose, his birthright, the properties of his very soul, all are carved and cleaved by a Hjalti who is enraptured and entranced, a glorious life ending and being whittled to nothing while the dragon quakes and quivers and the world spins about the tower like a pinwheel.  Ysmir too is inherited- for Ysmir and his covenant was always a part of Cuhlec, manifesting around his very soul.  The razor slices many throats- Cuhlec, his advisors, and Tiber Septim.

It was Tiber who had shouted and earned mutterings of Ysmir and Talos from the soldiers, Tiber who had ascended the mountain with his curious lord at his side, Tiber who had made covenant with Ash, Tiber who had spoken to a dragon while Cuhlec waited, Tiber who had pushed his lord to seize empire, telling him that he had been told it was his birthright to lead his noble lord to victory.  What sorrow misfortune it was that night, upon the night of their greatest victory, that a cut-throat nightblade of the Illiac, one who had traveled with them and spied from the beginning, had slit their throats and vanished, likely with the help of a vast multitude- a thing Tiber survived, but that his poor lord didn't.  And so it was Tiber who would assume empire, the dragonfires lighting at his touch in ceremony presided over by his new battlemage Zurin Arctus, who would yield to him a treasured thing: The Amulet of Kings, an artifact that had traveled with him since Renald, even when it hadn't.


PART 3: SHEZZARINE

With identity dissected and stolen, the association of Cuhlec's nymic has been taken as well.  It isn't quite that history has been changed; but near every memory of history has been changed, including that of the world's.  Which essentially has the same result, more or less.  Tiber is mentally in an odd position.  He is now in touch with both his honorable name of Septim, and his cut-throat name of Hjalti.  Zurin picks up on this disconnect pretty quickly, and while its initially tense Zurin and Septim become confidants.  Zurin is the one soul Tiber trusts enough to discuss any of his past and his lies with (albeit without details like 'I stole divinity' or 'Septim is a name I murdered').  Zurin does not speak much of himself in any detailed manner, but does share details, and implications of his own nature and lies- enough that Septim will eventually be able to conclude that Zurin is in fact a snake.  Zurin also becomes Tiber's greatest advisor as to the handling of politics, to which he is a quick learner but is initially without finesse, and becomes his tutor, teaching him history, more advanced mathematics, and theology.

The two as well become an administrative machine, Tiber's wit and skill with the intentions of his fellow man and Zurin's fine-edged nibenese experience with politics leading to frequently able appointment of governeors, administrators, bureaucrats, advisors, and generals.  His greatest general though is Wulfharth, though Wulfharth is instructed to act as Tiber; to use their strikingly similar features to produce the lie that the emperor is as competent on the battlefield as he claims to be.

Holdings at this time are a tenuous Falkreath, a swathe of the northern highlands including Chorrol and Sancre Tor, and the Cyrodiilic Heartlands.  Colovia and Nibenay are the first on Tiber's list to acquire.

PART 4: TALOS


CONCLUSION: THE SOUL OF NIRN