Rise of the Empress

[dragonpen61]

Tamriel much bigger, expanded out with more settlements, more lands, more rivers, longer coastlines, more cities, more peoples, more magical creatures etc.

 

Peoples more varied in appearance and kind.

 

Provinces less mixed with each having its own definate large majority related to history.

 

Humans tend to be generally more common mixed and those like orcs, elves, khajiit, argonian, centaurs and imga are found only in various lands or as minorities in their own districts in human dominated cities. There are exceptions to this rule.

 

Many circular forts are fully in repair and are used but not always by the Cyrodilin Imperial Legions. Many more forts. There are working mines surrounded by mining settlements. There are clusered farms guarded by forts or even castles. There are castles. (To be added to.)

 

Magic is less common but there is more practical magic.

Those who use magic intrinsically are magefolk who have basic automatic magical abilities from birth.

Only about half of all magical devices can be used by non-magefolk and many of those that can are better utilised by magefolk.

 

Mages Guild has the following Subguilds: Battlemages, Healers, Illusionists, Magic-Artisans, Magicians (entertainers), Summoners, Levitators, Teleporters and others.

Wizards and Wizards are of the ancient wild magic.

 

Normal summoning magic summons no undead and no daedra but elementals of varied kinds and some others.

 

Magic devices:

magic-kinetic wheeled vehicles, boats/ships, flying air-coaches, flying-platforms (semi-enclosed or enclosed).

magic-kinetic dartguns, globeguns, arrowguns, boltguns

magic-kinetic clocks, timers

 

Priests (Priestesses) have gained spiritual magic of their own of basic general, individual based and faith based types.

 

Necromancy is banned by the Cyrodilin Empire and the Mages Guild.

Necromancers do not summon the lesser undead but create zombies from corpses and skelezies from gathered and linked bones. Necromancers can also create armazies, armour and weapons animated by lesser undeath forces.

 

Akaviri dwell in the pocket province of Akaviria granted to them after much service to the empire and the Emperors.

 

 

 

 

One

 

The strange young man walked swiftly through the city of Kvatch in denim jeans, a pouch dotted bumbag with the 'bag' to the front, a T-shirt with a picture of Betty Boop on the front, a black leather jacket and black motorbike boots. Plus he had a fair sized backpack, ergonomic and canvas with hidden frame-structure, on his back.

 

The city was both strange and familiar to him. It was familiar because he played the game Oblivion. It was strange to him because that was in a computer game on a flatscreen but this was realistic, more realistic with added features. That other Kvatch had not had wagons or other horse drawn vehicles. This one did. There were more people, they were more varied, the city was larger, the architecture was more varied. Stray dogs wandered along the street seeking scraps. It was early in the morning and still in darkness so much of the city was asleep. He was in a city district where wagon trains of goods arrived from other cities full of trage goods or from the countryside full of produce. This part of the city was wall off from the rest of the city.

 

There were areas of paving and the cobbled streets were as he expected. Exotic statues rose into the air here and there of the Nine, of mythological figures, of historical figures of the long and complicated history of Tamriel and of the Cyrodilin Empire.

 

Danger threatened. He could sense a growing menace. Anyway he had played the game and knew how it would come out. The Daedra hordes would invade the city using one or more mighty machines to crash through the walls as they flooded out of one great and many lesser Oblivion Gates.

 

It made no sense! How had he, a mere computer game player, found himself in this reality?

 

Then he knew he was going to change the story, that he was going to save at least a good deal of it and its people.

 

The cold harsh voice spoke deep in his mind.

- "You haven't got a chance. Nobody is going to believe a strange looking stranger like you."

 

He ignored the negative voice, all the time looking around. Then he almost bumped into a stray dog. The mongrel growled softly at him, he looked into her eyes and the dog started wagging her tail. He reached out and rubbed the fairly thin animal's body and slipping a savoury ration-biscuit out of a pouch, gave it to the animal. The dog gulped it down hungrily and then licked his hand. So he gave her another but this time slipped her a vitamineral pill.

 

Then he made her vanish with a soft sparkling shimmer, hoping nobody would notice.

 

But a young boy of a street urchin strode over to him, light brown of skin just as he was white, and in poor charity clothes and shoes, he stared hard up at Bobby and he frowned. "What did you do to that poor doggy, you great big doggy theif. Nobody takes doggies. Doggies like me and I like doggies. They like my sister special. Stray cats and dogs like my sister. Even stinking rats and clawcrabs like me sister. I will tell my sister on you."

 

Bobby looked into the small boy's eyes, admired the determinism of a survivor who still was basically good at heart. The boy looked startled. Then Bobby reached out and touched the boy's nose. The boy vanished.

 

- What you stealing little boys for, pevert."

 

The even voice, his core, responded.

= You want time in isolation?"

 

- No, no, just joking. You know me, always ready for a laugh. So you going to do the sister or what?"

 

He knew much of what the small boy and the dog had known now and he examined the street with a new more knowing perspective. The negative interactor of his mind was annoying, more than annoying at times, but also provided surprisingly good insights at times. The overly positive interactor was in his way just as bad as the negative one but also useful.

 

The positive, overly warm voice spoke deep in his mind.

+ Oh happiness, of bliss, to save a small boy and a dog from a terrible fate. Go forth and rescue them all from Methrunes Dagon and his terrible hordes."

 

A group of tough young poor workers from the transport yards came striding towards him. He stepped a little to one side but the four of them made no adjustment to give him room to pass them. They were a mix of orcs and human-orcs, were part of a minority in Cyrodiil that often worked the hard work that humans did not want to do and did not have to do. They had no big weapons just knives in sheaves that were both weapons and tools plus some hidden items. They didn't want trouble with the Sheriff of Kvatch or the Cityguards. Yet upon seeing him they assumed at once he was a stranger that nobody would care about.

 

He lifted up his right hand just a little and it glowed with swirling flamelight.

 

The thugs suddenly decided that he was not worth bothering with and they gave him plenty of room on the sidewalk. He moved black them and halted to buy a broadsheet called the Klavtch Crier that spoke of unrest in some isolated outlying parts of the empire. He paid a single copper-1 coin to the broadsheet sales boy and then tipped the boy a second copper-1 causing the boy to grin happily when he added to this a ration-biscuit. The boy was chewing away on the food as Bobby kept on moving.

 

In the fair distance, in the sky over the lands just to the east of the city, a strange red-yellow flare flashed high and then ceased.

 

Where was the sister? She worked at night in a poor tavern on that very street. The boy knew of it but was not sure what she did there. All he knew was that she got extra copper and somtimes a couple of silver coins for working there now and again. He saw a sign to a music-hall but it was closed, the last of the crowds and the employees having gone home. Then he saw the tavern.

 

Except a veteran came limping to block the view. He wore leather armour well used but well cared for and basic but well cared for clothes and boots. The dark browned skinned man was Cyrodilin. He scowled at Bobby and spoke in Cyrodilic. "What are you staring at, boy? Haven't you ever seen an invilid? Go stare at somebody else. I have work to do." Then he looked into Bobby's eyes and he stopped abruptly. His tone softened. "I take that back! Looks as if you have seen plenty of torn up people."

 

Bobby reached out to the man with amazing speed, touched him and the man vanished with a green sparkling shimmer. Now Bobby knew much of what the man had known and had two tasks to perform but both were linked by being in the very same tavern.

 

A tall robed figure, a somewhat arrogant mage bearing rather high ranking emblems of the Mages Guild, stepped up to Bobby and slammed the butt of his rather elegant staff against the ground with its softly glowing crystal point. He spoke. "What have you done to that man, a fine old veteran? What magic have you used? Are you licensed by the Mages Guild or by the Order of the Nine?"

 

Bobby met the eyes of the other and the mageborn stepped back in surprise, losing some of his arrogance. "I serve the One Herself who created the Nine, She who formed the very foundation that allowed then the creation of the mortal dimensions and with it magic as we know it. Jack Ulmat will not only be fine but in about an hour he will return younger, fitter, healthier and with all of his limbs intact. Danger threatens the city. The Mythic Dawn are busy in the city preparing it for destruction by cunning and treason. I suggest you return to the Mages Guild and have them prepare for a large scale attack on the city that will take place tomorrow night but only after Mythic Dawn Followers and Daedra have cut off the city from the outside."

 

The Mage frowned. "Those magical flares in the sky! Daedric nastiness for sure but the Duke will not listen. A fine leader in many ways but he is not a good leader in a time of conflict for he would rather pretend that either no threat exists or that the magically enhanced walls of Kvatch will easily hold back any threat. He has refused to call forth a major raising of the city defences and to call forth all militia and reserves. He has been worse since he returned from the city of Yugullus in the pocket province of Yugiar where those damned Yugiata dwell with their Uioodoo, their summoning of dead spirits, their ancestor worship, their bone and blood magic."

 

Bobby sighed. "Not all Yugiata need be tarred with the same brush. Uioodoo is fairly good. It is Shzioodoo that is the true dark magic that with them is always one and the same with their faith as is Uioodoo. Uiooodoo is majority and Shzioodoo is not only a small minority but is only tolerated in isolated pockets of various cities or other areas. Do you know where the Duke and his party went in Yugullus, a finely elegant city by the way with canels where one can go by taxi-boat, and what they did?"

 

The mage shook his head. "I do know he came back with a lot of high value golden coinage, gems and some ornate gifts. He also brought with him a pair of strangers that the Mages Guild does not trust, a very beautiful man and woman that look almost identical. They state they are twins and that they are much learned sages of magic, spiritualism and nature. They stink of dark magic, of unwholesome acts of the supernatural."

 

The young man frowned. "There is a very good chance that the Duke and perhaps all of those who went with him to that small isolated cape are not the same, that is they are under some kind of influence are they are simply not what they were. Shzioodoo is linked with undeath and with one form of undeath that is fairly rare in Tamriel, which are dopplegangers."

 

The mage scowled. "What do we of the Mages Guild know of such creatures or how to detect them, let alone to defeat them?"

 

At that moment Bobby reached out quickly and touched the mage and then the mage-staff so that each was briefly surrounded by a sparkling shimmer. Neither the mage or the staff vanished. The mage bowed briefly from the waist. "As you know I am Blazo Farhis of the Silver Fifth Star of the Mages Guild. You have strengthened my magic both intrinsic and learned in focus, power and flexibility of use. We of the Mages Guild will now have more chance of seeking out both the Mythic Dawn and any dopplegangers in our fine city. Yet you drained valuable energy by doing so. I wil go to the Mages Lodge here in Kvatch and will persuade them somehow to be wise."

 

"Choose wisely and touch just one who will also change." Bobby bowed briefly in return. Then he passed over a couple of ration-biscuits. "Not as fine as the baked meats, vegetables and spiced sauces you were looking forward to but surprisingly filling and nutritional. I must go now and so must you. Bobby Bobalong is a name you can call me by."

 

They parted ways and Bobby found the tavern next to a large workshop-shop that made, repaired and sold bows, crossbows, arrows, bolts and related items. It looked and seemed important to the city as if it did much important manufacturing and repairing. It was two levels high and, he sensed, had a big basement level but also stretched out across the block to meet another main street on the opposite side of the block from this shop front.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[dragonpen61]

two

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to be done.