Tamriel Reflections

[dragonpen61]

The Bard Mage of Tamriel

 

Concerning the Emperor

 

The actor came out to the stage so regally that he would have been in a sense the Emperor even with out the elaborate costume. A mage did his best to throw up illusions of smoke pouring through the open windows of the Imperial Palace. Another mage and some secondary actors made the noises of battle coming from outside. The actor was old and was well experienced in the arts of the dramatics but also of song and dance, of mimicry, of entertaining the masses. The poor were a ground level and up in the biggest stall was the Emperor himself. He was half smiling at this portrayal of his much honored ancestor. This was neither a good sign or a bad one so far.

 

The famous, sometimes infamous, Bard Mage Shakesword observed patiently from his own special, hidden box. He looked through a cleverly made magical mirror as he sat in a raised swivel-armchair. The man looked like a young handsome Cyrodilin but some doubted that he was anything so simple. There were whispers of him being a powerful exotic mage but those were not the strangest of rumors.

 

He frowned softly and steepled his fingers before his face and pondered further steps that he might take in learning the truth about this man who many people assumed was the real Emperor but who was a very dangerous impostor.

 

Flickering light caused him to turn to an extra large crystal-globe inside which floated the reflected image of a young, beautiful elf woman. Her eyes were cold and hard but not so much as a true High Elf would be. She was hybrid human-elf despite her elfish looks. She spoke in New Cyrodilic. "Is the Emperor pleased with your play?"

 

The man snorted softly. "The hidden clues in the dialog have caused some tiny reaction in his amazingly well controlled body language. It is confirmed that he is not the Emperor but I doubt he is a demon or anything of that nature. The real Emperor is behind this impostor business, I grow more certain of it with every passing day. The Emperor has gone somewhere in secret but to do what?"

 

He went on. "Emperor Martin II, the former Mythic Dawn member who was the son of Martin the Courageous, is not a man to trust but I am not the only one to think so. Somehow he is linked with the growing troubles with magic, especially with summoning magic."

 

Summoning anything, be it daedra, magical creatures, animals, clones and other creatures other than the undead had become both more difficult and haphazard. Lower level summoning spells had become useless. Haphazard meant that the number and kind of creature summoned was becoming increasingly less controllable.

 

As for the undead, they would not be summoned except by necromancer spells and they were having more difficulty.

 

Summoned creatures were not vanishing as they should but were staying longer and longer as days passed.

 

The Mages Guild had sent out warnings even to necromancers not to try any form of summoning magic.

 

Other areas of magic was a little more difficult and tricky but magic users, mages or otherwise, seemed to be adapting quite well to it so far.

 

The young looking Cyrodilin man remembered his first meeting with the new Emperor who was charming, intelligent, ambitious but hardly what one would call great. Yet he had been what the people, the nobles, the guilds and the Imperial Government had wanted if only to fill a power vacuum and stop a war from rising that would rip apart the Cyrodilin Empire. The new Emperor failed to gain any real influence on the more powerful guilds and the aristocracy saw him as being average at best. The Mages Guild basically ignored him though they did not trust him. Yet there was a strong cunning streak to Emperor Martin II that almost made up for his lack of brilliance.

 

 

 

[Netwit2008]

Very fascinating. I might be late, but I hope there's more! Nice air of mystery and intrigue!

[dragonpen61]

Netwit2008, thank you and you are not late but you did inspire me to write more sooner than I would have done.

 

The Bard Mage of Tamriel

 

Concerning the Emperor

 

Continued

 

The elfin woman spoke. "Where could he have gone?"

 

The youthful looking man, in his tough but fairly good looking mage robe, responded thoughtfully. "Our people picked up a name of a place called Sanctimornis from various secret dispatches sent out from the Emperor's Office. Santimornis is a very old fortress hidden by the harshness of time and savage historical conflicts in the Tornlands."

 

During the last great magical battle of the Great Magic War, the Tornlands had been created, a place not so bad as the Forbidden Zone but bad enough to be one of the Restricted Zones. Magical toxins, side-effects and mutations were common there. The only people to go into the Restricted Zones were those with legal permits to do imperial business and those who went in illegally for mostly profit. Openly active official parties tended to be multiple purpose with much physical and metaphysical protection but secret operations tended to be faster and smaller. As for illegal expeditions they were often such as treasure seekers, mages seeking secrets or hunter-collectors of strange beasts.

 

Since then magic had become highly regulated through the Cyrodilin Imperial Magics Council representing the Mages Guild, the Metaphysic Sages, the Emperor and the Mages Guard. Magical weapons and other offensive magic was very heavily regulated. Dangerous magical creatures had been driven out of large areas of the new empire. Necromancy and the use of soul stone magic were both totally forbidden with death as the punishment.

 

But there were areas the empire lacked greater control of and many of those tended to be bordering the Restricted Zones and especially the Forbidden Zone that together were known as the Abandoned Zones.

 

The elf woman showed puzzlement. "Why would the Emperor, not the bravest man in the empire, go to the Tornlands which are one of the worst of the Regulated Zones?"

 

"And to a fortress infamous for being the bastion of a series of dark Mage Lords and War Lords during the Hundred Years of Chaos. " He nodded. "A place where the Necromancic Union built up its power before it hurled mighty undeath spells at Cyrodiil."

 

The great undeath spells had been mostly reflected right back at the necromancers, destroying them, but Cyrodiil, especial the Imperial City, had suffered much. Not just the zombies and skelzies but Corprus plague had sprung up which once and for all revealed totally the link between the horrific disease and the undead.

 

Only five great magical battles taken place in the Great Magic War that had only lasted less than a month but it had been enough to greatly alter the nature of the magical forces of the continent. Also a tenth of Tamriel could no longer be safely dwelt in or utilised in other ways such as fishing, hunting, gathering or harvesting of timber. Some of the best mining areas for gold, iron, silver and other metals were now out of reach.

 

The Bard Mage leaned forward as if to take the other into greater confidence. "I am leaving in an expedition to the fortress very soon. I do not know when I will get there for I have other tasks to carry out and of these I can not speak."

 

The elf-human hybrid nodded. Her name was Chas'Opon and she was one of his agents but she was also a double agent who really worked for the Cyrodilin Empire. Though the people she really served worked against the Emperor, the Bard Mage was not sure how much he could trust her.

 

She sighed. "I will now break off communications but before I do you need to know that another big flying-platform has crashed killing fifteen people. It happened just fifteen kilometres from the Restricted Zone of Bruma. There is growing concern that toxic magic is leaking out of the Abandoned Zones and that it is interfering with and distorting normal magic."

 

After Chas'Opon was no longer shown in the big crystal ball, he stood up and went to a normal looking wooden locker on one wall. But it was not normal at all being made of very physically and metaphysically strong materials and having very special locks and wards.

 

From this he took an ornately practical and efficiently powerful magipulse pulse-pistol which he put under his robes in a shoulder holster. Magipulse weapons were much more immune to toxic magic than were old fashioned type staffs and wands. He hid other devices around his body and then took out a mage-staff of a special kind with buffering effects against toxic magic. The robe itself had many protections built into it and he had other forms of protection.

 

His first trip would be to Bruma but only after he confronted the false Emperor now in the same theatre with him. He was not looking forward to that encounter.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited August 1, 2009 by dragonpen61

[Germandeathkittiez]

Very inspiring. I love when fantasy and science fiction start to meet. It cuts the lines that restrict imagination. But I don't get what "Bruno" and "Bruna" are. Are they different names for Bruma?

[dragonpen61]

Very inspiring. I love when fantasy and science fiction start to meet. It cuts the lines that restrict imagination. But I don't get what "Bruno" and "Bruna" are. Are they different names for Bruma?

 

Thank you for your positive feedback and appreciation.

 

Bruno and Bruna are meant to be Bruma and are due to writing while I was tired and distracted late at night. This will be corrected.