alone you must drink life's gall

We’ve reached 555! To celebrate, I’m doing an art giveaway in the style of the Wasten Coridale illustrations seen here and here.

To enter a chance to win an illustration of your character(s), you must follow me and reblog this post. New followers are welcome to enter. You can also follow me on Twitter for an additional entry into the raffle.

Whoops, I forgot I did this for Inktober! Posting it here.

Ink is ground shortly before a session, with a very small amount of ash gathered from Morrowind incorporated, else it is not considered “legitimate”.

Many choose to incorporate the ash of their ancestors as well, which typically passes through a priest and is given directly to the artist to use, primarily to ensure that no spirits are disturbed.(In this case, a respectful prayer is said before the session begins.)

Tools used most commonly are a sharpened metal rod, and finer details applied with needles affixed to a smaller metal/wooden rod.

By tradition, sessions are done with the artist seated on the floor, though artists that have been practicing for some time may need the benefit of a chair and the mer they are working on to be on a bed or table, so there is much less strain on the back.

Typically, only the artist/client is present, and there is very little or no talking. 

Clients are encouraged to eat very well before showing and are provided meditative techniques in preparation. Lanterns and incense are frequently utilized to reduce stress.

Most tattoos have meaning, and are rarely just frivolous design

Specific soaps and salves are given for after care, usually provided by an alchemist that is familiar with the process.

He still looked Dunmer no matter how he tried to hide it! And no matter how much he wished he could have altered his face, he could not. He had promised his parents long ago he would leave his face alone. No matter how much he wanted to rip his nose off.

Frustration at himself grew as sadness crept up. Anger and hatred once more swelled within him, only this time it was at himself. His connection to the fire was severed as his thoughts became consumed once more by the words of the An-Xileel and words he had heard as a child. “Not a Saxhleel…Dres bastard…Grey-skinned filth…The Hist will only protect you so long as you’re useful…Shouldn’t have been allowed to live…You’re trying to look like us?! Oh how sweet! You know you could start by skinning yourself, that’d remove that disgusting hide of yours!”

Gilmyn sat, watched, and stared. The stranger did not say a word for a good, long time, clearly embroiled in his own thoughts. He crossed his arms and tapped his foot. Did this Dunmer, or whatever he was, know how to hold a basic conversation at all? 

Finally came the not-answer, Saxhleel. That’s what the Argonians called themselves, as far as Gilmyn knew. Huh - weren’t they and the Dunmer people traditionally enemies? Gilmyn couldn’t imagine why a Dunmer would want to live somewhere as wild and hostile as Black Marsh...unless he’d been kidnapped or something. There were always those stories of Dunmer infants kidnapped after the Red Year and spirited away, never to be seen again.

Maybe this fellow was one of them. Poor soul.

“Yeah, it is,” Navalli snapped bitterly, “But the sooner this gets done, the sooner you can stop acting like I’m the executioner, and I can get out of here where the smell of wet dog isn’t haunting my senses.”

It was times like these she wished she carried spare rags on her. It would make this experience a lot easier. Her gloves were too thin to be enough.

“It’s better than smelling like a rotting corpse,” one of the werewolves piped up from the sidelines.

She whipped around and pointed a finger at him. “Zip it, mutt, or you’ll be next rug on my living room floor.”

“Come fucking try me!”

“Don’t you have territory to be marking?”

He started forward only to be stopped by a couple of his buddies, and she settled on curling her lip up to bare her fangs at him. However, when she turned back to Gilmyn, she softened just the slightest. “Just let me help, alright? then you can get out of here and you won’t have to worry about-” me, “…anything.”

Gilmyn’s eyes swiveled back and forth between Navalli and the cheeky werewolf as though he was watching a tennis match. The pause in decoration gave him a moment to think, something he didn’t do very often. 

He was surrounded by werewolves. Hungry ones, but they hadn’t tried to eat him yet despite the numerous threats. Still smelled awful, though. 

Furthermore, he was literally attached to a blood-sucker who, despite having been chained together for a good long time, had only metaphorically bitten his head off. Sure, she was terrifying. But she wasn’t the savage, brainless vampire that had leered from too many of his childhood storybooks. Not one bit.

Gilmyn looked down to the forest floor, and noticed some oblong leaves that must have been blown down by some strong wind. Touching one revealed that they had a peculiarly spongy texture. He picked a leaf up and waved it in Navalli’s direction. 

“I don’t have gloves. Just use this, and don’t fuck up your hands for a couple cheap Saturnalia ornaments.” 

The letter had drifted in on a model boat, calmly resting in the corner of the harbour and laying undisturbed and undamaged for the longest time. The Siege had been mostly over at this point but still it was not entirely peaceful yet. Uneasy councils had been taking place, and no one had any time for the harbour really.

But after weeks of fear, tension was finally falling as the citizens felt more at ease to move about the city. So it was no surprise really that a child found the boat, that they opened the letter addressed to whomever would find the boat requesting that the boat be delivered to the local Temple. That contained within was a letter for a dear, deeply missed friend and an offering.

And so the child did as the letter bid, giving the boat and its objects to the Temple where a young priest read the first letter in the quiet of a small room in the Temple. It was a relief to read a letter like this - rather than having to deal with comforting the endless grieving families. The most painful casualties of any war were always the innocent citizens. The ones who never asked to go to war and yet were always caught up in it.

It was an…odd yet touching letter. Whoever had written it was not fluent in writing Dunmeris, but they had tried, with any words they did not know in Dunmeris being written in the Common Tongue.