Bronwen's Journal

This tracks with what you learn about him later, but can also hint at other things. He says that he's from the Pale, and that he joined the Cult as a "young elf." He also says that he would like to visit his parent's resting place (implies that he knows where they are but has not been) and that they were "wonderful people."

According to the Lore, one of the things they do in the Cult is cut out the hearts of conscious sacrificial victims and replace them with Daedra hearts. Obviosuly, his parents weren't in the Cult.

We can't know how young he was when he joined, so this is where headcanon comes in, along with books, research and friends' advice. (I recommend the book "Influence" by Cialdini as a starter on Persuasion in general).

For Cults, especially violent ones, the younger the better, so I HC they recruited him as a child.

So, to recruit him, a child with wonderful parents, they would have to offer him something. Shelter and care is the obvious answer, and they would have to take actual, real care of him, because otherwise he would just run away and tell everyone what was going on in there.

Obviously if he had great parents, he wouldn't want to leave, so they would have to be dead. Cue Tragic/Sad Orphan Backstory.

Cults always offer something (usually something that sounds too good to be true) in return for joining, but they also take something. They're very transactional in their relationships with their members, even ones that claim not to be.

In addition to Care, they would need to offer something else. Why would a sad, scared child go with some stranger in a purple robe? It would be silly to assume that his family didn't have any friends or weren't part of any community. (I have so much more written about this ARRRRGGGHHH! Anyway - ) Why would he leave?

The idea came from a potential exchange we can have if we yell at him in Nightcaller Temple. Erandur confesses to stealing the memories of children. Since we now know children are fair game, we know what the Cult can offer. The Cult of the Prince of Nightmares.

What if Little Erandur suffered nightmares because of his parents' death? What if they offered to take the bad dreams and the bad/scary/sad memories away? Remember, there's usually a lot of blood involved when people die in pairs in Skyrim.

I can see that being awfully tempting for a child, all alone in the world.

It's also not strange to rename members, so I HC that "Casimir" was not his birth name. Cults are all about control, and since this one can erase your memories, why not erase your name? They take your name, and give you a new one. I put this in the fic, and he talks about it here, and a bit more here.

Another note about "Casimir" - It doesn't follow the regular Dunmer naming conventions we see in any of the other games. Erandur is a very old Dunmer name, like, positively antique in style, potentially back from the old Chimer days. He's not *that* old, so I like to HC that he got it when he joined up with the priests of Mara in Morthal. Since he can't talk to his ancestors because he doesn't know his name and doesn't even worship the same gods, I like to think Mara gave him a vision and found some ancestor of his from waaaay back, like a 3rd cousin twice removed that married in or something that also worshiped her to give him a name. Hence why it's so old-fashioned.

Anyway, back to the Cult. So, he joins the cult, gets brainwashed very easily because he's a kid, and turned into an absolute monster, given the skill set they would want him to have.

Fun Fact - Erandur has a high Conjuration skill despite not having any Conjuration spells in his roster. Summoned Dremora will drop daedra hearts, but they will fight back if you try to kill them. Gee, I wonder where the Cult got all those daedra hearts for their rituals? Hmm. Food for thought.

OKAY - got distracted - So he joins the Cult, learns all sorts of interesting skills, and was, by his own admission as you wander about in the game, a murderer and user of/privy to "the worst of dark magic" or something like that. We also know, according to Lore, that the Cult's rituals can last for decades. To do this, Cultists are put to sleep/suspended animation with the Miasma, which you see in the Waking Nightmare questline.

Here where more headcanon comes into play, mixed with a bit of logic, Lore, and some lines from the game. In the game, Erandur says he was scared, and he "wasn't ready" to sleep. According to Lore, followers of Vaermina usually lose all sense of fear, so what could he be afraid of?

I think the lack of fear comes from repeated trips into the Quagmire, the realm of Nightmares. I mean, if you spend a lot of time there, whatever you see in the waking world is nothing compared to the literal Nightmare Fuel you'd encounter in Oblivion.

I think he was afraid he wouldn't wake up. I think that attack on Nightcaller Tample came when he was starting to Doubt.

Someone in full Zealot Mode wouldn't think twice about going to sleep to spend possibly forever in their god's realm, right? But if he started to have doubts, well... Suddenly that doesn't sound so good, does it?

Something had to have happened, and I have that fic outlined, actually, give me time...

Lotta fic writing going on behind the scenes, here.

SO - Casimir leaves the Cult because he was starting to Doubt, and given the circumstances this was his literal last chance to GTFO. He bolts out of the tower, makes a mad dash into the woods, and finds himself all alone in the cold. And not just alone as in no people, but ALONE alone. He just abandoned his GOD.

Coldest night of his life, I'm sure.

He's going to have to fend for himself, but what skills does he have? We know the Cult teaches their members Alchemy. He also has good Restoration skills and Smithing (gotta keep the knives sharp - cutting out someone's heart before they die requires precision AND speed, after all) and he's a good fighter, too.

He also has good Speech skills, but by his own admission, he wasn't a nice person. He says himself that it took a while to come around to the ways of Mara. I take this to mean that he was, at least, selfish, short-tempered, and very very drunk when the priests met him.

But what happened between those times?

Well, seeing as how our boy Casimir was an angry, ill-tempered, self-serving monster with a rather limited skill set who just came fresh out of a Nightmare cult that practiced murderous blood rituals on the regular, I don't think his first instinct was to get a real job.

People who leave environments like that, be it a Cult or just really controlling parents, usually go absolutely fucking wild. That first taste of real freedom goes straight to their heads and they literally don't know how to handle it. They go off the rails! We've all seen it or heard about it, unfortunately, so what should he be any different?

They also usually run right back into a "same but different" situation. You see this a lot with former gang members joining various churches. Both provide a lot of the same things to members - You get the sense of community, a support group, friends, activities, etc. People who grew up like that usually don't do well on their own.

I don't think someone like Casimir would be able to, mentally and emotionally, go straight into another religious institution. I think he turned to crime. That's a place where someone with his bad attitude and bloody hands would do quite well, and with his alchemy skills and relative lack of a moral compass, he'd make a killing in the skooma labs, wouldn't he?

So, I had him rename himself "Kaz" (because he'd edgy and cool, mom!) and he had a Crime Era where he developed some rather shitty coping mechanisms and started to slowly grow a conscience, but not too much of one. He says he hates bandits, and in the world of crime, the ones who hate bandits the most are smugglers, because bandits don't care if the caravans they're knocking over are legit or not - They just want the goods. Natural enemies!

And there's a whole lot more that I can write about this, but I think this is already really long. ^^; And this goes far into headcanon territory, and less into "proper analysis" stuff.

I could touch on his Bard's College thing, too, but again - That's a lot of HC stuff as well, and he's talked a bit about that in my facfic already, and I'm writing more in-depth stuff, and... Yeah - skipping ahead!

Let's go back to how this started - What we see when we look at him. We can't know his actual age, and I honestly think he doesn't really know how old he is, phsyically. The Miasma puts you in suspended animation. Unless he kept very careful track for some reason, there's no way for him to know how old he really is on a biological level. So that's fun - Do what you will with that.

I have HC backstory reasons for him being the age I made him that I won't go into here, but that would be a whole other post because then we're talking about pulling Lore from fucking ARENA on top of everything.

Moving on, we can ask other questions, and for these we can delve into plot and psychology for answers. He doesn't have any of the typical Dunmer facial tattoos or scarification because he wasn't raised like your typical Dunmer. He grew up fairly divorced from his culture, and while I HC that he knows the language, he probably didn't learn a lot of the customs. Erandur even says he spent most of his life in The Pale, which says to me he spent a big chunk of it in the Cult of Vaermina, and later on in Dawnstar as a Priest of Mara, but we'll get to that in a minute.

So no tattoos or scarification, but what about paint/makeup? All the Dunmer who do not have other markings on thier face are otherwise "made up". Same goes for his hair. He's very unkempt for a Dunmer, a people who are canonically prone to skin problems and therefore known for being fastidious in both cleanliness and appearance.

He's also got his weight slider in the TESEdit turned alllll the way down. Very few people have theirs turned that low. I didn't check all of them, obviously, but the ones that do that I did find are beggars and prisoners.

So he's not just "skinny", he's downright emaciated. He doesn't really comb his hair or take good care of his beard, doesn't bother with paint of any kind, he's kind of dirty, he's got really raggedy robes, and he hardly sleeps.

He's also wracked with Guilt and plagued by nightmares.

I'm no expert, but this sounds like Depression, and according to my friends who are experts, I'm right! It also says so in the TESEdit; his base disposition is Sad.

But he wasn't entirely without people. Ex-Cultists don't do well on their own. He went from Cult of Vaermina to Gang (in my HC) to Bard's College, to Benevolence, and then - To Dawnstar.

I like to think he was there for a while. When you go there and hear him comforting the villagers, they call him Erandur. Not "Brother" or "Brother Erandur". Just "Erandur", where in every other place, the priests and priestesses are given their due title/honorific/whatever you call it.

Okay, not in Riften when Ki'rava was yelling at Maramal, but she was yelling at him, that's different.

Anyway, they call him by his name, and to me that says he's a part of the community. He's familiar enough to them that he's Erandur first, Priest of Mara second. He takes just enough care of himself that people won't bother him about it, and I HC that he lives in Nightcaller Temple. He spends most of his time tending to his little shrine, and goes down to the shore in front of the Black Door to fish like he used to, back in the day. He's made a few friends, most notably Frida the Alchemist and her late husband. He serves as a Priest and backup Healer and helps Frida get ingredients when she needs it, like in the little comic I made.

So yeah, that's A LOT of rambling about Erandur! I could go on for a lot longer, actually, but I think this is a good place to stop! ^_^

I have to say, one of my favorite bits from Bronwen's Journal has to be This Entry where Erandur tries to go on a bit of a Woe is Me rant but is stopped by Valdimar.

I uhm - I hope I answered your question? ^^;;; I can ramble more. Like, A LOT more, but I'm going to stop now for everyone's sake, maybe go work on the fic/s some more.