#elbrin

Neus: Literally pledged to the god that celebrates honesty, so. She’s not so rigid as to refuse to bend the truth if the consequences for doing otherwise would be seriously dire, but she also doesn’t try to pretend that loopholes exist - the intent to deceive is what matters, not the exact words - so 99.9% of the time she’s as straight-shooting as anyone can be.

Elbrin: Sees no point in lying and is known for being uncomfortably blunt. She’s not particularly good at lying either; can sometimes get away with it because she’s difficult to read overall, but anyone who knows her well will see it coming as she fixes a stare over their shoulder and speaks even more woodenly than usual.

Lewen: Is honest by preference, but he knows the value of choosing one’s words carefully and he’s capable of light manipulation from a diplomatic front. He’s also very much on the tactful end of the scale in casual interactions.

Yarrow: Doesn’t lie often by nature, but has no moral objection to the notion and in the event that she does tell an untruth it’s with the same guiltless confidence as everything she says, so she tends to get away with it.

Avery: Technically he values honesty, but he lies a lot in a defensive sort of way - of course he wants this, no he doesn’t like that, god he’d be happy to never see you again. He’s not great at it though, and even worse at lying to himself. Seems to think that the louder and angrier he says it the more truthful it will become.

Just before parting ways with the Blades, Elbrin took Delphine aside and quietly admitted she had not seen Erandur since entering the Embassy; she had not been too concerned over him not being where they'd agreed to meet, as freeing the prisoner has resulted in enough of a furore that he might have had to relocate, but that there was still no word from him was...unusual. Delphine promised to look into it.

From there several small tasks took her attention, including finding yet more dead relatives for people, before she dropped briefly by the College. Despite her agreement with Tolfdir she was accosted by Onmund in the halls, asking for intervention in a bad trade he had made. She decided this would be a good time to go fetch Shalidor's writings instead and thus avoid further flocks of students descending on That Helpful Arch-mage Individual.

As they passed through the Western Watchtower, Marcurio eyed off the scattered rubble and asked what had happened. "Dragon," Elbrin said. "Like that one," she added helpfully when a roar rang out from overhead.

"There's a cave here! Think we should check it out?" At least he was enthusiastic about the bulk of her work.

Detouring to Whiterun on the long walk back to Winterhold, Elbrin found a courier had arrived for her from Delphine, with an answer to her enquiry. Erandur had not made contact with Elbrin again because he was on the casualty lists of those who had lost their lives at the Embassy. Whether he had been identified as another accomplice, had attempted to cause a distraction, or had simply caught in the crossfire was unclear...but the truth remained that the parting at Solitude's stables had unknowingly been their last.

This was hardly the first tragedy in Elbrin's life, nor even the worst, but it was still painful. The death of Malborn had been unfortunate, but this was a familiar face, this was a friend, someone she had travelled with for weeks and swapped stories with and fought alongside as a willing - a trusted - ally. He had recovered from a dark youth and had earned a better end than this. He had only been there that night because of her.

Another might have lost heart at this, grown fearful of a role that so easily lead to the deaths of those around them. Instead, it gave Elbrin the last kick in the behind she really needed. She had made a choice and the consequences for it had rebounded onto others. Fine - time to change that. Time to stop casting her eyes downwards, stop treating her responsibilities as a gift she was reluctant to receive, time to stop denying that had both the freedom and power to make a difference, time to stop letting others die because she was going into her duties half-hearted. She was thane of three holds. She was arch-mage. She was Dragonborn. And now? She was going to own it.

She didn't quite storm back to the College, kick the doors open, and shout, "WHO NEEDS SOME FUCKING HELP?" She did immediately go to Enthir and shake him roughly awake in order to start negotiating the return of Onmund's amulet.

(After getting rather turned about on the way to where Enthir's lost staff was, they finally entered the single room at the end. "Are you sure you can find your way?" Marcurio drawled. "It's easy to get lost in here." Yes. She's sure. Thank you, Marc.)

Elbrin then proceeded to find Tolfdir's lost thingmajig, fight a second dragon in the courtyard, close an Eye-related rift near Morthal, agree to test scrolls for J'zargo, and let Brelyna turn her into a series of animals. No one was quite sure what had provoked this sudden change in their new arch-mage's level of involvement but, well, no one was going to argue.

She also decided to pursue Words of Power more diligently - if this was her unique gift as Dragonborn, then she really ought to put effort into mastering it.

Broadly speaking, Elbrin earns an antisocial reputation with tragic ease despite being very much a team player (she went from life in a small village where everyone had to pull their weight to life in a mercenary company where group tactics were a big part of their success, so she actually prefers to have someone at her back and doesn’t need to like or even trust whoever’s there). It’s not that she pushes people away, but she has no idea how to handle small talk as the talker or the listener, and people tend to get a bit put-out by her apparent disinterest in anything but the job at hand when in truth she just can’t think of anything to say. Also her “curiously listening” face looks a lot like her “sternly disapproving” face and it’s unhelpful.

Cooperating with Faendal and Kharjo is therefore easy to justify—there was a favour owed / a mutual goal, and they travelled together long enough to see the job done and then parted ways without issue. Skyrim seems to have a well-established culture of brief professional partnership, what with mercenaries lying around everywhere and adventuring being a respectable career path, so it doesn’t seem a stretch that folks sometimes go “yeah sure” and follow a stranger down into the local zombie-filled pit. She doesn’t have strong feelings about either of them and I doubt they have strong feelings about her.

Lydia was kind of hobbled from the start by the whole housecarl thing since Elbrin was weirded out enough by being given enchanted weapons as a gift and was reallydisturbed at being given a person. They actually got on much better in the first playthrough, which might be because I did half the Companions quest-line and they bonded over mutual unease about the whole suddenly-a-werewolf thing (Elbrin did not think that through). In any case she’s even less sure how to interact with Lydia than she is regular people, and although they cooperate well enough on the field it takes a while for them to settle into a relationship that, while it isn’t bubbling with warm fuzzies, at least isn’t stiff as a pole. It gets easier once Lydia splits off to act as Elbrin’s Whiterun intermediary, since it guarantees lots of comfortingly practical affairs to discuss when they meet. Also I have to figure Lydia grows to be fond of a thane who does things like come back from a holiday to admit she’s now the head of the mage’s college and needs somewhere to store this cursed mask she got off an undead dragon priest.

That Elbrin and Erandur get on well is mostly due to him being such a nice old guy?? The things he says suggest that he’s an older mer and may have been around for a century or few, which really highlights how less-than-five-decades Elbrin is still a wee bab by her people’s standards and probably helps remove a fair number of the social hurdles she faces with other people. Erandur’s too old and affable to be offended that some young wood elf has a mean resting face and doesn’t make impressed sounds in all the right places, and if he’s happy to drop conversational pieces while surrounded by trolls then he’s probably fine with having one-sided chats—he may even appreciate an audience who doesn’t mind his old fart observations on everything. That said, as the first non-hostile mage she’s spent close time with, not to mention one with too much of a chequered past to judge her own, she actually has more to say to him than she does other folks. Starts off getting pointers about the proper form for conjuring, slowly loosens up enough to ask him for opinions on other points of curiosity, and in return gets a companion who respects her decisions without being too intimidated by her demeanour or status to see that she’s young and a little sad and could do with some non-serious treatment now and then. I can’t picture anything romantic happening because the mentorship overtones give their relationship too much of a power imbalance, but assuming they both survive the end of the plot I have to figure he’ll remain a close friend she visits regularly and swaps stories with.

Honestly, it was difficult to concoct an in-story reason for Marcurio to join her since she wouldn’t go so far as to fork over 500 septims to get a companion and he doesn’t strike me as desperate to jump on just any old expedition; triggering suspicious stalking via the magely pride button was the best I could do. He does seem to be rather keen on the kinds of Strange Places of Legend that Elbrin spends half her time visiting, though, so hopefully I can get away with him deciding that he might as well continue to accompany her since there are apparently some important events going down in the world and this woefully inadequate arch-mage is responsible for making sure things emerge from the other side in good shape and oooh dwemers. I’d like to justify keeping him around, partly because he’s absolutely murderous in battle, and partly because his attitude is notably different to all other companions thusfar and it gets some interesting responses out of Elbrin. Not that she’s suddenly running her mouth, but Lydia was forcibly below her on the hierarchy and Erandur vaguely above in terms of life experience, while Marcurio’s closer to a peer and will argue with her. It’s to everyone’s benefit that he meets Elbrin after she’s passed through Erandur’s hands and remembered that she has a sense of humour and is allowed to express emotions, and it’s fun to see her having to take control of her place in this partnership.

In other words Lydia and Erandur were fairly passive companions, though they were still good guides for Elbrin’s development, but now the training wheels are off and she’s having to deal with someone more aggressive and as a result he stands to do for her what I’d expect loudmouth extrovert Bhaarja’s influence to do in that position. I haven’t travelled a huge deal with Marcurio yet though, so ehh it’s hard to say for sure. It depends a fair bit on whether it seems like he’d judge her harshly for basically being a bandit for a while. She doesn’t need cry on anyone’s shoulder over her sordid past, but if he didn’t drop her himself she still wouldn’t want to travel with someone who makes her feel even bleaker about it.

Kharjo cheerfully agreed to guide Elbrin to Riften, since she had yet to travel that far east and he would be able to reunite with his caravan there. This is a nice, narrative way of addressing the fact he turned out to be absolutely fucking useless in a fight.

Riften smelled like mould, sewerage, and fish, and the guards immediately tried to rob her. She had to admit it was a little nostalgic.

Finding Esbern seemed like one of those tasks that might involve subterfuge, which she hadn’t actually gotten any better at and people needed to learn to stop asking her to miraculously develop a talent in. Experience gave her just enough savvy to prowl around the marketplace and the local inn, though, and her habit of hoarding rare materials in her bedside table came in handy when she found a market for half her junk and helped the cause of true love or at least adorable lizard marriage.

In the Bee & Barb she met a young Imperial mage and another Priest of Mara, the latter of whom recognised her as the Winterhold arch-mage (presumably via the Priestly Gossip Chain) and got the indignant attention of the former. “You,” Marcurio said flatly, giving her the hairiest eyeball she’d yet earned. “You are the arch-mage.” Elbrin wasn’t particularly bothered by his disbelief until he insisted that since she was supposedly the Grand Poobah of educated mages in Skyrim she wouldn’t mind if he accompanied her for a little time to absorb some of her mighty wisdom, being but a mere apprentice himself. Needless to say she did mind a bit, but he also claimed to know something of the Ratway and, well, taciturnity aside she was much more used to working with company than without.

(Later she would pull the arch-mage robes out of her chest at Breezehome and successfully earn a silence lasting several entire seconds. She would then offend him all over again by asking if he wanted to use them when she wasn’t at the College, since she didn’t favour their lack of armouring and the tassels got caught on everything. No. No he did not. He would take the hide destruction helmet and some gauntlets, though. Why did she have so much stuff.)

In the present day, having found a clue to Esbern’s location, Elbrin and her perplexing tagalong enjoyed a round of sewer-diving that at last lead to his secret hideaway. No long after providing some cheering information on an impending apocalypse, Esbern was attacked by – surprise, surprise – a posse of Thalmor, necessitating a battle back out of the sewers. Perhaps developing an interest in the tangle of world-eating intrigue he had stumbled upon, Marcurio helped escort the Blade to Riverwood, where Delphine consciously chose not to be surprised that the Dragonborn had left with a cat and come back with a snooty mage and yet still didn’t seem to have developed the social skills usually required to pick up companions like a child with a butterfly net.

Elbrin managed to convince Tolfdir to take over most of the practical arch-mage duties, promising to at least show up for formal events and future catastrophes so long as she didn't ever have to try and actually teach anyone.

She didn't quite manage to escape the Jarl of Winterhold though, who took time out of his busy day to shout, "THANKS FOR THE HELP, HAVE A THANEHOOD" and throw a sword after her. She put it in the chest with the others.

A variety of small tasks were completed, most of little note: found the body of a lost woman, found a moon amulet, found some words of power. The words of power involved another contender for worst fight, when attacking a bear brought into the mix three spriggans, a sabre cat, a very delusional fox, and, of course, a dragon.

Having found one-third of the Amulet of Geirmund, Elbrin decided to go collect the other pieces, mostly on the grounds that everything she'd seen so far suggested no one else in this entire godscursed country could be trusted with anything of unusual properties. The power-crazed dead dunmer explorer she found in one cavern did not disillusion her.

She also collected a broken star of Azura after yet another person insisted she was the subject of prophesy. She ended up somewhat at a loss having found it, though; what little she knew of daedra did not make her inclined to fulfil her supposed destiny, but she frankly didn't trust the mage's intentions either. Erandur had unusually little to say on the matter (right when it would have been damned useful). The choice was postponed.

Luckily (cough) something else took her attention - it was time for the party! Elbrin hoofed it to Solitude just in time to watch an execution, which was mildly uncomfortable considering her personal introduction to Skyrim. The meeting with Malborn involved very little exchanging of racial solidarity, and a lot of emptying pockets. As this was not a mission that favoured numbers, Elbrin parted ways with Erandur for the time being, giving the old guy a probably welcome holiday from danger and tomb-diving.

The plan was simple enough: pass through the doors of the embassy on the pretense of being a party-goer, and then slip away to find information proving the Thalmor responsible for the dragons' return. At the party, she was pleasantly surprised to see Jarl Ravencrone, who good-naturedly assisted in causing a distraction and allowing Elbrin and Malborn to enter the more forbidden areas. She crept through the embassy, collecting her evidence, and eventually worked her way down to a torture chamber.

(Or...at least that's how it went in the story. In the game, we blew our cover barely two rooms in and sprinted the rest of the way to Elenwen's place where they promptly forgot we'd ever been seen. Also Malborn died partly because I didn't realise he was even being threatened until I found his corpse among the rest. I WAS BUSY STABBING THALMOR OKAY I DIDN'T HEAR THE THREATENING PROPERLY. Apparently he's very hard to get out alive, though, so I don't feel too, uh, bad.)

In the chamber, something in Elbrin...wavered. She had her instructions. Get the evidence and get out without being seen, plain and simple. As she crouched in the shadows, watching the cold brutality inflicted on a desperate man, however, she was moved - moved to more than the indecisive dithering that had her still holding onto the Star, moved to more than unspoken irritation at reckless mages, moved to take her axe from her belt and sink it solidly into the Thalmor's skull. She fled with the prisoner down the trapdoor, and the quick cast of a spell saw them safely past the frost troll lurking there. He thanked deeply before they went their separate ways.

On the way back to Riverwood, she ran into Kharjo and returned his moon amulet. As a show of gratitude, he accompanied her since Erandur was still, um...elsewhere. Probably, hopefully, still hiking back to the Nightcaller Temper. 

Following a reconvening with Delphine, they determined from the documents gathered that the Thalmor were not in fact responsible, and that another Blade lived in Riften who might know more.

She also learned that Malborn had been outed as conspirator to what had happened in the chamber, and lost his life for it. Consequences were nothing new to Elbrin. This time, though, it had been her decision and hers alone that had lead to them.