#fourth era

They sat on the coastal rocks of Valinor’s bay, listening to the quiet waves wash over the shore. The setting sun painted the sky and sea in golden hues when Finarfin, gazing thoughtfully into the distance, began to speak.

Finarfin: How do you think things would have turned out, Maglor, if everything had gone differently? If your brothers hadn’t sworn the Oath?

Maglor: (laughs bitterly) “If only.” I’ve often asked myself that, especially on those lonely nights when I remained on the distant lands, far from everyone. If they hadn’t sworn, there would have been no slaughter, no deaths. Perhaps our homes would not have been so ruined. But… every choice has its consequences. And if we hadn’t taken the Oath, things might have been even worse.

Finarfin: Do you really think so? I saw how the Oath weighed on you all, how it destroyed you from within. If your father had found another path… Perhaps Morgoth would never have found support among our brothers?

Maglor: (shrugs) Perhaps. But you know how our father was. He would not have backed down, even if it meant the doom of us all. We were blind in our pride, and I don’t think Fëanor could have seen any other way. Everything was sealed the moment he left Tirion. But speaking of ‘what ifs’… What do you think, if you had come with us?

Finarfin: (smiles with a touch of bitterness) I’ve asked myself that question many times. But I stayed. Perhaps it was the wise choice, or perhaps just cowardice. But I couldn’t follow Nolofinwë into exile and darkness. My heart was too tied to Aman. His gaze drifts toward the horizon of the sea. And what if you had returned?

Maglor: Returned? And for what? Returned with a stain that nothing can wash away? And where would I return to? The home we destroyed no longer waits for us. I am just one of many who lost everything and was left only with memories and songs.

Finarfin: And yet you did return to Aman. Valinor has accepted you, as it did me. We are both still alive, despite all our mistakes. I often think: what if… we can start anew? Bring light, not darkness?

Maglor: (a sad smile) I always sang of hope, but I could hardly see it for myself. And you, Finarfin? Do you see the light among what remains of our past days?

That's... A big question, that's two different eras I remember every detail of things that happened. Please don't ask me to explain, I'd rather not remember some of those things.

But I did meet Martin Septim, he was a dear friend and I miss him, I was part of the blades for a while but I left after his death.

Hm. Yet another curious, scrabbling toad-spawn, come to pick at closed off wounds and pry into one’s memories. Tis almost as if your own life is miserable, pitiful, dull, boring, plain, uninspiring, bland, devoid of anything approaching interest, routine, and ultimately, flaccid. In fact, one is sure of it.

Regardless. You surely must realise that by now, both of one’s children have long since passed back into the embrace of the Divines. It must have been some ten or eleven generations ago at least that they passed from this world. Their progeny remains, of course, and one remains in contact as best one can, yet after so long, tis inevitable that the people will have drifted and moved and separated across Tamriel, especially with the age of the Empire and the peace of the Third Era having made this easier. To say naught of the fragile memories of Men, and the fact that one’s name and face and part in the building of the family lines has been, by some, forgotten, and for others, dimmed.

But that is not what you asked, is it, hm, little mudcrab? You asked about one’s children, those one raised with one’s own hand, those children who became adults and who carried with them one’s hopes and prides.

Both spent some time wandering Tamriel together, a band of two, at times joined by Ma’Riahni, and at times by the Dunmer boy Sildras. They had their own adventures, many and varied, good and ill both. One encouraged them, naturally so, as was only right and proper. Even if they did tend to manage their escapades more by fool luck and happy circumstance than actual forethought, Birk’s natural gift for charm notwithstanding.

Alas, they were but Men, and it was inevitable with their short lifespans that the wandering could not continue. Birk was the first of the two to settle down, falling for a woman who, to look at, was perhaps a tad plain and dumpy, but whom he seemed to simply fit. He went on to build a life of his own in, of all places, the Imperial City itself, working as part of the Imperial machine of administration and paper, putting his talents to use as but a cog in the machine. He was happy enough, however, content in his life in the heart of Cyrodil, building a home with a wife, and in time, their children. Three, one believes, in the end, though one is far from certain. You Men have the self control of Lorkhan and breed like rabbits, one cannot keep track.

As for Gwemba, she continued her adventures for longer, and suffered her pains for it. She became more and more the rough and weathered fighter she had always wanted to be. Even she ultimately settled down, however, pitching up on her brother’s doorstep and inviting herself to live with them. She rather took to the role of eccentric aunt, in truth, glorying in her more free spirited image when compared to Birk. She always did cause one more concern than her brother, something she knew and deliberately encouraged. Fool girl.

(OOC: This is a new RP thread I am starting with @lonelyblueshark. It is set ‘in the future’ in comparison to the main story of this blog (i.e. the one with Qau’Dar, Fayrl, etc), taking place in the same timeframe as TES V: Skyrim, so 4E 201. Lillandril is 1126 years old.)

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This, he thought, was why he hated Skyrim.

Bad enough that he had found himself drawn back to this miserable, frozen, hateful stain on the map of a country. Bad enough that he was an Altmer once again surrounded by Nords, now emboldened in their open dislike of foreigners by the Stormcloak cause. Bad enough that he still couldn’t find reliable staff so that he could manage his assets and business’s from the far away, warm climates of his Valenwood home.

No. All of that was bad enough. Yet on top of all that, it seemed to him that the passage of years had only lessened the calibre of the average adventurer. Nowadays it seemed as if anybody who claimed to be an adventurer or sell-sword or similar would just as likely to get lost and spend an hour walking into a wall as actually getting anything done. Frankly, half the time he fancied he could put an upturned bucket onto some people’s heads and they would barely notice the difference. And there were just so fewer people about willing to go and explore nowadays. Back then, there had been hundreds of people dashing about on tasks and quests. Now it sometimes seemed as if the people of this world were just going through the motions, repeating the same things day in, day out.

This was why he hated Skyrim. Because it was cold. Miserable. Unwelcoming to strangers. Divided. It reeked. It continued to be illiterate. It was backwards in every sense.

That, and every time he found himself in the mud filled hole in the ground pretending at statehood, he always seemed to find himself in some dank cave or other.

Lillandril sighed, shifting slightly to adjust the one of the straps on his armour. He knew he should have just stayed in Whiterun and forgotten about it. It was only a rumour, that tale of a new opening to some Dwemer ruin in the back of this cave. So what if the hired sword he had sent to investigate the ruin and bring back its’ treasures hadn’t returned? It wasn’t his fault if the fool had gone and gotten himself killed in some freak accident. He certainly wasn’t responsible for every death he had peripherally had a part in over the years.

Pah, he thought to himself. And pah again. Stop kidding yourself, Lillandril. You know you could never resist the chance to dust off the old leathers and recapture the days of your youth. Long ago as they are now.

And didn’t he know it. It took him longer and longer each day to get out of bed, and that was even before he had returned to the damn cold of hateful Skyrim. He wasn’t exactly old, by Altmer standards, but he wasn’t young either, and a youth spent wandering from one disaster to another was rapidly catching up with him. To say nothing off all the times he had set off to sort out the messes of other people - Khajiit, Dunmer, Nord, Redguard, all of them one time or another. Hell, it had barely been a century since he had needed to head out into the Alik’r to sort out that mess with his great-great-great-great-how-ever-many-greats-it-was grandson and that business with the Councillor.

He sighed again, glancing behind him. The two bandits he’d been forced to shoot between the eyes were still lain there, sprawled on the hard rock floor. As if he had expected anything different. It was not a surprise that bandits would be drawn to the rumours of a Dwemer ruin, of course. Though even the bandits had been of a higher calibre back in his day. He could have sworn it had taken the second a good minute to realise the first had been shot with an arrow, carrying on his inane commentary as if nothing had changed.

Which, perhaps in some ways, it hadn’t. Here he was, Lillandril, the scion of a line that reached back to the Dawn Era, back in Skyrim, bow in hand, delving into a damp cave on the promise of treasure and excitement

Arbethanou is described as the Newton of magic by fourth-era magicists. Arbethanou was an elvish mage and academic of the late-first era, and is credited for discovering much of what was known about magic. One of the units used to describe magic, the Arbeth (Ar), was named after him. Johannes Glanthorpe was another man renown for his studies in the Arcane; he is known as the father of modern magic.