#htdc-comment

Iriel stared at his reflection in the dim light, trying to avoid deep (and deeply clichéd, he felt) questions about who he was, you know, really, and focus on more immediate concerns.

I don't think it stops being a cliché, just because I'm making the character lampshade that fact. But I'm trying to not focus on the bad stuff, which means we're going to fast-forward through the first half of this chapter, because it's total rubbish.

Twelve hours later, he woke from bizarre and vividly erotic dreams about Dwemer automata

All right, the giant robot kink is fair game to make fun of, from here on out.

If you don't feel like doing that, and want actual character insight, instead? Well, if you're someone with fantasies about exerting sexual control, but you believe acting on them would make you a toxic, abusive person, then robots are literally designed to serve. If you're dubious about your ability to relate to others, or consider their feelings, robots are perfect. They can't be related to, and they don't have feelings! Robots make everything wonderfully simple. (Wait, does this mean Iriel would be a gay version of a Real Doll fan? No, of course not. The kink has taken hold, and the robot aspect is no longer optional. Raw, riveted metal is key to the whole aesthetic.)

“You look fine, hurry up.” said Julan, behind him, and Ire jumped, almost head-butting the mirror. “I don’t know what your definition of fine is,” he grumbled, “but it’s not mine.” “Oh, come on. You’ve got that whole ‘mysterious mage who has seen terrible things no mere mortal should witness’ look going on.”

Iriel knows he looks awful by Altmeri standards, but Altmeri standards are ridiculous. Even at his best, he's never looked good by Altmeri standards, since they involve skin like unblemished silk and individual hairs arranged with geometric precision. Dunmer beauty standards are rougher, and embrace looks that scream "wresting survival from the claws of a hostile universe". Battling your demons is very sexy, whether literal or metaphorical, and looking like you're winning is optional.

“Well, then.” Julan was pulling at his hair in the mirror. “Girls love that kind of thing. Boys, too. Probably. For all I know.”

Speaking of, we can totally dig out the "men say they be fighting demons but it's bisexuality" meme later, but for now, Julan's mostly got other things on his mind. While he does eventually start making awkward attempts to signal bicuriosity to Iriel, this isn't one of them, and it's not even a "protests too much" sort of accidental admission. Right now, his heterosexual angst is so dominant that homosexual angst can't gain a foothold on his psyche. There's nothing much beneath the surface of this comment, beyond [attempts to bolster Ire with encouraging comment], [remembers Ire likes boys], [remembers Ire likes dumb Imperial asshole boys], [gives up trying to predict anyone's taste in men].

“What about charming shrine sergeants with hands like sunrise over the sea and smiles like warm spiced wine?” whispered Iriel to his reflection, but Julan wasn’t listening.

They're both talking complete nonsense, but neither one is listening, so it makes no difference. Communication: net zero.

“D'you think I should shave my head?” [Julan] asked, pushing the uneven front sections back from his forehead, and squinting at himself sideways. “Or maybe just shave the sides. I dunno, what do you think?”

Another mod-derived conversation, but I don't think there are too many more, as I'd realised by now it was a bad idea. This one isn't too awkward, since it didn't need much tweaking, and brought up themes I already wanted to explore: identity and visual markers thereof.

Ire had opinions on many topics, but other people’s hair wasn’t one of them. 

Unless it's male facial hair, about which he has a 24-slide powerpoint presentation, and all the slides read "NO".

The trouble with shaving it, is I don’t have any tattoos or piercings, so it’d probably just look stupid. 

It was hard to get Julan's hair and face looking right, when initially designing him, because so many of the Dunmer options were way too badass, with the high-maintenance spikes and the piercings - none of which seemed quite right for a young outcast. Besides, you don't want a companion to be cool, you want them to be relatable. Sometimes people make appearance-update mods for Julan, and that's fine, but recently I saw one labelled with something like "makes him look less of a dork", and I was confused how someone could miss the point so badly. I'm sure Julan himself would be very happy, if you installed it, though.

“Among my people, body markings show your status within the tribe. Your age, rank, if you’re married, if you have sons, stuff like that. Me, I have no status. I never even went through the initiation rituals, when most boys get their first marks. Outcast, remember?”

The off-hand reference to "sons" rather than children implies something we see more clearly, later: Ashlander culture is very gendered, and explicitly patriarchal. Men and masculinity are prioritised, and the degrees of manhood you have successfully earned are judged by the tribe, and inscribed on your body. Being an outcast means having no identity, in a way that impacts on Julan's own masculinity, which remains, in a sense, incomplete.

Iriel nodded, slightly embarrassed.

These implications aren't lost on Ire, but he's trying not to jump into another argument. He is also aware of the cultural divide, and understands, intellectually, that he should not map his own emotional reactions onto Julan's. That he doesn't know enough about Julan's life or situation, and he needs to restrain his opinions, before he really puts his foot in it.

“You could do it for yourself, if you wanted to, surely?” he asked.

He still can't help, as carefully as he can, trying to feel out the exact contours of this suspicious mindset. It's setting off... not alarm bells, exactly, but definitely a few tiny warning lights are blinking on in Ire's brain.

Julan looked confused. “What would be the point? What meaning would it have, then?” “I don’t know,” Ire said. “Do they need to have a meaning? Can’t they just be aesthetic?”

Iriel, as we know, sees external labels as nothing but trouble. He understands that these particular labels have a complicated and painful emotional layer, for Julan, but doesn't get why you'd want to keep ONLY the painful part. If you really want the label, Iriel figures, then why not wear it for your own reasons, re-contextualise it, cut away the pain?

Julan considered for a moment, then shook his head. “It wouldn’t be the same. Receiving an earring or a tattoo from an elder, a parent… it’s a mark of shared respect and trust, of family and belonging. It’s not just sticking holes in yourself.”

Doing it yourself wouldn't just be cheating, it'd be inherently meaningless. These aren't just cultural labels or gendered labels, they're symbols of your personal worth in the eyes of others. A visible total of the love you have been given in your life.

Iriel, with more bitterness creeping into his voice than he perhaps intended, said, “You’re really still concerned with obtaining the validation of people who cast you out?”

And Iriel can't contain himself, because this seems such an obvious own goal - to deliberately and consciously place your entire self esteem into the hands of people who hate you. Who will never give you what you need, and will only continue to taunt you with it, while you sit there and let them. That is stupid. Iriel knows stupid, he knows an awful lot about self-sabotage and self-harm, and even he thinks this is too much.

“Of course. Why shouldn’t I be?”

Julan seems on such a totally different page to Iriel on this topic that Ire starts to wonder if they both mean the same thing by "outcast", if maybe this is a whole, big lost-in-translation misunderstanding. 

“What did you do to get made outcast?” he asked.

Julan didn’t appear bothered by the question. “I didn’t do anything,” he said. “It all happened before I was born. Mother got on the wrong side of tribal politics, and got pushed out to keep the peace.”

The last sentence is sort of... plausibly deniably kind of true... or at any rate, it's what Julan's mother told him, and if he doubts her, it doesn't serve him to admit it. The first two sentences are skating on such a tissue-thin layer of technical half-truth as to be far better described as "deliberate lies".

Ire couldn’t contain his incredulity. “So, you’ve never even been part of this tribe, they rejected you literally from birth, but you still care about what they think of you, and want to wear their marks? That’s ridiculous.”

Nope, thinks Iriel, this makes even LESS sense, now. He didn't even experience the rejection himself, in real-time, knowing what he's lost? He never even had the label, he had the opportunity to construct his identity outside the system right from the start, but he's not taking that as the gift it is, he's uselessly scrabbling against the walls of the society, bloodying his self esteem to no purpose. 

Julan glowered, and turned away from the mirror. “Maybe it is. I don’t care. They’re still my people. I don’t expect you to understand.”

Julan believes that there is a purpose. That, while he's not going to pretend he doesn't want the Ahemmusa's approval, his dedication to them isn't about that. Unlike Iriel, his "people" aren't a massive nation who won't even notice his absence. They're a small and vulnerable group of individuals, all of whom he's known personally since childhood. Their survival is constantly on a knife-edge, and Julan won't abandon them, regardless of their opinion of him.

If that doesn't seem entirely coherent, that's because it isn't, and maybe he's avoiding the full explanation because he knows Ire might poke holes in it. For a start, hasn't he abandoned them, already? He's miles away from home, right now.

Secondly, there's the aforementioned lie to Iriel about why he was outcast, which cross-examination might cause to unravel. Such as: why is he so familiar with the Ahemmusa as individuals, if he was exiled from birth? Because while he was technically born outcast, it was a purely technical exile for most of his life, and he spent a lot of his childhood and teens hanging out in the camp. The real exile was much more recent, and while half the cause was beyond his control, the other half was purely self-inflicted.

“Fine,” said Ire. “Have it your way. But being an outcast is still no excuse for letting your mother cut your hair.”

Of course hearing the word "mother" come up again reinforced Iriel's suspicion that she's part of the problem, and he's not going to miss an opportunity to roll his eyes about it. The player also says this line to Julan in the mod: I was trying to make it clear that he's not supposed to look cool! He's supposed to look like his hair's been cut with a rusty dagger by a drugged-up hermit in a darkened yurt, because it has!

Julan's hair comes up time and again, because in Ashlander culture (as in Black culture), it's deeply meaningful. Like the tattoos, it's another measure of your worth as a person. Elaborate styles with braids and beading are a sign that you have people in your life willing to spend hours of their time caring for you, loving you. Julan's hair, then, is meant to show that he has, at most, one person in his life who cares about him, and she isn't even any good at it. 

Julan by arimabari

Iriel thinks he knows all about being an outcast. In the same way that Helende looked at Iriel and saw someone who needed to finish the job of cutting themselves free from their people, Iriel looks at Julan and decides that this is someone who hasn't even started that brutal but necessary task. Thing is, Ire's not particularly interested in helping. As far as he's concerned, Julan is no longer supposed to be his problem. Unfortunately, as the next chapter demonstrates, he's been assigned a babysitter.

Iriel was outside. [...] Even though there were people out here, and occasionally, they looked in his direction.

When I put HTDC on AO3 and I had to add a summary, I called it "a story about visibility". This echoed my description of the project I'd completed prior to writing HTDC, a multimedia twine game called Krypteia - "a game about femininity and visibility". To an extent, HTDC was a conscious extension of the visibility theme I was still interested in exploring.

In Krypteia, you play a character who is marked and targeted for their femininity, and you can choose whether you embrace it and find power in it, or hide it, and find power in invisibility. The first method is fulfilling, but dangerous; the second is safe, but self-negating. Which obviously implies the first way is "better", and sure, maybe in a videogame, it is! But in the real world, safety is actually kind of critical. Safety is what keeps you alive, in a violent world, where you might end up as a beautiful, self-actualised corpse.

If this theme sounds transfeminine, that's because I'd been hugely affected by the case of Cece MacDonald, a trans woman who was jailed for defending herself from a transphobic attack. Krypteia expressed my rage over who was allowed to fight for their own life, about the cost of visibility and survival, and how if society's decided you're marked as an acceptable target for violence, you can't win either way. To survive is to be made into a monster, and punished by the system.

This is what was in my head, when I started playing Morrowind, and while it's approaching it from another angle, you can see some of the same questions coming out in Ire and Julan's attitudes. I circled back to a (not the, just a) transfeminine experience, later, when Ire makes this same journey with Helende.

In all honesty, most of them weren’t even looking at him, they were looking at Julan, who was wearing the most obviously-Ashlander things he owned, and was marching through town with head held high, while Ire skulked along behind him. Every time someone aimed him a dirty look, or muttered an insult, Julan would return fire with a word or gesture, and his grin would get broader.

Ashlanders are stereotyped as violent savages, and often face prejudice from settled Dunmer. But Julan embraces his socially marked status because of the personal validation it affords him, even to the point of nearly provoking a fight. Even if he doesn't win, getting beaten up for being an Ashlander would still be something he could take pride in. 

“See? They can tell!” he said to Iriel. “I don’t need tattoos and stuff for people to know what I am.”

Sunderlorn asked for more details on exactly how people identify Julan as an Ashlander: "He doesn't have obvious scarification stuff, right? So is it accent, bearing? Physiological? Attire? Is it the leather trousers? Like is there an apparent ethnic difference between Velothi and House Dunmer?"

At this point, I don't wanna give the reader too much specificity, since asking this question is part of the point of the identity/visibility theme. We're told clothes are a major part of it, and yes, I do think guarskin pants are considered particularly Ashlander by other Dunmer. Beyond that? It's possible to headcanon that there are physical traits more common among Ashlanders (or perceived to be), but I'm not doing that. Not for Julan, at least, given the whole point is that he doesn't have hard-coded things like that to base his identity on. I will say that accent is a marker, but we'll come back to that one.

“I don’t understand how this is an advantage,” Ire said, clenching his fists to prevent himself casting Chameleon. “What does it matter? Why invite trouble?”

Iriel sees Julan's attitude as an essentially masculine-coded response, relying on Julan's (dubious, in Ire's view) ability to project enough dangerous warrior swagger to ensure nobody actually attacks him. He considers it rather childish, prioritising fragile ego over safety, which in this case, includes Iriel's safety. If Julan wants to get wrecked in his own time, fine, but could he please stop dragging other people into it?

At the same time, Ire's apparently set himself the challenge of not using illusion spells to walk through town, implying he considers it an unhelpful coping mechanism, and something he should drop, if he's going to be a clean, healthy normal person, now. So... what's your self-defence plan, Ire? Do you even have a plan B? Being normal and unobtrusive didn't exactly work for you, before - the Camonna Tong still harassed you. At least Julan's method lets him feel good about himself, and maybe you're a little jealous of that.

“EBONHEART?” Julan’s good mood had been ruined instantly.

This section of the fic is labelled in my notes as "Teambuilding Exercise", and that's broadly the goal - develop a friendship between these two very different people. We're going to start by torturing both of them, whilst ensuring they can't escape one another. I know how friendship works.

I passed through there on my way here from Balmora, and it made me want to die.

Wait, how did he manage to pass through Ebonheart, when heading east to Sadrith Mora from Balmora? This seemed unhinged, even for Julan-navigation, but actually, if you don't use guild-guides, then taking the strider to Vivec, followed by the boat to Ebonheart then Sadrith Mora is the least horrible option, and certainly beats hiking overland. Sorry, I'm getting hung up on weird logistical issues, this re-read. But Iriel getting banned from the Mages' Guild meant a lot of slow travel, and this upcoming boat trip takes eleven hours, according to the travel map. Lots of time for awkward silences to stretch out and resentment to fester!

“Go on, then,” said Ire. “Nobody asked you to come. Whatever Helende may have guilted you into, I really don’t need looking after.”

Ire, who hoped he'd be back to travelling solo, has been told firmly by Helende that he ought to take Julan along. He finds this unbearably invasive and condescending, but, lacking the guts to oppose Helende, is going to take this out on Julan.

“She didn’t guilt me into anything!” protested Julan. “We’re friends, aren’t we?” Iriel looked unconvinced, but nodded briefly.

Of course his instinctive response is "sounds fake", but Iriel should realise that Julan at least believes he's for real. Ire, you told him you were going to be friends! You let him imprint on you like a baby chick! More importantly, from Julan's point of view, the alternative is returning to his "mission", which is a terrifying proposition. Of course he's going to latch onto Helende giving him the job of keeping an eye on Iriel, and of course he's going to convince himself it's vitally important. Because his sacred mission is really important, so if something's going to take priority (and oh god he desperately needs it to) then it has to be really, really important.

Then you’ll just have to put up with Ebonheart for a while.” he said

What follows is several days of Iriel trying to get rid of Julan, not by using his words like a grown-up, but by acting like a bratty asshole and deliberately trying to make Julan's life intolerable until he quits of his own accord. Julan, for his part, is determined not to be dislodged, for all the reasons given above, and also because, as far as Julan is aware, people treating you badly is just how relationships are. He does not have what you would call a regular baseline for comparison, which is to say: Julan is a willing disciple of my theory that constant lowkey torture is totally how friendship works.

another acolyte was making the terrible mistake of trying to give Julan a leaflet.

If you persist in making Julan do Imperial Cult quests with you, he does eventually snap and enter peak Troll Mode, in which state he will give you endless "missionary leaflets" of his own design, every time you talk to him. I think there were about ten different ones? Some of them can be seen here.

A loud Imperial voice boomed at him from across the room. “Aha! We have a volunteer, by Zenithar!”

Iriel miscalculated. This trip was supposed to be irritating to Julan, but Imperial Cult fundraising quests are a brutal hazing ritual for someone like him.

Ire gave him a despairing look. “I said we’d go to the Skyrim Mission and ask the Nords for alms for the poor.”

He's already realised he's fucked up, and he's getting out the puppydog eyes. Immediate pivot to pathetic woobie, appealing to someone else to save him.

“I’m sorry! I shouldn’t have done it, but I had to get you out of there, and now I’ve agreed to it, but I can’t go and ask strangers for money, I just can’t!” Ire gazed beseechingly at Julan. “You’re so much better at talking to people than I am. Please can you do it? Please?”

Iriel has created a monster of a situation. He's angry and resentful that he's not allowed to be alone, but the moment he tries to do something, he feels like he can't do anything without help. If he had spent weeks designing a blueprint for a machine to torture himself and constantly generate vast quantities of self hatred, he could not have done any better. It turns him into the absolute worst version of himself, and he can barely stand to remember it, later. This is what he means, later, when he tells Julan: "I don't want to become that person again. The one I was, when I met you." This bitch, right here. Selfish and demanding, spiteful but weak.

“Oh, you don’t like Nords, now? Last I heard, you were deeply into certain aspects of Nordic culture.” “What are you talking about?”

Cf. "spiteful". Julan doesn't notice, though, because Sottilde has been shoved into the box of things he doesn't think about, and he is also under the hilarious impression that Iriel has no idea what happened that night. Maybe if you grow up in a yurt that blocks NO sound, you assume stone buildings block ALL sound?

Just tell me - why in Oblivion are you licking the feet of these Imperial Cult scuttleheads? I can’t stand them, with their charity, and their false humility, trying to make me feel bad about hating the Empire.

A lot of Julan's early mod dialogue has this sort of slightly ridiculous over-the-top opposition to the Empire, mostly because I didn't want him to come off as moralising, so I made fun of him a bit. I added more nuanced conversations in later, but I do still kinda regret that first approach, because I think his instincts are correct. The Imperial Cult missionary/charitable arm is an oppressive force in Vvardenfell, just as much as the Legion is. They're two sides of the same coin: soft and hard power. Julan doesn't always have the background knowledge or critical skills to explain how or why the Cult is doing harm when it appears to be doing good, so he comes off as incoherent, but that doesn't necessarily make him wrong.

Iriel has his own emotional biases towards the Empire, which get brought up later, when this argument blows up between him and Julan even more explosively.

Help me? Please?” “I… oh, fine.

It would be perfectly possible for Julan to refuse to participate in Imperial Cult bullshit, thus allowing him to maintain his pride and moral principles, while still continuing to monitor Iriel. His problem is that Ire's big, sad amber eyes are incredibly difficult to say no to. This problem will only continue to escalate.

“There’s a Redguard,” Julan said dubiously, “but he didn’t really fit your description. I’m not sure any mortal could have fitted your description, though.

Evidence for the "Kaye is just a normal-looking middle-aged human guy, and Iriel is wearing crush-goggles" theory.

“For the thousandth time, you look fine. Maybe you’d prefer me to go up to him, whisper ‘my friend likes you!’ into his ear, then run away?”

“I would prefer,” Iriel pleaded, “for you to not embarrass me. No getting into arguments. No scaring the novices. No loud comments about the Emperor. Are you sure you don’t want to wait out here?”

Julan makes an attempt to initiate some gently teasing banter, you know, like friends do, because they're friends, right? And Iriel shuts it down with a sledgehammer: no, you're an aggressive, threatening savage who can't control himself.

“And miss you making a fool of yourself?” Ire glared at him. “Not. Funny.

And even then, Julan tries really hard to take it as banter, and Iriel slams him down again: no, I mean it, you suck.

“Look,” Julan said heatedly, “tricking Nords out of their drinking money is one thing. Taking money from the Argonians is quite another. You told me yourself, they help slaves escape!”

Even though Ashlanders aren't slavers in the way that most other Dunmer are, most still hold nasty opinions about slaves, and someone could argue that Julan being explicitly anti-slavery is unrealistic. To which I would say, maybe so, but who the fuck would want to hang out with a guy who's not explicitly anti-slavery?

Anyway, notice how Julan ignored the personal attack, but reacted angrily to defend Argonians from exploitation? He only does it when it's not about him.

“Yes, all right.” Ire muttered. “Stop complaining I paid for that one myself, then.”

Anything to avoid having to go inside the Argonian Mission, and think about the last time he was in there, dropping off Rabinna.

Julan looked on the brink of losing his temper, but held himself back at the last minute, folding his arms and looking away. “Go on then. Take the damn bowl back, if you’re going to. I’ll be in the Six Fishes. Wouldn’t want to embarrass you in front of your Redguard.”

He ignored the personal attack, but it still stung. Julan's gonna dwell on accusations that he's a violent savage, because, as he later explains, he worries it might be true. But he can't defend himself, and getting angry makes it worse, so he shuts down, instead. And there's the impulse to drink kicking in, right on cue.

Kaye’s smile hooked Iriel the moment he walked through the door, and reeled him blissfully across the room. Choosing to ignore the possibility that Kaye’s joy was caused primarily by the limeware bowl in his hands, Ire returned the greeting with an extremely genuine smile of his own. He even remained conscious as Kaye’s hands gently brushed his as the bowl was passed over.

We end the chapter with something completely different: a rare scene where Iriel has a wonderful time! Readers immediately responded with comments like: "this isn't going to end well, is it".

I wasn't planning anything horrible, I swear. Kaye came into the fic by accident, and Ire's crush emerged as something that helped flesh out his character: what does Iriel think he wants? It certainly wasn't intended as a deliberate complication/jealousy/love triangle to cause drama before he inevitably got together with Julan - at this point, I wasn't even sure that would happen. At this point, I could barely keep them in the same room without a fight.

“Glad to hear it.” Kaye placed the bowl reverently into a chest, and turned to face Iriel. “I know missions can get messy, at times, despite all our best intentions. I want you to know that as head of the shrine sergeants, I trust your judgement. It’s your call, and whatever happens, I’ll back you up. But I’m pleased that you handled things peacefully. I think that’s more in the spirit of the teaching of the Nine. Even a bad life should never be cheap.” He grinned, a little sheepishly. “End of sermon.

The second half of this is taken straight from Kaye's ingame dialogue. Isn't he lovely?

(Someone incredibly fixated with the details of Morrowind dialogue might notice that this is actually based on the lines that Kaye says when you DO kill Caryarel, and does this imply that tarhiel actually had Ire and Julan kill Caryarel in their game? No, it does not. If you are really the kind of insane pedant who reads the Construction Set for fun and memorises all their favourite dialogue to this kind of hyperfixated degree, then please DM me, because I'm the same, and we should be friends.)

He reached into the chest, and drew out a small enchanted amulet, white ceramic, inlaid with silver. “You’ve shown yourself to be a loyal member of the Imperial Cult. I hope this small gift will make your labours a little easier.”

It's this one, and he gives it to everyone, Ire, don't read anything into it! At one point, I thought Iriel might do more Imperial Cult quests, including the one where Kaye has you go and find the body of (in my headcanon, his dead lover) Linus Iulus. It would have been so awkward for Ire to find exactly the same "special" amulet on Linus' skeletal body. Maybe Ire would deliberately return the wrong amulet to Kaye, in a fit of pique, just to see if he'd notice the difference.

He held it in both hands, and motioned Ire closer.

This is completely unnecessary, right? He could just hand it to Iriel, but he's getting up close and personal. He's not quite making a pass, it's all plausibly deniable, but he's definitely testing the waters.

Fully aware that he was blushing, and not even slightly caring, Iriel bent his neck, allowing Kaye to fasten the amulet around it.

Which is why Iriel isn't embarrassed by the blush: he understands it's the desired response. Again, all plausibly deniable, but their communication is crystal-clear, in the moment.

At the moment when Kaye’s fingers touched the nape of his neck, he looked up, their eyes met, and for an electric moment, he thought he might be pulled into a kiss. But Kaye only smiled, and said “Congratulations, Iriel. I’m honoured to be able to promote you to Initiate.”

It's a little too soon, not quite the time or the place, for someone as careful and respectful as Kaye. But they both know there's something there, now. No doubt Ire will immediately start doubting his senses and telling himself he was probably mistaken, but... I think he knows he wasn't.

Like Ire, I had previously assumed that his crush on Kaye was unrequited, but at this point, I thought: if this is what Iriel thinks he wants, someone nice, normal and safe to take care of him, what would happen if he was actually offered it? Because right now, he has someone being nice and taking care of him, and he's reacting like a cat in an acid bath. He fantasises about being fucked by soulless automatons. What does Iriel really want, and what does he actually need? Is it even possible for these things to correspond?

From Iriel's perspective, it's wonderful to have confirmation that someone could find him desirable, but it's also completely terrifying - he's self-aware enough to be asking himself these same questions about whether he's ready to handle a romance. Fortunately, he has new tasks to complete that will buy him time before he needs to answer them.

He can spend the interval brushing up on his interpersonal skills: emotional maturity, clear communication, consideration of other's needs, generally being a thoughtful and rational person. Right?

Iriel and Kaye by @sinilakki

Iriel sat at the upstairs bar, sipping bittergreen tea and adjusting to a new space. 

Bittergreen is a very Iriel plant, both for obvious and less obvious reasons: its alchemical properties include restore intelligence and invisibility. Good for when you don't want to talk to anyone yet, but want to try and be sensible, when you do.

(art by traitspourtraits: x)

Iriel isn't feeling very sensible yet, but he wants to be.

Iriel recalled the smashing sound from the previous night, and stared at the bar-top in dismay. Careful to avoid touching anything else, he picked up his mug, and moved to the corner table instead.

Tilde insists barmaids have to have sex on the bar, even when it isn't their bar, and they aren't the one who has to clean it afterwards.

He knew that the seething rage and betrayal he felt was completely and utterly irrational. He knew he had no reason to be jealous, since he wasn’t pursuing either of them. He knew that his own emotional and physical isolation was entirely self-inflicted, and shouldn’t prevent others from enjoying themselves. All this knowledge only had the effect of making him angry with himself, as well as with his friends.

Some small part of Iriel is convinced that he's just lost both his friends at once, because the powerful magic of Heterosexuality will conquer all. Now, they will probably get married and have a million kids, because that's what happens after straight people fuck. Iriel's read too many shitty romance novels.

Julan was unaccounted for, until he came up the stairs, rubbing his hair with a towel. “Have you seen the basement?” he demanded of Iriel, eyes wide. “They’ve got a bath! With hot water!”

Clearly, Julan's been consumed by a fairytale romance, he's just hiding it well. The fact that his first action today was apparently to scrub himself clean probably means nothing.

“O’ course I do,” Muriel said, sweeping up glass fragments. “I’m from High Rock. I wouldn’t be here if I couldn’t keep m’necessaries.”

You can't convince me that the more magically-inclined societies haven't made enchanted improvements on the perma-medieval aesthetic, especially given the steam-power Dwemer stuff that's around. Since video games don't include bathrooms, I get to invent them. Never say I don't do anything nice for my characters.

“How’re you feeling?” the Dunmer continued. “I gather they’ve been… what do you call it?… un-addicting you? That’s great! Good thing I didn’t try to break you out, but I had no idea what was going on, until Sottilde filled me in." I thought it was the other way arouSHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUP

Be kind to Iriel, he's managing not to say these things out loud. And it's very hard not to snap at Julan, when he's being this nice, with his "can I get you anything?" and his "look at me, being all understanding and positive about your drug rehab". Because Iriel doesn't WANT nice, he wants someone he can take out his bitchiness on, and not immediately feel awful about it.

Forcing himself into speech to stave off mental images, Iriel said, "I’m surprised you’re not more hung over.” Julan looked puzzled. “Why? I wasn’t all that drunk.” …oh.

Look, you said you didn't want him, and you honestly mostly didn't, but it STILL feels like hell to have your nose rubbed in it, especially when you're feeling this forever_alone.jpg.

Julan's standard of drunk is different to Iriel's. By "wasn't all that drunk", Ire assumes he means "my decision-making was not impaired by alcohol", whereas Julan means something closer to: "I didn't completely black out and can still remember most of what I did."

Anyway, Julan is refusing to make himself a proper target, the bastard, so Ire has to go find someone else he can take his bad mood out on.

Helende was sorting through lockpicks at a table, while the Dunmer mage, Erer Darothril, reclined on a basket chair in the background, smoking a kreshweed pipe. Iriel wondered what he did with the Guild. He didn’t look like much, in fact he appeared older, and his robe even more worn than the last time Ire had seen him.

Erer Darothril will teach Iriel a lot of useful things, and one of them is that it can be useful to let people underestimate you. Iriel comes from a place where obvious shows of power, nobility and glamour are how you protect yourself. He's no good at that, and always feels vulnerable as a result, with invisibility spells seeming the only alternative to being victimised. But it's possible to seem harmless and still deflect hostile attention with apparent guilelessness and sheer... well, charm. This is not easy for Iriel, but it's part of the trick he later pulls off with the Urshilaku here, for example.

Iriel shrugged. “If you want.”

She raised an eyebrow, but took out a key. “Your wrist, please.” The bracer clicked open. “Thanks a lot,” he muttered. “It was last night that I needed the Silence spell, but never mind what I want.” She placed the bracer on the table, and looked at him. “All right,” she said. “What’s the matter?”

It's a sign of how much Iriel implicitly trusts Helende that he feels safe venting this minuscule tantrum at her. And it's their shared Altmeri background that lets her immediately recognise it as a tantrum - no young Altmer should be this casually disrespectful to an older Altmer in a position of authority. They both know he's doing the social equivalent of flipping her off.

Helende focused the look into a glare, and Ire was forced to make eye contact. “How old are you?”

She refuses to take his bait about "last night" and Silence spells, because she's not trying to be Iriel's friend, and has no interest in letting him launch into a soliloquy about the tortuous angles of his current Pain. Which is for the best - she might have laughed pretty loudly at him, which wouldn't have helped.

Have you eaten today?” He shook his head, and she pointed to the kitchen. “Bread and scrib jelly are on the side.

Helende is a practical woman. Food first, then stupid thoughts. If the stupid thoughts are still there after the food, we'll make a plan, but try the food first.

I keep slipping Iriel weird Dunmer food when he's distracted, so that he won't register what's in it until it's too late, and he's discovered he quite likes it.

And don’t give me that look. If you don’t want me mothering you, stop requiring mothering.”

She really would prefer not to have to mother him. Helende fell upwards into guildleading, and is still finding her feet. She struggles with maintaining her authority, and being seen as "tough enough" to be in charge. And yet, she keeps ending up with these waifs and strays, and once you have a reputation for nursing lost baby birds, people keep bringing them to you. She doesn't think she's all that good at it, and knows it doesn't improve her street-cred. But her ambivalence about being a mother figure is part of why Iriel finds it tolerable. And he does need some parenting, at least for now.

What I’m getting at is that it sounds like you’ve been using skooma to cope with your problems. And I want to know what you’re going to do instead. Because if you don’t have a plan, you’ll end up right back on the sugar, the next really bad day you get.”

OK, food is down, time for the plan. Habasi is right: getting Ire clean is pointless if he can't stay clean. This is a bold attempt to introduce Iriel to the revolutionary concept that remaining trapped in a cycle of drugs and self hatred is actually just one option among many. If he wants different mental roads, he needs to start building them, and if he's in the market for tools, then she might know a guy.

He could feel Erer Darothril’s red eyes fixed on him, and when he had finished, it was the Dunmer who spoke next. “You don’t know Charm?” Iriel visibly stiffened. “No,” he said coldly. “I don’t. And even if I did, I don’t see how it would be applicable.”

Illusion magic is often derided and stigmatised among magical practitioners. There are two types of illusion mages, they sneer: frivolous and evil. The kind who make pretty lights and useless theatrical diversions, and the kind who use it to cynically manipulate the minds of others. Iriel doesn't see himself as "an illusion mage", more like an illusion user - it was his first drug habit, after all. He uses illusion to negate himself, not to dazzle or deceive others. He's extremely sensitive to the suggestion that he might be one of those illusion mages.

Why don’t you just go swooosh, poof, fingerwavey,” (she demonstrated the fingerwaving part) “and then he’ll think you’re a golden god of sex! [...] Ire had been infuriated with her.

The only thing worse than being vilified for being one of those illusion mages, is being praised for being one of those illusion mages.

“I’m going to rip his fucking nipples off! He talked me into giving him my code book, and now Habasi’s pissed at me!

The Code Book.

My point stands, though. I’m not that sort of person. That’s definitely more Tilde’s style - I’m sure she’d have no hesitation adding coercive spells to her arsenal of alcohol, sleeping potions and leaning across tables with half her shirt buttons undUGH stoppit, Ire, stoppit, she’s your friend and you’re being an asshole again, ugh.

It's great to have a friend who you like for being terrible and making you feel better about yourself. Right up until she's terrible in the wrong direction (at you). Ire's brain does briefly manage to skim over the idea that Sottilde might have also behaved badly towards Julan, but his feelings of personal grievance mean he doesn't really latch onto it.

To be absolutely clear, because Iriel's biases are tainting this: while I think Sottilde is far from blameless, and downplaying male rape victims is a huge problem, I also wouldn't characterise what happened as sexual assault. Julan's feeling dirty and regretful because he has issues about casual sex, but he's not feeling violated or coerced.

You can’t manipulate people like that, especially not people you want to like you properly, as yourself.

Is that what you really want Kaye to do, Ire? Because, you don't like yourself properly, as yourself, so why would you think it's gonna happen for other people? You just said what you did because it seemed like a healthy, normal-person thing to say to healthy, normal-person Sottilde.

Erer Darothril was looking at him oddly, probably due to the succession of disgusted and angry faces he was making.

In a throwback to his Imperial City days, he looks like someone is rotating wildly around his Oblivion Persuasion Wheel.

“I’m not interested in that sort of magic,” Ire said. “It’s unethical and counter-productive.” 

The mage smiled, disingenuously. “And a fireball isn’t? Surely, context is everything.”

For Erer Darothril, Prescribing Psychiatrist Wizard, I was trying to avoid the temptation to slip into an automatic Wizard Voice, you know the one. Baladas had it, but there are lots of wizards in Vvardenfell, so I needed to start distinguishing them better. With Erer, I'm going for an annoyingly Socratic, scruffy-professor type.

Iriel snorted. “There’s always an excuse, isn’t there?” 

“Isn’t there?” repeated Darothril, with a shrug.

Who smiles sweetly while you talk rubbish, and lets you hang yourself with your own rope.

Iriel is blustering, because he doesn't have a good response to Erer's question, which is, effectively: does it matter how we hurt others, or does it matter why, or even whether we hurt others? Why does Iriel consider a non-destructive weapon to be worse than a destructive one? And if we understand that fire has beneficial uses as well as destructive ones, why can't a spell like Charm also have beneficial uses?

Iriel doesn't have a response, because he can't think clearly: this whole topic is too personal for him, and Erer is a complete stranger, trying to judge him. All he can do is react defensively, batting away anything he sees as an accusation, which, right now, is everything. Because deep down, Iriel knows that there's something he finds very attractive about exerting certain types of control over others, and he ALSO knows that feeling makes him a terrible person.

Ire had the strong suspicion he was being mocked, and he wasn’t in the mood.

Iriel is not at all used to wizards who talk like Erer, who don't keep up appearances, who don't stand on their dignity, or assert their intellectual superiority. None of his professors in Summerset and Cyrodiil were like this, leading Iriel to assume that this cannot possibly be an intellectually serious person.

"Do you actually have anything valuable to contribute,” he said, “or are you just trying to argue with me for the sake of it?

Yet another reason Iriel hates himself: when under pressure, he finds himself borrowing the weapons of people who've targeted him in the past, like the sneering academic lecturer tone he's taking here. He knows it's a cheap, nasty weapon, but he also knows, from personal experience, that it works to hurt and humiliate people.

“Yes,” Helende spluttered. “As the time you told the greatest illusion mage in all of Vvardenfell to shut up, because you knew–”

As mentioned, Erer is the Master Trainer for Illusion on Vvardenfell. He also appears as a character in the book, Silence, in which he appears to be an "old vagabond", and when asked his profession: "I do nothing," said Darothil with some measure of pride. "But in my youth, I used to teach the skills of Illusion at the University of Gwylim."  

I’ve never studied any actual theory of illusion magic. Why would Charm spells help me?” 

“Because they might not work the way you think they do. All illusion spells involve changing perceptions. This is why people sneer at illusion magic, of course, comparing it unfavourably with the School of Alteration, which alters physical properties. And yet our perceptions are the very first point of contact that any of us has with the world. Change those, and you change everything.

Iriel, who has been using illusion magic daily for years, getting his mind blown by the opening lecture of Illusion 101. Because he's never put any rigorous thought into any of this! How could he? Illusion is what he uses when his brain's not working!

"You’re saying it’s a… good mood spell?” “Yes, if you like.” “I still think it’s manipulative.” "Which is why I told you to cast it on yourself."

“Don’t go thinking it’ll be a panacea for your problems. It won’t. It will work for the duration of the effect, and then you’re liable to feel worse than before.

Self-medicating with illusion spells is not new to Iriel, but he's been offered some alternate prescriptions, with a warning about side-effects. It raises questions about the invisibility spells Ire was using before... do they also have hidden downsides, long-term complications? Could he overdose? But it's not until much later that Iriel starts suffering from visibility complications, and by that point, Erer is too busy to help.

Darothril taught Iriel two more spells, in addition to Charm. They were, he said, two sides of the same coin, or perhaps two ends of the same see-saw was a better metaphor. Rally and Calm, designed to push the mind towards either action or inaction, depending on which was required.

Iriel finds Calm spells useful immediately, but Rally never gets mentioned again until chapter 103, where we get:

[Rally] felt like snorting fire salts directly into his brain. He’d tried it in the bathroom, once, and almost smashed the mirror because he wanted to murder his own face. He was now completely terrified of casting it again.

If Charm spells are ecstasy and Calm spells are sedatives, I think Rally's just meth. (Was Ire casting Frenzy, by mistake? Or overdosing - is  the difference between Rally and Frenzy purely one of degree?)

Ingame, Erer does, indeed, sell two varieties of the Charm spell. He doesn't offer Calm or Rally, but he does sell a variety of spells to bind and summon Daedra. Probably best he doesn't mention those, given Iriel's current frame of mind.

However, if you do come to believe that you perform your best self when under a constant, low-level effect of some kind…” He spread his hand before Iriel, showing two enchanted rings, one with a green stone, and one a band of engraved silver. “Such things are expensive, but possible.

Ire can't afford it yet, but in the interests of scientific experiment, I did mess around with the enchantment system, in Morrowind to see if I could make such a thing. And though I had to trick the editor a little, I succeeded!

I wasn't sure what would happen when I equipped them, since Morrowind has no mechanism for applying these effects to the player. I thought it might crash the game, but to my disappointment, absolutely nothing happened.

In my opinion, it’s a good job offer, and you should take it. From what little he told me, it’s mostly research, and nothing you can’t handle. Beats me why he’s gone to so much trouble over you, but he’s full of mysteries, that one. So. Go and see Caius. He’s reliable, he pays well, and it’ll keep you occupied.

Helende gives a lot of what sounds like good, sensible advice, but some of it really isn't. She realises there's something fishy about Caius' interest in Iriel, but sends Ire there anyway, enticing him with words like "research". Ultimately, Helende's problem is that she's spinning too many plates, and wants to get Iriel out of her hair, so she can concentrate on protecting the hideout from the Tong, and figuring out what fuck's happened to Bodu and Cel.

He might have got better advice from Habasi, along the lines of: "Caius is dangerous, and hard to evade, when he wants to catch you. Go to him, yes, listen to what he wants and tell him sweet words to placate him, but be sure to puzzle out what his schemes are, before he entraps you in them." But Ire doesn't hear that, he hears Helende, and trusts her enough to lower his guard.

Do you have somewhere to live?” “Not as such, no.” “Well, you do now. Here. As I said, you’re Guild, and in this house, that means family.  Most of the boys sleep in the basement, but you might actually persuade Muriel to let you keep the attic.

Iriel getting force-fammed (I have got to stop saying that) is a mixed blessing, since it means getting a whole slew of new brothers, one of whom is Celegorn. For an only-child like Iriel, it's a lot to deal with. At least he gets his own room.

It’d be a very good idea for you to have someone around to keep you company, and he seems keen enough. Said something about the two of you poking about Dwemer ruins? Fine. Keep yourself busy, that’s the ticket.

This sounds like more good, sensible advice. Later, Helende will apologise profusely to Iriel for ever having given it.

Iriel and bittergreen by @sinilakki.

He staggered out of bed, and pushed open the tiny window, clinging to the frame for support. Julan, perched on the ridge opposite, paused in the act of throwing another pebble.

For the purposes of logistics, here is Dirty Muriel's Cornerclub:

Iriel is in the attic, and as you can see, the neighbouring ridge is almost as high as his window. Witness my dedication to in-game accuracy over things that have zero significance!

Ire, at a complete loss, only nodded.

You completely forgot about him, didn't you? OK, maybe not forgot, exactly, but definitely cast him immediately out of your mind, with a relieved sigh that at least your abduction had solved that particular problem for you. Automatic ghosting service!

“I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to find you,” Julan said, “but these blighted thieves know how to move things quickly and quietly. I lost them after Balmora. Finally got your location out of that Nord girl at the South Wall, and then I had to actually get here. These Telvanni lands are like Sheogorath’s own country! But I made it! 

Lacking Julan's POV, we don't get these missing sub-narratives of his solo journeys from A to B, like how he got from the Grazelands to Ald'ruhn, or Ald'ruhn to Ghostgate, or now from Balmora to Sadrith Mora. All I can say is that they were, without exception, filled with bad decisions, wrong turns, near-death experiences and panicked escapes. They remind Julan why he hates trying to do anything on his own, and cement his conviction that the world is out to get him.

Don’t worry, I’m going to think of a plan, and break you out.” “Julan–” “I was going to force my way in, but there are quite a lot of them–” “Julan, listen.” “–and I remembered how mad you got last time I got myself into a rough fight, so I thought I’d better ask you what you wanted me to do. Was that right?”

Another time where the attempt at macho bravado collapses in on itself before anyone's even poked a stick at it. He's totally gonna be your hero, as long as you tell him exactly what to do, and please don't yell at him any more.

“Yes. Yes, it was, thank you.

Iriel sensing that what is required of him here is a slightly more polite version of "you've been a very good boy".

I don’t want breaking out. Not yet, anyway. I think… this is for the best.

God, don't you ever want to get air-lifted out of all your problems by a bunch of brutal but benevolent queers, and forced to lie in bed and eat soup for a week? It didn't take Iriel all that long to realise this was exactly what he needed, and now that the peak of the agony's worn off, he's almost enjoying himself. You can see why getting "rescued" to go back to sleeping rough and fleeing towns with Julan doesn't exactly appeal.

Oh. In that case, can I come in?

This is all so dog-coded.

It’s starting to rain, and I’ve got a cold coming on.

Julan is prone to colds, flus and related maladies. A canon mod-thing, for him, since I never gave him any resistance to disease, so he catches stuff off creatures all the time. I consider this a fun gameplay experience. Especially when you find out because it's drained his strength, so he stops following, and you have to imagine he's collapsed under the weight of his bag.

“…I’ll ask.”

Ire was never going to be enough of a bastard to say "no, fuck off and leave me alone forever", but maybe someone else might do it for him? Guilt that he kind of wants them to, that the sight of Julan is nothing but a gut-punch of fear and loathing, not of Julan himself, per se, but the sheer dread of having that proximity to someone else again, of dealing with their problems, their needs, their wellbeing, of knowing that reaction makes him a bad person, guilt, guilt, guilt.

Later that day, Sottilde visited. Her mop of chestnut hair and wide hazel eyes rose nervously over the trapdoor first, then she was hurling herself across the floor to bury her face on the bed. “I’m soooo sorry! You have to forgive me!

Sottilde, however, is an uncomplicated pleasure, at least for now: she's grovelling at his feet, completely in his moral debt. He can take all the target practice at her he wants, because she is unarguably the Bad Friend today, a role Iriel usually feels like he occupies.

Gods, Ire, you’re barely even a skeleton. When even Tilde thinks you're too skinny, you know you've really fucked up. Left "hot twink" way behind and entered your "dessicated corpse" era. 

“He’s downstairs, you know.” “Who is?” he replied, diffidently.

Determined to at least pretend he didn't know she was going to start on this irritating line of enquiry any second.

“Oh Tilde, bless your optimistic little heart for actually thinking I might have two boyfriends instead of none.”

Still, it's nice to have a friend who considers you hot shit, no matter how terrible you look. Maybe Tilde can be the Good Friend, again?

Ire rolled his eyes. “Death threats are like flirtation to Nords, aren’t they? Well, you can have him, if you want him.”

A perfectly genuine offer, in the moment - maybe Julan will glom on to her, and stop being Iriel's problem! Careful what you wish for, Ire.

“You’re really, truly, honestly not interested?” He hesitated slightly too long, but, seeing her expression, replied before she could interject: “No, firstly because I don’t waste my time chasing straight boys, and secondly because he’s an idiot.” 

Look, it's not as if he hasn't had plenty of time to run the analysis, while sleeping rough with Julan, in a detached-but-horny sort of way. And that analysis is going to take a second to flash by, as he loads it into working memory. But the results were very clear!

“But you like idiots!” she scoffed. “That’s how you get to feel superior to everyone! It’s why we’re friends! Can you really imagine dating someone smarter than you? You’d hate every minute of it.”

He wanted to contradict her, but couldn’t quite find the words.

She thinks she's being funny and self-deprecating, but it's actually a very mean thing to say, especially to Iriel, sensitive to the whole Altmeri elitism thing. Is it fair? Ire didn't think so, but now he's paging back through his taste in men, failing to gather evidence to the contrary, and worrying about it. He always thought he'd been rather egalitarian, dating men like Hiranel and Reu, who were the opposite of scholarly, but was he just maintaining his own intellectual superiority? Someone please remind him that two people isn't a pattern, he's too rattled to remember how statistics work.

He's also too busy processing to explain what he really meant by calling Julan an idiot, which is something closer to: "even if it turned out he wasn't 100% straight and something happened between us, he would immediately act like an idiot about it because he clearly has homophobic issues". And he would have, as later events bear out, a point.

In any case, a comment so rude and out of left-field definitely puts Tilde back in the Bad Friend zone.

“Anyway,” she added, “he can’t be all that dim. He’s been holding his own against Fandus for half an hour, now, despite the fact he’s had three drinks, clearly doesn’t know the first thing about architecture, and is making it up as he goes along. He’s driving Fandus up the wall. It’s great.”

It's not "despite" the three drinks, it's because of the three drinks. Julan has entered Troll Mode, in which he gains the super-powered ability to argue, endlessly, pointlessly and regardless of topic, so long as it's a.) something he doesn't know or care about at all, and b.) deeply irritating to someone he enjoys irritating.

He sighed, theatrically. “I refuse to sanction your appalling fetish.” “That’s OK, maybe he’ll sanction it. Maybe he’s always had a secret yearning for a rough barmaid from Riften!”

It was always tempting to have Iriel and Sottilde go off and have adventures together, despite her combat skills being sub even Iriel's. The verbal offence levels would be devastating, though.

“You oughtta come downstairs, though. Helende says she asked you ages ago. Why are you still hiding up here?”

Because he's taking a well-deserved break from being a person.

He turned away from her, and stared out of the window. “I know, I’m hopeless, you don’t have to tell me. So just leave me alone now, OK?”

Careful, Ire, you're starting to sound like Morrissey, again, which is never a good move.

Left to himself again as the light slowly faded outside, Ire listened to the voices below, the familiar mingling with the unknown.

The allure of invisibility, of eavesdropping, of observing social interaction without having to take part, and be observed (and judged), yourself. It's why social media is a seductive bad habit of mine, because I can read other people's personal dramas without posting anything myself, and still feel like I'm gleaning a diluted form of friendship from it, despite it being entirely parasocial and one-sided. Like I said, bad habit.

“…iner’s daughter lost her pearl down in the mine! Oh, the kwama miner’s daughter lost her pearl down in the mine. The kwama miner’s daughter lost her pearl down in the mine, and she bid me fetch it baaaaack…”

I'm convinced that at one point, I had a text document with all ten verses of The Kwama Miner's Daughter, but I've been searching for years, now, and I can't find it. I remember that it had a comedic twist sex joke ending, but I can't recall what it WAS. The entire song is a sex joke, though, so it must have been really obscene.

Iriel lay on his bed and watched the stars crawl across his small square of sky.

Just as he was balancing on the edge of sleep, he heard hushed voices on the floor below, and a low, bubbling laugh he recognised.

A note I posted explaining the slight delay on this chapter reads: "I left two characters in a room together, and now they’re doing something appalling, and I haven’t decided yet if I should cast Authorial Intervention to make them stop."

Fictional characters don't have agency, because they're fictional. You can't actually use "the characters made me write it because they're real people who live in my head" as an excuse for shitty writing, even if it feels that way. It is, at the end of the day, your head. What good fictional characters have is the illusion of agency, meaning that their actions are consistent with their personalities, and make sense to the reader.

Sottilde sleeping with Julan was an example of the little people in my head reacting in a particular way to a particular (drunken) situation, but it wasn't inevitable, and I debated "allowing" it. Was it just cheap drama, to mess with Iriel? As a writer, how do you decide when to heap extra pain upon a character, beyond what's determined by their previous actions or necessitated by the plot? Short answer: as long as it's doing something!

Unfortunately for Iriel, I realised that this particular variety of angst supported my narrative goals for his character development and introduced useful conflict. Sorry, Ire.

A muffled crash, another familiar voice cursing, more giggling. Silence for a while. Then small sounds, mostly suppressed, but unmistakable in tone.

WORST FRIEND. SHE IS DEFINITELY WORST FRIEND. THEY ARE BOTH WORST FRIENDS, PLURAL!

It's hard to explain the ethical principle of not sleeping with drunk people to Nords, it's so culturally alien. Not do things drunk? But then how would anything happen?

As the sounds became steadily less suppressed, Ire pulled the pillow over his head

To be clear: nobody is having all that much fun down there, Tilde is probably just trying to be encouraging. Drunken sex between complete strangers has an incredibly low chance of being good, and this encounter is not improving the average. If it seems like it goes on way too long to Iriel, he assumes that's because the universe is torturing him, and doesn't think to wonder if maybe the people involved have started to feel that way about it, too.

the even less pleasant suspicion that he was getting exactly the punishment he deserved

Deserves, because in Iriel's fatalistic view of his own social ineptitude, this is all part of the process. As he continues to shrink from other people, he will become increasingly isolated. His few existing friends will forge new connections, rendering him unnecessary. He will be left peripheral and alone, with no one to blame but himself.

Random Tildeism from my notes that never made it in:

Sottilde: "I once sent my youngest brother to the market for half a dozen eggs, and he came back with a dozen half-eggs. He was never the sharpest cheese in the drawer. I wondered what was taking so long. He was trying ta gerr'em up the hill without spilling 'em."

The second day brought a square of light from a small window in a sloping roof.

Technically, this alone might indicate we're no longer in Balmora, where all the roofs are flat, but nobody will (or should!) be paying that much attention to such minutiae.

Consciousness. Confusion. Panic. The inevitable nausea of withdrawal, the pounding head, the aching weakness of body. Struggling out of the narrow wooden bed despite it, and dizzily navigating the room: bare floorboards.

I'm trying to do a thing with verbs here, and I like how it came out, but I don't know what you call it. Still technically writing in past tense, but using "the [x] day brought" as the past tense frame for a bunch of bluntly arrayed nouns and present-participles to give a sense of immediacy, and being as close as possible inside Iriel's horrified perspective. The narrative voice that usually imposes its awareness of linear time progression is gone, leaving only Iriel's jumble of perceptions. The technique sort of fades out, through the chapter, as Iriel calms down and gets more of a grip on his situation.

No door, but eventually, a metal ring in the floor, and the edges of a trapdoor, locked. Screaming, banging till his throat and fists were raw.

Which is gonna take some time, because the Guild has handled Ire's intervention with a sledgehammer, and it's set off all his "in jail again" alarms. Because they're fantasy thieves, not modern-day mental health professionals. Although, given what I hear from people who've undergone enforced hospitalisation in the real world, I'm not sure I wouldn't rather take my chances with Helende's crew.

“E..er, would you mi… … … … …ny trouble?”

 = "Erer, would you mind accompanying me, just in case our new guest decides to give us any trouble?"

“Hello, Iriel.” A soft, lilting burr to her voice, that washed into corners of his mind he’d long since abandoned

At some point I decided that the Lillandril accent shared by Iriel and Helende is basically Welsh. Iriel was always aware, growing up, that his father's accent was "common", and his mother would correct him, if he imitated it. As an ex-noble, her accent, while still recognisably Lillandril, was far less pronounced than that of her fisherman husband. At the Tower, Ire softened his accent into an even more generic upper-class Altmer version, in order to fit in.

Helende, by contrast, was born to minor nobility, but seems to take pride in keeping her accent as pure-Lillandril as possible, even to the point that Iriel's getting flashbacks to the fishwives of the Lillandril docks, where he was raised.

“I know all this must seem quite dreadful right now, but it’s for your own good. The next few days will be the worst, but if you behave yourself, there are ways to make it easier. Don’t get any silly ideas about escaping. That’s why we’ve had to neutralise your magic with a bracer, but again, if you behave, we can see about relaxing it a bit. Hurt any of my people, and that changes.”

[...]

“Remember, we’re doing you a favour, here. Special instructions from Caius Cosades. You’re getting clean, Iriel.”

No-nonsense, trying to make the situation clear as quickly as possible: yes, you've been temporarily kidnapped, but it's just to get you off the drugs. Behave, and you'll be fine.

And Iriel immediately stops struggling, and behaves. It's a relief to have the decision taken out of his hands. The fact he was forced negates the guilt and shame of being cared for by strangers: like Baladas, they have a clear agenda, clean and free from messy emotion. He's not sure what capture by Caius' agents means for him long-term, but that can wait. For now, he's sick of running, and even sicker of being a junkie.

They tried to make him go to rehab, and he said: you know what? Fine.

A small round Breton woman coming from time to time, to bring him water, foul-tasting potions, clean buckets and sympathetic nods. “I don’t expect ya’ll be wanting food yet,” she said once, “but jus’ let me know when ya do.”

Muriel Sette, whom you should be hearing in something like a Cornish accent. I have mixed feelings about typed-out-accents, but I wanted hers to be noticeable. Partly because I wanted her to come across to both Iriel and the reader initially as a sort of peasanty, servant-woman stereotype, someone who exists to do things like bring food, and be otherwise invisible.

Not that I had anything much planned out for her character at this point. It was just easier to play down Muriel's role for now, keep things less complicated. Because, who is actually in charge, in the Sadrith Mora Thieves Guild? Clearly Helende is the boss in Thief terms, but it's presumably Muriel who owns the building, since it's her name on the sign. And what about Erer Darothril? What's one of the most powerful wizards in Vvardenfell doing in this seedy dive at all? I had a lot of questions, and the game doesn't answer most of them. Neither did I, to be honest. What is a Master Illusionist doing in a den of thieves? The whole point of being an illusion mage is to be mysterious, so why would I spoil that for him?

Dreams, waking and sleeping. His father, silent as always, hunched angular in the corner of the room, except the room was his fishing boat, and he was casting his line into Iriel’s throat, and pulling.

"Hunched angular" jumps out at me, here. That sort of thing started creeping in after I began talking to Sunderlorn and reading their TES fic. Sunderlorn showed me it was possible to approach TES fanfic writing like an actual writer. Writing as if the words you chose mattered, working on an artistic level, as well as a self-indulgent one, fandom one. There's nothing wrong with only ever doing the latter, of course, but the idea of doing the former hadn't ever occurred to me. Why bother making such an effort, for a silly, personal project?

Sunderlorn was bothering. Sunderlorn was doing professional-writer shit over there on their tumblr and AO3. Sunderlorn was writing McCarthyesque blood and ash epics about disaffected Dunmer youth, was chronicling the poetic wanderings of a ghost-ridden Ashlander mystic. I had no illusions about my ability to write like that, but that didn't mean I couldn't try to write better. Think more about the effect I wanted to achieve and consider which words would best convey it as economically as possible.

Anyway, "hunched angular" is an extremely Sunderlorn turn of phrase, and if you want more of them, you should read their stuff. Start with Ghostline.

With the snippets of dream/hallucination, I was trying to avoid anything too obviously symbolic of something specific, but at the same time, keeping the way dreams feel symbolic in illegible ways that we try to write narratives into. Metaphors without meaning, perhaps arising purely from some physical sensation in your sleeping body (like the urge to vomit), that your mind is layering symbolism onto (like your fractured relationship with your father).

tiny pink and green scribs

As with his earlier reference, it probably shouldn't be scribs that Ire's hallucinating. This is purely me, as the author, reaching out my hand to the reader, and going, "hey, let's all imagine tiny, multicoloured scribs!" 

At night, a skeleton on the bed. It was pitch dark, and he couldn’t see it, but he knew it was there, and he lay awake, unable to move a muscle, for what felt like hours.

This one's my favourite. It's so stupid and so terrifying. Worst sleep paralysis demon.

Later, it brought the blonde woman again, introducing herself as Helende. “Big Helende, they call me in the Guild. They do like their nicknames. Can’t say I’m fond of it, but at the time, they were threatening to call me ‘Little Hel’. You know. As a joke. So I chose the lesser evil.”

Proper Helende introduction! Helende is Altmer-tall, so, Tall. As with the accent, she's decided she might as well lean in to it.

“Sorry about the accommodation. Breton-made, y'know.

I probably should have Iriel hitting his head on low ceilings and things way more often. But it's not like I don't hit him on the head plenty in other ways.

Who’re your parents?” “Murecano and Cinteril.”

The standard Altmeri negotiation of identity through blood, but a more low-key, class-neutral one than the sneering "What's your line?" that Iriel gets from an Altmeri officer, later on.

I think this is the first time we get Iriel's parents' names. I assembled these from syllables of standard Altmer-type names, which follow the Tolkien tradition of all sounding like prescription drugs.

She raised her eyebrows. “Well. Dip me in fire salts and throw me to the Dremora. I remember Cinteril, all right. Is she as awful as she used to be?”

I know I'm skirting close to the line of pop culture, here, but I couldn't resist giving Helende a penchant for wild turns of phrase, and this one had the right middle-aged lesbian aunt vibes I wanted her to emit.

A loosening of the tightness in his chest. Anyone who hated his mother was surely a safe person.

The standard Iriel procedure: identify safe vs unsafe hands, and if safe, proceed to babble uncontrollably about your trauma.

He was curious. “What would your badge say, then?” She considered for a moment. “Hmm. Can I be a morally reprehensible lesbian genderhorror?”

Yet again, we strike against the terminology problem, of what words fantasy characters might have, in their languages, and what is too anachronistic. I let Iriel have "gay" as a point of principle, so Helende gets to have "lesbian". We are translating, it does not matter that Lesbos doesn't exist in Tamriel. I was less sure that Altmeri culture would have a word for transgender, or at least, not one Helende would choose to use. She and Iriel are playing at sarcastically exaggerating their monstrosity, so if he's a degenerate, she's a genderhorror. It'll do for now.

Labels are a pain in the rear anyway. That’s why I had to get out of Lillandril - family had me pegged as a boy, but I wasn’t having it.

Characters outing themselves can feel contrived, and I'm still not super-thrilled with this scene, but it's something Helende is doing as an act of trust-building, of deliberately offering personal information to Iriel, as a sort of bargaining chip. It works.

Like I said, I don't see Altmeri society, based on what we're told in canon, being a queer utopia. Your form is perfect and divinely inspired, your function is to continue your bloodline. Alexgaretti commented:

"very interested in the amount of homophobia in your Tamriel. Gender and sexuality's always baffled me in TES games because, despite it clearly being a very patriarchal society where wealth and status get passed down male lines for the most part, no-one ever has an issue with someone shacking up with someone of the same sex or being a woman. Both those things would surely put your family at a disadvantage in the dynasty stakes."

Alexgaretti is an Elder Scrolls Online player, and is pointing out the disparity between that much more recent game's inclusion of happy, socially integrated LGBT characters (including a trans Altmer woman) with the existing lore of the TES setting.

Back in 2002, queer representation was not something "expected" in games, and Morrowind doesn't do that sort of thing. We get Vivec's shenanigans in the Sermons, sure, but only because it's veiled, and MK's editors didn't notice before they approved it. Clear and present in the game? We get Crassius Curio, being a predatory bisexual perv, played for comedy.

I'm going to be blunt: I'm glad we've moved on from Uncle Crassius, but I'm not a fan of the fluffy ESO approach, either. Because like Alex said, it frequently feels "off", somehow. Implausible, culturally too good to be true.

I think what's happening is this: a lot of the time, game designers are uncritically reproducing the patriarchal societies that are the default setting of their imaginations, but don't want to include the sexism and homophobia that are lynchpins of this system because they think they will get yelled at on the internet. And to be fair, they would get yelled at. Some people don't want to be reminded of their oppression, in games. Me, I like my fantasy societies crunchy. I'm not saying every game should be like this, but I love it when elves call me slurs.

Dinamel's pro-queer Altmer fic works because it expands massively on canon and reimagines the whole society from first principles. I'm not on that level, I'm just going by the lore we have, and for Altmer society, the keyword is stasis. That's not a trans-friendly cultural attitude.

There's a lot of Altmer/Dunmer cultural contrasts in this fic, and a lot of them are about change. It's Aedra and Daedra, Anu and Padomay again, innit? Iriel as a person from a Stasis Culture getting dropped into Morrowind, a Change Culture. Helende, a trans person born into a society fundamentally suspicious of change, got out as early as she could, as a matter of survival. She immediately recognises Iriel as someone still getting choked by distant family ties, and recommends a clean break. She's always ready to offer him a sharp dagger, or at least an example that survival beyond Summerset is not just possible, but enjoyable. He just needs to stop giving a fuck.

I have better family, now. You hurry up and get well, so you can come downstairs and meet them. We can have cake! I’ll ask Rissinia, his are the best.”

As soon as Helende turned up, it was clear that this was the guildhall Iriel was going to find his home in, at least for a while. I didn't want to introduce too many new characters at once, so I had some of the Guild NPCs be absent that night, and started out with just Rissinia and Fandus. Despite my attempts to have Julan start a feud with Fandus in the next chapter, it didn't stick, and I never found anything interesting to do with them. It ended up being the absent duo, Bodu and Cel, who waltzed back into the story later and took over as significant characters.

HTDC started from Pratchett inspiration, but once I met the Sadrith Mora crew, it was Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City series that took over as primary muse. If you haven't read them, it's a series of novels set in San Francisco, chronicling the queer, funny, sad, ordinary, ridiculous lives of the drama-prone characters. Like the characters, the books are often silly and imperfect. They're also deeply human, and blend comedy and tragedy in way I try to emulate. If you like HTDC, you should read them.

a pile of trashy novels and light biographies begged from Muriel’s stash [...] he passed the day curled up under a blanket, sucking a Cure Poison potion slowly through a straw, and working his way through the entire Real Barenziah.

The existence of obviously mass-market books like The Real Barenziah is how we know Tamriel has a printing press, despite these books' attempts at retaining a faux-medieval aesthetic through the use of "handwriting" fonts. Fantasy involves suspension of disbelief, but my disbelief cannot be hung so high that it can imagine scribes paid to copy out The Lusty Argonian Maid thousands of times. You could make an argument for enchanted pens, I suppose (cf. Feyfolken), but we do actually have an ingame printing press heavily implied to exist in Mournhold: we don't see any machinery, but Trels Varis is definitely "printing" his leaflets.

The eighth day brought Sugar-Lips Habasi, smirking at the look of pure hatred and betrayal he shot her.

Ire's had some time to figure out the basic trajectory of his kidnapping, and who must have been in on it from the start. Thieves Guild rank and file don't seem to know Caius is an Imperial spy, though several of them have dialogue suspecting he's more than he seems. But the bosses might know, especially Habasi, given her proximity, and the amount of time Caius spends at the South Wall, working on his cover story. Ire knows he could never be abducted from the middle of her base without her say-so.

“Many people say there is no cure for a skooma addiction. This is both false, and true.

What Habasi says about skooma is broadly based on the ingame book, Confessions of a Dunmer Skooma Eater, which takes a surprisingly sympathetic and nuanced position on drug addiction, for a fantasy game. Heck, it's a surprisingly sympathetic and nuanced position for a 2002 North American videogame studio, or even a 2025 one.

Habasi knows this, because Helende did this for Habasi, too, five years ago. That is why Habasi brought you to her, and why you should thank her, when it is done.

Much later, Helende says, of their meet-cute: "I wouldn’t be here today, if I hadn’t found people who helped me. If Habasi hadn’t decided to keep me, the night I crashed through her bedroom ceiling, with a sackful of spoiled ash yams, a thousand-drake bounty and a broken collarbone.”

just as separating from a lover does not remove the desire for them. You have known the taste, and now you must carry it with you.

For Habasi, skooma addiction was completely bound up with her romantic relationship with Tsiya. Iriel's time in Tsiya's house has given him some insight into the horror of such a co-dependency. Basing it on love rather than hate sounds even more nightmarish.

But Habasi tells him, if Iriel is not ready to let go of the sugar, he will fall back as soon as he leaves. Caius should know this better than anyone.

Habasi thinks Caius doesn't understand addiction, because he's only playing at it. Caius thinks Iriel is an irritating little weasel, who is using skooma to hide from the reality of his situation, and the Emperor doesn't have time for his bullshit. Both of these things can be true.

Does Iriel think he is ready?” A long pause. “I don’t know.”

At the time of writing, I didn't know, either. I enjoyed leaving that sort of thing up to emergent gameplay, and the resulting fluctuations in Ire's mental state. Ire has the self-awareness to recognise that he's likely to relapse under stress, but assumes that's not the answer Habasi wants. The long pause is him deciding whether he could pull off lying about it.

Choose carefully who you have around you.” Another  pause, as she sheathed and unsheathed a claw, staring at it. “This is the real reason Habasi had to break with Tsiya, and never see her any more.”

Quitting skooma for Habasi meant quitting Tsiya. Iriel also remembers quitting Tsiya, and it was a messy, unpleasant scene, even for him, who hated her guts.

Silence, and creeping guilt. “Habasi, I… was a shit to Tsiya. I left her in a bad way, and I don’t know if she’s all right.”

Oh no, Ire, what if she's a person? What if people could be loved, even in their abjection? What if we're all villains and heroes in other people's stories, rotating positions as required? What if none of us "deserve" kindness or forgiveness, not Tsiya, nor you, nor anyone? What if we got it anyway, would the world end? If we all only ever got exactly what we deserved all the time, wouldn't that be hell?

But… perhaps it is time that Habasi goes to see Tsiya again. Habasi will do what she can for her.” “Thank you. But is that… safe for you? You said…”

"Please please please do not simply exchange me one chunk of guilt (treating Tsiya badly) for a different, bigger chunk (causing you to relapse by making you check on your shitty unsafe-claws ex.)"

“Do not worry about Habasi. Habasi tells you the best thing she has found about getting older. You learn the geography of your own mind. [...] Once you travel to rock bottom enough times, you recognise the stones in the road leading there.

Earlier, I brought up the realisation that even though you're writing fanfic, you can still try and do Proper Literary Writing, if you want to. This is the other side of that: you can stop whenever you like, and do something else. Something a bit cringe and self-indulgent and didactically self-helpy, like making your characters mouthpieces for your own pet pieces of life-advice. I am not here seeking forgiveness for this. It's my silly fic, and I can do what I like.

“What if… what if you recognise the stones, but you can’t see another way off the road?”

Iriel's instinctive response to being told to pay attention to his own reactions and behaviour: what good would that do? He still experiences himself as a collection of responses to stimuli. A victim of other people's actions, not a free agent, capable of choosing their own path. He isn't walking down a road, he's falling from a cliff.

watch the stones

Another little metaphor that Iriel puts into his pocket, and fidgets with, occasionally, trying to make it do something useful for him.

Playlist pick: Saint Mary by Sparklehorse: zoned out rehab songs, where people treating you kindly takes on a cosmic significance. They're not going to save you, but it's holy and beautiful that they would try.

Non-playlist pick that I didn't include because it's clearly about an abortion, and that seemed a bit weird to re-contextualise, but nevertheless feels even more apt than the Sparklehorse song that's actually about drug rehab: When Under Ether by PJ Harvey. 

Two songs about the feminised labour of care. About caring for others going through "shameful" experiences, and that effective care means stripping away that shame, and refusing to see or acknowledge anything except shared humanity.

This is a scene in which two people, both teetering on the edge of collapse, try to pretend they aren't doing that, and are normal enough to drink a beer and make small-talk. Julan would usually be better at this, but he just nearly died, and people with blood loss really shouldn't drink alcohol. He's already somewhat manic, veering from twitchy paranoia to eager puppydog and back, neither of which is calming Iriel's nerves.

“What does that mean, an Ashlander?” The Dunmer thumped his mug down on the bar, and turned to Ire with an intense look. “We are the Velothi

OK, terminology time: "Ashlanders" vs. "Velothi". According to some Morrowind ingame dialogue:

"The Velothi are people of Ashlander stock who have abandoned nomadic life and settled among the native Dunmer; the Velothi are despised by their Ashlander cousins as weak and soft, while the Dunmer look down upon the Velothi as an insignificant underclass."

According to this, Velothi and Ashlanders are slightly different groups of people. Why, then, am I having Julan use Velothi as a term for Ashlanders?

Point 1: "Ashlanders" is clearly English-derived, which is to say, in the context of Morrowind, it's a Cyrodiilic/Tamrielic word, i.e. Imperial language. It is, therefore, a translation of a local term, and not what Ashlanders call themselves in their own language. (Ashlander language is not the same as Dunmeris, but that's a whole other thing, and I'll come back to it.)

Point 2: The source of this quote is a city-Dunmer savant, not an Ashlander. Their other dialogue shows them to be unsympathetic to Ashlanders, considering them ignorant savages. This may not be a trustworthy source of information about what terms Ashlanders use.

Theory: City-Dunmer savants think ex-Ashlanders are called Velothi because when Ashlanders moved to the cities, and local people asked them who they were, they said "we are Velothi".

Thesis Statement: "Velothi" may be what city-Dunmer call ex-Ashlanders, but actually, it's what Ashlanders call themselves.

You can take or leave my reasoning, of course, but for fic purposes, I wanted a word that wasn't obviously assigned by outsiders, like "Ashlanders". "Velothi" made the most sense to me.

the true people of Morrowind, the only ones left uncorrupted by foreign influence. We alone keep faith with the traditions of our ancestors.

It fits with all the Ashlander self-mythologisation, like the tripe Julan is currently parroting uncritically. Veloth was the Original Dunmer, Mr Morrowind himself.

I call it tripe, because while Ashlander culture has certainly diverged from city-Dunmeri culture, I call bullshit on the idea that it hasn't changed, and city-Dunmer have. But more on this, later.

But the Empire and their lackeys have stolen our fertile land, and forced us into the wastes

The problem with giving speeches like this, is that it's never about whether you're right. It's about whether you're annoying. I have a soft spot for characters who feel very strongly about something, but who don't have the rhetorical skills to convince anyone of it, even the reader, so everyone treats their ranting as comic relief, and ignores the question of how much of it is true.

The rehearsed part of his speech over, he shrugged and took another drink.

Why do Julan's tavern rants come off as irritating rather than convincing, given he's sincere about the content, and broadly correct? Mostly because they aren't his words. He's repeating things he's heard other people say - probably one of the preachier elders, maybe Dutadalk. Julan doesn't trust himself to act as an Ashlander representative in the cities, in his own words. He doesn't trust himself to speak from the heart about his own experiences, (even if he's often very effective when he does so - compare his speech about missionaries, here.) Julan doesn't trust himself in all kinds of ways.

“I see,” said Ire, non-committally.

Already plotting his exit from the conversation, the room and the surrounding area. 80% of Julan's words and behaviour (i.e. the loud, aggressive, volatile parts) are setting off alarm bells in Ire's head, and causing him to regret getting himself into in this complicated, walking-on-eggshells social interaction.

I’m Julan. Julan Kaushibael of the Ahemmusa. Well… sort of… I’m officially an outcast, but… ah… it’s complicated. Don’t take it the wrong way, I’m completely devoted to my people, it’s just…”

“They’re not as devoted to you?”

“Something like that.”

“Don’t worry, I know the feeling.”

But then, the other 20% of the time, he'll say something that triggers a spark of sympathy in Ire, a flare of emotion that causes him to waver, to cling to this moment of unaccustomed connection. As with Viatrix, all sorts of interpersonal irritations get temporarily forgotten, when Ire is pointing and going "same hat!" about his trauma.

And we finally got a name! Iriel doesn't know anything about Dunmeri naming conventions, so he doesn't realise how strange the name "Julan Kaushibael" sounds, to a Morrowinder. "Kaushibael" is clearly an Ashlander surname, but "Julan" is certainly not an Ashlander name - the Velothi alphabet doesn't even have a J. The word is Dunmeris, but... as a name? Sounds odd. Julan is aware of this, and tends to be a little awkward around introductions, as a result.

"Something like that" is one of Julan's favourite phrases for shutting down a conversation threatening to go places he'd rather not.

An Altmer, for Azura’s sake! Uh… I mean… no offence, but it looks bad.

In Dunmeri culture, Altmer are seen as effeminate, and one of the stated reasons for this is that they cry more. I wasn't just basing this on The Changed Ones, it was also the comments about "Saliache", which at the time of writing, I thought referred to Altmer, but I've since realised is a term for Ayleids! That said, I think it's very likely it could also come to refer to Altmer in the centuries after the Ayleids vanished: the weeping+golden+arrogance parallels would make it too tempting. Saliache are (according to Vivec, in semi-canon baby street-rat mode) "weeping and weak-kneed with their lisp, their lilt" - exactly the same effeminate stereotypes we already know Dunmer have about Altmer.

The natural corollary to "gold elves are crybabies and not real men" is that Dunmer therefore, have to be the opposite. And so we get the Dunmeri national identity of stoicism at all costs, boys don't cry, suffering is character building.

These are tiresomely familiar concepts to Iriel, and constitute the initial lines he's entering onto his mental notebook page entitled "Julan Kaushibael: why the fuck is he Like That?".

“Oh yes, it must be unbearably embarrassing,” said Ire, raising his eyebrows.

I briefly wrote "raised an eyebrow", here, before deciding, no, Iriel can't raise one eyebrow at a time. Writers always have characters do it, but it's not a universal ability! I spent many weeks teaching myself to do it, as a child, because I sensed it would be a critical life skill, (and I was right!) but not everyone has put in the WORK, and I refuse to allow fiction to keep pretending anyone can do it, cheapening the efforts of those of us who HAVE.

Julan didn’t appear to notice the sarcasm, or to be paying much attention at all.

He's not normally this oblivious, and it's a sign of how incredibly out of it he is. At least, it should be, but it's not apparent to readers, because I haven't written any scenes yet in which he's acting normal!

Iriel sipped his drink, and discreetly shook his head at the bartender, who looked as if she might offer to refill Julan’s mug.

He knows it's a bit hypocritical to police someone else's substance intake, but even at this stage he's recognising there might be an issue, here.

All you need to know is that I have a sacred mission I need to carry out within the Ghostfence on behalf of my tribe… and others.

I'm never sure how early people catch on to what Julan's whole deal is. I always think it's obvious, but of course it is, to me. The concept of false Nerevarines does get mentioned a few times, though, and even before the Cavern of the Incarnate failed ghosts turn up, there's one you can meet, in Suran.

Is there a difference between failed and false Nerevarines? Someone who was an incarnation, but failed to fulfill Azura's task, vs. someone who only thinks they're an incarnation?

If you fulfill the task, does it matter, if you were an incarnation or not? Could you become one, retroactively?

If there's an original inspiration for the Julan mod, it's when I read On The Devil's Doorstep, by mercurybard*, which was first put online in around 2005. In it, Dak and Jiub crouch in a Dwemer citadel, preparing to fight Dagoth Ur:

"She wasn't the Nerevarine. Jiub wasn't either. As best they could tell, the true Nerevar Incarnate had been knifed on the boat trip over here, his body dumped over the side for the slaughterfishes to eat. By sheer luck of being the last two off said boat, the Emperor's little minions, the Blades, had decided to try and pass Jiub off as an Incarnate. That had worked for maybe a minute. No one was dumb enough to think he was Moon-and-Star, the reincarnation of one of the greatest heroes of his people, the Dunmer. He was just a tomb robber from Necrom. But someone had to do something about Dagoth Ur."

The majority of the initial inspiration was just me liking mercurybard's version of Jiub, and thinking Morrowind would be even more enjoyable if you could have him as your companion, all game. But it was more fun to write my own Dunmer guy, and at that point I started thinking about false Nerevarines, about complicating the narrative of who was the Nerevarine.

If you subscribe to the idea that your player is a true reincarnation of Nerevar, then Julan's delusions are free drama, fun conflict, some potholes in the road to your Destiny.

But you don't have to do that. As in mercurybard's version, you can question the entirety of Azura's premise. Notice that I never, either in HTDC or when discussing it, call Iriel a Nerevarine.

*The best part of this is that mercurybard posted some new Dak/Jiub stories just recently, and Julan's turned up as a character in them! THE CIRCLE IS COMPLETE.

Julan heaved a sigh. “My mother’s like that. She has this… terrifying faith.

It's not that Julan doubts the existence of the Daedra, it's that his opinion on them is irrelevant. Everything is mediated through his mother, the actual mystic, he only needs to have faith in her interpretation. Faith, in Julan's experience, is a word people use to justify the unpleasant things that are about to happen to you.

I think too much, that’s my problem. I need to stop doubting everything.

Things Julan says, where the complete opposite is actually true.

Someone asked me once what Julan's Myers-Briggs type alignment would be, and while I think MBTI is fully bullshit astrology for LinkedIn users, it's kinda fun for considering fictional characters, and different ways their brains might work.

Julan was weird, because he kept coming out differently, depending on the test, or the context - sometimes extroverted, sometimes introverted, levels of perceptiveness, intellect, judgement - all wildly variable.

Eventually I figured out what was going on. Julan's brain is, by nature, quite logical: good at making decisions through experiential/physical evidence. He was then raised by someone who gaslit him for 20 years, insisting that he trust in and make decisions based on a lot of stuff he had no logical evidence for (such as "faith"). The result is that Julan has pretty good innate judgement… that he rarely uses, because he was taught to ignore and discount it. And spouts a lot of received-rhetoric that, if pushed to examine it, he frequently finds to be false/illogical and rejects. But he needs a lot of time, and pushing, to get there.

Iriel wrinkled his nose. “Did you really just imply that you’re going up Red Mountain because your mother told you to?”

Iriel is primed to despise Mashti from the start, of course. Terrible mothers is something he considers himself fluent in, and Mashti is obviously terrible, even through Julan's constant attempts to make her sound better than she is. He so clearly needs saving from her, or at least severing. It blinds Iriel to the fact that Mashti is a terrible mother in completely different ways to Cinteril. Iriel doesn't understand the nature of this other relationship, which dooms his sabotage attempts to failure.

His eyes narrowed, suspicious. “No, forget it. I don’t know you. I don’t know why you helped me, but you could have any reason, it doesn’t mean I can trust you.”

Mashti has stoked Julan's paranoia all his life: people are out to get you. People will pretend to be your friend, and then turn out to be an enemy in disguise. Trust no one, because they will stab you in the back. You are too gullible, too easily led, too eager to confide your secrets to a "harmless" stranger. The Temple and the Empire are sworn to destroy you, and their spies are everywhere.

This has never, in Julan's experience, turned out to be true, and he's starting to think she just doesn't want him to have any friends.

He literally considers the exact possibility of Ire being an Imperial spy, and talks himself out of it.

Julan stared at the bar, frowning. Then his lip curled. “I guess we did sleep together. Be rude of me to claim I don’t know you now, right?”

Julan takes the executive decision to forcibly shove ALL his anxieties, confusions and paranoias back into the box of things he doesn't think about. Picks up Iriel's dropped "joke", dusts it off and offers it back, to defuse the tension. He's determined to stop making things awkward - he does actually have social skills, under all the neuroses! There's the possibility here of making a connection with someone his own age, and he wants to do everything he can to not fuck it up.

Julan smacked a hand onto the bartop, and Ire flinched, spilling his drink.

Julan very quickly learns to curb this sort of sudden physical impulse, given how badly Iriel always reacts. I doubt he even notices he stop himself. He's very good at moulding himself to someone else's needs and expectations: companion mod psychological traits, again.

I can’t keep thinking everyone else is the enemy, that I have to do everything on my own, because it’s not working, and it’s driving me mad.

The tension of Julan's situation has reached breaking point: he's been forced into a "lone wolf" position, but he does terribly on his own, and knows it. Unlike Iriel, whose breaking points tends to come when forced out of isolation and into contact with other people.

Would you train me? Help me get better at magic, so that I can survive on Red Mountain?”

Again, for future-Iriel's benefit: regardless of what happened later, the initial basis of this arrangement was that Julan is weaker than you, and needs help. You successfully created an illusion of competency (mostly through sheer bitchiness), and Julan was all too willing to buy into it, because he's so desperate for someone to intervene in the disaster of his life.

How do you make a companion mod character, who'll agree to travel with anyone, and not have it feel contrived, or like they're acting out of character? You just keep giving them psychological problems, until it feels natural. I like emotional co-dependency and crippling insecurity, but you can use whatever you have in the house.

“That’s just it! I was thinking I could come with you. You want to explore Dwemer ruins, right?

Julan's been forced into an impossible situation: go to Red Mountain and kill the devil, all on your own. He's been told he can handle it, because Faith, but on a deeper level, he doesn't buy that, and knows he's totally fucked. He deals with this in a variety of ways, few of them healthy. Glomming on to a near-stranger, and inventing a distraction-quest that you can pretend is actually a way to progress your mission? Honestly, one of the better ones.

Well, I could help! I’m no scholar, but I could protect you while you study them!

If Julan does immediately try to blur the line of who's helping who, it's not out of some sinister desire to put Iriel in his power, it's just a natural instinct to equalise things, to offer something in return, to salvage his own pride and self-respect.

It started out normal and potentially healthy, Ire. It could have stayed that way. You were the one who made it weird.

But perhaps… all of these things would be just slightly more bearable… if I wasn’t so fucking alone all the time.

I'm not convinced this is the actual reason Iriel agrees. I think it's just the reason he gives himself, because it makes more sense than the real one. It's the reason Julan just gave, after all, for wanting company, it's the reason normal people give, for the things normal people want. Iriel thinks he ought to be more normal. Would company help with that?

But he's contradicting the thing he said only two lines earlier:

I can’t maintain any kind of relationship, even a friendship, without everything going to shit!

A sentiment closer to his actual feelings about the situation. Interpersonal relationships are high risk, and Ire has a bad track record.

He doesn’t look as if he has his life together any more than I do. He has nothing to lose by coming with me, so how badly could I screw this up?

You could get him killed.

He’s already doing that on his own, though. What’s going to happen to him, if he stays here? You can’t make it worse.

This is, by the way, true. If you don't intervene, Julan will get himself killed. I think it's only in v. 3.0 that I made it this explicit, but if you don't take him on as a companion, or you tell him to leave, later, you can find his corpse in one of the Dwemer citadels behind the Ghostfence.

Iriel, if you’ve learned anything at all, it should be that you can always make it worse.

All these conflicting things Iriel is thinking, as he argues with his guilt-paralysed urge to avoid helping anyone ever, are legitimate. It's the problem with being Iriel: debating yourself is hard, because both sides are very good at constructing arguments. He can't reach a conclusion, and so falls victim to random impulse, for his final response.

“All right,” he said, and was immediately alarmed by the way Julan’s red eyes lit up.

What impulse, though? Iriel's feelings are complicated and contradictory. Of course, some part of him wants connection with others - but is this really the right person, the right opportunity for it?

Or is he just having yet another "fuck-it" moment of existential desperation, when he's drawn like a magnet towards the option that will create a drastic change in his situation, regardless of the fallout?

But please don’t expect too much. And please don’t treat me like I’m your teacher, or your superior or anything like that. If we’re travelling together, it’s as friends, that’s all.

Iriel's already trying to manage expectations, downplay what he's capable of offering. A miscalculation, and he probably realises it, even as he says it. For contact-starved Julan, the prospect of gaining a friend is far beyond his initial hopes. And for Iriel, being a friend is far harder and more complicated than being a magic teacher. There are so many more ways he can fuck that up.

Playlist pick: The Violent Femmes - Kiss Off. Songs for Julan, left alone with his own brain for too long, thoughts chasing their tails in paranoid little circles.

“We are about to pass through the sacred barrier of the Ghostfence, which shields us from evil through the combined faith of thousands of souls of the honoured departed.

It's actually easy to include in-character exposition, if your characters are tedious pedants who like to lecture everyone! But yes, the final stage of the Temple pilgrimage involves a brief trip onto Red Mountain proper, which is terrifying at low levels. Especially if you get turned around in the blinding red ashstorms, and your "brief" trip turns into a panicked flailing skitter, trying to find the shrine before something horrible catches you.

The "combined faith of thousands of souls" powering the Ghostfence is another example of the Tribunal's extremely literal take on the power of faith. Though here, the souls are dead, so it's probably just the regular Tamrielic magical application of soul energy to act as a battery for something. I'm sure a Temple priest would disagree, but I don't think souls have anything as individual as faith. The faith came in when they chose to donate their souls to the Ghostfence, it's not still there afterwards. That would be like saying that because Grandma donated her body to medical science, this vaccine thinks you need to fix your hair and find a husband.

Iriel glared at her through bloodshot eyes, until the light became too painful, and he had to close them again. "You.” he said. A surge of nausea forced him to stop.

Red Mountain might be the least of Iriel's troubles. Moon sugar withdrawal was bad, but skooma withdrawal is on another level.

liKE my fucKinG SKoOma yOu SpOiLed, selF-CentrED–

I love random-capitalising "slightly unhinged" text like this, in defiance of everyone telling me it's cringe and a tacky, unprofessional writing habit. One person even threatened to stop reading the fic, if I kept doing it! Sadly, no one has yet managed to get me to stop, though I may have to, if it becomes too embedded in pop culture as "mocking spongebob voice", since that's not my intended reading. That said, picturing Iriel using that tone is making me giggle, so even that may not work to restrain me.

“Well, I’m not standing for it,” she said, planting a hand firmly on her hip.

There's a little idle animation like this that female NPCs do, in Morrowind. Clearly, they thought it was too sassy for men, with the little hip tilt. Cowards. Anyway, I'm assigning it to Viatrix specifically, because Iriel later recognises her by it, when she's wearing a full-body plague doctor outfit.

Over the course of the next hour, the force of Viatrix’s will propelled Iriel through a bath, a comb, and into a clean shirt and pants

Powerful as Viatrix's will is, there's a more powerful force at work here: authorial engineering. I need Iriel to look a little bit less dead rat, marginally more like someone who has his shit together. Fortunately, not much more, because he only has to beat Julan, a man about to undergo disassembly by Daedra.

It doesn't matter. The important thing is that we cleansed ourselves. It’s symbolic.”

You wouldn't think that this statement of Viatrix's would stick around long, in Iriel's skooma-starved brain, but here he is, quoting it to himself, months later. Bitterly and sarcastically, but still. As if she gave him an oddly-shaped piece of metal, that he never figured out what useful thing he could do with it, but he can't quite throw it away, either. Iriel feels this way a lot regarding matters of symbolism and metaphor, ways of looking at the world that simply aren't true enough for him. And yet, these weird little fictions hang around in his mind. What are they good for?

“Don’t like robes. Too magey.”

Iriel dislikes the mage label, and prefers to avoid visual signifiers, but he could still wear a robe if he wanted to - lots of other people do. He's just making up a plausible excuse for what is really no more than a personal, non-psychologically-significant dislike of having a whole ton of extra fabric all around his legs, as he moves.

Once we’re on the mountain, you could catch the Blight if you don’t take better care.

There is a crack, a crack in everything, That's how the Blight gets in.

- Dunmer Leonard Cohen.

Sorry, that wasn't fic commentary, just something I needed to get off my chest. Carry on.

“Thanks, Ma,” he muttered, but wrapped the scarf she gave him around his mouth and nose. It was made of stoneflower-blue silk, and embroidered with tiny sequins.

This scarf! If people were gonna set textual analysis essay questions about HTDC, a really good question might be: what is the symbolism of the stoneflower-blue scarf? Not because I know the answer; I don't. I just want to know what other people would write. You could absolutely invent some sort of thesis, I'm sure.

The scarf was a throwaway moment of detail that Iriel invested with way more personal significance than I expected. It'd been so long since he'd had something nice, something frivolously pretty, that suits him, and makes him feel good about himself. And, unlike the silk shirt he finds later, practical enough to wear on the regular! It became his signature clothing item in art - though opinions differ on whether the sequins are silver or gold. I can't remember if I ever specified.

“Plain and simple pilgrim fare again, I see,” he said, and took satisfaction in her expression as the barb hit its mark.

Iriel is being so spoiled with all these "valid targets", lately.

“It’s true that my clothes are expensive. When I left home, they were the only kind I had. I could have sold them and replaced them with rags, but what would that achieve? I am who I am. I see no purpose in hiding it.

And then she absolutely bodies him, in return. Just destroys him, with her whole "refusal to be ashamed of personal qualities she can't control", and "rejection of the idea that she should camouflage herself towards others, to make herself safer or more acceptable to them."

Dagoth Ur, lived in the central crater, plotting the destruction of the Tribunal, and cursing the land with his evil ash-blight.

I dreamed about you baby, it was just the other night. Most of you was naked, ah, but some of you was Blight.

- Dunmer Leonard Cohen again.

Reverently, she placed a soul gem before the shrine, and knelt before it, praying aloud. “Thank you for your pride, Lord Vivec. I shall not doubt myself, or my people, or my gods…”

Pride is one of the core Temple virtues, and Viatrix is showing Iriel why. How it's a necessary defence mechanism, when others would seek to destroy you by targeting your insecurities and your self-esteem. Obviously I'm not gonna bring in the whole real-world "gay pride" angle in the fic, that'd be cheesy as hell, but of course, it's not unrelated. Pride is refusing to let other people hate you into hating yourself.

he felt like he’d been pushed through a sieve

Still love this image. Brief but evocative.

He realised, with irritation, that his last Recall point was set right outside Arobar Manor, which was not somewhere he should risk re-materialising.

Teleportation: not narratively overpowered, provided your characters are stupid enough about it!

His reverie was shattered by something small, grey and furious

They're not the most dangerous, but ash slaves are so annoying.

he returned fire from his prone position, but only succeeded in intercepting the next attack, the two spells colliding in mid-air and detonating.

At least, they are to Iriel, because of how frustrating magical battles are in Morrowind. Spells that hit each other collide in mid-air, wasting everyone's magicka, and I always get stuck in a poor-timing cycle of never actually getting a hit in. I know, I should just fucking dodge, but I'm really bad at video games, you guys.

On the plus side: look, I'm writing a fight scene! It's brief and poorly written (too many long words bogging down sentences and ruining the pacing, fight scenes need to feel sharp and tense), but at least I'm trying!

He was almost at the tunnel when he realised he could hear screaming, but it was coming from the other side.

While this chapter doesn't have what you'd call a climactic ending, and leads straight into the next, it's technically the end of the first narrative arc. As defined in my notes, anyway. The arcs have names, and I may or may not share them with you because, intended to be seen only by me, most of the names are kinda stupid. Case in point: the first 29 chapters are labelled "Sad Elf In Swamp". If you think you know what that's a reference to, no you don't, and what were you doing at the devil's sacrament?

It's the end of the arc, because it's the end of Ire's solo career, and the beginning of a complicated collaboration.

I kind of love writing TV-guide-style chapter summaries. The format is such fun: one sentence long (maybe two if there's a B-character plotline), no spoilers, and as many cliches as you can cram in. If at all possible, end it with: "Hilarity ensues."

“Fool!” Tsiya hissed. “Vorar Helas was Tsiya’s connection! With that one dead, there will be even less sugar coming into Balmora! What was Iriel thinking?”

I hadn't thought of this direct consequence until I got to writing this scene, but it made immediate sense. And we need to inject some real conflict to get Ire out of this stagnant living arrangement.

Tsiya cannot care for all the thousands of slaves in Vvardenfell! Slaves die every day! Tsiya has enough to do caring for Tsiya, and making sure SHE doesn’t die, because nobody else will!” “You’re horrible,” said Iriel. “You’re a horrible person.

Iriel is perfectly familiar with Tsiya's viewpoint, having held variations on it himself. He understands survival. He has no interest in extending sympathy to Tsiya on this point, just as he has no interest in extending sympathy to himself on it. His words may be cruel, but they're technically not hypocritical.

But Iriel is so sure he’s superior to Tsiya, even though he’s the one leeching off her hospitality, wasting her sugar, using up her skooma, telling lies about her to Habasi.”

It comes off as hypocrisy, of course, complete with a sneering veneer of Altmer superiority. Is it Ire's fault, that his culture's reputation precedes him? No, but he's also leaning into it, as a defensive reaction. He's heard that tone, seen that expression. He can imitate it well enough, when he wants to. And it's not entirely a pose - he does think he's superior to Tsiya, or at least... that he ought to be. So it's worse, if he isn't. But we'll pick up on this mental thread, later.

“Lies? I told her the truth!

Given the chapter title is "lies", and accusations are flying, I should mention that nobody has told any actual lies, yet. It might be better if they had, since the truth is so much harsher.

He was too angry to tell how much of his own self-hatred was bleeding into his hatred of Tsiya. His inability to tell the difference only drove him deeper into fury.

Spelling it right out, here. Ire's habit of taking his self-hatred out on other people, looking for valid targets. Notice that he also, even in the heat of the moment, knows he's doing this, thus ensuring an ongoing supply of fuel for the self-hatred engine.

“GET OUT.” Tsiya’s claws twitched convulsively, and there were tears in her eyes. “GET OUT OF TSIYA’S HOUSE. NOW.”

I'm reminded of a passage from much later on:

Iriel sometimes felt the great turning points of his life were less about big decisions, and more about fuck-it moments. Times when his frustration would build to such excruciating levels, that it could only be relieved by acts that forced a change in his situation, even a negative, self-destructive one. Throwing himself off a cliff, because the bottom of the cliff promised to be a different place from the top.

Anyway, this moment comes under this heading: deliberately provoking Tsiya into kicking him out, because anything's better than continuing their rancid little cohabitation.

“There is no more skooma! Irrriel should give Tsiya the skooma he found in Hla Oad!” “What skooma? I didn’t find anything! Your information was as full of shit as you are.” He didn’t turn to meet her eye.

Ah, here are the lies. Iriel certainly did pick up some stray skooma bags during his Bitter Coast meanderings. And as for Tsiya...

Sure enough, three bottles of skooma were hidden inside one of the storage jars at the back, and he hesitated for less than a millisecond before putting all of them into his bag.

...of course she has a back-up stash. As Iriel knows, since it's what he would do. And he knows that, if the situation were reversed, she would steal all HIS skooma, so why (he thinks) shouldn't he take hers? They're exactly as bad as each other, so he can't feel guilty about hurting her - at least, not just yet.

Holding it high out of her reach, he forced his way through the door

Altmeri height privilege at work! Not only are Altmer the tallest race in Morrowind, (as you can see from the ingame character model height multipliers) Khajiiti women are the shortest in pure elevation reached - technically Bosmer men are shorter, and Breton women equally short, but in practice, Khajiit digitigrade leg angles knock a fair bit off the real-money height of female Khajiit. Even with her knife-hands, Tsiya doesn't have a hope.

[Sottilde] looked him up and down. "Shor’s balls! Your shirt looks like something with a whole lotta teeth ate it, an’ threw it back up.”

Tsiya definitely gave it her best shot, though.

I think I stole "Shor's balls" from @sunderlorn, but he thinks he stole it from someone else, too. Whoever created it, thank you. It is the perfect Nordic curse. Tilde didn't say it in my first version of this scene, though, because I hadn't yet realised she ought to talk like my friend [redacted]. Once I fixed that, everything fell into place.

“Ah… yes. That would be Tsiya’s claws, and then before that there was the boat, the silt strider, the blood, the swamp… Mara’s arse, when did I last change clothes?

I think "Mara's arse" is one of mine, though? Anyway, this line is me the author speaking through Iriel, as I realised how many consecutive scenes I had dragged him through with no chance to clean up or get changed.

Sottilde watched, grinning, as he pulled his shirt off and started rummaging through his bag for another. “That’s just rude an’ uncalled for,” she said, “taunting me with that view when you’re off-limits to the ladies.”

She's not fully formed as a character yet, but Sottilde's already making blatantly horny remarks, and generally being adorably dreadful. Which is why Iriel immediately fell in love with her, because what's a best friend, if not someone who cheerfully offers themselves up as a target for all your bitchiest jabs? As we know, Iriel likes having a target, and because Tilde's making herself one on purpose, he doesn't even have to feel guilty about it. Even better, he doesn't have to self-filter, with Tilde (evidenced by the fact he's already out to her), since she's always being filthier and more inappropriate then him.

Sottilde's just so laid back and non-threatening, she can get away with anything. She's so frank and open with her lascivious comments that it converts into a weird sort of innocence - there's no shame to her at all. I assume she opened their acquaintance proper by hitting on Iriel on general principle, but upon realising that was a non-starter, she swiftly and enthusiastically shifted gears into friendship, with zero awkwardness or damage to her ego. Iriel likes that she still makes a point of telling him he's hot, now and again - not because she's creeping on him, but because she thinks her friends ought to know that they're hot. He appreciates the effort, even if her specific tastes mean he's not sure it's a compliment.

“Oh, I like skinny, me. This one time, I saw a picture of a really hot guy on the town news-board, but when I got closer to see if I could get his name, it was a can-you-identify-this-corpse drawing of some poor sap they’d found dead of starvation in a cave-in.”

This is a true story, that I stole from a different friend, and slightly adapted for Tamriel. The original was something like: "I knew I had a thing for skinny men when I saw  a photo of a hot guy in the paper, and he turned out to be a prisoner on hunger strike, taken three days before he died." Which is way funnier, but Tamriel doesn't have photos, and also I didn't want to steal the anecdote too precisely.

Ire almost choked on his wine. “You’re terrible! What kind of Nord are you? Is that why you’re not in Skyrim any more, they threw you out for disrespecting brawn?”

See, he gets to feel all prim and pearl-clutching when he's with Tilde, which is great fun, since other people usually make him feel like the weird, perverted one.

“Yeah, that, and the whole stealing military secrets, traitor to my homeland thing.”

Everyone who meets Tilde gets to listen to this whole silly, self-deprecating bit, where she pretends to claim she's a superspy revolutionary and political dissident, then admits that what actually happened was that she worked as a clerk in an outpost near the Skyrim/Morrowind border, had military secrets flirted out of her by a cute Dunmer agent who got her drunk, and then had to flee the country in a panic when her boss found out.

She smirked. “Who says I wanna sleep? Why’d you think I came here?” She leaned forward, conspiratorially. “Seen any… elves?”

Because sometimes people tell me they read the fic without ever playing Morrowind, I feel I have to explain things like this: Nord NPCs in Morrowind often greet you with: "Seen any elves?" Then they laugh, because it's a Nord dad joke. Because Nords and elves are ancient enemies, and used to hunt and kill each other a lot.

Sottilde, in defiance of her country's usual "sporadically shaved bear" beauty standard, hunts elves for more salacious reasons. Iriel considers this a creepy racial fetish, and he's honestly not wrong. He likes her all the more for it, though, because it gives him free target practice on her.

She paused, tapping her fingernails on the bar. “You really oughtta quit, you know.” A sigh. “I know.” “I don’t wanna lecture you. I know it’s not an easy thing, and it’s gotta be your choice, but…” “I know. Thanks.”

You can immediately see how much better Iriel is, now, at navigating a friendship, and handling the gentle suggestion that he needs to quit drugs. Compare his panicked, defensive reaction, back in Vivec, when Dro'Zaymar tried something similar. Back then, he couldn't comprehend what his life might look like, without his addiction holding it up. He's much closer to being able to do that now, and he can see Tilde's non-judgemental concern for what it is.

But he's still not quite ready to make the break.

She rolled her eyes. “I shouldn’t enable you.” “Would it help if I took my shirt off again?” “Whore.” “Please don’t insult whores by comparing them to me. It’s a skilled profession, and I’m merely an enthusiastic amateur.”

I really don't know how Ire and Tilde became so close so quickly, it just happened. Right from the start, they glommed onto each other, and before I could blink, they were best friends ten bizarrre in-jokes deep, and I couldn't stop writing her into scenes. Obviously, this only continued to escalate. I am not kidding at all when I say that this is the most important and significant relationship, not just of the fic, but perhaps of Ire's entire life. The growth of their love is less messy and dramatic than Ire's romantic entanglements, and it takes up less of the word count as a result, but it's no less deep. That's part of why the ending is the way it is. Blame Tilde, basically.

There’s a friend of Bacola’s who comes in sometimes. I dunno much about him, but he’s a sugartooth. No clue where he gets his supply from, but he never seems to run out. In return for his name and address, though, you gotta tell me more about this Kaye guy.

Much later, Iriel says of Sottilde:

Do you know, she… she was the first person I ever met in my life who thought my gayness was a positive thing about me. Aside from Reu, perhaps, but everything he said had an ulterior motive. Tilde had no reason to pretend, she was open as a summer sky, and she thought it was wonderful. Encouraged me! She could be nosy and overly, um… imaginative, but… she’ll never know what her unconditional acceptance meant to me, at the time.

Iriel views Tilde's borderline-fujoshi streak with bemused toleration, because in his world, it's such a novelty. He tells her off when she goes too far, but on the whole, Iriel likes Sottilde for her faults, not despite them. She makes him feel normal.

Anyway. Ire's off to find the Spymaster.

It's nice when you can set up these little plot dominoes. To push a character towards something that most readers will know is inevitable, but you don't it want to feel inevitable, in a brutal, author-forced way. No weird coincidences, or out-of-character decisions. You want it to seem natural that this would lead to that happening. Iriel needs skooma, and Caius Cosades is well-known as a skooma addict, at the South Wall. Ire would never voluntarily attract Cosades' attention, if he realised who he was, but how likely is it that he recalls a name he was told once, back in Seyda Neen, when he was deep in a dissociative haze?

Let's see how fast he remembers.

Art pick: Iriel by @bigger-rat. Beautiful lighting. Immaculate resting-bitch-face. Absolutely perfect nose, in particular - the slight upturn and irregularity in the bridge that, if you're Altmer, marks him on sight as insufficiently highblood. That, and the moles, of course. Imperfection literally on display.

Eventually, an Imperial man appeared in the doorway. The scraps of his remaining hair were white, indicating he was at the far end of middle age, but he was in remarkably good physical shape, for all that.

Even if it's nothing more than the consequence of every male Imperial character having to share a body model, I could never betray the legend that is Improbably Buff Old Man Caius Cosades. Besides, it's canon, now:

“Are you Caius Cosades?” asked Ire politely. “My name is Iriel of Lillandril, and I was told to speak to you.” The man blinked heavily, and rubbed at his eyes. “What? Yes. I’m Caius Cosades. But, what do you mean, you were told to speak to me? What are you talking about?” Ire threw a quick glance over his shoulder. “It’s a rather sensitive matter,” he whispered. “Would it be all right if I came inside?”

All right, fine, it probably counts as implausible authorial engineering to have Iriel only say things that could be interpreted as being about either drugs or spycraft, but only a little bit. And you know I can't resist a classic comedy speaking-at-cross-purposes trope like that, it's too much fun to write.

The tiny bedsit was a mess of books, plates and bottles, with the unmistakeable scent of moon sugar overriding everything.

I love Caius. I love how you never really figure out what the deal is, with his moon sugar - is he a real addict, or is it all a cover? There's plenty of evidence both ways. He's never visibly impaired, certainly. None of his subordinate Blades agents seem worried. Chirranirr says: "The old greyhair gobbles sugar like scuttle. Chirranirr is surprised he still walks. But it doesn't affect him. That is the mark of a long-time user." Is he a long-time user? Or just good at faking his consumption? Though... surely if he wanted to fake an addiction, it would be better cover to pretend the sugar did affect him? When he's recalled, Caius mentions there's"concern about my sugar" back at the capital. Why, unless they believed he wasn't faking?

I like the idea that he does have an addiction - one he cultivated specifically as his cover, and which he has near-complete control over. Which he can do, because a.) he's a stone-cold badass and b.) unlike a regular, Iriel-type addict, there's no emotional need underlying it. It's purely pragmatic. He really can stop any time he likes.

“According to this, you were issued with a package of coded documents. Do you have them?” [...] “You already broke the seal, I see. Not that you’ll have gotten anything out of them, but it doesn’t say much for your integrity.”

I was positive this was a thing that happened ingame - if you tried to read the coded package, the game would ask if you wanted to break the seal, and Cosades would comment on it, later, if you did. But I just checked the CS, and it seems I'd got mixed up with a different coded package quest else where in the game? But it should happen. Of course he would know, if you'd meddled with it!

He read another page, nodding slowly. “Ah. Your speciality is illusion magic. I can see why they thought you might be suited to this kind of work.

Later, you get to read the decoded document. It doesn't actually mention the player's class, but I wanted to give Caius some reason to believe in Iriel's potential, and not give up on him completely, based on Ire's terrible first impression.

The document does say this, though:

"I have the honor to acquaint you with his Majesty's wishes concerning %PCName, an individual of no rank or consequence.

%PCName has been released from prison by his Majesty's authority and sent to you with this missive. %PCName is to be entered as a Novice in the Imperial Order of the Blades, and is to serve under your absolute authority as you shall see fit, except insofar as his Majesty's particular wishes are concerned.

His Majesty's particular wishes are as follows.

A local superstition holds that an orphan and outcast, a youth born on a certain day to uncertain parents, shall unite all the tribes of the Dunmer, drive out the invaders of Morrowind, and shall reestablish the ancient laws and customs of the Dark Elven nations. This orphan and outcast is called in legend the "Nerevarine," and is supposed to be a reincarnation of the long-dead Dunmer General and First Councilor, Lord Indoril Nerevar. %PCName has the appearance of meeting the conditions of this local superstition. Therefore it is his Majesty's desire that %PCName shall, insofar as is possible, satisfy the conditions of this ancient prophecy, and shall become the Nerevarine."

I'm gonna quote @profanetools here, because they put it really well:

thinking from it from a different context the basic unifying conditions of the nerevarine policy - an orphan, an outlander, and a prisoner - definitely are skewed towards someone who is isolated, disaffected, easy to manipulate, easy to indoctrinate into a cult, and easy to sell the idea of doing something harebrained and dangerous because you were given some world-saving quest as dictated by prophecy, who would likely rise to the idea that they were secretly someone special and important because someone from that background is less likely to have been told that they have worth and value in of themselves.

and all of that, all of that, is extremely sad and absolutely speaks volumes about how the differing political entities in that game sought to manipulate you

Morrowind: the only good "chosen one" narrative? We'll come back to it a lot, but this is the crux. Prophecies are words. Who invented them? Prophecies are tools. Who is saying them to whom, and why?

While Iriel isn't actually an orphan, he is an outcast, a prisoner, and definitely qualifies as "of no rank or consequence". Still, his complete allergy to heroism means he's far less susceptible to manipulation of this sort than the Empire might hope.

Caius is savvy enough not to drop all this on Iriel just yet, which is good, because if he had, Iriel might have run away a lot harder. He might have sprinted into the sea, or tried to levitate to the moons.

You do understand who the Blades are, don’t you? We’re spies. We’re the Emperor’s hidden eyes and ears in the provinces. We watch the Emperor’s enemies. We look for opportunities. We make reports. And, when the Emperor commands, we obey.

Imitating Caius' voice is easy, because it's so distinctive. I don't know for sure, but I suspect Ken Rolston wrote him. Anyway, the main feature are these very. Short. Stabby. Sentences. Clean, sharp and straight to the point, like little daggers.

Are you ready to follow my orders, Iriel?

It wasn’t the sort of question you could really say “no” to. Ire said it anyway, and teleported out.

You can carefully set up all your plot dominoes, but a character might still dodge the last one, and scuttle off through a crack. Ingame, there's nothing forcing you to agree to join the Blades and follow Cosades' orders, except for the fact that the player will know they have to, if they want to see the Morrowind main quest content. Which obviously isn't going to work on Ire, so Cosades will have to work a little bit harder to get Iriel properly entrapped into his service.

“Drive!! Drive!!!” he yelled to the surprised caravan operator.

I'm really digging the comedy clichés out of the bottom of the barrel in this chapter. And I'm not sorry. Partly because while they're the opposite of new or revolutionary, I don't see them much in fanfic, so it's fun to combine them with the fanfic staples of overly complex emotional landscapes and general angst. It's why I like using the "tragicomedy" label, which I carefully scrutinised definitions of, to ensure it meant combining comic and tragic elements, but not committing to to a particular type of ending. One of my favourite types of feedback is evidence I'm pulling this off successfully, i.e. variants on "This would be funny, if it wasn't so sad!", or alternately, "This would be sad, if it wasn't so funny!"

The caravaner’s brow creased. “Striders don’t work that way, muthsera. You got to be very precise with what you tell them to do, else you might damage their tendons, see, or worse, they might get disoriented, and start to skrell. You don’t want to be inside the carapace when they do that, sera, believe me.”

Plus, it's a precious opportunity to make up esoteric silt strider "facts". God, I love silt striders. Best part of Morrowind.

A spy. Ahahahahaha haaha ahaha hahaa oh gods. Master of deception, that’s me!

When you think you're making a funny joke, but you're actually seeding yourself a new psychological complex that's going to haunt you for another couple hundred chapters.