#nerevarine oc: balaarys marethi

[whitegoldtower]

I think one of the most devastating parts of my Nerevarine’s story is this;

He was a humble farmer who daydreamed about something more, who wanted so desperately to know the source of his yearning, this black haired lover, this dream…

But the actuality of it wasn’t what he wanted. He was forced into this pre-written destiny which ended in him contracting corprus and slowly going mad before dying alone, and it would have been kinder to keep him as that lowly daydreaming farmer. To have him not even meet his soulmate in the first place.

And the true weight of his emotions get lost to time. Finding his skeleton and his journal is like finding the lovers in Pompeii; what were the last things they said to one another? We’ll never know. It’s like seeing a star, knowing that it exploded long ago and you’re only seeing the after image.

But reviving his song? Hearing it sung and loved and revived in taverns and the bard’s college?

Balaarys and Voryn Dagoth do get their happily ever after, in this sense; it just happens years and years after their deaths. We get a taste of what he felt through the way his song is sung.

That’s true immortality. They may be dead, but their love lives on through a sad little ditty hummed by a farmer on Solstheim.

Balaarys’ whole story is basically why gods shouldn’t be allowed to meddle in mortal lives, how a pre-written destiny can fuck someone up, and why music is such a clandestine human experience; it doesn’t matter when the song was written: music can still evoke emotion in any era and gives weight to context.

Balaarys Marethi dreamt of the sun and sky but he was forced to be Icarus.

To fly, for him, was a wondrous experience. He got to touch the sun, but he never was told that he was meant to fall. And when he did inevitably fall, it was written into his story by someone else. It was expected, and unavoidable.

That emaciated, frail dunmer at the end, dying in the tundra, sobbing over his journal and scribbling madly, ravaged by corprus, would never have chosen this if he knew this was to be his fate.

He was written to hit the ground. Brutally.

“I do not have wings, love, I never will,

Soaring over a world you are carrying.

If these heights should bring my fall,

Let me be your own Icarian carrion.

If the wind turns, if I hit a squall;

Allow the ground to find its brutal way to me.

If I should fall on that day,

I only pray,

Don’t fall away from me.”

✨

^^ The original tune Balaarys sings

^^ The sapphic version Panteia Atea sings in the Winking Skeever posthumously

^^ The song Veloth Sadri wrote about Balaarys

[whitegoldtower]

In addition to the last post;

Llevana rereads Balaarys’ journal over and over again whilst travelling to Morrowind, and catches herself humming the song.

She’s unsuccessful in locating the burial chamber of the Sixth House, and can’t get to red mountain to find Dagoth Ur’s remains, so she brings Balaarys’ skeleton home again, giving him one more adventure:

After she comes back to Skyrim, she goes to the Bard’s college in Solitude and shows Viarmo the journal, then hums the tune like

“Can you revive this song?”

To which he nods and directs her to a young dunmer bard, Veloth Sadri:

“This should be up your alley, if you’re feeling the challenge.”

The dunmer bard revives “Black is the Colour of my True Love’s Hair”, and is so moved that he also writes another song, this time in tribute of that sad Nerevarine, who flew too close to his ‘Sun and Sky’:

[whitegoldtower]

Yippee doing one more loredump about my sad Nerevarine

On a positive note, they do have their own personal afterlife. One made for them by Azura, herself, who - even though Balaarys forsook her and she cursed him - still loved the Nerevarine, and was moved by his love for Voryn Dagoth.

I keep saying that Nerevar’s feelings for Voryn were amplified in Balaarys, but I think a better phrasing would be this: Balaarys is the part of Nerevar that loved Voryn. He’s the embodiment of a doomed love. Like I said; he was written to hit the ground, brutally.

But!! In this afterlife, Voryn is alone in it for years until Balaarys finally dies, reliving his past in a reconstructed dream of Red Mountain, dying ofer and over again to faceless white haired Nerevarines… until Balaarys actually shows up.

Voryn is ready to fight again, used to the routine, but it caught off guard by Balaarys just walking towards him, quietly singing the song.

The song is like an instant balm, soothing both of them as it echoes around this dream of the heart chamber, quenching Voryn’s isolated madness and quelling Balaarys’ shock at his own death.

Singing the song soothes Balaarys because he’s completing his unfinished business, singing it to Voryn’s face. And it soothes Voryn because now he knows exactly who Balaarys is.

“You are the embodiment of his love for me. You aren’t Nerevar anymore; you are love, itself.”

(new Dunmeri daedra just dropped? A little scion of Azura representing the process of remembering (the transition between forgetfulness and remembrance), the immortality of a love remembered?)

To which Balaarys once more removes Voryn’s mask to speak directly to him, so that Voryn can’t hide. Balaarys speaks the words he said to Dagoth Ur’s body after killing him.

“We should have lived away from Vvardenfell together. We could have. You would have had me. A heart given freely to you. A heart you would not have needed to steal. Your moon and star. My sun and sky. We could have had it… you idiot.”

These words completely stun Voryn. It takes a moment for him to gather his thoughts enough to respond. But the key here isn’t speaking.

Voryn needs to remember. And the last thing he remembers is a pair of lips upon his own. A pair of lips he couldn’t kiss back.

So he kisses Balaarys, now, instead, and the world around them melts away, shifting from the endless loop of red mountain, to their true afterlife; a little pocket of Moonshadow.

Will they get jiggy with it in the daedric realm? Absolutely they will.

[whitegoldtower]

Mother, I have emotionally wounded myself again

[whitegoldtower]

I headcanon that Severin’s daughter, Llevana, finds Balaarys’ skeleton and his journal on her way to another dwemer ruin.

This is her most prized discovery. She holds it in higher regard than any dwemer artefact she’s uncovered.

The majority of the journal is completely intact, aside from the last few pages, which are the tear stained ramblings of a madman, the words “black hair” and “My sun, my sky” scrawled over and over again.

She brings the skeleton and the journal back home and begs her father, Severin, to use whatever necromantic powers he has left to reanimate him to ask him more questions, but Severin explains to her that this isn’t how necromancy works. She even turns to Ancano, but Ancano admits that this is beyond his capabilities.

Llevana thus makes it her quest to return to Morrowind with Balaarys’ skeleton, in order to find the burial pit of the sixth house, so she can put his remains there, where Voryn Dagoth, himself, is also potentially buried. A quest that is likely HIGHLY taboo.

Better idea for my Nerevarine.

Name: Balaarys Marethi

Age: Appears around 35

Appearance: pre-op but post T ftm Dunmer. Quite muscly. Long, white hair and black eyes - those who sent him to Morrowind could spot him as the Nerevarine a mile off because of the white hair and black eyes; he doesn’t look like a regular dunmer, and looks more like a chimer. That, and him being FTM hints STRONGLY at Azura’s influence (being the Prince of Dawn and Dusk, and - by extension - transition.) They took one look at him and went “yeah, it’s this one, there’s no questioning it.” Then kidnapped him from Solstheim and stuck him on a boat.

Backstory: He was living quite happily as a farmer of ash yams in Solstheim until he was torn away from his life and put on that boat to Morrowind. He was a worshipper of Azura, and for all intents and purposes, was a normal guy, aside from this deep yearning in his heart that he couldn’t quite place. Whether a yearning for a person, or a thing, or a place, he wasn’t sure. Only dreams of a touch like sunlight, and a breath of fresh air, a blood red setting sun, and the occasional sensation of jet black hair sweeping over his skin, smelling like fire. Balaarys was a romantic at heart, and mused on these dreams through song as he worked, singing quietly; in this AU, he wrote the song “Black is the Colour of my True Love’s Hair” by Nina Simone. - I’d consider this song his theme song ngl. He’d hum the tune quietly to himself whilst farming, or on the boat to Morrowind, or absently when he’s concentrating on a task; he’s haunted by this song. He doesn’t know the words, just the melody, but every so often he will try to find the words (he doesn’t succeed - it’s not time for him to know them yet).

He later learns who he really is - Nerevar. And because he’s a smart lil guy, the pieces fall into place; the song he’s haunted by, the dream he thought he concocted, he knows who that really is: Voryn Dagoth.

Voryn Dagoth might have been the ‘true’ Nerevar’s secret lover, but those feelings were amplified in his reincarnation to Balaarys; one might even now consider Voryn Dagoth to be Balaarys’ soulmate. Which is an absolutely crushing revelation to Balaarys.

Balaarys is being asked, essentially, to kill his dreams. So my playthrough of Morrowind is just a very tragic love story.

Of course, Balaarys goes through with it, and faces an extremely difficult task; there is no way to save or redeem Dagoth Ur, because as soon as he severs the heart, Voryn Dagoth will die.

Of everyone he’s ever met, when he meets Dagoth Ur, to make it even more painful, he’s never been spoken to so lovingly. For someone who’s supposed to be this horrific villain, Dagoth Ur offers him mercy, to let him go free, tells him they don’t have to fight, tempts him to join him, calls him ‘moon and star’.

On top of that, the parts of Nerevar’s fragmented memories of Voryn Dagoth that Balaarys holds dear are shocked by the reality of what Voryn Dagoth looks like now. If it wasn’t enough to have Balaarys’ dreams shattered, he’s now faced with what that dream has become. The monster it has warped into.

Furthermore, despite his corprus being ‘cured’, he knows this isn’t truly the case, and that sooner or later, the negative effects will come back, like a cancer, worse and more malignant. He knows it will eventually kill him. He knows he’s living on borrowed time, and wants to live as Balaarys instead of just a reincarnation of Nerevar as much as he can before that time runs out.

So after severing the heart, he can’t bring himself to just leave. In response to being earlier called ‘moon and star’ by Dagoth Ur, he does what Nerevar never did, and names him ‘sun and sky’, and stays by his side as he dies. He removes Voryn Dagoth’s mask and kisses whatever monstrosity is underneath it. He’s sick and dying anyway, so what does it matter, right?

This completely hardens his heart.

Balaarys doesn’t care for Almalexia. Nor Vivec. Nor Sotha Sil. He kills the tribunal with no regrets, trying to ‘wipe’ Nerevar from his system because he’s sick of the story. Or rather, he wants to be Balaarys, not Nerevar. Once that’s done, he forsakes Azura.

As a result, his hair turns black, and his eyes turn red. He’s completely gotten rid of anything ‘Nerevarine’ about himself, aside from the memories of Voryn Dagoth, which he keeps tucked away safe in a corner of his heart.

Balaarys, then, follows the refugees to Skyrim, looking no different to an ordinary dunmer. The only thing that seems to make people question it, now, is the way he sings the lyrics to the song he used to hum, having finally found the words. He sings with such an aching weight that people can’t help but listen. And after he’s sung, he moves on to the next town, forever wandering. Sure, he got Nerevar out of his system, but he also now has no idea who ‘Balaarys’ actually is, and he’s too old to start trying to figure it out. He has no sense of identity, no sense of purpose.

He becomes a piece of folklore in Skyrim; sometimes, out on the roads late at night, a heart-wrenching song can be heard, carried on the wind. A song about a man, and his black-haired lover. Some say the singer is a ghost whose lover was killed. Some, albeit few, know the real story.

As Balaarys grows older and his corprus comes back, he slowly forgets the lyrics, and returns to humming, still wandering, slowly going mad. He starts to look more and more zombie-like, no longer the muscular, white haired Nerevarine, but an emaciated, frail dunmer.

Then, in Skyrim, years later, when the Dragonborn arrives, his skeleton can be found in the tundra between Winterhold and Dawnstar, along with his journal, telling the story of the Nerevarine from his point of view.

If you made it this far, I hope you enjoyed the angst.

Also, this song is the theme for later on, when he’s in Skyrim. If it was a film, this would be the end credits. ✌🏻

[whitegoldtower]

I also headcanon that Panteia Atea sings a sapphic version of “Black is the Colour of my True Love’s Hair” in the Winking Skeever after telling the tavern folk the ‘true’ story of the Nerevarine that was told to her by Veloth Sadri, who was told by Llevana Nervayne.

It’s a Skyrim LGBT hit, and I think that Balaarys would appreciate what they’ve done with it. 😭😭

In addition to the last post;

Llevana rereads Balaarys’ journal over and over again whilst travelling to Morrowind, and catches herself humming the song.

She’s unsuccessful in locating the burial chamber of the Sixth House, and can’t get to red mountain to find Dagoth Ur’s remains, so she brings Balaarys’ skeleton home again, giving him one more adventure:

After she comes back to Skyrim, she goes to the Bard’s college in Solitude and shows Viarmo the journal, then hums the tune like

“Can you revive this song?”

To which he nods and directs her to a young dunmer bard, Veloth Sadri:

“This should be up your alley, if you’re feeling the challenge.”

The dunmer bard revives “Black is the Colour of my True Love’s Hair”, and is so moved that he also writes another song, this time in tribute of that sad Nerevarine, who flew too close to his ‘Sun and Sky’: