#while her other goal includes destroying the Thalmor

[the-skooma-den]

My Dragonborn, Tenara Aedaire, A former Thalmor who is now known for her pretty fucking ruthless rebellion against them

Class: Spellsword of a sort, only uses magic and summons swords. Beyond that, uses Mainly destruction and Alteration with restoration as as distant 3rd.

Age: 207 

Race: Altmer. There were rumors that she had human blood in her because of her Black hair but she’s 100% altmer

Personality: She was once upon a time a complete straight edge with only a little bit of a strange and buried sense of humor. That was at least 50 years ago now. 

Nowadays she’s far more outwardly goofy and cares little for others opinions about her (though to be fair It was never that much of a concern for her).

Though outwardly extremely friendly,outgoing and helpful she allows very few people to be truly close to her. She will usually push any who try to get close to her away and it takes a very certain kind of person to break through (i.e stubbornly kind). 

She is always happy to learn experience new things and will go out of her way to see the sights wherever she is. Tenara is creative and constantly keeps a sketch journal of sorts, keeping notes on everywhere she’s been and everything she’s seen.

She is rather debaucherous as well, those new experiences aren’t always just new food or to see the sights, She will happily try out any drug or alcohol. She is also very flirtatious and will happily have one night stands or short flings with just about anyone anywhere she goes. She tends to leave a string of broken hearts, albeit unintentionally.

Even she can get annoyed by how over the top heroic she can be. She’s someone getting robbed and she goes “Oh shit” gets off her horse and trudges over to help them. 

 Backstory:She grew up in the Summserset isles and was only about 5 years old during the oblivion crisis. It was of course a scarring time for her as the part of the isles she lived in was hit harder then the rest. She watched her father get burned alive by a flame atronach and was almost burned herself only escaping because her mother was able to save her just in time. She has ever since had a fairly reasonable phobia of both Daedra and Fire. 

She was never close to her mother before the crisis and any chance they had of a normal relationship was dashed when her father died. Tenara would spend most of her Childhood and adolescence trying to impress her mother. (spoiler: didn’t work)

Not long after she discovered her own talent for magic, though she absolutely refused to touch any conjuration magic, she had quite a talent for destruction (specifically shock spells) and Alteration. Eventually when she was older she started to reluctantly use summoned weapons. 

She was in her early 20’s when the Thalmor we know today, the Xenophobic ones that dispise all the “lesser” races of Nirn and would destroy Mundus as we know it if given the chance, started taking Summerset by storm. Her mother encouraged her to join and unfortunately Tenara listened. She didn’t really want to, if she had her own say she’d have run off and joined the house of reveries. But her mother was Insistent and she was young. 

 She rose quickly through the ranks and ended up never doing much field work and rarely leaving the isles, taking a more behind the scenes position there. (To this day she refuses to say how important she was but more than a few of the really important members do seem to recognize her)

Everything was for a long while perfect. Her mother respected her, though if she was honest with herself She knew it was mostly that she liked having a child at such a high rank in society rather than any kind of maternal affection. She ended up falling in love, with scandalously enough a member of the lower class and they had a little girl of their own. It all fell into place rather nicely for her. 

Things of course went wrong rather stupendously, as just because she was able to push her empathy down and ignore it doesn’t mean her husband was able to. He spoke out against the Thalmor’s awful treatment of….anyone that wasn’t an altmer really and it was tolerated thanks to his wife’s status. And when Tenara agreed and started to advocate for more fair treatment of the other races. That was when it became an issue. Tenara was competent, well liked, and pretty well respected. They didn’t want to lose her, but they didn’t want her to change anything. 

So when her husband disappeared the message given to her was clear. She was to follow their rules. Not to try and change them,or else her daughter would end up alone. Her daughter was only 10 at the time.

So years go by. Her daughter,Ciriwen, grew distant but at least it wasn’t out of spite (yet) just the result of the usual teenage angst, a dose of trauma from her father apparently abandoning them, and her mother working so much and simply not being around. Ciriwen turned to her books and was very interested in history, with the 2nd era being her favorite and on the occasions she was left unsupervised (or snuck away) she would sneak off to explore the nearby ruins. (Tenara knew she was running off, but she was certain no one else did and Ciriwen never went anywhere to dangerous so she let her have the small rebellions). She was also was frequently allowed a look at far rarer history books and first hand accounts thanks to her mother’s high position. 

As Ciriwen dived deeper into the ruins and into ancient history she was…distrubed. The history in the more modern books was wildly different than the first hand accounts and older history books she found. The story of Queen Ayrenn and the first dominion in the 2nd era had been twisted in horrible way. The more she dug the worst it got and the clearer it was that the Thalmor had been trying to rewrite the past.

She went even deeper and started to sneak into her mother’s records (as well as other Thalmor’s records whenever she got the chance) and found out even more. Of the goals of the Thalmor, of what they’d been doing. And she was horrified. The discoveries went on for years. It accumulated when she found out the truth of what happened to her father, that he had been killed for only slightly speaking out against them. 

She was 20 she just couldn’t take it anymore. She left. Leaving a hastily scrawled note explaining at least some of why she left. She went to travel Tamriel and to stop these people wherever she could. 

Tenara went into a panic and for weeks tore apart every file she could find to make sure that her daughter hasn’t disappeared in the same way her husband did. Eventually she came to the hard truth that her daughter had just left. Still preferable to being dead however.

She started going through her daughters notes and books and ended up on a similar journey with similar realizations. Even Tenara hadn’t known how much history had been changed. She thought it had just been a few simple smaller things that put current politician in a better light and the past would probably come forward again after they passed but what she found was a total rewrite. Completely rewritten speeches and manifestos and histories all the way back to.

When Tenara finally read through the end of the extensive note it was months later, and it had finally hit her how irredeemably evil the organization she had been working for for almost 100 years was. She knew it was bad but not like this. Not to mention how evil the things she was doing for them was. And reading through her daughters notes she also read her journal entires. Her shock and horror at discovering it all, including the truth behind her fathers death. It finally put Tenara into action.

A week later she took off after her daughter. At 130 years old she had finally left the Summerset Isles for good.  She would spend the Next 75 years or so wandering Tamriel looking for Ciriwen, always either just missing her or hearing a rumor that she was halfway across the continent. Tenara also did her part in fighting against her former comrades. And her eyes opened more and more to the atrocities the Thalmor had committed, some of which she had ordered or suggested and what it truly meant and was leading to. 

She never forgave herself, and very likely never will. She will and will continue to do everything in her power to fix what she’s done and what she can’t fix, she will stop from happening again. 

Eventually she figures that at this point, her daughter MUST know Tenara is looking for her, and at this point must be avoiding her. To a point Tenara accepts this and truthfully she never expected her daughter to forgive her, at least not fully she just wanted the chance to apologize. To maybe work together to fix what shes done. But she also realizes at this point, It’s not likely to happen.

She hears a rumor that Ciriwen is up in skyrim, she doesn’t really question it. With the Civil war the Thalmor had increased their numbers there that sounds exactly like the kind of place Ciriwen would be.

Tenara tries to follow but gets caught up at the border and ends up tied up on a cart ride to Helgan. 

[parasite-core]

So I’m playing Skyrim for the umpeenth time. Normally I play one of my D&D characters, but inevitably get bored when I can’t really act out everything they’d do. So this time I decided to actually make a character from Tamriel to play. Thus I created a former Thalmor mage, a traitor to the Dominion on the run. I have no idea what his real name is, when he was asked for his name in Helgen he told them it was none of their business (they were going to execute him anyways and he’d rather die fast by Imperial headsman than be tortured and killed by the Thalmor) His in game name just says “None”, and I’ve been calling him Nonni so we’ll go with that.

Anyways after Helgen he followed the main story up through Whiterun because he felt honorbound to at least warn the Jarl about the danger to Riverwood since Ralof helped him to escape. He even agreed to help get the Dragon Stone because it wasn’t like he had anything better to do, and running around in an old tomb could help any trail on him from Helgen hopefully go cold.

During the dragon attack on the Whiterun Watchtower, Nonni slayed the beast with a frost enchanted sword he’d found in Bleakfalls Barrow—the first time he’d used a sword, his preferred weapon, since leaving the Thalmor.

Nonni said ‘fuck this’ to the entire situation. He’s no dragon fighting hero, and suddenly all the Nords in town are treating him like some legendary savior, and a voice from the sky called him to the highest mountain in the realm. No way. He just wanted to lay low somewhere, not get roped into Skyrim’s issues. And definitely not draw attention to himself by playing hero. So Nonni made his way south to Falkreach, intending to slip through the southern border and make his way towards Hammerfell. This didn’t work out, the southern border was blocked off and he found the mountains nearby too treacherous to climb to try to circumvent them. Worse, another dragon swooped down near the border, and he had to slay it by himself. Cold and wet from a rainstorm starting, and despondent at the realization that these dragon’s would just keep coming, he made his way to some nearby ruins to get out of the elements. He decided to take the time while he waited out the weather to explore the old ruins, in the hope of finding some treasure to fund his unwilling but necessary travels to High Hrothgar.

The place was infested with skeletons and two vampires. The first he met just inside, she was weak and starving and was easy to take out. The second, in the deepest chambers of the ruins, was a much stronger master vampire who nearly managed to kill Nonni. After a difficult struggle Nonni managed to limp his way to the top of the ruins, where he unwillingly found another word of power and an exit high in the mountains.

As he left the ruins he began to feel a nagging hunger that his rations didn’t seem to quench, but he shrugged it off as having just dealt with a long and frustrating day. He took some time to climb down the mountain and began a long journey back to Falkreach.

Along the way he ran into a hunter from Falkreach whose companions had been killed by Spriggans. Nonni healed him and helped to avenge his companions, with the promise from the hunter that he could keep the alchemical pieces of the Spriggans for himself. He had no problem with the Spriggans, but was badly hurt by a bear that was also in the cave and began to feel feverish. The nagging hunger had gotten sharper as well. Something about being around the injured hunter made it worse, but Nonni still shrugged it off as the effects of fatigue.

After this he did a few favors for people in Falkreach, including getting a lost journal for their local priest of Arkay. He was a bit nosey and read some of they journal entries, which seemed to say that the priest had a vision of Nonni and the return of the dragons. More importantly, in Nonni’s mind, he found the sword of a deceased member of the Blades. Being former Thalmor he didn’t feel comfortable using it, but kept it as a reminder and to possibly return it should he stumble on any other surviving members someday.

Once he had money and supplies, Nonni began his trek back to Whiterun, intending to get a carriage to somewhere closer to High Hrothgar. After about a day’s journey, he accidentally stumbled on a bandit camp. They attacked without question, so he defended himself. As he faced the final bandit, the strange hunger that had been eating at him for days came to a head. When he killed the bandit, his vision went red, and he fed on him, becoming a fully fledged vampire himself.

Nonni was initially horrified. He’d just gone into all of this intending to keep his head down and just avoid the Thalmor for the rest of his days, but now he was some dragon magnet undead bloodsucker. Worse, he remembered that he’d been hearing rumors of vampire hunters in town recently, so he had even more need than ever to keep his head down.

Still, the dragons were attacking, and he wouldn’t be able to get a moment of peace to figure out his new situation until something was done about that. So he continued to Whiterun, and took a carriage to Windhelm, which seemed to be closest to High Hrothgar on his map.

Outside of Windhelm another dragon attacked. Backed into a corner, weak to fire, and badly hurt, Nonni fought back with everything he had. In a moment of desperation he was forced to use the blade he’d found earlier in a last ditch effort to save himself. He managed to slay the dragon with the Oathblade, and limped his way into Windhelm to rest.

He made his way to High Hrothgar, and began his training as the Greybeards insisted. Then he went to procure the horn at their request, and instead found nothing at the end of the path, only a letter leading him back to Riverwood.

Here he met Delphine, whose connection to the blade he immediately suspected given the armor she donned. He decided to play along for now, to join her in going the Kynsgrove and seeing the dragon burial mound for himself.

There he witnessed Alduin resurrecting a dragon, and was forced once again to play the role of dragon slayer. This earned Delphine’s trust, and she confirmed Nonni’s suspicions that she was one of the few remaining members of the Blades.

Nonni was not keen to help infiltrate the Thalmor Embassy. He doubted that the Thalmor were behind the dragon’s returning, although he didn’t doubt they might be keeping tabs on whoever or whatever the real cause was. Regardless, he had been avoiding them for so long, he feared placing himself right into their hands more than anything else. He finally convinced himself that between the time in hiding, the tattoos he’d had added to his face to make himself harder to recognize, and the changes becoming a vampire had made to his skin and eyes, surely he wouldn’t be recognized even if by some coincidence someone he’d once known was there.

So he handed off his best equipment (and a few bottles of resist fire) to Malborn and dressed in some gaudy Skyrim finery.

When the Thalmor ambassador singled him out to speak to almost immediately he was certain he’d been caught, but between answering her questions in a circular manner and Malborn interrupting and redirecting her attention, he managed to avoid such a confrontation. He egged on a drunkard to make a scene and get attention off of him, then slipped into the back with Malborn.

He immediately snuck up on and took out a Thalmor soldier, swapping clothes with him in an attempt to blend in and to mask his features. This worked part of the way, but as he approached his goal a mage stopped him. The Thalmor recognized him, he raised the alarm that a traitor was in their midst, and a fight ensued.

He managed to slip in and steal a number of papers that proved the Thalmor don’t know who caused the dragon uprising (as well as some incriminating documents about Ulfric Stormcloak that he intends to hold onto for later). After learning about Esbern and freeing the Thalmor’s prisoner, Nonni made to escape. Unfortunately the Thalmor has caught on that Malborn had let him in. Malborn came running into the room chased by mages. Nonni tried to kill them before they could kill Malborn, but he wasn’t strong enough, and only managed to escape with the released prisoner.

After that he’s continued with the main story with few other incidents at the moment. After freeing Esbern from Riften and meeting up with Delphine he agreed to go with them to Sky Haven Temple—he’s less of a reluctant hero now that he knows the literal apocalypse is going to happen if he runs and the Thalmor know he’s here anyways so hiding’s not such an option anymore. On their way they ran into two dragons. One was named and swooped out of nowhere. The other was a blood dragon and was another desperate and close fight that he only survived with Delphine and Esbern’s assistance.

And that’s Nonni’s adventures so far. Most recently he met Paarthurnax, he respects the dragon for his choice to side against his own kind when he saw something was wrong. He has lost any respect he has for the Greybeards however, after Arngeir decided that helping the Dragonborn to destroy Alduin would be a worse sin than letting the world die. We’ll see where those feelings go later. Somewhere along the way he also found Merida’s beacon and accidentally became her champion.

He’s too scared of being smote on the spot to tell her that he’s a vampire and that her making him her champion of light is incredibly ironic.