#xileel

[the-troll-of-the-bridge]

Nothing better than telling stories around a campfire

[the-troll-of-the-bridge]

LOOK AT MY BOY!!!

I know I al read stupid it but thank you he looks so good in your style!!!!

xileel for @the-troll-of-the-bridge :)

[elderscrollsconceptart]

"An-Xileel Invader"

Art for The Elder Scrolls: Legends

*Artist Unknown* If anyone knows the artist comment below

[jiubilant]

cw: horror elements

He’d been a scrib of three, sticky-fingered and clinging to his sister’s skirts like an anther-burr, when first he saw a war-wasp of the Dres. In less than seven years they’d be extinct: their cliff-hives burnt, their grubs smeared across singed flagstones or speared wriggling on An-Xileel pikes. But it had been a bright morning—the dust had glittered in the air like motes of kanet, like the specks the goldsmiths blow off their tables—and the messenger from Bal Foy had circled his glorious mount three times above the marketplace, like a victorious chap’thil, before landing her in the middle of the street.

“Give her a pat,” he’d said, laughing, to the children clustering round—and the adults, too, a few merchants and house-servants whose stern faces broke with smiles. “She’s polite, my Khes.”

He ran, that scrib of three—not towards the great wasp grooming her feelers in that circle of hands, as oblivious to her admirers’ attentions as Benitah, but to a basket of comberries abandoned at a fruit-seller’s stall. The first fistful he stuffed in his mouth. The second he stretched above his head, high as he could reach.

“Khes!” he’d called, his voice shrill and garbled with fruit. He remembers the moment even now. Juice dribbling down his wrist. Dust in his throat. His little heart surging upward with that cry, as if on jeweled wings. “Khes!”

The wasp turned her alien head, broad and shining as a bonemold shield. Her feelers whiskered over him. Out flicked her wings once, twice: sheer and strong as wevet, fluted like stained glass into a thousand fiery panes.

“Hold your hand out flat, hla!” the messenger called.

He did. The mouthparts that could crush a Nordling breastplate descended to meet it. Delicately, like a lady reaching into a bowl with finger and thumb, the wasp took a single berry from his palm.

* * *

He wakes in his cold dormitory cell feeling stiff, sore, and improbably cheerful. Mzulft and its horrors, the Synod included, are behind him; it’s up to Mirabelle, now, to decide what to do with what they’ve learned. A magic staff in Hjaalmarch—perhaps the first item of import, he thinks with amusement, to ever come out of Hjaalmarch. And the Thalmor know nothing about it. And he’s rising late from a bed, not a bedroll, with the fading idea that he’d dreamed something pleasant.

“She’s stung me to the heart,” he sings in soft Velothis over his washbasin, scraping off the journey’s stubble with his shaving-knife. The ancient song comes to him in snatches, like the dream. “She’s stung me, jewel of the sky, armored queen of the valleys of the Shir”—someone raps on his door, probably one of the prentices with a question about a translation, and he takes some smiling liberties with the next line—“one moment, per favore, s'il vous plaît—”

“Break it down,” says a curt voice.

The door crashes open. He makes a startled, absurd swipe with his shaving-knife at the first of the intruders—black robes, beaky buttons that glint gold in the firelight—before a burst of magic shivers through him like heat-lightning. He hears a thump. Himself, he realizes with belated surprise, hitting the chilly floor.

“Is he immobilized?” the voice asks pleasantly.

A chorus of subordinate voices, at least three: “Yes, Secretary.”

They’ve never gone this far, thinks the man on the floor, struggling to budge limbs that have gone rigid and heavy as kedge-anchors. Something’s emboldened them at last. A heavy-gloved hand dips into the neck of his nightshirt and fishes out his Company chain.

“Justiciar Ancano was right!” the young Dominion agent attached to the hand exclaims. He dangles the pendant in the light. “East Empire Company. A factor’s clerk. A pleasure, Master”—he squints at the inscription on the copper, above the tarnished ship—“Ramo, to properly make your acquaintance.”

That’s right, the clerk thinks. They’d bungled his name on the thing. Probably in the records, too. A laugh escapes his spell-sealed lips as a stifled huff.

“Kick him,” the pleasant voice suggests. “Oh, cousin. To scribble and scrape for the mayfly enterprises of men!”

Someone does kick him. He finds himself facedown on the hearth, seeing nothing, hearing creaks and thumps and curses as the Thalmor toss his room. One rummages through his sea-chest, takes something out, slams it. His ewer shatters. Floorstones scrape in protest as they’re pried up; the thieves’ Altmeri chatter grows excited, then. They must have found his papers. The clerk scrabbles through his mind for what little Altmeris he knows—

“Closer to the fire,” says the pleasant one in Cyrod, perhaps for his benefit. The clerk’s heart petrifies like his limbs. “He fell. A terrible accident. Put his cane—yes, there. As if he’d been trying to reach it.”

Someone drags him closer to the hearth. Flings his arm into it like a peat-brick. The heat bakes his hand. “I can seal his heart-valves to be sure—”

“Don’t be a fool,” snaps the pleasant one. “That shrieking cat who heads up Restoration would notice. Let us defer, out of respect for our cousin, to Velothi custom—”

The click of the closing door.

The silence.

He can breathe, the clerk thinks, breathing fast. He can blink. Involuntary motions, then, are not suppressed by the spell—only those that he wills. Sitting up. Crying out. Smothering the fire nibbling, with increasing interest, at his sleeve.

It was once said of the war-wasps of the Dres, he recalls with faint amusement, that the venom of their stings worked much the same. One was advised, perhaps as a way to bide one’s time before the end, to battle the enervation in increments: try wriggling a finger. A toe.

Something pops in the fire. The cell begins to smell of smoke and singed hair. He wonders whether the jerk of a limb exposed to flame, to that sharp, betraying sting, is involuntary—no, it seems not. The pain scourges his arm, his ear, the side of his head.

A finger, he thinks, concentrating all his awareness of his body into the palm of his lifeless hand. A toe. A terrible accident, they’ll say when they find him. Don’t think it. Hold your hand out flat, hla—

A strained rap on the door. “Magister?”

Relief crashes through him where the magic holds him fast. His thumb twitches free of the spell. It makes less noise than a crumb of peat shifting in the hearth.

“Magister,” calls the voice, dear and strangely small, “the—the Master Wizard, she wants you in the quadrangle—”

“Brelyna,” a familiar brogue interrupts, “J’zargo does not think he’s in.”

Her voice rises nearly to a wail. “Where is he, then—”

They’re going, the clerk thinks, gripped by a panic more searing than the flames climbing his sleeve. His hand jerks. It hits his cane, which the Thalmor had propped so tellingly on the fireplace-jamb.

The cane wobbles. He holds his breath.

Then, with a magnificent scrape, it clatters to the floor.

A silence.

“Is it unlocked?” asks Brelyna.

The creak of the door. A gasp. The panicked squeak of boots. Then someone throws the contents of the washbasin on him: a shocking blue chill, like a plunge in pack ice. He breathes out. His shaving-knife swirls past his head on a runnel of suds.

“Turn him over.” J’zargo’s voice, sharp as claws. “Is he dead?”

“I don’t think so.” Magic crackles in the air above his head. “I, I think he’s—didn’t Master Neloren show us how to dispel this? Let me try—”

Something heavy and sluggish evaporates from the clerk's bones. He stirs with some difficulty, blinking soap from his eyes, and finds himself in a circle of worried hands: J’zargo lifting his head, Onmund buffeting the last of the fire, Brelyna slapping his ridiculous half-shaved face.

“Hlai,” he rasps, laughing, trying to raise his arms to fend them off. They’ll beat him to death. Ai, a terrible accident. “Hlai, I’m not a rug—”

“You look a rug,” snaps Onmund, terse as ever. The clerk recalls that he’s wearing the nightshirt patterned with fleurs. “What happened? Who spelled you?”

The less they know, the better. The clerk flexes his hands, then his face, breathing with great care around the boot-shaped ache in his side. “Shouldn’t you”—the fire’s ghost gnaws his arm when he bends it, and he winces—“be in class?”

“In class?” Onmund sits him up so roughly that they nearly knock heads. The boy’s hands, the clerk realizes with a start, are shaking. “We were in class. Don’t you know what’s happening outside?”

Brelyna sits back in the mess of hearth-ash and washwater, rubbing her crumpling face with both hands. Her voice wavers like a shrill flute. “I thought you were dead, too.”

“Too?” The clerk, blistered and dripping, stares at his pupils. “Who’s dead?”

A muscle jumps in Onmund’s ashen face. J’zargo flattens his ears and looks away. It’s Brelyna, choking on overwhelmed tears, who answers.

“The Archmage,” she sobs. Outside, muffled by the dormitory walls, a scream pitches above the cries of gulls. “The Archmage.”

[scales-like-ash]

A Imperial once asked me, while on a contract in Leyawiin if I'd hate the Dark Elves for what they've done to my people

I simply answered "No, beeko. Because of two reasons. Argonians don't really hold grudges. We live in the now, not in the past or future. The An-Xileel crusade gave us the opportunity to get revenge for the centuries of enslavement and we got it. Second I don't hate 'a people'. If I hate someone it's because of their individual behaviour and not because their a Dunmer, Redguard, Orc, whatever. If I got one feeling for the Dark Elves, it's pity."

[the-troll-of-the-bridge]

I'm telling you this again but it is really so fucking pretty i cannot stop looking at it

I am in love with the way you drew the folds in his scarf

A secret Santa done for @the-troll-of-the-bridge !!!! It was so fun to mess with armor textures <3<3<3< 3

[lizardstho]

I want to study at an Argonian university.

I will spell regret as **shunatei** and use **reed huts**. I would watch **Hallucinations** in my **mind** every night while drinking **Hist sap** with my **Egg-brothers**. I’ll have **Raw meat and Bogwater** every day that’s worth 5 **Septims**. I would go to **An-xileel raids** every night. I am also more likely to meet **Wamasu, Talen-Jei, Jaree-ra,** and **The Nisswo.**

I wish I was argonian : (

[tamrielwolf]

I was playing the ESO Murkmire dlc and just realized I was standing in Lilmoth, the city where the main characters of The Infernal City/Lord of Souls novels are from. For those who haven’t read the books, it’s set 40 years after the oblivion crisis and is such a great canon overview of major historical changes (e.g., Empire’s transition from the Septim to Mede dynasty, eruption of Red Mountain) that occurred between the events of Oblivion and Skyrim.

ESO, however, takes place in 2E 582 after the fall of the Reman Dynasty and before the birth of Tiber Septim. During this eclipse of power, the three banners war hindered Imperial control of Lilmoth, leaving it primarily governed by merchants.

Fast forward to the 3rd era, the Septim dynasty at its height married into Black Marsh and regained control of Lilmoth up until the oblivion crisis where it was soon reclaimed by argonians via the An-Xileel:

Fun fact: this book is where the “argonians stormed the oblivion gates” lore came from:

[hendrickfw]

I´m not sure if I´ll do it, but my mind won´t stop having ideas for a fanfiction of my Dragonborn and his adventures throught my modded playthroughs. I just wanted to write some ideas here, though really doubt I´ll ever write about it.

-My LDB´s named Hendrick. He was borned under a lukiul family in Gideon, Argonia. His family was killed by a group of An-Xileel, leaving him an orphan. Around 4E 183 he was found by a Nordic collectionist that traveled to Gideon to buy some artifacts for the museum he was trying to make in Anvil. When the man found the six-year old Argonian he decided to bring him back to Anvil. He was also married to an Imperial noble family of the city. When they arrived to Anvil his new parents gave him the name of Hendrick. His new mother fought on the Great War alongside her brother.

-Hendrick soon followed the academic life of his family, being interested in the past from young. He helped his father study old artifacts and explore some nearby ruins. He was also trained by his mother and uncle on the sword and bow, fearing the Thalmor would invade again when Hendrick became an adult. His uncle is part of the Fighters Guild btw.

-Despite the peace treaty, his family kept worshipping Talos, so Hendrick also started worshipping him. Hendrick still learned about his culture with other local Argonians, but he follows Talos as his main god.

-When he grew up, Hendrick was sent to the Imperial City to formalize his studies. He started getting interested in the Ayleid history as well as the old Skyrim cultures (Nord, Dwemer and Falmer). While he was on the Imperial City he met Lucien Flavius, Auryen Morellus and Professor Marassi.

-After finishing his studies, Hendrick got back to Anvil and kept working on his father´s museum and collection. I´m still not sure what or how, but Hendrick made an importante discovery for the city´s history.

-After that discovery, Hendrick was contacted by Auryen, who wanted to make a Gallery Museum in Solitude, and wanted Hendrick to be the museum´s relic hunter. He accepted and took the first ship to Skyrim. In the ship he met another Argonian named Lucifer. Lucifer, seeing the opportunity of adventure with Hendrick, decided to go with him.

-When Hendrick and Lucifer arrived on Solitude they witnessed Ulfric´s escape from the city after killing Torygg, and thus the start of the Civil War. A day later they witnessed Roggvir´s execution.

-The first thing Hendrick does for the museum is to organize a donation festival so the people of Solitude could give the museum stuff, help the gallery grow and letting Solitude´s people have a place that represented their history. Tullius and the jarl are the one´s that contribute the most.

-During his firsts expeditions throught Skyrim, Hendrick would expand his team meeting other modded folllowers. The ones I like to include are Xelzaz, Inigo, Caryalind, Kaidan, Khash, Redcap, Taliesin, Lucien, Nebarra and Remiel.

-The only official members that join the Explorer´s Society are Hendrick, Remiel, Lucien and Xelzaz. Despite that, everyone helps one way or another. They all live in the Safehouse and it´s utterly chaos.

-Before starting Skyrim´s main quest Hendrick would fight an Altmer collecting Daedric artifacts for the Thalmor. Hendrick got a few of them (Dawnbreaker, Sanguine Rose and Wabbajack), so the Altmer stole them to deliver them to the Cyrodiil border. Hendrick fights him and, after defeating him, he got separated from his team and caught up on an Imperial ambush and got captured with Ulfric. The Alduin conflict starts.

-Probably Inigo would be the one to get Dawnbreaker with the help of Lucien and Xelzaz. Nebarra, Taliesin and Kaidan made the Sanguine´s mission. Hendrick, Xelzaz and Lucifer did the Sheogorath´s stuff. The evil Altmer did the rest of the Daedric quests. Hermaeus Mora quest is done later during the Elder Scroll fetch to defeat Alduin

-Hendrick would end up with Lydia. Caryalind and Kaidan end together. I´m not sure of other ships.

-Lucifer would be the one to do the Companion´s questline with the help of Nebarra and Inigo. Other members would help during certain quests. Hendrick just helps to get Kodlak to Sovngarde to get something of Ysgramor for the museum.

-Hendrick, besides the Legacy´s stuff, main quest, siding with the Dawnguard and defeating Miraak, also makes the College stuff and ends the Civil War with the imperial, mostly because the Stormcloaks forced him to choose the other side.

-Other quests that add stuff to the museum like Moon and Star, Wyrmstooth and Wheels of Lull happen. Maybe I´ll do something inspired by Lucien´s line at the end of Moon and Star where he suggests a "League of Heroes", or at least more interactions between both Hendrick and the Nerevarine.

-When Odyssey of the Dragonborn happens, everyone follows Xelzaz to his mission to High Rock and help him during his mission. Same happens with Inigo´s prophecy

-Remiel´s quests are done by Hendrick, but the ones that help the most are Xelzaz and Redcap.

-Nebarra, despite never saying a word, loves the mead that Xelzaz makes.

-Nebarra and Taliesin redemption arc before the Second Great War. They´re friends with a Talos worshipper so they need to.

-Khash is adopted by everyone. Caryalind, Xelzaz and Hendrick are the ones that raise her the most.

-Xelzaz is my favorite follower of them all, so I´d definitely reflect that on the friendship.

-And other stuff. Yeah, probably not gonna write a fanfic. After all of this the Second Great War happens, everyone is forced to leave Solitude with the museum´s relics and they start fleeing to High Rock and Hammerfell. They meet Uriel Septim V and then start a new rebellion, as well as some lore-breaking stuff about Hendrick´s family, but I won´t say more. I just wanted to get this off my system. I know it´s dumb, but my mind doesn´t stop

[bytalos-thiscantbehappening]

robespierre the argonian will guillotine house dres. the armor is not from a murdered imperial

im making robespierre an argonian(best elder scrolls race) in morrowind. what should his stats be?

I was like, this is brilliant ahahahaha my favourite race, but is it suitable -- oh wait in morrowind --

Yeah I can very well imagine a argonian monk or pilgrim Robespierre shouting on a plantation or in a city PERISH YOUR COLONIES ABOLISH SLAVERY, getting himself into troubles and having to be saved by the Twin Lamps before joining them or some.

I'm liking the idea of a argonian pilgrim or a argonian Robi with surprisingly high personality and willpower, skillful in speechcraft, illusion and/or restoration and picks up short weapon or hand-to-hand fighting skill along the way ...

OMG this build would make your game experience a torment pls think twice

I would also love to hear your idea & your end product dear Anon! this is fun!!

[metallic-scaled-scarf]

Ta-da! Here we have my half of an art trade with @the-troll-of-the-bridge ! This is their Ordinator oc, Xileel, who unfortunately liked his job (especially Vivec) a liiiiittle too much.

WIPs below.

Reblogs > Likes

[the-troll-of-the-bridge]

Sometimes you need to face your past, and that means going home.

(I haven't dabbled in watercolor in a while bu I quite like how this turned out :D)

[ansu-gurleht]

huh. i just realized. i need to figure out more about this timeline these four (malekaiah valer kassur and aryon) occupy by 4e201. like……so much would be different by then. the oblivion crisis doesn’t hit as hard thanks to preparation from what i’m tentatively calling the “new ebonheart pact” between morrowind and black marsh under the hortator ku-vastei and her an-xileel. the empire as a result isn’t as destabilized, meaning the aldmeri dominion has less success (or maybe no opportunity at all) to attack it. martin septim survived and was a successful and beloved emperor who cooperated heavily with the new ebonheart pact and its hortator. orsinium never fell so never had to rebuild, since they were sent aid by the new ebonheart pact and the empire. the red year never happened since the hortator had baar dau mined out completely. no skyrim civil war bc no aldmeri invasion, no great war, etc. it’s honestly a thriving tamriel at this point

[profanetools]

22? (hard mode: nothing about the dwemer)

22. your favorite part of canon that everyone else ignores

I really like Argonian lore. Less so the spirtual/religious/metaphysical aspects of The Hist or Sithis, which is what most people are drawn to, but actually more the sociopolitical history - the organisation of society, the differences between communities/tribes, the rise/fall of Pyramids in favour of a new philosophy, the various plagues, the resistance to the Reman Dynasty, the fact that there was a Kingdom of Argonia at somepoint, the An-Xileel.... it's all really interesting and overlooked imo. Obviously a lot of this ties into imperialism both on an intra- and extra- textual level (as most things with bosmer / khajiit / argonians do tbh), and that can often be difficult to navigate, but I do like that you've got this group whose society has taken all these different forms and have evolved in all sorts of ways in response to the times.

Anyway, think it's telling that after Dwemer, I think the most common OC race I have is a joint tie between Argonian and Orcs.

[nirnrootic]

thinkin abt mirvon this fine morning .......... to most, it's obvious he's hiding some kind of disfigurement, with his full body coverings. to some, it's so obvious, that they think he ought just show it anyway.

but mirvon knows it's better this way. even when he takes it all off, to steep himself in a bath, or to take tender care of his long, long silken hair, his last vestige of beauty, he doesn't like staring too long in the mirror.

memories sometimes cut through like a seared knife. burning, slicing, agonising. he is the result of war, of the pain and suffering of argonians for far, far too many years. he was only a child, less than five years old, when the accession war was waged. his village was one of the first targeted, since they were so close to the southern border. he survived, somehow, by the blessing of his mother who hid him prior to her death. he was taken in secretly by an argonian nurse, who supported the war, but only against those that actively targeted her people, such as house telvanni. her heart was torn to see villages, oft so separated that they were unaffiliated with houses and house squabbles, torn to shreds and burnt to black dust.

she took him into the depths of the black marsh. deep into an-xileel territory. mirvon thought of her as his second mother, an angel where he might've been left to otherwise starve and perish in silence; unknown and unremembered.

but there were great punishments that would lurk in the horizon. years later. for, harbouring a dunmer in an-xileel territory, would result in pain so agonising, that her entire family, mirvon included, wished they would simply drop dead rather than face an-xileel wrath.

[jiubilant]

YES. excited that you mentioned this, thank you for weighing in—would contend that it might not be SPOKEN at winterhold with much regularity, as the hold's velothi population has been almost entirely driven elsewhere by 201 (and very few of the college's current faculty are old enough to remember the scholarly climate of winterhold before the great collapse; brelyna's dialogue also seems to suggest that a wizard of telvanni descent studying at winterhold is now something of a rarity), but knowing how to at least READ velothis would absolutely be a valuable skill for incoming prentices. the arcaneum may well be one of the largest surviving collections of dunmeri-written magical scholarship after the red year and the an-xileel sack of the telvanni

gf and i were talking the other day about the college of winterhold (as we do). given that it accepted students from across tamriel at its height—and that its students from abroad seem to outnumber its local students in 4E 201—it's reasonable to assume that passable fluency in a few languages is expected of or at least preferred in prospective students:

cyrod—the lingua franca of the empire, and of its scholarship. a majority of the arcaneum's texts are written in cyrod; if you can't read it, you might have a bad time at the college

bretic—because of the bretons' great advancements in magic, it's common for mage-scholars to learn bretic in order to keep abreast of the latest scholarly publications from the isles. most bretic tracts are quickly translated to cyrod, but many mages pursue the study of bretic anyway for an edge over their peers

altmeris—ditto for altmeris, though scholarly correspondence between mages in alinor and mages outside it has dwindled to a trickle during the thalmor regime

nordic—this one's most useful in the village when you're trying to order a pint

most of winterhold's masters are fluent in at least three languages (this was common among scholars in antiquity). by 201, incoming students often arrive with much less knowledge of languages other than their own and face a steep uphill climb to understanding their study materials