When the Bird-Mer Flew Away
Welcome everyone, now’s as good a time as any to tell you all a special story. It happens on my favourite mother, Nirni!. Though we have to give thanks to Meridia, the one who told me the story and gave me these lovely feathers to remember it.
Now, way way back when Ald Cyrod didn’t have a big empire the Ayleids were in charge. It was a bit odd for them at the time, because they still had a wicked love for birds but they were worshipping any kind of everything; some of them even loved math so much they went crazy over the number 8!
But, the Ayleids found themselves a nasty surprise. A flying bull man caled Morihaus came down with his uncle, who was a time-travelling false-life blood-drinking mass murderer called Pelinal; but he looked like a knight so most men figured it was okay. Those two came down to the slaves called Nedes and helped free them from as many Ayleids as they could. But the problem was the Ayleids didn’t want their workers to go, so they started wars with each other. The sad thing is Pelin-El was a fucking headcase and when one of his good friends died he went mental and killed everything around him.
Like literally, he killed every single thing around him. He even crushed a baby bird in his metal hand. It only got worse after that too.
The Ayleids were freaking out a little, because Pelinal was really damn good at killing everything (they even say one of his hands could shoot a death light at you!). So a few of them get together and start contacting Meridia – who wasn’t a big fan of Pelinal – to see if they could work something out.
But I haven’t told you the romance story yet! Morihaus – who some call Breath-of-Kyne – was in love with the queen of the slaves. Her name was Alessia (some scholarly bastards call her other names too, but that doesn’t matter). She liked to ride Morihaus and he liked her company, because Alessia was a very special lady. Pelinal tried to stop them, because he figured that Ada and Ehlnofic races shouldn’t mix together like that; and Morihaus was conflicted because that was his elder (or younger. Pelinal’s crazy) but you can’t help loving the ones you love, can you? So Morihaus did the only thing that felt right and that’s how Minotaurs were created.
Whilst that happened, Pelinal killed everyone in what’s now called the Imperial City. Well, everyone who didn’t run out before he got to them. Anyway, blood and feathers and gore everywhere. Some folk say that Alessia had to give sacrifices to her gods so that they wouldn’t leave the Mundus, but I reckon that was just a threat to get Pelinal back in line.
When he was done with that genocide, he went looking for the rest of the Ayleids. Some of them thought that they’d fly to Skyrim, but there was only more angry men there. There was also Resdayn, but they heard stories about what the Dwemer do to other mer, so they figured “better not”. Most went down to Valenwood, because the Bosmer are usually pretty relaxed and nice folk, although they had to adjust their diet to make sure they didn’t get kicked out by angry beasts.
Pelinal couldn’t calm down, so he tried to go down to Valenwood but was stopped by a very loud king. Pelinal then went to one of the northern kingdoms of the Khajiit, what we call Elsweyr now. Pelinal killed a lot more of what he thought were mer, or at least funny looking Ayleids. He kept going until a giant flying cat on fire came down and smacked his shit. This was observed by the Man-Who-Is-Not-Really-A-Cat-Man-But-Says-He-Is (because he told us this part of the story); the cat then sent Pelinal up to a flying furball, who tried to calm him down. It didn’t work entirely, but the giant cat did a wicked flaming spear tackle on Pelinal all the way back down to Nirni and he never went back again, so at least it worked.
Meanwhile, the Ayleids and Meridia came to an agreement. Meridia gave them a champion whose mother was Ayleid and father was “divine” (though I reckon Meridia’s trying to hide it actually being her child. She is the one who told a bit of this story). He was called “Umaril” and had no feathers.
I could tell you all the crazy details of their fight, but we don’t want to ramble, so basically Pelinal won but Umaril didn’t die. At least, not properly. Umaril came back with a bunch of his family and killed Pelinal for the 2nd or 3rd time (I told you he’s special) and then split him in Eighths (and I told you they loved that number).
So, did the great bird-mer return to owning the centre of the Starry Heart? Well, no. Pelinal killed way too many of them and the people formerly called Nedes had become brave and strong, even taking some help from the big Nords from a place called Keizaal (but they don’t like that name). Now all that’s left are legends; and maybe a few birds. Some figure that when the big bad Oblivion Crisis happened, the remaining bird-mer flew in flocks to their Daedric masters; but come on, that’s ridiculous.
We’ll see you next time!