The Ghost-Bladed Golem

As per your request, I have found what remains of the salient records. It was incredibly difficult to find, as these short-lived Men change their documentation system with nearly every generation. Consider implementing the Phynasterian System for future cataloguing.

…and both the second and third regiments were slaughtered. The fourth, however, had a large contingent of battlemages, which I led, and was thus able to bring the beast down with well-applied pyromancy. I was forced to step through piles of the corpses and limbs of my men to investigate further that which had done such grievous harm to us, but before I made my way into the chamber I was struck by the wounds I observed.

Having been trained in Restoration magicks, wounds are not at all unfamiliar sight to me. But there was something strange about these; there all appeared to be cuts, yes, but they lacked the ripped flesh around the edges and slight curvature that speaks of a bladed weapon. No, the edges of the wound were bizarrely neat, and the angle of the trauma was almost mathematically perfect. In some instances I was reminded of the precise cross-sections of tissue and flesh present in Restoration manuals. I noted that the edges of the chamber where the battle had taken place were also marked with the same strange striations, though expressed in stone rather than flesh.

Once the beast that had caused so much devastation had fallen, it seemed to twitch and groan as if still alive. I assured my men that it was merely a trick of the escaping steam, though I admit that my courage may have faltered for a moment. It was a Dwemer centurion, though only barely recognizable as such. It lacked the wholeness of its shining brethren, instead existing as a bizarre brass skeleton with exposed mechanalia and a face of whirling gears. Its left arm was like that of a man, though it was the right arm which had decimated so many loyal Legionaries. Instead of the large hammer or blade typical of such creatures, the arm consisted instead of a long, straight brass pipe. The pipe had a series of holes of various sizes and shapes inside of it, and each hole had a small lip near the bottom of it. It appeared for all of Nirn like a flute, though one blessed by Sheogorath.

During the battle I had noticed the strange being brandished by the shining golem like a sword. There was a strange emanation around the pipe, similar to the distorting heat-waves that surround the air in a forge or the horizon on a summer’s day, though there was no heat lingering on the pipe itself. The wounds itself were also curiously absent of any charred or burned flesh. Perhaps most curiously, I distinctly remember an awful, undulating sound coming from the centurion’s arm when it still moved, and that whistling seemed to worm into one’s head like the screeching of those damned to Coldharbor.

The pipe, which some of the men have taken to calling the Ghost-Blade, has been disconnected from its armature. We’ve brought it to the Imperial City, as we believe that it may be of interest to His Majesty. We recommend giving it to the Mage’s Guild for further study, and my personal recommendation is to…

The documentation is too destroyed to read past this point, another casualty of the poor recording-keeping of men. We have determined that “ghost-blade” is a misnomer borne of ignorance. We theorize that the blade utilized the tonal architecture of the dwemer, specifically the mysterious “untone”; much as a talented singer may modulate her voice to shatter fine crystal, so too does the ghost-blade vibrate the very nature of the Aurbis into localized disarray. Further study is recommended, as replicating and miniaturizing the technology could lead to an immensely useful tool for our endeavors in the upcoming centuries. While we have found this notice confirming the existence of the dwemeri ghost-blade, the artifact itself could not be found within the storage of the White-Gold Tower. I recommend searching through the stocks of the Synod for any artifacts left there by their predecessors.