Prologue

Thrice-Blessed and Thrice-Cursed – Memories of a Dunmer Pilgrim, Vol. 1

by Erdar Nyrandil, 4E 202

Author’s Note

I have always been one for moderation and balance. When I first began piecing together this memoir, I struggled for a title, and in the end, I feel that I have found a title representative of that balance in my life.

Throughout a great deal of my life, I maintained a series of meticulous journals, which meant that creating this memoir was a labor of playing the role of editor more than author. The writing was largely done, and I needed only to properly select excerpts from my journals and piece them together. However, my faithful journal logs did not commence until I was nearly thirty. As short and perhaps insignificant of a time thirty years may seem, a titular part of my tale takes place in those first thirty years, so I have chosen to recount these years in the prologue. After all, like with any book, a life cannot happen without a beginning.

Prologue

The Curse of Loss and My Exodus from Morrowind

I was born under the sign of the Tower, back when birthsigns still mattered to people, on the 22nd of Frostfall in the year 396 of the Third Era. For the first few years of my life, I called the Redoran city of Ald’ruhn home. As members of Great House Redoran, my parents dedicated themselves to service to the Tribunal Temple, the glory of House Redoran, and to the care of family. With these values ever in mind, my father proudly served House Redoran as a city guard, and my mother maintained a respected shop near the Skar while raising me and instilling in me at a very young age an interest in the art of the merchant. These happy years constitute less than six years of my life. By the waning days of my sixth Midyear, the first of my life’s curses would rear its retched head. It began with a cough.