The Cephalo City, Volume I

To His Grace Emperor Attrebus Mede, may the Eight and One keep you safe.

Per request, I have detailled another of my many adventures travelling around the Starry Heart. I was delighted to know that you enjoyed reading about the somewhat civillized Orcs I met living in the abandoned Dwarven city of Bthardtemz in Hammerfell. Their disregard for the Divines or the Daedra was most bizarre, I can assure you.

I have written this tome for your pleasure, and hope it will satisfy your thirst for knowledge about the citizens of the other provinces. Some embellishments have been made to make the story more exciting, but the story is true all the same.

Quintillius Trebates, Imperial Scribe.

After purchasing a copy of Jouane Errin's most famous epic, Attrebus Mede-The Saviour of Cyrodiil, from a bookstore in Blacklight, I was most intrigued to follow the path you took during the Umbriel Crisis. I asked around the city if anyone would escort me to the south of Vvardenfell, but regrettably no-one would take up my offer, not matter how many Drakes I offered. (These Dark Elves are a stubborn folk, I do not know how you did not place your sword through that companion you had.)

I was about to give up on my potential journey and head east to Skyrim, when a hooded figure approached me and told me to meet her outside the Temple of Azura on a night when Masser was full and Secunda was waxing. I asked her why it had to be with those specific circumstances, but she would not give an answer and disappeared into the crowds as quickly as she had appeared from them.

[Authors note-In the three weeks I had to wait for the moons to be just right, I met with your most beautiful daughter Morihatha, who was a pleasure to be in the company of. She will make a great Empress one day.]

After praying to the Eight and One for days on end, the moons co-operated with each other and my meeting with the woman was to finally happen. The moonlight fell on the Temple of Azura, and she came out of the shadows. After I moved forwards to approach her, I felt a sharp pain at the back of my head. I fell to the ground, and unfortunately I cannot remember anything else of this encounter.

Magnus' rays were cast across my face, and I awoke lying on a rowing boat; choking on the thick ash in the air. I look around at my surroundings, and I could see I was no longer in Blacklight. The ruins of a city lay in front of me, and the Red Mountain in the distance.

I turned to see who was steering the boat, and it was a woman wearing what appeared to be chitin armour, but on further inspection seemed to be her skin. She had a humanoid figure, but the ears of an elf, and her skin was a shade of pink you would see when Magnus is resting his eye over the Abecean Sea. She wore no clothes, save for a pair of netch leather gloves, and carried a large spear on her back.

"It is good to see you are awake, kroki. I feared you might have been hit a little too hard and left this land to go to the Sar Khazar." she said to me as she moved the boat's direction towards the ruined city.

"By the Divines who are you, and where in Oblivion are we?" I asked her.

"Shh, be quiet kroki, you are much too loud. I am Kaatesh, and we are in what your people call the Scathing Bay. We are going to the ruins of Vivec City, and you shall be invited to join our 'family'."

"I hate to be blunt, but what are you? I have travelled all over the Starry Heart and never seen anything like you before."

"You must not have been looking hard enough then. Your people call us the Dreughs, but we call ourselves the Cephalo."

"But Dreughs are just beasts. They cannot speak Common Tamrielic."

"That is true kroki, but I am not speaking in your tongue, you are speaking in mine."

It was at this point that I realised that Kaatesh had not opened her mouth to speak to me, and neither had I to her. I did not know how to respond to this mind-boggling information, so I stayed quiet until we reached Vivec.

I had read about this city back in the Imperial City, about how it had been ruled by a God before the Ministry of Truth crashed into the city and caused the Red Mountain to erupt.

Kaatesh took me from the harbour, through a market (which had stalls run by seemed to be Paatru, white elves, the smallest goblins I had ever seen and of course other Dreughs) and to her house. A broken sign above the door had the word 'Olm' written in Daedric.

I was taken inside, and was told to sit next to what I can only describe as an obese Dreugh sat upon a bed with dwarven spider legs holding it up off the floor.

"And who might you be, kroki?"

"My name is Quintillius Trebates, sir, and I hail from the Imperial City in Cyrodiil." I held out a hand to shake, but he did not return this apparently foreign concept.

The fat dreugh puffed on a skooma pipe, and exhaled the smoke into my direction. "Kaatesh, you travelled all that way for a smooth-skin?"

"Do not be silly, sesa. I was in Blacklight on behalf of the Order, and overheard an esteemed scholar wanted to come here. So I brought him back with me."

"He's a bit small for an evening meal, don't you think?"

After hearing this last remark, I could feel the blood draining from my face. I pushed myself up to leave, but Kaatesh shoved me back into the seat.

"This smooth-skin isn't for eating, sesa. He can help us with our cause."

He looked me up and down, and scoffed at Kaatesh. "Pfft, he doesn't look like he can throw a spear."

"He doesn't have to, he can negotiate with them."

The dreugh looked away from Kaatesh, and moved himself over to the pantry, where he took out an ash yam and begun crunching on it. "They haven't listened before, why is this smooth-skin any different?"

Kaatesh exhaled, seemingly in defeat. "I don't know."

"Well I can see why you didn't want to be the one negotiating. Smooth-skin, my daughter seems to think you are the one to help us against the Grey Ones. Eat some food, and get some rest. You are going to be a very busy man in the days to come."