Minor Factions of Skyrim: The Seventh Source

by Dervyn Releth

I awoke to the smell of strange herbs.

“The Wise One awakens.”

Sitting over my form was a man clad in a simple green robe. Only a simple green robe, and unfortunately not one that left much to the imagination either. He was a Breton or an Imperial youth who looked no older than eighteen human years, but his eyes were glazed and beset with bags, as if he had not slept in some time.

“…Where am I?”

“You are in the tent of the Seventh Source, O Wise One. Please, partake of the musks.” He bowed.

A bowl of some strange potion was next to me. I sipped it carefully. “What happened to me?”

The boy’s head jerked upward, as if being pulled by an invisible rope. His hand shot up. “You fell from the sky. You were being chased by one of Mother Kyne’s beasts.”

A memory resurfaced. In my tactical retreat from an unfortunate incident involving a frost troll and a former Companion, I must have slipped and fell from some height. It would explain the pain besetting my leg.

(This chronicle is told elsewhere)

“The musk will heal you of your wounds, Wise One. Herb-Song made it herself.”

“Herb-Song?” I said.

“Yes. That is her name. Well, her new name. All who have escaped the Lie take new names, Wise One.”

I scratched my brow. “What’s with all this ‘Wise One’ crap?”

“Ah! Moon-Flower sends his apologies. The Wise Ones are those like yourself, free from the impurities of Man. Source-Toucher is one like yourself. He sailed here all the way from your shared homeland of Aldmeris.”

Er, what? I thought. “Dunmer are from Morrowind, not Aldmeris.”

The boy looked at me like I had eaten a live skeever.

“...So Moon-Flower sees that even the Wise Ones fall victim to the Greedy One’s lies.”

I sat up despite the pain in my leg. “OK, I need an explanation. What in Oblivion is this ‘Seventh Source’ and what does it have to do with the ‘Greedy One’?“

He bowed again.

“Apologies, Wise One. Allow Moon-Flower to explain.”

The world, as he told me, was under a Lie told by the Greedy One. His forms were manifold. Sometimes he would appear as the World’s Maw, eating bit by bit of the world and throwing it up anew. Other times he would be the Doom Drum, beating and beating and beating new Lies into the heads of Men. Still other times he would be the Sixteen Iniquities, whose minions peopled in the Place That Never Was And Never Will Be. Occasionally he would be the Tyranny of the Sun, whose powers were used to call upon his minions from the Abyss or twist the world so that his priests’ will (and by extension his) would be made manifest into the world. In fact, all modern history, science and magic were Lies of the Greedy One.

The only ones working against this were the Triplicate Goddess, who had three Faces – Mother Morwha, Mother Kyne and Mother Dibell. Their founder, an Altmer named Source-Toucher, had been contacted by them in his dreams and had been told the secret histories of Mundus.

Scholarly readers will be familiar with the concept of the “Dragon Break”, but Source-Toucher was told that the Dragon Break a. never really ended and b. broke much more than just time. When the Monkey Men (agents of the Greedy One) defiled the Mundus with their tyrannous sorceries, they broke its laws so hard that they were never able to coalesce back into shape again. Reality was now dictated by the Greedy One, bent to serve the Greedy One’s agenda. Only through the use of herb-derived hallucinogens called musks (modern alchemists and alchemy were viewed as more agents of the Greedy One), ritualised sex and meditation around esoteric patterns of words could True Gnosis be reached. Curiously, only Source-Toucher has ever reached True Gnosis, and when pressed for further details he declined to comment.

As for the Wise Ones? They were elves. Elves were considered to have a special connection to the Goddess, and thus purer than the other races. I declined to mention the fact that many so-called “agents of the Greedy One” were mer.

As Moon-Flower explained all this to me, a robed woman entered the room bearing another bowl of musk. I presumed she was “Herb-Song”. She was completely silent when she entered, and her eyes were even more glazed than Moon-Flower’s were.

She set the bowl beside me. I did not dare touch the wretched thing.

“I think I shall take it from here.” I said.

I cast a Healing spell, enjoying the feel of magic cracking the fracture back into place.

“Lies.” Moon-Flower muttered. “Lies of the Greedy One.”

“No! It’s, uh...it’s a power from the Goddess.” I said, startled.

Moon-Flower only closed his eyes. “The mysteries of the Wise Ones...” He either believed me or was too high to care.

It was at that point that Herb-Song took off both of their robes and the two started copulating in front of me.

A while passed. No visible emotions from either of them, despite the intimacy of the act.

Eventually, Moon-Flower opened his mouth and started singing. Badly.

On the nature of the song’s actual content, I am hazy. I have a dim memory of the words “Wise Ones”, “Source-Toucher” and “great mysteries” being howled at volumes that would make the Greybeards tremble. I do not wish to remember more.

All I remember for sure is that halfway through it, Herb-Song opened her mouth in a silent scream. Her tongue had been cut off.

I stood up, grabbed my staff and left the Seventh Source forever.

When I had come a good distance from their encampment, I realised I had left my satchel of potions with them. I could not care less about what happened to it, I decided.