Racial Variations in Interrogation: Nords

I am not the original author of the Racial Differences in Torture and Interrogation series, but I made sure I wasn't stepping on Matobar's toes before I even wrote this. He gave me the go ahead. And in the space of two sleep-deprived hours, I wrote what you see below. It's probably awful. But hopefully you'll enjoy it.

Racial Variations in Interrogation: Nords

The Dunmer had no idea how long the party had gone on. She didn't even remember her name at this point.

"Ei, Elf! Bottoms up!" And the sound of drops spattering to the stone tiled floor filled the room like sizzling meat over a pit fire. When she went to put the bottle down, she inadvertently let go and it shattered. The sound was awful, and it just went on and on. The smell was worse. Everything smelled like a brewery based around rancid blood.

"Aye, there ya go, milkdrinker! There's a girl!" The laughter was raucous, echoing, and harsh like a new grindstone. It pounded in her ears until she swore she'd be deaf. Blinking in involuntary slow motion, too much alcohol and too little sleep, her eye caught on one of the filthy men, the one with the frizzy beard that stood out in all directions, laughing heavily, hand half-way to clapping his knee. Her eyes closed, and her mind played it back on a stuttering loop for a moment, and she couldn't help but notice all of his teeth were pristine.

These were, after all, the Stormcloak interrogation specialists, the Velmannar or "Glad-Men". Their techniques were unfathomably crude, but they worked. And they had appearances to keep up when they reported to their superiors, hence the teeth.

She tried to recall the mantra for a clear mind she had been taught in the Temple, but her thoughts were jarred when another glass bottle was shoved rudely into her hand.

"Drink up, elf, drink up! We've all got tales to tell now, and Hrolmnir is gonna start us off. Drink while you can!"

There was no resisting. Any attempt at resistance would break the script, and it would immediately turn into a flat-out beatdown as the interrogators systematically demolished every bit of furniture in the mead hall over her head and back until she couldn't move. Then a nurse would be sent in, she would be returned to health (with, she suspected, the aid of Magicka), and the process would begin again.

So she knocked off the neck of the bottle on the chair, not caring when the glass cut her lips or a couple small shards went down her throat. Such things were meaningless.

It was the dirty one. Oh, they were all dirty, but that broken feedback loop that had played in her head of the man set him apart as especially dirty, somehow. He was covered in mud and soot. He stood up and began to walk around the room as the story began.

"So, Ulfric's not the most light-handed of Nords. Heart of steel, that one. And he says to me: 'Hrolmnir, these dark elf scum are polluting my part of the city. I want them in their ghetto or gone.' And I know what he really means is make it look like they brought it on themselves, because we don't need an uprising. So I pay this kid playing near the gates to run down and tell the Argonian dockhands that the elves are talking about reinstituting slavery. That's still a sore spot for the sorry bastards. By Ysmir, they drowned the damned elves and threw their bodies to the wolves!"

She had expected laughter. Humiliation. This was the first time she'd gone this far without resisting, and she expected more degradation. Instead, there were murmurs of a kind of assent. The fat one with the burn scars grunted, "Y'did what ya had to. Was the Argonians' choice to go dirty, after all." She was named Hausta. She'd had always been the quietest thus far.

The one who had handed her the bottle... Beitar, she thought? He spoke up too, and the cloying stink of alcohol tripled. "And ol' Ulfric didn't need to have them done away with. As you said, he's a hard, frosty Nord. Heart of steel, beard of stone." He coughed, and the man opposite him flinched and wiped at his face. "It was the right thing. A true Nord's way is not to question your superiors."

The stories went on in this vein. "I did some horrible, racist thing!" "Ah, wasn't your fault, look at the circumstances." After the first couple of stories, the tone started to shift towards the targets of their crude behaviors not deserving such treatment. To anyone with a full set of mental faculties, it was transparent.

At first, she, too, was dimly aware that there was a sense of camaraderie they were trying to build with her. But the doubts nagged. They wanted to know what she was doing and why, and it seemed clear that they had done similar things and that forgiveness was in their power. She began to dwell on it, taking occasional pulls of that mead... What was in it, anyway? Tasted like... Tomatoes. A tap on her head, a mere inch from a still-tender bruise, pulled her up before she could consider further.

"Your turn, elf! Get up, get up!"

She (with much difficulty) stood upright and turned toward the table. Her hair hung in front of her eyes, and for some reason she couldn't seem to reach it to move it out of the way.

"Aye, it's no bother, let me help you with that." Large, coarse hands pulled her hair aside. They smelled like soot and tomatoes and sweat. Candles blazed in long parade lines down the table. The smoke formed a filmy haze over everything. Before her sat all but one of the Velmannar; Beitar was at her back, steadying her on her feet. They had eager smiles on their faces. She had their undivided attention.

Something about tomatoes...

"Come on now! Get to talking!" Hausta's voice. In response, with great dignity and effort, she managed to croak out a meager question.

"Wrr-What am I talking about again?"

There was a pause, and then uproarious laughter.

It was Beitar's voice that spoke. The stench of his foul breath had acquired a thickness sufficient to be seen in the air.

"Aye, I think our little elf has had a bit much to drink! Not used to that Nordic swill, are ya?" She began to shake her head automatically, but a finger on her jawbone stopped her. "Easy there, don't want you to pop now! We were talking about the things we've done, is all. Awful things, every one of us has done 'em, but here's a safe place to let it all out." The nods started in unison.

It was hypnotic. Even the room was nodding. She could remember now, the things they had said so far. The things they had done. And she almost slumped with relaxation, because this was a safe place. As her vision dimmed, as her eyes closed, she breathlessly whispered to her rapt, hushed audience of the plan.

They had many spellcasters. The Nords mostly did not have any. It would have been simple, a little thing -- just a fire rune on every doorway. Just that. And the lightning runes in the windows, of course. She could hear them nodding. Undivided attention.

And then the march, of course. Just burn the houses down that were still occupied. And with the bows, the imperial bows, they had acquired a shipment, she didn't know where from, just shoot the guards. Just that. No more. It was justice for racism, after all. And there was no suffering, no terror. Just one short series of events.

Take the docks. Force the Argonians into the sea. Burn the boats, and the piers. A little thing. It was all just that, a little thing. One little thing, nothing more. Not the litany of abuse and the ghetto and the enforced poverty. Just. One. Thing. And make a little place in Skyrim for just them, just the Dunmer, to be safe.

And her role? Coordinating the runes. Just that. She wasn't trusted with anything else. She was a fencer and a strategist, nothing else. Fencing? Worthless. Strategy? Useful, so long as it were properly focused and applied. That's what the others had said.

She opened her eyes, but her vision was too blurry to see anything much. Silence stretched on before her, except for the thump of her heartbeat in her ears. Beitar's quiet voice was like thunder next to her ear. The smell made her nose run defensively.

"Is that all, then, elf?"

"Yeah -- yes, I mean... There's nothing else to say about it."

Nine blurs in front of her bobbed up and down. There was a scraping of chairs, and Beitar's grip on her shoulder was suddenly firm. "That's good, elf. You did good."

Hausta's seared face leaned into her vision, the individual features coalescing shockingly from the blurred vision. "She's a goner, sir. Gave her too much of the nightshade, y'damned idiot."

"Shut up, Briehla. It damned well worked, didn't it?" Of course, she thought. Tomatoes. Nightshade is related to tomatoes, and they smell similar. And of course they wouldn't use their real names. Dunmer ancestral magic meant that Briehla's operational security was compromised even now, in theory. And of course they'd be nice, she was destined to die, and the Nords had always treated the dead well.

"Do you want to die on your feet, elf?" Beitar was suddenly in front of her, cleaning off his arms and pulling on a proper Stormcloak uniform. "We can give you that honor. Or you can lay down and shit your own bedsheets in agony as the nasty part kicks in, if you're the soft little dark elf you seem to be."

"I..." She paused, thought processes hanging on the weight of alcohol and toxic alkaloids. "I, I will take two of you with me."

Beitar smiled a grim smile as he lowered his helmet into place.

The next thing she remembered was that helmet crashing into her face to knock her off of the sword, landing on a cooling body, dropping the knife they had handed her. There was a moment where she was certain she was going to throw up, because all she could smell and taste was blood. She crazily wondered, will my family recognize me? Or will they think I'm an orc?

And then the kicking and stomping of 7 hobnailed Nord boots started, but she was already halfway to Oblivion before she could feel the blows hit her.