A Void-Sailor's Primer: The Dark

Interview with Saj’varra, Priest of Azurah Temple of Dusk, Secunda

What you must know, tail-less scholar, is that it began as an idea – a vision of the Mane.

Ma’zhjad, called the Mad, ascended a few years after the mananauts fled back to Nirn. During his meditation in the Temple of Lorkhaj he had a vision of the Wheel; he saw the plane(t)s of the Princes, the light of Magrus, the stars…all at the center, the hub. He claimed he saw the Dark beyond the stars…the remainder of the Wheel.

The priests and mages were…skeptical. But the Mane used his authority to assemble a great fleet, a spiritual pilgrimage of illumination. Many were the Khaj who went with him, eager for this sacred enlightenment. It was ten years before they returned, or rather, ten years before the survivors returned. A single Remanite ship: the NVM Waymaker.

Imagine when you have sailed so far beyond the stars that everything you have known – Nirn, Magrus, the entire fundament – is a single light behind you. Imagine when you can see that light no more. That, tail-less one, is when you have entered the Dark: the demesne of Anu’s Second Children. The Prophet wrote of Our Father’s pain when his First, the et’Ada, left him for Lorkhaj’s deception. He said, “Anu poured his anger, regret, and guilt into the Beginning Place. And they teemed before him, a turmoil of all he did not want, all he would not comprehend. So he turned from them and looked elsewhere for his joy.”

The Children haunted the Dark and filled it with myth-echoes of the Father’s emotion. It seethed with their hatred: for the Light and for themselves. They created their own plane(t)s, their own realms, their own Empires. They filled the Wheel with violence. And that is when the ‘nauts of Reman came as conquerors.

Ma’zhjad found what remained. He found the Children feasting on their Light.

Most of the survivors were taken to monasteries, tended by the religious of Mara. Some found healing and with it their voices; from them we learned. But most…most lay muttering to themselves of voices without blood, entities comprised of Un-light. Perversions of Life itself, mockeries of Creation.

Since the Landfall and the Miracle of Union there are some who seek it; thrill-seekers, scholars and fools. The Khajiit will not. We learned long ago.

Yes, the Prophet went; or did he? Are his writings factual or theological? Did he live to see the War of the Trees and Minute-Menders, did he live until the 11th Era, only to Return? Or is it a mystery, a mystical meditation? You must ask Ra’zhiin, though he will not tell you. But Khajiit do not need to ask.

We will never again seek the Dark.

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For more Ra'zhiin's experiences in the Dark, see: http://akhajiitc0daverse.com/a-khajiit-denouer.pdf