What Became of the Dreamers

Felix,

Keeping well, brother? I hope your nightmares haven't been too much trouble. I have with me your last letter, and the dreams you have sound just dreadful. You oughtn't put much stock in that alchemist's "remedies," as they ply their trade tricking rubes like you - besides, I may have found a solution to your troubles. Business in Cheydinhal brought me face to face with someone who doesn't dream at all. He didn't offer much in the way of direction, per se, but if you're really bothered by all this I might recommend you book passage to Vvardenfell at first opportunity.

Ah, but I should explain first: between my conversations with Count Indarys I had occasion to stay overnight in the Newlands Lodge - a dark elf establishment, through and through. There was another, more respectable inn across the way, but you know my affinity for local color outweighs any considerations of propriety. At any rate, I was busy sampling imported spirits when I took notice of a deformed elf sitting alone at a nearby table. He had the look of a leper, missing damn near half his face. Unsurprised that he was alone, I nonetheless inquired after him at the bar.

The owner squinted. "Oh, that's old Rukil. Ashlander."

Now Felix, you're well aware how many elves I've known (in many senses of the word) and this Rukil, despite his unfortunate appearance, didn't look a day over a hundred. I remarked as such to the bartender, who patted me condescendingly on the hand. "He has an old soul, serjo. Best to leave him be. Has no disease or anything, just..." And she trailed off, frowned, then repeated her insistence that I just let the matter go.

Assured that Rukil bore no maladies, you can probably guess I proceeded to ignore the bar maid's advice! The mer proved more accommodating than I'd anticipated, offering me a seat and a mug of sujamma, which I took gratefully.

We exchanged the usual pleasantries before I cut straight and sharp to why I'd approached him. You've always been more circumspect than a Colovian ought to be, Felix, but I bear no compunctions about slaking my curiosity, asking directly about the ashlander's missing flesh. He nodded, remarked that I was actually the first to frame the issue as a dialogue, not an opportunity to sneer, and then he spoke:

>It is a simple thing, how I lost my skin. Less simple are the other things I lost.

>I slept in dirt before I came to reside in the Sixth House. My days were spent in misery, my nights in terror. Labor sounds and grunting filled my ears, sometimes of rutting, sometimes killing. The stench of guar shit drowned my nostrils so thoroughly that clean, crisp air was a dizzying shock. With wise women whispering prophecy on one side, and the Sharmat lurking in my dreams on the other, my mind was never calm, always racing. It was exhausting to weigh both their counsel. The tribe always was promised hardship, and only fools like the Urshilaku waited around for heroes to rescue them. We had to raise ourselves up out of the muck, to raid the fat House folk, drive the pale skinned Cyrodiils from our home. Of course it wouldn't be easy.

>The Sharmat said many of the same things, but he spoke more prettily than our wise women, and the consummations he promised were more glorious. Listening to him was seduction. My waking thoughts were filled with endless toil, but my trips to Vaermina's realm were exciting, sensuous affairs of bountiful feasts and victorious battles. In them I saw a land of our own. Visions of Resdayn. I imbibed these lies, and came to be drunk of them.

>These are my recollections of the Velothi, of the Sixth House. Impressions, vague strokes of a shalk's gossamer wings. When I became a Dreamer, memories of the Erabenimsun faded into fog, scarcely visible anymore. When I ceased to Dream, my retainership in House Dagoth was even more thoroughly obliterated, as if one moment I had wandered away from camp into an ashstorm and next found myself sitting naked in a lightless cavern, the waking cries of terrified Dunmer reverberating in the dark.

>We staggered out of that cavern onto the slopes of Red Mountain. The sky above us blazed a vibrant blue, free of swirling blight, as if the Triad had yanked it all from the world.

>I stood there and knew only two things - my name, and the name of my tribe. That isn't the truth, of course, I had blurry recollections of a myriad of things, but none of it seemed so important as reminding myself who I was, where I'd come from. It is how I moored myself to reality, standing among a mass of gibbering Dunmer - some bearing House sigils across their faces, others true Velothi, like me. Our bodies were patchworks of missing flesh and strange, swiftly decaying growths. We were united in deformity, equally lost on that barren cliff side. Some of us remembered our past lives, those who hadn't been immersed in the Sharmat's dreaming for very long, but many more had holes where their memories should be. We trusted the former group to lead us. For days we wandered. The ashstorms had not been stripped from the world as the blight had - many were claimed by the elements, many times we squatted in caverns which dot Vvardenfell like honeycomb, and many were the foemen which drove us off from our shelter. Daedra, criminals, House mer. We were naked and helpless, hated for the signs of the Sixth House we bore.

>On reaching Molag Mar, we numbered four. The Temple, those I thought hypocrites for living in service to traitor gods, offered us food and rest. Few of us survived that could remember who we were. One took up the sermons of the Temple. Another begged and won passage on a silt strider, its destination unknown to me. I learned the current campgrounds of the Erabenimsun from a Redoran scout, and kept going.

>Baldras, the last, followed me. Scales marked his forehead as Hlaalu, the most decadent of the House folk. At the time I did not recall how we Velothi hated the House folk, and how we liked killing the Imperial running dogs most of all. I am sure I once believed these things, fervently and honestly, but today it rings hollow.

>My former tribesmen had not forgotten, of course, so through Baldras' chest they sent a flying spear. It wavered as he drew in a shuddering breath, a sudden, ridiculous extension of his body, and then he dropped into the ashes and scathecraw.

>I was recognized after. My speech and hair passed muster - I would not be killed. They said Velothi had been filtering back into the camps for some time now, dazed and unable to remember who they were. Many were killed initially, but the wise women counseled against this. The warriors wondered what should be done instead? Ahemmusa, Urshilaku, and Zainab were letting these wayward souls back among them as brethren, but the Erabenimsun refused to be corrupted by any lingering traces of Dagoth Ur's legacy. If death could not be meted out for our weakness, then exile would have to do.

>I welcomed this, for as Baldras had died for the skin he wore, I resolved to die in spirit along with him. I could have gone to the Zainab, or the Ahemmusa, but for what I do not know. The only kin I felt I'd had was just murdered in front of me, and the ways of the ashlanders were just familiar enough that I could almost hear the Sharmat's whispering all over again. I could not return to it.

>I traveled. Everywhere I went I found Morrowind in a frenzy, drifting further and further away from the old dreams of Resdayn, becoming always more unsettled, more Western. The false gods vanished. The Empire strode ascendant with their puppet King Helseth. The beast folk were freed. My kind - those that had Dreamed - were quietly shunned everywhere we went, be it cities or Velothi camps. I felt I should be sad at all of this, but instead I only felt a gnawing sense of displacement, like I should be somewhere else, somewhere far from this land I felt I should recognize but couldn't.

>I decided I must try and make a new land my home - so I have sailed over the sea, I have gone up the mountains, and now I come down in Cyrodiil - a land that once held evil portent for me, now only provokes my curiosity.

>The travel does not calm me, though. My sleep has not been restful. I have not dreamed since I was released from my service to the Sixth House; there is only a malingering blankness. Where my dreams return, where the full breadth of my new existence begins to leak into Vaermina's realm, I think, that is where I shall cease my wanderings. In the place that my soul feels whole again.

A remarkable - if dreadful - account, is it not? I plied the mer for more details, particularly how he came to enter into this devil figure's service, but he could not remember. Still! He claimed there were many other "dreamers" in Vvardenfell, and some have retained their memories! Perhaps they, too, do not dream anymore?

I know it's a shot in the dark, Felix, but imagine if one of them could help you! They sound like a wretched lot, but who knows? Might be one will know how to harness the magics or whatever it was this "Sharmat" worked over them - perhaps this is the balm that can soothe your nightly terrors?

Food for thought, dear brother. Give my regards to your wife, would you?

Fondly,
Dimo