Priest to Beast: On the Spinners of Valenwood.

Greetings, friends! I am Saenlen of Arenthia and I present to you this work concerning the magicks of Valenwood. Know that you are privileged to hold in your hands a tale of monsters, priests and magic.

During the Great War, I was injured by an Imperial blade whilst being forced to fight in the Battle of the Red Ring (Naarifin's Blunder we call it in Valenwood) which left me a limping, hobbling excuse for a mer. Naturally, I have travelled far and wide to find a cure for my ailment, studied the religious practices of the many cultures and races which populate Tamriel, and communed with capricious spirits in an attempt to ease my pain. Along my journey, I have met with Velothi mystics, superstitious ashlanders, sugar-frenzied Twilight Cantors, and cloud-singing Greybeards, but of these religious folks, no group were more mysterious than the Spinners of Y'ffre. If you have read 'A Dance in Fire', you may be familiar with the Wild Hunt and think it a fantastical tale. I have actually met the priests who become it, and I can assure you that it is very real.

It took great effort and patience to be accepted by the Spinners. For this particular group were loath to divulge the secrets of Valenwood even to a fellow Boiche, lest some foreign power (read: Thalmor!) should seek to usurp the knowledge for their own dark ends. Having persuaded the Spinners to grant me an audience, I met with 8 of their number who sang to me the old tales of Y'ffre, and they even sang of my own story, prompting me to recall how I had travelled all across Tamriel limping in pain, searching for a mystical panacea to heal the wound which that gladius had inflicted upon me. The Spinners knew my story- knew that I did not believe in their powers- and, chanting in rapid fashion to put me under their magicks' sway, they sang of the Battle of the Red Ring, what the weather had been like, how the anger and fear of each side pulsed like a quickened heartbeat, and how, perchance, the sword may have missed me, changing my narrative self from maimed warrior to agile victor.

When I exited the trance, I could see a Spinner smiling, she was holding a large object in her hands: an Imperial gladius, and with a flash, it faded into nothingness. I examined my hip and found no scar, no evidence of a wound at all, and the old pain which had plagued me was strangely absent. Had these priests actually changed the course of my life, or was I still in some mystic trance- was there even a difference anymore? When questioned, the Spinners told me that they had the ability to sing possible outcomes (perchances they called them) into existence because they sang in harmony with the spirit of the Perchance Acorn. They had sung hundreds of thousands of songs in their lifetimes, using their magicks to alter events in minuscule ways, but they could only make thousands of 'suggestions', they could not force their own envisioned or definite conclusion, they merely provided an elaborate and complex list of better outcomes, and it was up to Y'ffre which event would become reality.

Upon further questioning, the Spinners told me that they had sung many songs to lessen the destruction of the Great War: songs of blood-cooling which made both elf and man less eager for war, songs which told of how Falinesti had found itself in the Winter locale despite the Thalmor raid against it taking place in High Summertime, and finally, songs of the various catapults arrayed against the Walking Tree City failing to hit their mark despite the vast number of calculations employed to ensure their accuracy. Thalmor-issued orders had been misinterpreted and entire legions had been plagued with a profound confusion and lethargy, this had apparently helped save the White Gold Tower from destruction and had ensured Lord Naarifin's defeat to a band of rock-slinging, arrow-loosing bosmeri rebels.

'Everything is perchance', they said, '8 songs were sung to heal you, each one told of a slightly different way in which your wound was healed. However, beware, for a 9th song shall be sung when Arkay's will is done and it shall mark your end as sure as the leaves shall fall in the Autumn.'

Just at that moment, a Cathay-Raht Warband jumped out from the undergrowth and, snarling and baring their fangs, the jaguar-men made a formation with their spears which encircled the priests. In haste, the Spinners began a rapid chorus of rhythmic chanting, intoning the power of Ooze and calling upon dangerous magicks to come to their aid. In a bright white flash the Spinners were transformed into a giant orb of black ooze which began to divide itself at high-speed into a great multitude of fearsome abominations: bears with spikes for fur, deer with sabre teeth and dragon wings, boar with golden hide and glaring red eyes, giant fire-breathing serpents who dripped acrid and caustic venom from their fangs, and wolves made of dark smoke which were larger even than a senche tiger, all these emerged from the pulsating sphere of ooze. Yet still, more beasts poured from the orb until a group of eight Spinners had become a host of hundreds of shadowy, amorphous beasts who howled to the night and sought the Cathay-Raht as their meal. In what felt like an instant, the Wild Hunt was upon the Khajiit, ripping them apart, cracking their bones and supping of the marrow in an orgy of death and viscera.

With the Cathay-Raht lying dead all around them, the beasts turned upon themselves, consuming each other in a frenzy of blood until only eight beasts remained. These beasts howled to the sky what sounded like chants and slowly collapsed into shadowy pools of ooze which then formed back into the shape of the Spinners. Peering at the grim spectacle, I could see that each Spinner wore a raiment of gore and blood and that they immediately sat down to cook the khajiit in accordance with the Meat Mandate which they apparently extended to even non-mer, such was their combined hunger after their transformation. After witnessing such a macabre feast, I could not stomach (pardon the pun) the smell of roasting cat flesh and made haste homeward to Arenthia.

And so if you should ever believe the Wild Hunt to be a falsehood, do not be so foolish as to test the theory by provoking conflict with one of Y'ffre's Spinners.