The Emperor, The Underking, and The Bastard Divine

or

##The Talosian Grimoire

####Part 1: 'Legendary'

>"...Did you really expect to be able to worship the Lord of Might and Conquest without adversity forever?"

The ascension of Talos to the Divine Metathrone of Aetherius is one of the most confusing, impermeable, and genuinely fascinating elements of all Elder Scrolls lore. By now many people know the basics of the secrets concealed within the legacy, the hidden origins, plots and betrayals forgotten along the way. But there's always been a sort of missing link for most. Okay, they did all this stuff and there's a very cool story behind it and now he's a god, but...how? Why? You can throw out words like "Entantiamorph" and "Mantling" and "CHIM," but it still doesn't elucidate the exact process. Those words are echoes of myth. They are symptoms exhibited by power, but not the power itself.

The other preliminary thing I want to talk about here is an example of life imitating art that I've gotten endless amusement out of over the last 5 years: look at your average Skyrim player. "Fuck the Thalmor! Praise Talos!" And yet if you were to ask these people what they could actually tell you about Talos, why they think the Thalmor hate him with such violent energy and invection, then what, like maybe a few of them could tell you that Talos was "Tiber Septim, the Emperor!" and he ascended to godhood because "Well, he was just that good!" or "The people really liked him so they decided to remember him as a god!" or "The Thalmor are just jealous of him!" or "Shut up, I just do okay?"

You know what it reminds me of, precisely? Nords. A bunch of Nords in Skyrim worshipping Talos with the exact same blind fervor and little to nothing else backing it. Hell I imagine a big reason for most of them is simply because someone else is telling them they aren't allowed to. It's so perfect I refuse to believe it was intentional or planned.

Anyways, let's begin.

The background and setup for much of this first part draws heavily from The Arcturian Heresy. Now being a heresy and all, you can place about as much trust in it as you can in the words of the Dissident Priests, which is to say "some, kinda." However, heresies do go a long way towards unveiling the truth when weighed together with the official accounts. I wrote a similar post years ago that begins to piece together this info and start to extrapolate "truer" elements from it. This series will be the evolution/conclusion of that initial train of thought. But it will also be an open discussion of its elements, for Truth must be cut from a collective of thought.

The zero-point of this entire topic is that Talos started off as nothing more than a story. A fabricated illusion. Larger than life. A lie that demanded belief in its perfect simulated veracity. It begins with a broken undead king, defeated and forgotten, only his desire for revenge left burning with all else being reduced to ash centuries before: Ysmir Wulfharth.

The Second Era was coming to a close and the winds of change had begun to blow in the North, as war among the races of men took the region. And on Kyne's breath so too came a prophecy from her Tongues at Hrothgar. The voice of the Sky foretold the rising of a new champion of mankind, one who would finally unite all the peoples of Tamriel under one banner.

Wulfharth was like, "Ha, that's me! I'm your man. As you can see I have an impressive resume with centuries of work experience slaughtering filthy gold-skinned devils and there was even this thing at Red Mountain where Shor himself basically took control of-" and the Greybeards were like "NO!!!!!!" except way louder than that and he was blasted back into ash and just generally furious at the whole way the day had gone for him. The Hero of Prophecy was just...some kid?

Well all of you who've read this far already know who the kid was. Yung Hjalti, spittin fire and frost and power at all y'all peoples. Was he from High Rock? Probably. Was he a pure-blood Breton? Don't be silly, that's an oxymoron! Was he from Atmora like the legends say? Not until later. Who knows his true birth origins, none of us ever will and really it's beside the point. Anyway, Hjalti's quite the talented young dragonborn and even his basic command of the thu'um has been enough to already gain notoriety in the Colovian warlord Cuhlecain's coalition of Nords and Imperials battling the Reachmen for control of Western Skyrim. And yet their forces have reached an impasse at the stronghold of Old Hroldan, deep in enemy territory. So old Wulf Kingmaker seeks out Hjalti the Kid one night before a pivotal battle, in the midst of a raging storm. Echoes of Yoku-Nordic myth of times long past rebound throughout the camp as the Spiritual Assumption plays out yet again. And the next morning Hjalti walks onto the battlefield enshrouded by an impenetrable whirlwind of ash and frost and thunder and sound and power. The Storm of Kyne makes him an unstoppable force and he shouts the walls clean down as his future Legions flood into the fortress and show the men of the Reach what's really good.

Thus was the legend of General Talos born into this world.

STORMCROWN, they called him. Never in their lives had they seen such a warrior's like. He commanded the very creatia of the natural order itself to obey his Voice. They had no idea about the ghost above the curtain of the storm. To them it seemed like these actions and the ones that followed in victory after victory were those of a single, exceptional man. To those Nordic berserkers who stood behind him as Hroldan fell he must have already seemed a god. But that's the whole point. It's why I'm telling you all this to begin with. Because Talos started as an illusion, a man who seemed like a great man but in truth was more than one man, and the legend spread and hyperbolized more and more until Talos was a bonafide super hero. Those who saw him in action were amazed and those who didn't were even more so the further away you were, aside from the requisite percentile of skeptics who refused to believe any story on general principle of course.

The legend grows and eventually once the Colovian Estates have seen Cuhlecain's prowess he expands into Nibenay and takes the Ruby Throne, later being colloquially known as "Emperor Zero" of the Septim dynasty. In this period of consolidation the star general Talos is introduced to another Cyrodiilic military celebrity: the genius battlemage Zurin Arctus. What do we know about this man? Surprisingly little, to tell the truth, at least of his early life before this whole mess really kicked into gear. As I've said he was already something of a well-known figure in the Imperial City. I really enjoy the ideas that get kicked around from time to time that he had some Akaviri ancestry in his bloodline as that's all kinds of fitting, and not really all that uncommon in Second-Era Heartland. Well at any rate the man is a master strategist and before long, he's let in on a little secret by Lil' H and meets the Underking.

"Ah, so that's how you've been doing it. Impressive."

Strategic mastermind Arctus sees the potential here. And Wulfharth's already playing the long game. Do the people really love this new emperor? Of course not, they only care about his star quarterback who's been winning everything for him. I heard he can break walls with his voice! I heard a volley of arrows fired at him turned to dust! I heard he can burn your eyes out with a look! I heard he pleasured an entire tavern of Argonian wenches in one night! Who really won the Ruby Throne in the end?

So they killed him. Probably. I mean, if you believe the heresy anyway. They probably killed him. Had to happen some way or another. Blame it on the Bretons, Peyrite's' blood just hire some Bretons, who cares, we got shit to do. Time to expand, because now begins the reign of Emperor Tiber Septim.

The stories of the Emperor have spread far and wide at this point, and his mystique only grows further with talk of him being able to appear in multiple places at once. Wulfharth masquerades as a silent Emperor during the expansion into Skyrim while Hjalti holds court in the capital with Arctus and begins the machinations to annex Hammerfell by exploiting the civil war between the Crowns and Forebears which happens over the next decade, along with the plot of TES:Redguard. Waiting on the horizon are the elves, the Underking's true reason for bothering with any of this.

Throughout the acquisitions of the various human provinces, Wulfharth is adamant in his insistence and pressure for the Red Legions to attack his ancient enemies in Morrowind. His two colleagues have heard all the legends ALMSIVI have created in their own right, and are rightfully skeptical about the wisdom of engaging Morrowind in a military conflict. Perhaps this is one for the treaty table. Good practice for the Dominion, arguably an even greater adversary overall than these three demigods. This infuriates the Underking, and he takes it as a direct betrayal. He withdraws all his power and aid to the Empire, which of course makes a direct conflict even less feasible.

So the Emperor travels to Morrowind and meets with its resident warrior poet.

What they speak of will change the course of history for the next two eras.

Unfortunately since our boy Cyrus wasn't present I don't think our potentially-mutual friend Kaptain Bryden Kirk is ever going to write about the meeting that took place between Tiber and Vivec. Probably better that way tbh, at least some of the meeting should be left to the imagination. Vivec had imagined him long, long ago after all. But many words were had about how best to integrate Morrowind into this brave new changing world while still retaining its national identity and proud heritage of independence from literally everything but itself and the Heart of Lorkhan. An Armistice goes underway. The Empire gets to tap into some of that sweet sweet ebony the province is rife with, and ALMSIVI and their Temple get to go pretty much unperturbed in their affairs. A nice new client state.

Except one more thing gets floated to sweeten the pot and seal the deal: Vivec still has the Numidium. Well, most of it anyway. What a nice, neat little solution to the problem of those troublesome Altmer to the southwest. The Lord of the Middle Air doesn't have much use for it, maybe this hotshot from the starry heart wants to take it for a test drive instead? A couple problems though: this thing is hard-coded to run on pure Shezzarite AE. The Heart of Lorkhan is its engine, and that's very much off-limits because Vehk and Co. need to drink from it on the reg time shift

^(note: here is the part where Vehk is lying. Even he can no longer access the Heart; Dagoth Ur now controls it from within the Ghostfence with the Buoyant Armigers struggling to suppress his growing army of ash spawn. ALMSIVI wants a war even less than Septim and Arctus do, but they cannot let them know this.)

return But but but, I know something you don't know... that friend of yours Tiber, the old dead one? Has he ever told you about that time he was Lorkhan's avatar for a little while? Whole thing at Red Mountain right before my second face came onto the scene, real messy, couple good friends of mine bit it that day. Aw what am I saying, I bet you can't get him to shut up about it. Tells the story every chance he gets, doesn't he, old snow demon bastard? Well Tibsy, your boy the Underking might just be the key to making this godform take a stroll across the Blessed Isle. Look into it.

So the Emperor heads on back to his resident "guy in the chair" battlemage and gets him up to speed on the new developments. An aetherial lightbulb flicks on above Arctus' head and the gears start to turn. If they could somehow "trick" the Numidium into "thinking" it's being powered by the Heart of Lorkhan with a close enough Shezzarite AE signature...with some sort of massive soul gem...well then all they'd really need is the right soul, and nothing on Tamriel could possibly hope to stop the conquest that would ensue.

And so the Thief and the Mage did conspire to murder the Warrior.

Septim extends an olive branch to the brooding Underking. He is humble and apologetic, saying he's had a change of heart: he has the Eastern Devils lulled into a false sense of security and now is the perfect time to strike and enact Shor's vengeance upon their blasphemy. Remember Zurin's famous saying, “Only in victory will the enemy be vulnerable to defeat.” The goldskins of the South will be next to fall after that. Just come on back and we'll start this fight in earnest.

Wulfharth bites.

Zurin Arctus has devised an incredible and unique soul gem in which to trap Wulfharth's AE and emulate the Heart of Lorkhan, dubbed the Mantella. Once Wulfharth walks into the trap, the mage simply needs to cast the spell and then slay him, assisted by Septim and a unit of what I can only assume were the Blades' best of the best. All the pieces are in place. Wulfharth arrives.

None of the three players (well, actors really, if you want to get technical) in the Legend of General Talos survive the encounter unchanged.

#####Part 2