The Nerevarine Cult in 4E 202 | First Informant

6th Morning Star, 4E 202 Submission to the Tamriel Journal of History First Draft to the Editor Anaximander

The following is an entry from my journal, with the hopes that this will be edited in the future. It takes a more personal point of view, and may eventually be cleaned into a more clinical and scholarly format.

What great fortune, a septim for this beggar's alms bowl. In the twilight hours yesterday morning, an Imperial guard caravan came trundling through the city gates carrying prisoners bound for a new work camp in the Blackwood. Petty criminals all, probably heading for a fortnight's work hewing cypress before release. I was informed by a city watchwoman that part of the collection included an acolyte of the new Nerevarine cult. Female, "though you couldn't tell", she told me, and marked with a painted moon and star on her head. Nerevar's chosen banner. When I rose to greet the day, the prisoners were being watered in the Corbolo. A few drakes tossed the guard captain's way, and I had an interview. I will commit to ink my best recollection of the interview with this informant as it occurred.

"Couldn't tell" was correct. Stooping in a shallow in her loincloth, washing pests and dust from her skin, was a yellow lizard. Sure enough, too, etched across the top of her scalp was a moon and star in the Daedric banner style. The remains of dull, rusty pink feathers clung to a patchy mat of quills on the back of her skull that stiffened at my approach. She scratched a louse from her head. The scales on her cheeks and neck stung with a dull red and claw marks. Dry, and colorless if not for the memory of blood shed.

"I'd like to ask about your markings", and pointed to her head. The raspy, slithering voice leaked out.

"The faithful need not hide the Root of their courage. It is the symbol of the long, long recycled Nerevar and his last, the Nerevarine. This one is Hunger-Child,".

"How does an Argonian come to hold such appreciation for a Chimer hero? Or the savior of Morrowind?"

She stretched beneath the disturbed, silty river flow to reach and rip the bulb of cattail from the bed, and began picking the tough husk with her teeth and claws. The starchy white meat leaked a milky water onto her talons. She devoured it.

"The rightness of his or her path. The rightness of his or her path paved a wide enough road for everyone. I found it in Windhelm, at the Argonian Assemblage with my tongue wrapped around a skooma pipe. All of us come willingly to the way he walks. I only know pieces of it, but I know it to be true all the same. She came as Man, Mer, as cat, as People of the Root. Healer, thief, conqueror. In a true hand, a sharp blade may carve history. This one is not the only Saxhleel that walks the path, for he or she will always be the Prisoner that sees the top of the Tower's wall. A fine saint for a slave people. He killed the Devil and kept us safe from the unwaking, dark dream, and then betrayal. Nerevar, Nerevarine. As above, so below,".

Now she traced her fingertips on the surface of the slow current, circles carried away.

"We of the Root know Memory better than most. We do not see the Dragon, we see the Trees. And the Hole. Sithis who is PSJJJJ. Padomay. Lorkhan. Nerevar. Nerevarine. All walking a path for others to follow before foul murder. Pash tells us we all have the ghartoki, At the altar of Padhome, in-".

"Back in the carriage! The lot of you!". The captain barked at Hunger-Child and the rest of the bathing prisoners, banging his gladius against his shield and shoving me aside. The rising sun cut the mist on the river in that twilight hour as I watched Hunger-Child and the other prisoners corralled back to the city gate.