I’ve left the corrupt merchant Reman and the murderous prophet Louna in the capable hands of my hunt-wife. I don’t know or care whether Reman will be fined, executed, or released on account of none of the murders actually taking place in Dominion territory. I am not smart enough to figure out what to do with Louna’s mess of predictions, and would honestly rather not deal with anything to do with prophecies at all. Louna is too good a resource to throw away, but I don’t know how to use her myself. So! Delegation!


    In between setting up a teleportation network in Cyrodiil, I’ve been delivering mail for random people. Everyone just sees a well-armed Orc and doesn’t recognize a king unless people are stomping about going “That guy’s the King!” so I’m obviously the one to ask and I don’t care to turn them down because chances are, I was going there anyway. I would make sure to tell them anyway because I need the name recognition and goodwill, but I think it’s just as well that I don’t tell them they just asked a king to deliver fertilizer.


    I suppose it wouldn’t matter if I were the Emperor or a freaking Daedric Prince, someone is probably going to give me a fetch quest anyway. I can just imagine some peasant in Cyrodiil asking Sheogorath to do some inane task for them and it going horribly hilariously wrong.


    While I’ve been playing warrior-king and part-time courier, Green-Venom-Tongue has hardly taken his pointed snout out of the Black Dragon’s journal since I brought it back. The big problem with this all is that Lyra Viria is supposed to be dead, killed in the purification of his former Sanctuary in Black Marsh.


    “Purification.” Such a pretty word to describe simply slaughtering everyone. The Black Hand believed there was a traitor, and had everyone killed. Everyone except Green-Venom-Tongue, who was away at the time and deemed unconnected to whatever was going on.


    Ilara’s off in Greenshade at the moment to stab some fetcher who was disrespecting the Wilderqueen, so I’ll be heading off on a trip to Black Marsh with Green-Venom-Tongue by myself (and anyone I can call up with a short orb-call).


    “This will also be a good opportunity to conduct that private interview you promised,” Venom says.


    “This one did not promise, but he will answer whatever questions you have regardless.” I grin. “He might even answer truthfully.”


    “Slim-Jah spoke highly but vaguely of you,” Green-Venom-Tongue says.


    Green-Venom-Tongue says that the location of his former Sanctuary is “not far” and is “just across the border to Black Marsh.” I’m sure he’s just saying this encouragingly, as if I haven’t looked at a map to know that much of Cyrodiil, Valenwood, and Elsweyr are between the Gold Coast and Black Marsh. I decide to save us some time and teleport us to Dune and hop a caravan from there rather than Anvil.


    “It’s a pity you could not get us closer,” Venom says. “Ah… Dune is so dusty. It dries my scales. Literally, I mean. I know my people frequently use that phrase metaphorically.”


    I’ve never visited Elsweyr proper before, so my first glimpse of it is… interesting, to say the least. By which I mean there’s plenty of sand. If Green-Venom-Tongue was complaining about dry and dusty scales before we left Dune, he’s quietly unhappy about the trip by the time we reach Riverhold, offset only by looking forward to being somewhere moist in the near future. Everything in this part of Elsweyr looks like it’s been blasted by millennia of sandstorms. I light the wayshrine outside of Riverhold, making a show of praying for a safe journey for the sake of the caravaneer.


    I’m probably not going to be able to pass for a Khajiit as well here among actual Khajiit, so I avoid contact with the locals as much as possible. Easy enough to do when we’re traveling at a not-especially-leisurely pace.


    “You’ve never actually been to Elsweyr before, have you,” Venom observes.


    “This one has not,” I say, not bothering to deny the obvious. “It has been a busy time and he has not had the opportunity to truly visit. Alas that he still does not have the time now, either.”


    Rimmen. Leyawiin. Gideon. The worst of this all, even worse than someone spelling the name of a city ‘Leyawiin’, is that Green-Venom-Tongue is keeping me focused and won’t let me run off to poke my nose into caves or help random people on the streets with finding lost pets or whatever. Fine, if I must. I suppose this is slightly time-sensitive. (And delicate enough that we can’t just get a mage in need of coin to portal us to Gideon.) I can always come back to Elsweyr and Blackwood and poke into whatever secrets they might hold later.


    Once we reach Gideon, Venom hires on a boat handler to get us through the swamps to the Sanctuary. It’s at this point, while traveling through the sluggish waterways of Black Marsh with only an Argonian fascinated by the Shadowscales to overhear, that Green-Venom-Tongue chooses to start interviewing me.


    “Where are you from?” Venom opens with.


    “Dunno,” I say.


    “How do you not know?”


    “It’s complicated,” I say. “And a much longer story than this one is willing to tell right now.”


    “I see,” Venom says, writing something down. “Why did you decide to become an assassin?”


    This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    “Dunno,” I say.


    “How do you not know?” Venom repeats.


    “It just kind of happened.”


    “You just happened to kill someone and got the Night Mother’s attention?” Venom asks.


    “One of the many, many, many people this one has killed,” I say. “But she was more interested in Kisha than Vara-do. So this one does not know.”


    “How many people have you killed?” Venom wonders.


    I give a snort of laughter. “Dunno.”


    “This has not been a productive interview,” Venom complains.


    “Sorry,” I say. “There’s just quite a lot of things this one cannot say and he would prefer not to insult you with a pretty lie.”


    “I understand,” Venom says.


    The boat handler stops to let us off at an abandoned village half sunk into the swamp. Past the ruined wooden buildings lies a ruin of stone, and Green-Venom-Tongue leads me inside the xanmeer.


    A creepy door is inside the xanmeer’s entry hall, asking, “What is the gift of death?”


    Green-Venom-Tongue replies, “Solace, my brother,” and the door opens to let us inside.


    Noted. You can never have too many secret bases. I will never be able to find this place again and I didn’t spot a wayshrine nearby. I’ll need to make a call once we’re done here to see if it’s worth setting up an anchor.


    Venom starts talking about “seeing as the Hist sees”, through the veil of time and weirdness.


    “This one has probably consumed more Hist sap than many Argonians have,” I say.


    “I would have thought moon sugar would be more common amongst Khajiit,” Venom says.


    “Oh, there’s been plenty of that, too,” I say. “This one even communed with a Hist once.”


    “Really?” Venom says. “That’s very interesting. I will need to make note of that.” He starts writing in his journal.


    Green-Venom-Tongue brought some sort of Hist resin that can cause visions when burned.


    “Ooh!” I say. “That sounds very useful! Where did you get it? Can I just buy it somewhere or do I need to have connections?”


    Venom gives me an inscrutable look and I realize I’d just completely dropped my Khajiit speak in excitement about new drugs. Dammit. I don’t correct myself and smoothly act like I meant to do that. He probably figured out a lot more from that alone than the “interview” we just had.


    “We can discuss it when we are done here,” Venom says. “This is not a place to linger or chat. Do you sense them? We are not alone here.”


    “This one hears the dead,” I say. “Creaking bones. Wind where there shouldn’t be wind.”


    We make our way through the crumbling halls of the abandoned Sanctuary. The bodies had been left where they fell, skeletons by now, and approaching them reveals echoes much like the ones I’ve seen in Ayleid ruins. We see visions of Lyra striking down her fellow assassins, grieving at her orders as she does so.


    The Sanctuary is full of skeletons and ghosts. Perhaps I won’t bother leaving an anchor here. There’s plenty of good places for secret hideouts that aren’t haunted. The Dark Brotherhood Guardian skeletons are particularly tough and are probably the sort that will pull their bones back together again after a while.


    “Why do the skeletal guardians see us as intruders?” I wonder.


    “The Black Hand must have commanded them to attack anyone entering the ruin…” Venom muses, writing something down.


    “Will anyone get annoyed at Vara-do if he just dismembers these skeletons until we’re gone?”


    “If they would, they should not have made them attack us.”


    The Anvil Sanctuary is practically homey compared to this place, and not just because the guardians attack us. We pass a torture chamber. People were tortured to death here and their bodies left to decay into skeletons on the rack. I shudder involuntarily as we pass by.


    “You don’t like torture,” Venom observes.


    “It takes a sick person to like it,” I say.


    “It’s a distasteful business,” Venom says. “I don’t like it either. Some of my Dark Siblings here enjoyed it a little too much. Perhaps it’s connected to what led to the Sanctuary being purified somehow? I will make a note of it.”


    Once the vision of Lyra finishes the purification, she goes to the giant statue of Sithis (though I doubt he actually looks like a six-armed… whatever that’s supposed to be) and prays in anger and anguish. As she’s praying, a High Elf woman–a Speaker I don’t know–comes up and tells her to go to Kvatch and kill a Primate of Akatosh by the name of Jonas. The one who was primate before Artorius.


    “Now that is interesting,” I say.


    There’s nothing here even worth looting. Everything of value that might have been here has already been removed, presumably by the Black Hand.


    “So, we’ve learned that Lyra is indeed Lyra,” I say. “Sadly, we have not learned what in Oblivion was going on here that the Black Hand felt this was necessary.”


    “We may not find out,” Venom says. “The Black Hand does not share everything with us. I abhor a mystery though.”


    “This one feels like it is an important piece of the puzzle,” I say. “But alas, unless Speaker Terenus deigns to tell us something, Vara-do does not know where to get more information.”


    “I want to use the Hist resin at the Kvatch Cathedral,” Venom says. “I have a feeling that may provide additional clues.”


    We return to Kvatch, teleporting to the wayshrine this time, because fuck the slow boat through the marsh, seriously. Next time I go to Black Marsh, I need to remember to bring a new formula of insect repellent that works properly and doesn’t make me itch while failing to actually repel anything. Alas, I never had a chance to test it against Black Marsh insects, which are considerably more pervasive than the ones in Valenwood. I feel that Molag Bal really missed a trick in how to annoy people to death.


    I still wonder if Vara-do is going to get marked by any priests, but nobody pays close enough attention to me to care who I am regardless. We stroll in through the gates and Venom burns the remaining resin in front of the Cathedral of Akatosh and no one is paying close attention to that, either. The priest I’d berated the other day is no longer standing on the steps handing out pamphlets and excuses, and I just pretend to be praying and praising Akatosh as the last vision comes up.


    Now-Primate Artorius was, in fact, the one who performed the Black Sacrament to have Jonas killed. He claims it was because he wanted to recruit an assassin, maybe even Lyra specifically, though how he would have known in that case is an open question. Lyra is emotionally wrought, and breaks upon the offer of redemption. Did the High Elf Speaker knowingly give her this contract as a test, which she failed?


    We return to the wayshrine before discussing what we saw, in the interests of not talking about murder in the middle of town.


    “I did not believe Primate Artorius had it in him to perform the Black Sacrament,” Venom says.


    “Does this make them cultists?” I wonder. “Cultists are people who do bad things for religious purposes, right? Does it matter if the religion they’re claiming to espouse is an Aedra rather than a Daedra?”


    “Why do you do bad things?” Venom asks.


    “Vara-do does not do bad things. Everything Vara-do does is right and good, and everything that annoys him is bad.”