Velyn Virith was born on Vvardenfell on the third day of Sun's Dawn in the four hundred and twelfth year of the Third Era. He was the son of Theldyn Virith, Kinsman to the Great House Redoran, Hetman of the fishing port of Ald Velothi. Most of Velyn's childhood was spent between the Redoran district capital of Auld'ruhn and his family's ancestral estates in the West Gast. Like his brothers and cousins, he was bonded to his house from birth, and was expected to follow in his father's footsteps as another proud Redoran warrior, but fate had other plans for Velyn Virith.
He couldn't have been more than five, perhaps six, when the course of his life was irrevocably changed. His father had business with a clan of fellow Redoran nobles, the Saren clan of the city of Vivec, and he brought young Velyn with him on the long journey down to the greatest city on Vvardenfell. While his father conducted his business, he left young Velyn with a retainer to show the young boy the sights of the city.
It happened the second morning they were there, as he passed over one of the high bridges that linked the upper plazas of the cantons. A crowd had come out to line the waterways, and being a curious young child, Velyn pushed his way through to the railings to witness the cause of the excitement.
A regatta was being held on the grand canal. Barges of beaten gold, wreathed with floral garlands, floated upon the shimmering waters. The oars of each barge were manned by a host beautiful maidens and comely youths. Groups of troubadours and musicians filled the air with the sound of lutes, and pipes, and drums. From the gilded decks, knights clad in iridescent glass laughed and sang as they threw roses to the adorning crowds. And there, hovering above them all, a seated figure, half gold, smiling, and radiating the light of Heaven itself.
This was the first time Velyn saw a God. He vowed that day that it would not be the last.
He would not forget what he saw that day. On the long journey by strider back to their home it was all he could think about. He wanted to live in that light, and bathe himself in its warmth. The Redorans were one of the more pious of the Dunmer Great Houses, but even amongst them, Velyn's single minded dedication to the faith and in particular to Lord Vivec, struck many of his kinsmen as being unusual.
As soon as he was old enough he pledged himself as novice to the Temple, the first step in what he thought would be a lifetime spent in that glorious light. Once he had proved himself in feats of arms, exhibitions of arts, and generosity of alms, Velyn was apprenticed into the Buoyant Armigers. That order of iridescent knights he had glimpsed upon those gilded barges many years ago.
But the he order in found himself in was somewhat different from how he had imagined it. In those days the fear of the Sharmat hung over Vvardenfell, and recently the ALMSIVI had receded from the outside world. Rather than spending his time at the side of the Lord he had adored from far, Velyn was dispatched to the fortress of Molag Mar in the magma strewn wastes of Molag Amur. There he began his work as an Armiger, hunting down the blight of the Sharmat, slaying Sixth House Cultist and Corpus Monsters.
That was the year that the Nerevarine returned, and by his hand, the fall of the Dagoth Ur. There was upheaval in the wake on St. Nerevar's return, the amnesty on the Dissident priests, the events in Mournhold where it was rumoured that the Tribunes Sotha Sil and Almalexia were both slain. To many it was a time of uncertainty and fear. But to Velyn those few years were glorious.
Vvardenfell was freed from the threat of the Sharmat and his monsters, and Velyn's Lord was freed from his ancient duty of maintaining the Ghost Fence. For those precious few years Velyn bathed in the light of his Lord. There was time for music and poetry in those years. There was time for dancing, and nights where they would join their Lord in rituals that had been long neglected. It was in those years that Velyn learned the secrets of carnal exultation, it was everything Velyn had ever dreamed of.
And then it was over.
It was when the Gates of Oblivion opened that everything began to go wrong. Portals opened up across Morrowind, and Tamriel beyond. The Imperials sat behind the walls of their fortresses, on the mainland some even marched back through the passes of the Velothi Mountains to defend Cyrodil while Morrowind burned. The Armigers were dispatched to keep the city of Vivec safe from Daedric incursions. The city held, but elsewhere the situation was dire.
In Ald'ruhn, where Velyn had spent much of his childhood, where he had first served as a temple novice, the fighting was the worst. The city was practically destroyed, its defenders going so far as to resurrect the great Emperor Crab Skar, demolishing the council halls and manors of their most powerful citizens in the process. Once the city of Vivec was secure Velyn had fought his way north to meet up with a Redoran army from the mainland. But they too late. By the time they arrived there was little left by corpses and rubble.
Theldyn Virith, his father, was among the dead. Velyn was left to burn his body and make sure his ashes were interned with his ancestors.
In all this madness there was no sign of Lord Vivec, the Living God had disappeared around the time the Crisis. There was no sign of the Nerevarine either, who it was rumoured had travelled to the continent of Akavir. The people of Morrowind did their best to pick up the pieces, and rebuild their shattered lives and cities, Velyn was amongst them. For though their Lord had disappeared, though his father was dead, Velyn had the support of the Temple and of his sworn brothers. That was enough.
Besides, Velyn could not forget what it meant to see a God in all their glory. He never would. So he kept his faith, as best he could.
Those were trying years for Morrowind, there was fighting amongst the houses as the Hlaalu lost their place of preeminent and were expelled from the Grand Council. Imperial authority collapsed with the lack of an Emperor on the throne. While the Dunmer simultaneously tried to rebuild and fought amongst themselves, an even greater threat loomed. One that had been hanging over them for a long time.
Baar Dau, the Ministry of Truth, Lie Rock. It had floated above the City of Vivec for millennia, suspended there by the Living God himself and held in place by his power and the faith of people who lived beneath. But it appeared the Crisis, the deaths of the Tribunes, and the disappearance of the God had weakened that faith. In truth, those years were first where Velyn felt his own waver. Sometimes at night he wonders if he too is partly to blame for what happened when Baar Dau fell.
He had not been in the city. If he had, he would not be here today. The Palace and High Fane were directly beneath the impact, none who were there survived. Instead Velyn was at the Armiger's fortress at Molag Mar. All they saw was a burning light on the horizon, a terrible shaking in the ground, and the roaring hot winds of the blast wave when it finally reached them. It was only when that the mountain had answered with ash and fire, filling the Foyadas with lava and trapping them in their stronghold.
When boats from the mainland finally reached them he had tried to go to the city to search for survivors. They had told him there was no point, the city was gone and waters where it had once stood boiled. They call it Scathing Bay now. He had thought then to try to reach Ghostgate, to find the other chapter of their order, but that fortress had sat upon the Foyada Mamaea, and had been incinerated in the eruption. So, with no other option, he had gone to the mainland.
It was a good thing that he had, for soon the mainland would have need of every warrior Morrowind could provide. In the moment of their greatest ever weakness the Argonians invaded. The lizard men sacked every city they came upon, even as the ash and fire rained down still. No where was spared, not even Mournhold, a holy city of the Tribunal and the capital of all Morrowind. The jewel of their province which had somehow miraculously escaped the ravages of the Red Year was reduced to another smoking ruin.
That's what Morrowind was those days, a land of smoking ruins, refugees, warfare, and death.
And somehow, Velyn kept his faith.
He fought with his sworn brothers, with his fellow Redorans, with anyone who would defend Morrowind. Perhaps that's what allowed him to keep his faith, he had no time to think about what was happening around him, he was too busy trying to survive. So went on as he always had done, being an Armiger, doing his deeds of Love and War in the name of his Lord, Vivec.
The war was terrible and it was long. The Argonians made it as far East and North as Port Telvannis, they even made it onto Vvardenfell itself. Their armies fell most heavily on the Dres and the Telvannis, but no where was truly safe from their wrath. Over the years more and more of his brothers fell, but the Redoran led armies slowly routed the Argonian warbands from much of their lands. Mournhold was recovered, even if it was a ruin, and new fortified borders and lines of defence were drawn up between these two new independent powers.
Suddenly there wasn't anymore fighting to be done. So Velyn went back to the Temple. Only to find there was no Temple for him to go back to.
While he had been away at the front, the balance of power in the Temple had changed dramatically. With the loss of the traditional centres of orthodox Temple power, Vivec and Mournhold, there were new Archcanons at the head of the faith, and they had very different ideas about the status of the Old Tribunal. The Dissident Priests and the New Temple, as it later came to be called, had emerged triumphant from the rubble of their nation and they decried Vivec as a false god.
He should have just accepted it. The evidence was plain enough, Vivec had not protected them, and he was gone. But Velyn couldn't forget. He couldn't forget what it was to see a God in the flesh. To see the light of Heaven itself. To touch it.
Velyn kept his faith. And won himself exile for it.
Bereft of his Lord, his Land, and his Love, it was only then that Velyn finally broke.
Spurned from the homeland he had fought for, he fled to Cyrodil, following in the footsteps of countless Dunmer refugees across the Velothi Mountains. There he found a province also lost to chaos and war as the Stormcrown Interregnum unfolded. In the camps outside of Cheydinhal he fell into low company and discovered something which could take away the pain that felt in every waking moment. Skooma.
He frittered away what money he had left, when it was gone he began to sell his possessions. When he started to run out of things to sell he began to offer his services in exchange for a fix. That was first time he had killed in cold blood, without a higher purpose, in those days he was little more than drug addled thug. He acted without the Will of Love.
He left Cheydinhal when he argued with a dealer over a payment he had been owed, it became physical, and when the dust had settled the other man was dead. Velyn took every vial the man had on him and ran. It was no longer safe for him in camps there, so he decided to go overland to Bravil, where he had heard Skooma was cheap and plentiful. That had been the main concern on Velyn's mind at the time.
Going overland to Bravil however, meant travelling by Skingrad.
There were always refugees on the road, looking for somewhere safe, so he had travelled on the edge of convoy. He had not truly been a part of them, but when a patrol of the Count's men fell upon the refugees he found himself unable to turn away. These were cruel men, who subjected the weak and desperate to harassment and depravity to satisfied their own base needs. In that moment Velyn had felt some old instinct reawaken in him, and before he had fully known what he was doing, the bloody tip of his spear was protruding through the chest of one of the soldiers.
Singlehanded he had slaughtered the patrol, taking a few grievous wounds in the process. Many of the refugees fled the scene, only a few remained to tell the band of rebels who emerged from the woods what had happened. They took the wounded Dunmer in and nursed him back to some degree of health.
That was how Velyn Virith met Isobel Aurelia.
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