Spoopy Scary

The Elder Scrolls: In the Shadows of Oblivion

Isai Sutor-Armaseptus

_{@Sir Lurksalot@Quest Abandoner@Simple Unicycle}

---

At last, the horses were off to the races, as it were. A journal and feather quill in hand, compatriots in tow, and the Emperor and his trusted blades chomping at the bit and leading the charge, they descended beneath the belly of the Empire. With the ruinous bones that the heart of Tamriel was built upon, it was no surprise that there would be underground passages, either built or found or repurposed, though it may have been a surprise that one of its entrances was in a prison cell… though he must credit the thinking, for he doubted anybody would have suspected that one such passage would be found in a prison. Surely the Emperor had escaped his assailants and will live many more years.

Isai found himself near the front after some polite pushing past some bodies, allowing some more of the combatively inclined to take point, but still close enough in earshot of Captain Renault, Blades Baurus and Glenroy, and the Emperor to record any word they might have said. There seemed to be little that they shared with one another, as if psychically linked in their understanding of their duties and trust in each other’s competence, so more often than not, he was recording dialogue shared between them and the prisoners.

Hm.

Though the Blades were diligent in their duties to the Empire, the magnitudinous weight of the prisoner’s lives and presence forced their attention away to address them – always from one, while the other two remained alert – but I feared that even a moment of distraction may spell disaster should they come upon their enemy.

As he wordlessly scribed, he found words from other conversations floated into his ears, prompting him to accidentally write an unintentional word or two that he’d be forced to cross out. Former inmates getting to know one another or their homelands, as if this evacuation was a meet-cute. He raised the end of his quill to his mouth in thought when he heard mention of Y’ffre or the Green Pact, perking his ear up a bit. He first heard of such things from his mother, so he may have had a bias for such things, even if in the grand scheme of Tamriel’s cosmology, he found it less likely than other explanations. Still, there were records of the bosmer’s strange abilities in certain times of distress, and the names and explanations for common belief may differ from more conventional academia, but the common belief persists nonetheless. Faith in the Earth Bones spread across opposite ends of Tamriel.

Oh, but the prisoners were talking about one another, of course.

“With the world so big, what brings anyone anywhere…” Isai mused, nibbling on the end of the quill, reshaping its writing edge with his teeth before testing it on the margins of his parchment. “Perhaps she’s just curious. They're curious people. My mother was, at least. Having borne witness to the Green in prior ethnographical expeditions, I might add, the hoarvers and giant wasps by their lonesome are sufficient to prompt leave.”

Isai held up his quill, “Stingers as long as yay. Leaving eggs in your body whilst paralyzed, so you can only pray that a dog-sized tick finds you and drains your blood in seconds before the eggs hatch.”

Isai gagged and shivered, as if reliving the memory of seeing those creatures in person, before continuing to write in his journal.

Accompanied by fellow academic. Be sure to record EVERYTHING & publish book before they do. Maybe make him write foreword.

"...Somehow, it's still preferable to Vvardenfell."

The Spoopiest Skeletons

Garil Mavos, the Real GM

" G A R I L M A V O S "

_{"I be just a simple farmhand, sera, though I may sell you my services if that is what you wish."}

══════ C H A R A C T E R P O R T R A I T ══════ _______________________________________________ _______________________________________________ ═══════ C H A R A C T E R S U M M A R Y ══════ "Garil Mavos" _______________________________________________ 55 | ♂ | Dunmer _______________________________________________ Farmhand, Mercenary, Hedge Philosopher, and Impersonator ▼ P H Y S I C A L T R A I T S ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ ► Build - Lean and athletic; built for dexterity. ► Skin Color - Ebony, with mild hues of dark blue and ashen grey ► Hair Color - Black, with grey strands. ► Eye Color - Deep red. ► Other - Body is littered with scars from small cuts and labor. ▼ D O S S I E R ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ ► Birthplace - Presumably Cheydinhal in Cyrodiill. ► Birthsign - The Ritual ► Biggest Regret - Garil would have you believe that it was his inability to seize ripe opportunities and rise above his humble origins, as well as cutting ties with his family. Also the fire, he feels pretty bad about that. ► Garil's Goal - To perform great, honorable deeds that would make his ancestors proud. Maybe make him a little famous. Fame and fortune, really. Maybe not fame. Probably fortune. Power and wisdom? Seeing the world, definitely that. Garil's goals are as protean as the Dunmer himself. ▼ F A V O R E D A T T R I B U T E S ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ ► Personality ► Agility ▼ S K I L L S ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ ► Speechcraft - Adept ► Acrobatics - Adept ► One-Handed - Adept ► Conjuration - Apprentice ► Stealth - Apprentice ► Athletics - Apprentice ► Smithing - Apprentice Technically, all the rest of the skill tree would be in the Novice category anyway, but these three are those of which he employs somewhat regularly without proficiency despite the fact: ► Alchemy - Novice ► Pickpocket - Novice ► Hand to Hand - Novice ▼ S P E L L S ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ ► Conjuration - Conjure Dagger, Conjure Sword, Soul Trap, Summon Ghost ▼ E Q U I P M E N T ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ ► Weapons - Three knives, though they look to be more for utility than anything else. There's a skinning knife with a gut hook, a filet knife, and a silver cheese knife. ► Armor - Nothing but the clothes on his back. ► Containers - A satchel which hangs from his shoulder and a 32 oz. waterskin. ► Food, Drink, Potions - A cheesecloth pouch filled with two pounds of assorted nuts and seeds, dried fruit, and dense preserved bread. Two large and round bottles with cork stoppers, and are filled with sujamma. ► Miscellaneous - Two small wooden bowls and two small clay bowls. Tightly packed in the satchel are small, folded mats and rugs. Assorted trinkets and mementos from past lives. Strangely enough, a bundle of scrolled documents.

══════ A P P E A R A N C E ══════ Garil is as unassuming as a dunmer can get: he dresses modestly with threadbare clothing, he's clean shaven, and he carries himself with such a humble and passive disposition, so obviously trustworthy, that the only thing keeping him from being conspicuously unassuming would be his impressive height -- 6'2". Though his build is somewhat lanky, and not at all like one would would expect a soldier or mercenary from, he is still lean from what he claims to be years of hard farm work. Knicked and scratched by numerous petty scars across his hairless body, too few of them appear to be from life-threatening injuries by blade or creature, either lending credibility to his skills or undermining his integrity. He walks, stands, and sits with a slight hunch, and often rocks his jaw from side to side when in contemplation. He also tends to gesture his hands quite often when talking, and has a distinct tell whenever he's lying, where he cranes his head in as if to invade your personal space and his tone becomes suggestive. Curiously, he's quite acrobatic and has an impeccable sense of balance. He doesn't seem to have much reason to be as adept as he is, and any questioning is answered with a shrug and a blasé, "I like to climb things. I guess I just have good balance." He walks with a peculiar grace and sense of purpose, as if he has a clear destination in his mind's eye, a gait which other dunmer familiar to him have insultingly referred to as monkey-like. You can occasionally catch him looking over his shoulder or staring at other dunmer. Watching Garil swing a blade, on the other hand, he doesn't seem so great at it. There's almost a hesitance or uncertainty as he cuts the air -- no confidence -- but a trained eye can find his perfect grip and footing, and figure out pretty quickly that he probably picked up a couple of lessons. His angular features are somewhat striking. His cheekbones are high and pronounced, almost jutting from his face and combined with the gauntness of his cheeks, this quality being particularly highlighted. His chin is long and comes down to a point. However, he also has a wide jaw, which adds to the strength of his facial features. Almost out of place upon his face are a pair of a thick lips, their shade a darker hue than the rest of his face. He's almost always munching on nuts or seeds, swelling his jowls as they fill with food, rocking his jaw side to side as he chews. His mouth sits beneath a long, hawkish nose that may have once been broken in the past if the vertical crookedness is not just another sharp facial feature on a long list of sharp facial features. His ears, low on the sides of his head, flare out quite a bit like two dishes waiting for signals. His peripheral extremities, his arms and legs, are quite spindly though not without lean muscle; you'd be forgiven for underestimating the strength in his figure due to his light toning, but even so, the dunmer is more agile than he is brutish. His black hair is long and well kept, also undercut, and behind his neck you'll often find residing loose, frizzy hair. He prefers to keep his hair tied back and usually does so in the shape of the bun to keep the hair off his neck and back while he's working. Overall, Garil is a dunmer that seems very conscious of his personal hygiene despite his humility and humble occupation. Of course he has no qualms with getting himself dirty, but with as often as he seems to mock pride and vanity, he seems quite content to preen himself with the beginning and end of every day. That said, he is not so self-conscious either that he'd remove the gray hairs growing on his head. In fact, he seems quite fond of them. He is at least self-aware enough to acknowledge his contradictions and hypocrisies, though it's almost as if he occasionally forgets he holds such values. There aren't many accessories on his person. Little holes sit on his ears where there were once piercings, and as mentioned before, what little clothes he has appears old, weathered, and quite obviously favoring warmer colors such as reds and oranges -- they compliment his eyes, he says. What passes for a shirt is actually more like a red blanket or a shawl, which he wraps around his torso to cover himself during the day in a Nibenese-esque fashion. It's not uncommon to see him using the toga wrap to use as an arm sling after a long and tiring day of work. The pants he wears goes down to his knees and are held up by a leather cord, and his calloused, leather-like feet have not the luxury of proper footwear beyond a pair of sandals, which he occasionally forgoes in favor of the cool sensation of morning dew upon the grass. ═══════ P E R S O N A L I T Y ══════ All around a peculiar person, Garil enjoys his privacy and does his best to appear unassuming and inconspicuous. This is best done when minding his own business, which he does successfully for the most part, but he's also irrepressibly curious. While he might do what he can to keep his hands and mind busy, such as sweeping or mopping the deck, overhearing a conversation will pique his interest enough so that he might pay undue attention to whomever he may be eavesdropping on. To others, he could very well just be some random, nosy s'wit, which in turn can -- counter-intuitively -- direct even less attentions towards himself if he can push others away. No one wants to be around somebody who can't mind his own business, and that's the genius of it. If he can convince others he's not worth paying attention to, then it makes his goal of staying inconspicuous even easier. He watches and listens, preferring to have the edge over others, just in case it's better to be safe than sorry.

Getting to know Garil is not necessarily a bad thing though. He's quite an amiable fellow, if a tad odd in his habits and mannerisms. He has the ability to read people and read them well, a skill he's developed over years of people-watching and questioning. Kindly and well-spoken, he's not at all the judgmental type, as if there was nothing you could say that could startle him and he'd accept you for who you are. If anything, you might pique his curiosity and he'd harry you with more questions without fear of looking dumb or naive. His lack of judgement also shows itself through his liberal approach towards sexuality, thinking very little of the different races and genders of Tamriel intermingling with one another and uses flirtation as a brand of humor regardless of who he is talking to, only reinforcing the stereotype of sexual deviance often foisted upon dunmer. This is an unfair characterization, he feels, since his attitude as a lover is actually rather conservative in the sense that he reserves the action of touch for truly intimate matters. Otherwise, he is content to sit calmly and converse with his loved ones, and it is because of his liberal approach to sex that he doesn't hold it in such a high esteem, as he'd rather sit in candlelit silence and enjoy the calm and peace. Much of his personality, in fact, is reflective of the endlessly infuriating duality of the Dunmer mentality. And yet, he is still one of the most amiable of his kind and gets along worse with other Dunmer.

He has a complicated relationship with spirituality however, as he speaks very little of his ancestors and is a critic of both the Reclamations and the Tribunal saints, all while disregarding the Divines as powerless lesser deities. This does not exactly translate into being a logical individual, as he does have his fair share of superstitions. He regards matters of superstition and spirituality as private affairs, though that hardly seems like a profound statement considering he regards all of his affairs as private. Privacy is his primary value, and the invasion of which is one of the only ways to stoke the even-tempered dark elf's ire. Even then, you'll typically only be met with indignant irritation. He is not the type to explode in rage and anger, and even if the worst of his secrets should come to light, he would merely react to it as one would to any threat of danger -- run. He doesn't consider himself a murderer or dangerous mer -- or, if I may be so bold, a merderder -- and he only resorts to such extremes if there is no other choice. If bandits are intent on killing him, then he'll defend himself, but even in a fight he is more inclined to rely on his rationality than his emotions.

Overall, his company is very calm and welcoming even if it is a bit foreign and bizarre, but he invites others to learn, inquire, and critique, to become curious about the world around them as he is. He frequently refers to himself as a parched, informational sponge. This reflects the fact that although he has no traditional education, he has a very keen mind that is quick to pick up on information and make practical use of it. He's a clever, patient, and resourceful mer if one can't find anything else kindly to say about him, and he takes insult and injury with a saint's grace. One of his most notable talents is his ability to perform impressions, which might sound quite tame in a world where magic exists. Which to be fair is true, but even so, his keen eye and ear can have his constant people-watching pay off with impressive vocal reconfiguration, enabling him to mimic the sound of someone's voice. Aside from vocal impressions, he also has a knack for physical impersonations as well, and can even copy other people's handwriting once he gets a good look at it. Eventually, this skill of his becomes creepily uncanny. However, he hasn't ever used this for wrongdoing and only for the sake of entertainment. He is not totally scrupulous however, as he in his youth was something of a charlatan, liar, and gossip-monger, and the only reason he doesn't continue this way of life is that he was caught too many times and he learned that it wasn't a safe way to make a living. Such skills still remain with him.

Garil is notoriously meticulous and methodical, almost to the degree of neuroticism. Part of his nightly rituals, even at the end of particularly long days, is to lay his possessions out before him and to keep track of everything he owns. If there is a list of chores that needs doing, he'll go down the list one by one even if he is capable of striking multiple things off at once. He has an impulsive desire to see every task through to its end. On one hand, this reassures his employers that he is not one to shirk responsibility and that he'll complete his duties with no mistakes left behind, but on the other hand, this can annoy everyone else to no end if they are impatient and prefer shortcuts, or if they find those specific tasks as arbitrary. His inclinations to obfuscate the truth whenever the opportunity arises, and his appreciation for ambiguity, makes him a mysterious sort. This can sometimes be alluring, but it can also make him an unreliable narrator despite his known collection of rumors and hearsay. He's like a font of information that only rewards those capable of outwitting him, and that can make him threatening to those who don't see the allure in his mysteries. The dualistic nature of the dunmer people is best represented by one of the best known paradoxes which transcends cultural borders: danger can be sexy, but sex can be dangerous. At his best, Garil can be wise and dutiful, but at his worst, Garil can be secretive and selfish.

_{═══════ B A C K G R O U N D ══════}

Garil's story is a simple one, as he says: a first generation Cyrodilian born in Cheydinhal after his family fled Morrowind near the end of the Arnessian War. With the southern side of Morrowind being assailed by argonian guerillas and Queen Barenziah abandoning her country, it no longer felt safe. So, they moved to Cyrodiil, a place where they would be mostly accepted and, more importantly, not a target of war. Garil grew up under kind, yet strict parents that had high expectations of him for living in a land ripe with opportunity and less hostile than the rugged ashlands of Morrowind. Garil calls himself a suitable family disappointment for repeatedly failing to rise above his parent's own humble occupations of tiler and trading in buttons. Instead of becoming a respected warrior or accomplished mage, he instead found himself working other people's land for pay, or even sharecropping. Sure, he picked up a few tricks, a couple of prestidigitated bewilderments... nothing impressive though. He has no claim to power, status, or to land of his own, and though he has received no formal education of his own -- working hard only to help his family put food on the table and putting down payments on a nice, future Dunmer fusion house for future generations to live in -- he's always had been the wise sort. He is more keen to listen than to speak, and absurdly well-spoken despite his humble origins by listening and eavesdropping on the conversations of more noble folk and practicing to himself their manner of speak when he was by himself. Stories from his parents and stories passed down from their parents always helped to put things into perspective. Then when all else failed, a jaunt over the eastern mountains and into Deshaan, a journey that could last a week or more, he could find the cairns of his ancestors there. Communing with them, albeit a dreaded affair given his lineage of very accomplished and very disappointed mages, offered some contrived wisdom or another that his parents never provided. Of course, that would only be as soon as they were done admonishing him for never rising above a meager farmhand.

For reasons he chooses not to disclose, he has not visited his ancestors in some time. Not since the farm he was working on had burned down. In fact, he seems to address them with some measure of resentment that is almost childish in nature, like refusing to speak to one's parents after a petty injury done to one's pride. Interrogating him on the story seems to turn up no correlation between his resentment of his ancestors and the fire, which in itself was a mysterious circumstance. Anyone who has ever met Garil can attest to him being one of the most orderly and organized people they have ever met, hopelessly methodical and infuriatingly meticulous in how he arranges and categorizes his (few) personal possessions and running down the checklist of his responsibilities. The very idea that the fire was the result of an accident -- an oil lantern left burning or a candle left lit -- is inconceivable as long as Garil was around to tend to the farm's affairs. Everything from harvesting the wheat, repairing the barn or wagon, to defending the grounds from hungry and predatory animals and men alike, he was always a dutiful sort that never would've let anything adverse happen to anyone or anything that was under his care. Perhaps, then, it was done in the dead of night as a form of reprisal against the farm's owners for one reason or another.

Perhaps.

He fails to mention that he was partly to blame for the barn's destruction, though perhaps for the reason that he does not feel at fault for it. Garil has a complex relationship with undead, necromancy, and his own people. He is not immune to the dominant Imperial influences either. He felt himself feeling a cognitive dissonance between both his family and culture's coinciding values of respecting the dead, but also embracing the undead in the form of his ancestors' ghosts. And dunmer mostly only cared about necromancy as it pertained to their own ancestors, but generally didn't care if it happened to others. What was the difference between a righteous, ritual necromancy and the evils of philosophical necromancy? Alienation from his people and being constantly spited by his own family drove him to travel many days into Morrowind and into his family's crypt in Deshaan under the pretense that he was setting out to pay his respects, so that he could set the entire cairn ablaze and be free of his ancestors' haunting. Without no one at the scene, he returned thinking it was a fool-proof plan: the fire was a tragedy that must've occurred after he left. He did not think that at least one of his ancestors would remain tethered to Mundus and seek retribution. Indaryn Sadras was a particularly fickle great-great-uncle of his even before the arson, and in the ghost's attempt to incinerate Garil in his sleep for his descendant's transgression, he ended up burning down the entire barn instead.

After escaping, Garil payed a pretty sum to a discreet member of the local Synod chapter to keep his affairs under wraps while asking for a brief lesson in binding spirits. With the help of a Breton mage and a few overnight cram sessions in Conjuration magic, they were able to summon the unbound spirit of his ancestor to the confinement of a ritual circle where they were able to bind Indaryn to a phylactery. This phylactery would be available for Garil to carry on his person, being small enough in size, and its magical inscriptions made it sturdy enough to be mostly adventure-proof. Inscribed upon the phylactery were daedric runes that compelled the spirit to obey his descendant's will and forbade him from uttering any information pertaining to his great-nephew. Though the affair was costly in more ways than one, Garil supposed that this technically made him some kind of mage like his family originally wanted, and that sort of left a bitter taste in his mouth.

However, the affair also left him without a job. So, in his attempt to move on and forget the fire ever happened, he began going around working odd jobs for people around Cheydinhal and relying on various short-lived paramours. His charm was only such that he could only couch surf for weeks at a time, and his air of intrigue and novelty shortly wore off the more his bummish behavior grated on them. He had also taken to a buy-sell formula of making money, buying cheap stocks of clutter from the local stores and selling them at markup, and even going so far as to sell fish oil as miracle elixirs. He was also something of an eavesdropper and gossip-monger, and for a cheap price, was willing to share with anyone the local rumors or the gossip he's overheard. This made him a few friends with some of local burghers, but also a few enemies. Complaints to the local guard had brought him bruises and threats of being thrown out of town. Garil eventually learned that it was probably best to keep such businesses practices less in the open. The odd jobs he had picked up here and there since then had gone from fixing leaks and scrubbing floors to dredging the sewers and exterminating rats, so Garil was able to salvage his reputation as an untrustworthy miscreant to a somewhat reliable if quirky and gossipy handyman.

Yet, from the fruits of his labor arose another problem: his labor was cheap and people took advantage of that. Before long, some of the jobs he began to take were beginning to steal low-level contracts from the local Fighter's Guild. After a thug or two from the guild confronted him in an act of intimidation, he backed down and decided it was best for him to start traveling the road. For a few reasons, really: among them was his new taste for mercantilism, the farm was no longer tying him down, he finally had an opportunity to see the world and perhaps rise above his meager station, and he thought has gotten pretty good with a blade. Good enough to encroach on Fighter's Guild territory at least, so he thought to himself "How hard can adventuring be?" Besides, it would've done him no good to keep living where his next door neighbors were a band of blooded mercenaries whom he had slighted and armed guards who were less than enthused with his eccentricities. He would've bade farewell to his family had they cared to see him again, but his place as the family disappointment was alive and well.

Eventually, after about ten years of adventuring and surviving off of odd jobs or mercenary work, he managed to build up a resume. He's proven himself a fairly capable bodyguard, exterminator, private investigator, ruin explorer, tomb-raiding, or an all-purpose handyman. He learned that his ancestor would be a useful tool to exploit if nothing else, much to Indaryn's chagrin, and relied on his great-uncle's destruction magic to clear out many a dungeon for him. Of course, Garil also learned that his great-uncle was aware of what was going on outside of his phylactery pretty much all the time, and that he was a bitter old ghost each and every time he was summoned. Sometimes it was worthwhile to summon his ghost, and other times... not so much. The two hated each other, and at least that much was clear. Still, his discreet use of summoning a ghost gave him something of a reputation to his employers as a one-man army when in reality he often relied on his ancestor to do much of the heavy lifting. All the while, he was peddling his treasures to merchants or selling them by auction, putting his mercantilism to decent use. Adventuring was easy, and sometimes even lucrative. His penchant for spinning yarns and impersonations also helped him sneak into and out of places that he otherwise had no business being in, but only if such roles called for a dunmer. He tried passing for a sickly Breton once. No one bought it.

Much of the loot Garil collected was basically junk, save for the rarer finds such as valuable jewels and tithes of gold. Oftentimes they were pieces of antique furniture or ceremonial displays, things that would be more interesting to historians and eccentric nobles than any general merchant. What he can say, at least, is that his travels took him to many different places, like High Rock and Hammerfell, boats from which brought him briefly to port in Auridon before making way to Elsweyr, and he even traveled into Black Marsh -- only to high-tail it out of there after a few weeks when he got chased by some of the more rabid tribes of argonians. He managed to pick up a lot of skills along the way as well, being a sponge for information and fascinated by other cultures. High Rock helped him hone his speechcraft and magic, Hammerfell taught him how to better swing his sword and sneak past their tomb sentinels, Auridon taught him that high elves were pricks, some Baandari in Senchal taught him some of their dances and to always watch his pockets, and Black Marsh taught him that not all cultures are created equal.

Eventually he found himself in Anvil, ready to explore the region of the Gold Coast. His many years of travel has accustomed him to violence, of which there are several varieties: bloody violence, the violence of dramatic action, or the violence of change (albeit not yet desensitized to such violence). Yet, in doing so, he has built his proficiency in both swordplay and mental resilience. He has come to the realization that his claim of being a mere farmhand might now be a lie, though he has no intent on changing that. Though an old sailor he met once told him a thing or two about Anvil, he still isn't quite sure what to expect even as a native Cyrodillian. Still, as long as it was nothing like the customs agents in Black Marsh, he felt pretty secure in being here for the sole purpose of selling his wares at the market or town square.

At least, that's what you're all made to believe.

---

_{"Truth is a fickle creature. I may be no farmhand, but does my harvest not reap life in service of life? Were my services not for sale?"}

---

The Elder Scrolls: In the Shadows of Oblivion

Isai Sutor-Armaseptus

_{@spicykvnt@MacabreFox}

---

What was once a gentle moment with Isai's handling of his assistant, quickly gave way to one of smug satisfaction. The amusement he felt by Deia’s sudden demands and… my, is that begging? A tongue that can turn locks indeed! Why, if she made such a show with her magic, then why not burst through the cell and slay every guard on the way out? Aside from the obvious answer of the complications that’d arise thereof… could she? It begged the question of her ability, though he wasn’t one to test her patience on a woman who seemed to have nothing to lose – especially since that patience already seemed tested and found wanting.

Then she turned to the rest of the cell and tried to stoke the rebellious spirits of the others. The same ones who she might have once endeared herself towards, only to scoff at the opportunity and tease their mettle and make mockery of? While he appreciated her getting the cathay-raht off his back, there was such a present lack of rhetorical cohesion that he could barely stifle a chuckle! He leaned into Verena’s ear to whisper, “A note from the history books: appear weak when you are strong and appear strong when you are weak.”

Truly, there were many here who appeared strong.

Amidst an uncomfortable moment of silence (or at least a moment of no one addressing the raving woman in the room), all it took was so much as a single pair of eyes to fall on him — whether accidental or otherwise, as there were many different people stuffed into the same cell and he wasn’t picky for attention — to interpret as his permission to intervene. He felt his experience made him neatly qualified, whether he considered himself a real esquire, true magistrate of the law, or not, his certainty of the law was itself, he felt, sufficient to champion its cause. He certainly knew enough to bend them to his will, if nothing else.

With a deep breath, Isai began his attempt to assuaging Deia’s nerves, “Because, dear madam, the crimes alleged to be committed are for either drunk and disorderly, vagrancy, or misdemeanor assault. As enumerated within the Emperor’s decree in the Imperial legal charters, such crimes are only punishable by fine up to forty septims or by… nine and a half, round up to ten, hours of penance by incarceration. A night in holding to cool tempers once stoked aflame! No one will be rotting tonight.”

As he looked around at the other prisoners, he did not doubt that some threw more than a single punch aimed at more than a single person, and as such their sentences would be longer. Still, he hoped his words would bring some sense of calm to the anxieties already present and those that may be further stoked by the vulture woman’s words. He peered through the cell door at the guards beyond, forcing some larger man, still drunk, to lift his arm and subject the poor bard to the smell of his underarm.

“I don’t oft dispense with legal consult free of charge – oh gods, sir, get help –” he continued, retching for a moment at the smell of his cellmate’s pits, “but I’d advise thee against jailbreak. I entreat instead: relax! It’s hardly worth the hundred septim fine for breaking through the cell, nor the additional thousand for each guard thou slayest en exeunt… ah, but alas, I fret that fines and incarceration will be the least of thine worries if re-captured — once the magicka reserves deplete.”

There was a pause amidst Isai’s gesticulating and grandstanding only for there to be a moment – a human moment when his eyes met hers with an earnest plea, even though he felt called to look away when the animal in her stared back – when he said in simple words, “There are greater battles ahead, love. Rest up.”

The Elder Scrolls: In the Shadows of Oblivion

Isai Sutor-Armaseptus

_{@MacabreFox & @spicykvnt}

---

Truly, the bombardment of what had come was unexpected. The vulture woman, Deia – “A pretty name,” Isai remarked – seemed to place more importance on demonstration of power as magicka cracked and sparked in her hands. Wherever she came from, might made right. Still didn’t exemplify the use of her tongue in undoing the lock, though. Then the cathay-raht, in his grandiose posture, indeed postured as he pushed his way through the cell like he could part the sea all but confirming the rumors he always heard about prison, that the biggest did indeed seem to run the cell block. He thought might made right too. This “Kiffar’s” size was such a thing of awe that his own words were overshadowed by him, as he had treaded the borders of Anequina, the Rim, and Reaper’s March and but never dared to cross that border given Elsweyr’s conflict with County Leyawiin, and he had no interest in being abducted by a cartel or the Renrijra Krin. During that time, he saw many khajiit, but never came across a cathay-raht in person. If anything, his zoo-like novelty outweighed anything he had to say, as his mastery of language was better likened to one of Skyrim’s giants than any of the well-read alfiqs he had the privilege of meeting. Indeed, at that size, Isai supposed it was hard not to measure the value of something by its susceptibility to being stepped on or eaten.

Deia, however, seemed keen to interject and saw him just as meal-worthy and dissected him with hungry eyes as much she did for himself, calling his bluff and rising to the open challenge Kiffar had made. One's might measured against another's, and the rightness that would prevail. The way she engaged in banter made her feel more popsy than crone, were it not for her demeanor. Then came the bosmer, and not just any bosmer it seemed, but one from the Deep Green, untamed unlike the wood elves found here in the Heartland. It was obvious to him by the measure of her sharpened teeth, antlered head, scarred and painted, the braids in her wild hair, the animal-derived attire — the whole nine yards. Nothing was missing from the caricature of her people. She had a delightfully savage and wild manicness in her face, as much a predator as the cathay-raht, but she followed him in his shadow like a remora that stuck itself to the belly of a shark. Even so, he wondered if she cowered under his shade, or if the khajiit was but the tall grass for the snake to hide in.

Even a young man from across the cell block, barely a child, seemed attracted to whatever was occurring here with his address to… either Deia or the bosmer, he wasn’t entirely sure, since he seemed he returned to his conversation and story-telling right after. Either way, he delivered some toilet humor that thankfully wasn’t in reference to whatever that initial charlatan said that spurred much of this on. Sure, there was a dirty taste in his mouth, but it didn't taste anything like... well, he didn't really want to continue that assessment in case he was wrong. In any case, the arena event was a world wonder in the right that it attracted so many from around the Empire! And here they all were, crammed in these quarters.

Still, there seemed to be quite a few people out for his head already — quite a feat, considering that he hadn’t even slept with anyone yet. Or talked to most of them. Isai deflated a bit.

Then came a trembling. His own? Heavens, no, surely he’s been through worse. He looked down to see Verena at his side, apparently interposing herself between him and the crowd. He barely even noticed that for the solid minute he spent looking around, watching everyone in his fascination and preoccupation with his own emotional self-inventory, that he barely noticed the homeostasis he felt — that he wasn’t being shoved around by the masses of people anymore.

“I keep my faith in you, Isai.” She said, “You have seen us through the most unusual quarries. Perhaps when we leave this place, I would make us both some eidar cap.”

Isai paused for just a moment, as if to process what she was saying. Her eyes spoke of a pain not heard in her words. He felt something melt away, though he couldn’t name what in that moment, as he could only think of giving her a pearly, reassuring grin.

“Quarries? Ah, quandaries? Well, no worries my dear. Truly. I’ve always attempted adherence to one principle, which is never to trust how one feels about life after nine in the evening. Look at them — look at us — all locked together, but were these cages permanent, they’d have not keys. I propose that our differences be seen in how hardship is endured and continue our belief in the carrot before the stick… agreed? Besides…”

Isai looked over his shoulder toward Deia and the little bosmer woman.

“...Twas not the first time I was threatened with devourment and, gods willing, it shan’t be the last.”

The Elder Scrolls: In the Shadows of Oblivion

Isai

_@spicykvnt

---

A woman, perhaps once beautiful and graceful in dress and tongue, now defiled and in dire straits in her need for a bath and a tailor, descended upon the gentleman and his assistant like a vulture. And like a vulture, she had a hungry glint in her eye and dressed in dark, almost greasy plumage, with nails like talons. Her mouth, with each utterance, was like a beak pecking and prodding, as if testing for still and ripened flesh so as to pull his liver out from his side. Her language was like a sordid distortion and corruption of the courtly cant communicated in higher class circles. Her face, in isolation, a vintage ceramic stained by patina in need of polish or like a wine on the cusp of vinegar, and so then her dress may perhaps not be like a vulture’s at all, but like aedra fallen from grace. Part of him saw the wild of wyresses in her, but nay, it was something darker… not even in the daedric sense, but the dark of nature: like starving wolves in the dead of night, plagued by infection, thorns, and venom. Well, Isai resolved to prove that he was no carrion! If this fallen angel saw fit to test her mettle in descending upon him, he hoped she’d find no easy meal. However, lest she see him a threat, he wanted to allow her to believe her illusions still stood.

Isai looked over at her, his eyes darting between the youth-hag and Verena. He didn’t face her, but rather addressed her from the side, and quickly, before Verena had a chance to respond. “Hm? Esquire of Cheydinhal actually, my lady, though I appreciate your estimation of my station. Isai Tegulatoris Sutris-Armaseptus da Leyawiin, Esquire. Alas, the gods permit me only to be but of the landed gentry before the peerage, and my tongue to turn naught but opinion, pleasure, and tied cherry stems.”

Ending his introduction so matter-of-factly, he bowed as much as the physical space would allow him to and extended his hand with as much distance and with as much respect for her space as he could. He added, “Though speaking of pleasure, it is mine to make your acquaintance, dear lady…?”

His words lingered in the air as she awaited her name. He couldn’t lie to himself, he was kind of scared of her. But he thought he put up a good enough front, and if nothing else he knew how to make people good about themselves in his presence, like everyone else around them is momentarily forgotten. That aside, she seemed enough of a caricature — more a character to him than a real person — that made her interesting enough to serve as a literary subject in one of his manuscripts. So, getting the full scoop of what she was about might be worth losing a finger over as long as one of the restorationists in here felt like mending another one.

The Elder Scrolls: In the Shadows of Oblivion

_{In collaboration with @MacabreFox}

Isai & Verena

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Among the hustle and bustle, and the squirming and tussle, of women and man packed together arse-to-muscle, extended a single, slender hand from amidst the mass and at the mercy of jostle. In its palm, a sachet of tea, extended beneath the drip, drip of water fed by the cit-y from the stonework above. The water doth run, and the steeping just begun, though its temperature, a pity.

“Good sirs, if I may beg your pardon…” Isai said, his voice barely audible as his face was smushed betwixt one man’s shoulder and another’s pectoral. A moment passed and the shoulder rotated, granting the bard some reprieve. He took a sigh of relief, and his head craned through the cell for his compatriot, Verena Luscinia, as he felt his heart swell with pride over what seemed to be a moment of ingenuity. His voice tried to climb over the others and their griping of the inhumane conditions.

“See for yourself, my dear, and testify as witness to this newest utterance: hacking shortcuts and conveniences through life, merited by creativity and resourcefulness — a life hack one may say — so behold, if one has acquired tea in a dungeon’s depths and be lacking in water, taking control of one’s fate, one may cup water found in thine hand and surely improve its quality! See?”

Indeed, the water dripping from the ceiling pooled in his hand and soak and leeched some flavor from the tea leaves in the sachet. He noisily slurped from his hand as if to demonstrate before a man’s cry shot through the prison, “Hey-ho! Look! That guy is drinking shit water!”

Isai immediately spat and sputtered and wiped his mouth on his sleeve before stammering, following the shout, “I-indeed, verily, where’s this hapless cur? I should have a laugh at the fool!”

The deflection worked to some extent and most of the crowd was looking around to see who was the culprit, apparently eager to sink their teeth into him, while Isai sank low beneath the crowd and ducking beneath arms and the like to reappear next to Verena’s side, looking a little pale-faced.

“I do sympathize for the poor, unknown chap to have fallen for such fecal folly,” he muttered to her, not making eye contact or paying acknowledgement for what had transpired. The chaos of the current situation in this prison was such that he paid little heed even to the large khajiit lifting a dungeon door from its hinges, there being so much to have eyes on. Still, he wanted to mentally record everything he saw so as to perhaps convey the events that transpire in prison in a future book… that would conveniently exempt the little, insignificant detail that he shared a cell with the miscreants.

“I did not witness there to be any excrement in the water, whatever do they mean?” Verena pondered to herself, loud enough for Isai to hear, though her attention drifted elsewhere, the finesse of the situation flying entirely over her head. She shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other, her feet aching in her leather slippers from having to stand due to the more bodies the guards crammed into the cell. She noted a few Argonians, the massive Khajiit, Bretons and Redguards, was that a Bosmer? Yes, it was. And even the surprise handful of Nords.

The heat of the bodies crammed into the cell filled her nostrils, an odour that made her wrinkle nose. Her attempt to identify the sources of the odours kept her occupied for the time being. Some smelled strongly of sweat, others of ale, there was the scent of perfume… She gagged, had someone passed flatulence? The audacity. Though… if duty calls, who was she to pass judgement? Growing hot under the collar of her cloak, Verena proceeded to unhook its simple clasp, folding the grey woolen fabric into a neat square, and held the bundle to her chest.

“So much for the greatest sporting event of the era,” Verena sighed half-heartedly, harking to Isai’s desire to record the event. Oh, how he had urged her that it would be an exciting affair, and truly it was, until the riot broke out like grease spilled over an open flame.

“Any idea on how you will portray the riot? You likened it to a bar fight, after all.” She mused, though she wasn’t certain if her companion would recall his own words given the events of his losing consciousness shortly after.

“Mmm, yes,” the thespian mused in turn, massaging away the bump on the back of his head, wincing when he pressed too hard, “I’m sure I could make some… inferences, supplement the material with auxiliary interviews of the, ah, more active participants… oh, excuse me!”

As a guard paced in front of him, his attention was quickly fetched away from his commiseratory compatriot, and his hand nearly lunged out from between the bars to wave them down.

“I beg your pardon, ser,” he pleaded, “but I am afraid there has been some confusion. See, I don’t truly belong here, as I’m sure you recall that I was in a sordid state which eluded the lucidity and wherewithal befitting of any acquiescence to the participation of a– ser?”

The guard, while initially uninterested in any pleas for mercy, at least began to hear him out until the syllables started getting too long and continued on their patrol down the swollen prison. Isai sighed and hung his head down, tuning out the droning of a dunmer man spitting his vile rhetoric towards the cellmates across the prison from him.There were only so many voices he could try to focus on, one suggesting some game of cards or dice, as if the guards would’ve allowed anything to enter the cells besides the clothes on their backs… and in the case of the massive khajiit, apparently not even that.

He pondered for a moment about the logistics of their ability to lock up mages. He could always attempt to magically open the lock, though it may be a higher grade more complex than what he was able to deal with, and the consequences that would come after were as clear as a flash of steel. What about conjurers? Technically, they’re always armed. He did think for a moment about conjuring a die – it wasn’t any more complex than a dagger, but he recalled the last time he tried performing such a parlor trick and the die ended up having a mouth and an opinion: “You arrogant worm! Mark my words mortal, once I’m recorporealized I will flay you alive and wear your cock as a hat!”

Needless to say, being retraumatized by a daedric household trinket will not be on today’s agenda. Isai took a moment to recompose himself, standing at his full height, and spinning on his heel to greet Verena with pearly-white smile. “Make yourself comfortable, darling! I’ve exercised my leverage and spoke with the guards, so I am sure I will have gotten us out of this predicament in no time at all.”

Verena’s gaze snapped to Isai, and at his words of assurance she breathed a sigh of relief, her shoulders sagging in response. A vibrant and warm smile spread over her lips as she beamed at him, “Oh what a relief, Isai! Truly a hero, indeed.”

The Elder Scrolls: In the Shadows of Oblivion

(WEB VERSION) Isai Tegulatoris Sutor-Armaseptus da Leyawiin, Esq.

I S A I T E G U L A T O R I S S U T O R - A R M A S E P T U S
D A L E Y A W I I N , E S Q .

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_{"Paint me like one of thine Dunmer bonnies."}

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══════ C H A R A C T E R P O R T R A I T ══════ _______________________________________________ _______________________________________________ ═══════ C H A R A C T E R S U M M A R Y ══════ Isai Tegulatoris Sutor-Armaseptus da Leyawiin, Esq. _______________________________________________ 29 | He / Him | Imperial / Bosmer _______________________________________________ Painter, Mage, Astronomer, Astrologist, Historian, Simp, Literary Critic, Writer (of Prose and Poetry), Theoretical Physicist, Phrenologist, and Philosopher ▼ P H Y S I C A L T R A I T S ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ ► Build - Lithe and erect. ► Skin Color - Of Mediterranean or Imperial likeness. ► Hair Color - A dark walnut brown. ► Eye Color - Blue. ▼ D O S S I E R ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ ► Birthplace - Leyawiin, Cyrodiil. ► Birthsign - The Ritual. ► Ambition - He wants to be as far away as he can from the dirt from whence he sprung, to climb station after station. He also wants to crack the cosmological code, and though he's unable to put it into exact words just yet, to understand the towers, mantling, and CHIM -- and he's woefully ignorant as to what that entails. ▼ F A V O R E D A T T R I B U T E S ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ ► Willpower ► Intelligence ▼ S K I L L S ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ ► Speechcraft - Adept ► Conjuration - Apprentice ► Illusion - Apprentice ► Alteration - Apprentice ► Mysticism - Apprentice ► Sneak - Novice ► One-Handed - Novice ► Marksman - Novice ► Smithing - Novice ▼ M A G I C & S P E L L S ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ ► Conjuration - Bound Dagger, Summon Scamp ► Illusion - Clairvoyance, Command ► Alteration - Open Lock, Magelight, Equilibrium ► Mysticism - Dispel, Dispel Other, Soul Trap ▼ E Q U I P M E N T ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ ► Personal Items - Aside from his clothes and a sachet of tea in his pocket, he hasa satchel carrying little more than a journal, a bunch of loose papers, a quill deemed too cheaply made to be considered a weapon, a handful of septims, house key, some stamps and seals, and a separately kept cheesecloth of venison jerky, nuts, and roots. ► The Lock Box - A flimsy wooden letter opener and a "waterskin" filled with wine, considered to be contraband. ► Stored Items - Somewhere in Leyawiin sits a simple cabin with many books, papers, and documents; the most important of which are under the floorboards, under a rug, under the bed, and in an airtight box. Oh, and does Verena count? She's in prison too and was supposed to carry a bunch of toiletries and other things -- when are we getting those back by the way?

══════ A P P E A R A N C E ══════ "Egad, who is't this knave ere me? Who is't he who wears the drapes of a lord without the filigree and station to whomst his dress deserves? This lad, this rapscallion, this wretch who is't saunters through Cheydinhall, prances about Skingrad, and canters 'round the Imperial City like some misbegotten beggar prince who is't swindles the valorous perceptions of the peasantries too naive or witless to behold his true nature?" -- Palonirya, esteemed Imperial City couturier Such is one of the many stellar reviews of Isai's presumed character but veritably affirms the suspicions one may have upon visitation of him. He offers an aesthetic that can only be ascertained as some Bretony fad, "baroque chic, baroque genre," falling just short of the haute couture he roleplays as. So, while his fashion presents the haunting shade of an elite-class academic, his disposition appears bereft of the customary mannerisms and tics that betray them, only managing to caricaturize those he impersonates... but it's understated. There's no doubt he takes care of his appearance, as his dress is designed and tailored to insinuate a higher class that is dressing down, but only to the extent of denoting a certain humility that screams "I could be adorned head to toe in pearls, but I'm not, see? I'm so likable, but also, not like you." The fashion choice in question is expressed with an almost-perfectly tailored cassock with a likeness to a liturgical vestment, were it not embroidered with same-colored Toile de Jouy patterns overlayed by a conflicting gold Jacquard, unintentionally symbolic of the bucolic and pastoral backdrop of his life blending and hiding in the tapestry of his life, shocked by the glittering distractions of opulence and indulgence. The cassock, typically unbuttoned at the top and almost thick enough to be mistaken for a gambeson, contrasts against silken white shirt underneath, and makes him appear somewhat top-heavy with the pansied slops he wears as his leggings, but are rebalanced by some riding boots (meant to suggest the ownership of a horse [he does not own a horse]) that unfortunately just give his legs the appearance of twigs supporting his otherwise heavy silhouette. His long brown hair is well groomed, as is the notably Nibenese-Imperial fashioned facial hair, and they frame and accessorize an oval head, hard at work to mislead the eye and suggest some of the absent chiseled-ness he might desire. He is a fairly thin man, generally speaking, lacking a sort of cut fitness that he desires but lacking the interest in exerting the physical effort to obtain it, but also having a slight belly that lets you know that he routinely samples the best of the world's foods like Breton honey cakes and spicy wyress wine, Altmeri golden pear punch, Imperial dormice with marrow sauce, or a Dunmeri curried kwama scrib risotto. Conveniently, or perhaps by design, his cassock somehow both hides and flatters his figure. He is somewhat tall, but not particularly intimidating at 5'10". All this to say, Isai looks younger than his years, and the pep in his step instills in the passive observer a sense of energy and dynamism that undercuts a boyish charm. His presentation disarms and distracts from a genuinely curious mind trying to crack some kind of esoteric code not readily apparent to others. ═══════ P E R S O N A L I T Y ══════ Isai is an Imperial man (alleging to be half-Bosmer on his mother's side) with a wide range of self-ascribed titles relating to the arts, sciences, pseudo-sciences, philosophy, and magical studies. However, he is perhaps best known as an author who has and will write about anything and everything, though it is unclear whether it be from genuine academic interest/artistic expression or because he likes the attention of being heard and seen. He is also known for having an inclination towards being melodramatic. A true renaissance man, he doesn't purport to be an expert in any one field, but it cannot be denied even by those chagrined by his self-indulgent behavior that he is very knowledgeable about a wide breadth of topics, even if some of them may be misinformed. He seems most interested in the world history of Tamriel, its mortal denizens, and the cosmology of the universe which provides magicka, gods, and daedra. In league with such interests, he possesses apprentice-level knowledge of conjuration, alteration, and mysticism, as well as apprentice-level knowledge of the illusion school, only being invested insofar as to only become versed in the nature of illusions so as to “study how the mind behaves within its confines, and shatter that which allows reality to allude." ...Whatever that means. His clear eccentricities notwithstanding, he is a man who mostly has his wits about him in most situations. He’s an advocate for “training the mind,” being a considerable fan of theory — no matter the discipline — and appearing notably excitable when broaching even the most esoteric and cerebral topics of conversations.

That said, his interest in such unsubstantive ideas like creation that evade or bewilder even most existential philosophers and conjurers. He has studied figures and events such as Tiber Septim, the ALMSIVI, the towers, and the Dragon Break extensively, even if the most regarded research is still little more than speculative theory and intellectual junk food. Such is the reason for his studies into magics that reach across the planes, alter reality, influence minds, and its own essence.

Isai is ambitious if nothing else, always wanting a little more and not really caring about the means to seize it. He has an appreciation for law if not a respect for it, preferring to use it for his purposes and bending them if he can’t, but never brashly breaking them if he can help it. There is a limit to what he’ll do, as he wouldn’t dare, say, making a human sacrifice in a daedric ritual, though it’s hard to say if that’s simply because he doesn’t have the stomach for it, but he at least purports to have a moral code of not deliberately hurting anyone despite all of his seeming faults, he is undeniably a friendly person, and whether or not he remembers your name being beside the point, you are sure to feel welcomed and flattered in his presence, and if one is so keen, to enjoy a cold night made warmer. He enjoys traveling between the provinces to see the world and to document history as it occurs.

_{═══════ S K I L L S (E X T E N D E D) ══════}

Skills (Extended)

SPEECH
Isai may not be the quintessential bard with lute in hand as Tamriel understands it, but his function is none less impactful with his dissemination of information. Speechcraft is just as much a level of literacy as it is the proficiency to persuade, as to master rhetoric is to understand language in many forms and functions; to resist propaganda or perpetuate it. His familiarity and comfort with the arts, philosophy, politics, and history, with toes dipped into understanding magic, enables him to dance and perform in many intellectual arenas or get what he needs out of most people. It is now also how he earns most of his income.

MAGIC
Isai's interest in Conjuration, Alteration, Illusion, and Mysticism are not arbitrary decisions, as he believes that the study of magic helps him investigate the fabric of Aurbis and spirit of Anu. Destruction is, to him, a useless school because it takes magic to recreate the physical phenomenon that occurs on Mundus for the purpose of physically changing the environment within the closed system of reality's laws, whereas Alteration bends those laws itself. He studies Illusion to study the mind and metamagical or aethersynaptic entanglement, or how magic from Aetherius influences the mind and its senses and prevents it from seeing what is real. Mysticism is the study of magic itself, of course. Conjuration is the school of magic that, while is at the same practical level, is supposedly his specialty and operates on the highest theoretical level, as it expresses the movement between planes and potentially throughout the Aurbis itself.

However, he is keen to not advance too far into these fields past the adept level, because he fears that working too deeply in one's school constrains thought to laboring within their laws and rules. By never becoming an expert in a school of magic, he believes he won't become too invested or confined by its scholarly tradition. He has little consideration for any practical applications of the magic he studies, but he supposes that if he is held up in a highway mugging, he can summon a knife in his hand just to get his ass beat worse. He supposes that trying to bend his assailant's mind works less in his favor if he fails, because even if it has the best potential outcome, failure means he doesn't even have a knife and the opportunity to bluff. Summoning scamps are often more trouble than they're worth, but they are still his best bet in a scrape: summon and run and hope there aren't any authorities nearby witnessing you summon daedra. Clairvoyance is his most practical spell, as it helps direct him where to go while on the road followed by magelight -- a midnight writer's non-flammable lighting option. Mysticism is almost entirely based in theory. He learned how to cast soul trap on himself then immediately panicked and had to learn how to dispel it.

SNEAK
He's a sneaky guy. Is he a super sneaky guy? Not really. Twigs have snapped underfoot, but he's no assassin - he's just an intellectual charlatan who sometimes gets himself into sticky situations he has a hard time running out of. What's a man to do? Hug the wall and pray someone doesn't see you. One may even say that the theory of sneakiness is deep in his bones via some underhanded methods, but erasing his presence from others' senses is a skill he does not have.

ONE-HANDED
He's not a swordsman; he just assumes it is expected of him to have some swordsmanship ability as a gentleman. Like fencing and such, only he's not very good at it. He can conjure a dagger for you to laugh at, but it's weightless and sharp as sin, so it's still worth your consideration. Laugh only briefly, because it doesn't take much to bleed a pig.

MARKSMAN
His mother is a Bosmer, and although that doesn't automatically default her or her son with skill with a bow, she does know how to use one and imparted that knowledge onto her son while on the road. While it started as recreation, she did stress the importance of being able to acquire game and food. While Isai is not much of a chef, a lucky shot means he can bring a buck into town to sell for enough money to get some food and a comfortable night in an inn bed.

SMITHING
Probably even worse than a novice. He has a lot of theoretical knowledge of construction, engineering, and maths, but he lacks any practical competency with hardware and no desire to exert the physical effort. He can come up with the ideas, but he's just an ideas guy. He'll tell you what to do if you're so inclined to build a wagon for him.

_{═══════ B A C K G R O U N D ══════}

Isai's background is remarkably... varied to say the least, and superstitious at worst. He took after his father rather than his mother in his dominant traits, being born more of an Imperial than a Bosmer--which was uncommon enough to begin with--and he had a twin who the restorationists in Anvil suspected he ate in utero. His bosmer mother was from Anvil, not from Valenwood like many of the Colovians accused her of (though her ancestral memory ran strong in her blood), and Isai's father was from the Imperial City and born to a tiler of the city's streets, to whom his given middle name alludes to. He was born under the sign of the Ritual, but on the cusp of the Lover, and as the Serpent was travelling across the sky. So many strange happenings at once would make his father very nervous, but unfortunately Stephanus would not stay very long to care for the baby and returned to the Imperial City, since he and Isai's mother, Boniel, broke off their engagement. So it is for this reason, and among others to come that Isai has come to resent his father, while also finding great humor and irony in that what he did inherit from his father is that which comes further down his bloodline--for the man looked to be a proud Colovian imperial, whereas Isai inherited more Nibenese traits from much older and deader descendants.

Naturally, single-parent living was going to be much harder. His mother, originally studying to be a mage, resorted to working nights as an entertainer and a dancer and living in a cabin in the cheapest part of Leyawiin to supplement the stipends received from the local lord for working their land. In the few hours that remained left in her day, she delivered Isai his homeschooled education. He was often babysat by his argonian neighbors he often had little clue on rearing a mammalian child as opposed to a clutch of eggs. Some of their appetites may have rubbed off on him, though now he would not likely stand to stomach most of it outside of the crawfish boils, cornbread, and baked bananas.

His mother would eventually achieve the rank of apprentice within the Mage's Guild, and though she was a smart budding conjurer, barring the ability to conjure a warm house and filling meal, she wouldn't be able to save her income from drying up and her standing in the Mages Guild was only such that she could no longer to sustain even her meager housing, nor could she move her little family into the quarters of the guild. She had friends and connections with an entertainment troupe that they could travel with in caravan.

Isai has since found it to be a consistently enrapturing conversation starter that the solution to poverty is to be kidnapped by "Daedra worshippers" and join the circus, or at least that's how he puts it. True, the caravanning troupe were performers and entertainers, actors and musicians, but they also carried with them some trade skills and general merchants. Many of them were of the buy-sell businessmen sort, and Isai would learn to pull his weight amidst this community. Though he never felt as if he was particularly good with numbers and money, he was good enough at working people -- whether they were colleague or patron, always trying to get the best deal for himself, whether honest or swindle.

It doesn't take much to become disillusioned with this lifestyle, especially if one is always looking up at the wealthy from the ranks below. Isai had a talent for reading and writing, something that his mother was keen to instill, and he often had little to do but read while on the road and acquiring books with what little money he'd earn. When the collection of books took up too much space or became too heavy, they were sold at the next stop. He became more immersed in the arts, history, magic, and cosmology. That was the stuff he wanted to talk about at length, but at a higher level. It was only a matter of time until he got tired of not being on the same intellectual level as most of his community and found a way out.

Most of the retinue owed money to some lord who owned the land they originally lived on -- even Boniel. But clever Isai found a solution on his return to Leyawiin. While he worked for others in their homes to accumulate some wealth (and reading their books all the while), he collected swamp sludge and sewage from the surrounding area and directed it toward a naturally dry piece of land just outside of the walls and expressed interest in purchasing that land that was little more than 15x15 feet. Looking utterly worthless, Isai obtained it for almost literally a steal. While almost utterly uncultivatable, that wasn't the important part. By technicality, or fact, he now owned land. He upscaled his life from beginning from serfdom, to vagabond, domestic servant to, suddenly, a franklin -- a freeman, dispossessed of a lord.

Seeing now that such mobility was possible, he wondered what it would take to achieve more. From the cabin he had built here began the rest of his life, writing books upon books and engaging with the local academics, and as he traveled the provinces to return to his humble abode, his history of publications grew:

• Scamps of Avignaue _{(A genuinely well-crafted novel centered around a fictional Breton kingdom that is rife with romance and poignant political analogues and commentary)}
• Engaging the Works of Crassius Curio: A Deconstructionist Approach _{(Feckless and vain efforts to critically analyze soft and hardcore smut)}
• From the Blackwood _{(An earnest attempt at poetry was made in this collection)}
• Spinning Wheels: Observations of the Stars, the Serpent, and Aetherius _{(Seen by experts as an amateur's entry into cosmology making peculiar speculations)}
• 69 Aphrodisiacs: Tried and Tested _{(Tested is underlined on the cover)}
• Halfway There: Extraplanar Conjuring and What Lies in the Threshold Between Realms _{(An attempt to investigate the space between Mundus and the planes of Oblivion -- grants + ½ skill to Conjuration)}
• Halfway There II: Padomaic/Sithic Principles, the Paradoxical Improbability of Void, and Absent Idols _{(Continuation of prior research into sub-planar spaces and simultaneous challenge of metaphysical presence or expression of a "void," undermining the Dark Brotherhood's belief in Sithis)}
• Halfway There III: Shadows as Aurbic Expressions of Padomay and Redacting Speculation of the Void _{(Seems written under duress)}
• On the Constitution of Man and its Relationship to External Objects _{(Definitely not plagiarized)}
• In Defense of the Arts _{(Tone-deaf piece missing context of beggars given "enrichment" instead of food and shelter)}
• Marble Spokes: Bridging Mundus to the Meta-Aurbis _{(Raises more questions than it answers)}
• "Spindle Enhancement Balms, 15 Septims" _{(An ad placed in the Black Horse Courier)}
• Much Ado About ALMSIVI _{(Comparing the old Tribunal to the Mantling of Talos, he... wait, is this fanfiction?)}

And many more "highly acclaimed" publications that have somewhat ballooned his ego. Eventually, his travels took him to Cheydinhal, where he sought to curry Count Andel Indarys' favor, so as to increase in social rank once again and position himself among the landed gentry. There, he encountered a young but well-organized Imperial castle administrator, Verena Luscinia, with whom he was able to conspire with (and possibly bribe) to learn information about the good Count, what he liked and didn't like, the things he seemed insecure about, and the controversies around him. After spending a meager amount of time in the Newlands Lodge writing his newest book, In Observance of Cheydinhal and Governance: Beauty, Culture, and Rumour, which was full of tailored and piecemeal interviews from the citizens of the county and painted a flattering state of affairs for the city and its Count. He took extra care to emphasize records of the Count's humility and dispelling the rumors surrounding his qualifications and his wife's passing by utilizing formalist theory to use the front-facing appearance of the city as "evidence from the text" (so to speak) to support the Count's reputation.

Through a combination of blowing smoke and pomp up the ass of Count Indarys, and a few well places signatures, check marks, and stamps from Verena Luscinia, Isai obtained legal evidence (through questionable means) of acquiring the courtesy title of esquire from County Cheydinhal, becoming formally recognized as a gentleman, though intending to perform no squirely duties on behalf of the Knights of the Thorn. From here on, he poached Verena as his own assistant, promising her adventure, excitement, and making a difference in the world... only to saddle her with carrying most of his stuff, few though they may be. Through thick and thin, they traveled together for almost a whole year, and eventually reached the Imperial City Arena by the skin of their teeth at Isai's behest, insisting that he recorded what was bound to be the greatest and most barbaric sporting event of the Era... only for fans to drunkenly riot, catching Isai and Verena in the mass arrest that occurred soon thereafter. He last remembers expressing excitement to Verena about how his readers would love to know what it's like to be in a bar fight before suddenly blacking out.

---

_{"I'll be the one to find it, I tell you! I'll crack the code and everyone will remember me."}

---

(MOBILE VERSION) Isai Tegulatoris Sutor-Armaseptus da Leyawiin, Esq.

I S A I T E G U L A T O R I S
S U T O R - A R M A S E P T U S
D A L E Y A W I I N , E S Q .

---

_{"Paint me like one of thine Dunmer bonnies."}

════ C H A R A C T E R P O R T R A I T ════ _______________________________________________ _______________________________________________ ═══ C H A R A C T E R S U M M A R Y ═══ Isai Tegulatoris Sutor-Armaseptus da Leyawiin, Esq. _______________________________________________ 29 | He / Him | Imperial / Bosmer _______________________________________________ Painter, Mage, Astronomer, Astrologist, Historian, Simp, Literary Critic, Writer (of Prose and Poetry), Theoretical Physicist, Phrenologist, and Philosopher ▼ P H Y S I C A L T R A I T S ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ ► Build - Lithe and erect. ► Skin Color - Of Mediterranean or Imperial likeness. ► Hair Color - A dark walnut brown. ► Eye Color - Blue. ▼ D O S S I E R ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ ► Birthplace - Leyawiin, Cyrodiil. ► Birthsign - The Ritual. ► Ambition - He wants to be as far away as he can from the dirt from whence he sprung, to climb station after station. He also wants to crack the cosmological code, and though he's unable to put it into exact words just yet, to understand the towers, mantling, and CHIM -- and he's woefully ignorant as to what that entails. ▼ F A V O R E D A T T R I B U T E S ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ ► Willpower ► Intelligence ▼ S K I L L S ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ ► Speechcraft - Adept ► Conjuration - Apprentice ► Illusion - Apprentice ► Alteration - Apprentice ► Mysticism - Apprentice ► Sneak - Novice ► One-Handed - Novice ► Marksman - Novice ► Smithing - Novice ▼ M A G I C & S P E L L S ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ ► Conjuration - Bound Dagger, Summon Scamp ► Illusion - Clairvoyance, Command ► Alteration - Open Lock, Magelight, Equilibrium ► Mysticism - Dispel, Dispel Other, Soul Trap ▼ E Q U I P M E N T ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ ► Personal Items - Aside from his clothes and a sachet of tea in his pocket, he hasa satchel carrying little more than a journal, a bunch of loose papers, a quill deemed too cheaply made to be considered a weapon, a handful of septims, house key, some stamps and seals, and a separately kept cheesecloth of venison jerky, nuts, and roots. ► The Lock Box - A flimsy wooden letter opener and a "waterskin" filled with wine, considered to be contraband. ► Stored Items - Somewhere in Leyawiin sits a simple cabin with many books, papers, and documents; the most important of which are under the floorboards, under a rug, under the bed, and in an airtight box. Oh, and does Verena count? She's in prison too and was supposed to carry a bunch of toiletries and other things -- when are we getting those back by the way?

════ A P P E A R A N C E ════ "Egad, who is't this knave ere me? Who is't he who wears the drapes of a lord without the filigree and station to whomst his dress deserves? This lad, this rapscallion, this wretch who is't saunters through Cheydinhall, prances about Skingrad, and canters 'round the Imperial City like some misbegotten beggar prince who is't swindles the valorous perceptions of the peasantries too naive or witless to behold his true nature?" -- Palonirya, esteemed Imperial City couturier Such is one of the many stellar reviews of Isai's presumed character but veritably affirms the suspicions one may have upon visitation of him. He offers an aesthetic that can only be ascertained as some Bretony fad, "baroque chic, baroque genre," falling just short of the haute couture he roleplays as. So, while his fashion presents the haunting shade of an elite-class academic, his disposition appears bereft of the customary mannerisms and tics that betray them, only managing to caricaturize those he impersonates... but it's understated. There's no doubt he takes care of his appearance, as his dress is designed and tailored to insinuate a higher class that is dressing down, but only to the extent of denoting a certain humility that screams "I could be adorned head to toe in pearls, but I'm not, see? I'm so likable, but also, not like you." The fashion choice in question is expressed with an almost-perfectly tailored cassock with a likeness to a liturgical vestment, were it not embroidered with same-colored Toile de Jouy patterns overlayed by a conflicting gold Jacquard, unintentionally symbolic of the bucolic and pastoral backdrop of his life blending and hiding in the tapestry of his life, shocked by the glittering distractions of opulence and indulgence. The cassock, typically unbuttoned at the top and almost thick enough to be mistaken for a gambeson, contrasts against silken white shirt underneath, and makes him appear somewhat top-heavy with the pansied slops he wears as his leggings, but are rebalanced by some riding boots (meant to suggest the ownership of a horse [he does not own a horse]) that unfortunately just give his legs the appearance of twigs supporting his otherwise heavy silhouette. His long brown hair is well groomed, as is the notably Nibenese-Imperial fashioned facial hair, and they frame and accessorize an oval head, hard at work to mislead the eye and suggest some of the absent chiseled-ness he might desire.

He is a fairly thin man, generally speaking, lacking a sort of cut fitness that he desires but lacking the interest in exerting the physical effort to obtain it, but also having a slight belly that lets you know that he routinely samples the best of the world's foods like Breton honey cakes and spicy wyress wine, Altmeri golden pear punch, Imperial dormice with marrow sauce, or a Dunmeri curried kwama scrib risotto. Conveniently, or perhaps by design, his cassock somehow both hides and flatters his figure. He is somewhat tall, but not particularly intimidating at 5'10".

All this to say, Isai looks younger than his years and the pep in his step instills in the passive observer a sense of energy and dynamism that undercuts a boyish charm. His presentation disarms and distracts from a genuinely curious mind trying to crack some kind of esoteric code not readily apparent to others.

_{═══════ P E R S O N A L I T Y ══════}

Isai is an Imperial man (alleging to be half-Bosmer on his mother's side) with a wide range of self-ascribed titles relating to the arts, sciences, pseudo-sciences, philosophy, and magical studies. However, he is perhaps best known as an author who has and will write about anything and everything, though it is unclear whether it be from genuine academic interest/artistic expression or because he likes the attention of being heard and seen. He is also known for having an inclination towards being melodramatic.

A true renaissance man, he doesn't purport to be an expert in any one field, but it cannot be denied even by those chagrined by his self-indulgent behavior that he is very knowledgeable about a wide breadth of topics, even if some of them may be misinformed. He seems most interested in the world history of Tamriel, its mortal denizens, and the cosmology of the universe which provides magicka, gods, and daedra.

In league with such interests, he possesses apprentice-level knowledge of conjuration, alteration, and mysticism, as well as apprentice-level knowledge of the illusion school, only being invested insofar as to only become versed in the nature of illusions so as to “study how the mind behaves within its confines, and shatter that which allows reality to allude." ...Whatever that means. His clear eccentricities notwithstanding, he is a man who mostly has his wits about him in most situations. He’s an advocate for “training the mind,” being a considerable fan of theory — no matter the discipline — and appearing notably excitable when broaching even the most esoteric and cerebral topics of conversations. That said, his interest in such unsubstantive ideas like creation that evade or bewilder even most existential philosophers and conjurers. He has studied figures and events such as Tiber Septim, the ALMSIVI, the towers, and the Dragon Break extensively, even if the most regarded research is still little more than speculative theory and intellectual junk food. Such is the reason for his studies into magics that reach across the planes, alter reality, influence minds, and its own essence.

Isai is ambitious if nothing else, always wanting a little more and not really caring about the means to seize it. He has an appreciation for law if not a respect for it, preferring to use it for his purposes and bending them if he can’t, but never brashly breaking them if he can help it. There is a limit to what he’ll do, as he wouldn’t dare, say, making a human sacrifice in a daedric ritual, though it’s hard to say if that’s simply because he doesn’t have the stomach for it, but he at least purports to have a moral code of not deliberately hurting anyone despite all of his seeming faults, he is undeniably a friendly person, and whether or not he remembers your name being beside the point, you are sure to feel welcomed and flattered in his presence, and if one is so keen, to enjoy a cold night made warmer. He enjoys traveling between the provinces to see the world and to document history as it occurs.

_{═══════ S K I L L S (E X T E N D E D) ══════}

Skills (Extended)

SPEECH
Isai may not be the quintessential bard with lute in hand as Tamriel understands it, but his function is none less impactful with his dissemination of information. Speechcraft is just as much a level of literacy as it is the proficiency to persuade, as to master rhetoric is to understand language in many forms and functions; to resist propaganda or perpetuate it. His familiarity and comfort with the arts, philosophy, politics, and history, with toes dipped into understanding magic, enables him to dance and perform in many intellectual arenas or get what he needs out of most people. It is now also how he earns most of his income.

MAGIC
Isai's interest in Conjuration, Alteration, Illusion, and Mysticism are not arbitrary decisions, as he believes that the study of magic helps him investigate the fabric of Aurbis and spirit of Anu. Destruction is, to him, a useless school because it takes magic to recreate the physical phenomenon that occurs on Mundus for the purpose of physically changing the environment within the closed system of reality's laws, whereas Alteration bends those laws itself. He studies Illusion to study the mind and metamagical or aethersynaptic entanglement, or how magic from Aetherius influences the mind and its senses and prevents it from seeing what is real. Mysticism is the study of magic itself, of course. Conjuration is the school of magic that, while is at the same practical level, is supposedly his specialty and operates on the highest theoretical level, as it expresses the movement between planes and potentially throughout the Aurbis itself.

However, he is keen to not advance too far into these fields past the adept level, because he fears that working too deeply in one's school constrains thought to laboring within their laws and rules. By never becoming an expert in a school of magic, he believes he won't become too invested or confined by its scholarly tradition. He has little consideration for any practical applications of the magic he studies, but he supposes that if he is held up in a highway mugging, he can summon a knife in his hand just to get his ass beat worse. He supposes that trying to bend his assailant's mind works less in his favor if he fails, because even if it has the best potential outcome, failure means he doesn't even have a knife and the opportunity to bluff. Summoning scamps are often more trouble than they're worth, but they are still his best bet in a scrape: summon and run and hope there aren't any authorities nearby witnessing you summon daedra. Clairvoyance is his most practical spell, as it helps direct him where to go while on the road followed by magelight -- a midnight writer's non-flammable lighting option. Mysticism is almost entirely based in theory. He learned how to cast soul trap on himself then immediately panicked and had to learn how to dispel it.

SNEAK
He's a sneaky guy. Is he a super sneaky guy? Not really. Twigs have snapped underfoot, but he's no assassin - he's just an intellectual charlatan who sometimes gets himself into sticky situations he has a hard time running out of. What's a man to do? Hug the wall and pray someone doesn't see you. One may even say that the theory of sneakiness is deep in his bones via some underhanded methods, but erasing his presence from others' senses is a skill he does not have.

ONE-HANDED
He's not a swordsman; he just assumes it is expected of him to have some swordsmanship ability as a gentleman. Like fencing and such, only he's not very good at it. He can conjure a dagger for you to laugh at, but it's weightless and sharp as sin, so it's still worth your consideration. Laugh only briefly, because it doesn't take much to bleed a pig.

MARKSMAN
His mother is a Bosmer, and although that doesn't automatically default her or her son with skill with a bow, she does know how to use one and imparted that knowledge onto her son while on the road. While it started as recreation, she did stress the importance of being able to acquire game and food. While Isai is not much of a chef, a lucky shot means he can bring a buck into town to sell for enough money to get some food and a comfortable night in an inn bed.

SMITHING
Probably even worse than a novice. He has a lot of theoretical knowledge of construction, engineering, and maths, but he lacks any practical competency with hardware and no desire to exert the physical effort. He can come up with the ideas, but he's just an ideas guy. He'll tell you what to do if you're so inclined to build a wagon for him.

_{═══════ B A C K G R O U N D ══════}

Isai's background is remarkably... varied to say the least, and superstitious at worst. He took after his father rather than his mother in his dominant traits, being born more of an Imperial than a Bosmer--which was uncommon enough to begin with--and he had a twin who the restorationists in Anvil suspected he ate in utero. His bosmer mother was from Anvil, not from Valenwood like many of the Colovians accused her of (though her ancestral memory ran strong in her blood), and Isai's father was from the Imperial City and born to a tiler of the city's streets, to whom his given middle name alludes to. He was born under the sign of the Ritual, but on the cusp of the Lover, and as the Serpent was travelling across the sky. So many strange happenings at once would make his father very nervous, but unfortunately Stephanus would not stay very long to care for the baby and returned to the Imperial City, since he and Isai's mother, Boniel, broke off their engagement. So it is for this reason, and among others to come that Isai has come to resent his father, while also finding great humor and irony in that what he did inherit from his father is that which comes further down his bloodline--for the man looked to be a proud Colovian imperial, whereas Isai inherited more Nibenese traits from much older and deader descendants.

Naturally, single-parent living was going to be much harder. His mother, originally studying to be a mage, resorted to working nights as an entertainer and a dancer and living in a cabin in the cheapest part of Leyawiin to supplement the stipends received from the local lord for working their land. In the few hours that remained left in her day, she delivered Isai his homeschooled education. He was often babysat by his argonian neighbors he often had little clue on rearing a mammalian child as opposed to a clutch of eggs. Some of their appetites may have rubbed off on him, though now he would not likely stand to stomach most of it outside of the crawfish boils, cornbread, and baked bananas.

His mother would eventually achieve the rank of apprentice within the Mage's Guild, and though she was a smart budding conjurer, barring the ability to conjure a warm house and filling meal, she wouldn't be able to save her income from drying up and her standing in the Mages Guild was only such that she could no longer to sustain even her meager housing, nor could she move her little family into the quarters of the guild. She had friends and connections with an entertainment troupe that they could travel with in caravan.

Isai has since found it to be a consistently enrapturing conversation starter that the solution to poverty is to be kidnapped by "Daedra worshippers" and join the circus, or at least that's how he puts it. True, the caravanning troupe were performers and entertainers, actors and musicians, but they also carried with them some trade skills and general merchants. Many of them were of the buy-sell businessmen sort, and Isai would learn to pull his weight amidst this community. Though he never felt as if he was particularly good with numbers and money, he was good enough at working people -- whether they were colleague or patron, always trying to get the best deal for himself, whether honest or swindle.

It doesn't take much to become disillusioned with this lifestyle, especially if one is always looking up at the wealthy from the ranks below. Isai had a talent for reading and writing, something that his mother was keen to instill, and he often had little to do but read while on the road and acquiring books with what little money he'd earn. When the collection of books took up too much space or became too heavy, they were sold at the next stop. He became more immersed in the arts, history, magic, and cosmology. That was the stuff he wanted to talk about at length, but at a higher level. It was only a matter of time until he got tired of not being on the same intellectual level as most of his community and found a way out.

Most of the retinue owed money to some lord who owned the land they originally lived on -- even Boniel. But clever Isai found a solution on his return to Leyawiin. While he worked for others in their homes to accumulate some wealth (and reading their books all the while), he collected swamp sludge and sewage from the surrounding area and directed it toward a naturally dry piece of land just outside of the walls and expressed interest in purchasing that land that was little more than 15x15 feet. Looking utterly worthless, Isai obtained it for almost literally a steal. While almost utterly uncultivatable, that wasn't the important part. By technicality, or fact, he now owned land. He upscaled his life from beginning from serfdom, to vagabond, domestic servant to, suddenly, a franklin -- a freeman, dispossessed of a lord.

Seeing now that such mobility was possible, he wondered what it would take to achieve more. From the cabin he had built here began the rest of his life, writing books upon books and engaging with the local academics, and as he traveled the provinces to return to his humble abode, his history of publications grew:

• Scamps of Avignaue _{(A genuinely well-crafted novel centered around a fictional Breton kingdom that is rife with romance and poignant political analogues and commentary)}
• Engaging the Works of Crassius Curio: A Deconstructionist Approach _{(Feckless and vain efforts to critically analyze soft and hardcore smut)}
• From the Blackwood _{(An earnest attempt at poetry was made in this collection)}
• Spinning Wheels: Observations of the Stars, the Serpent, and Aetherius _{(Seen by experts as an amateur's entry into cosmology making peculiar speculations)}
• 69 Aphrodisiacs: Tried and Tested _{(Tested is underlined on the cover)}
• Halfway There: Extraplanar Conjuring and What Lies in the Threshold Between Realms _{(An attempt to investigate the space between Mundus and the planes of Oblivion -- grants + ½ skill to Conjuration)}
• Halfway There II: Padomaic/Sithic Principles, the Paradoxical Improbability of Void, and Absent Idols _{(Continuation of prior research into sub-planar spaces and simultaneous challenge of metaphysical presence or expression of a "void," undermining the Dark Brotherhood's belief in Sithis)}
• Halfway There III: Shadows as Aurbic Expressions of Padomay and Redacting Speculation of the Void _{(Seems written under duress)}
• On the Constitution of Man and its Relationship to External Objects _{(Definitely not plagiarized)}
• In Defense of the Arts _{(Tone-deaf piece missing context of beggars given "enrichment" instead of food and shelter)}
• Marble Spokes: Bridging Mundus to the Meta-Aurbis _{(Raises more questions than it answers)}
• "Spindle Enhancement Balms, 15 Septims" _{(An ad placed in the Black Horse Courier)}
• Much Ado About ALMSIVI _{(Comparing the old Tribunal to the Mantling of Talos, he... wait, is this fanfiction?)}

And many more "highly acclaimed" publications that have somewhat ballooned his ego. Eventually, his travels took him to Cheydinhal, where he sought to curry Count Andel Indarys' favor, so as to increase in social rank once again and position himself among the landed gentry. There, he encountered a young but well-organized Imperial castle administrator, Verena Luscinia, with whom he was able to conspire with (and possibly bribe) to learn information about the good Count, what he liked and didn't like, the things he seemed insecure about, and the controversies around him. After spending a meager amount of time in the Newlands Lodge writing his newest book, In Observance of Cheydinhal and Governance: Beauty, Culture, and Rumour, which was full of tailored and piecemeal interviews from the citizens of the county and painted a flattering state of affairs for the city and its Count. He took extra care to emphasize records of the Count's humility and dispelling the rumors surrounding his qualifications and his wife's passing by utilizing formalist theory to use the front-facing appearance of the city as "evidence from the text" (so to speak) to support the Count's reputation.

Through a combination of blowing smoke and pomp up the ass of Count Indarys, and a few well places signatures, check marks, and stamps from Verena Luscinia, Isai obtained legal evidence (through questionable means) of acquiring the courtesy title of esquire from County Cheydinhal, becoming formally recognized as a gentleman, though intending to perform no squirely duties on behalf of the Knights of the Thorn. From here on, he poached Verena as his own assistant, promising her adventure, excitement, and making a difference in the world... only to saddle her with carrying most of his stuff, few though they may be. Through thick and thin, they traveled together for almost a whole year, and eventually reached the Imperial City Arena by the skin of their teeth at Isai's behest, insisting that he recorded what was bound to be the greatest and most barbaric sporting event of the Era... only for fans to drunkenly riot, catching Isai and Verena in the mass arrest that occurred soon thereafter. He last remembers expressing excitement to Verena about how his readers would love to know what it's like to be in a bar fight before suddenly blacking out.

---

_{"I'll be the one to find it, I tell you! I'll crack the code and everyone will remember me."}

---

The Elder Scrolls: In the Shadows of Oblivion

Sers, ladies, other personages of the landed gentry, I may have gotten carried away.

(WEB VERSION) Isai Tegulatoris Sutor-Armaseptus da Leyawiin, Esq.

I S A I T E G U L A T O R I S S U T O R - A R M A S E P T U S
D A L E Y A W I I N , E S Q .

---

_{"Paint me like one of thine Dunmer bonnies."}

---

══════ C H A R A C T E R P O R T R A I T ══════ _______________________________________________ _______________________________________________ ═══════ C H A R A C T E R S U M M A R Y ══════ Isai Tegulatoris Sutor-Armaseptus da Leyawiin, Esq. _______________________________________________ 29 | He / Him | Imperial / Bosmer _______________________________________________ Painter, Mage, Astronomer, Astrologist, Historian, Simp, Literary Critic, Writer (of Prose and Poetry), Theoretical Physicist, Phrenologist, and Philosopher ▼ P H Y S I C A L T R A I T S ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ ► Build - Lithe and erect. ► Skin Color - Of Mediterranean or Imperial likeness. ► Hair Color - A dark walnut brown. ► Eye Color - Blue. ▼ D O S S I E R ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ ► Birthplace - Leyawiin, Cyrodiil. ► Birthsign - The Ritual. ► Ambition - He wants to be as far away as he can from the dirt from whence he sprung, to climb station after station. He also wants to crack the cosmological code, and though he's unable to put it into exact words just yet, to understand the towers, mantling, and CHIM -- and he's woefully ignorant as to what that entails. ▼ F A V O R E D A T T R I B U T E S ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ ► Willpower ► Intelligence ▼ S K I L L S ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ ► Speechcraft - Adept ► Conjuration - Apprentice ► Illusion - Apprentice ► Alteration - Apprentice ► Mysticism - Apprentice ► Sneak - Novice ► One-Handed - Novice ► Marksman - Novice ► Smithing - Novice ▼ M A G I C & S P E L L S ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ ► Conjuration - Bound Dagger, Summon Scamp ► Illusion - Clairvoyance, Command ► Alteration - Open Lock, Magelight, Equilibrium ► Mysticism - Dispel, Dispel Other, Soul Trap ▼ E Q U I P M E N T ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ ► Personal Items - Aside from his clothes and a sachet of tea in his pocket, he hasa satchel carrying little more than a journal, a bunch of loose papers, a quill deemed too cheaply made to be considered a weapon, a handful of septims, house key, some stamps and seals, and a separately kept cheesecloth of venison jerky, nuts, and roots. ► The Lock Box - A flimsy wooden letter opener and a "waterskin" filled with wine, considered to be contraband. ► Stored Items - Somewhere in Leyawiin sits a simple cabin with many books, papers, and documents; the most important of which are under the floorboards, under a rug, under the bed, and in an airtight box. Oh, and does Verena count? She's in prison too and was supposed to carry a bunch of toiletries and other things -- when are we getting those back by the way?

══════ A P P E A R A N C E ══════ "Egad, who is't this knave ere me? Who is't he who wears the drapes of a lord without the filigree and station to whomst his dress deserves? This lad, this rapscallion, this wretch who is't saunters through Cheydinhall, prances about Skingrad, and canters 'round the Imperial City like some misbegotten beggar prince who is't swindles the valorous perceptions of the peasantries too naive or witless to behold his true nature?" -- Palonirya, esteemed Imperial City couturier Such is one of the many stellar reviews of Isai's presumed character but veritably affirms the suspicions one may have upon visitation of him. He offers an aesthetic that can only be ascertained as some Bretony fad, "baroque chic, baroque genre," falling just short of the haute couture he roleplays as. So, while his fashion presents the haunting shade of an elite-class academic, his disposition appears bereft of the customary mannerisms and tics that betray them, only managing to caricaturize those he impersonates... but it's understated. There's no doubt he takes care of his appearance, as his dress is designed and tailored to insinuate a higher class that is dressing down, but only to the extent of denoting a certain humility that screams "I could be adorned head to toe in pearls, but I'm not, see? I'm so likable, but also, not like you." The fashion choice in question is expressed with an almost-perfectly tailored cassock with a likeness to a liturgical vestment, were it not embroidered with same-colored Toile de Jouy patterns overlayed by a conflicting gold Jacquard, unintentionally symbolic of the bucolic and pastoral backdrop of his life blending and hiding in the tapestry of his life, shocked by the glittering distractions of opulence and indulgence. The cassock, typically unbuttoned at the top and almost thick enough to be mistaken for a gambeson, contrasts against silken white shirt underneath, and makes him appear somewhat top-heavy with the pansied slops he wears as his leggings, but are rebalanced by some riding boots (meant to suggest the ownership of a horse [he does not own a horse]) that unfortunately just give his legs the appearance of twigs supporting his otherwise heavy silhouette. His long brown hair is well groomed, as is the notably Nibenese-Imperial fashioned facial hair, and they frame and accessorize an oval head, hard at work to mislead the eye and suggest some of the absent chiseled-ness he might desire. He is a fairly thin man, generally speaking, lacking a sort of cut fitness that he desires but lacking the interest in exerting the physical effort to obtain it, but also having a slight belly that lets you know that he routinely samples the best of the world's foods like Breton honey cakes and spicy wyress wine, Altmeri golden pear punch, Imperial dormice with marrow sauce, or a Dunmeri curried kwama scrib risotto. Conveniently, or perhaps by design, his cassock somehow both hides and flatters his figure. He is somewhat tall, but not particularly intimidating at 5'10". All this to say, Isai looks younger than his years, and the pep in his step instills in the passive observer a sense of energy and dynamism that undercuts a boyish charm. His presentation disarms and distracts from a genuinely curious mind trying to crack some kind of esoteric code not readily apparent to others. ═══════ P E R S O N A L I T Y ══════ Isai is an Imperial man (alleging to be half-Bosmer on his mother's side) with a wide range of self-ascribed titles relating to the arts, sciences, pseudo-sciences, philosophy, and magical studies. However, he is perhaps best known as an author who has and will write about anything and everything, though it is unclear whether it be from genuine academic interest/artistic expression or because he likes the attention of being heard and seen. He is also known for having an inclination towards being melodramatic. A true renaissance man, he doesn't purport to be an expert in any one field, but it cannot be denied even by those chagrined by his self-indulgent behavior that he is very knowledgeable about a wide breadth of topics, even if some of them may be misinformed. He seems most interested in the world history of Tamriel, its mortal denizens, and the cosmology of the universe which provides magicka, gods, and daedra. In league with such interests, he possesses apprentice-level knowledge of conjuration, alteration, and mysticism, as well as apprentice-level knowledge of the illusion school, only being invested insofar as to only become versed in the nature of illusions so as to “study how the mind behaves within its confines, and shatter that which allows reality to allude." ...Whatever that means. His clear eccentricities notwithstanding, he is a man who mostly has his wits about him in most situations. He’s an advocate for “training the mind,” being a considerable fan of theory — no matter the discipline — and appearing notably excitable when broaching even the most esoteric and cerebral topics of conversations.

That said, his interest in such unsubstantive ideas like creation that evade or bewilder even most existential philosophers and conjurers. He has studied figures and events such as Tiber Septim, the ALMSIVI, the towers, and the Dragon Break extensively, even if the most regarded research is still little more than speculative theory and intellectual junk food. Such is the reason for his studies into magics that reach across the planes, alter reality, influence minds, and its own essence.

Isai is ambitious if nothing else, always wanting a little more and not really caring about the means to seize it. He has an appreciation for law if not a respect for it, preferring to use it for his purposes and bending them if he can’t, but never brashly breaking them if he can help it. There is a limit to what he’ll do, as he wouldn’t dare, say, making a human sacrifice in a daedric ritual, though it’s hard to say if that’s simply because he doesn’t have the stomach for it, but he at least purports to have a moral code of not deliberately hurting anyone despite all of his seeming faults, he is undeniably a friendly person, and whether or not he remembers your name being beside the point, you are sure to feel welcomed and flattered in his presence, and if one is so keen, to enjoy a cold night made warmer. He enjoys traveling between the provinces to see the world and to document history as it occurs.

_{═══════ S K I L L S (E X T E N D E D) ══════}

Skills (Extended)

SPEECH
Isai may not be the quintessential bard with lute in hand as Tamriel understands it, but his function is none less impactful with his dissemination of information. Speechcraft is just as much a level of literacy as it is the proficiency to persuade, as to master rhetoric is to understand language in many forms and functions; to resist propaganda or perpetuate it. His familiarity and comfort with the arts, philosophy, politics, and history, with toes dipped into understanding magic, enables him to dance and perform in many intellectual arenas or get what he needs out of most people. It is now also how he earns most of his income.

MAGIC
Isai's interest in Conjuration, Alteration, Illusion, and Mysticism are not arbitrary decisions, as he believes that the study of magic helps him investigate the fabric of Aurbis and spirit of Anu. Destruction is, to him, a useless school because it takes magic to recreate the physical phenomenon that occurs on Mundus for the purpose of physically changing the environment within the closed system of reality's laws, whereas Alteration bends those laws itself. He studies Illusion to study the mind and metamagical or aethersynaptic entanglement, or how magic from Aetherius influences the mind and its senses and prevents it from seeing what is real. Mysticism is the study of magic itself, of course. Conjuration is the school of magic that, while is at the same practical level, is supposedly his specialty and operates on the highest theoretical level, as it expresses the movement between planes and potentially throughout the Aurbis itself.

However, he is keen to not advance too far into these fields past the adept level, because he fears that working too deeply in one's school constrains thought to laboring within their laws and rules. By never becoming an expert in a school of magic, he believes he won't become too invested or confined by its scholarly tradition. He has little consideration for any practical applications of the magic he studies, but he supposes that if he is held up in a highway mugging, he can summon a knife in his hand just to get his ass beat worse. He supposes that trying to bend his assailant's mind works less in his favor if he fails, because even if it has the best potential outcome, failure means he doesn't even have a knife and the opportunity to bluff. Summoning scamps are often more trouble than they're worth, but they are still his best bet in a scrape: summon and run and hope there aren't any authorities nearby witnessing you summon daedra. Clairvoyance is his most practical spell, as it helps direct him where to go while on the road followed by magelight -- a midnight writer's non-flammable lighting option. Mysticism is almost entirely based in theory. He learned how to cast soul trap on himself then immediately panicked and had to learn how to dispel it.

SNEAK
He's a sneaky guy. Is he a super sneaky guy? Not really. Twigs have snapped underfoot, but he's no assassin - he's just an intellectual charlatan who sometimes gets himself into sticky situations he has a hard time running out of. What's a man to do? Hug the wall and pray someone doesn't see you. One may even say that the theory of sneakiness is deep in his bones via some underhanded methods, but erasing his presence from others' senses is a skill he does not have.

ONE-HANDED
He's not a swordsman; he just assumes it is expected of him to have some swordsmanship ability as a gentleman. Like fencing and such, only he's not very good at it. He can conjure a dagger for you to laugh at, but it's weightless and sharp as sin, so it's still worth your consideration. Laugh only briefly, because it doesn't take much to bleed a pig.

MARKSMAN
His mother is a Bosmer, and although that doesn't automatically default her or her son with skill with a bow, she does know how to use one and imparted that knowledge onto her son while on the road. While it started as recreation, she did stress the importance of being able to acquire game and food. While Isai is not much of a chef, a lucky shot means he can bring a buck into town to sell for enough money to get some food and a comfortable night in an inn bed.

SMITHING
Probably even worse than a novice. He has a lot of theoretical knowledge of construction, engineering, and maths, but he lacks any practical competency with hardware and no desire to exert the physical effort. He can come up with the ideas, but he's just an ideas guy. He'll tell you what to do if you're so inclined to build a wagon for him.

_{═══════ B A C K G R O U N D ══════}

Isai's background is remarkably... varied to say the least, and superstitious at worst. He took after his father rather than his mother in his dominant traits, being born more of an Imperial than a Bosmer--which was uncommon enough to begin with--and he had a twin who the restorationists in Anvil suspected he ate in utero. His bosmer mother was from Anvil, not from Valenwood like many of the Colovians accused her of (though her ancestral memory ran strong in her blood), and Isai's father was from the Imperial City and born to a tiler of the city's streets, to whom his given middle name alludes to. He was born under the sign of the Ritual, but on the cusp of the Lover, and as the Serpent was travelling across the sky. So many strange happenings at once would make his father very nervous, but unfortunately Stephanus would not stay very long to care for the baby and returned to the Imperial City, since he and Isai's mother, Boniel, broke off their engagement. So it is for this reason, and among others to come that Isai has come to resent his father, while also finding great humor and irony in that what he did inherit from his father is that which comes further down his bloodline--for the man looked to be a proud Colovian imperial, whereas Isai inherited more Nibenese traits from much older and deader descendants.

Naturally, single-parent living was going to be much harder. His mother, originally studying to be a mage, resorted to working nights as an entertainer and a dancer and living in a cabin in the cheapest part of Leyawiin to supplement the stipends received from the local lord for working their land. In the few hours that remained left in her day, she delivered Isai his homeschooled education. He was often babysat by his argonian neighbors he often had little clue on rearing a mammalian child as opposed to a clutch of eggs. Some of their appetites may have rubbed off on him, though now he would not likely stand to stomach most of it outside of the crawfish boils, cornbread, and baked bananas.

His mother would eventually achieve the rank of apprentice within the Mage's Guild, and though she was a smart budding conjurer, barring the ability to conjure a warm house and filling meal, she wouldn't be able to save her income from drying up and her standing in the Mages Guild was only such that she could no longer to sustain even her meager housing, nor could she move her little family into the quarters of the guild. She had friends and connections with an entertainment troupe that they could travel with in caravan.

Isai has since found it to be a consistently enrapturing conversation starter that the solution to poverty is to be kidnapped by "Daedra worshippers" and join the circus, or at least that's how he puts it. True, the caravanning troupe were performers and entertainers, actors and musicians, but they also carried with them some trade skills and general merchants. Many of them were of the buy-sell businessmen sort, and Isai would learn to pull his weight amidst this community. Though he never felt as if he was particularly good with numbers and money, he was good enough at working people -- whether they were colleague or patron, always trying to get the best deal for himself, whether honest or swindle.

It doesn't take much to become disillusioned with this lifestyle, especially if one is always looking up at the wealthy from the ranks below. Isai had a talent for reading and writing, something that his mother was keen to instill, and he often had little to do but read while on the road and acquiring books with what little money he'd earn. When the collection of books took up too much space or became too heavy, they were sold at the next stop. He became more immersed in the arts, history, magic, and cosmology. That was the stuff he wanted to talk about at length, but at a higher level. It was only a matter of time until he got tired of not being on the same intellectual level as most of his community and found a way out.

Most of the retinue owed money to some lord who owned the land they originally lived on -- even Boniel. But clever Isai found a solution on his return to Leyawiin. While he worked for others in their homes to accumulate some wealth (and reading their books all the while), he collected swamp sludge and sewage from the surrounding area and directed it toward a naturally dry piece of land just outside of the walls and expressed interest in purchasing that land that was little more than 15x15 feet. Looking utterly worthless, Isai obtained it for almost literally a steal. While almost utterly uncultivatable, that wasn't the important part. By technicality, or fact, he now owned land. He upscaled his life from beginning from serfdom, to vagabond, domestic servant to, suddenly, a franklin -- a freeman, dispossessed of a lord.

Seeing now that such mobility was possible, he wondered what it would take to achieve more. From the cabin he had built here began the rest of his life, writing books upon books and engaging with the local academics, and as he traveled the provinces to return to his humble abode, his history of publications grew:

• Scamps of Avignaue _{(A genuinely well-crafted novel centered around a fictional Breton kingdom that is rife with romance and poignant political analogues and commentary)}
• Engaging the Works of Crassius Curio: A Deconstructionist Approach _{(Feckless and vain efforts to critically analyze soft and hardcore smut)}
• From the Blackwood _{(An earnest attempt at poetry was made in this collection)}
• Spinning Wheels: Observations of the Stars, the Serpent, and Aetherius _{(Seen by experts as an amateur's entry into cosmology making peculiar speculations)}
• 69 Aphrodisiacs: Tried and Tested _{(Tested is underlined on the cover)}
• Halfway There: Extraplanar Conjuring and What Lies in the Threshold Between Realms _{(An attempt to investigate the space between Mundus and the planes of Oblivion -- grants + ½ skill to Conjuration)}
• Halfway There II: Padomaic/Sithic Principles, the Paradoxical Improbability of Void, and Absent Idols _{(Continuation of prior research into sub-planar spaces and simultaneous challenge of metaphysical presence or expression of a "void," undermining the Dark Brotherhood's belief in Sithis)}
• Halfway There III: Shadows as Aurbic Expressions of Padomay and Redacting Speculation of the Void _{(Seems written under duress)}
• On the Constitution of Man and its Relationship to External Objects _{(Definitely not plagiarized)}
• In Defense of the Arts _{(Tone-deaf piece missing context of beggars given "enrichment" instead of food and shelter)}
• Marble Spokes: Bridging Mundus to the Meta-Aurbis _{(Raises more questions than it answers)}
• "Spindle Enhancement Balms, 15 Septims" _{(An ad placed in the Black Horse Courier)}
• Much Ado About ALMSIVI _{(Comparing the old Tribunal to the Mantling of Talos, he... wait, is this fanfiction?)}

And many more "highly acclaimed" publications that have somewhat ballooned his ego. Eventually, his travels took him to Cheydinhal, where he sought to curry Count Andel Indarys' favor, so as to increase in social rank once again and position himself among the landed gentry. There, he encountered a young but well-organized Imperial castle administrator, Verena Luscinia, with whom he was able to conspire with (and possibly bribe) to learn information about the good Count, what he liked and didn't like, the things he seemed insecure about, and the controversies around him. After spending a meager amount of time in the Newlands Lodge writing his newest book, In Observance of Cheydinhal and Governance: Beauty, Culture, and Rumour, which was full of tailored and piecemeal interviews from the citizens of the county and painted a flattering state of affairs for the city and its Count. He took extra care to emphasize records of the Count's humility and dispelling the rumors surrounding his qualifications and his wife's passing by utilizing formalist theory to use the front-facing appearance of the city as "evidence from the text" (so to speak) to support the Count's reputation.

Through a combination of blowing smoke and pomp up the ass of Count Indarys, and a few well places signatures, check marks, and stamps from Verena Luscinia, Isai obtained legal evidence (through questionable means) of acquiring the courtesy title of esquire from County Cheydinhal, becoming formally recognized as a gentleman, though intending to perform no squirely duties on behalf of the Knights of the Thorn. From here on, he poached Verena as his own assistant, promising her adventure, excitement, and making a difference in the world... only to saddle her with carrying most of his stuff, few though they may be. Through thick and thin, they traveled together for almost a whole year, and eventually reached the Imperial City Arena by the skin of their teeth at Isai's behest, insisting that he recorded what was bound to be the greatest and most barbaric sporting event of the Era... only for fans to drunkenly riot, catching Isai and Verena in the mass arrest that occurred soon thereafter. He last remembers expressing excitement to Verena about how his readers would love to know what it's like to be in a bar fight before suddenly blacking out.

---

_{"I'll be the one to find it, I tell you! I'll crack the code and everyone will remember me."}

---

(MOBILE VERSION) Isai Tegulatoris Sutor-Armaseptus da Leyawiin, Esq.

I S A I T E G U L A T O R I S
S U T O R - A R M A S E P T U S
D A L E Y A W I I N , E S Q .

---

_{"Paint me like one of thine Dunmer bonnies."}

════ C H A R A C T E R P O R T R A I T ════ _______________________________________________ _______________________________________________ ═══ C H A R A C T E R S U M M A R Y ═══ Isai Tegulatoris Sutor-Armaseptus da Leyawiin, Esq. _______________________________________________ 29 | He / Him | Imperial / Bosmer _______________________________________________ Painter, Mage, Astronomer, Astrologist, Historian, Simp, Literary Critic, Writer (of Prose and Poetry), Theoretical Physicist, Phrenologist, and Philosopher ▼ P H Y S I C A L T R A I T S ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ ► Build - Lithe and erect. ► Skin Color - Of Mediterranean or Imperial likeness. ► Hair Color - A dark walnut brown. ► Eye Color - Blue. ▼ D O S S I E R ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ ► Birthplace - Leyawiin, Cyrodiil. ► Birthsign - The Ritual. ► Ambition - He wants to be as far away as he can from the dirt from whence he sprung, to climb station after station. He also wants to crack the cosmological code, and though he's unable to put it into exact words just yet, to understand the towers, mantling, and CHIM -- and he's woefully ignorant as to what that entails. ▼ F A V O R E D A T T R I B U T E S ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ ► Willpower ► Intelligence ▼ S K I L L S ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ ► Speechcraft - Adept ► Conjuration - Apprentice ► Illusion - Apprentice ► Alteration - Apprentice ► Mysticism - Apprentice ► Sneak - Novice ► One-Handed - Novice ► Marksman - Novice ► Smithing - Novice ▼ M A G I C & S P E L L S ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ ► Conjuration - Bound Dagger, Summon Scamp ► Illusion - Clairvoyance, Command ► Alteration - Open Lock, Magelight, Equilibrium ► Mysticism - Dispel, Dispel Other, Soul Trap ▼ E Q U I P M E N T ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ ► Personal Items - Aside from his clothes and a sachet of tea in his pocket, he hasa satchel carrying little more than a journal, a bunch of loose papers, a quill deemed too cheaply made to be considered a weapon, a handful of septims, house key, some stamps and seals, and a separately kept cheesecloth of venison jerky, nuts, and roots. ► The Lock Box - A flimsy wooden letter opener and a "waterskin" filled with wine, considered to be contraband. ► Stored Items - Somewhere in Leyawiin sits a simple cabin with many books, papers, and documents; the most important of which are under the floorboards, under a rug, under the bed, and in an airtight box. Oh, and does Verena count? She's in prison too and was supposed to carry a bunch of toiletries and other things -- when are we getting those back by the way?

════ A P P E A R A N C E ════ "Egad, who is't this knave ere me? Who is't he who wears the drapes of a lord without the filigree and station to whomst his dress deserves? This lad, this rapscallion, this wretch who is't saunters through Cheydinhall, prances about Skingrad, and canters 'round the Imperial City like some misbegotten beggar prince who is't swindles the valorous perceptions of the peasantries too naive or witless to behold his true nature?" -- Palonirya, esteemed Imperial City couturier Such is one of the many stellar reviews of Isai's presumed character but veritably affirms the suspicions one may have upon visitation of him. He offers an aesthetic that can only be ascertained as some Bretony fad, "baroque chic, baroque genre," falling just short of the haute couture he roleplays as. So, while his fashion presents the haunting shade of an elite-class academic, his disposition appears bereft of the customary mannerisms and tics that betray them, only managing to caricaturize those he impersonates... but it's understated. There's no doubt he takes care of his appearance, as his dress is designed and tailored to insinuate a higher class that is dressing down, but only to the extent of denoting a certain humility that screams "I could be adorned head to toe in pearls, but I'm not, see? I'm so likable, but also, not like you." The fashion choice in question is expressed with an almost-perfectly tailored cassock with a likeness to a liturgical vestment, were it not embroidered with same-colored Toile de Jouy patterns overlayed by a conflicting gold Jacquard, unintentionally symbolic of the bucolic and pastoral backdrop of his life blending and hiding in the tapestry of his life, shocked by the glittering distractions of opulence and indulgence. The cassock, typically unbuttoned at the top and almost thick enough to be mistaken for a gambeson, contrasts against silken white shirt underneath, and makes him appear somewhat top-heavy with the pansied slops he wears as his leggings, but are rebalanced by some riding boots (meant to suggest the ownership of a horse [he does not own a horse]) that unfortunately just give his legs the appearance of twigs supporting his otherwise heavy silhouette. His long brown hair is well groomed, as is the notably Nibenese-Imperial fashioned facial hair, and they frame and accessorize an oval head, hard at work to mislead the eye and suggest some of the absent chiseled-ness he might desire.

He is a fairly thin man, generally speaking, lacking a sort of cut fitness that he desires but lacking the interest in exerting the physical effort to obtain it, but also having a slight belly that lets you know that he routinely samples the best of the world's foods like Breton honey cakes and spicy wyress wine, Altmeri golden pear punch, Imperial dormice with marrow sauce, or a Dunmeri curried kwama scrib risotto. Conveniently, or perhaps by design, his cassock somehow both hides and flatters his figure. He is somewhat tall, but not particularly intimidating at 5'10".

All this to say, Isai looks younger than his years and the pep in his step instills in the passive observer a sense of energy and dynamism that undercuts a boyish charm. His presentation disarms and distracts from a genuinely curious mind trying to crack some kind of esoteric code not readily apparent to others.

_{═══════ P E R S O N A L I T Y ══════}

Isai is an Imperial man (alleging to be half-Bosmer on his mother's side) with a wide range of self-ascribed titles relating to the arts, sciences, pseudo-sciences, philosophy, and magical studies. However, he is perhaps best known as an author who has and will write about anything and everything, though it is unclear whether it be from genuine academic interest/artistic expression or because he likes the attention of being heard and seen. He is also known for having an inclination towards being melodramatic.

A true renaissance man, he doesn't purport to be an expert in any one field, but it cannot be denied even by those chagrined by his self-indulgent behavior that he is very knowledgeable about a wide breadth of topics, even if some of them may be misinformed. He seems most interested in the world history of Tamriel, its mortal denizens, and the cosmology of the universe which provides magicka, gods, and daedra.

In league with such interests, he possesses apprentice-level knowledge of conjuration, alteration, and mysticism, as well as apprentice-level knowledge of the illusion school, only being invested insofar as to only become versed in the nature of illusions so as to “study how the mind behaves within its confines, and shatter that which allows reality to allude." ...Whatever that means. His clear eccentricities notwithstanding, he is a man who mostly has his wits about him in most situations. He’s an advocate for “training the mind,” being a considerable fan of theory — no matter the discipline — and appearing notably excitable when broaching even the most esoteric and cerebral topics of conversations. That said, his interest in such unsubstantive ideas like creation that evade or bewilder even most existential philosophers and conjurers. He has studied figures and events such as Tiber Septim, the ALMSIVI, the towers, and the Dragon Break extensively, even if the most regarded research is still little more than speculative theory and intellectual junk food. Such is the reason for his studies into magics that reach across the planes, alter reality, influence minds, and its own essence.

Isai is ambitious if nothing else, always wanting a little more and not really caring about the means to seize it. He has an appreciation for law if not a respect for it, preferring to use it for his purposes and bending them if he can’t, but never brashly breaking them if he can help it. There is a limit to what he’ll do, as he wouldn’t dare, say, making a human sacrifice in a daedric ritual, though it’s hard to say if that’s simply because he doesn’t have the stomach for it, but he at least purports to have a moral code of not deliberately hurting anyone despite all of his seeming faults, he is undeniably a friendly person, and whether or not he remembers your name being beside the point, you are sure to feel welcomed and flattered in his presence, and if one is so keen, to enjoy a cold night made warmer. He enjoys traveling between the provinces to see the world and to document history as it occurs.

_{═══════ S K I L L S (E X T E N D E D) ══════}

Skills (Extended)

SPEECH
Isai may not be the quintessential bard with lute in hand as Tamriel understands it, but his function is none less impactful with his dissemination of information. Speechcraft is just as much a level of literacy as it is the proficiency to persuade, as to master rhetoric is to understand language in many forms and functions; to resist propaganda or perpetuate it. His familiarity and comfort with the arts, philosophy, politics, and history, with toes dipped into understanding magic, enables him to dance and perform in many intellectual arenas or get what he needs out of most people. It is now also how he earns most of his income.

MAGIC
Isai's interest in Conjuration, Alteration, Illusion, and Mysticism are not arbitrary decisions, as he believes that the study of magic helps him investigate the fabric of Aurbis and spirit of Anu. Destruction is, to him, a useless school because it takes magic to recreate the physical phenomenon that occurs on Mundus for the purpose of physically changing the environment within the closed system of reality's laws, whereas Alteration bends those laws itself. He studies Illusion to study the mind and metamagical or aethersynaptic entanglement, or how magic from Aetherius influences the mind and its senses and prevents it from seeing what is real. Mysticism is the study of magic itself, of course. Conjuration is the school of magic that, while is at the same practical level, is supposedly his specialty and operates on the highest theoretical level, as it expresses the movement between planes and potentially throughout the Aurbis itself.

However, he is keen to not advance too far into these fields past the adept level, because he fears that working too deeply in one's school constrains thought to laboring within their laws and rules. By never becoming an expert in a school of magic, he believes he won't become too invested or confined by its scholarly tradition. He has little consideration for any practical applications of the magic he studies, but he supposes that if he is held up in a highway mugging, he can summon a knife in his hand just to get his ass beat worse. He supposes that trying to bend his assailant's mind works less in his favor if he fails, because even if it has the best potential outcome, failure means he doesn't even have a knife and the opportunity to bluff. Summoning scamps are often more trouble than they're worth, but they are still his best bet in a scrape: summon and run and hope there aren't any authorities nearby witnessing you summon daedra. Clairvoyance is his most practical spell, as it helps direct him where to go while on the road followed by magelight -- a midnight writer's non-flammable lighting option. Mysticism is almost entirely based in theory. He learned how to cast soul trap on himself then immediately panicked and had to learn how to dispel it.

SNEAK
He's a sneaky guy. Is he a super sneaky guy? Not really. Twigs have snapped underfoot, but he's no assassin - he's just an intellectual charlatan who sometimes gets himself into sticky situations he has a hard time running out of. What's a man to do? Hug the wall and pray someone doesn't see you. One may even say that the theory of sneakiness is deep in his bones via some underhanded methods, but erasing his presence from others' senses is a skill he does not have.

ONE-HANDED
He's not a swordsman; he just assumes it is expected of him to have some swordsmanship ability as a gentleman. Like fencing and such, only he's not very good at it. He can conjure a dagger for you to laugh at, but it's weightless and sharp as sin, so it's still worth your consideration. Laugh only briefly, because it doesn't take much to bleed a pig.

MARKSMAN
His mother is a Bosmer, and although that doesn't automatically default her or her son with skill with a bow, she does know how to use one and imparted that knowledge onto her son while on the road. While it started as recreation, she did stress the importance of being able to acquire game and food. While Isai is not much of a chef, a lucky shot means he can bring a buck into town to sell for enough money to get some food and a comfortable night in an inn bed.

SMITHING
Probably even worse than a novice. He has a lot of theoretical knowledge of construction, engineering, and maths, but he lacks any practical competency with hardware and no desire to exert the physical effort. He can come up with the ideas, but he's just an ideas guy. He'll tell you what to do if you're so inclined to build a wagon for him.

_{═══════ B A C K G R O U N D ══════}

Isai's background is remarkably... varied to say the least, and superstitious at worst. He took after his father rather than his mother in his dominant traits, being born more of an Imperial than a Bosmer--which was uncommon enough to begin with--and he had a twin who the restorationists in Anvil suspected he ate in utero. His bosmer mother was from Anvil, not from Valenwood like many of the Colovians accused her of (though her ancestral memory ran strong in her blood), and Isai's father was from the Imperial City and born to a tiler of the city's streets, to whom his given middle name alludes to. He was born under the sign of the Ritual, but on the cusp of the Lover, and as the Serpent was travelling across the sky. So many strange happenings at once would make his father very nervous, but unfortunately Stephanus would not stay very long to care for the baby and returned to the Imperial City, since he and Isai's mother, Boniel, broke off their engagement. So it is for this reason, and among others to come that Isai has come to resent his father, while also finding great humor and irony in that what he did inherit from his father is that which comes further down his bloodline--for the man looked to be a proud Colovian imperial, whereas Isai inherited more Nibenese traits from much older and deader descendants.

Naturally, single-parent living was going to be much harder. His mother, originally studying to be a mage, resorted to working nights as an entertainer and a dancer and living in a cabin in the cheapest part of Leyawiin to supplement the stipends received from the local lord for working their land. In the few hours that remained left in her day, she delivered Isai his homeschooled education. He was often babysat by his argonian neighbors he often had little clue on rearing a mammalian child as opposed to a clutch of eggs. Some of their appetites may have rubbed off on him, though now he would not likely stand to stomach most of it outside of the crawfish boils, cornbread, and baked bananas.

His mother would eventually achieve the rank of apprentice within the Mage's Guild, and though she was a smart budding conjurer, barring the ability to conjure a warm house and filling meal, she wouldn't be able to save her income from drying up and her standing in the Mages Guild was only such that she could no longer to sustain even her meager housing, nor could she move her little family into the quarters of the guild. She had friends and connections with an entertainment troupe that they could travel with in caravan.

Isai has since found it to be a consistently enrapturing conversation starter that the solution to poverty is to be kidnapped by "Daedra worshippers" and join the circus, or at least that's how he puts it. True, the caravanning troupe were performers and entertainers, actors and musicians, but they also carried with them some trade skills and general merchants. Many of them were of the buy-sell businessmen sort, and Isai would learn to pull his weight amidst this community. Though he never felt as if he was particularly good with numbers and money, he was good enough at working people -- whether they were colleague or patron, always trying to get the best deal for himself, whether honest or swindle.

It doesn't take much to become disillusioned with this lifestyle, especially if one is always looking up at the wealthy from the ranks below. Isai had a talent for reading and writing, something that his mother was keen to instill, and he often had little to do but read while on the road and acquiring books with what little money he'd earn. When the collection of books took up too much space or became too heavy, they were sold at the next stop. He became more immersed in the arts, history, magic, and cosmology. That was the stuff he wanted to talk about at length, but at a higher level. It was only a matter of time until he got tired of not being on the same intellectual level as most of his community and found a way out.

Most of the retinue owed money to some lord who owned the land they originally lived on -- even Boniel. But clever Isai found a solution on his return to Leyawiin. While he worked for others in their homes to accumulate some wealth (and reading their books all the while), he collected swamp sludge and sewage from the surrounding area and directed it toward a naturally dry piece of land just outside of the walls and expressed interest in purchasing that land that was little more than 15x15 feet. Looking utterly worthless, Isai obtained it for almost literally a steal. While almost utterly uncultivatable, that wasn't the important part. By technicality, or fact, he now owned land. He upscaled his life from beginning from serfdom, to vagabond, domestic servant to, suddenly, a franklin -- a freeman, dispossessed of a lord.

Seeing now that such mobility was possible, he wondered what it would take to achieve more. From the cabin he had built here began the rest of his life, writing books upon books and engaging with the local academics, and as he traveled the provinces to return to his humble abode, his history of publications grew:

• Scamps of Avignaue _{(A genuinely well-crafted novel centered around a fictional Breton kingdom that is rife with romance and poignant political analogues and commentary)}
• Engaging the Works of Crassius Curio: A Deconstructionist Approach _{(Feckless and vain efforts to critically analyze soft and hardcore smut)}
• From the Blackwood _{(An earnest attempt at poetry was made in this collection)}
• Spinning Wheels: Observations of the Stars, the Serpent, and Aetherius _{(Seen by experts as an amateur's entry into cosmology making peculiar speculations)}
• 69 Aphrodisiacs: Tried and Tested _{(Tested is underlined on the cover)}
• Halfway There: Extraplanar Conjuring and What Lies in the Threshold Between Realms _{(An attempt to investigate the space between Mundus and the planes of Oblivion -- grants + ½ skill to Conjuration)}
• Halfway There II: Padomaic/Sithic Principles, the Paradoxical Improbability of Void, and Absent Idols _{(Continuation of prior research into sub-planar spaces and simultaneous challenge of metaphysical presence or expression of a "void," undermining the Dark Brotherhood's belief in Sithis)}
• Halfway There III: Shadows as Aurbic Expressions of Padomay and Redacting Speculation of the Void _{(Seems written under duress)}
• On the Constitution of Man and its Relationship to External Objects _{(Definitely not plagiarized)}
• In Defense of the Arts _{(Tone-deaf piece missing context of beggars given "enrichment" instead of food and shelter)}
• Marble Spokes: Bridging Mundus to the Meta-Aurbis _{(Raises more questions than it answers)}
• "Spindle Enhancement Balms, 15 Septims" _{(An ad placed in the Black Horse Courier)}
• Much Ado About ALMSIVI _{(Comparing the old Tribunal to the Mantling of Talos, he... wait, is this fanfiction?)}

And many more "highly acclaimed" publications that have somewhat ballooned his ego. Eventually, his travels took him to Cheydinhal, where he sought to curry Count Andel Indarys' favor, so as to increase in social rank once again and position himself among the landed gentry. There, he encountered a young but well-organized Imperial castle administrator, Verena Luscinia, with whom he was able to conspire with (and possibly bribe) to learn information about the good Count, what he liked and didn't like, the things he seemed insecure about, and the controversies around him. After spending a meager amount of time in the Newlands Lodge writing his newest book, In Observance of Cheydinhal and Governance: Beauty, Culture, and Rumour, which was full of tailored and piecemeal interviews from the citizens of the county and painted a flattering state of affairs for the city and its Count. He took extra care to emphasize records of the Count's humility and dispelling the rumors surrounding his qualifications and his wife's passing by utilizing formalist theory to use the front-facing appearance of the city as "evidence from the text" (so to speak) to support the Count's reputation.

Through a combination of blowing smoke and pomp up the ass of Count Indarys, and a few well places signatures, check marks, and stamps from Verena Luscinia, Isai obtained legal evidence (through questionable means) of acquiring the courtesy title of esquire from County Cheydinhal, becoming formally recognized as a gentleman, though intending to perform no squirely duties on behalf of the Knights of the Thorn. From here on, he poached Verena as his own assistant, promising her adventure, excitement, and making a difference in the world... only to saddle her with carrying most of his stuff, few though they may be. Through thick and thin, they traveled together for almost a whole year, and eventually reached the Imperial City Arena by the skin of their teeth at Isai's behest, insisting that he recorded what was bound to be the greatest and most barbaric sporting event of the Era... only for fans to drunkenly riot, catching Isai and Verena in the mass arrest that occurred soon thereafter. He last remembers expressing excitement to Verena about how his readers would love to know what it's like to be in a bar fight before suddenly blacking out.

---

_{"I'll be the one to find it, I tell you! I'll crack the code and everyone will remember me."}

---

The Elder Scrolls: In the Shadows of Oblivion

If you're still accepting CSs, me and another would be interested. I could have a sheet put together over this weekend.

@MacabreFox

I am the another.

The Elder Scrolls: City of Anvil

@Kassarock I'm giving Velyn a friend!

Garil Mavos, the Real GM

" G A R I L M A V O S "

_{"I be just a simple farmhand, sera, though I may sell you my services if that is what you wish."}

══════ C H A R A C T E R P O R T R A I T ══════ _______________________________________________ _______________________________________________ ═══════ C H A R A C T E R S U M M A R Y ══════ "Garil Mavos" _______________________________________________ 55 | ♂ | Dunmer _______________________________________________ Farmhand, Mercenary, and Impersonator ▼ P H Y S I C A L T R A I T S ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ ► Build - Lean and athletic; built for dexterity. ► Skin Color - Ebony, with mild hues of dark blue and ashen grey ► Hair Color - Black, with grey strands. ► Eye Color - Deep red. ► Other - Body is littered with scars from small cuts and labor. ▼ D O S S I E R ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ ► Birthplace - Presumably Cheydinhal in Cyrodiill. ► Birthsign - The Ritual ► Biggest Regret - Garil would have you believe that it was his inability to seize ripe opportunities and rise above his humble origins, as well as cutting ties with his family. Also the fire, he feels pretty bad about that. ► Garil's Goal - To perform great, honorable deeds that would make his ancestors proud. Maybe make him a little famous. Fame and fortune, really. Maybe not fame. Probably fortune. Power and wisdom? Seeing the world, definitely that. Garil's goals are as protean as the Dunmer himself. ▼ F A V O R E D A T T R I B U T E S ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ ► Personality ► Agility ▼ S K I L L S ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ ► Speechcraft - Adept ► Acrobatics - Adept ► One-Handed - Adept ► Conjuration - Apprentice ► Stealth - Apprentice ► Athletics - Apprentice ► Smithing - Apprentice Technically, all the rest of the skill tree would be in the Novice category anyway, but these three are those of which he employs somewhat regularly without proficiency despite the fact: ► Alchemy - Novice ► Pickpocket - Novice ► Hand to Hand - Novice ▼ S P E L L S ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ ► Conjuration - Conjure Dagger, Conjure Sword, Summon Ghost ▼ E Q U I P M E N T ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ ► Weapons - Three knives, though they look to be more for utility than anything else. There's a skinning knife with a gut hook, a filet knife, and a silver cheese knife. ► Armor - Nothing but the clothes on his back. ► Containers - A satchel which hangs from his shoulder and a 32 oz. waterskin. ► Food, Drink, Potions - A cheesecloth pouch filled with two pounds of assorted nuts and seeds, dried fruit, and dense preserved bread. Two large and round bottles with cork stoppers, and are filled with sujamma. ► Miscellaneous - Two small wooden bowls and two small clay bowls. Tightly packed in the satchel are small, folded mats and rugs. Assorted trinkets and mementos from past lives. Strangely enough, a bundle of scrolled documents.

══════ A P P E A R A N C E ══════ Garil is as unassuming as a dunmer can get: he dresses modestly with threadbare clothing, he's clean shaven, and he carries himself with such a humble and passive disposition, so obviously trustworthy, that the only thing keeping him from being conspicuously unassuming would be his impressive height -- 6'2". Though his build is somewhat lanky, and not at all like one would would expect a soldier or mercenary from, he is still lean from what he claims to be years of hard farm work. Knicked and scratched by numerous petty scars across his hairless body, too few of them appear to be from life-threatening injuries by blade or creature, either lending credibility to his skills or undermining his integrity. He walks, stands, and sits with a slight hunch, and often rocks his jaw from side to side when in contemplation. He also tends to gesture his hands quite often when talking, and has a distinct tell whenever he's lying, where he cranes his head in as if to invade your personal space and his tone becomes suggestive. Curiously, he's quite acrobatic and has an impeccable sense of balance. He doesn't seem to have much reason to be as adept as he is, and any questioning is answered with a shrug and a blasé, "I like to climb things. I guess I just have good balance." He walks with a peculiar grace and sense of purpose, as if he has a clear destination in his mind's eye, a gait which other dunmer familiar to him have insultingly referred to as monkey-like. You can occasionally catch him looking over his shoulder or staring at other dunmer. Watching Garil swing a blade, on the other hand, he doesn't seem so great at it. There's almost a hesitance or uncertainty as he cuts the air -- no confidence -- but a trained eye can find his perfect grip and footing, and figure out pretty quickly that he probably picked up a couple of lessons. His angular features are somewhat striking. His cheekbones are high and pronounced, almost jutting from his face and combined with the gauntness of his cheeks, this quality being particularly highlighted. His chin is long and comes down to a point. However, he also has a wide jaw, which adds to the strength of his facial features. Almost out of place upon his face are a pair of a thick lips, their shade a darker hue than the rest of his face. He's almost always munching on nuts or seeds, swelling his jowls as they fill with food, rocking his jaw side to side as he chews. His mouth sits beneath a long, hawkish nose that may have once been broken in the past if the vertical crookedness is not just another sharp facial feature on a long list of sharp facial features. His ears, low on the sides of his head, flare out quite a bit like two dishes waiting for signals. His peripheral extremities, his arms and legs, are quite spindly though not without lean muscle; you'd be forgiven for underestimating the strength in his figure due to his light toning, but even so, the dunmer is more agile than he is brutish. His black hair is long and well kept, also undercut, and behind his neck you'll often find residing loose, frizzy hair. He prefers to keep his hair tied back and usually does so in the shape of the bun to keep the hair off his neck and back while he's working. Overall, Garil is a dunmer that seems very conscious of his personal hygiene despite his humility and humble occupation. Of course he has no qualms with getting himself dirty, but with as often as he seems to mock pride and vanity, he seems quite content to preen himself with the beginning and end of every day. That said, he is not so self-conscious either that he'd remove the gray hairs growing on his head. In fact, he seems quite fond of them. He is at least self-aware enough to acknowledge his contradictions and hypocrisies, though it's almost as if he occasionally forgets he holds such values. There aren't many accessories on his person. Little holes sit on his ears where there were once piercings, and as mentioned before, what little clothes he has appears old, weathered, and quite obviously favoring warmer colors such as reds and oranges -- they compliment his eyes, he says. What passes for a shirt is actually more like a red blanket or a shawl, which he wraps around his torso to cover himself during the day in a Nibenese-esque fashion. It's not uncommon to see him using the toga wrap to use as an arm sling after a long and tiring day of work. The pants he wears goes down to his knees and are held up by a leather cord, and his calloused, leather-like feet have not the luxury of proper footwear beyond a pair of sandals, which he occasionally forgoes in favor of the cool sensation of morning dew upon the grass. ═══════ P E R S O N A L I T Y ══════ All around a peculiar person, Garil enjoys his privacy and does his best to appear unassuming and inconspicuous. This is best done when minding his own business, which he does successfully for the most part, but he's also irrepressibly curious. While he might do what he can to keep his hands and mind busy, such as sweeping or mopping the deck, overhearing a conversation will pique his interest enough so that he might pay undue attention to whomever he may be eavesdropping on. To others, he could very well just be some random, nosy s'wit, which in turn can -- counter-intuitively -- direct even less attentions towards himself if he can push others away. No one wants to be around somebody who can't mind his own business, and that's the genius of it. If he can convince others he's not worth paying attention to, then it makes his goal of staying inconspicuous even easier. He watches and listens, preferring to have the edge over others, just in case it's better to be safe than sorry.

Getting to know Garil is not necessarily a bad thing though. He's quite an amiable fellow, if a tad odd in his habits and mannerisms. He has the ability to read people and read them well, a skill he's developed over years of people-watching and questioning. Kindly and well-spoken, he's not at all the judgmental type, as if there was nothing you could say that could startle him and he'd accept you for who you are. If anything, you might pique his curiosity and he'd harry you with more questions without fear of looking dumb or naive. His lack of judgement also shows itself through his liberal approach towards sexuality, thinking very little of the different races and genders of Tamriel intermingling with one another and uses flirtation as a brand of humor regardless of who he is talking to, only reinforcing the stereotype of sexual deviance often foisted upon dunmer. This is an unfair characterization, he feels, since his attitude as a lover is actually rather conservative in the sense that he reserves the action of touch for truly intimate matters. Otherwise, he is content to sit calmly and converse with his loved ones, and it is because of his liberal approach to sex that he doesn't hold it in such a high esteem, as he'd rather sit in candlelit silence and enjoy the calm and peace. Much of his personality, in fact, is reflective of the endlessly infuriating duality of the Dunmer mentality. And yet, he is still one of the most amiable of his kind and gets along worse with other Dunmer.

He has a complicated relationship with spirituality however, as he speaks very little of his ancestors and is a critic of both the Reclamations and the Tribunal saints, all while disregarding the Divines as powerless lesser deities. This does not exactly translate into being a logical individual, as he does have his fair share of superstitions. He regards matters of superstition and spirituality as private affairs, though that hardly seems like a profound statement considering he regards all of his affairs as private. Privacy is his primary value, and the invasion of which is one of the only ways to stoke the even-tempered dark elf's ire. Even then, you'll typically only be met with indignant irritation. He is not the type to explode in rage and anger, and even if the worst of his secrets should come to light, he would merely react to it as one would to any threat of danger -- run. He doesn't consider himself a murderer or dangerous mer -- or, if I may be so bold, a merderder -- and he only resorts to such extremes if there is no other choice. If bandits are intent on killing him, then he'll defend himself, but even in a fight he is more inclined to rely on his rationality than his emotions.

Overall, his company is very calm and welcoming even if it is a bit foreign and bizarre, but he invites others to learn, inquire, and critique, to become curious about the world around them as he is. He frequently refers to himself as a parched, informational sponge. This reflects the fact that although he has no traditional education, he has a very keen mind that is quick to pick up on information and make practical use of it. He's a clever, patient, and resourceful mer if one can't find anything else kindly to say about him, and he takes insult and injury with a saint's grace. One of his most notable talents is his ability to perform impressions, which might sound quite tame in a world where magic exists. Which to be fair is true, but even so, his keen eye and ear can have his constant people-watching pay off with impressive vocal reconfiguration, enabling him to mimic the sound of someone's voice. Aside from vocal impressions, he also has a knack for physical impersonations as well, and can even copy other people's handwriting once he gets a good look at it. Eventually, this skill of his becomes creepily uncanny. However, he hasn't ever used this for wrongdoing and only for the sake of entertainment. He is not totally scrupulous however, as he in his youth was something of a charlatan, liar, and gossip-monger, and the only reason he doesn't continue this way of life is that he was caught too many times and he learned that it wasn't a safe way to make a living. Such skills still remain with him.

Garil is notoriously meticulous and methodical, almost to the degree of neuroticism. Part of his nightly rituals, even at the end of particularly long days, is to lay his possessions out before him and to keep track of everything he owns. If there is a list of chores that needs doing, he'll go down the list one by one even if he is capable of striking multiple things off at once. He has an impulsive desire to see every task through to its end. On one hand, this reassures his employers that he is not one to shirk responsibility and that he'll complete his duties with no mistakes left behind, but on the other hand, this can annoy everyone else to no end if they are impatient and prefer shortcuts, or if they find those specific tasks as arbitrary. His inclinations to obfuscate the truth whenever the opportunity arises, and his appreciation for ambiguity, makes him a mysterious sort. This can sometimes be alluring, but it can also make him an unreliable narrator despite his known collection of rumors and hearsay. He's like a font of information that only rewards those capable of outwitting him, and that can make him threatening to those who don't see the allure in his mysteries. The dualistic nature of the dunmer people is best represented by one of the best known paradoxes which transcends cultural borders: danger can be sexy, but sex can be dangerous. At his best, Garil can be wise and dutiful, but at his worst, Garil can be secretive and selfish.

_{═══════ B A C K G R O U N D ══════}

Garil's story is a simple one, as he says: a first generation Cyrodilian born in Cheydinhal after his family fled Morrowind near the end of the Arnessian War. With the southern side of Morrowind being assailed by argonian guerillas and Queen Barenziah abandoning her country, it no longer felt safe. So, they moved to Cyrodiil, a place where they would be mostly accepted and, more importantly, not a target of war. Garil grew up under kind, yet strict parents that had high expectations of him for living in a land ripe with opportunity and less hostile than the rugged ashlands of Morrowind. Garil calls himself a suitable family disappointment for repeatedly failing to rise above his parent's own humble occupations of tiler and trading in buttons. Instead of becoming a respected warrior or accomplished mage, he instead found himself working other people's land for pay, or even sharecropping. Sure, he picked up a few tricks, a couple of prestidigitated bewilderments... nothing impressive though. He has no claim to power, status, or to land of his own, and though he has received no formal education of his own -- working hard only to help his family put food on the table and putting down payments on a nice, future Dunmer fusion house for future generations to live in -- he's always had been the wise sort. He is more keen to listen than to speak, and absurdly well-spoken despite his humble origins by listening and eavesdropping on the conversations of more noble folk and practicing to himself their manner of speak when he was by himself. Stories from his parents and stories passed down from their parents always helped to put things into perspective. Then when all else failed, a jaunt over the eastern mountains and into Deshaan, a journey that could last a week or more, he could find the cairns of his ancestors there. Communing with them, albeit a dreaded affair given his lineage of very accomplished and very disappointed mages, offered some contrived wisdom or another that his parents never provided. Of course, that would only be as soon as they were done admonishing him for never rising above a meager farmhand.

For reasons he chooses not to disclose, he has not visited his ancestors in some time. Not since the farm he was working on had burned down. In fact, he seems to address them with some measure of resentment that is almost childish in nature, like refusing to speak to one's parents after a petty injury done to one's pride. Interrogating him on the story seems to turn up no correlation between his resentment of his ancestors and the fire, which in itself was a mysterious circumstance. Anyone who has ever met Garil can attest to him being one of the most orderly and organized people they have ever met, hopelessly methodical and infuriatingly meticulous in how he arranges and categorizes his (few) personal possessions and running down the checklist of his responsibilities. The very idea that the fire was the result of an accident -- an oil lantern left burning or a candle left lit -- is inconceivable as long as Garil was around to tend to the farm's affairs. Everything from harvesting the wheat, repairing the barn or wagon, to defending the grounds from hungry and predatory animals and men alike, he was always a dutiful sort that never would've let anything adverse happen to anyone or anything that was under his care. Perhaps, then, it was done in the dead of night as a form of reprisal against the farm's owners for one reason or another.

Perhaps.

He fails to mention that he was partly to blame for the barn's destruction, though perhaps for the reason that he does not feel at fault for it. Garil has a complex relationship with undead, necromancy, and his own people. He is not immune to the dominant Imperial influences either. He felt himself feeling a cognitive dissonance between both his family and culture's coinciding values of respecting the dead, but also embracing the undead in the form of his ancestors' ghosts. And dunmer mostly only cared about necromancy as it pertained to their own ancestors, but generally didn't care if it happened to others. What was the difference between a righteous, ritual necromancy and the evils of philosophical necromancy? Alienation from his people and being constantly spited by his own family drove him to travel many days into Morrowind and into his family's crypt in Deshaan under the pretense that he was setting out to pay his respects, so that he could set the entire cairn ablaze and be free of his ancestors' haunting. Without no one at the scene, he returned thinking it was a fool-proof plan: the fire was a tragedy that must've occurred after he left. He did not think that at least one of his ancestors would remain tethered to Mundus and seek retribution. Indaryn Sadras was a particularly fickle great-great-uncle of his even before the arson, and in the ghost's attempt to incinerate Garil in his sleep for his descendant's transgression, he ended up burning down the entire barn instead.

After escaping, Garil payed a pretty sum to a discreet member of the local Synod chapter to keep his affairs under wraps while asking for a brief lesson in binding spirits. With the help of a Breton mage and a few overnight cram sessions in Conjuration magic, they were able to summon the unbound spirit of his ancestor to the confinement of a ritual circle where they were able to bind Indaryn to a phylactery. This phylactery would be available for Garil to carry on his person, being small enough in size, and its magical inscriptions made it sturdy enough to be mostly adventure-proof. Inscribed upon the phylactery were daedric runes that compelled the spirit to obey his descendant's will and forbade him from uttering any information pertaining to his great-nephew. Though the affair was costly in more ways than one, Garil supposed that this technically made him some kind of mage like his family originally wanted, and that sort of left a bitter taste in his mouth.

However, the affair also left him without a job. So, in his attempt to move on and forget the fire ever happened, he began going around working odd jobs for people around Cheydinhal and relying on various short-lived paramours. His charm was only such that he could only couch surf for weeks at a time, and his air of intrigue and novelty shortly wore off the more his bummish behavior grated on them. He had also taken to a buy-sell formula of making money, buying cheap stocks of clutter from the local stores and selling them at markup, and even going so far as to sell fish oil as miracle elixirs. He was also something of an eavesdropper and gossip-monger, and for a cheap price, was willing to share with anyone the local rumors or the gossip he's overheard. This made him a few friends with some of local burghers, but also a few enemies. Complaints to the local guard had brought him bruises and threats of being thrown out of town. Garil eventually learned that it was probably best to keep such businesses practices less in the open. The odd jobs he had picked up here and there since then had gone from fixing leaks and scrubbing floors to dredging the sewers and exterminating rats, so Garil was able to salvage his reputation as an untrustworthy miscreant to a somewhat reliable if quirky and gossipy handyman.

Yet, from the fruits of his labor arose another problem: his labor was cheap and people took advantage of that. Before long, some of the jobs he began to take were beginning to steal low-level contracts from the local Fighter's Guild. After a thug or two from the guild confronted him in an act of intimidation, he backed down and decided it was best for him to start traveling the road. For a few reasons, really: among them was his new taste for mercantilism, the farm was no longer tying him down, he finally had an opportunity to see the world and perhaps rise above his meager station, and he thought has gotten pretty good with a blade. Good enough to encroach on Fighter's Guild territory at least, so he thought to himself "How hard can adventuring be?" Besides, it would've done him no good to keep living where his next door neighbors were a band of blooded mercenaries whom he had slighted and armed guards who were less than enthused with his eccentricities. He would've bade farewell to his family had they cared to see him again, but his place as the family disappointment was alive and well.

Eventually, after about ten years of adventuring and surviving off of odd jobs or mercenary work, he managed to build up a resume. He's proven himself a fairly capable bodyguard, exterminator, private investigator, ruin explorer, tomb-raiding, or an all-purpose handyman. He learned that his ancestor would be a useful tool to exploit if nothing else, much to Indaryn's chagrin, and relied on his great-uncle's destruction magic to clear out many a dungeon for him. Of course, Garil also learned that his great-uncle was aware of what was going on outside of his phylactery pretty much all the time, and that he was a bitter old ghost each and every time he was summoned. Sometimes it was worthwhile to summon his ghost, and other times... not so much. The two hated each other, and at least that much was clear. Still, his discreet use of summoning a ghost gave him something of a reputation to his employers as a one-man army when in reality he often relied on his ancestor to do much of the heavy lifting. All the while, he was peddling his treasures to merchants or selling them by auction, putting his mercantilism to decent use. Adventuring was easy, and sometimes even lucrative. His penchant for spinning yarns and impersonations also helped him sneak into and out of places that he otherwise had no business being in, but only if such roles called for a dunmer. He tried passing for a sickly Breton once. No one bought it.

Much of the loot Garil collected was basically junk, save for the rarer finds such as valuable jewels and tithes of gold. Oftentimes they were pieces of antique furniture or ceremonial displays, things that would be more interesting to historians and eccentric nobles than any general merchant. What he can say, at least, is that his travels took him to many different places, like High Rock and Hammerfell, boats from which brought him briefly to port in Auridon before making way to Elsweyr, and he even traveled into Black Marsh -- only to high-tail it out of there after a few weeks when he got chased by some of the more rabid tribes of argonians. He managed to pick up a lot of skills along the way as well, being a sponge for information and fascinated by other cultures. High Rock helped him hone his speechcraft and magic, Hammerfell taught him how to better swing his sword and sneak past their tomb sentinels, Auridon taught him that high elves were pricks, some Baandari in Senchal taught him some of their dances and to always watch his pockets, and Black Marsh taught him that not all cultures are created equal.

Eventually he found himself in Anvil, ready to explore the region of the Gold Coast. His many years of travel has accustomed him to violence, of which there are several varieties: bloody violence, the violence of dramatic action, or the violence of change (albeit not yet desensitized to such violence). Yet, in doing so, he has built his proficiency in both swordplay and mental resilience. He has come to the realization that his claim of being a mere farmhand might now be a lie, though he has no intent on changing that. Though an old sailor he met once told him a thing or two about Anvil, he still isn't quite sure what to expect even as a native Cyrodillian. Still, as long as it was nothing like the customs agents in Black Marsh, he felt pretty secure in being here for the sole purpose of selling his wares at the market or town square.

At least, that's what you're all made to believe.

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_{"Truth is a fickle creature. I may be no farmhand, but does my harvest not reap life in service of life? Were my services not for sale?"}

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