Tes4Mod:Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul/Arch-Mage Traven's Notes

[This book contains many personal notes of Arch-Mage Hannibal Traven. Of special nature are his remarks on renegade necromancers]

 
These last hours of the night remind me of what could have happened to our great destiny. The flicker of the candle's light is fragile and ephemeral, yet full of life and future. Darkness surrounds it but cannot extinguish its glow. Darkness creeps upon us all and only the trembling fires of our hearts keep it at bay. Such flame must never disappear, or we will forever dwell in an unknown, forever lost to our own home.

This is what they fail to grasp, my willing followers, so enveloped in the warmth of the hearth that they have completely forgotten what lies beyond its delicate embrace. I have seen it. I have felt it. I have tasted it. Nothingness, angst, and the eternal monotony of the Beyond whose never-ending litany transforms all distinction into sameness; this is the true nature of its power. It levels, it flattens, it brushes away that which makes us unique, only to swallow us into an eternal prison that cannot be torn open or breached.

This is the truth that escapes my dear people. This is the reason for which I did what had to be done. The bonfires of revenge are lit, but this is more welcome to me than the secrecy and the deceit, the momentum and inertia, that would deliver us slowly, without recourse to choice, into a void of existence.

Necromancers will forever remain among us--I do not entertain the folly of thinking otherwise. It is the nature of our very presence in this world. What I sought was not to eradicate them, but to displace them. The only way to stop the tide of darkness was to turn its children against it. Now, more than ever before, they overflow with passion, with fury, with despair, with love, with hope, with life.

Those who died will perhaps understand, in time, for not even they can escape the flow of our ultimate master and judge. They may comprehend my motives, my desires and the final goal of my actions. Future may see me with brighter eyes. For now, those eyes are full of hate in some, and full of incomprehension in others.

Lien Valeth, the new master of our renegade brothers and sisters, no doubt plans to turn the tables on us. I was unsure about the path he would choose. I am almost glad that he decided to oppose the guild. Such a promising one, I shall miss our conversations together but welcome our enmity. It is a very risky gamble what I have done. On the one hand, it was the only way to revive our withering spirits. On the other hand, it may, in the end, turn against us like an untamed beast.

Valeth has gathered many strayed children of the guild--more than I once imagined possible. His necromancers of the Putrid Hand number among the most fearsome threats in our beloved Cyrodiil. We may tire, in time, of this strife. For now it is fuelling us with the resolve necessary to confront the coming of the King of Worms. Valeth will not join him. He is too proud for that. He will, however, seek the secrets of the tomb with more fervour than ever before. My only fear is that he may discover a way to form a permanent link with the realm of the dead. I know he has studied the books. I know he has learned of what happened to those who ventured that far, in the past. He knows of Graithlan's rise, journey and demise. No doubt he will seek the vessels of his soul, in order to bind his own life to the fate of a spectre.

Were he to discover the location of the vessels, were he to don the armor of Graithlan and thus let his own body be taken into the plane of the dead, as a door between our realms, he would become as immediate a threat as the King of Worms himself. The power of this dreaded armor, once joined into one, would awaken the soul of the wraith and grant the wearer power to touch that which alone belongs to the dead. Any one who may wield such spectral abominations into our own plane would, without a doubt, bring great suffering to our people. The balance of power cannot be shaken thus. I shall send scouts to investigate more deeply the fate of Graithlan's Dread Armor. His resting place, in the fork of the Xylo river, in Valenwood, is the unavoidable destiny for those who know of its existence.

Once this threat is crippled, I shall study it in order to devise a way of finding any other remaining conduits to the spectral realms. In the meantime, Valeth and Mannimarco have my full attention. The next step lies in finding where exactly lies Valeth--in Ayleid ruins, no doubt, seeking the items of old power. Perhaps he shall try to contact the other prominent wayward figures in this deadly game of betrayal and riddles, of aims within other aims, of disguises and masks. Yes, indeed the future is, now, anything but a resemblance to the cold eternity of the grave.