General:Pocket Guide to the Empire, Second Edition

Editor's Note:
''The following is a transcription of a note folded inside a manuscript of the Pocket Guide to the Empire, Second Edition. The manuscript, commissioned by the Empress   in the fourteenth year of her reign, was infamously left unpublished due to the scandalous nature of its contents – a product, many would say, of the   taking far too literally its assignment to "modernize the claim that [ ] was in fact a unified  " (the role of the   in suppressing this vital document cannot be overstated; it is but one of many pieces of evidence against the Empire burnt to ashes by the Dragon's acrid breath). The note, along with the manuscript, was found in the bowels of a forbidden library of the Moth Chantry, hidden from sight between two massive tomes of indecipherable paleographemes. The discoverer was a confrater of the Temple installed in a convenient position as an agent provocateur. Upon recovering the texts he immediately channeled them to Temple Zero via high-priority glyphstream, as per Null Oath protocols. Unfortunately, contact with him was subsequently lost.


Yet even more unfortunate is a delay in the propagation of the Truth! While the Temple's mnemographers were able to decrypt the abnegaurbic doctrines of the note, the Pocket Guide remains a puzzle to our scribes even as you read this. Certain complications that arose at the end of its transmission have made the transcription process difficult – in passages, it can be difficult to distinguish the original text from the sender's hectic fever dreams. It is the work of the Empire's sleepers, no doubt: their touch venomous, their tendrils crawling through every pocket of the dreamsleeve.


The note appears to be the minutes of a secret meeting of the   held in   in which the membership of the Geographic Society were convicted of treason and the Pocket Guide was suppressed by Council edict. How they fear the Truth, who came to Power by clawing it to tatters! But they failed, of course, for the lovers of the Truth are many; though we know not who spited the Dragon by saving it, they who preserved these texts have embodied the heart of our Manifesto(and, indeed, may have helped bring it about.) And now the Temple has found it appropriate to publish its contents, that all of Tamri-el might see the Truth with eyes unveiled – for it is in the Truth that we are free from the mythopoeic enslavement of   and his co-conspirators, free from all  !


NU-MANTIA! FREEDOM! NU-MANTIA! FREEDOM! NU-MANTIA! FREEDOM!

NU-MANTIA! FREEDOM! NU-MANTIA! FREEDOM! NU-MANTIA! FREEDOM!


 Here you will find the foundation for your new Temple.

ECMB-MRA: mnemonic daedron-capacitance memospore classification xD15JMo0JfiX

cogitocode: a gnarled tibrol tree against the sunset, overlooking a lake; try to feel melancholy


"fk00-54bQ15"

ZERO-SUM VENTURE... RETURN FALSE... VERIFICATION 1

"f000-50bQ15"

FEXFEINT ENABLED... RETURN TRUE... VERIFICATION 8

"f000-000015"

WATERWORD WARD... RETURN TRUE... VERIFICATION 0

"0000-000000"

ACCESS GRANTED RELEASING MEMOSPORE

 INUTES


of a meeting of the Most-Esteemed

ELDER COUNCIL,

forever lieges and loyal servants fraternal of Her Most Honored and Exalted the

EMPRESS SEPTIM MORIHATHA,

Chosen of   and the  , Sovereign of the Ruby Throne, Lord of   and her

Dominions, etc., etc.,

Held

TWENTY-EIGHTH OF MID-YEAR

in the

THREE HUNDRED AND THIRTY-FIRST YEAR

of the Empire of Men,

transcribed and annotated by an adjunct of His Lordship the

GOVERNOR-GENERAL OF  -UPON- ,

Master of the Hamlet-Across-The-Way, Most-Esteemed Among Equals of the Minor Council, etc.,

FOR THE EYES OF FELLOW-COUNCILORS ONLY 


We, in this year 331 of the 3rd Era of the Empire Cyrodiilic, on the 28th of Mid-Year, have appeared before the Lord and High Chancellor Arboretumest-Best Ud-Maniphas Segu, representing in voice and authority our Empress Morihatha, hegemon of Cyrod and Cyrod and all its lawful territories under the Ruby Red Throne as established by Tiber Imperator, with the goal of forming an Elder Council consisting of the following persons:

Here we will dream-swell on a very, very long list of councilors with their respective positions and titles, and absentees, and councilors attending via trance, spectral representation, etc., except the following persons (hear-see: now), as they shall already be mentioned in those other estimable lists found now in your pockets save for the naked here assembled, etc., and the asagreed-upon-in-amulet those members and delegates and strangely-beautiful silk concerns as writ in the council definitions for the legislative year 331. 

AND AS the aforementioned Elder Council having been called together by the Lord and High Chancellor Arboretumest-Best Ud-Maniphas Segu via priority dreamsleeve transmission and couriermoth, to take place outside of the regular calendar, though thereby not replacing the scheduled meeting on the 31st of Mid-Year AND UNDER the   Protocol of 3E 275, this council session is to be treated compliant with the standards of security class "E12 - ad hoc and highly classified" and, thusly, SHALL be held in secret. Access to the session or its transcription must be denied to any citizen with Imperial clearance level smaller than or equal to 23b, as decreed in Subsection 4-B of the Concealment Clause of the Council Accords vis-à-vis the Corbolo Protocol. Does any present Councilor object to the aforementioned procedural enumeration?

 Elder Councilor Maganifly-Good One, Elder Councilor Ambassador Wood-Worth, and Elder Councilor Delphine IV have already presented their collected votes of "Nay." What say the others?

Elder Councilor Trails-his-Graves seeks to initiate a vote of "Nay" – let us now be interrupted by an unseen cascade resonance in the echo-stream of his dreamsleeve transmission. Very good.

Elder Councilor Maganifly-Good One, Elder Councilor Ambassador Wood-Worth, and Elder Councilor Delphine IV, along with Our Ceremonial Guard here-now named and/or title Afternoon Nap and an adjunct to Elder Councilor Ambassador Wood-Worth here-now named and/or titled for this time-being, Circumference Comfort, now may proceed to assist Elder Councilor Trailshis-Graves in re-establishing a stable link. Make it happen, people.

Ah, very good. Unfortunately we must laugh now, and in a great volume, DO IT, as Adjunct Circumference Comfort has received injuries amounting to a minor concussion and third-degree burns along his thigh and needs to be escorted out of the Council chambers. Goodbye with you, good sir.

Upon re-establishment of all links, a cloture vote shall be re-instated as per Sub-Protocol 343 of the Laws of Triangulation, wherein all members may present their votes.

There is a unanimous NAY. Good for all of us. Very, very good. The Empress will be and is already pleased yesterday. Our Proceedings May Resume.****'''

High Chancellor Arboretumest-Best Ud-Maniphas Segu: "All members of the Imperial Geographic Society that undertook the sacred act of the penmanship of the Second Pocket Guide via Imperial Command (in writing, no less): You are hereby given the right to defend your actions before the Elder Council."

Imperial Geographic Society Editor [NYMIX NOW ZERO'D]: "If I may, on behalf of – "

High Chancellor Arboretumest-Best Ud-Maniphas Segu: "Let it be known that the right to trial was conferred upon the defendants. How does this Council rule?"

Elder Council Collective: "Guilty."

High Chancellor Arboretumest-Best Ud-Maniphas Segu: "The matter of guilt having been settled, how does this Council move to sentence the defendants?"

Elder Council Collective: "Death, effective immediately."

High Chancellor Arboretumest-Best Ud-Maniphas Segu: "The Council has ruled. Guards?"

Hatta of The Sphinxmoth Inquiry Tree: "High Chancellor, ENOUGH! If I may first address to all assembled or in state ad semblio, I would request of the Council the reason that We have overlooked the need for an encoded Verification Return False for the  harm?"

Lord Jak Candlestick of the Western Wax, the Eastern Wax, the Southern Wax, but Not Yet of the Northern Wax: "Silence, Hatta! We are already in session. All here know your affinity for the son of the   (pauses for hymnals thirty and eight) but you have no right to–"

Hatta of The Sphinxmoth Inquiry Tree: "Acausal Interrupt! I will not allow these proceedings to be compromised by future scrying, nor to allow you to ignore silks uncounted since–"

Ghost Counsel Choir (Blade-Seneschal and above): "Peli-NULL. Hatta is dead. Move to formation of NU-Hatta post-assembly by his brethren blessed. 331 High Chancellor regains the floor."

High Chancellor Arboretumest-Best Ud-Maniphas Segu: "Thank you in the utmost of that ideal, Ghost Choir. No doubt, we are all in a moment of woe. Let me mourn for– all right, I'm done. I shall now invoke the name of the Hasphat and most likely we will get sidetracked by talk of the Rim."



High Chancellor Arboretumest-Best Ud-Maniphas Segu: "HOLD! THE! CENTER! I have just been informed that Her Majesty has arrived in our heads. There we go! Ponder her! Now... where were we?"

----
 

Welcome, Citizen (Zero)!
The Totemic Return: Skyrim

A Preamble

To properly understand  , which one must do if they are to take on the burden of describing it for the layman, its geographies, its histories, its peoples, and its myths must be perceived as an aggregate. The   and their environs are the most variegated simplicity on this earth, with their heroic narratives serving as a record of all events leading to the present day. Which is a long way of saying that the land and the legendry of Skyrim is of a cycle not quite recognizable as prudent to the rest of the Empire's Mannish kingdoms, since the Cyrodilic south prefers some coherence in their Fatherland's fancy and it will give them none. Perhaps in this way, the Sons and Daughters of   are more akin to the mytho-genealothosphy of the modern Mer, but attempts to find common purchase in this matter is always met with the shaking, frostbitten beards of those that hold most dear the Nordic faith.

With that preamble sitting precariously on a precipice (an idea that the Nordic   study themselves with an almost reverent amusement), let us just say here that Nordic faith is complicated. It is decentralized by the inevitable embellishment and narrative entanglement of millennia of oral tradition. Most Nordic myths contradict each other, using anachronisms or elements co-opted from other cultures, or repeat themselves under different guises. Sometimes they do all of this, and purposefully so.

Indeed, the Nords freely admit their mythic haberdashery, and take great delight in mishmashing their legends together (and the legends of others, even their historic enemies, the   and  ) into "whatever just tells a good story at feast time." As their Clever Men are fond of saying, "The snows melt and then freeze again and in the end it is all still so much water. Legends are the same."

It is almost palpable here, the wondering anticipation of the reader how these ideas might apply also to (indeed be part and parcel of) the very ostensibly empirical observations of Skyrim's history and geography. There is no better rendition of this seminal through-line of the Nordic comprehension of this   than their most famous tradition, the annual reckoning of the Thirteenth of Sun's Dawn Feast for the Dead, "The Five Hundred Mighty Companions or Thereabouts of   the Returned", a song so delicately exquisite that the throats of every hallskald worthy of becoming hoarse in its telling proudly tells it at knife and mead point, relishing in the danger closeness of both.

The Five Hundred Mighty Companions or Thereabouts of Ysgramor the Returned


Towards a Dragon'd Sea: Cathnoquey
Of all the Imperial Provinces described herein,   is the newest to join its ranks. Before being formally reorganized under the terms of the Veto of Charter and Decree of New Lordships [3E307], the archipelago was first established as a Third Empire Territory in   under Emperor  , "The Fighting Diamond".
 From "Eyelid to Power, the Eastern Fleet Futility" by Commander Hung-tat Torpal, of the  , present at both   and Cathnoquey, wounded en route to the ports of  , and islanded there after its burning, to heal. Returned to Cyrodiil after the disaster at  ; retired command at  ,  .

"On the matter of Cathnoquey's famously-swift conquest, it is my own opinion that we would have achieved all of it by the sundown of our first landing, foregoing nine more of crazed massacre. The Quey, both man and mer, surrendered their shelters both fortified and at sea without our demanding, and almost began to resupply our stock,  , and weaponry as if we had always been here; but they did so smiling, which the Imperator took almost reptilian umbrage at, and made order that we take nothing from the natives unless we did so by force, and to let them know the Septim Regime was never to give nod nor knee to so vulgar and obvious a trickery."

  

Before that time, the "Kingdom" of Cathnoquey was an impressive egalitarian society of two quite divergent cultures, the tribal fishermer-flotillas of the  i-quey, a loosely-organized coastal power of shorekhans, and the "untitled leaders" of the Menof-Keptu-quey, who positioned their peoples mainly along an array of military frontier fortresses. It had no kings to speak of, in the manner that we do, but for the sake of history and Imperial embellishment it was given this royalty for context.

It seems that the racial schism that still troubles Tamriel had never been a problem in Cathnoquey. Records testify to a government that convened only in passing and, when it did, did so passively, structured along a   system whose chief concern was "the selflessness of melting ice".

We will never know how that system worked, only that it could be, and was, decisively dismantled by the Legions of the Red Banner. With Roscrea already captured and
the Emperor's Eye towards the other independent island states between him and the main prize of  , Uriel V began a series of short and brutal campaigns that decentralized the governing bodies of Cathnoquey within a fortnight. By midsummer 3E276, the annexation of the whole archipelago was complete. The Emperor was not even there to sign the missives that were to be sent back to Cyrodiil to cement its claim, invoking Quill'd by Proxy, as the bulk of his navy was already making sail for the Ysneslean lanes.

Cathnoquey culture is, at best, abstract for our purposes here. As a record of events and ordeals, this is understandably inconvenient for both writer and reader. For that, we can both be sorry. But we must carry on, and will, as evidenced by the existence of the paragraph following.

The Chimeri-quey's contact with the Men-of-  has always been fleeting and heavily ritualized. The best example of this is probably the arrival of the Chimer for market. Moments before the gloaming that signals the break of dawn, the bulk of the flotilla-township heaves into view, like some incalculable sea turtle; a vast misshapen shadow on the face of the water; crystalline light sources blink into life atop the flotilla's many masts, giving brief lamp-lit glimpses of ships that seem at once ramshackle yet sturdy, and shortly thereafter begins an incredible balletic display that turns the very water into an enormous semaphore.

The ostensible message of "the arrival of trade" strikes the outside observer as entirely negligible in view of such a spectacle. Indeed, sometimes it is, as neither party, man or mer, exchange any goods at all, not even immaterial commodities such as information. Even when this "not-trade" happens, however, the merchants of both flotilla and fortress return to their domains with great smiles of satisfaction.

Whenever questioned on their trading practices–moreover, their customs as a whole– the only response is in the colloquial Quey, "such-like and so-forth". This acceptance of odd ritual and an unwillingness to disclose on things that are seemingly commonplace in Cathnoquey has given its people something of a reputation for, at best, aloofness, or, at worst, an implied duplicity. This is entirely in contradiction with the proven hospitality of its peoples of an effusiveness that some would find, and have found, offensive.

Now we turn... sorry, the   has new keys, whatever are these? I am doing my very best, I swear. Don't look at me that way. Hang on to something, at least, otherwise it'll get swollen, and that's not the plan at all. Where were we? The pie is delicious, thank you. Largely, I do not much care for the wine, but whatever this is, it is. Am I right? Oh, yes, as ever: Cathnoquey.

What little one sees of the Chimeri-quey is largely limited to these prearranged meetings with the Men-of-Keptu, or to the largely industrial townships that dot the shore of Cathnoquey, which occasionally stage battles to settle tribal squabbles over the efficacy of their weapons and tools. Such theatrics are so heavily ritualized that no casualties are ever suffered or blow even struck, although impossibly the Chimer do somehow ascertain an outcome. After a visit to their coastal towns, one carries away an impression of clockwork model villages, as these settlements, if they can be really called that, seem to exist purely to support the flotilla-townships, away at sea for weeks on end, constantly searching for no one knows what. Their crews appear never to leave their boats except to resupply or to trade in the manner above described.

To the modern Cyrodilic citizen, the Men-of-Keptu-quey may strike them as a relic of a bygone age. Their imposing fortresses and antiquated weaponry (typically blunt or stylized to the point of being unrecognizable as an instrument of war) is at odds with their unimpeachable hospitality and ready smiles. One detects in them a stalwartness, an anxiety, a preparedness for battle. If it is for the  , then it is for an enemy they have not seen in centuries; if it is for any other, it is one of those things they refuse to disclose to outsiders, even to the Provincial Governor who now presides there, and whose inquiries into the loyalties of these inscrutable men who have for so long associated with mer have yet to be adequately answered.

It can be conjectured that the Men-of-Keptu are the long-lost   keptulets of Ald Cyrod, but, when asked to explain their origins, they only make drawings of bulls. Then again, they draw bulls to explain nearly everything, even when queried about their abovementioned apprehension, and it is not uncommon for the Chimeri-quey to receive "payments" in large amounts of these bull sketches, even some drawn only in the sand in front of their flotillas.

 

Early on, this strange obsession with drawing bulls even resulted in violence. During the annexation of Cathnoquey, the Admirality assumed that the Men-of-Keptu were hiding a cattle reserve somewhere in the archipelago. Desperate to replenish the  's beefstock before the final push into Akavir, more torture and execution was visited upon the natives that yielded no answer regarding this imagined location. When Imperial outrunners found no cattle anywhere in the island chain, the bull drawings of the Men-of-Keptu were relegated to just one more entry into the Eastern Inscrutability.

It should be noted here that after this persecution ended, missionaries of   tried drawing images from the   Hegemony for the Quey, to see if they were reminded of anything. Whether this was an attempt at mercy or distaste is up for the reader to decide; for their part, the Men-of-Keptu merely took those images from the missionaries and drew bulls on top of them.

After. After? An after? And now I have just heard the sounding of many horns. And now (ah, there we are) the stamp of hooves, but they are fashioned so that I can't adequately count their true sum number. I think I have documented all I need to in regards to Cathnoquey, and yet fear that it will never truly be enough, even if some other might take the pen. For that, I am wait no that's me writing what I'm thinking. No, not right now, not yet. I have only ever served what I knew to be there. I knew it: a knock at your door.

Places of Interest

The Wasabi Run: 

After the Disaster at Ionith and the retreat of the Cyrodilic navy back to Tamriel, there was little reason for the Empire to keep either resupply stations or legion garrisons in Cathnoquey. That changed with the discovery of "the Wasabi Run," a trickle of shoals and small islets whose every available surface had been cultivated in swirling garden crops of a tibrol-based wasabi.   is as lucrative a trade in Skyrim as   is to the hinterlands of the south and east, with the added benefit of actually being legal. Withdrawal of the occupying forces from Cathnoquey was stalled in  , to give the Treasury Agents of Outland Holdings time to surreptitiously tally a drake-value annual return based on exploitation of the wasabi gardens. Only a year later, a wholly-endorsed provincial investiture was won by Veto at White-Gold Tower, opposed only by the powerful, and corrupt,"Blackmouth Counts" of the Cheydanene districts.

During the Treasury's investigations, the Quey naturally denied having created these gardens in their alien and insouciant way, shrugging as if the mystery was really quite obvious. To their credit, the Quey had never been actually seen trading wasabi at market in the thirty years of Imperial occupation. When their "untitled leaders" were questioned how it got there and who its gardeners were, they merely told the Imperials that "it showed up when you did." Under torture, the origins of the Wasabi Run and its careful cultivation were made even less clear, with variations of a single answer: "you needed something from Cathnoquey, so it gave it to you. You are Quey now, so stop hurting yourself."

Llénnöcöcönnèll, the Anachronisle

An island at the southernmost end of the Cathnoquey chain, formerly known as "Llénnöc" (Quey for "south-but-we-mean-west") when it was an independent state during the Second Empire.
After the famous surrender of Akaviri forces at   to   Cyrodiil, Llénnöc was quickly annexed as Imperial territory to help facilitate the capture of any   military-leaders seeking to evade their failed invasion by means of the north-but-really-east sea straits.
When no such nets bore fruit– perhaps since the Tsaesci indeed never invaded by sea and therefore did not use it for retreat– the Imperial Dracocryptography & Authentifications Congress petitioned to the Elder Council that the native government be further reorganized "to alleviate the sleeve-strain of invaluable but atrophying memospores". Seeing no need for extended deliberations, Llénnöc's original inhabitants were almost immediately moth-altered by Decree to serve as a collective repository for the most ancient dream-drafts that had not been converted to silk "either due to negligence or whim or both".

Perhaps because of the haste of this mass alteration and even more "negligence or whim", the eventual result was an island of living historical records that made no sense as the population began to mate in their now-unnatural fashion. Mongrel-memory-mothmen of anachronistic power and a fantastic reproductive cycle attempted a poorly-planned siege of the IDA Congress Mission House by the end of the year. The retaking of Llénnöc might have proved victorious had the leaders of the coup ever reached agreement on how best to apply their ever-varying and non-linear recognitions of simple logistics.

The Empire has never relinquished its holdings on the Anachronisle. It was eventually renamed "Llénnöcöcönnèll" after subsequent failed sieges by the mothmen, a small palindrome trans-loop magic that surprisingly rendered the island both inescapable by its prisoners and yet safe for officially-sanctioned visitors bearing a proper set of phrenolocles.
The lunar province of Secunda: Tatterdemalion

Imperial subjugation of the lunar territories began as early Reman the First. His failed conquest of the Underworld (and its terrestrial consequences) ended in the loss of his mid-wife wives, and the only anodyne to his grief was a reckless void-eyed hubris. In  , he circumvented the bureaucracy of his own throne, including all county courtships and trans-provincial authorities, to make plans to colonize Tamriel's twin moons. He commissioned the nachronachs of the Immaterial Harmonics Institute of Incongruitech and Extrinsic Travels to begin work on the first genegineered Megalomoth vessel-fortresses, "to reclaim all extramundic holdings and grant lands from the maddening nighttime tatters of Shezzar's proof of Man's provenance".

When Reman's efforts were finally revealed, there was a large discomfort throughout his sovereignties and even outright dissent in the Elder Council. These iconoclasts feared   vexation for unritualized   into the  , and perhaps rightly so. However, this was all quickly dissolved when the   of Tumult lent their   oaths in their first display of coalition since the Fall of   in the previous kalpa. Conjecture points to some machinations of  , who took on her mantle of Ur-Dra of  , and it was by her primogeniture that Reman was able to pursue his cosmic acquisitions without further censure. 

Alas, The Cyrodiil did not live to see the completion of the Megalomoth vessel-fortress, which he wanted to christen as the NVN Manywife with Interest. Ash-bitten knives of the  i assassin's guild, the  , ended him in  . Its final construction, and its first landing on  , was overseen by his son,  , who renamed it either capriciously (or just more simply), the NVN Accrual. Of that famous planefall, we turn to the records of Bethalamet Grieves,   of the New Void Navy:

[Transcript ends]


Better is a Better Word: The Lynpan March

If there is one noble thing to have come out of the true Empress' brief reign, it is surely her (somewhat indirect) displacement of the   from the land of the  . Perhaps "noble" is the wrong word; "better" is the better word.

While  eering in the deeps of   atop her equine brother and with a train of treemimes and vatgrown dwarf-sized versions of other favorite relatives behind her, the hoary monstrosity called King-  attacked. Perhaps "attacked" is the wrong word; "sought to rejoin them, thinking they were all a vision of his ages-ago  ". In any case, the monster's display of brotherhood was frighteningly loud and led to some casualties, including the Court's Royal Vine-Mime, Magpie O'Middlepants, who was trampled to death by the spooked  , an uncounted number of uncleculi, and Her Majesty's favorite falcon, Crow.

Soon, the bone-arrows of the feral greensaps pelted everyone present, completely freaked out about the return of King-Dead Wolf-Deer. However, since the Meat Mandated Bosmer really weren't all that hungry, and quite unsure that their stomachs could even house their antediluvial redcapped cousin, they used arrows tiny enough to be more annoyance than fatal, fashioned from  s. All their harrying did was cause more confusion and panic and to bring out the Great Apes, who brought their own rather questionable projectiles to the battle.

At the end, the spirit of Crow the falcon was sent up and out at the Empress' order to summon  's rains. Morihatha, at this point, was picking out robin-bones from her velvets and tossing away her Imga-leavings-laden wig, all while keeping her brother from galloping out from under her, yelling obscenities that King-Dead Wolf-Deer had not heard since Old Borgas' time. The Maiden of Rains sent a torrential downpour at the Imperial Order. The Lynpan March was washed away entirely, sliding to whereabouts unknown. Hopefully, the Elder Lord of Teeth and Twenty Antlers will trouble us no more, as there were no recorded survivors.

Except for the Empress and her brother, who arrived back to Cyrodiil through a small windshift magic that accompanied the rain-wroth divine, and no one said a word to her as she made her way to the Bathhouse of Belharza, her horse snorting in tow. As for Crow the falcon, his sacrifice at Lynpan March was made manifest in  let metals, and his aspect watches over a row of hedge-heads of  , giving much pride to those living birds that allow their regal-ghosts to parrot some manner of speech.

Those Regions Largely Unwritten

The Republic of Hahd