The Chronicles of Sindinius Sirk

[Timster]

Hello everyone. New here. I found this awesome forum because I was searching for a place to share a weekly series of short stories that I'm writing. They follow the travels of a High Elf who is on the run from his troubled past. The Empire, the Thalmor, the majority of the inhabitants of Tamriel - they pretty much all despise him. Why? Well, that's the great mystery for us to find out.

All of these stories will come from the "The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim" - a role-playing open-world game of awesomeness. I will be playing a heavily user-modified version, taking whatever happens there as I play, and morphing it into the stories that follow. I randomly generated the character about whom you will read. He is a crotchety old mage who has at last made it to the cold northern province of Skyrim, where the wilds are nearly as dangerous as a highwayman's sword. How long will he last in cold wastes? Will he take part in Skyrim's raging Civil War? Will he help the needy or take everything he can for himself?

I'll play, you'll read, and we'll both find out!

So without much further ado, let's jump right to it and let 'ole Sindinius introduce himself...

Entry 1

17th of Last Seed, 4E 201 - moonrise

My name is Sindinius Sirk. Wretched name, I know, but blame the Altmer High Council from which I hail. They choose the names of all the newborns that spawn from their perfectly selected marriages and my name must have been next on the List of Wretched. They can be damned.

I was born in the Fourth Era, Year 100 – a nice round figure – on the very day the Void Nights came to an end and the return of Nirn's moons happened at last. End of a very frightening two years, I hear. When moons disappear, it is never a good thing. As for the current date, it notches 4E, 201 as far as I am aware, in case you missed it up top. So far, a year of insignificance.

If you have calculated the difference between the dates of my birth and the present, you will come at a startling number. Yes, I am old. Quite old. I have wrinkles. I smell a bit like the winds of the wild mixed with the decay of time. I even have a dead eye gouged by the claw of a bear fifty years ago. But I am not frail, and you had better never think it. Do so, and you may end up sucking down the front end of a fireball. I am Altmer, and we live far longer than the petty life you likely live. Time drags down skin for some of us, this is true, but we are just as strong at 101 as we were at 35. Looks are deceiving.

However, this is all a waste of time. The reason we are here is not any of that. The reason I have begun writing this journal, and hope to continue writing should fate allow it, is that a new era of my life has begun...if you want to call it that. Truth is, I am on the run from the province of Cyrodiil, the Imperials hate me, my life is at risk of being cut short by an axe through the neck, and I have come to Skyrim as the very last place I can go where no one knows my wretched name. That is all you need to know for now. When I begin to trust you further, maybe I will share more.

What follows will be a recording of my 'adventures' (pissing, s***ting, and sleeping most like) as I make my way through Skyrim in search of ways to survive. Let us not fool ourselves into thinking I will find anything of any significance in this miserable, gods-forsaken land of wind and cold. I may be camping now in a nice vale of trees and shrub, but I will not be fooled. I crossed the mountains to get here. I know of the snow and ice that awaits further north. If it were not for the fact that the entirety of the world beyond the southern mountains of Skyrim hates me, I would never have come here in my wildest dreams.

But here I am, and I may as well chronicle the days before I die. Perhaps you, you wayward traveler you, will find something of interest here. Perhaps you will use these ink-stained pages to wipe your a**. I care little. If you find this, I am likely already dead.

That said, let us begin.

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If you liked this and want to read more, you can do so here (vividwhispers.blogspot.com). There are a number of entries already up.

Cheers!

[Timster]

And here is the second entry, which kicks off the adventure.

Entry 2

18th of Last Seed, 4E 201 – near noon

Today for breakfast I ate three bandits, one skeleton, and two undead draugrs. Who would ever visit this land? It truly is the most inhospitable place imaginable. Let a man camp in the foresty vale away from the snow, cold, and sharp rocks? No, no, no. That would be too easy! No one in Skyrim can be afforded comfort. Let us send bandits and foul things to harass him.

Suffice to say, I dispatched the three trouble-seekers who came to rob me as I sat down for my breakfast of rock warbler eggs, dried out bread, and fried leeks. I then ate said breakfast and set out for the village of Falkreath a short walk away. Upon that walk, I stumbled upon the very outpost from which those fools came, and of course, was forced to dispatch their two tar-brained friends who were waiting in ambush beside the road. As I told you before, I may look old and frail, but looks can be deceiving. Just like a fireball looks deceptively small a hundred feet away. Then it hits you in the face, and you're wondering what in oblivion you were thinking.

At any rate, I came upon an old ruined temple or graveyard of some sort after that incident, whereupon I fended off the draugrs and the lone raised skeleton. All in all, it was menacing if mildly irritating start to the day. All I wanted to do was find a place to trade the scraps of hare and berries I had for some salt so I could better preserve future supplies. If I had known the trouble I would go through to reach town, I would have stayed well enough away.

When I finally did arrive at Falkreath, I was not met with the charm I half-hoped for. Instead I was met with a foreboding, gloomy atmosphere. Sure, all was peaceful and the sun shined clear through the sky – remarkably – providing for what should have been a beautiful, cheery morning, but cheerful the town was not. A terrible thing had occurred there not two days ago. A death struck the town. A horrible death to match this horrible land. A girl who had not seen her tenth winter had been brutally ripped apart in the field of her family's own farm...

As I joined the crowd in the bleak graveyard filled with the stoneheads of generations long past, a terrible sorrow befell me. I am not a kind soul by any means, but while I listened to the parents of the child weep and sob, and as the undertaker entombed the remains of the body in its casket below the earth, I managed to overhear from the whispers of bystanders what exactly had happened – and it struck me deeply.

Apparently a man by the name of Sindling had come to town roughly a week ago – at the same point in time when my frozen self was barely scraping over the mountains – and implored the two parents for a job on their farm. Being the good-hearted people they are, they were only too glad to help a fellow man out. It is apparently a typical thing to help strangers in this town, and no one thought anything of it. Days went by with nothing unusual. He helped them with their crops, working long hours through the day, and in return received a bed, some coin, and food.

Then one morning, terrified screams tore through the town. They pierced sharply through the air, one after the other, in cries until they were cut short at a high-pitched peal. The town rushed to help, but they were too late. When they arrived, the little girl was a ravaged, bloody mess strewn amidst the crops of wheat. Sindling stood over her, casting his shadow on the scene.

I have seen and heard of much in my many years, but this brought shivers to my skin and tingles to my spine. What deplorable scrap of a man could do this? What had driven him to such a thing? There is always the case of kidnapped children to be taken away to satisfy daemon desires, and those usually end little better than this, but I had never heard of such a senseless case of destruction. So pointless. A poor girl murdered, literally ripped apart, for no apparent reason.

I could not let this go. I attempted to push it from my mind as the ceremony came to an end and as I traded a few goods with the town merchants for salt, but it would not leave. In my foolish curiosity, I had to know what had happened and why. So I spoke to the guards of the town, who thankfully are not Imperials. The Imperials control a number of holds in Skyrim, and I daresay Falkreath may be one of them, but the guards here are completely unaffiliated with those in other lands of the Empire. They know not my face nor my name, thank goodness.

Upon speaking with these guards, I learned that Sindling was still alive. The miserable bastard was not executed on sight but was being held for further investigation. This is a shame and a slight to the passion of vengeance, but in the name of my curiosity, it is a boon and a blessing. I asked if I could see him, and they allowed.

Down into the dark, dank, putrid, miserable, moist dungeons of Falkreath Barracks I went. (Really was not much of a dungeon to be honest, but I have to put on appearances, you see, for sake of keeping interest). At the bottom of these 'dungeons', I found him. In a round cell filled with murky water, if you would like to call it that, he stood ready to talk. The place smelled awful, and I considered turning back, but I remembered the girl, and I could not leave. So I approached the bars.

“Who are you?” he asked, as if it mattered.

I only stared back to him in response. I searched him, studied him, surveyed his every expression, his every twitch of a muscle. He was shirtless and wore only the barest of frayed pants. His hair was long and ragged, and his face was covered in bruises. He seemed deeply sad. I was expecting a madman, an insane lunatic, but this man was neither. He was calm, and as I said before, deeply filled with sorrow.

“You've come about the girl, haven't you?” he continued. “I know, because they've all come. They all come to hurl spit and hate. I– I...” He looked at his hands as if they were still covered in blood.

“I am a traveler,” I said, “not from this town. Spitting on you would not bring the girl back, but I do desire to know why you did it. How could you do such a thing?”

The man looked up from his hands. “I didn't mean to do it. I didn't want to do it,” his voice wavered. “I've tried to tell them it wasn't my fault.”

“Yet you look at your hands as if they are still fresh with her blood. Do you deny you did it?”

He looked back at his hands. “No...” He looked back up, tears in his eyes. “But it wasn't my fault. It wasn't me.”

“Then who was it?”

“It was the ring,” he whispered with a trembling voice. Tears began to stream down his cheeks. “I've told them all before, but they won't listen.”

“Ring?”

“Yes, right here.” He lifted his left hand and pointed at his middle finger, but I saw no ring upon it. “It has doomed me. Hircine will not forgive me now.”

At this point, I was much disturbed. Perhaps this man was a lunatic and I had misjudged his silence of insanity for calmness of character, but a deeper sense within me – the sense, which of course, you will have no knowledge given the pitiful number of years you have lived – told me that there was something more to this. This man was no lunatic. He was no insane monster by any ordinary means. However absurd or apparently trifling, there is always a reason to explain action.

“Give me your hand,” I ordered.

He looked at me but did not comply.

“Your hand!” I shouted, so loud a guard down the way took a few steps closer. “Give me your hand, or I will ensure they give it to me for you.”

Sindling hesitated but apparently believed threat. He extended his hand through the bars, and I waved the guard off.

Taking his hand, I rubbed it all over, feeling for the ring, but found nothing. I put his hand up close to my eyes, up close to my ears, and I even sniffed it for good measure. To ordinary eyes, noses, and ears, the inspection would have yielded nothing, but my eyes, nose, and ears are no ordinary eyes nose, and ears. Need I remind you, I am Altmer? For certain, this man bore upon his finger an enchanted, invisible ring.

“Can you remove it?” I asked of him, to which he shook his head 'no'. “Would you like it removed?”

“Yes,” he begged.

“First you must tell me of this Hircine.”

“Hircine?” His eyes retreated in fear. “You do not know of him?”

“Of course I know of him,” I snapped. Everyone with half a brain, yes even Orcs, knows of the Daedric Prince of Hunt. “But what dealings do you have with him?”

“I– I–“

“You bargained with him for this ring, didn't you?”

He nodded. “I was supposed to track a beast in the woods. To kill it. This ring was supposed to help me control...c-control the transformations.”

“But it's done the opposite, hasn't it?”

He nodded again as fresh tears sprang forth. “I can't control it anymore. It happens at any time. Like with the girl...” He stared off, far-away. “The sweet, innocent girl. I didn't want to hurt her, but there was a lust inside of me I couldn't control it. She was so frail and weak. Such easy prey.” His eyes filled slightly with a cold darkness. “So vulnerable and fresh. Ready for the taking.”

At this point, I swallowed just the slightest bit of fear. “How about we take this off?”

Sindling's eyes came back to me. “Yes, please.”

“Very well.”

With a wave of my hand over his and a deep concentration of my mana, his hand exploded in light and the ring was revealed.

He gasped. “You did it.”

I yanked it from his finger before he could do anything else, and he pulled back from the cell, holding his hand in awe and spinning around. “You did it. You did it!” His joy reached a child-like level as he continued to praise me, until the transformation began. Then he screamed.

With an agonizing roar, he fell to his knees, flung his arms back, and tilted his head upwards. His voice filled the dungeon with a mighty roar. All I could see at this point was his back as it stretched and ripped. Fur broke forth where skin had once been, bones broke and multiplied where once they had been one, and in place of nails and fingers, menacing claws stretched out in arcs.

“Lycanthropy,” I whispered. Sindling had transformed into something I had only ever heard of. With the process completed, he gave me one chilling glare back with his hunt-filled eyes, before soaring up through the cell, climbing the walls, and breaking out through the roof.

And when I looked down, the silver ring had somehow found its way onto my very own finger of middle.

[Calidore]

Is this simply going to be a narration of a Skyrim mission? Speaking for myself, I'd much rather read original work.

Since the second entry starts the adventure and the first is nothing but exposition, you can drop the first entirely and insert any relevant information into the adventure itself where needed.

"Finger of middle"? Good grief. I suggest not trying too hard to sound "medieval" at the expense of clean writing.

[Timster]

It's a mesh of original and borrowed work. I add all of the dialogue and embellish the events far beyond what actually happens in the game. The game is a bouncing board. If I simply narrated the plots of the missions, there would be very little to tell (and really no point in doing so, since you could just wiki them if you wanted).

But yes, you are correct that the Sindling plotline, for example, is not original work by me. Other writers came up with that, and I won't take credit for it, because I have no right to do so. As for the progression of events - such as Sindinius's later hunt for the werewolf - those are completely original. No one previously wrote that or came up with it except me. That is based on how I choose to play - and thus write - the story.

"Finger of middle" - hah, just a whimsical way for Sindinius to write it. He's a queer fellow. :wink5: Wasn't *trying* to be medieval, but I see your point.

Thanks for your response.

[AuntShecky]

The question I'm asking myself is why so so many LitNutters (i.e., not just you) spend their time and creative energy attempting to rewrite material that has already been "done" and in the case of TLOR is extremely well-known and successful rather than trying to write something NEW. Rather than rehashing derivative material, why not rely on your own experiences, thoughts, and personal vision? Why not present a view of the human condition as filtered through your own unique perspective?

I don't mean an autobiography disguised as fiction nor a literal and banal snapshot of everyday life. You can bring in imaginative elements or anything your talent may conjure up, but the result should be interesting, not a tired old journey down roads we've all traveled many times before.

[Timster]

Thanks for your response Aunt Shecky.

I understand what you're saying. I agree and disagree on certain elements. Yes, there are a lot of re-hashes of the typical fantasy genre, and thus a lot of mediocre material that dilutes the genre; but no, I don't necessarily think that means authors shouldn't keep trying to re-hash in new and inventive ways. The entire Elder Scrolls story, of which Skyrim is a part (which I did not write - want to make that clear) is a re-hash of fantasy sub-genres. It has orcs, elves, and magic - but it has a HUGE following. The same can be said for other works. Take "A Song of Fire and Ice". What if George R. R. Martin had decided re-hashing the typical, medieval-fantasy genre was a waste of time, and his incredible series was never born? I think everyone steals from everyone. Everyone re-hashes. It's the few who re-hash WELL that get recognized.

As for this series of short stories, it is purely a small thing that I do for fun. I make no claims to it being incredibly original, seeing as it's purposefully based on the collective work of other writers. I have other stories I'm working on that I put a great deal of work into in attempting to create something original, and as you say, inject my own experiences, lessons, and thoughts on life. This series is purely meant to be something I can write quickly and create something short and enjoyable. Most importantly for this project, it's fun for me. If other people don't enjoy it...well, I can't really help that except take constructive criticism and apply it. I simply wanted to put it up here in case somebody DOES find it enjoyable. If even one person likes it, well, that's one person who got something out of it than otherwise would have if I hadn't shared it at all.