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greyborn2 · 9 months

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WIP (belated) Wednesday

Got tagged in by the fantabulous pair @thana-topsy and @kookaburra1701 but, at the time, didn't have anything cooking. Have since cracked and started working on my still-unnamed Goblin TES fic featuring the Tel Mithryn crew and 1 (one) goblin!! So ya! Have finally written up a little chunk and toooootally not just using a belated WIP wednesday as an excuse to share it;

The town of Dagon Fel had, all things considered, taken the eruption of Red Mountain remarkably well. Those vicious plumes of ash and fire that had come forth from it, scouring most other settlements from Vvardenfell, had been redirected by the cliffs of Sheogorad’s southern shore. Dagon Fel, on the northern one, had been as protected as Raven Rock behind its bulwark. In the shadow of the ruins of Mzulft, the town survived. The town thrived.

Survivors had come flocking there, first in scatterings, then in droves. Settling down and quickly overpopulating the original Nord inhabitants of the town. It became a gateway settlement – the last stop for hundreds of refugees before they moved on to Solstheim, or Skyrim. The old Nordic townhouses torn down, or burned down by ashfall, to be replaced sturdier stone dunmeri buildings. A city of tents spiraling out around it, dwarfing that core permanent settlement in size and population alike.

Always, though, in that space between tent-town and true-town, a small gap was left. A market square, one might call it if they were being generous. In the panic to flee one’s home one grabbed all manner of brick-a-brack that only later, on reflection, turned out to be useless. Antique kitchenware, ceremonial armors… books. The refugees of Dagon Fel flocked to that market to pawn off those old keepsakes in the face of desperation, hoping to make a few more septims to fund their journey further afield from the vicious glow of the mountain.

All sorts of interesting things turned up in those markets. Things people didn’t need to survive, maybe, but had worth in other ways. It was this small market of desperate fools that kept Neloth coming back to Dagon Fel, away from his tower in Solstheim. That small market and the occasional treasures it held.

The boy – Talvas – was being a nuisance, as always, as children his age were want to do. Enough to make him question why he had taken him on as an apprentice in the first place. Running here and there, poking at the piles of trash and treasures the folks were trying to peddle, tugging on Neloth’s robe’s incessantly with some new exclamation of “Look at this master!” or “What about that master?”. His high spirits were sickening and his pestering a pain. To make matters worse the boy’s hands where filthy – though his ashen skin hid the true ash on them well – and he kept. Rubbing. Those. Grubby. Hands. On. His. Best. Robes.

Neloth let out a hiss of annoyance, shooing his pest of an apprentice away again to return his attention to the reason he had come here. Not that any amount of attention would help – on the sliding scale of trash to treasure it was decidedly skewed towards the former this season. No matter how refugees tried to extort the ‘historical value’ of ancient familial records or now-useless scrolls of Almsivi Intervention they were of no use, and even less interest, to him.

Slowly but surely his circuit brought him from the trash markets to the one place in Dagon Fel that could be relied upon for some base level of quality. Even if the goods here were decidedly more… perishable.

As such places generally were, the slave markets of Dagon Fel were a sad little affair. Only the Dres tried to hide the misery places like that held. Mostly this one wasn’t even run by distinguished traders, it was just unfortunates trying to sell themselves or a family member off for some hope of escaping this ashen rock. It took Neloth a good hour of questioning and shooing away hopefuls before he even started to find some that knew the first thing about brewing tea. Even fewer seemed to have the skill… the basic decencies… he expected of a potential steward.

He had just started to talk with a promising young woman – a Nalona or Varona or something to that effect – when that blasted apprentice of his came to pester once more. Tugging away on his sleeve, leaving dusty, grimy, fingerprints on the yellowed fabric he had worked – or more accurate had someone else work – to keep so clean. “Master Neloth, sir!! Sir!!” he had said, eagerly, “Not. Now. Boy. Go find some other children to pester with your inane discoveries…” “But… Master Neloth… sir… it’s so ugly!!!” – sure enough, the boy was pointing eagerly with his other, equally filthy, hand towards a nord man of no fair looks but… no… he was pointing at what the man was holding. Not the man. What he was trying to sell. A small bundle that, after a moment, Neloth realized was a baby. Or else something decidedly baby-shaped.

“We are looking for a steward, boy. Not another infant. Now please, me and Sera Belona-” the young woman interjected with a quiet, barely audible, correction of ‘Varona, sir’ under her breath “-yes, yes, that’s what I said. We were talking, boy.”

“But… master… it’s hideous!! It has to be half… half Falmer or… or… something!! Maybe even a troll!!”

There was no arguing with him. Besides, he was mostly done with this Varona woman anyway… what could be the harm in amusing the boy just this once? Neloth let out a long sigh, gesturing towards the docks and saying a last few words to the woman before he followed his apprentice to see the sight; “You will report to my ship, at the docks. Sera Mothren will give you something more… presentable… to wear for the return voyage to Tel Mithryn. You are to treat her with all the respect you would treat me. She is an asset to my house and I will not have her disrespected.” “I… yes Serjo Neloth, sir. Understood, sir.” – she wasted no time, at least, following the orders she had been given.

All in all, Neloth wasn’t completely sure what he had expected to see bundled up in the Nord warrior’s arms, offered up for sale. Perhaps some unfortunate burn victim from the ashlands. Perhaps just a particularly hideous bosmeri babe, given the pathetically small size. No… what he saw instead caught him by no small surprise, even if he did his best to hide it.

It was an infant, yes, but nothing human or merish. Not even orcish.

If an adult of its species was a rat, this thing certainly looked the part of a newborn pup. Its flesh pinkish-grey rather than the grey-blue of an adult. Its eyes large enough to bulge out of its tiny head, though still sealed behind closed lids that had not yet opened and seen the world. Its skin wrinkled and thin enough that veins could be seen through it. More foetus than baby. Small enough that one could almost hold it all cupped in one hand. Long ears sticking out either side of its misshapen head under a soft white-haired fuzz. Viciously fanged mouth not even crying just… opening and closing. As if it expected food to be delivered straight to that vicious little maw it had. No… what his damnable apprentice had found was a goblin. A goblin babe.

#tes #the elder scrolls #neloth #skyrim #FINALLY plucking Teemakr outta my brain!! Even if they are just a baby and barely even in this!! Still something!!#goblins - I suppose? - I mean this will eventually be a full fic focused on them #if anyone has name suggestions for the fic please through them my way I'm honestly stumped.

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sylvienerevarine · 1 year

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as you may recall, I have a very good headcanon that the dwemer invented cameras. this is simply a fact. now, for some reason, i have written a fic about it, featuring Master Neloth, my dragonborn Sophrine, and some other fabulous friends.

(shoutout to @libertineangel who inspired me with a few headcanon additions)

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Many years earlier–too many to count, really–Master Neloth had been a teacher of magic. His students had been gifted young mages from high-ranking Morrowind families, all of whom had passed a series of excruciatingly hard exams, and every one of them had driven Neloth out of his mind. Talented they might have been, but they were utterly impossible to deal with, particularly on any educational expeditions.

On the island of Solstheim, trekking through the vast Dwemer ruin of Nchardak, Neloth was feeling a distressing sense of deja vu. This time, however, his companions were not gifted (if irritating) Telvanni youths.

They were much, much worse.

“What do you think the Dwemer ate?” came a shrill female voice from behind him. This one was Sophrine Aulette, the Breton chef who called herself the Dragonborn. More like the dragging born, the way she dragged everyone along behind her, Neloth thought, allowing himself a quiet chuckle at his own joke. If she hadn’t been a descendant of the Nerevarine, he’d probably have turned her to stone by now.

“I mean, they lived in these underground cities, right?” Sophrine went on. “Not so easy to grow vegetables this far down. There’s always mushrooms, which are delicious, but that’s hardly a balanced diet. Unless they had very good greenhouses.”

“I still don’t like these types of ruins.” That was one of the Nord women–Neloth couldn’t remember which was which, and frankly, he didn’t much care. “Have I ever told you how I almost died in a place just like…”

“Yes,” chorused several voices.

As the little crew began bickering about how many times, exactly, they’d heard that same story, Neloth sighed and began subtly inching toward the nearest door. Perhaps he could find the book and make his way back to Tel Mithryn without participating in any more inane conversations.

“Master Neloth?” called Sophrine from across the room, before he could make his escape. “Could you come here, please? We’ve found something interesting.”

Neloth rolled his eyes and made his way over to the group, who were gathered around some sort of cube on legs. “What is it?”

“That’s what we were hoping you would tell us,” said Serana. She was an interesting one, now. A vampire, and older than the hills, yet she traveled around with a group of nosy vagrants. “We think it might be some sort of light fixture, but none of us have seen anything like it before.”

“Let me see that.” Neloth bent down to inspect the artifact, frowning. It consisted of a box on a three-legged stand, with a latch on the back and a small cylinder projecting out of the front. At the cylinder’s end was a highly polished glass lens, still without a crack after all these years.

“By Azura,” he said in awe. “It’s a camera.”

“A camera!” exclaimed Sophrine. “Of course! Wait, what’s a camera?”

“A singularly ingenious device. I’d thought they were all lost long ago. Look here, children.” Neloth unlatched the back of the cube, all annoyance forgotten. “You may not believe it, but with this machine, the Dwemer were able to capture a person’s likeness in a fraction of the time it would take a painter.”

“So it makes pictures?” The dark-haired Nord woman–Lydia, her name was–eyed the camera suspiciously. “What sort of magic could do that?”

“No magic at all. Simply a bit of clever engineering. They would take a small plate of brass–like this one! My goodness, one’s survived! They’d take this plate and treat it with a liquid that made it sensitive to light, and place it here in the camera. The subject would sit in front of this lens for a minute or two, and once the plate was removed and treated with a cinnabar solution, you’d have a fine picture more true-to-life than anything from a paintbrush.”

“I say, that’s clever,” remarked the Dunmer fellow named Teldryn. “A fellow could make a fine living selling these metal portraits. I don’t suppose you could get it working again, old man?”

“My name is not ‘old man,’ and no. Not unless those particular chemicals are still available somewhere in here.”

Serana nudged him gently and pointed to a nearby shelf stocked with an assortment of small, dusty bottles. “I think, Master Neloth, we may be in luck.”

---

“Hold still, you lot,” Neloth called. “Or this ‘commemorative portrait’ will come out an utter mess.”

“It’s been about twenty minutes,” complained Mjoll. “My feet are beginning to fall asleep.”

“It’s been thirty seconds. This should be complete in about five…four…”

“Wait!” Sophrine interrupted. “Everyone, say cheese.”

“Why?”

“It automatically makes you smile! Go on, try it!”

And, for no reason Neloth could discern, all five grinned widely and called out: “Cheese!”

A few minutes later, the group gathered round eagerly to inspect their completed picture, which was not entirely flattering. Mjoll was blinking, Serana had for some reason stuck up two fingers behind Teldryn’s head, and Sophrine looked about to sneeze. It was, as Neloth had predicted, remarkably true to life.

“A handsome bunch, we are,” Teldryn said approvingly.

“A thoroughly frivolous bunch,” Neloth grumbled. “Now, may we return to finding that book?”

#my writing #master neloth #skyrim #tes #morrowind #serana #teldryn sero #mjoll the lioness #lydia #oc: sophrine #dwemer

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