Tag: Telvanni

Morrowind’s Prison-Industrial Complex

I drew a comic based 100% on real, actual (Morrowind) events. I’ve also written a prelude to it because I think those events were hilarious as well. At least everybody in Morrowind is so cynical that nobody even pretends the guards do anything other than participate in an exploitative system that does nothing to deter actual crime.

Steen was tired and beat-up and dusty from trekking all across Morrowind. She was feeling bad about always crashing at Aryon’s place, and besides the local inn was closer, so she went in and asked to get a room for the night. She paid the innkeep 10 golden drakes.

“Alright,” he said, “the room is yours for the day!”

“Cool!”

“To get to your room, you just have to go down the first flight of stairs on your right,”

“Uh-huh”

“Then at the bottom, go 10 doors down, and go through the first door on your left after that,”

“Okay”

“Then, you head down that corridor, and go 10 paces until you get to 3 more doors,”

“Hold on, I think I better be writing this down or something…”

“Then go through the eastern-most door, and immediately turn left,”

“Uhh…”

“Then you will be at the part of the inn we all like to call ‘The Maze'”

“Oh god”

“Go up a half-flight of stairs at the end of the hall, and there will be 5 doors on each wall. Face to the West, and your room is through the door directly in the middle.”

“Is there a room number or something?”

“No room numbers.”

“Can you… can you walk with me to my room?”

“Sorry, no, I gotta stay and keep bar here. Can’t have those ruffians drinking all my sujamma without paying for it!”

Steen followed the directions to the best of her recollection. The inn was HUGE, and all the rooms looked totally identical.

“Well, I’m pretty sure this is the right room. Besides, I don’t think anybody would care if it isn’t, none of these rooms are being used.”

She put down her pack and put on her pajamas. She could feel her eyelids growing heavier at the promise of a nice, soft bed. So soon! She pulled back the covers, and started to crawl into the bed.

“YOUR CRIME HAS BEEN REPORTED!” shouted a guard from somewhere down the hall.

“Huh, I wonder who they’re arresting, I didn’t see anybody else down here”

Suddenly, Steen saw two guards bolting toward her at break-neck speed. They grabbed her and pulled her out of the bed before she could even close her eyes.

“You filthy fetcher! You didn’t pay for this bed! YOUR bed is over there!” the guard gestured at the room next door.

“Well, I think you can see how somebody could make this mistake…” Steen explained, kind of thinking the whole thing was a prank.

“All I see is a mouthy little outlander who thinks she can come to Morrowind without bothering to learn the local customs, and just be a hooligan all day!”

“I… now hang on!”

“Quiet, n’wah!”

“OK look, I’m cooperating, alright? Can I just send a message to Master Aryon? I’m supposed to be gathering ingredients for some experiment of his, and if I’m going to jail he should know about it, so he can plan the experiment around that or something.”

“Master Aryon?? You’re Aryon’s protege??”

“Yeah…”

“Holy shit, that dude is loaded!”

“Can I just send my message…”

“Sit over there, and keep quiet!”

The guards huddled together and spoke in low voices.

“She said she’s running some errand for an experiment, right? Well, if we lock her up and she gets delayed, probably all of Aryon’s… frog tongues or whatever will spoil, and his experiment will be delayed! When he finds out it was all because we arrested his protege, he’ll take it out on us!”

“OK, new plan. Instead of taking her to the clink, we bring to Aryon’s place, and try to ransom her off for some of that sweet, sweet Telvanni gold.”

“Yea, we’d be doing him a favor! But… what if he decides he’d rather blast us into Oblivion than pay up?”

“OK, if it looks like he’s going to blow us up or whatever, then we tell him that we just wanted to escort her home safely, and we’re letting her off with a warning.”

“Got it. Good plan.”

The guards turned back to Steen and raised their voices for her to hear, “Get up Outlander, you’re coming with us!”

Is Master Aryon an Imperial Sympathizer?

Everybody seems to talk about Master Aryon as being an Imperial sympathizer because he has a reputation as being the “progressive Telvanni”: he’s hired a racially Imperial mercenary as captain of his guard, and his tower is in the middle of what appears to be Imperial architecture. Therefore, this seems like it would be a logical conclusion to reach. But is it the correct conclusion? I’ll admit, I hope not, since my character is fiercely anti-colonial and one of the reasons she joined House Telvanni is because of how they refuse to recognize Imperial rule as legitimate.

Let’s look closer at the evidence.

Speak to Aryon’s captain, and you will realize that, while he is indeed racially Imperial, the man is a mercenary and is in no way affiliated with the Imperial Legion. Aryon does have a rather diverse cast of characters on his staff, after all. I’ve seen, among his host and retainers: Khajiit, Argonians, Altmer, Bretons, Imperials, and of course Dunmer. Because he is the “progressive Telvanni”!

Does the Legion recognize Aryon’s claim in Tel Vos as legitimate? Aryon explains the permitting process, and how nobody may develop land or lay claims in Vvardenfell without express permission from the Empire. After explaining this, Aryon tells the Nerevarine not to worry about him though, as he is confident he can hold his own against the Empire if they decide to siege his tower for building it without “official” permission.

So it would seem that Aryon does not have any Imperial recognition of his holdings in Tel Vos, as he admits that the Empire might try to unseat him. This would be pretty typical for a Telvanni. Indeed, all of the Telvanni Masters with holdings on Vvardenfell are there explicitly in violation of the Imperial decree, which is also a major reason for their being there. Things are getting pretty crowded and cut-throat for Telvanni on the Mainland, especially since many of the established Telvanni nobility on the mainland are either liches or vampires, and have probably ruled their holdings for a thousand years or more. This doesn’t leave much room for young Telvanni nobles to advance or gain holdings of their own. So when the Imperial decree about Vvardenfell came down, the established Telvanni aristocracy hatched a plan to kill two birds with one stone.

Telvanni, as a house, will often go out of their way to violate an Imperial decree to demonstrate that they do not answer to the Emperor. House Telvanni announced that any holdings their nobles could take and keep on Vvardenfell would be officially recognized by the house, and would advance said noble in the Telvanni hierarchy. So of course, several young Telvanni made their way to Vvardenfell to try their chances. At last, this was a way to advance! This was a very clever thing for the established Telvanni to do for a few reasons: it gave the frustrated young nobles an outlet to spend their energies on instead of always fighting the older Telvanni to claim their holdings; it would ensure that Telvanni interests were established on the island of Vvardenfell; and maybe those young nobles would kill some Imperials or even each other while they were at it. Win/win for those old liches holed up in their towers on the mainland!

The plan seems to have worked, for the most part. Several Telvanni masters have established holdings on the island of Vvardenfell, and due to the vast power (and even vaster wealth) of the Telvanni, the Empire seems like it is essentially powerless to enforce its decree and stop the Telvanni from claiming land on Vvardenfell.

So why does Aryon live in a hybrid of a Telvanni tower surrounded by Imperial architecture? If you search the South Tower, you might find some clues. Here, Aryon has set up a Dwemer museum, as well as an Imperial museum, with several artifacts from these cultures on display. There is an unusual exhibit in Aryon’s Imperial museum, though: a live Imperial guard, held captive in a barred cell and put on display for the museum. Aryon, in fact, has several Imperial soldiers held captive in his fort. This should begin to paint a picture for you: after the aforementioned Telvanni decree, Aryon took his host and retainers to Vvardenfell to seek his fortune. There, his host came upon an Imperial fort at Vos. They managed to siege and take the fort by force, and the surviving defenders which Aryon could not ransom back to the Empire are currently held as prisoners of war. Aryon proudly displays the plunder from his conquest around his tower, hence all the Imperial paraphernalia around the place. We can only speculate as to why one of the prisoners was selected to be put on display in the “Imperial Museum” with the rest of the plunder. Maybe he was the captain of the fort?

Then, depending on whether you think Aryon’s tendencies bend more towards the petty or more towards the pragmatic: he either planted his tower in the middle of the fort as a giant middle finger pointing straight at the Empire, or he figured there was no reason to let a perfectly good structure go to waste so he decided to plant his tower in the middle of the fort for extra protection. Or both.

That pretty much covers Aryon’s history on Vvardenfell and his motivations. And now for an extra detail that is largely incidental but I think really seals the deal:

Trebonius Artorius, Arch Mage of the Mage’s Guild Morrowind chapter tasks the Nerevarine with killing all of the Telvanni councilors in Vvardenfell: Master Neloth, Arch Magister Gothren, Mistress Therana, Mistress Dratha, and yes, Master Aryon. This also does not seem surprising, since the Mage’s Guild and the Telvanni loathe each other. The Empire expects the Telvanni to register with and pay dues to the Mage’s Guild if they want to continue providing magical services. However, as you might recall, the Telvanni reject the Empire’s right to rule in Morrowind and pretty much flaunt the fact that they refuse to join the Mage’s Guild. The Mage’s Guild seems to occasionally get the young Telvanni here and there, but they seem to drift away after realizing that the Mage’s Guild is nothing but a bureaucratic nightmare and a racket designed to scam them out of their money. And of course, the Mage’s Guild intends to hunt down these young Telvanni and either strong-arm them into paying all their back-dues or murder them (or both). Gee, I wonder why they left the guild? So, as an official government organization of the Empire, if Master Aryon was indeed working with the Empire in any capacity, you might expect Trebonius Artorius to grand Aryon some clemency in this regard.

Take all these details and observations together, and you realize that although Master Aryon is a very atypical Telvanni Master in many respects (most likely due to his relative youth), in regards to his attitude towards the Empire he seems to be a very typical Telvanni. And, I mean, he put a living Imperial soldier on display in an “Imperial Museum.” That is a rather Telvanni thing to do.

The Great House Telvanni

great-house-telvanni-sigil
The Sigil of the Great House Telvanni

Lately, I’ve just wanted to dissolve into Morrowind forever. Over time, my Nerevarine has undergone an interesting transformation. When she started, she was ultra-moralist, and would never (could never) kill a non-hostile NPC. She was also incredibly charming, so almost no NPCs were hostile (and the number of hostiles kept going down as she got more charming).

I attempted to follow the main plot, but pretty much right out of the gate Caius told me to run around doing other things to “establish cover” because, oh yea, I’m an agent for The Blades now. Yeah, right. I hate the Empire, I hate imperialism, and I hate The Blades. So she just said, “Thanks for springing me from prison, suckers!” and ran away to do her own thing.

“She’s establishing her cover quite well, even I am starting to believe she doesn’t really work for The Blades.”

I’m not really sure what kind of a plan this was. Like, “Hey, I know we’re the Empire that had you imprisoned and deported to Morrowind, but we were hoping you could work with us a bit here…”

Along her quest to charm everybody into doing her bidding, she kept meeting people trying to actively recruit her to work for one of the great noble houses of Morrowind, particularly House Hlaalu. Those guys must be really hurting for talent. She mostly ignored all the invitations and did her own thing. Until she traveled to the east coast of Vvardenfell and found the Telvanni.

House Hlaalu were recruiting hard, but they’re Imperial sympathizers and the Telvanni were just so out there that she had to join them. She had heard of the Telvanni here and there on the west coast, but on the east coast where most of the ranking nobles had their towers things were just unreal. The first person she met in a Telvanni tower was some guy who, apparently, created clones of himself to make a bunch of daughters. I mean, come on. Telvanni are just absolutely ridiculous.

Her patron in the house, of course, would be Master Aryon because he was supposedly the cool new young liberal hip Telvanni councilor who would be open to sponsoring an outlander like her.

So she set her Mark spell right in the middle of Master Aryon’s living room for convenience’s sake. Because she had to constantly report to him for various House Telvanni chores, and it turned out to also be a convenient way to access everywhere else in Vvardenfell:

  • Wherever you are, cast Recall, wind up interrupting Aryon’s dinner or whatever
  • Cast Divine Intervention, end up in Wolverine Hall
  • Depending on where you want to go, either Levitate over to Sadrith Mora to get to the Telvanni Council House or go inside Wolverine Hall to the local chapter of the Mages Guild and use their teleportation services to go to whatever major urban center you’re trying to get to

This works great because Recall to Master Aryon’s house fills in the notorious gaps in traveling in and around Telvanni headquarters, and Wolverine Hall connects you to all the other usual fast travel.

Alas, as always happens in any location where you’ve set Mark, Steen (my character) gradually offloaded more and more of her expensive junk onto Master Aryon’s floor.

“Steen, do you really think it is appropriate to teleport into my living room unannounced and proceed to throw all your junk on the floor?”

“But Master Aryon, this Daedric Katana is worth 50,000 golden drakes!”

“Well, sell it, then! Don’t throw it on my floor!”

“But nobody haaaaaas 50,000 golden drakes!”

Sometimes I wonder if Master Aryon didn’t regret taking Steen on as his pupil. But he was always super supportive and complimentary towards her and her achievements, so… who knows? But you have to imagine that Steen must have teleported into his home at all manner of inappropriate times… like if he had a romantic guest over, there’s no way Steen could have known while she was collecting junk in the bowels of a Daedric temple. She’d just be, “Op! Cleared this dungeon, and I’m over-encumbered, so I’d best pop on over to Aryon’s place…”

“STEEN!”

“Heya Master Aryon… and heya Ma’am… don’t mind me, I’m just going to stash some stuff here…”

Steen throws a ton of junk onto the floor and then vanishes.

Arron’s guest tries to make things less awkward.

“Your pupil seems… talented…”

Arron sighs.

“Indeed.”

But I didn’t notice how Master Aryon seemed to be slowly grooming Steen to be more and more willing to outright murder Redoran and Hlaalu nobles. It started off with helping several Telvanni nobles whose towers were under siege by Hlaalu forces simply because they practiced necromancy or other such minor offenses. Well, Steen wasn’t going to stand for that! She doesn’t believe that a dead body is anything but a lump of mass, so who cares what necromancers do?

But then after rescuing several Telvanni-under-siege by Redorans and Hlaalu, Master Aryon started giving Steen quests like, “This Redoran noble is building without a permit! Better murder him!” and Steen was like, “Oh, uuh, yeah! Those Redoran sure are getting out of control!”

great-house-telvanni-murder
Sadly, this a common sight in Redoran manors now-a-days.

And before I knew it, Steen was just levitating down into the centers of Redoran manors, and straight up murdering Redoran nobles in their beds. Because they were building without a permit. Isn’t that something you usually report to… Department of Building Inspection or something? Murder seems a bit extreme. But here we are. Murdering Redorans for increasingly trivial reasons.

Maybe I don’t feel so bad for those Redoran nobles. But I suppose I didn’t quite realize how feudal and how openly-at-war the noble houses of Morrowind were before doing the quests for a noble house.

Master Aryon was supportive of Steen becoming the new Archmagister of The Great House Telvanni, and he felt like they were overdue for a turnover in the Telvanni leadership. Which, of course, would require murdering the current Archmagister, Gothren. Unfortunately, after Steen became Archmagister, Master Aryon became emotionally guarded, distant, cold, and subservient towards her. Which was upsetting because he had previously been the closest character to Steen in the game (and yes this includes Caius). But Steen’s the Archmagister now, and it is lonely at the top.

great-house-telvanni-archmagister
Steen liked it better when Aryon would tell her just exactly what he thought about her stashing her stuff at his place… as opposed to now where he feels like he has to grovel and go along with it 🙁

She sort of wishes that she never became Archmagister, but what can you do?

Also, I have no idea why the Redoran or Hlaalu would nominate Steen as Hortator at this point unless it was… out of abject terror of her or something.