There didn’t seem to be anything unusual happening in Falkreath, at least not among the living. He, on the other hand, was looking for something specific among the dead: something subtle, no doubt partially hidden.
This graveyard holding generations of fallen warriors had plaques and stone markers so ancient that they were barely visible beneath layers of dead foliage, with a Watcher statue keeping vigil over all. Dale walked slowly through the old headstones making sure not to disturb offerings and lighted prayer candles, carefully pushing the few plants aside with his feet, searching for anything that looked like a hatch. He found nothing but the occasional burial mound so old it had been worn down nearly to the surrounding terrain.
Legend held that very little lived near Falkreath’s graveyard. Dying trees and the stumps of their ancestors dotted the area. The Watcher, in fact, stood beside a stump so large that the tree of which it was merely a remnant might have built the entirety of the Jarl’s longhouse. He approached the stump, noticing something inside: something definitely not wooden. Dale looked around to make sure he was alone and then climbed up one of the huge roots to look inside. He grinned. Inside the stump’s hollow was a covered stone circle.
And there we have it. A very unlikely place for an entrance, but well hidden. I’ll bet the crypt below predates everything else that’s here, including the former tree.
Dale hoisted himself up and opened the grate, dropping down into the rough-hewn cave below. He hadn’t expected the pair of aggressive skeletons that shuffled out from the shadows. They weren’t difficult to defeat, but if they could be roused to attack, the other sets of bones near moldy bedrolls might, as well. He scattered the bones with a foot, then continued his explorations. He fully expected to find much more than an earthen cavern here.
Each of two niches just off the main cave housed a single plain coffin. The one to his left held nothing but the coffin. The other niche was more interesting: one wall was stone bearing all the hallmarks of a camouflaged door but with no obvious way to open it. He carefully searched every surface, at last locating a tiny chain pulley ring, tucked in so close to the back of the coffin that it might forever have hidden.
“Finally,” he muttered, pulling down the chain. The familiar sound of a counterweight grinding downward preceded the stone panel‘s rising obediently up and out of the way. Behind it, stairs led down to a crypt of polished gray stone, blocked by a portcullis-style gate. He was about to trot down them to engage the pulley at their base when he spotted two flame nozzles mounted in the ceiling just before the lower landing. That pulley no doubt activated the flames.
“Not so fast,” he told himself, turning to examine all the other surfaces of the stairwell. At the very top, snugged into the lip of the raised doorway’s track, was a button no casual intruder would ever have noticed. He climbed back up and pressed it, leaping up into the safety of the cave just in case. But he’d avoided the trap; the portcullis rose quietly, granting him passage.
He found a wealth of potions: human blood, Falmer blood, bat blood, poisons, philters of blacksmithing and enchanting. There were pieces of ebony armor, ingots, and an odd assortment of bat wings and fangs, soul gems and shards, and other rare alchemy ingredients. A weapon rack held an ornate bow, gleaming black, with energy pulsing along its length. Dale took it, trying but failing to determine what kind of enchantment it held.
On a table was another of Tamara’s journals. Early entries echoed what he’d read in her Coldhaven diary: she reported progress developing specialized weapons. Of more interest, though, was her note that she had “met someone I trust to help me destroy our enemies”: Galain, the Coldhaven co-founder, just as Dalaran‘s research journals had suggested.
Dale frowned, puzzled. Galain had left Coldhaven looking for Tamara, even as Dalaran had continued his Dwemer research.
So how old is this journal? When did they meet, I wonder? Galain was one of the founders of Coldhaven, so he was already there even as Tamara was working in that lab in the mountains. She never mentioned that. I suppose it doesn’t matter now; but they clearly were working together long before she started agitating the Nobles to remove Sicara as Sovrena.
Dale turned the page to find notations in a different hand about “rumors of vampires being able to turn themselves into fearsome bat-like creatures, or perhaps bats themselves.” Further notes suggested that Galain had been experimenting on vampires but had been unable to get them to transform.
That would explain the bat wings, fangs, and blood here. But they seem not to have known about Vampire Lords. It’s hardly just an unfounded rumor.
Galain found the key to the Dwemer lift, and the book describing the transfer of life powers from one vampire to another, but died before he located the lab. And all the while Tamara, Galain, and whoever this other handwriting belonged to were out here trying to do the same sort of thing with weapons – using vampires.
Unconscionable. It’s one thing for someone like me to agree to be turned, or to accept the gift of pure Volkihar blood. I made my choice willingly. But to experiment on others without their consent?
Journal entries in the third hand explained the black bow’s enchantment. The energy of soul-trapped bats had been bound to the bow. “Instead of simply poisoning a hunter,” the writer said, “we can surround them with a cloud of angry, blood-sucking bats.”
It was a beautiful bow, to be sure, but heavy, and he already had the ability to become a cloud of angry, blood-sucking bats. He returned the bow to its stand and went back to the desk, shifting papers around until finally he found a message from Tamara to Galain. She’d been attacked by two Dawnguard; while she’d defeated them, she had felt uncomfortable staying in Falkreath.
If you find this note before I return, Galain, know that I am safe. If you have need of me, look for me at Theseus’ forge to the north – it is just west of the grey moor, hidden in plain sight on the doorstep of the fortress.
Theseus. That was the name he’d read in Tamara’s Coldhaven journals. He was the one who started the research. It was likely his handwriting on the page here, wondering how to achieve vampire lord powers without knowing how they existed.
Dale clasped his hands behind his back, stretching backward and groaning in satisfaction as tight muscles released. Then he shook his arms out and sighed. The forge’s location wasn’t too hard to guess from Tamara’s clumsy wording about Fort Greymoor. “Alright. North it is.”
The looming bulk of Fort Greymoor emerged from the fog. Not far to its west, the burned remnants of a structure snugged up against the hillside, just out of sight of the fort. A metal blacksmith sign covered in soot doggedly clung to a wildly-slanted post, and the smithing stations outside tilted crazily, scorched and non-functional. Dale circled the building until finding a way through the rubble into the interior.
Empty wine bottles and moldering crumbs spoke of some wanderer’s brief rest in the scant shelter. Of more interest were the fairly fresh logs stacked in the fireplace, and the moisture-spotted but intact note peeking out from beneath. Dale retrieved it and carefully unfolded the parchment. As he read it, the hair on his neck rose; it was Tamara’s admission that she’d murdered Theseus.
I arrived too late, Galain. Theseus is slain and most of his work is destroyed. I will never return to this empty place. It holds nothing but despair for me now.
Enter Theseus’ Forge to see the depravity he committed and do not judge me too harshly for the justice I delivered.
Tamara
Beneath the logs and a thin layer of ash, Dale found a hatch, cleverly disguised to look as much like the stone floor of the fireplace as possible. Feeling around its edges he located the latch and opened it, slipping into the building’s basement.
It was one large room. Aside from a few empty wine bottles and crates, and a chest containing a few coins and some smithing supplies, the only thing of note was a well, quite full, complete with a bucket bobbing at its surface. It made sense for the location. A forge needed water. But inside? Not next to the forge and smithing stations outside? Dale walked over to the well and stared down into it.
Vampires don’t drown. But mortals do, and mortals would never think to look at the bottom of a well full of water.
His next move was obvious. At least this wasn’t putrid water. He’d get wet, but his armor wouldn’t need to be burned afterward. Reluctantly, he jumped into the well.
At the bottom of the well Dale found a long, arched stone hallway. Like the Falkreath crypt this was clearly a very ancient space, predating the nondescript wooden buildings above by centuries at least. Flooded, this was as secure a location as he could imagine. He swam through the corridor to a staircase up at its end. Emerging from the water, he found another portcullis gate and paused abruptly; a fortunate splash of water had revealed a tripwire.
I smell oil. But I need to get past this thing.
Dale backed up as far as he could while still managing to reach the wire. Then he tapped it with his sword and submerged, just ahead of a hanging lantern dropping onto the oil-coated steps and exploding into a sea of flame. The entire area burned furiously for several minutes while Dale floated just out of reach, relieved that he’d expected a trap. Once the flames died out he raised the gate with the button beside it – a button that might have lured someone ahead to their fiery doom – and stepped into a space that rivaled his home.
This, not the motley collection of burned workbenches outside, was the forge. The oblong room held everything but a smelter. Niches around either curved wall overflowed with wood, ingots, ebony items, and Dawnguard armor. Opposite the entrance was a curtained alcove. As in the other hidden lairs, thralls behind bars moaned and swayed. Oddly, there was also one cage with nothing but a pile of glimmering ash at the bottom. Someone had been incinerated, or resurrected and then re-killed; Dale couldn’t tell for certain but it made him uneasy.
As expected, there was another note from Tamara to Galain lying on the desk. Dale opened it and read, frowning at the distressed tone of its message.
You know the acts I committed needed to be done… You should understand better than most that this was the only way.
I cannot seek safety with you yet in Coldhaven. I am sorry to have led you on a wild chase. I have heard rumors of an excavation of ice burrows along the shores west of Winterhold, and I need to investigate. Apparently some bumbling fools have found some very old vampire artifacts.
I will see you soon and share what I have found. Let us never speak of Theseus again.
Tamara
“But what did she do?” he murmured, looking back at the ashes in the cage. Would Tamara have been so upset at the loss of a thrall? Not likely, especially given how long she waited before setting someone to locate Dalaran. Dale rummaged about on the desktop for a few more moments before finding a journal, this one heavy-bound. He expected it to be another amalgam of odd notes and research observations, but what he read on the first page had the hair on his neck rising.
Theseus had been the one to discover how to create bloodglass – the material Coldhaven’s smith, Kharsh, used for his special weapons. This didn’t surprise Dale in the least. What did surprise him was that Tamara had killed Theseus because, as she put it, “if my brethren discovered the materials required for its creation, all involved would be destroyed.”
Dale turned the page and growled.
How many vampires did Theseus kill while experimenting at his forge? I cannot imagine how an esteemed colleague could murder his own kind and distill their blood for research.
Tamara had burned Theseus’ notes about bloodglass. She hadn’t been able to destroy the prototype shield that hung above a large, locked chest next to the desk, so she sealed the place, hoping that this knowledge would never emerge into the wider world.
“Or so she says,” Dale hissed, his thoughts running faster than he could truly understand. “Because bloodglass weapons exist. She was proud of them. They were the reason she became Sovrena.” She had been proud of passing the knowledge on to Kharsh. It made no sense. Grim-faced, he turned to the curtained alcove and stepped inside.
A single, richly-appointed upright coffin rested atop what likely was once an attractive rug. Now, though, it was covered by ash – undoubtedly Theseus’ ashes. A blood-stained goblet lay nearby, as though it had been dropped in mid-sip. A large key hung from a peg nearby. Dale sighed. He’d clearly been a powerful vampire, in order to search out this ancient information and experiment with it – but he’d been killed at Tamara’s hand. She must have caught him off-guard.
He took the key and returned to the chamber, where as expected, it unlocked the large chest. Inside were bloody rags, distilled vampire blood, and a great deal of vampire dust, presumably from the vampires Theseus had experimented with.
Dale took the shield, and the dust, and all of the materials he could carry, grinding his teeth the entire time. It was too late to worry about the knowledge being leaked. She’d taken it on her own. It existed in the world. He would return all of this material to his home and then explore the northern shoreline for the excavation Tamara mentioned in her note. He left the forge and headed for Solitude, fuming all the way.
The hypocrisy of the woman! She was, she says, outraged that vampires had been used to power Theseus’ experiments. She burned all his notes. And yet she took his research, his knowledge, and set about making those very weapons, going to Coldhaven then and agitating until Sicara was deposed and she became Sovrena.
They all knew about the ancient Dwemer research into transferring life energies. She, Theseus, Galain and Dalaran. They must have. They just didn’t know where the physical evidence was. So she took Theseus’ knowledge and disposed of him when he was no longer necessary, using a facade of disgust for his methods as her excuse. Then she left this trail for Galain, not expecting him to be waylaid by Dawnguard. It wouldn’t surprise me if she’d planned to dispose of him, as well. “My dearest friend.” Bah. He was only dear to her because he agreed with her.
And then there was Dalaran. She didn’t know where he’d gone, but he was the closest to finding the Dwemer lab and she knew it. His secrets might have died with him, if not for me, because she didn’t know how to get into his tower, and never learned that Dalaran’s ring was the key. She was safe, and well-situated, and had the weapons that “her” research had discovered to bolster her position as Sovrena. She had me to follow up on Dalaran and had I not inadvertently used the extra life force in that laboratory I have no doubt I’d have met a similar fate, somewhere in the sewers. And who might have been next? Sicara, no doubt.
I’m glad I killed the bitch. Agryn and Vyctyna have a mostly clean slate, now.
Dale wondered why, exactly, he was running down the frozen shoreline looking for something that might not even exist. Tamara’s various journals hadn’t confirmed that she even followed up on this lead. But he still hadn’t figured out who had set him on this treasure hunt, or why, and he wondered whether he might yet find answers.
He was more than halfway to Dawnstar before he found the remnants of an expedition site, outside a large crack in the ice. A couple of tents that had seen better days desperately clung to the shoreline beside overturned chairs, frost-rimed crates and tools, and a cold fire ring. A journal in one of the tents suggested that the treasure-hunters had come here based on rumor from an innkeeper. Dale grinned.
Always listen to your local innkeeper.
They’d found odd carvings, impossibly hard ice walls and a “monster” statue inside, the journal said. Given the number of ruins here along the shattered coast, Dale guessed that it was a Nordic barrow, though the references to runes and the statue were perplexing. He’d come all this way, though, so he would simply go see for himself.
His mouth dropped open in surprise as soon as he entered the ice cave. Just beyond a smooth stone pillar was the “monster statue” – for there was nothing else the journalist could have meant – a shrine to Molag Bal. It was time to tread carefully; he readied his bow and crept forward.
It was easy to see where the treasure-hunters had been. The narrow passage resembled an ore mine, its branches skirting additional pillars and burrowing under others that had fallen inward, then down stairs to other branches. At the bottom of the first icy staircase, shuffling sounds to his right caught Dale’s attention. A body shuffled slowly away from him, toward what looked like a dead end.
Draugr.
He loosed an arrow and then skittered back up the stairs to get distance and ready another. The draugr followed as far as the intersection, but it couldn’t see nearly as well in the dark as Dale could and fell to two more arrows without reaching him.
The passage the draugr had been in was indeed a dead end, blocked by several half-collapsed pillars. Turning around, Dale passed through the ice cleft and stopped for just a moment to peer down a staircase descending to his right. He decided to check ahead first, before going deeper. This corridor also ended in a short staircase down and to the left, past a draugr frozen in the wall. Another draugr, this one moving, guarded a chest at the hall’s end. Fortunately, Dale had been nearly silent moving through the ice, and was able to end the draugr with his blades. The chest held rubies and enchanted vampire armor, a puzzling development. Yes, vampires – in particular, Volkihar – had been known to frequent the ice fields; but this place had presumably been sealed off from the outside world until the treasure hunters opened it up. Whose armor was it?
He returned to the first staircase and descended. One branch at the bottom led right to a dead-end. To his left, though, was evidence of what the journal’s author had mentioned: a dead man lay before a wall of ice, his blood splattered across the wall and the glittering rune embedded in it. The position of the body made it fairly clear what must have happened here. There was probably a matching ice wall and matching rune blocking the dead-end branch and the miner had tried to break through, only to be blown back against this wall and killed.
I probably could survive a rune explosion well enough at this point, but I’d rather not risk it. Besides, I don’t know what’s beyond.
Dale backed up and hurled a fire bolt at the rune, disintegrating the wall in a burst of magic. He crouched silently, waiting for the flames to dissipate, listening and peering into the space beyond. He had only enough time to get an impression of a huge, mostly-empty cavern with an ornate gate at the far side when a pair of draugr rushed toward him. Trapped in a dead-end hallway was not where he wanted to be. He conjured a gargoyle between himself and the draugr, and dashed for the stairwell before turning to battle.
These were powerful draugr, he learned as he fired arrows into the one engaged with his gargoyle. Even between his bow assault and the gargoyle’s powerful, life-draining claws, it took several minutes to defeat it, whereupon the second beast moved up to take its place. In the narrow confines of the ice cave there was little room to fire past the gargoyle, so Dale drew his blades and squeezed past it to attack the remaining draugr head on. This one wasn’t as powerful, and it fell almost immediately.
The cavern beyond the dead treasure hunter was huge, deep, and hollow, and spanned only by a narrow, ice-covered earthen “bridge.” Dale crept across it, silently approaching the ornate gate at the far end. He tried it, gingerly, and as expected found it locked. When he looked through the gate’s open grill to the room beyond, though, he had to suppress a gasp.
A vampire lord floated above a platform, in a chamber of the same make as all of Tamara’s labs. Dim light reflected off the once highly-polished stonework and illuminated furniture and workstations. He wasn’t sure, but he thought he could just make out an upright coffin. Of more importance, though, was the aura of the vampire lord – an aura so powerful that Dale could feel it even this far away from the creature’s presence. It was an ancient being, much more powerful than he was himself. He backed away, slowly, to search the rest of the cavern. This vampire lord was not something he wanted to attack unprepared.
Beside the bridge, just next to the ice wall he’d destroyed, Dale spotted a ladder descending into the cavern itself. He climbed down, slowly, trying not to disturb the spiders he sensed below. Once at the bottom, he took just a few moments to quietly kill them with bow and arrow; they were large but not especially dangerous. He found nothing much here aside from the spiders’ venom, at least until he moved the largest spider aside and found the body it had wrapped in silk. After cutting open the cocoon, Dale checked the body and found a key. He grinned to himself and returned to the ladder, climbing back up and approaching the gate again.
He wasn’t exactly sure how to approach the problem of the vampire lord. He couldn’t very well transform himself for fear of alerting the ancient one. Even if he went back outside to do so, the ice corridors here were so narrow that he might well not be able to pass through them. He carefully unlocked the gate and pushed it open, expecting the lord to engage immediately, but it didn’t; rather, it floated silently, motionless, as though sleeping. Dale decided that distraction would once again work to his advantage, and placed a gargoyle directly in front of the vampire lord. As the gargoyle roared into being, the vampire lord came to life itself, and moved toward it.
“Aha!” it cried, a guttural male voice. “Now you die!” It cast blood magic at the gargoyle, over and over, but doing surprisingly little damage.
Dale had a small number of elven arrows imbued with explosive shock magic. He didn’t know whether they would work against the vampire lord, but it was worth a try; he fired one and heard the creature cry out in pain when the arrow exploded. It backed up, away from the still-vigorous gargoyle’s advancing claws, and Dale decided to press the attack further with more arrows. He fired a second, and then a third. Each time, the vampire backed up a bit more until it had cornered itself between the vault’s entrance and the gate. Dale drew his blades and charged.
The gargoyle continued shredding the vampire with its claws. Once Dale reached it, he and his conjuration only took a few minutes to defeat it. With a cry of pain and distress, the creature sank to the floor, collapsing next to the gate that had trapped it.
“I don’t understand,” Dale murmured, kneeling to examine the body and relieve it of a key. “How could you be so weak? Had you not fed in awhile? Could something as ancient as you survive like this, without feeding? I shouldn’t have been able to kill you.”
He leaned forward and gently pierced the creature’s throat, taking what little blood remained into himself to recuperate. Once more he felt a rush of new power. It was strange, both exhilarating and disgusting at the same time. He’d been revolted by taking the life force of the vampires below Coldhaven, but hadn’t hesitated to do this. This felt more like paying the ancient creature honor in some odd way, allowing its life force to continue in the world in some small part. Dale rose to his feet and tsk’d.
“I’m a hypocrite, is what I am,” he said to the room. “I just did this to prove that I defeated him. That’s all.” He sighed loudly. “Now to find out why I was sent here.”
The vampire had been hovering before a cold throne placed midway along the frosty walls. The coffin Dale had seen was beyond it, tucked into a corner between a pair of short bookcases brimming with scrolls and potions. Nearest Dale were two old stone tables, one of them broken. Between the tables and the throne, a large, locked, frost-encrusted chest beckoned. Unsurprisingly, the key he’d taken from the dead vampire lord opened it. Inside were a large pile of coins, a note, and an ordinary-looking katana. Odd to keep such an uninspiring weapon under lock and key, he thought. The note, however, had him intrigued. The katana, the vampire had written, had been enchanted with power directly from Molag Bal.
If you say so. I suspect that it’s more likely you were an expert enchanter.
“The katana I have enchanted allows me to slip between planes of existence and be undetectable to my enemies!” the note continued breathlessly. It apparently required a power attack to activate the invisibility the blade conferred, but only while out of combat, and the spell would be broken as soon as its wielder interacted with anything. The note’s second page outlined another drawback of the sword.
This katana does demand a price for entering the slipstream realm, however… it is not powered by soul gems, as regular enchantments are, but instead saps my own health, magicka, and stamina. It has never killed me, but slipstreaming always leaves me weak and vulnerable.
“What good are you, then?” Dale asked the blade, while taking it in hand. He was half convinced that the vampire had gone mad from long confinement, but he was certainly willing to give the sword a try. With a cry of exertion, he slashed through the air as hard as he was able. There was a burst of magic. Looking down, he realized that he could no longer see his body.
“I’ll be damned. It works. But what good is it to be invisible if your enemy can see the magic where you are?”
He stood there for a moment, thinking, and then realized that a cold sweat was breaking out on his brow. It was, as the vampire lord had suggested, heavily draining to maintain this spell. He wasn’t much hurt – no more than he was when emerging into the sunlight of a bright day – but his muscles were tiring. He’d never had an enormous pool of stamina, and what he had was dwindling rapidly. Dale reached for the sword’s sheath and, as promised, the moment he touched it the magic began dissipating, leaving him in a thin veil of blue, clutching the katana. He shook his head and sheathed the weapon, going back to a search of the den.
The vampire had left another note, this one confirming what Dale had suspected. It had been trapped here, sustained only by the blood potions already here in the vault. He’d sensed someone, a vampire, he thought, but his powers had been too weak to control the being. A journal nearby reiterated that fact. After accepting Molag Bal’s gift, he had been trapped here in his stronghold by a cataclysm some centuries before and had barely survived.
Hmm. Was it Tamara he sensed? Did she follow up on the rumors of a stronghold here, but flee when she felt the vampire lord within? She might have expected Galain to join her here, not knowing that he’d been killed by Dawnguard. Everything I’ve read up to this point has me believing that they did not know about vampire lords. This one’s aura would have been terrifying to her. It was daunting to me, and I am a Lord.
So she never found this tool. And now she never will.
And I may never know who sent me here in the first place.
He spent a few minutes exploring the remainder of this vampire’s den, helping himself to the few soul gems, blood potions, and alchemy ingredients stored there. Then he shrugged, looking down at the dead Lord once more, and wound his way back through the icy passages, emerging from the cave into the bitter air of the coast. He was midway between Winterhold and Dawnstar. It seemed a good time to check in at the Sanctuary.