Secunda's Fall

ClumbsyKhajiit

Once, a noble poet told me that Blood makes the Blade Holy. I felt the emphasis of this truth in my family. Things that should have been simple were drawn out, feelings that should have been shallow were filled with depth that I couldn’t ignore. Dearest Moon Father, I still wait for you to hear my words and return to us with understanding.

Forgive me, I’ve told this story so many times that blurs and mixes. Ri’ywer, the renowned, the proclaimed trading king of Secunda’s Fall, Torval. His reputation preceded him, often we would meet travelers whom had heard of him from afar. It was quite something to see the results of his work, life seemed to grow from his fingertips. As he developed the world around him, I stayed home with our clan mother. Such a loving yet wise woman, I wonder if she noticed how long ago the resentment began to fester.

First he began with our village, it feels ironic that he started with the children. He created a place of recreation for our youth, a hunting club of sorts. Those were some of my earliest memories, moon son to the founder of the Torval Hunters, one would think life couldn’t be more. Once the litter was organized the elders could handle the more complicated matters, expanding our town and establishing connections through Torval and surrounding areas.

The harbor expanded, traders patted down and marked the path for more and like a clock with no hands the world I knew changed and refused to stop. The outsiders came; sometimes they brought disease, sometimes they *** and beat our youth, my friends. Yet sometimes they brought or needed goods and our people hungered for it so we thanked our assailants and they revered Ri’ywer as their fearless leader. Secunda’s Fall grew and in ways it flourished.

It amazed me how time changed things. Eventually the wise woman of our clan discovered a way to refine moon sugar from our bay and we became the northernmost town we’d heard of with that luxury. In fact, at that point our town had become self sufficient. The Hunters had become renowned, and much of the others were grown enough to fish and harvest, with a source of moon sugar our village had all it needed. However, with established traders and daily visitors, soon the moon sugar was just more grease for our booming economy.

I didn’t think of us as reliant on the outsiders, I didn’t want to. I wanted to believe like the others that Ri’ywer would intervene when we needed him to. The Imperials came with their gold and trinkets and their wealth. Prior we’d seen mostly our own kin, khajiit’s from the jungles and sands. Occasionally we’d have a bosmer or two, usually mediating on behalf of their king for attacks from the borders, but these Imperials were truly foreign.

They came in leagues, never in a group smaller than twenty clad in armor, smelling of cheap liquor. They bartered and bustled and treated us just as sorely as any other outsiders, if not worse. Later the elders would tell me that it was for our protection, for the good of the clan that we sided with the Imperials. I never understood, what good was protection if you had no honor left to protect?

Of course, Ri’ywer was the spearhead of negotiations, this truly is my judgment of him after all. Where valiant strength and cunning were hoped for, those hopes were met with feebleness. The city grew, more flooded in, the young grew older each with their own burning ambitions. Many of those that left the town were captured and enslaved by the clever Imperials. The thjizzinri protected them stating we couldn’t be certain it was the Imperials, and we did not want to start a war.

Secunda’s Fall will be absorbed into the greater city of Torval. It is through this great expansion that I worry our town gained power, but lost identity. I left eventually, I didn’t want to watch. I had thought that the departure of his moon son would stimulate his understanding, however Ri’ywer remains knee deep in governing of his city.