The path to Red Mountain is long, and filled with danger, but if you are worthy, you will find there wisdom, a firm friend, and all the power you need to set the world aright.As ever, your respectful servant and loyal friend,
Lord Voryn Dagoth, Dagoth Ur

Dagoth Voryn
The Elder Scrolls

Lord High Councilor of House Dagoth, advisor, councilor, scant lover, and personal friend to our half of Resdayn's twin kings, serjo Indoril Nerevar Mora. The Devil of Red Mountain, and the death of my House. I gave all I had and more for the sake of a united Resdayn, for the sake of Nerevar, and all I had to show for it was ash and despair. The Heart was a second chance, the opportunity to give back to my House all I had taken. It was not my intent to become a god, only to bring back the House I had sacrificed. But, perhaps, Dagoth-Ur could succeed where I had failed.Canon

The Dark Urge
Baldur's Gate

As another famous white reptile asks: what is better? To be born good, or to overcome your evil nature through great effort? I overcame my evil nature and decided that I rather enjoyed being evil, thank you. Self-determination doesn't necessarily mean changing course; I chose, of my own will, to continue down the path I was set on. I had no qualms with killing for fun, but the Urge made me impulsive, unpredictable, dangerous to even my closest allies. Ultimately, what I wanted was autonomy, and no amount of brain parasites could get in my way.Canon

My rancid blood whispers to me: kill, kill, and kill again. My ruined body yearns to reap death in this world, and when this foul Urge calls, it possesses my whole being. Injured beyond repair, I know nothing besides this: I must resist the Dark Urge, lest it consume my mind.

Should our little chat not proceed in a spirit of mutual understanding and complete frankness, we shall copiously anoint your head with the aforementioned syrup...then we shall place you on an antill, this one here to be precise, over which these charming, hardworking insects are scurrying.

Iorveth
The Witcher

Woodland Fox or a "regular son of a whore," both titles fit me equally well. I became a warrior at a young age, but I grew up on a farm. Aen Seidhe did not natively farm, we learned that from humans. From coexistence. Why did I forsake that for hopeless bloodshed? Well, for one, dh'oine burnt the farmhouse down. I always longed to return to the agrarian life, deep down, but that wasn't my story. Perhaps I was just born to sow violence instead of seeds.Canon

Corvo Attano
Dishonored

Lord Protector was just a title; I had been a protector all my life. My family, the people of Karnaca, of Dunwall, Jessamine, Emily. It was all I knew how to do. Take that away from me, and I'm not sure that I like what's left over. I regret that I spilled as much blood as I did, yes, but "chaos" isn't just a tally of how many people die. I did what I had to do to survive and picked up the pieces later, to hand my daughter an empire at any cost.Canon

You gave yourself over to blood and terror, gave it everything you had. Then you spent fifteen years making sure it wouldn't happen again. But now it has. And this time you know where it leads. Will you do it all again? Where is that good man now?

The essence of balance is detachment. To embrace a cause, to grow fond or spiteful, is to lose one's balance, after which, no action can be trusted. Our burden is not for the dependent of spirit.

Garrett
Thief (1998)

I owe my life and more to Artemus, so don't think me ungrateful, but I just wouldn't have been happy as a Keeper. They didn't exactly teach me how to be a cobbler or blacksmith, though; with the skills they gave me, being a thief was the obvious choice. And I was a damn good one. Too good, in fact. Wouldn't have had to deal with Pagans and Mechanists if I had just been worse at my job. That's the price of success, I guess.Canon

I'm gonna be so honest I've kinned this guy for like a year and my memories are like 95% killing people. Which is VERY apt. But not useful for a narrative summary. This is maybe half-done but I'll get to it later.• I definitely recall Shadowheart, Lae'zel, Astarion, and Minthara in our party until the end. Gale seems familiar, so I suspect he was with us, too (though I'm not sure if his moral compass would let him stay). Wyll, Karlach, Halsin, Jaheira, and Minsc would all have... complaints. At the very least, they wouldn't have been with us. I wouldn't have bothered to hunt them down, but if they confronted me I'd have had no problem killing them.• Something fruity going on with Astarion, but I wouldn't call it a full-on relationship. Little leech, I'd call him. He didn't go after my blood first, what with being covered in scales. Once the barely-kept secret was out, I was his meal of last resort. There were usually plenty of victims to pick from, or at least some wildlife, but if he hit a dry spell, I was the largest party member and thus had the most blood to spare. I'll admit that I liked him enough to tolerate this.• Whatever was going on with Minthara was also probably not a "relationship," but, well, there was something there. I didn't really have time to think about these things, you know.• I got away with killing Alfira. She offered to take a night watch shift for us and wandered a little too far. Silence is a level 2 illusion spell. Put the rest together. I kept her tail spade as a bookmark.• I don't remember much of the druid's grove, and I do remember having Minthara with us, so I can surmise what happened there. Most people weren't necessarily chomping at the bit to slaughter refugees (and yours truly had... a genetic condition, so I had an excuse), but they were not useful to our cause. Minthara was.• We killed the Nightsong. Even now, the Urge flares when I look at her, so I can only imagine the restraint I showed. We'd have defended Isobel in the sense that we'd rather she not be used against us, but whatever she did afterwards was of no concern to me.• Bhaal still liked to turn me against my friends for fun, don't worry. He was built like a skeleton, but Astarion could tie some pretty impressive knots. Honestly, it was kind of a nice bonding activity. Bondage activity. Whatever. We both had our own struggles with insatiable and undiscriminating bloodlust, so he was more forgiving than he maybe should have been.• I did successfully resist Bhaal, in the end. Not because I disapproved of his objectives, necessarily, but moreso his methods. Or, at least, the haphazard nature of them. The Urge was an instinct, something you acted on without thinking. Murder is a beautifully effective tool, but I preferred having the power to decide when and where my blade fell. It's more pragmatic. Everyone dies in the end, but you maximize your returns. Maybe Gortash rubbed off on me. Ugh.• On that note, Orin and I weren't so dissimilar as she might imply. We just had... creative differences. Orin treated murder as an artistic medium. Gods help whoever had to clean up the rooms her victims fell in. I did not believe Bhaal cared for the aesthetics of a murder, only the raw numbers, and so my approach was simple, effective. Kill in as few moves as possible and leave before you're caught. But I did have my own artistic sensibilities, I just kept them separate from my work. I was rather into taxidermy, actually. Particularly fond of mounting other Dragonborn; soft-skinned people don't preserve very prettily, but things with scales and fur look quite nice on a wall.Art credit: velinxiGo back

• House Dagoth had been arguably the strongest House in Resdayn, and most certainly the strongest Chimeri House on the island. Modern-day Vvardenfell was split between Dagoth and and the Dwemer, with whom we'd brokered our own uneasy alliances. Nordic invasion affected us heavily as they were particularly interested in mineral deposits on the island. We were powerful and vain, but not stupid, and we understood the need to unify with the other Houses.• I came to lead House Dagoth shortly after we accepted Nerevar as our King and Hortator. My father ruled prior to me, but leadership was not passed by bloodline- I earned my position by wit and conquest. However, I served as a minor councilor when Nerevar first made his bid to the Houses, so I met him when he petitioned for my vote on the Dagoth council. He was strange, but interesting. He showed ambition, yes, but we all did; what interested me most of all was his humility, which was rare among exalted rulers. I decided to trust him.• I trusted him, yes, and came to love him. That word means many things. I loved him as the king who finally unified Resdayn. I loved him as my friend, who was impulsive and hardheaded and absolutely genuine. He loved me in these ways, too. I'd have loved him like he loved Azura if he'd asked, but he did not.• Vivec speaks the truth. Nerevar entrusted Kagrenac's tools to me, and left me alone in Red Mountain as he sought his other advisors. I loved him, and while I distrusted his judgment, I wished to heed his words all the same. However, my faith in him had been strained. With unwavering confidence I claim that no House sacrificed as much for the war as House Dagoth. As a House we did not betray him, but this loyalty was not without pain. The Dwemer had long been our companions, and though our relationship was terse before the Council, we were not enemies and our economies and cultures were deeply intertwined. For Nerevar, we sacrificed this all, and this alone was enough to crack the foundation of our House. Sharing the land itself with the Dwemer, now our hated enemy, we also suffered the most in damage and casualties. House Dagoth was little more than smoldering ash by the end of the war, and though our sacrifice was doubtlessly critical to our victory, my regrets could not be assuaged. I knew that my House would fall, that it stood no chance of recovering, and I knew that this was the only way it could have ended. Nothing I could do would be enough to resurrect my House, and nothing Nerevar could say would be enough to convince me that it had been worth it. I would not betray him in revenge, because I loved him in equal measure as I hated him. But for my House there was no treachery too great, and the Tools in my hands had proven to perform miracles already. (I theorized that as the Heart could steal away the Dwemer, it thus could return my Housekin. Godhood for personal benefit was not my goal, but perhaps another means to the same end.)• For the record, Nerevar killed me. I defended myself, but never attacked him.• I think it is inaccurate to call Dagoth Ur insane. To say he was insane is to say that he was not in his own mind. He was not in Voryn's mind, yes, but he was most certainly within his own. So much so, that he was convinced that everything else was also in his own mind- or if it was not, then it soon would be. I'd rather liken him to a Daedric Prince. Dagoth Ur is, in a way, everything I felt most strongly when I died. And what I felt was love. Love for my House, which had fallen so far by my own hands, which I would see returned to its exalted status. Love for Resdayn and all it had endured. Love for its people, both Chimer and Dwemer. Love that was tested by breaking bonds and making sacrifices. Betraying one ally to save another. Love that was genuine and hopeful and doomed beyond salvation. Dagoth-Ur, Red Mountain, Prince of Desperation.• My Nerevarine was half Dunmer, half Bosmer, a spellsword or something of that sort. She was a curious one, utterly disregarding her Imperial sender. Whatever her motivations, they came from within; I respected this far more than the string of Imperial appointments preceding her, who had no thoughts of their own and simply attacked whatever the Emperor pointed his finger at. Gods don't have the strongest sense of mortal time, but I'd wager that we talked for hours. She knew that she would slay me, and nothing I said would have ever dissuaded her, but that was not the point. There were a million different tellings of the same story, each urging her onwards with different motives. She wanted to know my telling, my motives, so she could finally triangulate her own location. When I died the second time I simply ceased to exist, leaving no body behind.• Everything I did, and everything the Tribunal did, should be interpreted in the context of love. Dantean philosophy interprets the seven deadly sins as perversions of love. Wrath is to love wrongly in loving another's suffering. Sloth is too love too little and squander all that the world offers. Greed is to love too much, loving the act of having without any reason for having. I loved Resdayn and its people, and the Tribunal did, too. Never doubt this. Our love was often wrong and corrupt (mine most of all), but to deny it was love is to misunderstand our motives. Corprus was my generosity, my way of sharing enlightenment with a people I saw as being deceived by false gods. Baar Dau's fall was Vivec's mercy, his way of telling the Dunmer people that the Tribunal was well and truly dead, and that it was time for them to venture forward on their own.Link to the freakishly huge Google Doc? TBDArt credit: cherrymoya (account deactivated)Go back

• Like I said, I grew up on a farm, in a little village in Cintra. I was an only child. I lost my father to bandits when I was maybe ten, not an uncommon occurrence, and lost both my mother and the farm as a young adult. Though we got along with our human neighbors well enough in the past, tensions kept rising and rising until they culminated with Lara Dorren. I came home one dawn to ash and smoke staining the sky grey. I knew what that meant. I turned around and never came back.• Scoia'tael was a fairly modern term, only adopted with the Nilfgaardian wars. Aen Seidhe fighting for our place in the world, however, were far from new. I moved from unit to unit, going wherever I was assigned. Not like I had any home or family left to bind me to one place. I did my best to stay near Riordain, though. We grew up in that same little Cintran village, so in a way we were all we had left of each others' pasts.• I was part of Isengrim's unit for a very long time, until I had a unit of my own to lead. I loved him dearly, perhaps more than anyone else. I'm not sure what I did to catch his eye, but I was crevan'ca to him, little fox. I sometimes fretted over the power dynamic- not because I feared him, not in that sense, but because I worried about it undermining his authority. He never cared. Favoritism didn't win wars, he would tell me, and any who disagreed were free to leave. If they thought a pair of long ears could alter his battle plans, clearly they did not trust him, and he did not need fickle troops in his unit. I assume he died shortly after the Peace of Cintra. Or maybe I tell myself that to feel better; if he loved me as much as I loved him, I would have hoped he'd at least send word to me that he was alright.• I lost my eye as the commanders of the Vrihedd Brigade were being rounded up. That wasn't the wound that felled me- I was taken down by a broken leg. The eye was plain human cruelty; the scar was long and intentional, and the man that captured me picked my right eye, my dominant eye. It took months to learn to shoot as well with a left-hand bow and one eye, and years later I still preferred the sword due to my lack of depth perception. I don't remember how I escaped the Peace of Cintra. That's not just the amnesia of a different life; I blacked out and woke up somewhere else, broken and bleeding and free. I limped through the woods for days, subsisting off berries, and after escaping a mass execution I almost died of hypothermia. For all the land I traversed, I almost died as I was born, in a backwater region of Cintra. I found a surviving unit hiding deep in the woods, or rather their scouts found me. Cedric took care of me, made sure I ate enough and that I didn't kick my broken leg during my night terrors. We had a thing for a while, and I took him with me, though our paths diverged again in time.• Our best commanders were all in the Brigade. With everyone else gone, I inherited all their fame, and all their responsibility. It worked wonders for my infamy, most certainly, but bringing the Scoia'tael back from the brink of extinction was no small feat. Getting shafted by one kingdom after another just proved to me the need to rebuild, though, and others clearly felt the same. It took some years skittering around the bushes, but with time we grew and divided into new units.• Flotsam was... not particularly grand hunting grounds, no. It was a port of great economic importance, though, so there was reason to establish a relatively powerful Scoia'tael presence there. Monitor the trade between Temeria and Aedirn and whatever else passed through the port. Intercept things we wanted for ourselves, or things we didn't want to reach their intended destination. Distribute to other units as needed. Of course, everyone else on the continent had the same idea, so the other reason for keeping a strong presence in Flotsam was to fight off competing thieves and brigands.• I don't think I loved Saskia as much as the games suggested I did. I honestly might have been gay, for one. For another, I think I loved the idea of Vergen more than I loved her. That's not to say I didn't like her, but I think I idealized her more than anything.• I think Geralt sided with me during the events of The Witcher 2. I also believe he chose to help me save Saskia. Triss was a strong and capable sorceress, whereas a mind-controlled golden dragon is... less likely to escape of her own strength, immense as it may be. I assume this was all damage control, then. In any case, I am grateful to him.• I think I was alive during The Witcher 3, though I'm not sure what I was up to. Not the scrapped plague questline, at least. Something in my mind tells me that I had a chance to meet Ciri, so maybe Geralt and I met up again at some point. Who can say.Art credit: ana_godisGo back

• I was a classic tragic orphan case. I never knew my parents, just flitted between shelters as they opened and closed for about as long as I can remember. Some of the older kids took on caretaker roles; I had a sister-like figure, presumably she took care of me before I was old enough to remember that, but I don't recall where she went. Maybe we got separated somewhere along the way. I ran messages for a coin here or there, but I quickly found that thievery was far more profitable, kept me fed for less effort. And so began my career.• I was an okay pickpocket. Nothing special. Got caught plenty of times, but small kids mostly got chased off; if you got older and still hadn't learned your lesson, then you got beaten. Point being, what impressed Artemus wasn't my pickpocketing skills at all, but the fact that I picked him as a target. That meant I could see him, trail him through a crowd. A Keeper could walk through an empty street undetected, so that kind of thing was significant to them.• I remember... basically nothing of the Keeper compound. I suppose that befits them. But still, they taught me everything. How to read and write the common tongue, for starters. From there, Glyphs, at least the ones we acolytes were permitted to know about. Stealth and speechcraft and all those tools I would find oh-so useful later on. I didn't hate it there, genuinely. I had friends, and though I would never have said it to his face, I really did view Artemus as my father. I respected him, loved him in my own way. But while I enjoyed the life of an acolyte, I just knew in some way that I couldn't stay there. I don't like how many of my big life decisions come down to gut feelings, but all the same I always trusted it.• You don't abandon the Keepers. If they truly didn't want me to leave, they could have easily stopped me. I don't know what told them to stay their hands, but hey, I suppose I should be grateful. If I held on for just a few more years, I'd be a Keeper. And I didn't want that. So despite the threats of Enforcers coming to take me back in the dead of night, I mustered up the courage one day to just leave. They followed me, of course. They followed me very closely. But they left me alone, mostly. Asking for any more than that would be asking too much.• I started my career as a thief around age twenty, physically in my prime but with little more to my name than whatever I had taken with me from the compound. I relied pretty heavily on people like Basso to throw me petty thievery jobs just to stay afloat until I had the reputation to do anything more profitable. Bless him. I'd considered him an actual friend.• Most of my memories follow the games pretty well. The only major discrepancy I can think of is that Artemus pulled me out Constantine's mansion. I was pretty temperamental about it at the time, but I really don't think I would have been able to escape on my own with my injuries. You have to re-learn how to do everything without depth perception, you know. I was basically without my bow- I could hone in on a target with a few test shots, but needed two eyes to be able to douse a torch in a single shot. I was without my mechanical eye for a few months, and while it wasn't a career-ending injury, it was certainly a disability.• I had built up a reputation as the One-Eyed Thief before Karras thought to gift me a new one. I was wary of it at first. It's generally wise to be wary of Hammerites and any of their splinter groups. But I had too many near-death experiences in those few months, and I missed my bow quite dearly. I figured that I'd be certainly dead without the eye, and possibly dead with it, so I might as well take the risk. Plus, Artemus suggested I take it, and I did value his input despite my bluffs.• By the way, getting a new eye installed is painful, to say the least. I don't want to know where those wires go or how they even work.• I don't know how to feel about Viktoria. She took my eye, for one. I trusted Pagans no more than Hammerites, for another. But still, I ended up getting attached. To grow fond or spiteful, is to lose one's balance. Ha. We respected each others' trades in some strange way. Maybe we could have been something more, if we were different people, if we lived in a different time.• The girl at the end of the third game, I don't recall her name, but I know that I took her in. I suppose I felt some sort of obligation to repay what Artemus did for me as a child. I probably didn't make for a great father figure, but hopefully I was alright. I had Artemus's example to follow, if nothing else.• Did I mention that I was 5'0"? People assume that infamous, imposing figures should be tall or something, but a tall thief has a hard time hiding. Small and thin, I could fit into places people wouldn't even bother checking.Art credit: doubleleaf*Go back

• My father was a carpenter. He died in a lumber accident when I was young, so I don't remember much about him other than the fact that I loved him. My mother was a musician and a weaver.• I always liked collecting whale bones along the beach, when nobody was looking. They called to me for some reason. I preferred not to think about those implications later on in life.• I joined the Serkonan Guard at fifteen to bring home more money. Little guttersnipe as I had been, it was probably the only legal job I would have been any good at. Beatrici left when I was sixteen. For a few years, it was just my mother and I. She hadn't been well and Beatrici's departure left her missing physical, emotional, and financial support. I hated to leave her all alone, but the money I would earn in Dunwall would be enough for the both of us for once. She urged me to go, and promised she would be fine, so long as I remembered to write her from time to time.• My mother died soon after I arrived in Dunwall. Terribly ironic. Couldn't just go back at that point, and there was nothing left for me at home anyway. I figured I'd finish out my contracted period in Dunwall and then return to Serkonos, but not Karnaca. Dunwall was grey and cold and depressing, and I never thought I would ever see it as home.• I had spent a lot of time near Euhorn and Beatrix, who took particular interest in me as I was a gift from Theodanis. I was a good guard, but I learned much of court life from them. How to act and talk in a presentable way, the things that nobles appreciated that went over my backwater brain. They liked me and could tell that I had a good head on my shoulders, as Beatrix told me, I just happened to come from a very different place. The more I knew about court life, the more refined of an air I could put on, the closer I could be to the royal family. I suppose I sort of saw them like parents, since I no longer had any of my own.• Euhorn was the one who suggested I vie for the role of Lord Protector, so I did. And I won. I suppose Jessamine got her defiance of tradition from her parents.• While I was seen as the out-of-place foreigner, I think Jessamine picked me because I was so unique compared to the other candidates, highborn, high rank, more interested in the role's prestige than the lady herself. I also think we got along well because of that. A Lord Protector need only be that- a protector- but if you're going to be joined at the hip for the rest of your natural lives, it would be helpful for the two of you to like each other. We didn't have much in common early on, but at the very least I could entertain her with stories of my home. I think she was just glad to have someone who talked to her like an actual person.• I'm sure there's much discourse to be had on the start of our relationship. She appointed me as protector at the age of twelve, as is customary; I was nineteen per the official timeline and could not be much younger (the Royal Protector must be an adult, obviously). "Waiting until eighteen," in the modern day, is synonymous to being a massive creep. Truthfully, I don't recall these social rules well enough to say what was or wasn't normal in our time and place. Suffice to say we fell in love in a conformation that was acceptable at the time.• Honestly, I was scared half to death when I learned Jessamine was pregnant. I figured they'd find a way to ship me back to Serkonos. But she could be as fierce as she was defiant, and anyone who dared talk too loudly about Emily's Serkonan features and mysterious lack of a father was promptly silenced. We would've gotten married, eventually; Jessamine was never the type to respect tradition, and the social ramifications could never have stopped her. But, well, someone got in the way.• I remember the events of Dishonored pretty much as they are in-game. I was somewhere in the medium to high chaos region. Sometimes, violence is the safest option. "Chaos" is more than a clean tally of how many people you kill, and death has diminishing returns. I had no desire to purge the entire city, but cutting indiscriminate paths through anyone in my way showed that I could. Someone in the wrong place at the wrong time would be slain with equal precision as the Lord Regent himself. That was what caused chaos. A city of bones is orderly, a city of fear is not. I wasn't killing haphazardly, or for fun, but neither did I go out of my way to show mercy. I killed all my targets save for Lady Boyle and the Pendleton twins, whom I found easier to get rid of non-lethally. No moral choices, simply a calculation of which path was least likely to get me killed. I don't recall if Martin and Pendleton were already dead when I got to them, but if they weren't then I didn't bother to chase them down. Do I regret this? In the sense that I didn't enjoy it, sure. But throw me back into Dunwall Prison to do it again, and I can't guarantee I'd change my methods.• I respect my Outsider. Without his Mark, I wouldn't have gotten through the events of the game. That doesn't mean I have to like him.• I don't recall much of Dishonored 2, having been a statue and all, but Emily accepted the mark and followed a low-chaos path. She also brought home the mementos from my home in Serkonos. She mentioned Billie to me; while Emily didn't forgive her for her hand in Jessamine's death, she made no move to harm her. For all the blood I spilled in my own course, I'm glad Emily came out of it stronger than me.• The Outsider did offer me the Mark back, once I was sapient again. I suppose he liked me, even if the feeling wasn't mutual. I didn't take it. I won't say I'm grateful to Delilah for removing it, but I think I was happier without it, albeit weaker. Emily could take care of herself by then, so I didn't need it.• Emily and Wyman did marry pretty quickly after the games ended. Perhaps they figured they shouldn't be a repeat of Jessamine and I. They've had my blessing since the start, but just like Jessamine, not even her own father could really stop Emily from doing what she wanted.• Death of the Outsider wouldn't have been canon for me since I had killed Daud. I didn't ask him about the events of Knife of Dunwall and Brigmore Witches, as the Outsider so readily told me off for (but why would I?), but I suppose I might have spared him if I had known. No promises. It does elevate him in my mind to know that he did so much to help Emily, and didn't even try to use it to bargain for his life.Art credit: wehavekookiesGo back