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Alinor in its first days was chaotic; the mortals so newly formed did not know how to organize themselves without the ambiguity of the Grey Maybe. Even a few thousand years into Lorkhan’s great project this chaos remained. Part of it was the merish unwillingness to adapt– it was undoubtedly Trinimac’s fault, Trinimac the melancholic, gliding around the island like a gilded mourning-dove, inciting the mortals to tears over their lost divinity. How was anyone to create things anew when consumed by nostalgia and their own misery? No, most preferred to drown their sorrows in fleshy pleasures if they were without means, or if they were wealthy, delved into outrageous excess in an attempt to recreate the world lost to them.
So there was the city of Alinor– hedonistic. Gaudy and golden (why did they believe the grey maybe was Trinimac-coloured?). Breeding-ground of debauchery. Playpen for daedra.
In a narrow street, crowded by drunks and public mourners, a solitary man drew his cloak tight around his face. He glanced about furitively, and seeing no sign of his persecutors, slipped a little purse into the hand of a poorly disguised Skaafin that perched atop a trash-mound. With that he was ushered through a narrow door.
In the streets the daedra were subtle, mindful of Trinimac’s wrath. In the “Humping Hound”, probably so named to deter the righteous champion, they were brazen. In one corner stood an Ogrim pounding on a drum while a Skaafin strummed a lute to the disharmonious ballad of a drunken Mazken; on a rickety stage a pot-bellied man performed a revolting strip-tease. The room was low-ceilinged and crowded, thick with the stench of rum and blood and sexual fluids of indeterminate source. The man pressed his cloak over his mouth and soldiered through.
Concealed by the debauchery, here in the corner, sat two women who seemed wholly unaware of the wretched scene around them. A bottle of wine, half-drained, sat on the table between them; one, bruise-skinned and flame-eyed beneath the hood of her robe, leaned over the table and spoke passionately.
“East,” Veloth heard her say as he approached them, “We must go east.”
Her companion, a shawl draped around two of her six slim shoulders, looked up. “Veloth,” she called, “Here.”
“Mephala, listen to me.” snapped Boethiah. “We must go east.”
“It’s too dangerous for them.” Mephala drew out a chair for Veloth, who looked a little worse for wear, having just fought his way through a legion of unwashed revellers. He took the seat gratefully, as well as the wine offered on custom.
“It’s where Lorkhan’s heart flew.” Boethiah continued. Her cheeks were flushed, not just with wine, and Veloth noticed the gleam of zealotry in her eyes; that tended to be a bad omen, he knew well enough, Boethiah could be erratic when she was on a tirade. “If we are to honour him we must follow it! We must, Mephala– it is ours to claim.”
“Honour?” Mephala cocked her head. “Don’t say that word too loudly in a place like this.”
The table shook– the fat man doing a striptease had done a ground-shaking splits in the middle of the room, to thunderous applause. Veloth uttered an involuntary cry when he realized that the man had landed on the upturned face of a passed-out ogrim, who had awoken immediately and now lay complicitly beneath him, with his mouth–
Mephala mercifully draped an arm around Veloth’s neck and guided his eyes away from the scene.
“Sanguine,” Boethiah scoffed, shaking her head. Then, “You know I’m right about this. And I know you want to be with him too. Why do you deny me– why do you deny him?”
“Oh, that poor Ogrim.” Mephala murmured, still staring at the pot-bellied man and his victim.
Veloth cleared his throat. “What is this about the east, Boethiah?”
“This is a travesty.” Mephala said. “When I invented sex it was a meaningful thing. Now look at it.”
“Trinimac is a jealous lover and radically devoted to Auri-el.” said Boethiah. “He’ll pursue us to the ends of the world after we challenge him, so to the ends of the world we shall go.”
“So we’re giving up our plan to lead our rebellion here?” Veloth asked, surprised.
“Look over there.” Mephala pointed, shaking her head. “Five eggs, they just managed to fit in that Churl. Five. I don’t know why I ever bothered.”
Boethiah gestured at the general chaos surrounding them. “Veloth, is this worth saving? No. Take the worthy, I say, only those who will prove themselves true. Only–” She froze, and quickly turned towards the wall, pulling her cloak up to conceal her face. “Crap. Don’t look over there. We’ve got ugly company.”
Veloth glanced around, a little less subtly than the Prince would have preferred. “Where?”
“There.” Mephala pointed to a nearby table, where sat Molag Bal, with one Mazken on his lap and another feeding him a bowl of grapes.
“Don’t point at him!” Boethiah hissed. “Just ignore him. Lorkhan’s Heart, what a wretch.”
But Molag Bal had already noticed them. Mephala waved politely; Veloth shrunk into the shadows.
“If we just ignore him, he’ll leave us alone.” Veloth said.
“Nobody’s here to start trouble.” Mephala agreed. “Don’t look at him. Focus. Boethiah, the mortals won’t survive the journey. Their forms are too feeble, too untested.”
“Untested! Mephala, that is why they must head east! They must prove themselves worthy of inheriting this world. If their wills are strong, they will survive.”
“Yet more would survive, and our profits be greater, if we remained here.”
“Hello!” A cheerful boy of no more than ten, wearing a toga, appeared beside the table. “I have a drink from the gentleman over there?”
Veloth jumped up, alarmed. “A child!” he cried. “Who on Nirn let a child in this dreadful place!”
“Veloth, meet Clavicus Vile.” Mephala jerked Veloth back down into his chair, roughly. “Vile, this is a distasteful form to wear in such a place.”
“Oh, goodness, no! Distasteful things? In this fine establishment?” Sniggering, Clavicus Vile put before Boethiah a foul blue concoction, served in a jar. “A ‘sex in the swamp’ for my finest customer, courtesy of your friend over there.”
“What friend–”
But Clavicus Vile had already disappeared, and just as well; Molag Bal’s smug stare from across the room answered the question clearly enough.
Veloth adjusted his cloak nervously.
“Boethiah,” Mephala said.
“I’m fine.” Boethiah closed her eyes, exhaling. “I’m not going to start any fights. No fights.”
“I was going to ask if I could have that?”
Boethiah shoved the drink across the table, then sat back, arms crossed. “There is too much rot in Alinor. Better to excise the pure flesh and start anew. In his shadow.”
“You aren’t going to drink that.” Veloth uttered, aghast.
Mephala, who was already taking a dainty sip from the wretched cocktail, raised her eyebrows and said nothing.
Boethiah scowled at her. “You’re absolutely dreadful.”
“It’s really quite good. Try some.”
“I’d rather cast my own tongue into the void.”
“Hm.” Mephala, thoughtfully, twisted one of the drink’s harrada strands between her fingers. “Veloth, what do you think?”
“Well, if I must be honest, I don’t think you should be drinking that. Even if the contents are benign, the source is utterly distasteful.”
“I was referring to the idea of going east.”
“Oh.”
“It is distasteful!” Boethiah blurted out, smacking her palm against the table angrily. “If he comes over here and starts flirting with you, I’m going to attack you, for you are behaving like an enemy to me.”
“I thought we agreed on no fights,” replied Mephala.
“That was before you started making eyes at– at thrice-cursed Molag Bal!”
“I think east sounds nice,” Veloth continued, trying to avert the argument. “Boethiah is right to fear Trinimac’s ire. I don’t think our chances will be good if we stay here; he’s a fanatic. But why east, Boethiah?”
Boethiah’s attention snapped to him immediately. “It’s where Lorkhan’s heart is.”
“Oh. This is about him?”
“I loved– I love him. I’m not ashamed to admit that to you, Veloth. This world was made for love, of love. It is right and good to love him.”
“If this world was made for love,” Mephala murmured, staring over Boethiah’s shoulder, “Sanguine missed the memo. There is no love in this building tonight.”
Veloth followed Mephala’s stare across the room– the pot-bellied man had moved away from a noticeably flattened Ogrim, and now appeared to be performing fellatio on an ugly rusted mace that Molag Bal had produced from somewhere, to Molag Bal’s fury and the fascination of his dremora companions. He was gathering quite the crowd, too; as his mouth expanded to improbably proportions, slipping over the mace, Molag Bal was growing increasingly vexed, fidgeting in his chair and cursing at the reveler. It seemed a matter of time until a fight broke out.
Boethiah let out a long hiss. “They don’t deserve this world. He wanted so much more– we should be so much more.”
“Personally,” said Mephala, “I think Lorkhan would be thoroughly amused by this.”
“Is–” Veloth coughed, “Please tell me that’s a daedra. No mortal jaw should do that.”
“It’s just Sanguine.” Mephala reassured him. “This isn’t the worst thing he’s done in the past hour, believe me.”
“I hope he swallows that mace,” Boethiah hissed. “Why is Bal here in the first place? I don’t want him seeing Veloth.”
“This place has become quite the gathering place for Princes,” Mephala told her. “There’s six of us here just tonight.”
“You, I, Vile, Bal, Sanguine– who’s the sixth?”
“Namira’s in the latrines. Veloth, don’t use the latrines.”
“I… wasn’t planning on it. Namira, you say.”
“I don’t like it!” Boethiah complained, slumping in her chair. “We’re meant to be keeping a low profile. Does six Daedric Princes sound like a low profile to you, Mephala? We must look for a new meeting place.”
“I agree with you,” Mephala reached over and gave her a sympathetic pat on the shoulder. “But right now, we must be more concerned with avoiding the Aldmer than with avoiding our fellow Princes. Cheer up.”
Behind Boethiah, Sanguine had– to the crowd’s horror– inserted the mace so deep in his throat that only the tip of the handle remained. He now stood, arms raised triumphantly in the air, as Molag Bal’s dremora friends tipped a pint of ale into his gaping maw. The whole vision was hellishly nauseating, and Veloth averted his eyes, looking around the room for something a bit more tasteful–
“Mephala,” he whispered.
Mephala was likewise captivated by Sanguine’s antics. “Hm?”
“Look at the door–”
“Shit.” Boethiah said.
At the door to the wretched tavern, a tall, gleaming, golden warrior stood. He was so large as to take up the entire doorway, and his very presence cast a profanely pure light over the crowd.
In a moment everyone went silent. Even Sanguine, poised like a crab with the handle of a mace protruding from his mouth, froze in place; even Molag Bal, who was quaking with anger, didn’t dare move. In a moment, all Daedric debauchery had been frozen in time. The entire room paused, like a child caught in an indecent act, awaiting chastisement with bated breath.
“Mephala,” Boethiah whispered. “Hide Veloth. I’ll cause a distraction.”
In one fluid gesture, Mephala embraced Veloth and pulled him to her breast. The tall, gilded figure stepped into the room, wearing an expression of profound disdain– his longsword, glinting malevolently, was drawn and in hand. The patrons of the bar were beginning to murmur, or make their subtle exits. Sanguine remained frozen, unable to move with a mace balancing in his gullet; Molag Bal was looking, baffled, between the warrior and his own half-consumed mace.
With her eyes fixed on the warrior, Boethiah reached over and collected the cocktail. Vision half-obscured by Mephala’s bosom, Veloth watched as Boethiah stood, drink in hand, and sauntered over, and–
Boethiah smashed the jar against Molag Bal’s ugly mug.
The last thing Veloth saw, before Mephala dragged him from the chaos, was that Molag Bal had lifted Sanguine by a leg and was swinging him around like a mace.
… Later, after Mephala had gracefully spirited Veloth out of a window and away from the chaos, after Boethiah had several hours later limped into Veloth’s home, bloody and fuming, they regrouped. Veloth prepared dinner, while Mephala sat beneath a lamp and patiently picked shards of glass out of Boethiah’s skin. By Boethiah’s account, she’d managed to start a fabulous brawl, that she had only escaped when Trinimac pile-drove her through a wall, shattering his own glass sword in the process. Trinimac had been trying to root out the debauchery of daedra from precious Alinor, apparently, and chose the Humping Hound as his target; they had been lucky, very lucky, that he hadn’t spotted Veloth in the company of his co-cpnspirators.
“I must confess.” Mephala said, face inches away from Boethiah’s back.
“You must– ow!” Boethiah yelped, “Careful!”
“I must confess,” Mephala repeated herself, easing a large chunk of sword from Boethiah’s backside, “East is sounding better by the minute.”