"I saw pale kings and princes too,
       Pale knights, death-pale were they all;
They cried—‘La Belle Dame sans Merci
       Thee hath in thrall!" ¬Keats

 

 

  Skyrim, The Old Kingdom, The Fatherland. It began here, not the family, they are of Olde High Rock and always have been. There have been Montalions at the Bjoulsae River since before the first foundation stone of Wayrest was laid and there will likely be long after it has crumbled to dust. And in that great bastion of the arts their claws are sunk into every aspect of society, from the merchant halls and trade floors, their banks and counting houses, from the underground dens of the thieves to the very courts of King Barynia himself. Tugging on the strings of society in their endless struggle with the Selenu, across the bay.

 

 

  No, not the family, the taint. The curse that spread from this cold hard land to infect every corner of Tamriel. The people of the North held belief in the constellations of stars or primitive worship of totem spirits. It was here that the most blessed of Arkay, the Nedic priestess Lamae Beolfag, walked the bring the lord of seasons' light to the savages of the North and bring them into the worship of the Divines. It was on these frosted roads that the wandering pilgrim was ambushed and assailed, not by brigands and beasts, but a hunger far far darker.

 

 

  The Maelific princedoms will ever war with the virtuous, turning the honest to villainy and the faithfull to debauchery, virtue to vice. And none are more persistant than the Fire-stone, Molag Bal, Lord of Schemes and Prince of Domination. Seeking to assault Arkay's temple and undo his influence upon the world, the virgin priestess was waylaid and savaged, brutally beaten and raped by the prince of rage and left to die in the crimson stained snow, a single drop of his blood the only sign of his passing through Mundus.

 

 

 

 

  It was the nomadic tribesmen that found her, broken and violated, and carried her to saftey. Though alchemy and sorcery were in their infancy amongst men they worked their primitive mixtures and rituals in a bid to revive the molested maiden and treat her wounds. Compassion turned to terror as those very wounds, marks that would cripple or slay a mortal man and leave him crossed with scars most hidious, vanished overnight. And yet she lay still, unmoving, unbreathing, pale as the fresh fallen snow. Fearfull of dark sorcery a pyre was built and the virgin priestess laid upon it, Rituals were performed, rites incanted and dirges sung as it was lit.

 

 

  Arkay did not lift his chosen to Aetherius that day, perhaps the corruption of Molag obscured her from view, perhaps the rituals of primitive Nedes insulted him, for whatever reason, he turned away. We know the rest of the tale, Lamae awoke amidst the flames, dazed, confused and enraged. The nomads fell before her fury, women and childeren slaughtered indiscriminately , the men violated as savagely as she was. When the red thirst abated and senses returned, she stood amongst the dead she uttered a cry to the heavens, beseeching Arkay for aid and when no answer came forth she cursed the Divine and Molag Bal both and strode into the land of mortals once more, spreading her taint to spite both the damned and divines.

 

 

 

 

 

  When her curse found it's way into High Rock and when our noble line fell before it, I do not know. Vampires of the Iliac Bay and other texts I have read in the years since suggest the Montalion line has been befouled since at least the third era, nor do I know when it found it's way into the veins of my immediate family. Ancient Elders had been taking the most promising members each generation, when they came for my parents and siblings I am not certain. I saw no signs when growing up in the old manor, I don't recall when the windows were barred and the curtains were finally closed, never noticed when their lives became nocturnal.

 

 

  I remember when I came of age and it was my turn to bathe in the blood of Lamae, recoiling in horror when they revealed themselves for what they had become. All the hours studying with the scribes, all the days at court, all the jousts and tourneys, none of this was to prepare for knighthood, merely to give the clan's elders another pawn in their endless games. I remember fleeing, persued by the servants, by blackened hounds and more indescribeable horrors, twisted creatures that even the most crazed and depraved of the isles could not conceive in fevered dream, yet somehow were given form and loosed to writhe over Lorkhan's corpse. For days upon days I ran, I do not remember when or even if their hunt ever turned from my trail.

 

 

  Perhaps they thought me dead, the priesthood certainly did when I burst into the sanctum, beaten and bloodied. Old legends say that the blood of Lamae cannot enter into holy ground but old proofs put the lie to that myth. Indeed several Balspawn have not only entered but infiltrated the holy orders entirely, Movarth Piquine's notorious penetration of the Order of the Circle is well recorded in the tome, Immortal Blood. But none of the Montalion hunting hounds darkened the door of her Ladyship's temple and so it became my sanctuary.

 

 

  Arkay's order of the circle would have perhaps been a better choice for one who has seen the darkness and wishes to end it, or the Vigilants of Stendar. Likely I would have chosen either, that I came into this one was mere chance, it was the first chantry of the divines I stumbled into on my flight. And years of my life were spent within it's walls. When I became sure I was no longer looked for I would venture out with the sisters and take the Passion Dancer's message to the masses, elsewise I would study within it's grand library, arming myself with knowledge of her foes. Eventually I was ordained, a cleric of the Order of the Lily and when I returned to my ancestral home, it was I that was the cause of fear.

 

 

 

  I grew up with these people, I had known them since I was a child, the servants, the nursemaids, the knights that patrolled the estate. I should have felt something, heartbreak, despair, but there was no emotion other than rage, a cold wrath that the world I had known was a lie and that our name was not only tainted but had been for centuries, perhaps millenia. Even as my father fell before the blessed blade and I sifted through his ashes, there was only apathy.

 

 

 

 

  Of my mother, my siblings, there was no sign. How long they had been absent from our ancestral domain I could not discern, the order swept the demense entirely, clearing room after room of abomination , discovering some hidden chambers that even I, after spending half a lifetime within these walls, did not know of. I sat and watched as it burned, a childhood reduced to ashes and embers in a matter of hours, by the time Arkay's light lit the sky not even that remained, only a collum of black smoke marked the site. But it was not over, Mirabelle and Arnaud still stalk the night, a mother and brother I had loved still tainted our name. And so I wandered the realms, spreading the Lady's blessings and ending the evils that plagued her people, always seeking, always hunting even a trace of a cursed family.

 

 

Which brings us here. To skyrim, The Old Kingdom, the Fatherland. Where it all began.