The Khajiit

Synopsis: All legends have beginnings.


It is said that when he was born, it snowed in the desert.

An embellishment, maybe; the kind that are always put in legends, foretelling the future, when life rarely does so in truth.

A cloudy night, the story goes, the kind parents abhor for it hides the moons. Cold, as desert nights go, but especially bitter when the birthing pangs came upon her. The winds roared and bit through the tents and skins. She roared as well, for the child was known to be large, and she was not of the physique to bear such a one easily.

But she held on, desperately attempting to stem her child’s entrance to the world, for the moons had not shown their faces from behind the clouds. Such a birth was not what she desired for her child.

As the caravan sat within their own tents and wagons, astonished at the sudden freeze and whispering amongst themselves of the clouds above dark and foreboding, snow began to fall. The guards clutched their cloaks closer to themselves in a wordless fear.

‘Such an ill birth,’ they said amongst themselves, feeling pity for the woman. But their pity and fear did nothing to calm the winds, nor did it allay the snow, which blanketed the cold sand in short order.

‘Wait, my son, wait,’ she cried, but he would not be stayed.

Outside, surrounded by his fellows, the father awaited, head down, heedless of the snow and cold. It was his place, after all, despite the ill timing of the birth.

And then, the clouds, broke.

The moons glowed over the desert once more; the snow glittered in the sky like sand under the moons’ light.

All raised their eyes to the sky.

With one last great cry, the babe was born. The father entered the tent and retrieved the child, and bringing him out, raised him up to gaze upon the moons for the first time. It is said the babe did not cry, and the child’s first sight of the moons was to see them briefly, before once more they were covered by the dark and furious clouds.

The child was named Kazahan, and his life was one of tragedy and rage; of vengeance and blood; the plaything of the gods.

Of course, despite that the account is undoubtedly embellished, there is truth in this account of his birth. Perhaps not factual, though none now are that were there, but a truth of his own being.

You shall see this to be true.



The Girl

It is said that when Tana Little-Bear saw her parents killed, she swore then and there an oath, the kind that the Nords are known for making. An oath of vengeance and justice against her father and mother’s murderers, especially the Imperial Captain that ordered it and saw that she witnessed the sentence firsthand, but also the mean and furtive archer that loosed his arrows; not only with special hatred to the Aldmer mage that smiled to hear them cry out in pain and burned them alive, but also to the swordsman that held her still, and then pulled her away, knowing that their bodies would be left to rot.

Every one of them she swore would die by her hand. This oath she made to Talos Stormcrown and to Kyne, and to Shor the Dead.

To a Nord, such an oath is unbreakable. Even should she fail in the attempt Sovngarde would await her. To swear so and then turn away is the epitome of cowardice, and forever would she wander, never to find the great bridge to the Hall of her ancestors.

It burned within her as they took her away, and though it was as embers months later, it warmed her all the more when she escaped the walls and farms of Solitude, making her way back to Coldrock where remained but ruins of her home.

All that remained aside from bones in the earth was a small burned dagger; this would be the instrument of her revenge, she swore to herself. However else she would kill them, the dagger would be her final stroke.

She was but a child, but the world works in such ways. Many swear such oaths, though perhaps not so severe, and many turn aside from them. She did not, though she did not know how to set out on her path of blood.

Until the day she came upon a Khajiit that seemed but only just smaller than a Troll. Or perhaps it was that the Khajiit came upon her, a great and opaque beast so unlike the ones that walked with the caravans that traveled from city to city.

His name was Kazahan, and he was far from his home indeed.