Ladies and gentlemen, I’m back with another Adventures post — the epilogue to the Skyrim save I was running at the start of the year on my brother’s PlayStation before I moved away.
About a week before I left, I had accomplished all the main goals I had in mind for the roleplaying of the Imperial Legionnaire Damon, did all the expansions, did the Main Quest, faffed around a bit exploring and being basically a noble sword-for-hire, etc, and I got bored with the lack of direction to the save and realised it was time to wrap it up once and for all.
Because I have a penchant for creative writing and the mood struck me a few days after that save concluded, I wrote up this epilogue here. A letter to no one from an undisclosed place where Damon, an old man at this point, is nearing the end of his days and has decided to take up a quill and inkwell one last time to jot down the last of his thoughts for the last time.
This thing has been sitting on the Google Docs text document I wrote it on since March, and I decided that I wanted to share it with whoever wanted to read it and bring a proper closure to the Skyrim run.
My whole life has been spent fighting. Killing. A sharp turn from the old days, as a young man before the Dragon Crisis.
It’s funny. When I was a young boy, I had the sense of duty to Titus II that my parents had. That my father and my father’s father had to our Emperors and Empire. I joined the Legion out of obligation to uphold the family honor, and I got out a short couple of years later, my duty done without ever drawing a blade to strike a man, which was find with me.
I was stuck in street patrol in the capital, which while boring, was generally safe. I married a girl, she was carrying our child, and one night she was gone. Dead, killed by a Dunmer named Movarth Piquine.
With vengeance in my heart, I followed him to Skyrim, intent on killing him. Once in Skyrim, my life turn another dramatic change. A curse, I have grown to believe.
I was almost executed by my own Legion, mistaken for a Stormcloak rebel. I was thrust into war to pacify the rebellion that almost killed me, I was drawn into a service to Skyrim that lead to my discovery as a Dragonborn. I have fought and killed numerous dragons, innumerable bandits, highwaymen, vampires, including the Volikhar court of Harkon’s, I’ve travelled to Solstheim to kill Miraak, the first Dragonborn and steal his power. Killing, that’s all I’ve known for decades.
It took a toll on me. I have kept few friends over the years. I have a few dedicated housecarls that are honor-bound to defend me with their lives, and I have Serana as my sole long-term companion. But, she’s just that. A companion. There’s nothing between us, though I’d like to imagine something was possible now that she’s no longer a vampire herself.
There’s the Blades, my brothers and sisters in the battle against the dragons, who will remain anonymous. I have watched many of them fall in battle as well.
My brothers in the Legion, I’ve watched hundreds of Legionnaires die in the war against the Stormcloaks, fighting to protect and preserve a land that wasn’t their own, to ensure the world is a safer place, and it took a toll on us all.
When I was a young man, I was full of passionate love and energy. I was a sharp jawed, clean shaven man of the Legion who could have had anyone or anything I wanted. I had a boring, yet secure job, I had a wife I loved, a family I loved… Now I’m a bitter, graying old man, blind in one eye, a body covered in healed scars and burns. I’ve got no family left that I am still in touch with. I haven’t had the time to write, needless to say, and I doubt I’d be recognised at this point if I managed to make my way to Cyrodiil to find them.
Even after my roles in the previous conflicts were done, I couldn’t just settle down after all I’ve been through, and believe me, I tried. My job done, I wanted nothing more than to try and have the normal life that I would have had before that fateful trip to Skyrim. When Alduin was dead, when I got out of the war with the Legion, when Movarth Piquine, Harkon, and the vampires were dead, when Solstheim was saved from Miraak… When all was finally said and done, I bought a parcel of land out to the east of Solitude and I built a homestead.
The ritual of waking up to take care of chickens and manage my homestead outside of Solitude wouldn’t work for me. Just three years before that point, I would have wanted nothing more than my own house and family. Nothing to do but wake up, kiss my wife, take care of a home, then relax to have a pint and raise a family. The times changed, though, and I changed with them.
The past still haunted my eyes and the fire kept burning in my heart. I left my partner and friend Serana and my housecarls behind in Skyrim to depart for other lands, always on the search for a purpose. A direction to life.
I've lost track of my exploits as a mercenary and roaming bladesman. Scarred as I was, with my hair and a beard growing out, I wasn’t even recognised as the Dovahkiin of Skyrim, not that my renown carried the same weight in other provinces when I wasn't using the Thu'um as a tool of war anymore.
Now, here I am, approaching my sixty-third year of life… I can not move like I used to, and I’ve come down with some nasty disease. The healer that I summoned assures me that I’ll be dead within a week, should I not find a cure. I’ve weakened to the point where writing is a chore of its own, and I’m definitely too weak to go out looking for some special plant I didn't know existed.
I'm okay with dying. I’ve spent years fighting the battles of other people and the battles within myself, and I’m still standing, despite the pleas to die.
Serana has been gone for years. To where, I don’t know. She left sometime after I left, and I miss her. She was just a friend to me, but though I didn’t know it until later, I loved her dearly in the end.
My housecarl, I don’t know where he is. I understand that he watched over my home dutifully for several years after I left Skyrim, but as years turned to decades, he departed. Again, a person I trust with my life.
I don’t know where either them are, and I haven’t been able to make contact with them, if they are still alive, that is.
I am ready to die alone, to pass into afterlife. To Sovngarde. I am without child, without a wife, and I abandoned my love interest and the simple notions of family that I’ve always had to feed the addiction to want to die and go down in a fight.
I can not say I regret the life I had, but I regret the life I didn’t have.
Damon Terellia
14 Hearthfire, 4E 234
