In 4E 200, at the northern end of the continent of Tamriel, in the province of Skyrim under the Mede Empire.
On a mild day in Rain's Hand (April), the sunlight over Riverwood was soft and warm. The stream murmured by, the sawmill's waterwheel creaked as it turned. Smoke rose from the blacksmith's forge, and hens wandered the road in search of food. Along the riverbank the grass was tall and birds flitted through the air; butterflies danced among the bushes; thistles, lilacs, and pansies bloomed in profusion. The raw, pastoral countryside was enough to charm anyone.
Skyrim had four distinct seasons, and by early summer the temperature was already pleasant. The townsfolk came out of their sturdy wooden houses to work and bask in the sun.
That morning, a stranger came to the peaceful little town.
He wore wizard's robes and a pitch-black cloak, with a white owl perched on his shoulder, peering around at everything.
The Nord guards on the street watched him warily. With that outfit, Skyl looked like a mage—and Skyrim did not welcome mages.
Not long after stepping through the portal, Skyl had figured out what kind of place World II was.
This was the world of The Elder Scrolls, and the spot where he had arrived was a ruined shack in the middle of Whiterun Hold in Skyrim.
The world of The Elder Scrolls was high fantasy through and through, steeped in myth. But under normal circumstances the power levels weren't completely over the top; you didn't have random nobodies walking around one-shotting cities. Civilization was still, by and large, at a primitive, cold-steel stage.
He spent half a day exploring the area and, almost without noticing, wandered his way to Riverwood.
At the town gate, a guard stepped in front of him.
"Outlander, what brings you here? Just passing through, or are you looking for someone?"
The language these Nords spoke was similar to Old English. Skyl would obviously need some time to study and adapt.
For now, all he could do was give the guard a helpless expression and point at his own mouth.
"Oh, you're mute? Can you understand what I'm saying, at least?"
Skyl nodded, then shook his head, meaning "not really".
The young Nord guard was patient, but also cautious—not only because Skyl dressed like a mage, but because Skyrim was not at peace at this time. The people of Riverwood had raised their own militia to keep troublemaking outsiders away.
Skyl listened to him talk for a while. Then, suddenly, he spoke.
"Balgruuf?"
The guard froze. "You can talk? What's Jarl Balgruuf to you?"
"Balgruuf?" Skyl asked again.
"All right, what in Oblivion are you trying to say?"
By now, Skyl had a rough idea of where in the story he was. This had to be The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.
Right now Skyrim was in the middle of a civil war. Before long, the dragons slumbering in this ancient land would begin to wake one after another. Their leader, Alduin the World-Eater, would return from his exile in time and once again rule sky and earth, enslaving all life. It was the set-up for an epic saga.
"Alduin?" Skyl tried.
The guard just gave him a baffled look and shook his head.
All right, so the main quest clearly hadn't started yet. Alduin hadn't attacked the town of Helgen, and the Dragonborn, our destined protagonist, had yet to appear.
Skyl patted his stomach, indicating that he was hungry. Then he pressed his hands together by his cheek and tilted his head, miming someone sleeping on a pillow—he needed food and a place to rest.
The Nords of Skyrim were a warm-hearted, hard-bitten people who had lived here for generations. They were typically fair-haired, with sea-blue eyes, pale skin, tall frames, used to hard work and bitter cold. If you approached them in friendship, they would never let you go hungry—very much unlike the Brits of World I.
Taking pity on this pitiful-looking stranger, the guard let Skyl through, but he didn't feel comfortable leaving him to wander the town alone, so he followed along behind.
Skyl did nothing suspicious. He made his way to the Sleeping Giant Inn at the north end of town and spent the whole day sitting in the common room. He didn't order anything, just sat quietly and listened to the guests talk. A bard plucked at a lute and sang ancient ballads; Skyl listened with a faint smile. People were curious about his strange clothes and the owl perched on his shoulder.
The young guard who had been tailing him explained for him. "Oh, he doesn't really understand what we're saying."
Skyl would applaud for the bard. When someone tried to strike up a conversation with him, he either put on a confused expression or pointed at his own mouth.
His gentle, quiet manner finally convinced the guard, who relaxed his suspicions. He went up to the counter, bought two bottles of mead, and brought them over so he and Skyl could drink together.
After half a bottle of mead, the young guard burped and said with a beaming grin, "Ahh, I owe you one, kid. Thanks to you, I'm actually getting a rare day off."
Skyl just gave him a puzzled, innocent look.
The guard burst out laughing.
He paid for lunch as well, and in the afternoon he took Skyl around the town, introducing him to the local townsfolk.
At dusk, Skyl waved goodbye to everyone and headed back to the ruined cottage where he had arrived.
He didn't spend the night there. Skyrim's nights were anything but safe—never mind the roaming beasts like wolves, bears and trolls, there were also bandits, vampires and werewolves. Anyone who could survive alone in the wild was no ordinary person; they were either reclusive mages or extremely capable warriors.
Skyl went back through the portal to World I, to the Leaky Cauldron, slept a night there, and then returned. With the help of Lumos and his textbooks, he made it through the long Skyrim nights.
At that time, Skyl had no idea that every time he opened the portal, something else was set in motion. Far to the east of Tamriel, on the island of Solstheim, a ship had already set sail.
The passengers aboard wore strange cultist robes and evil masks that looked like many-legged sea stars. Huddled together in the dim cabin, they chanted in low voices the name of Hermaeus Mora, Daedric Prince of forbidden knowledge, and another name—the Outsider, Skyl.
"Find him. Dig out his secrets. For Miraak… no—for the glory of great Mora."
…
Over the next month or so, Skyl went to Riverwood every day. Sometimes he arrived early in the morning; sometimes not until after noon. Riverwood didn't have many residents, and they gradually got used to this regular at the inn. Every time, he would sit in the Sleeping Giant's common room until dusk, quietly listening to people talk.
Slowly, he began trying to talk with the townsfolk. Now and then he could stammer out a few simple phrases. The moment he opened his mouth, he was mobbed by Nords whose curiosity knew no bounds.
Their biggest question was whether Skyl was actually a mage.
He answered obliquely, "I'm only a beginner."
At their urging, Skyl had no choice but to put on a small show, casting spells from the Harry Potter world.
Simple charms like Lumos, levitation spells, the water-summoning charm Aguamenti, and some very basic transfiguration. Waving his cypress wand, he turned a tin tankard into a chunk of bread. The same young guard, drunk again, grabbed the "bread" and took a bite—only to yelp in pain.
He spat it out. "By the Nine, that tastes awful."
"It looks like bread," Skyl said with a nod, "but it's still the same tankard underneath."
The whole tavern burst out laughing; the air was thick with good cheer.
One day in Second Seed (May), a group of very oddly dressed cult priests came to Riverwood. They wore long robes and wooden masks shaped like squids. They went from person to person asking whether there was a black-robed mage in town with black hair and a bird on his shoulder.
Skyl happened to be walking in from the gate. The moment he saw these cultists, he recognized them as Miraak's followers from Solstheim. In the game, these were the cultists who sought out the Dragonborn and picked fights with them. They served Miraak, the first Dragonborn, who in turn served the Daedric Prince Hermaeus Mora.
In short, their appearance was a sure sign that trouble had come to town.
"There he is!"
Skyl saw the cultists draw their daggers—and then, in eerie unison, they slit their own throats. Blood sprayed across the quiet street of Riverwood. The scene made his skin crawl.
Before he could react, the clear sky above Riverwood turned an ominous, sickly green.
A vast, low, heavy and languid voice sounded in every mortal ear. At the very instant they heard it, everyone in Riverwood—everyone but Skyl—fell into an enforced faint.
A cold, damp, foul wind fell from the sky like a corpse. Skyl was gripped by an indescribable terror; his nervous system simply stopped functioning. He stood there with his head tipped back, a speck of dust staring up at a mountain, and could only watch—watch as the void was disturbed by a black, slimy tentacle; as an inky vortex spread open above the street; as countless foolish, murky, bubble-like yellow-green eyes opened within that darkness. From the heart of the vortex, hundreds upon hundreds of black tentacles uncoiled, writhing and twitching in front of him.
The bizarre being before him was one Skyl recognized. It—no, He—was Hermaeus Mora, mighty Daedric Prince of the Elder Scrolls world, one of the Lords of Oblivion, called the Prince of Secrets and Keeper of Forbidden Knowledge, a god with an insatiable curiosity for every hidden thing.
" Mortal from a foreign shore, we meet at last. It seems Miraak's foolish followers are not entirely beyond redemption. Now, you will tell Us from whence you came, and how you slipped silently through Oblivion to reach Mundus."
Skyl felt his heart turn to ice.
At that moment, the door-shaped mark on the back of his hand began to glow. No other mortal could see that light—but Hermaeus's all-seeing eyes caught it, and the Prince gave a satisfied chuckle.
"Ah. Very good. Very honest. Offer up your secret, and We shall permit your service. You shall be Our faithful servant."
One of Mora's tentacles lightly touched the mark on Skyl's hand.
At once, the "door" turned into a vortex and swallowed Hermaeus whole.
The mighty Daedric Prince screamed in terror. His countless eyes were all smothered at once by that terrifying, brilliant blue. On every inch of every tentacle, door-shaped blue portals yawned open like barnacles clinging to a ship's hull, like flower buds in frenzied bloom. Doors piled upon doors, layer upon layer, squeezing and overlapping, with more doors opening within them, receding to a bottomless depth. They spat out raging surges of wild blue that blew away the sickly green clouds over Riverwood.
The Prince's body was infested by endless doors, turning him into something like a mineral crystal—sharp-edged, strange, beautiful and horrifying all at once.
In his panic, Hermaeus Mora realized he was "dying". For a Daedric Prince, death was a concept impossibly distant. Yet now, the great Hermaeus was facing it in earnest. This death did not mean leaving a corpse behind; it meant being devoured—from power to form, from his realm to his very essence, his consciousness, his past and future—everything was being consumed by that terrifying door-shaped mark.
"No… no! We will not… end here!"
Hermaeus Mora could no longer speak in that slow, languid tone. He shrieked and tore himself apart. Most of his being was stained blue; only a scrap of what he had been managed to flee back into Oblivion.
After devouring thousands upon thousands of eyes and tentacles, the door-shaped mark on Skyl's hand flickered once, then fell quiet again.
The sky over Riverwood cleared. When the unconscious townsfolk slowly came to, they saw the cultists' corpses on the street, shriveled to dry husks. As for Skyl—he had vanished without a trace.