Chapter Text
Method and Madness Across Seven Kingdoms
Ch.1 -Welcome to the Tundra
Somewhere/when in Space and Time
The sound of maniacal laughter faded in my memory as the world slowly swam into focus around me. A voice echoed in my mind behind the laughter.
“You’ve been here hanging around here long enough. Time for you to move on to greener pastures. Or whiter! And do have a little more fun this time around. Mortal lives are too short for such seriousness. Live a little! Try the cheese! Or I’ll turn you inside out!”
Fuck. Never trust a daedra.
The way my head was swimming made me wonder if Sanguine had made an appearance last night, but my incomplete memories couldn’t confirm that thought. It was more likely that I’d just lost the drinking contest I’d been challenged to by the Prince of Madness… not like refusal would have been a wiser choice.
When dealing with a mad god, one usually goes along for the ride and hopes for the best.
And now, I found myself sitting in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by empty snow-covered plains in almost every direction.
Fuck.
“Goddamn it, you lunatic! Sheagorath, where the fuck did you bring me? Where are you, you crazy fucking bastard?” I shouted into the cold, empty sky. There was, of course, no answer. Daedra rarely did what you wanted them to, and the Prince of Madness was unreliable at his best.
Looked like I was on my fucking own. Which was fine. It was how I was dropped into the exciting world of Skyrim 25 years earlier. I would find my way again without any problems, thank you very much.
Newsflash: There will be problems.
I took stock of myself: everything attached, nothing broken, nor missing. Fingers, check, arms, check, legs, check. I could feel my toes wiggling inside my boots in the snow, so no problems there either.
Oh, shit! My bag!
A lightning bolt of panic thrummed through my soul at the lack of a familiar weight slung across my body. My travel bag went everywhere I went. It was non-negotiable. I jerked my head back and forth across my field of vision, trying to locate the comfortable leather satchel that was my constant companion whenever I left home. It had been with me last night when I was drinking- oh, thank the gods/God/whoever.
One of my hands brushed across the bag's surface just behind my back in the snow. It would appear that I had been lying on it as a pillow. It was enchanted six ways from Sunday, so it was perfectly soft and cushiony no matter what was in it at any given moment. I’d used it as a pillow many times before, so that didn't set off any alarm bells in my head.
Whew. One disaster averted.
My travel bag was a medium-sized, high-quality brown leather bag that was attached to a shoulder strap that I wore most often across my body, slung over my opposite shoulder Indiana Jones style. It was my safety blanket, my trusted friend, my dependable partner, and more. It had been one of the first things I’d purchased in White Run, not long after my arrival and unofficial adoption by the denizens of the city. And within it, I carried a portion of my whole life. Much more than you’d expect from looking at it.
I guess I’m getting a little ahead of myself.
Hi! I’m Nate, and you don’t know me from Adam. I bet that saying surprises you, considering I’m talking non-stop about people and places from a video game, right? Very meta, I know. But, as it turns out, I’m not actually from the cold, unforgiving land of Skyrim. Not originally.
I’m not from Tamriel or even Nirn at all! Nope. I’m just your average 21st-century Midwestern schlub from Chicago. The Windy City. The City of Big Shoulders. The Second City. Urbs in Horto – that means City in a Garden if you don’t speak Latin, and I don’t. It’s the official city motto! I bet you didn’t know that. Okay, I’ll stop.
But it’s a pretty sweet town if you ask me.
I haven’t seen it in a quarter century now. And that makes me sad. It wasn’t my idea to leave it, after all. No, I was scooped up and stolen from my home quite against my will. I wish there were a big, heroic story about me dying in some selfless act to save the lives of my fellow citizens, but there isn’t.
One minute, I was at home watching some streaming service with a smile on my face, and the next, I was staring at the face of a fictional God of Madness.
Well, he certainly didn’t think of himself as fictional, and after a few tense minutes of me questioning my sanity and existence, I stopped thinking of him as fictional, too. He turned me into a spoon for thirty seconds.
You’d think if someone turned you into a spoon, you wouldn’t be aware of it – you know, being an inanimate object without life or a mind. But when a being that, for all intents and purposes, has the powers of a real god decides he wants to teach you a lesson... children, you’d better learn quickly.
Being a spoon sucks. Even for thirty seconds. I still have issues at dinner if I’m not careful – it’s tough to shake the thought that you might be putting a sentient thinking creature into your soup and then licking it clean after you’ve been there once.
Yeesh.
Anyway, I was straight-up kidnapped by an inter-dimensional Prince of Madness out of the blue and deposited right smack dab in the middle of the war-torn lands of Skyrim. As a fifteen-year-old. Yeah. The son of a bitch de-aged me by a quarter century. I remember looking at my scrawny, awkward teen arms and asking, ‘Dear God, why??’.
He laughed and said it would “give me character.” I was forty! I had plenty of character! And indoor plumbing!!
He also said he was bored.
What do you say to something like that? What can you say? I couldn’t think of anything, so I just laughed. Maniacally, like really crazy laughter. I might have snapped a bit. Normally, that would be a very poor decision in front of a being of unlimited (as far as I can tell) power, but it was the correct move for this one.
“That’s the spirit, kid! Roll with the punches. Always keep them guessing what you’ll do next!” And then he laughed and vanished in a cloud of butterflies. Honest to daedra. Butterflies.
After that, I blacked out, and everything got kind of hazy for a bit, but eventually, I got it together and made myself a life. Don’t worry, I’ll fill you in on the details as we go, wink .
Alright then.
I had my bag and was now standing in the middle of an open plain covered in a very light dusting of snow. It was cold, but I’d spent more than two decades in Skyrim and another decade in Chicago. I could do cold.
And it wasn’t that cold; maybe late April or late October at the worst, as I recalled temperatures in my native Midwest. I opened my bag and shoved my arm into the interior while thinking, ‘Jacket!’ and voila! One jacket was promptly pulled from its depths.
It was cut like a modern 21st-century leather jacket but not quite as refined. The stitches were tight and clean, but still only handmade. No modern machinery was available to put something like that together anywhere in Tamriel outside of a Dwemer ruin. And the automatons there didn’t offer to sew you a coat.
They usually just tried to cut your fucking head off.
I liked my jacket, though. It was comfortable and warm and offered protection from more than just the elements (I had years of enchantment study to thank for that). For a medieval setting, it looked damn fancy.
I didn’t bother with a heavy cloak for now. It wasn’t so cold like that.
Wherever this was.
Behind me, perhaps a mile or so, was a very thick and imposing forest of tall trees. It stretched beyond the horizon in two directions – to my right and at an angle to my left.
Damn, that was a big forest.
I briefly considered a location spell of some kind. The school of Illusion might have been my weakest magical skill, but even I could manage Apprentice level spells. Clairvoyance would likely get me to where I needed to go, so long as I kept the thought of a destination in my mind.
I let the magic rise within me, building up from the center of my chest until I felt I had enough to let it flow through my outstretched arm. I clenched my fist with exertion, only to release it along with the magical build-up within me. The power of Aetherius rushed from my now open hand. I kept the stream of magicka going for several more seconds as I studied the direction of the wispy helix-shaped path pointed out ahead of me.
I waited a few moments after I ended the spell, as casting as a novice always made me a little lightheaded. Illusion had its uses, but I didn’t often partake in them. I had always preferred other schools – Destruction, Restoration, Alteration, Enchanting—the glamour magics.
That was a little joke. You know, because illusions were also known as glamours? Get it? Nevermind.
After a short wait, I stood back up and started walking. The path had led in this direction, east, unless I missed my guess. Only trees, open fields, and brisk, clean air kept me company.
Nothing like a morning walk to start your day.
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I walked for what felt like half the day. At least six or seven hours. Okay, maybe less.
Definitely less; I could be a bit dramatic.
I had walked away from the line of trees behind me but practically parallel to the line to my left. That imposing line of trees was a definite source of discomfort for me. Who knew what was hiding in there?
But the path ahead, refreshed with an occasional blast of Clairvoyance to keep me in the right direction, led me east into the rising sun.
Assuming the sun was playing by the usual rules.
Eventually, I happened upon a road. It was a simple thing – paved with uneven stones but wide and sturdy. It stretched from treeline to the horizon, north to south, with no markers or signs. But if there was one thing that I was sure of, it was that roads meant civilization!
I looked left, to the north, and right, to the south.
It was a quandary. I mused over my choice for a few minutes, trying to devise a list of pros and cons for each direction. But there weren’t any, not without any additional information at my disposal. Save one. The path to my left led directly into that scary-looking forest.
So, I chose the path to my right and started my march south. It was cold already, so south had to mean warmer on principle, right? Right.
...unless this was the southern hemisphere of... wherever this was. Fuck. Best not to overthink it.
I marched south.
__________________________________
It was nearly evening when I saw smoke rising above the gentle hills.
It had been an uneventful day of solo travel. I hadn’t run across any fellow travelers, which I found somewhat surprising, over the course of the day. I hadn’t seen any towns or villages either. Just the occasional lonely farmhouse on the horizon every few miles. I wasn’t so desperate to approach a single dwelling like that, so I kept on my way.
That may sound strange, traveling for the entirety of a day’s hours in the sun without running across a major settlement or town, but it really wasn’t. After all, I’d been on foot and probably only walked about twenty miles in total.
And now, just before dark, I saw evidence of what I had been searching for all day—a village.
I sped up my pace, determined to push forward these last couple of miles as quickly as possible to beat the sunset. Modern people took that for granted – the ability to travel and move safely after sundown.
Two decades in Skyrim had cured me of that! We humans are naturally afraid of the dark for some damn good reasons. And I had no idea if something like a snowy sabrecat would be out hunting in the moonlight this evening.
Wait… moonlight? There was a moon! I could see it high in the sky behind me at that moment! I gazed up at the bright, white, shining moon blazing in the sky and realized two important things:
One: I was definitely no longer on Nirn. The white disk in the sky was much too light to be Secondus, which I’d been staring at for years in Skyrim, and there was no second, far larger red moon dominating the sky. No Masser = No Nirn. I should have noticed hours earlier but had been a little distracted by my mental disparagement of Sheogorath.
Two: It was also not likely the single moon mankind had looked up at above Earth. The size and color were about right from what I remembered, but the scars across the surface I could plainly see were incredibly unfamiliar. Unless some serious meteor activity changed the face of Luna sometime before or after my life there, then I was on an entirely new planet.
Fuck.
I sucked down a deep sigh of disappointment and trudged forward toward the smoke trails above the horizon ahead. The road wound through the low hills, which opened up to reveal a quaint little town. I took note of the styles and colors of the wood and tiles that made up the dozens, maybe hundreds, of buildings that hugged the road on either side.
The roofs of every building were sharply pitched as if to prevent the accumulation of snow beyond a minimal amount. That told me heavy snowfall was a severe threat here. They were mostly made of wood, though I could see a few stone structures scattered among the facades. Most were one or two-story buildings - family dwellings and shops, I assumed. They were not decorated, save for the occasional sign indicating the type of service or goods available.
All in all, the village was rather plain, though not poorly built. It appeared quite sturdy and well-kept. There was even a wooden palisade that encircled the entirety of the town. A pair of wooden towers stood sentinel over the open gates that led into the town, and men with spears or staffs congregated near the entrance.
Hopefully, they would be friendlier than the weather.
__________________________________
Success!
The guards hadn’t much cared about a single traveler making his way south and had waved me through the gates without a challenge. They’d been quite taken by my jacket (What did I tell you? Huh? HUH?) and bag, and I had half expected one or more of them to offer to buy them. I was also surprised that none of them had tried to shake me down for a coin or two as a “toll” or “fee” to enter unmolested. But I received a relatively warm welcome for an obvious foreigner.
Judging by their attire and the construction of the buildings, they were of a similar technological and historical bent as the people of Skyrim. Most of these folk would have fit right in across any of the Holds, except for the accent.
The sharp Nordic lilt I’d grown accustomed to over the past quarter century was nowhere to be found among the quiet chatter and neighborly banter I overheard on my way to the large inn that dominated one side of the town square.
A gritty working-class brogue bounced around the crowds in every direction. I recognized it as English but wouldn’t have known which part had I still been home on Earth. Not Cockney; I remembered that one. The language, too, was modern(ish) English, just like every written word I’d encountered on my march to a decent night’s sleep.
The inn was by far one of the biggest buildings in town. It stood on the far side of the square from what I assumed to be a manor/small keep for the town’s mayor or lord. The inn stood four stories high, with external walkways and balconies on each floor. It wouldn’t have looked out of place in any city in Skyrim, either.
Well, maybe Markarth.
Smoke bellowed into the sky from multiple chimneys emerging from its angled roofs, and people chattered in the crisp air on each level as I walked through the front door. A wave of sound, smoke, smell, and light hit me all at once. It was a familiar and welcome feeling after a long day of misery.
I surveyed the interior of the main dining hall upon entry. Vaulted ceilings in the cavernous room reached up to the third floor. Interior walkways led to rooms that might have been used for meetings or private dining, and people looked down from railed balconies on both upper floors. If those were rooms, they would be the cheapest and noisiest ones, so I hoped to find an external room with a bit of peace.
A dozen long cafeteria tables were lined up to my right. Each had a smattering of folks drinking or eating from pewter and wooden plates. A series of hearths, all lit, were being used for people to gather around and drink or roast various carcasses of game being served. A few pots of soup or stew bubbled above others.
Hmm. Trusting lot. In Skyrim, the urchins alone would have picked those spits clean.
Off-duty guardsmen drank with merchants and farmers. Ladies of the evening plied their trade on customers of every shape and size. Children rang laughing between the rows of tables, though I didn’t notice any pockets or purses lifted on their route. At least three different bards played their lutes and pipes in different corners of the room, the distance and noise of the night keeping their tunes from overlapping.
It was a lively place.
I walked through the hall and made my way up to the long wooden bar, where a middle-aged man passed out tankards and mugs.
“Howdy,” I called as I stepped up to the bar. If I play the part of a foreigner, I might as well have fun with it.
“Well met,” the man replied with an easy smile. “Yer new here. We get a fair bit of travelers of all sorts, but I don’t recall seeing you before. What can I get ya?”
I smiled back and perched on the edge of an empty stool at the bar. “I’m not from around here, so you definitely haven’t seen me before. I’m passing through the area unexpectedly. I’ll be needing a comfortable bed for the night, and maybe some information. I certainly wouldn’t turn down a meal and a cup or two of ale, either.” I reached into my bag and activated one of the runes etched into a series of clasps that ran across the length of the opening.
I had worked on this particular spell for over three years, bouncing between Tolfdir at the College and Neloth in Solstheim. With a bit of hard work, ingenuity, and luck, the three of us had come up with a series of space expansion, dimensional storage, and inventory spells that could be used for many things.
But for me, it allowed me to carry far, far more in this bag than should ever have been possible. And access it using a sorting system of runes on the aforementioned clasps. My own personal Bag of Holding and Sorting. Neloth and Tolfdir had found equally impressive uses for it, though perhaps a bit less personal.
The Alteration magic imbued in the clasp did its work instantly, and I opened the back and pulled out a small sack of coins.
If I’d come straight from Earth, with paper dollars and coins made of copper and nickel, I’d have been in a real spot. Thankfully, Skyrim used gold and silver, which were pretty much universally accepted in any world that humankind inhabited. It was just a question of value.
Exchange rates and values varied widely even across the lands of Tamriel. A coin would never buy quite the same amount of anything, depending on where you were. So there was no way to know, given I was no longer in that world, how much purchasing power my coin would have. A night at a good inn and a belly full of beer or mead with a meal would run you anywhere from 5 to 25 silver septims.
This inn was nice, and the food and drink looked clean and tasty.
But it was usually a bad idea to flash stacks of ready coin out in any unfamiliar place. That was true of both worlds I’d lived in. It was likely true here as well.
I counted out ten shiny silver septims from my pouch and two larger gold ones and set them down on the bar in front of the man I figured to be the proprietor of the tavern or inn. They usually kept bar themselves, as that was where they made the most coin.
I slid the small stack of silver septims across the bar to sit in front of the man and looked up at his face while I kept the two gold ones under my fingers.
Interesting reaction.
The size of his eyes and small trickle of sweat already rolling down his temple was indicative that I’d seriously underestimated the value of a gold coin here, wherever that was. He barely even looked at the silver yet.
Well, that was always a possibility. It was why I hadn’t grabbed twenty or twenty-five coins instead.
The man’s eyes narrowed as he picked up one of the coins to inspect it more closely. “Not seen coin like this before, either. It’s bigger than I’ve seen elsewhere. Can’t possibly be pure silver, can it?”
I shrugged. “The Empire strictly controls septims. All coins are carefully minted in only a few locations before being more widely distributed. They are as pure a coin as you’ll ever find, I’d bet.”
“Which empire is that? Where do ya come from, lad?” he asked with equal parts suspicion and curiosity. He couldn’t help but steal glances at the pair of gold coins still in my grasp.
“Well, that’s rather hard to explain. How about we agree to an exchange? You keep those silver coins for a night’s stay and a meal here, and I give you this coin,” I held up the first of the gold septims at eye level before him, “for the courtesy of answering any of my questions. The second coin… well, that will depend on your answers.”
I saw the war rage behind his eyes as he tried to work out the logistics and odds of being swindled versus the greed of walking away with a pair of large gold coins. I knew how it would end, the same way it always does.
Greed has no equal in the hearts of men in any world.
He reached out, plucked up the coin from my hand, and swept away half the stack of silvers on the bar. The others he pushed back toward me, to my surprise. He first looked over the gold coin, the big prize of our deal, and after a few moments of handling it, he decided to trust me.
“Never seen a gold coin this size before. Must be three times as big as a dragon. Silvers are more’n half the size of our moons, too. Yer coat ain’t something I seen before, neither. You some kind of foreign lord, then? Or a wealthy merchant, perhaps? Bah, no matter. You paid enough to stay with my thanks for a fortnight, not countin’ the gold. Ask yer questions, and if I got the answer, I’ll be happy to share it.”
Okay, I had already made progress! The silver septims I’d offered were enough to pay for a month at a reputable (I assumed) inn around these parts. I filed that information under IMPORTANT in my mind. I had ample coin of varying make in my bag—enough to fund a lifetime’s worth of stays at inns at that rate, if nothing else. An unexpected voyage to Elsweyr ten years prior had seared that lesson into my hide.
Almost literally!
Several chests of gold, silver, and copper septims were stashed in my bag, along with the scavenged coins of long-dead empires (and a couple of current ones) from my years of adventuring and dungeon delving.
Admit it, if you found yourself in Skyrim, you wouldn’t be able to pass up the chance to raid a few Nordic tombs either. There be gold in them draugr nests, I tells ya!
As long as I had my bag, I would never be penniless.
Now it was time to make good on the bargain I’d made with the innkeep and get down to brass tacks – to find out where the hell I was!
“Excellent, my good man. First of all, I saw the name of this fine establishment on the sign as I entered. Wind’s End is catchy; I like it! I did not, however, get the name of this lovely town on my way past the gate. The guardsmen there weren’t really the chatty types. Where am I?”
He smiled at such an easy question, undoubtedly thinking he was well on his way to earning that second gold coin. And he was; it was an easy way to make friends in a foreign land!
“Welcome to Wolfsrun Rest, my friend! We’re the largest town on the Kingsroad this side of the Neck! Won’t find a cozier town anywheres in the kingdoms, if ya ask me. Though I’m not what you’d call a fair judge o’ that,” he crowed and shared a conspiratorial wink with me at the end.
Hmmm. There’s something familiar now about this.
“I see. And which kingdoms would those be, if you don’t mind sharing?”
That stunned him. He could only gape at me like a fish for several seconds. It was not a question he often heard, I would venture from his reaction. He did not appear prepared for it in the slightest as he blinked in confusion at me. Wherever this was, it didn’t get a lot of lost travelers.
A snort from my left turned my head.
A small child struggled to climb onto the stool next to me, but I could only see a head full of thin, pale blonde hair from my vantage point. After a moment, the boy settled himself next to me and served me a portion of the surprise I'd given the barkeep.
“I had come over to the bar to refill my mug, but it seems that I’ve also found myself an interesting tale. Few people find themselves this deep into the North by accident, and fewer still don't know it.”
The not-boy turned toward me after sliding his empty mug to the barman, who only nodded and answered with a mumbled ‘milord’ before rushing off to the kegs.
Whom I had thought a child was a fully grown man, though not grown tall. Stubby fingers drummed on the bartop in idle distraction. Short, stunted legs rested beneath a squat, richly adorned body. That, in turn, supported a large (relatively) jutting forehead, beneath which were set a pair of keenly intelligent eyes.
Mismatched eyes, at that. Eyes filled with many things – curiosity, wit, humor, and even a little malice. One green, one black.
The blonde, silky hair that topped the head shone almost white in the flickering light, though I could spy a few strands of black hidden among the gold.
A smile so sharp it was almost a sneer greeted my astonished response.
“I saw your interesting coat at our table and, finding myself needing a refill, thought I would get a closer look. It’s not a style I’ve seen in the capital. Or the West. Or the North or anywhere else in the Seven Kingdoms. You aren’t from Westeros, are you? And if the attire wasn’t enough to prove that to my person, I’m quite sure your accent is one I’ve never heard before! Where might you come from, friend?”
I was finally able to shake off enough of my surprise at the revelation of where I now found myself to respond.
“You’re Tyrion Lannister!”
Fuck my life.