Lady-Inquisitor Ansari Gernot-Dungeoneer

"Yer name is Lady-Inquisitor Ansari Gernot-Dungeoneer, my love, and as our song says, 'If you forget my love, I'll try to remind you: stay by you, when it don't come easy.' We said 'till death do us part', and we're no dead yet love." Your husband tells you, and you smile at him.

"Thank you, that means a lot." You say, taking hold of his hand. "Now, what else can you tell me about my past, and 'our' past?" You ask.

Over the course of the long ride down to the capitol city of Skyrim at "Whiterun" Hold, the group, (with more than a few pertinent interjections from the Wagoneer when everyone draws a blank, but who otherwise is fairly laconic), explains most of what's going on, which will be summarized here, although more information will be shared as it becomes relevant later: especially further details. After a devastating war against the sun-elves three human generations ago, the empire was engulfed in a civil-war over the outlawing of the worship of many gods that the elves "disapproved of" but especially "Talos Storm-Crowned: the Divine Emperor" founder of the Empire, as part of the "The Treaty of the Gold and the White". Nowhere was this war more devastating, or prolonged, than here in Skyrim, where even-today the rebellion will, occasionally, flare-back-up in various areas, though not to the point it did during the latter days of Emperor Titus Mede II's reign. What no-one had expected was The Dragon-Lady, Necromances, and the Chosen of Io, Empress Phinda Cephalon I: Founder of the Imperial Dynasty of Cephalon, Empress; by Marriage to Emperor Titus Mede II, by Force of Arms, by Divine Right as anointed Demigoddess of Io, and by The Will of the Gods expressed by the re-alignment of the stars themselves and double-half-eclipse of the sun during her coronation outside of it's predicted timing. To say that her life had been "Eventful" would be the understatement of the AGE, but the candle that burns twice as brightly, must, correspondingly, burn but half as long, and she did blaze SO VERY BRIGHT... In a single generation, she restored the Empire to the height of it's glory, her legions of the dead slaughtered the enemies of the empire like cattle, and then with a tip of her crown the enemy dead rose-again to swell her own ranks even further.

Where Tiber Septum, also known as Talos Storm-Crown, had been a shining beacon of all that was bright and good about the empire, she became his natural counter-point: he was the empires mercy, its honor, its peace, and its truth: she was, and (in a certain sense of legacy), IS even-now, its great-and-terrible RAGE, HATRED, VENGECE, and WRATH when backed into a corner by its enemies.

Of the summerset isles, none have had word, not in a generation. Whatever happened there when; after driving first the Stormcloak army into defeat at the battle of White River Gorge, (for a time), killing False-King Ulfric the Usurper with the same power of "The Voice" he had used to Shout-Apart the True High-King, (right in Ulfric's own throne-room and in a fight so one-sided that it was more like an execution than a duel), re-unifying the entire continent at the point of a sword, and having four children with the pervious emperor one-after-another until his death; she finally raised an army of the walking dead assembled from all-those she'd killed over ten years of continual campaigns of bloody-handed slaughter, including many-many dragons, and sailed for the summerset-isles to fight the Thalmor where they lived-and-bred, is unrecorded. Among the whole of that army, only one other living person, her Dark-Elven lover-and-bodyguard Jenassa, (Who had followed her since nearly the very beginning of her legend, their tale as-intertwined as both their bodies and eventually fates would become), sailed to Summerset with her; and no-one-and-nothing that has set-foot on those gleaming golden shores and walked further inland than can be seen clearly from the crows-nest of a ship off the coast with a spyglass has returned to tell what happens there in the decade since she landed with the "Imperial Grand Army of the Dead". However, what IS known, is that the fading power of the Shrines of Talos has returned to full strength, and the former power of the shrines of the Thalmor pantheon have, similarly, begun to fade... What else is known is that no-one can ever be observed working in the weed-choked fields that can be seen from the shore-line, and that about twenty miles inland from there begins to sprout a massive forest of young trees across the entire coastal plane of the island as far inland as can be seen, very clearly planted in a way that was intended to appear 'random' to casual observation, under the direction of one who had no conception of the true randomness by which forests generate naturally at that latitude. Whatever happens beneath their branches, none who enter into the woods further than may be observed return, and any who once set-foot on its shore begin to walk straight toward the forest the moment they are out of ear-shot of their boats, nor has anything that's been tried been able to prevent them doing so, with much being attempted, only to ALWAYS fail...

A new goddess, "We-Jas" has appeared in the time since the Empress Disappearance: a goddess of death, magic, healing, rebirth, and renewal. Her clerics rebuke and command the undead, but, strangely, spontaneously cast "Cure" spells, instead of "Inflict", which those of no other deity do both of these things in combination. That goddess has also been lauded by Talos Storm-Crown, who has appeared alongside this otherwise voluptuous and alluring Skull-Headed goddess of magic and death in the dreams of officials the length-and-breadth of the empire telling them "This is We-Jas, Goddess-Empress of Mankind even as We are its God-Emperor, and Our new wedded Wife-Divine: begin to build unto her a shrine or temple, adjacent, adjoining, or co-mingled with my own, as you see fit and resources allow, within the span of this year; or you shall suffer Our wrath as your lord-and-god!" Those whom have obeyed have been blessed, those who have defied him have suffered for their sins. They have also stated, all of them, the obedient and disobedient alike, that during the dream, it never occurred to any of them that it was odd how her head was a blank human skull, no glowing eyes, just empty sockets, jaws that moved without muscles. Nor did it seem strange at the time how she spoke with a voice both youthful, sweet, and clear, yet strangely both motherly and matronly as well, for all that the rest of her flesh besides her head was very young and comely. Neither did they find it odd until later how her dark-but-vibrant human flesh blended into her bleached and leering deathlike skull/head with barely a seam, as though the flesh wasn't cut, or flayed, or rotted away from the skull, but had never been MEANT to grow upon it, the line of her thin-but-shapely neck just continuing up straight from it's narrow point to stop at the bottom of the skull with naught but a thin line of semi-hard tendon to mark the seam between them that only served to enhance her otherworldly beauty, rather than detract from it.

The thru-line of these events is intuitively obvious to most who hear it, but those who openly bandy-about such conclusions, or argue against them, or propose various plausible origin stories for We-Jas, or even directly speculate about her origins before she appeared a few years ago in any way at all actually, are universally visited by her in their dreams and always told the same thing in a voice as Icey as the grave: "What I am now, I am. What I have been before now: IS NOT. Dig you not into my history: that book in my story is closed, and neither shalt it be re-opened," whereupon they wake immediately, with an intuitive sense that continuing this line of questioning/speculation would be exceedingly unwise. None of those vanishingly small number who have directly persisted after her warning have lived-out the year; although it does appear to be safe to "talk-around" the matter, (provided you ONLY state the known-and-accepted facts of history as you see them, rather than speculating), even as I have just done... You may imply that which is supported by the evidence, but none may declare anything at all...

With the previous Emperor dead, his previous children appointed to the governorships of the re-conquered territories, and both of their wills stating that her blessed bloodline should rule for now, but the decedents of his previous children and her children with him should, in a few generations time when inbreeding ceased to be a serious concern, inter-marry to reunite the two bloodlines: the empire is at-peace, save that various provinces have ongoing issues with banditry and recurrent uprisings that are swiftly-put-down only to re-emerge a year or two later.