The Imperial Library

I'm looking to put some monkey-truth on TESF, but I keep second-guessing the voice and some of the facts. So I thought I'd run it by you guys first. So criticism is certainly invited.

[The following was found near the main campsite of Junior Spectre Umana’s expedition to Alftand. Given its contents and the state of the camp and corpses littered about, it is safe to conclude the following: 1. Umana is dead, and 2. The Falmer are irreconcilable and cannot be negotiated with at all for anything. I recommend they be classified a Sheogorath-Class Rogue Element of Indeterminate Threat. Organization and structure still remains unknown, but they do not appear to even understand the existence of the Empire. It is currently unknown how the Falmer wrote this in perfect Aldmeris, but it is speculated that they dictated it to one of these Castrati they refer to.

Observed by Primo Tutullius

Julian Spectre, Coronal Order]

                On behalf of the Council of Euphoric Timbre, I am tasked with the metallic Reflection of explaining to you in a manner you might understand as to why you should leave.

                It begins with the Tall Ones. We were once like you, deaf-yet-not, born of Fire and Sympathy. We desired simple things, we wanted our cradle back and we followed our Lord-Who-Is-No-Longer-Voiced to find it. We searched through the Cavern-Without-a-Ceiling until it became too cold and too wet to continue and our Lord-Who-Is-No-Longer-Voiced decided to settle there. The Tall Ones were already among us then, already souring the Great Song, but neither did we hear or did we care. We were obsessed with where the Roof-Was-Not and climbing as high as we could. We sang then too, but tone-deaf. We knew our cradle lay in the measures behind us and so we sought to create a repeat and bring those measures to us. We’d do it by reaching to the Great Tone with our Songs and reshape the Great Tone to reshape the Great Song so our cradle would come to us. Before we could, though, you Men came. You came with your Caterwauling and your New Instruments and our Lord-Who-Is-No-Longer-Voiced declared your song disharmonious. But your song was strong and you had the Meter’s followers with you who did not like our Song. We fought, we lost, the Meter’s followers took our old Song and made it theirs, a monument to their triumph and chrysalis. We had nowhere to go. Our brethren to the West were already like you and yet not and to the East, they worshipped the Silence, which was inimical to our Song. Some of us spurned our Lord’s voice and relentlessly fought Man in the East. But those of us who still followed our Lord-Who-Is-No-Longer-Voiced hid like Chaurus-spawn among the Tall Ones. They were strong enough to protect us, even if they didn’t care to destroy your New Instruments.

                At first, the Tall Ones were charitable and put us in their choir. They convinced us that we would blend our songs together until we would be strong enough to retake our old Song.

                They lied.

                The Tall Ones took their metal and steam, increased their treble and screamed at us in their Metallic Falsettos and we quaked and shrank away from them. Our Lord-Who-Is-No-Longer-Voiced stood alone against them. He cried out against their Metallic Falsettos, calling them Abomination and Pandemonious. He sang as loud as he could, but they drowned him with their Clanking Cacophony, shackled and chained him with their metals and then they did two horrible things. The Tall Ones first bound our Lord-Who-Is-No-Longer-Voiced by the throat so he could not breathe and sing. They ripped his voice away from him and bound it into a hand of metal. They said it was so they could manipulate the Great Song. They then set their machines on him to eat, chains and all. They started with his eyes, then flayed his skin open and made him scream out into the void and out of the refuse sprang all of the horrible unliving-yet-living machines that exist and spawn to this day. Their terrible Centurions, the song they sing, is a horrible mocking imitation of the song that our Lord-Who-Is-No-Longer-Voiced sang that day against the Tall Ones.

                The Tall Ones and their horrible metal and steam servants yoked us and made us sing like them. That was when we learned to listen, though we still did not hear. The Tall Ones made us listen to the Great Song for the first time in our existence and it was glorious. But they sought to change the Great Song. They hurt us when we tried to refuse and so we corrupted it as they wanted us to. Listen to it now. You’re not deaf enough to not hear that it’s wrong. Each note carries disharmonious subtones. The chords are off. It cadences where it should not. There’s too much polyphony. Too many voices thinking they are on the note, when in fact none of them are.

                In place of our Lord-Who-Is-No-Longer-Voiced, we had only our hatred of the Tall Ones and their cacophonous betrayal. And in the tunnels of the earth, it festered, transformed and grew, some by our doing, some by the Tall One’s own hand. We threw off our shackles, increased our bass section, and besieged their stronghold and we succeeded. Just as we opened the doors of their stronghold and just as we were breathing in to utter the Song of Change, the Tall Ones rested. We’re not certain if they were afraid of what we would do to them, or if the Great Song finally sang counterpoint and remade the Tall Ones as they remade the Song. It doesn’t matter anymore though. We conquered them. Us, the shackled and Voiceless, we did what no Man or Elf could do, we made the Tall Ones rest. But their song reverberates still through our Nation. Our Chained Castrati can hear it and they are just as deaf as you, so we know you can hear it clanking and clanging and mocking us all. It still twists the Great Song. We hate it so and therefore we work tirelessly and endlessly to dismantle their corruption and correct the notes that have been infected.

                We have made great progress in the measures since the Tall Ones rested. We transformed ourselves so that we could finally listen to and hear the Great Song. New Mardayn, what used to be the heart of the Tall One’s Dominion here, and where I am dictating from lies down from where you are. It is the capital of us Falmer. Many Falmer choirs were sacrificed, but you can at last hear the Song here, uncorrupted, pure. It is wonderful and sacred. So sacred that we do not allow the Chaurus into the Temple of Somber Reflections at its center. At the top of the Temple lies the Rostrum of Remembrance, where the Councils of Euphoric and Melancholy Timbre meet, the same place where the Tall Ones’ Conductor stood, and the same place where they took the voice of our Leader-Who-Is-No-Longer-Voiced. There, all singing is forbidden. We stand as mutes so that we may only listen to the Great Song. From there we hear you enter our halls with your tone-deaf and atonal music. It hurts us and prevents us from cleansing the Great Song. And so we send trios and sextets out to stop you from singing.

                You tread on our territory. You not only threaten our songs, but you also threaten to undo our work to purge the Great Song of the Tall One’s remixes. In short you think the noise that comes from your lips and instruments is music when it is simply cacophonous din. Leave this place before we are forced to silence you. If you wish to learn how to sing, then we will purify you and make you Castrati. Our soprano sections always need more voices. If you wish to become Castrati, then sit in the dining hall of the manor you currently occupy and wait for us to come. Otherwise leave and we will let you continue singing your noise up above in the Cavern-Without-a-Ceiling, where it makes little difference and impact. If you do not peacefully rest within the dining hall, or if you are anywhere else when we come in, we will turn you mute. You have until we finish the Elegy for the Reclaimers. We will pause slightly and then we will come in with the Concerto of the Unvoicing and that is when we will come if you are still around.

In the Name of the Council of Euphoric Timbre I do perform,

Dolphael