Skip navigation
Library

Coldharbour

Ritual of Resonance

Author: 
Anonymous

The Soul Shriven shriek and writhe in Coldharbour. The Harvester of Souls digests them, makes them mutter and despair. They whisper their secrets to the dead winds of Oblivion, and those with ears attuned will know them and use them.

Gather the implements
A steel needle, nightshade, frost salts
The crushed bone of a sacrifice
Splintered tooth of a daedroth

Inscribe the circle:
The names and the symbols. Sower of Strife. Lord of Brutality. Corner of the House of Troubles.

Create the tool:
Purify the needle over a fire of nightshade. Cool it in frost salts. Place upon it an enchantment of sharpness and one of weak shock.

Prepare the body:
Create a draught of bone and tooth and hold it in the mouth. Inscribe the names and symbols on the flesh of the palms.

Open the gate:
Place the needle in the left ear's entrance. Insert so slowly as barely to move. Worldly sounds make way for the cries and secret dreams of the slaves in Coldharbour.
 

 

Cadwell's Journal: Famous Coldharbourites , Part 37

Author: 
Sir Cadwell

What a fun group! I love visiting with Nolagha, Keggahiha, and Rsolignah at the Daedroth Larder.

But don't eat the snacks. They may be someone we know.

Cadwell's Journal: Famous Coldharbourites , Part 21

Author: 
Sir Cadwell

Honor sometimes plays with Duriatundur. He loves to grab hold of a rib and just shake and shake!

Maybe that's why Duriatundur runs when he sees the old chap …

Cadwell's Journal: Famous Coldharbourites , Part 14

Author: 
Sir Cadwell

The ruins of old Aba-Darre serves as the home of the misunderstood monster, Sthorha the Crazed.

Oh, the fiesty daedroth can be a bit testy, and we've certainly gone a round or two over the years, but she can be brilliantly affectionate if given half the chance.

Like now.

She's affectionately gnawing on my foot.

Good daedra!

Cadwell's Journal: Deep Thoughts, Part 412

Author: 
Sir Cadwell

Another bit of someplace else falls into Coldharbour and what do the Dremora do?
What they always do! It's a shame, really. Crush, kill, and destroy. So tedious!

Oh, that reminds me. I need to go to the Everfull Flagon and visit with those drunken Nords.
Tedious, yes, but they know some wonderful drinking songs.

And Honor loves the sweet dough that Bernt provides for his guests.

Slave's Diary

Author: 
Anonymous

They take more of us every day, regardless of whether we still have flesh or not. The soul shriven, as they call them, are the bulk of those taken; people whose bodies are long since wasted away, but whose spirits live on in Oblivion.

Some of them say that their souls are inside gems, and that they can feel themselves being jostled about as their respective gems are moved from one place to another. They are filled with so much sorrow that it crushes the heart just to hear them speak of the lives they have mostly forgotten.

I don't know what they do to the others, but their screaming can be heard even down in the dungeons. It is an endless procession of misery from which there is no escape.

The gods cannot hear us here. Is there any salvation? Is there any hope at all?

The Slave Pits of Coldharbour

Author: 
Anonymous

Kynbriefing #3 of 97:

So you survived your first two shifts in the pits without discorporation or being sentenced to the scathe-rings, and now you think you know it all. Not so, kynworm: we give you easy tasks for the first couple of shifts, jobs any idiot can do, so you won't embarrass us with your all-too-likely failure. But now it's shift three, kynworms.

Now we talk quota.

These soul-shriven weren't brought to the pits for your amusement, you know. As an overkyn, I can tell you they weren't brought for my amusement, either. They're here solely for the amusement of the Dread Lord—and he takes a lot of amusing. So pay attention. You're going to be assigned a coffle of soul-shriven, you're going to be told what they need to do, and then you're going to make sure they do it.

And you're going to be brutal about it. That's the good part, but also the tricky part—because we only get so many soul-shriven, and we have to make them last. They must suffer, of course, or you won't make your torment quota. But you can't use them up too soon, or you'll miss your toil quota. And if you miss either quota….

Well. You've seen the scathe-rings.

So that's what it's all about, kynworms: toil and torment, and maintaining the balance between the two. Some of you will fail, and suffer slow and agonizing discorporation—but others will find their inner abominance and triumph, exceeding quota and earning time in the bliss-cells. It's up to you, kynworms: cut it or scathe.

On the Nature of Coldharbour

Author: 
Phrastus of Elinhir

This is Lecture Eight: On the Nature of Coldharbour. It looks to me like there are more of you here than there should be, so please check your ledger—if it says Transliminal Bridges, you're in the wrong room.

Coldharbour is the Oblivion realm ruled by Molag Bal, the Daedric Prince of brutality, slavery, vampirism, and other assorted abominations. It is not, therefore, a pleasant place. Descriptions of the plane vary widely, as usual in any study of Oblivion, but all accounts agree that Coldharbour is a dismal, cold, and largely lifeless realm pervaded by a miasma of fear, where lost souls are tormented for eternity.

This emphasizes the point made in my previous lectures, that a plane of Oblivion, being made of the very stuff of chaos, takes on form and character that reflects the nature of its ruler. Coldharbour, therefore, has been molded to embody the purposes of mighty Molag Bal.

And what are those purposes? As it happens, I can speak to this subject with some authority, for I recently acquired the library and papers of the late Cardinal Belforte of the Order of Stendarr. The Cardinal devoted his life to ridding Tamriel of Daedric cultists of all persuasions. He was particularly rigorous in his persecution of the worshipers of Molag Bal, and in his time acquired a number of their repulsive tracts and treatises.

Study of these sources reveals that Molag Bal desires, above all things, the enslavement of mortals' souls. Various loathsome means are employed to this end, the ultimate goal being the diversion of a soul from its journey to the afterlife to imprisonment and slavery on the plane of Coldharbour. Upon arrival in Molag Bal's realm, the soul attracts to itself some of the loose creatia of Oblivion, forming a corporeal body with the semblance of the shape it wore in life. These sad slaves, called the soul-shriven, then toil in torment for the glory and amusement of their master, Molag the Slave-Lord.

I share these secrets of the cult, heretofore unrevealed, so that you may …. What is that confounded commotion out in the hall? How am I supposed to lecture over those bloodcurdling screams? I can't work under these conditions.

To All Who Pass Through

Author: 
Dutheil, Artisan of Oblivion

I am Dutheil, Artisan of Oblivion, and these are my Vaults of Madness. Look upon them and cower.

They were designed to contain my enemies, villains who lived only to inflict misery upon me. The wretches tormented me for years, jeered, prodded, taunted, before finally turning the nobles of Wayrest against me. They ruined my career as the preeminent architect in the West.

Such was my rage that I sought the Daedra, who came to me, offering a pact for my talents. They would capture my tormentors and imprison them here. In return, I would build for them. I accepted gladly.

In Wayrest, I designed inescapable prisons for law enforcement, opaline palaces for the nobles of the Gardens District. My works were heralded as a crossing of artistic perfection and architectural function. But what I've built for the planes of Oblivion are so much more. Black spires for the Scheming Lord of Coldharbour are instruments of torture as much as they are monuments to his greatness. The razor pits of Deadlands never dull, and cut flesh, bone, and spirit essence for the Prince of Destruction—in ways that even the most powerful healers can never mend.

Even so, all of these creations—from the gestating cyst-towers of Molag Bal to the sparkling Pellingare Manor in Wayrest—are but baubles compared to the Vaults. They are my Daedric Crescent, my Akaviri Warblade, the culmination of my skill, my greatest creation.

And they grow only more extraordinary with time. What was once a place of eternal anguish for the three charlatans who ruined my mortal life has grown to become a nexus of torture for all manner of Tamrielic souls. So exquisite is the work I do in these Vaults that even the Daedric Princes send souls to me to oversee.

And as for you, dear guest—know that the pain you experience here is the result of lifetimes of refinement and iteration. Embrace it, and writhe, and be awed.

The Lightless Oubliette

Author: 
Anonymous

If you've never served a shift in the Lightless Oubliette before, pay close attention, because this is not a place where you want to make a mistake. The L. O. was specifically constructed as a detention facility for captive servants of the Shining Bitch, and you know how our Dread Lord feels about her. If any of these Aurorans or Lustrants escape on your watch, you'll be lucky to get off with Second-Degree Gradual Discorporation.
Now I don't care how well you know the Seven-Hundred-and-One Edicts; I don't care if you can quote chapter and verse from the Mandatory Codicils: the rules that matter in the Lightless Oubliette are the following.

1. No white or yellow glow crystals to be brought into the facility.
This isn't because we like the place gloomy, fools. It's because the Prisoners can pervert certain spectra of light into working on their behalf. Stick to blue glow crystals for illumination, or even better, open flame.

2. No torment-sport with the Prisoners.
That includes the Elf King. No, I don't know why, that's just the way it is. Rumor has it the Dread Lord is planning some kind of nasty surprise for the Shining Bitch, and to pull it off he needs her servants with their bodies intact. Could be true, I don't know.

3. Clean up after yourself.
This is a top-security facility, so no Soul Shriven are allowed in, not even custodians. You make a mess, you clean it up. This includes any bodily fluids spilled during sparring practice—if I find stains on the flagstones again, somebody's next shift will be in the scathe-rings.