Oblivion Mod:Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul/Master Lien Valeth's Notes

[This book contains many personal notes of Master Lien Valeth, the feared leader of the Putrid Hand necromancers]

The grave! The empty and cold and barren and desolate and welcoming grave! How sweetly once I longed for its embrace of shadow and rot. What was that which enchanted me so? How could I have been so blind? The world, spinning in every direction, moving about the cosmos like wood in an ocean of eternal storms, holds the key to its own rest, beyond the maremagnum of destinies and fates. I have found the key.

The soul of Graithlan leads me through the path to where no mortal belongs. Hidden within the words of the ancient texts, burrowed deeply in the riddles of hollow meanings and bountiful lies, the secret opened as gently as a flower blooms. The hardships of the past, left behind, are a mirror of twilight's dreams--no longer heavy upon my body, no longer filling my mind. It is empty, and all that remains is the path.

My brethren, my kin, my friends and my lovers and guilt, are now but shadows of that long gone emotion bereft of true power and sunk in dark waters of torment. For their care I hold no passion, but the path inexorably leads back to them. The revenge against Traven is sealed--their fate is bound to the never-ending world that I will reveal to their blind and tired eyes.

Soon shall the tide turn into a still sea, and we must then hold our stride--for it shall never again walk the lands of the living and the dead. The gates are within sight. The key lies in a resting place from where it shall not emerge, until the hour comes--the hour where time stops.

It is beyond hands that would change this fate. Eregor cannot but fail, and the desperate efforts of the Bear will not procure him what his old age seeks despite his pride. Graithlan's vessels await for one alone--me. The destiny that will seal itself, along all others, belongs to one alone--me. Nothing they may do will now change the course of the world. Even if the ranger falls in his refuge of sacrilege and dishonor, even if Molag would reanimate the champions of chaos, even if her beauty and cunning were enough to brave Facian's dangers for the last prize, the course is set, and they will do naught but serve my purpose and will.

No being of flesh and blood will stop the tide of the netherworld--my soul is one with the destiny of Nirn, beyond the comprehension of Traven, beyond the gaze of the Worm King, beyond, verily, my own touch. The words are written as if etched upon the fabric of which reality is threaded--forever.

To those that would read my legacy, before the end, before the beginning, I bid you welcome and farewell. Your life is mine to hold, and in the beyond I shall open the gates of the Great Gray.

Lien Valeth, the exalted, the forsaken, the forgotten, the nameless -- your fate.