Board Thread:Roleplaying/@comment-25828117-20191127222222/@comment-5543592-20191128193559

Baldr nodded. "Whatever makes you happy."

Elinhir
It had been weeks worth of riding when Heidar arrived in Elinhir. But it was worth it.

Taneth was a city in the conventional sense. Massive, sprawling, overpopulated, a place that celebrated the splendor and wonders of mankind. With its towers and dark alleys, Taneth was filthy and beautiful at the same time. There was a charm to every aspect of it. One took the good with the bad and even the bad had some good in it.

Elinhir, however, was just beautiful. A faint mist enveloped Heidar as he emerged over the mountaintop, the imperial highway cutting down the side, and spotted the city. It was something else. It was not as large as Taneth, nor as tall, but it had all the wonder his hometown did. The fantastic and imposing Hall of Assembly with its domes and fortresses clung to a cliffside From the foot of the Hall, the city expanded outwards and eastwards. The buildings were tightly packed and uniform, a sea of red-tiled roofs. From the cliffs, waterfalls poured into the city’s canals, one of the main modes of transportation in the city.

“The City of Mages,” Heidar murmured. It was something, alright. What did they say about Elinhir? That it was ‘everything once and nothing twice.’

He patted the neck of his animal, breath steaming in the cool air. Elinhir might’ve been the most temperate of the eight kingdoms. “Well, Glendell? What do you think?”

The horse snorted and Heidar was inclined to agree.

“Yeah, me too. No big deal.”

They rode down the mountain, into the city. The mist didn’t lessen and soon Heidar’s hair and clothes were damp, an annoyance. He’d need to put extra oils on his sword, or else they’d rust.

At the foot of the mountain, the highway stopped as a dirt trail and began a new life as a paved road, now wide enough to accomodate the day-to-day traffic of a city. It led up to an open gate. Riding up, Heidar noted that Elinhir’s walls were low. Surrounded on every side by mountains, there were only three paths into the city--from the east, the west, and the south. This acted as natural fortifications, and in the event of an invading army, Elinhir needed only to block the pass in the direction they were coming from, and could receive supplies from the other two directions. Unlike Taneth, which had become warlike and culturally distinct as a necessity, Elinhir had become cosmopolitan and economically focused. It had one of the most diverse populations in Hammerfell, reflected by its architecture. The designs were more Imperial than Redguard, the use of waterways more Nedic than Yokudan. Although there was the flavor of the old Empire in the stonework, still there after so long, built into the bedrock of this city by its founders.

Heidar passed through the gate, into Elinhir. The highway led directly onto the city’s main thoroughfare, which cut directly through the center of the city and overlooked the main canal. Immediately he was packed into the traffic of the city, and although it wasn’t shoulder to shoulder like in Taneth, it was still slow going. Elinhir had a high population of mages, the city itself reputed for its school of magic.

A bridge crossed the canal, bisecting mainstreet, Heidar was forced to pull his horse to a complete stop as a Khajiit made their was across it, blocking the entire road. The pedestrians who had been cut off shouted racial slurs and curses at them, which made Heidar chuckle.

No matter how diverse your city, it suffered from the same bigotry as anywhere else. The caravan passed and Heidar rode only, but didn’t get very far.

At another intersection further down, a man stood on a crate, shouting at the passerby. In Taneth, such idiots were normally ignored, but here a crowd of people had gathered around the man, large enough to block a good portion of the road. A bottleneck had formed behind the crowd where people were squeezing past between the crowd and the edge of the canal.

Heidar led Glendell off to the road side, so that they were at the very edge of the crowd, and listened.

“Free people of Elinhir!” The man, a Breton, shouted from the crate. Behind him, on the wall of what appeared to be a bakery, someone had pasted up a large banner. The banner depicted the eye of Magnus, the symbol of the Mages’ Guild, however instead of a lidded pupil at the eye’s center, there was instead an eagle. The eagle was painted a bright, stark white, the eye a blood red. The background of the banner was a deep black. All the Daedric lettering had been removed from the eye, so that the symbol instead now resembled an eagle encircled by an eight-pointed star.

“Free citizens of Elinhir! For too long have we languished underneath the boot of tyranny! For too long all of Tamriel has existed underneath the corrupt and irresponsible rule of monarchy! The Septims, the Remans, the Medes, the Adamantines. With each Era, a new dynasty. And what has it done for us? What have any of these so called ‘leaders’ brought to Elinhir?”

Heidar thought the question rhetorical, but to his surprise the crowd shouted back, “Nothing!”

“Yes, nothing! Nothing but hardship and war. Our brothers, sons, and fathers killed in the name of wealth and power, for a state that we have no say in. The Rightful say no more!”

The crowd cheered with that. Glendell neighed, made nervous by the rising energy of the mob. Heider patted the horse’s flank. “Me too, buddy.”

The speaker continued, “No more to tyrants! No more to the false rule of kings! No more to shackles! With the Hall of Assembly empty, the time for equality is now! The Rightful stand for a republican Elinhir! A free Elinhir!”

From his feet, he picked up a stack of flyers. The nearest to him reached up, trying to snatch some. He held them back to make one final point.

“Join with the Rightful! Join us, before Elinhir backslides once again into tyranny!”

Then, he jumped down from the crate, to pass out his flyers to the crowd. People shoved past each other to get some. Two of the men from the crowd seemed to be with the speaker, as they helped him pass the flyers out, dividing the flyers between the three of them.

As the crowd condescended and then dispersed, Heidar remained on his horse. He wondered how big this ‘Rightful’ movement was and whether it’d be a problem. He hoped not.

He entertained the idea, for only a moment, that they might have been responsible for the attack on the Hall, but quickly rejected it. It had been a clean job, not the work of mob violence.

The crowd had thinned out to just a few people chatting and the speaker approached him. Up close, he was short, with average, unmemorable features. His dark hair was unkempt, down over his forehead.

“Hail, good man.” He held out one of the pamphlets for Heidar to take. “I saw you listening.”

Heidar took the paper, smiling gratefully. “Good stuff. Completely agree with everything you said. Just...” He made an OK sign with his hand, lips still pursed in a smile.

“Your accent is Forebear.” The speaker noticed, which Heidar thought was impressive. Non-Redguards could rarely tell Hammerfell accents apart. “You are not from Elinhir originally?”

Heidar shook his head. “Taneth.”

“Ah.”

“Ever been?”

The speaker made a distasteful expression. “Once.”

Heidar got the feeling he didn’t like Taneth very much. “Well, great speech. Say, if I was interested in this ‘Rightful’ stuff, where would I go?”

“Look at what’s in your hand.” The speaker did a salute that Heidar wasn’t familiar with. “See you soon, brother.”

The speaker returned to his crate. Heidar watched him gather up a few saddlebags and leave before reading the flier. It was a simple, flimsy sheet of paper, the printing solely in the front side in big blocky letters.

JOIN THE RIGHTFUL

JOIN THE RECKONING

JOIN WITH THE EAGLE

SAY NO MORE

Heidar let out a low whistle. “Well, this isn’t good.”