Tamriel Vault - Event Profile: Temdryn Calydos

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June 2, 2016

“No harm shall come to me, for I live under Azura’s wisdom.”

- Aranea Ienith, last priest of Azura

Azura, Azura,

Let your light shine,

Your dusk’s rays keeping we,

Your followers, from night.

Azura, Azura,

Keep me from Trouble,

From the Tribunal Three,

Keep me from Nordic breath,

And Skyrim’s animosity.

I seek knowledge in these mountains,

To learn from others’ lives,

To benefit mine own,

To keep me in the light.

Name: Temdryn Calydos

Aliases: The Young Historian, the Peripatet, He-of-all-Faiths

Sex: Male

Race: Dunmer

Class: Unarmored Spellsword

Skills: Enchanting, Destruction, Alchemy, Restoration, Illusion, One-Handed

Alignment: Chaotic Neutral

Title(s): Resident Scholar of the College, Thane of Winterhold, Scholar of the Orsimer Glories

Age: 49

Skin Tone: light grey, though he is so often caked with dirt that it appears to be a darker tone

Height: 5’11” (1.8 m)

Weight: 167 lbs (75 kg)

Build: slightly stocky, though his extremities are quite wirey. His legs are shorter than average, though his long torso, which helps to hide some of the weight, makes up for it.

Eyes: bright red, like those of a vampire. They are said to shine like beacons, even in the darkest of nights.

Hair: Temdryn keeps his dark brown hair long, past his shoulders. When he travels, it is kept in a high ponytail, which is often mussed up by the time he drops his hood. He also keeps a thick goatee for warmth in the colds of Skyrim, though he was clean-shaven before he came to the province.

Apparel: In cooler climates and inside buildings, Temdryn wears embroidered robes and a fur hat, along with his College-issued boots. When travelling in the cold, to which he is unadjusted, Temdryn wears College student robes, his boots, a pair of fur gloves, a fur hood, a College cape, and a fur-lined travel pack, where he stores various alchemical ingredients that he picks up on his travels.

Tattoos/Scars: Temdryn has various tattoos and scars on his face. On the right cheek are ritualistic marks from the New Temple. They are a lacy, flowing pattern, and go from just under his ear to above his eye, threatening to creep over onto his brow. His right cheek also carries the scars of a fight with an Argonian veteran. The scars cut deep enough so as to occasionally hinder his speech.

Weapons: Though Temdryn most often employs flame magic to waste his foes, he does occasionally require the usage of close-ranged weapons to slay his foes. He keeps a steel dagger for general utility, and an iron wakizashi, enchanted with fire, for close-range encounters. He jokingly calls his wakizashi ALMSIVI, because it, like the Tribunal, goes up in flames in the face of danger. Though not a weapon, Temdryn also carries a Staff of Magelight in place of a torch for late-night travel.

Temdryn Calydos is a scholar of many things. One of these is his role as the Resident Scholar of the College at the College of Winterhold. He serves as an apprentice to Urag gro-Shub, retrieving valuable books from ruins and shipwrecks across Skyrim (though he prefers to stay within the provinces of Winterhold, Eastmarch, and The Pale). Before turning them in, Temdryn also reads the books to be certain they are the right ones. Many of the books he is tasked to find are of an educational nature, giving Temdryn a wide base of knowledge on almost every topic.

Though the role of Resident Scholar is a small one, his fame as a historian and as a retriever of books led him to gain employment with the House of Orsimer Glories, a museum. The House, much like his mentor Urag, sought famous or valuable books to add to their collections, as well as Temdryn’s own thoughts on the works. The young mage gladly obliged, earning the title of Scholar of the Orsimer Glories.

Ashes. The ashes of a land once renowned for its wizards, its alien culture and inhospitable locales. From the ashes of Morrowind, Temdryn Calydos was born. When fires lit by the Argonian horde still raged across the once-burnt landscape, Temdryn’s parents fled, having just escaped the cascade of ash, and then the cascade of enraged Argonians, fled on a boat away from their ancestral home of Vvardenfell, and to the mainland of Morrowind.

From there, they wandered the wastes, avoiding roaming ash clouds and Argonian hunting parties. They made few friends in that time, and trusted even fewer. Eventually, the Argonian attacks subsided, and Temdryn’s parents found their way to a refugee camp, and from there to Solstheim, newly gifted to the Dunmeri people. The Calydos, however, had been reputed as a lying, cheating family in the Morrowind of old, and so they could not stay in the burgeoning city of Raven Rock. Instead they, as well as several other expelled families, made their camp at the base of one of the island’s many mountains, hunting and fishing to survive.

Their new lifestyle did not mean they fully abandoned the old ways of their province, and so they continued their education in both the magical arts and religion. After various ceremonies, the father of one of the other families became certified as a priest of the New Temple, and made each of the survivors a member.

Temdryn himself was born in the year 152, the product of a celebration over the defeat of the Argonian force that invaded the island. The Calydos family’s role in the defeat was diminished in the books of history. Any Dunmer on the island would tell you it was the work of Lleril Morvayn, though in reality his role was small. The actual truth involved Temdryn’s father, a Master of Illusion, and his mother, a Master of Destruction, and the intertwining of their schools that caused the Argonians both confusion and extreme burns.

By the time Temdryn was a teen, the island of Solstheim was falling apart. The Bulwark was in disrepair, the mines grew dusty, their veins empty. The people became unhappy, and so did the Calydos. Afraid for their future, Temdryn and his parents took the first boat to Skyrim. They took up their residence in the city of Amol, the fearful Nords of post-Collapse Winterhold declining to take the elves in.

From the city, Temdryn’s parents educated him in the only things they knew, magic and the teachings of the New Temple. As was custom, Temdryn was given ritual tattoos at the age of 18, and taught the various chants and mantras of the faith. When not learning about the Three, he would learn to wield fire and Illusion magic to his benefit, all while in the shadow of the College of Winterhold.

When Temdryn’s parents died of old age, he left his home, selling their house and almost all their belongings. With only a single backpack of belongings, a journal, a staff, and the septims he had earned, he set out to make his name known to the world.

When not studying magic or gods, Temdryn took up alternative pursuits to those common for teens. He especially loved the study of historical books, and when not buying taffy or sweet rolls, spent his meager allowance on biographies and other historical works. By the time he reached the age of 20, he already knew more about topics like Barenziah, Cyrodiil, the faraway Alinor and the Thalmor reign, than most people would learn in their lives.

His love of history did not stop at reading, and after gobbling up hundreds of pages of books, he decided to write his own. He started small, his first writing essentially journals of his day. Eventually, though, he grew as a historian, and took on greater tasks. In addition to writing several histories of villages across Skyrim, he also wrote his magnum opus, The Political Game of the Fourth Era Telvanni Isles. The short book was a history of the Telvanni Isles from 4E 6-199, written after amassing plentiful knowledge on the area, which he visited on the final of his pilgrimages. It was widely published, and greatly successful. After the success of the book, Temdryn’s economic status allowed him to retire to other endeavours that did not pay, including his current job at the College of Winterhold.

When Temdryn set out from Amol to the open land of Skyrim, he knew not where he would go. To remedy this, he visited his old friend Aranea Ienith. She was the keeper of Azura’s shrine, and surely the Reclamations would offer guidance. He climbed the mountain, only to be sent away without answers. It was not the fault of Azura, Aranea plead. Temdryn left, disappointed. He spent the first of his accrued money, buying a pack, a tent, and a carriage ride south to Eastmarch.

Thus began the first of Temdryn’s many pilgrimages, though it would be the shortest. His travels took him from the snow of Winterhold to the ever-autumn forests of the Rift. When he entered the city of Riften, he saw it as a city of disparity. On the one hand, the poverty and rampant theft of the city’s underbelly disgusted him, only to also exhibit a strange pull over the young traveller. On the other hand, the warmth of the taverns and temples grew his curiosity about other faiths. After a conversation with a priestess of Mara, who was herself a Dunmeri kinsmen, Temdryn was convinced...though the Reclamations had given him much to be grateful for, they never had shown Mara’s unconditional love. To this day he wears Her amulet, and shows love to all those who show it to him.

His second journey, however, would be longer, returning to Amol for a visit with old friends, then south again, through Riften and Ivarstead to Falkreath. In Falkreath, he took a visit to the Temple of Arkay, observing the similarity between the wheels of Life and Death and Azura’s Dusk and Dawn. On the return trip, he encountered a band of hunters, a recently-slain mammoth beneath them. When he asked them, they said it was Kyne’s wind that kept them from wasting any part of the beast.

His third journey would be the longest of all. He had heard whispers of a reformed Morrowind, one rebuilding from its ashes. Curious to see his ancestral home, he boarded a boat off the docks of Windhelm, and set a course to Morrowind. Perhaps it was Kyne’s wind, or fate, or just stormy seas, but the ship was blown off its course. Instead of hitting the coast just to the east of the Velothi Mountains, they instead travelled for a week longer, eventually landing on the Telvanni Isles. The Isles had gone through almost as much as the mainland, and the budding historian that was Temdryn saw a need for its transcription. He spent six years on the Isles, recording its history since the Red Year. When he finished, he took the next boat back to Skyrim, and began to sell the book. To his great surprise, it sold well, becoming a famous work across several provinces.

[similar to the previous section, this section will tell of how his many pilgrimages resulted in Temdryn adhering to pieces of many faiths, never staying to just one]

[this section will describe Temdryn's educational pursuits, particularly in the magical arts of alchemy and enchanting]