What are these stars? I'm forced to wonder it. Stars in Mundus were holes into the realm of the spirit, great lanterns of pure energy that lit up the sky in pale imitation of Magnus itself. Yet there is no Aetherius here to shine through.
These can not be true stars, but all a star is, all it looks like from the ground, is a bright point of light. If these are just bright points of light then something must be giving off that light. If not holes in the fabric of reality itself then something else, perhaps inexplicable in nature, perhaps mundane.
I must discover it for myself.
If I used Mundus as an example then all the stars were a uniform distance from Nirn, but could I really assume that such was the case here? This was not creation, this place followed alien laws, was there any way to tell the distance of the stars we could see?
I didn't particularly think so. Perspective might work, but the distances were far too long. Looking into magic, what was there that could help? Teleportation only worked for places you've been or places you could see, line of sight. You could never teleport such a ridiculous distance, but you might be able to use the line of sight to the various stars to begin the initialization of a teleportation spell and then calculate distances by the required magicka rates.
There were too many stars, far more than there had ever been in Mundus. Was there even a word to accurately describe the number of stars in Dunmeri? Picking stars at random would be meaningless, you'd never know if you had gotten a good selection of possible stars.
The only decent choice would be to separate the surrounding sphere of the visible starfield into segments, small enough so that a single ping from a teleportation spell would lock onto the nearest location, repeat for the whole field until the most optimum segment was found and then narrow it down from there.
Ahh, such exhausting work, good thing I'm a master in the magickal school of Delegation.
It takes a while, a lot of charting, recording data, some of the retainers get migraines from the tests at times, but we get it done. Go team!
The closest star is far enough that for an individual to teleport to it would cost about thirty-six million MP, using the standard Pinprick spell as a base measurement unit of magicka.
Converting that into common distance units (after subtracting the base-costs) and it was somewhere in the low trillions. This, could take a while, fortunately Mer live a long time.
Getting from Nirn to Aetherius took a week, getting from this last realm to the closest star took three months, and the Tel Thaga was moving incomparable faster as well. It was an extreme distance to be sure.
Over the months some problems started to show up, new ones that seemed to result from living without weight. Sure it was nice that our clothing didn't need to be cleaned as much, but basic hygiene was incomparably more difficult, minor trash floated aimlessly. Sleep was easy, just floating in the middle of a room or hallway, but people hadn't yet gotten used to the habitual use of levitation to move in three directions at once as combined with the lack of an up or down.
Then there were the health issues. Things like strength, speed and endurance suffered, people became more fragile to impacts, started to experience something akin to growing pains. We tried to offset these with Restoration at first, healing spells and then buffs, but the problem was too different from merely fixing something damaged and eventually we had to shift to Alteration spells.
Having your internal skeleton changed back to form is excruciating, we learned that immediately. The retainers with some experience in Illusion spells now had incredible amounts of motivation to develop a numbing spell, otherwise we would have to Drain Fatigue to knock the people out before opperating.
When we arrived at the star we saw Magnus, or something very nearly similar to it. A great ball of light, too bright to look at, in the center of orbital spatial distortions that could only be planetary bodies. It was almost a mockery of Mundus itself.
There was a single planet that looked decent, blue like oceans, spots that seemed like islands all over it, two moons. Where to land was the question though, there were no major land masses, no visible structures, it was just a place. Picking randomly, somewhere near the middle I guess.
At first glance this place is just like the last contained realm we had visited, a habitable world, a pale imitation of Nirn. Yet this was not within the confines of a creation, this was something different. Swooping low over the water I saw tens of metal structures, some sparkling in the sun, some dingy, most of them broken. Who would building things like that in the middle of the ocean, was it like some of the Daedric Shrines where they just sank beneath the waves?
I wanted to start with the same basic set up as before, but the tropical nature of the landing spot made that a bit pointless. We could all see the full extent of the island, so unless some sea monsters rose up from the deep there wasn't much risk. Still I ensured that there were paralysis traps along the beach just in case, as well as safeguards for tidal flooding and storms.
Here, I wouldn't say was as bad as the last world. True there was no magicka, but when I picked up the soil the senses attuned to Mysticism detected something else. Not sure what exactly, but if there is
something similar to magic then that beats the peculiarity of where we were before.
Some civilization must have built those metal ruins, I didn't know who but I did want to take a look at them. Are they as dangerous as the ruins on Nirn, who built them, what is their purpose, what are they built of? I wanted to take a look for myself.
Levitating over the water we see more structures and shards of metal under the waves, too small to poke above the surface, we pass them by in favor of the more convenient structures.
Approaching one of the largest, there doesn't seem to be any external entrance, perhaps it is underwater. Looks like we'll be going in with magic. Let's start with Conjuration, one of the retainers uses a summoned battleax to hack at the metal wall, but the energy blade is not quite sharp enough to penetrate fully. I instead have a Destruction user cast Disintegrate on the newly damaged portion, even that takes a few repetitions before a large enough hole is formed.
The interior is strange, dark to be sure but that is solved with a few magelights, no the problem is that the walls and floors are skewed, twisted at an angle. It wouldn't make any sense for it to have been constructed this way, more likely the foundation wasn't strong and it sank into the sandy soil. Yet the internal doors appear on what would seem to be the floor and ceiling, they're made of metal as well but can be pried open with some effort. Perhaps these people were like Telvanni and used levitation to move up and down their towers.
If it really is like a Telvanni tower then the services will be at the bottom and the lord's quarters at the top. Given that the bottom would no doubt be heavily flooded we headed upwards. We had plenty of time so I had each floor searched as we went.
Whomever these people were they built like Dwemer, the whole place seems to have been constructed of metal for no apparent reason.
There are a few skeletons here and there, most of them have clear signs of trauma, either burns like you'd see from Destruction magic or broken bones. The skeletons have some similarities to Men and Mer, but it's impossible to tell more about them from just this much.
It seems that the similarities to the Dwemer are not as superficial as I had believed. Near the top of the tower we find the unmistakable remnants of automaton parts. The difference being that these are clearly more complex, though perhaps not more skillfully created. The Dwemer automatons were elegant in their simplicity, using arcane knowledge that still escapes even the wisest of Telvanni lords, these automatons were nothing like that, covered in wires (like you'd see in fine jewelry!) and lacking any of the elegant enchantment work.
Would any of these still work? I take the bits and pieces of one of the less combat capable models, never sure of just how dangerous it might be, and had the breaks repaired with Alteration. The major damage seemingly repaired, the erosion undone, the head shoved back on I stepped back to see what would happen.
Ah! The eyes flickered. It's saying something? I've never heard of an automaton that could communicate, how peculiar. The retainers start muttering amongst themselves behind me, which cases the automaton to quiet down. It then starts to act almost like someone trying to make themselves understood, self-introductions, asking for reciprocation, pointing for the names of various items. There's no reason I can think of not to play along for now.
After about two hours the conversation could begin, though a few of the terms are difficult to get across I learned a great deal.
The automatons were made by a foundry known as
Czerka, and was what translated as a 'manners automaton'. It told me that this was not a tower at all but rather a ship much like the Tel Thaga, in fact, all the metal structures were such ships. Upon inquiry it resulted that the apparent reason that the Tel Thaga did not result in a similar crash is that it is piloted manually. All these ships had something similar to an automaton's intelligence operating them, and were thus incapacitated.
I naturally asked why the crew didn't use the local equivalent of Slow Fall or Levitation on their ships, or if none of them were mages. After some explanations it seems that magic users are rather rare where this automaton comes from. In fact, it seems likely that Great House Telvanni probably has more magic users than the entire star field beyond creation, the entire
galaxy. If the Empire ever decided to explore out here then these people would have little choice but to immediately kneel down and capitulate.
The galaxy had its Republic, some knockoff Empire that lacked even a basic sense of control, but we Telvanni had our skills, our culture. Who can stand in the face of that? It took Tiber Septim shattering
time itself with the fist of a pedestrian
god to conquer the Telvanni. What could the Republic bring to bear that could compare to that?