» Wed May 02, 2012 6:59 pm 
4E 173, 27th of Sun’s Dusk
Dear Reader,
If you are reading this, then I’m probably dead in the bottom of a lake somewhere. My friends implored me not to continue my research, and I received multiple threatening letters from Imperial officials, but persevered I did. 32 years it has taken me to gather the information and compile it into a single record, made all the more difficult with the conflict between the Aldmeri Dominion and the Empire. The now-crumbling Empire does not wish the subject of this to be revealed, and have most likely taken my life in an attempt to stop it. But if you’re reading this, then that means they have failed. The subject of this account is the Sidewinders: A unique clan of vampires thought to be long dead, but I assure you, they still exist. However, they are not regular vampires. They can and do walk among the masses in broad daylight; they are in every city, in every province, and go perfectly undetected.
A few of them are people you would expect, such as the rich, powerful and adventurous. However, the vast majority of them you wouldn’t suspect in a hundred years; simple folk such as family shop owners, manual workers, beggars, and everywhere in between. Odds are you know a few, but they will most likely never reveal themselves to anyone outside of their clan, and if confronted about it, will act as if they have no idea what you’re talking about.
So why am I writing this? For three reasons: To show you they exist, to warn you, and to show you just how far the Empire is willing to go to keep its citizens ignorant of the truth, because as I will explain why later, all records of them were ordered to be destroyed. While the Sidewinders themselves are not likely to be any danger, there are still a select few that have gone rogue, and have evaded the attempts of the Sidewinders to destroy them. Let me put in perspective just what that really means: The average sidewinder makes a fully trained fighter’s guild member look like a child with a toy sword. Imagine what it would be like if one of these people was totally out of control. These ex-sidewinders, psychotic and arrogant as they are, are not to be taken lightly. given the chance, they will destroy everything you hold precious and sacred, and laugh at your misery as if it was some sort of joke.
…my time is limited. I must finish this and hide it somewhere before they find me.
-Andal Dranas, novice historian
A Brief History of the Sidewinders
Originally, the Sidewinder Clan was a secretive cult of 61 Dark elven Vampires, the oldest of which was around 30 years old, who established themselves on the island of Vvardenfell in the Morrowind province, just north of where Ald’Run was, in a Dwemer ruin around 3E 153, before the major settlement of Vvardenfell.
Though they have somewhat Obscure history, one thing is clear. Their main goal was to find a way to immortality by keep all the vampires’ strengths, without suffering any of the weaknesses. Twenty of them tried to get into the tribes that dotted the northern landscape, in hopes that magic might have provided the answer. Few actually managed to, and what little they did learn was cut short by the tribe’s discovery of their true nature. So they went back to their home, taught their bretheren what they knew, and trained. They trained until 3E 414, when Vvardenfell was settled by Imperials.
By this time they had discovered many magical theories and formulae, and had gained a unique ability to remember everything they had ever experienced. The twenty that attempted to join the tribes earlier joined the Mages Guild in separate cities all across Vvardenfell, in hopes that they possessed the magical or alchemical knowledge that would provide the answer. They agreed before they left their Dwemer home thattwo of them would return in the last week of every season to teach their brethren what they learned; After five of them were caught feeding and executed, they realized that they needed to learn to be more stealthy. So seventeen other members joined the thieves’ guild over the course of two years. Like their mage brethren, two of them traveled once a season to their home near Ald’Run for a week to teach the others what they learned. This time, however, since the others were likely to be away when the two returned, they all agreed to travel back once a year for two weeks to help even out everyone’s skills.
To keep their Home from being detected, they buried the Dwemer ruin completely, and used a telekinetic spell on the rocks covering the entrance that would only react to vampire blood and pieces of gold Jewelry that all members carried on them. The Jewelry was enchanted to instantly disintegrate if it was ever taken off against the owners will, touched by someone else while it was not being worn by the owner, or if the owner died.
After two of them were killed by several Dwemer Centurions while on a Thieves Guild mission, the clan decided that it would be a good idea for some to join the Fighters Guild, to improve their combat skills. Twenty of them did, and like the other two groups, two traveled back once a season to teach their brethren what they learned. The remaining four did two different tasks. Three would run letters to other members by using dead drop points across Vvardenfell, while the last one, Fendura Adovsi, would tend to their original home and guard it, using what her brethren had taught her.
Since she was alone, one member of each faction would personally train her in their arts when they returned, and the techniques they gave her she would practice in her plentiful spare time. A few years into it, and she took to reactivating and reprogramming some of the old Dwemer robots lying around to serve as guards, the likes of which has never been done since, partially because she took her secrets to the grave.
After ten seasons, people had taken notice of a few of the members, especially in the Fighters Guild, who even though they had no apparent teachers, were easily casting various apprentice level spells. One particularly interesting incident was one where Aduin, a journeyman in the fighter’s guild, managed to levitate himself out of the way of two mages and a summoned dremora while on a fighters guild assignment, after being backed into a corner and having his shield disintegrated by the Daedric Being’s sword enchantment. After that, he used a telekinetic spell to knock a boulder on the top of the cave loose to crush all three of them. In spite of that fact that using magic saved Aduin’s life, a new pact was made to only publicly use the most basic skills in schools outside of your guild’s class to avoid detection.
After this pact was made, every member publicly feigned gradual disinterest in the two specializations not focused on by their guilds, and even began specializing in certain skills in their classes to be safe. This worked for about five years, but then people began to suspect the members of the sidewinders. To prevent the discovery of their true natures, they all organized a day where they would all fake their deaths in different ways, then return to their Dwemer home to continue searching for a solution.
They continued to practice and search for an answer there for another ten years, until one of them got a vision of a deathly curse that would descend on Vvardenfell in two years; the Curse of the Blight. When that happened, they relocated to Cyrodiil over the course of three months, each fasting from blood for three days before their journey so they would be at full strength when they had to smuggle themselves out of Vvardenfell, in case something went wrong. After everyone else had left, Fendura destroyed the Dwemer ruin and everything in it, to ensure no one in Vvardenfell would be able to track them to Cyrodiil.
Five died on the journey, due to a dead drop letter found by the Vivec guard that gave instructions to smuggle themselves on an Ash Yam trader’s boat. After the remaining Sidewinders got into Cyrodiil, They met up in the imperial city sewers. Since they still had found no solution, they decided to remain more anonymous, so they could continue their task without going through the mistakes they made in Varrdenfell.
To do this, they created three tribes; each consisting of fifteen members that were dedicated to one specialization, that would be located across Cyrodiil. One in the Jerall Mountains would be dedicated to combat, one in the Nibenay Basin would be dedicated to stealth, and one in County Skingrad would be dedicated to magic. They designated three masters, each of whom oversaw one of the tribes, as well as a single grandmaster. The grandmaster was Fendura, the keeper of the Dwemer ruin, being the most powerful and wisest one. They agreed she would live in the Waterfront district of the imperial City.
The messengers still carried letters, so the tribes could maintain contact with each other. To keep everyone Well-rounded, three members from each tribe would go to other tribes at the last week of every season, and spend a week there teaching members of that tribe what they had learned. The travelling members would learn what had been taught when they returned to their tribe. They also decided that three members from each group would join their respective guilds, traveling to their home tribe at the end of each season like last time teaching what they had learned as well. However, they did this primarily to keep up to date in current events. They also agreed that when the time came, those members would fake their deaths again, and three more members would take their place over the course of several months. However, that plan was only used once.
They kept searching for a solution, but it wasn’t until one of the magic tribe members, Aldose Ulina, fell in love with an outsider in Skingrad and had a child that the answer was discovered. The child was less affected by sunlight than the others were, but still kept her Vampire strength. This meant that breeding with mortals could create a vampire-mortal hybrid that could have the strengths of a vampire, but not the weaknesses. Of course, after the father found out the truth bout Aldose, he had the child executed and told her that he would reveal her affliction to the city watch. She took her own life by exposing herself to sunlight for three hours, after she had gone without blood for two days by using a barrel to hide in, but not before killing her ex-lover and half the city guard in the process (all of which knew her secret).
After Fendura found out, she declared that outsiders were allowed to join the Sidewinders, at the approval of an adept. As it turned out, trying to create the ultimate vampire by breeding was a very time consuming and unreliable way of trying to make and ultimate vampire, because many hybrids did not possess certain abilities, but still had many or all of the weaknesses. However, the incident gave Fendura the inspiration she needed to create the device. Using her own blood, the blood of all the masters, the blood of one of each sentient mortal race, and the blood of all of the hybrids, she created a special device that allowed one to alter the essence of the vampire’s disease on an unimaginably small scale to add and remove the desired vampire abilities, with the exception of two.
She used it on all of the hybrids, which gave them all of the strengths, and only two weaknesses: a weakness to fire, and the need to rely on blood or food for nourishment. What makes that a weakness is that they had to choose something, and while they wouldn’t starve, they would get hungry just like a mortal, even to the point of resorting to cannibalism. However, the original members still had all the Weaknesses of vampires, and couldn’t use the essence altering device because of the blood ritual that was required to construct the device. So to prevent a Coup, they decided to only train hybrids and outsiders to the point where they could easily defeat most that weren’t sidewinders. Nobody knows what happened to this device. There are rumors that it exists somewhere under the imperial city sewers, but nobody has ever found it. After twenty years, the Sidewinder clan was one of the most powerful organizations in all of Tamriel, consisting of well over twenty-five hundred members. The tribes still existed, but over the course of those twenty years, more and more sidewinders would reside in their homes in cities across Tamriel, keeping their membership secret.
By this time, all of the original members had become masters in all skills, were on the verge of a technological revolution that would have surpassed the Dwemer, and were even able to bend certain laws of reality itself. It is said that Fendura created a plane of oblivion specifically for training Sidewinders, much like Mankar Camoran did, and that time passes far slower there than it does here in Mundus.
Still, the weaknesses that all of the sidewinders suffered, along with all of the weaknesses of the original sidewinders sparked a revelation for Fendura: She realized that the vampire’s ability to retain eternal youth was not the answer to immortality. After about three months of meditation on how to fix this problem, she came up with a solution. She found a way for all of the sidewinder’s souls to be transferred to their plane of oblivion upon death. There they would continue to train, until they achieved mastery of all skills, where they would serve the sidewinders for eternity. The name of this undead army is the Shadowguard.
The remaining history is a bit obscure, but in the course of two weeks, and through several simultaneous Rebellions caused by outsiders that joined up with the sidewinders, the coordinated efforts of the Fighter’s guild, Mages Guild, and even the Thieves guild, and one of the Imperial Legions, the Sidewinders were all but wiped out. The rest of the world feared they had become too powerful, and many recruits didn’t like the fact that the original members were keeping the best training to themselves. The first real move against them was when twenty of the masters and Fendura were brought to trial and sentenced to death.
It is said that Fendura herself took down several hundred Imperial Soldiers, Archers, and Spellswords single-handedly by conjuring and maintaining a massive lightning storm that loomed over the Imperial City for the entire two weeks, but on the last day dissipated the storm and exposed herself to sunlight. No one knows exactly why she did this. Some say it was because she was tired of battling. Some say it was an accident. Others say it was because she saw the futility in fighting, because even though she was the most powerful person on the planet Nirn, she was still the leader of the most hated faction in all of Tamriel. Whatever the real reason, a note was found in her ashes that read:
“To the traitors who have organized this genocide,
You may have tried us in the courts of men and mer, but within the year you shall be tried within the court of The Nine Divines!”
After that, the remaining Sidewinders put a permanent silence hex on all the traitors, probationers and recruits, hypnotized them, and stuck them in magical armor that would disappear upon the death of the wearer. Then they gave them weapons that would do the same, and used them as scapegoats to distract the factions while they disappeared. All of them were slaughtered, and the remaining loyal Sidewinders vanished almost overnight, along with every discovery they had ever cataloged. All of their know encampments were burned to the ground, and official records even hinting towards them were ordered to be destroyed immediately, and the penalty for not cooperating was death on the spot. No one has claimed to have heard from them to this day.
Extras and commentaries:
Tenets of the Sidewinders:
1: Honor and Respect the Sidewinders
2: Understand your position
3: Avoid Extremes
4: Learn with the heart, not with the mind
5: Respect and honor the chain of command
6: Have no mercy on enemies.
7: Above all else, seek enlightenment.
They had a religion of sorts, but it was not what most would think of when they think of religion, because it only had one truly religious tenet, which was the seventh one of their creed: “Above all else, seek enlightenment”. They didn’t actually create the code until after they moved to Cyrodiil. Though there are many flaws one could pick out in the tenets, no existing accounts even hint to the sidewinders ever having debates or conflicts over the meaning or interpretations of the tenets until after they began to let outsiders join. Perhaps it’s because they agreed on all specifics when the tenets were formed, and they didn’t bother to put them in for some reason.
Ranks of the Sidewinders:
Probationer
Recruit
Novice
Apprentice
Journeyman
Adept
Expert (2)
Master
Grandmaster
They started using this system around the time they opened their doors for others to join. Though it’s not entirely clear, the progression of the levels went something like this: At probationer level, the loyalty and resolve of the student would be rigorously tested. This lasted for five years, and generally only one out of every thirty probationers made it (those born into the sidewinders were automatically promoted to apprentice). If they passed, they would be promoted to Recruit. At Recruit level, they would receive training in the skills they were already good at to fill in the holes that their previous training had missed. This usually took six months to seven years.
After that, they would be promoted to apprentice. At apprentice level, they would receive basic training in every other skill, taught the principles of battle and warfare, and would be initiated as a full-fledged member of the Sidewinders, and would also have been bestowed with the sidewinders version of vampirism, as well as the option to join the Shadow Guard. Those who were born in the sidewinders would just receive basic training in all skills. This was also the time they usually chose to master something, though they didn’t have to decide until they achieved the rank of Journeyman.
After they had completed all of their training, which would take anywhere from 10 to 50 years, they would be promoted to Journeyman level, and were officially allowed to go on missions and assignments. By this time, they had become at least a Journeyman in every skill, with the exception of the skill or skills they chose to master, which would be much higher. If a student didn’t choose something to master by this time, they would be held back until they did. This is also the highest rank a sidewinder not born into the clan could achieve.
Provided they survived this long, they would be promoted to Adept when they mastered the skill or skills they had decided to master, and would then begin mastering other skills. They could also act as ambassadors, representatives, double-agents, and recruiters for the Sidewinders. They also were granted a special amulet that allowed them access to the Sidewinder’s plane of oblivion.
When they mastered one entire skill class, they would undergo a trial designed to test the individual according to their class mastery. If they passed, they would be promoted to Expert. Mastering an entire skill class generally took about a hundred years, though they spent much of that time in their plane of Oblivion.
After an expert mastered all skills, they would be promoted to second degree expert, but were not allowed to be promoted to master. There were only a limited number of masters allowed at any one time, though how many is not certain. Provided that a position opened up, a ceremony would be held in the Sidewinders plane of Oblivion, which all Sidewinders were allowed to attend. It is said that the Experts and Masters that oversaw the apprentices and recruits would let them into Oblivion using their amulets. Probationers weren’t allowed in as part of their test.
During the ceremony, the Grandmaster would dual the Experts who qualified one at a time for a set period of time, in an arena made specifically for the occasion. If the Grandmaster thought the Expert was worthy, he would promote the Expert to Master. After that, a Master would be promoted to Grandmaster only after the existing Grandmaster died, and only by consensus of all the other Masters. No one knows who took Fendura’s place in this role.
Why the Sidewinders Were Hated so Much
The reason was simple: they were vampires, and even though they weren’t the typical ravenous, power hungry monsters who look at all non-vampires as food (or worse), nobody in their right mind would let vampires freely roam the streets. In addition they were abnormally powerful. To many, their abnormally immense power was cause enough to hate them, which was further re-enforced by the fact that they shared little to none of their discoveries with outsiders.
The reason all of the members didn’t get sent straight to the gallows was because they kept their membership a secret. It wasn’t until most of the sidewinders were hybrids that the hatred for the clan simmered down, though they were still disliked. Most people these days don’t even recognize the name, because the incident with the Sidewinders was so long ago, and was ordered to be stricken from all official records.
The Shadow Guard
While the Sidewinders were a powerful and resourceful clan, their power did not stop at life. The Shadow Guard consisted of most (if not all) of the loyal sidewinders that had passed on since they began to let outsiders in. They are said to have resided in the sidewinder’s plane of oblivion, training there just like they did in life. It is also said that they were able to be summoned into combat much like Daedra by living Sidewinders with a high enough rank, and like Daedra, got sent back to their plane of oblivion if defeated. Whether or not they had a time limit on how long they could be summoned has never been confirmed.
The catch was that they were bound to serve all of the sidewinders that had the authority to summon them, and they had to do this for eternity. However, the sidewinders did not place this burden on its members by force. Every sidewinder, including those not born into the clan, was given the option of choosing whether or not to serve in the shadow guard, and was allowed to withdraw their decision if they wanted to, because when they did die, the binding would become permanent and they would have to serve. Also, the rituals that would cause their souls to be sent to their plane of oblivion upon death were very lengthy and complicated, so this was a choice they did not take lightly. When they did serve in the Shadow Guard, they retained all of their abilities they had in life, as well as their Sidewinder rank, conscious minds and free will. They could even rank up after they joined the Shadow Guard, regardless of whether or not they were an outsider who had reached the rank of Journeyman.
Accounts describe the Shadow Guard as always wearing pitch-black hooded robes or cloaks, with armor that looked
like shadow-like chainmail. Their eyes are describes as being sharp, piercing and sky-blue, golden, or deep red. They are said to have rarely spoken, but when they did, their voice had a very penetrating and haunting effect to it. Any weapons they used were always translucent, were produced from under their cloaks or the sleeves of their robes, were almost always daedric, were almost always one-handed, and were almost always dual-wielded. It is most likely that these were bound weapons. They are also said to never be summoned alone, but summoned in pairs.
How they managed to pledge themselves for an eternity of servitude is still a mystery. It is said that since they sought enlightenment, they would detach themselves from worldly desires, which allowed them to be content with their places in the Shadowguard. This would also explain their mercilessness in combat, as anyone with combat experience knows that a centered mind is much more effective at anything than one ruled by emotions.
I can only hope my efforts have not been in vain...
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EDIT(this is not part of the story): honestly I expected at least one post reviewing it by now. I was hoping i could get some feedback on it.
