Money and thieves

  "Money must flow, souls must come and pass, and locked gates must be opened with the right key—and the key, of course, is Mine."

  Nocturnal, Codex Daedricus, the Twilight Appendix

  Nocturnal is a restless entity. Her soul is deeply troubled—obsessed, even—with the deep desire for what She calls progress. Yet Her understanding of progress is strange, twisted, and entirely alien to mortal logic. She interferes in the world of men and mer with remarkable impudence, trampling the unspoken rules of the so-called Daedric Code with shameless delight.

  Take, for instance, the Thieves Guild. Nocturnal founded it not out of justice or rebellion, but simply to keep wealth from stagnating, to make sure it doesn't rot in dusty vaults and damp caverns. While She does not fully comprehend the mortal concept of money, Lady Luck desires it to circulate—wildly, feverishly—through the veins of Tamriel's trade. She allows no rich man, no noble house, no merchant syndicate to rest easy. No lock is safe enough. No guards are numerous enough. For She, the Mistress of Twilight, has crafted a Daedric eugenics program—a divine breeding experiment that spans generations.

  Yes, you heard correctly.

  She forges lineages of exceptional thieves—mortal vessels selected, paired, and shaped like livestock on Nirn. It is, in essence, a sacred animal husbandry. But instead of cattle or horses, She breeds gifted thieves with hands like whispers and minds sharp as moonlight.

  "The blood of mortals is clay. I am the potter, and sometimes I create amphorae of unparalleled beauty and grace. When I wish, I fill them with My divine essence."

  Nocturnal, Sibylline Archives of the Shadow

  That alone would be enough to leave scholars and chroniclers scratching their heads. No matter how learned or seasoned, no mortal mind can fully grasp the twisted elegance of Her schemes!

  And beyond all that—beyond breeding, fortune, and theft—there is Her true passion: gambling!

  But make no mistake, we are not speaking of the petty coin games played in taverns. No, Lady Luck gambles in fate. She places bets on the lives and deaths of her followers, wagers made with perverse delight and rules only She understands. The stakes are often cruel. The outcomes? Terrifying or amazing; death or incomensurable wealth. And Her games? Oh, they are always intricate, theatrical, filled with traps and illusions.

  My beloved daughter, Elsie the Nightingale, once wrote in her already published tome:

  "I can't help but smile sadly now as I write these words, knowing what I didn't know then: Nocturnal plays a strange and cruel game every time a thief reaches for a coin that gleams under moonlight, or embarks on a heist that feels too perfect. But more than that—my beloved Mistress is so perverse that She's rarely content with the simple thrill Her divine game is meant to stir. No, She cheats. And She does it boldly, shamelessly—so much so that I still find myself admiring Her nerve, even after all these years we spent together."

  So apparently, She is no mere player. Perchance She is a master cheat, one who has elevated deception beyond perfection—perhaps even beyond absurdity. Scholars debate whether Her games serve a higher purpose, or if they are merely expressions of Her infinite boredom. But make no mistake: Lady Luck cannot be trusted, cannot be predicted, and certainly cannot be understood by mortal minds.

  Even the wisest among us catch only rare glimpses of Her true intentions!

  The Voidwalk of Nocturnal

  Nocturnal is... unsettling in another way, too. Long ago—before Nirn was even born from the primordial ashes—She embarked on a strange journey into the forbidden realm of the Void.

  At the time, She was still young, wild, even feral. The voyage itself came in the wake of the so-called Incident of Azura's Key—a calamity more whispered than written. That journey wasn't a mission, nor a conquest; it was an escape. A mad flight, punctuated by mocking laughter, and shadowed by an entity in the full glory of its unspeakable power.

  The event is ancient. Oh, no! It's timeless. One of those rare myths that cloaks a shard of truth in a lavish tapestry of exaggeration, metaphor, and half-lies. And yet... that Key still exists. It now rests in the possession of my daughter, and it remains the subject of bitter contention between Nocturnal and Azura—a silent war of veils, threats, lies, and insinuations.

  The full tale cannot be told here. Not even a skeletal version would fit in this space!

  What matters is this: when Nocturnal returned from that true Odyssey into the Void, She was not the same. Something had changed; She was more focused, more silent, and vastly more powerful.

  Which leads any free-thinking scholar to consider the unspeakable:

  That perhaps She met Him there, in the black cradle of the Void—the true Master: Sithis.

  Of Sithis and the Wars

  Sithis... We mortals know little of Him, and what little we do know, we mostly fear—irrationally, pitifully, like children afraid of the dark without knowing why.

  Yet there exists a select group in Tamriel who do not fear Sithis. No—they revere Him. They speak His name with reverence, and dedicate their lives to carrying out His Work.

  I am not referring to the Lizard-Folk—the Argonians, as some call them. True, they honor Sithis in their own way, offering chanted prayers in moss-drenched shrines half-swallowed by the great swamp of Black Marsh. Yet their fear is ritualistic, ancestral. It is cautious. It is not understanding.

  I speak of the Dark Brotherhood.

  To the common people of Tamriel, they are no more than an underground crime syndicate, murderers for hire, or a cult of knives and whispered riddles. But this is only the surface. Beneath that surface lies an ancient, sacred mission—a covenant sealed in blood with the Dread Father Himself.

  Unfortunately, I'm not allowed to speak of them. Not yet. Not ever, perchance... My daughter—yes, she will tell you, when and if the time is right, all that can be said about the Dark Brotherhood... and maybe about Sithis too.

  What matters for us, for the purpose of this chapter, is this:

  After Nocturnal returned from Her forbidden journey into the Void, something shifted. The world itself seemed to stir, like a beast waking in discomfort. The Aedra remained silent, but the Daedric Princes... oh, they grew restless! Wars erupted across Oblivion—true wars, not mere power plays or philosophical feuds, but cataclysms of will and form. Whole realms were scorched and reforged. It was then that the great Daedric kingdoms, as we know them today, were born.

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  Later, when mortal and conscious life came into being on Nirn, the same pattern emerged—though on a smaller scale, and in slower time. Thinking beings began to form tribes, then kingdoms, even empires... and instantly turned against one another. Endless war, endless ambition. The same cycle.

  And here lies the first great paradox:

  In the realms of Oblivion, the chaos eventually stabilized—after uncounted eons of destruction, the Princes reached a state of tense yet solid equilibrium. But on Nirn, war never ends. Kingdoms rise and fall, blades are drawn anew, and peace—true peace—is a lie told between massacres!

  Why?

  Perhaps the answer lies in that meeting in the Void.

  Or mayhap Sithis is not only the end of things, but also the thing that must never stop. At least for the mortal realm, because the Daedric one is stagnant from the beginning.

  Still, I don't intend to speak about Sithis in this particular study; Sithis, as my daughter told me some time ago, is just a tricky "dead end" for anybody trying to grasp some of the basic laws that govern Mundus. So, let's return to Nocturnal and see what Elsie says about her first perception of Lady Luck—an onirical one!

  Wherein Elsie confesses her true and only love, and the first dream that bore Her name

  "I love my Mistress Nocturnal! I love Her so much that the feeling is painful sometimes. Lady Luck is often haunting my dreams, yet the first one was truly tremedous in intensity and significance:

  'I was running through a dense pine forest; the strong scent of resin, the ground so soft it felt like silk, and the mist, deepening the usual darkness of such gloomy woods, summoned around me a realm both unreal and magical. I suddenly stopped in a small clearing where the rays of a pale noonday sun barely managed to thin the damp mist; I did that because I heard my name being called by many overlapping voices! Frightened, I looked around, and then I saw it!

  Through the heavy fog, a raven, perched on a gnarled branch, turned to look at me with an eye gleaming like a midnight shard. A low voice, flowing like honey laced with venom, whispered my name:

  'Elsie...'

  In that moment, I knew—the Twilight had chosen me. Terror filled my chest, yet wonder bloomed beside it, delicate and dark like a midnight flower. So I ran. I ran until the shadows of that day grew longer—and behind me, the raven laughed.' "

  This paragraph is part of my daughter's memoirs and is relatively well-known. But let's reflect a bit on an apocryphal passage, one that Elsie erased at some point from the aforementioned tome:

  "I think Nocturnal loves me. In Her own, twisted way, of course!

  I love Her with all my heart, and I can feel Her breath on my neck and hair when I lie or try to sleep. I hear Her giggles when I cheat. She is the only one who never asks me to be honest. Perhaps because She knows I couldn't even if I tried, or perchance, She likes me in that way...

  And yet... I hate Her. How could I not? We are too much alike!

  And this hate of mine... It's of a special kind... Hm, it's not the way one hates a tyrant or an enemy. No, I hate Her like a child hates the parent who never held them, but always watched from the shadows. I hate Her because She owns pieces of me that I didn't even know I'd lost.

  My Khajiit family — gods, I loved them. Warm paws. Soft purrs. Honest lies and shared scraps. They taught me to steal because they loved me. She taught me to vanish because She wanted me to be Hers. And, truth be told, I like to be owned by Her!

  So I walk in both shadows now. One of fur and yellow, cruel eyes. And one of raven feathers and warm mist. And I suppose... that's who I am.

  Oh, not to forget! The cat people revere Noctra, but they also fear Her terribly! And She? She doesn't like them at all, 'they are too smart for their own good!' as Lady Luck often says."

  Well, what can I say? Perchance she, my beloved daughter Elsie, is not so sure about Her beloved Mistress's feelings! She is very wise for her age and also knows all too well that Nocturnal is a Daedra, an entity truly alien, but as any person in love, Elsie would want to bind somehow Her Mistress in the web of her passion. In any case, I must make a remark, an important one! This manuscript was recovered from a scorched codex found deep within the Evermist Crypts, near the statue of the Laughing Raven. The ink used is peculiar—when read under moonlight, it seems to shimmer. Some claim Elsie never wrote these words, that they were whispered into the pages by Her Lady Herself, in a cruel imitation of her voice. Others believe this is Elsie's purest confession, one she never dared publish in her "Story of a Nightingale." Either way, it reveals a soul in turmoil—torn between love and a most intimate form of surrender.

  Nocturnal as an animal lover

  "Oh yes, She is indeed an animal lover! Well, in Her own brilliant way, sure... What would you expect? She's a Daedra and not a benevolent one, I assure you of that!

  Lady Luck has a curious fondness for the fauna of Tamriel. From the shadows, She watches them—beasts and birds alike—with gleaming eyes and a little smirk (I know She smirks!). With just a thought, She can stir them into frenzy or lull them into a trance, like a lullaby sung with moonlight. She's especially interested in or amazed by monkeys, foxes, and otters. Yes, otters! They're sneaky, smart, and always playing in the twilight waters. But Her greatest respect is saved for ravens—big, black, clever birds. Always circling Her mortal avatars, always whispering secrets. They are wise, cunning, and most of all... malevolent. And honestly, that's a pretty perfect way to describe a goddess like Her! Now, felines? Oh, that's a strange one! Nocturnal does not like house cats. Or tigers. Or lions. Yet She adores leopards—especially those rare, velvety black leopards who move like shadows and never miss a step. Silent. Deadly. Gracious. Beautiful. They are Her chosen ones among the beasts, and yes, She keeps an entire horde of them in Evergloam! I hope one day She lets me ride one!"

  Excerpt from "Nocturnal, My Love and Bane" by Elsie Leifsdotter

  This is one of those juvenile essays written by Elsie when she was very young and still pretty happy and content with her life. Written in the 197th Year of the Third Era, when the Nightingale was but sixteen years old and lacking the depth of her later theological treatises, this text showcases Elsie's budding obsession with Nocturnal — filtered through a lens of some kind of childlike wonder and curious zoological passion. Some scholars dismiss it as whimsical nonsense, but the Priests of Nocturnal have included it in several ceremonial readings, considering it a form of innocent revelation.

  Let us now recap. In this little study of Nocturnal, the Goddess of Twilight, I have gathered together the universally known legends, my personal deductions drawn from the careful examination of countless manuscripts preserved in the Great Library of Arcana in Bravil (and here I must thank my daughter, Elsie, for granting me unrestricted access to whatever I wished to study), as well as quotations from various works signed Elsie Leifsdotter.

  I have not included the uncertain — such as the rumors of great funds from the Thieves Guild of Tamriel being diverted into strange works of science or art — nor my private opinions on the peculiar forms of "divine inspiration" that sometimes touch mortal artists and scholars, past or present.

  Some of their works are so extraordinary that I sincerely doubt they could have been conceived within the narrow bounds of mortal thought. Yet, as a sober chronicler concerned above all with the truth, I have refrained from recording anything that is not supported by at least some evidence — even if controversial.

  In any case, I shall continue my research. And when the time is right, I will add new facets to the strange, alluring, and perilous "personality" of the Goddess.

  Here ends the excerpt from my work, "Tamrielic Chronicles" by Leif the Sage.

  Now, let's have Elsie, my beloved daughter, add some words!

  Elsie, the Siren of the Weald, the wild avatar

  Sometimes, when I wake up gasping from the Dream, I walk barefoot outside. I let the soil bite my soles and the dew soak my hair. I crouch low, and I listen. And in those moments, I feel the part of me that was never tamed—by books, by rituals, by the Lady Herself.

  There is a jungle inside me, wet and dark and full of growls.

  One day, I'll run into it. And I won't come back.

  P.S.

  As long as I breathe, I will never stop searching for Her. Sometimes I feel Her close—a shiver down my spine, a burst of laughter in the corner of the darkness, a black feather falling on my chest in the middle of the night. Other times, I see Nocturnal in the eyes of a panther, when they shine like two small stars.

  I thank Her for Her secrets and hate Her for the things She has taken from me, but above all, I love Nocturnal — with a love that bites and caresses at the same time.

  If you want to know the truth about Lady Luck, don't look in the big books; look in the whispers, in the footsteps on the damp earth, and in the laughter of the ravens.

  — Elsie Leifsdotter, Nightingale