Tribunal Heterodoxy: Death Song of Saint Rouran

The Death Song of Saint Rouran

The Death Song of Saint Rouran

Traditional

Listen, Redoran-born, hear the tale of Rouran who stood against the devil Thrud and her thousand and prevailed. No flesh-father had Rouran: his mother felled in the side by the Warrior-Poet's hurled Muatra. His mother, Redoran-born, was not believed by her House, who thought she had born them a bastard of lower birth.

B'Vekh! Such sacrilege against our saint's mother!

The Redoran cast her aside and she wandered, Houseless, in anguish. The border town of Ald Rudra, a fiefdom of her former House, became her home. Tall and strong were Ald Rudra's walls and boneclad were its oathmen who defended them. Nords and orcs, ever enemies of the Dunmer, came seeking to plunder and rape by sail and by foot. They pillaged the saltrice plantations and slaughtered the guar herds that lay beyond the sturdy walls of Ald Rudra. Never did the savages dare to contest the mighty bastion of the city, so great were its defenders and so small the courage of the pillagers.

The Blessed Mother, upon arriving in Ald Rudra in exile, was accepted by a family of guarherds who took pity on the outcast.

May all the saints and gods bless their ancestors! May they walk with Veloth!

In the barn of the guarherds, she gave birth to Rouran. Rouran, within his mother, did not consent to be born the conventional way, choosing instead to be born sideways through the Muatra-wound. Surrounded by musty hay and the purring of guars, our saint was born in purest humility.

By buglight his mother told his stories of his miraculous conception and sung to him the songs of his ancestors. She taught him his letters so that he might learn the scriptures of the Temple, the boy growing pious and wise from his studies. Rouran grew up amongst the guarherds and their children, living as they lived, growing strong and broad from his labors.

When he came of age, Rouran's mother died of a fever and passed on to her ancestors. On her deathbed, she bid him go to Ald Rudra to seek his fortune. The Blessed Mother wished more for her son than a life of guar and musty hay. She did not tell him of her outcast, for she feared the Redoran of the city would shun him like a lizard.

Bidding his adopted family farewell, Rouran traveled to Ald Rudra. Behind its stout walls, Rouran cast off his secular life, becoming a monk in the Temple. In truth, though his piety was beyond reproach, Rouran took poorly to monastic life. To sit and contemplate was not his way. Silent meditation drove him mad. The scratching of scriptorum quills set his teeth to grinding!

When he had leave from his duties, Rouran trained with hammer, sword and bow. In the battle arts, he excelled. One day, Rouran asked his master for permission to travel to the City of God to prove himself as a Buoyant Armiger. His master bid him stay in Ald Rudra, for if he was of martial mind and ill-suited to religious life, best he stayed in the city and become a hireling of House Redoran. Dismayed, the son of Vivec rid himself of the Temple and did as his master bid.

Rouran became sworn to the Great House of his mother. It is said that Rouran discharged his duties with aplomb. His mercy was sweet, his vengeance was terrible. Always he kept the Tribunal and saints in his heart. In his hundredth year, the Death Song began.

Across the sea, across the land, in Nordsinium, icebite and bleak,

A devil jarl did speak,

"I am Queen of nought but tumbled stones and beasts.

Winterhold is dreary dark when I see the shining East. My Kinsmen fair, my subjects meek, my treasure hoard is dull and pale compared to what I seek.