An Imperial reporter is assigned to cover news stories and events in Morrowind, inadvertently finding danger, adventure, and an unassuming Argonian who may or may not be the so-called "Nerevarine." Story updates every Sunday!
The boatman, whose name I luckily didn't catch (because I would slander his name incessantly in my reports), dropped me off after a short trip through the canals separating the floating cantons of Vivec City. We passed under the bridges where a few people fished and looked around idly, seemingly as bored as I was with the city. These were the first people I had seen besides the scumbag boatman over on Hlaalu Canton.
He docked the boat (more like a raft and barely sea canal worthy) next to a rickety wooden dock that seemed shoehorned within and totally out of place with the rest of the city. I gave him his money and he looked at me with a sly smile and said, "What? No tip?"
I ignored him and walked away.
I was greeted by that damn floating moon again; this time it was nearly overhead. The wooden planks, doors, and ropes that lined its sides were very clear now and seemed to be of the same shoddy construction as the boat dock was, if you could even call it a dock. And being this close to the moon, which let me remind you was a jail for Temple heretics as I was informed in Ebonheart earlier in the day, it finally struck me that there was no way to actually get up to it. Levitation? Was that the only way to get there? How did that work with the prisoners? Were they forced to levitate themselves up to jail? Or chained to a levitating person and dragged up there?
And next to the moon was undoubtedly High Fane, the head of the Tribunal Temple here in Vvardenfell. By the look of the building it couldn't be anything else. It sported three conical domes each of slightly differing height that reached up into the sky to about the height the moon hanging next to them. The left and right pinnacles had doors on their northern side, the side facing the rest of the city, while the central pillar had a tunnel traversing north/south through the building itself.
On the north side of the Temple Canton, at the entrance from the rest of Vivec city, greeting travelers, pilgrims, and those with noble/business purposes were two large statues of a Dunmer, who could be none other than Vivec himself. The two statues' eyes were both wide-open and seemingly focused on something that wasn't quite there, as if Statue Vivec was looking somewhere else other than where his eyes were physically looking. This was most notable in the western statue. Statue Vivec was in the process of killing a giant beetle-like creature with a spear, and while appearing to look at the beetle was somehow not looking at it at all. I found it strange that the statue -- and it was very clearly a statue -- could have this gaze that was so strange, purposeful, otherworldly, and even divine. Was this how Vivec the person/god actually was?
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The tunnel's southern end led to another open area of on the High Fane/Temple Canton, and slightly further to the south the Palace stood with a large staircase leading to the top. A group of people stood at the foot of the staircase and were staring up the staircase for some reason.
I figured I should search around in High Fane to find some information about meeting with Vivec.
Near one of the doors stood an imposing figure embellished in golden armor -- an ordinator -- a guard of the Temple. I had come across a few of these imposing figures a few days earlier in Almas Thirr but never had to deal with them. His mask had openings where his eyes were but I couldn't see anything like pupils or irises. Just blackness. And for some reason despite this utter blackness I couldn't shake the feeling that he was staring at me the entire time.
