Prologue
I don't remember much from when I was a little girl. I grew up in Blackrose which is a city somewhat located in the center of Black Marsh and I remember always being scared. Father always told me not to swim in the lake without him or never stray from the city gates, monsters would eat me. I loved water. I could swim for hours at the bottom of the lake with Father till people started disappearing in the lake and he told me we couldn't go there any more. I always had a feeling we were being watched in there but when Father was there I knew I was safe.
Safe being put in a relative term. There was always clans fighting for dominance over one-another. I remember at maybe 4 or 5 years old a group of big men and a couple scary looking women walked right into town like they owned the place. Father and a bunch of other people got together and they all had a big talk right there in the marketplace of town. I think if it wasn't for father there would have been bloodshed but instead the group left saying things like "Hist spit on this town, scaleless fiends, scale rot on you." Shortly after Mother came buy shooing me to get back in the house.
Maybe 10 years later I finally dug up the courage to break into Father's old chest. Whenever I asked him about it he would just tell me that he'd show me when I was ready. I had already gotten in the routine of my moon blood cycles and the boys were taking notice of me now. I wasn't some girl spreading whatever fake diseases that turned boys into girls any more. Mother began leaving me to do the home cooking or leather tanning, both of which were chores I despised. I wanted to go with Father and hunt but Mother always dragged me away saying it was the male's job to hunt and female's job to cook and tend to the house. It was time I took things into my own hands.
I managed to fashion myself a makeshift lock-pick and spent a good few hours poking and prodding at the lock to get it to release but eventually to my delight it gave way. Opening the old wooden chest I found a slightly rusted curved steel blade, a dagger made of the same fashion, a bow made of the wood of a Hist tree, and quiver of wooden arrows that I could tell were poisoned at the tip. Either that or it was burn marks but I wasn't going to take the chance. Some poisons out there would stop a grown man's heart in seconds and others would do much much worse. Beneath the weapons lay a steel armor set that looked just like scales with leather padding and a large coin purse. I didn't dare touch the money but I brushed my claws against the blades and armor appreciatively. At least from what I could tell at 15 years old it was well crafted, and well used, but very very clean like Father had been maintaining it all this time.
Hearing the door open my heart dropped as Father came in and dropped what would be our next weeks worth of food in dismay at what I had done. Almost instantly I looked to the floor in shame for disobeying him and I wanted to cry. Instead I just sat there not looking into the chest or father but just the floor waiting to be punished. Instead Father got to his knee and lifted my chin to his snout looking me straight in the eyes and speaking with the same soft comforting voice he always spoke to me in.
"Jasriella, my daughter, I was hoping I'd never have to tell you what was in that chest or why I kept it locked but it seems you've inherited your father's stubbornness. Come sit with me at the fireplace I'll tell you a story."
And so I sat in Father's lap that night as he told me stories of when he was a Shadowscale and how he went around as a murderer for hire. When I asked him what a Shadowscale was he told me it was an Argonian who was born under the sign of the Shadow. It was the same sign I was born under and when I asked him if I was a Shadowscale he just told me that maybe in a different time I would be but this life is much better than one devoted to blood and murder.
