The Great War has always intrigued me, and it was one of the pieces of lore I was most disappointed not to be able to explore in any of the Elder Scrolls titles. All we know about it is vague book entries and dialogues, which I think vastly downplays the importance that the four-year war had on the events of Skyrim. Some of the game's most important characters, like Ulfric, Tullius, Delphine, and the Emperor himself were involved in the conflict, and it created the strife that caused Skyrim's Civil War.

So I wanted to at least attempt to do the Great War justice in the form of a narrative rather than a history textbook, by offering perspectives from different characters to create a story with multiple viewpoints. In this prologue, taking place two years before the meat of the action, I have obviously used much artistic license, but the basic plot is taken straight from the in-game book "The Great War." I hope you enjoy!

Prologue: A Gift for the Emperor

30th of Frostfall, 4E 171

Ancano wished he could just go back home.

It was not the weather that made him want to do so. Even though it was the wintertime in the northern provinces, it never became very cold in the Nibenay Valley. Though a cool breeze was sweeping over Cyrodiil that day, it was nothing out of control.

It was not the large crate either; even though it was inconveniently set up right in the middle of the carriage that Ancano was within, forcing him to squeeze into a corner, he had gradually become used to the seating arrangement over the weeks of his journey. After all, this massive, rather putrid-smelling crate was the reason the Altmer had even come on this trek: it was their gift for the Emperor himself.

"Gods, these disgusting Imperials," Ancano sneered, revealing what bothered him so much.

He almost could not bear to even look at the beggars dressed in rags and covered in warts, pitifully wailing for money to any passerby. Even though Ancano was within the protective covers of the carriage, so he did not have to think about coming into contact the poor, the view of those horrible human faces disturbed him to no end.

"This is a horrible sign," the High Elf muttered under his breath.

"Qa, ame?" His companion, Arien, asked from the front of the carriage, with a quizzical look on his face.

Ancano did not want to talk to his driver. In fact, he didn't even like Arien that much. With his annoying voice and his constant chatter about useless things, he had become aggressively more irritating as time went on. But Arien was very good with the horses, so the mission unfortunately required him.

"We haven't even crossed the Talos Bridge yet, and I'm already despising this cesspool," Ancano exclaimed. "One would think the soldiers have enough sense to keep the beggars in the city slums, but instead they let the poor shits run around the towns and harass everyone for septims."

Arien nodded along, acting like he was listening to another one of Ancano's pedantic tirades, but in reality he was marveling at the sight unfolding right in front of the carriage. Turning the corner around a large cottage, Arien could finally see what he had wanted to see for so long: the White-Gold Tower, glistening in the sunlight, just a mile away.

After a few minutes, the Altmer reached the outskirts of the Imperial City. But they had not even accomplished their final objective yet, and the tension was already palpable within the carriage; though Ancano would never admit it, he was certainly nervous. He wasn't even sure why an amateur like him was on this mission, given its importance.

"But I'm just an apprentice mage," Ancano said to the elders after they gave him the scroll of details, assigning him on a mission with Grand Orator Nartea himself.

"Ah, but you are a mage gifted in the art of speech and rhetoric," the eldest of the elders would say, in their typical patronizing tones. "One of our best and brightest students." Apparently they believed in him.

"Imagine that!" Ancano proudly said to himself. A dirty orphan from the lowest caste, picked off of the streets and raised to be an upstanding citizen, was now delivering a message to the leader of the Empire of Men himself.

But there was no time to dwell on such daydreams, as Nartea awoke from his afternoon nap, sitting directly opposite from Ancano and quite infuriated that he let himself sleep for so long a time (hardly behavior fit for one of the most respected Mer on the continent).

"Arnaco!" the two-hundred year-old elf shouted with the power of a young man. Ancano hated it when the geezer messed up his name, but there wasn't much he could do about it; Nartea was one of the most powerful men in the Dominion, after all, and keeping a good relationship with him was critical.

"We've almost reached the Talos Bridge! Get out the papers, and make sure not to show the guards the treaty!"

"Of course, master," the mage said with a sigh, as he pulled out the document with the elegant seal of the golden eagle, with the words Naarifin, Supreme Lord of the Aldmeri Dominion emblazoned around the seal.

Then, right in front, Ancano saw the might of Men: the massive Talos Bridge, stretched out in front of him and the comparatively puny caravan. The great marble construct was at least fifty feet wide and three hundred feet long, with hundreds of people of all races scurrying across, and at least a dozen caravans going back and forth from the City gate.

"I'm almost envious of the Imperials!" Arien exclaimed in his all-too-positive voice, clearly infatuated with the marvelous architecture of this gigantic metropolis.

"I hope you know that this damn town was created by Mer!" Ancano exclaimed, clearly fed up with such ignorance; Arien had a worrying amount of belief in the ability of Men.

Getting through the city gates was far easier than Ancano had expected. Apart from sharp glares from the Nord city guards (Ox-fuckers and Talos lovers, the elves would call them), they made it straight into the bustling Market District. The glares did not stop at the gate, however; hundreds of eyes seemed to stare straight into the young mage's soul, hating him, despising him and his race and his country. The Empire and the Dominion's relations had been tense for a while now, and nowhere did Ancano notice this fact more sharply than on the streets of the City.

He was also pretty sure that he saw a Bosmer shopkeeper make an obscene gesture (barbaric cannibal heathen), but Ancano tried to forget these things, tried to forget the stupid idiotic peasants and low-lifes that he would never see again. And in doing so, the time in the City went by like a breeze, as the carriage found itself outside the Imperial Palace in an instant. The elves were greeted cordially by well-dressed servants, and led into the building's interior.

The Palace itself was just as magnificent as Arien had expected, and even Ancano had to begrudgingly acknowledge its beauty. Adorned with massive tapestries of ancient emperors and heroes, stained-glass windows of the Divines in all Their glory, and the most expensive rugs of Hammerfell, the throne room was one to envy. And right in the center was the Ruby Throne, the center of Cyrodiil, the center of the Empire itself.

And even though the stewards had protested at first, the elves were allowed to bring their carriage into the throne room, despite its putrid odor; Ancano insisted that the gift be handed over directly.

Many people had started to shuffle into the room at this point, a variety of servants, soldiers, and councilmen, but there was of course one person conveniently missing. The elves began to become restless, wondering if this was all some sort of cruel joke. But then, one of the stewards spoke the fateful words:

"I now present Titus Mede II, sovereign of the Nibenay Valley, most Holy Envoy of the NineDivines, and supreme leader of the Third Empire of Men!"

And so the Emperor entered the throne room, flanked on both sides by bodyguards of the legendary Blades Order, dressed in their traditional Akaviri armor.

Ancano appeared composed in the sight of the grand entrance, but on the inside, he was fiercely intimidated. Not because the Emperor was a terribly intimidating man, however; his massive regal coat, ornately decorated and bordered by giant tufts of fur, made him seem like he was overcompensating for something that was missing. His thick black beard almost made him look like a common blacksmith, hardly someone worthy of such respect. But the intensity of his gaze, and the way in which he walked into the throne room so confidently made Ancano's hair stand up on its end.

For a man who had only been emperor for three years, he seemed to have the game all figured out.

"Ah, you must be the Aldmeri entourage! And do I have the honor of meeting the Grand Orator Nartea?" The Emperor said in a booming, but oddly genial tone, accepting a humble bow from the old elf. "Now, I assume you are here to suggest certain….arrangements with our nation, yes?" He asked, his tone immediately changing to a more serious, almost annoyed one.

The Emperor was no fool, even if the local newspapers sometimes called him so. He understood the Thalmor's desire for the Empire's land, for Hammerfell's gold mines and its spices. He knew their penchant for vengeance, their wish to get back at the kingdom of Men for all the wrongs that the Septims did to their nation six centuries ago. If there was any province that could hold a grudge for that long, it would certainly be the Summerset Isles.

So Titus was determined to make the Altmers' case as difficult as possible to present; rather than speaking to the elder and more distinguished elf Nartea, he stared straight into the eyes of the younger one. Ancano fell right into the Emperor's trap.

Or so it seemed at first.

Ancano still had his superb skill of rhetoric, after all. On the spot, he could come up with convincing arguments that even stumped the High Justiciars, and his sheer confidence rivaled that of Nartea in his younger years. In Ancano's case, vanity was a powerful asset.

"You would be correct, Your Majesty," the Altmer began. "The Aldmeri Dominion has a few proposals that it would like to submit to the Empire for approval. As you well know, our two nations have not been on such great terms in recent years, so we hope to be able to ease the chaos before it gets…. out of hand."

"Well, spit it out then!" The Emperor said, in a slightly more brash tone than before, showing his growing annoyance with the irrelevant niceties of the elves. "What exactly are your demands? And let us not call them anything else than demands!"

Ancano looked over to Nartea to know what to do next, but Nartea only made a slight nod, the meaning of which Ancano understood perfectly: stick to the plan.

"Our demands? Ah, well they are simple: First, the Dominion demands the complete disbandment of the organization known as the Blades, for their unlawful acts of espionage against our nation!"

The faces of the officials in the room grew uneasy, as they realized the terrible truth, that the Thalmor knew everything, about the secret missions, about the disruptions, perhaps even about the attempted assassinations. The Emperor went from accusatory to completely stone-faced. He no longer had the upper hand on the bargaining table.

"For the second item!" Nartea shouted, speaking his first words in the throne room, "the Dominion requests that the Empire abolish the worship of that man that some call a god, Tiber Septim. In the past, he committed great atrocities against the Altmer people and their homeland, and to call such a man divine is simply sacrilege!"

At these words, the Blade on Titus's left side, a bearded Nord deeply offended by Nartea's comments, began to step forward and almost drew his sword, but the Emperor put his arm up: Even with such blatant flaring of the fires by the High Elves, Titus knew that remaining diplomatic was critical. Such was the only way that conflict could be avoided.

"Third!" Ancano now spoke up again, "The Dominion demands that Empire give over at least forty percent of the lands in the province of Hammerfell, to allow for a fair sharing of resources, as the great amount of precious materials that the Redguards hoard is well-known to the rest of the world."

The Blade on Titus's right tilted his head back almost laughing, clearly scoffing at such a ridiculous proposition. The expression on the Emperor's face was becoming irritated again, as he came to the realization that this meeting was not a negotiation at all: it was a hoax.

"Oh, and we also propose some monetary tributes that the Empire will give to us as a sign of true cooperation between our nations. The details are in this document," Ancano stated as he handed a thick sheet of paper to the steward, who handed it to the Emperor. Upon reading the numbers upon the document, Titus's eyes widened in pure dumbfoundedness, and looked at his steward in disbelief.

"We do not accept your propositions," the Emperor stated very matter-of-factly, after just a few moments of reflection. "I am still not sure if you mean to seriously bother me with such asinine demands, but you are wasting your time. I would have expected more from the 'great' Nartea!"

"Ah, but Your Majesty, we still have this gift to give you!" Ancano explained with a smirk as he pointed towards the carriage behind the elves.

"Your cart? Yes, yes, show me what you have. I will let you know that gold will not change my stance, however."

Ancano motioned towards Arien, who had, up until this point, been standing behind the two speakers, meekly watching the drama unfold.

"Come here, help me turn over this thing!"

"Turn over, what do you mean?" Arien exclaimed, clearly very confused.

Ancano stared at Arien, wondering if he really was so stupid, but he then realized: the higher-ups had told him nothing about the plan. At least they recognized his untrustworthiness.

"Nevermind why, just do it!"

The two elves upended the carriage, and the large covered crate toppled out, its contents spilling out right in front of the Ruby Throne.

It was filled with heads.

Imperial heads, Nord heads, Breton heads, Dunmer heads, over fifty of them. Rotting, decaying in the throne room of the Empire.

The stewards recoiled in horror, and the rest of the assembly simply stared in both utter disgust and morbid curiosity.

"These!" Ancano explained, motioning his hands excitedly, "are the remains of the fifty-seven Blades agents that we found lurking and conniving within in our nation! What do you have to say, Your Majesty?"

At these words, the Nord Blade walked straight up to Ancano, picked him up like a child, and began to strangle him. Ancano was now absolutely terrified, for he could see the pure hatred in the man's eyes.

"Hakon!" Titus exclaimed, getting off of his throne. "Let go of him, at once!"

Shocked by the anger in the Emperor's voice, Hakon immediately put him down, and let Ancano gasp for air.

"Damn savage!" Ancano shouted, straining his throat even more, only to face Titus's glaring eyes.

"I will give you one hour to leave this city. One. Hour. If my guards find you after that time, they will make sure to execute you as quickly as possible." Titus's voice was now calm, but with a kind of dread attached to it.

"Then, I assume, Your Majesty, that this….is war?" Ancano inquired with a smirk, regaining his confidence.

"Yes, inform your High Council that the Empire declares war on the Aldmeri Dominion. We will show no mercy."

Ancano, Nartea, and a dumbfounded Arien, still in a state of shock about the horrible secret that he had been driving around all these weeks, were all brusquely escorted outside of the throne room. As they did so, Nartea gave his protégé an approving nod.

"You did well, my apprentice. They played perfectly into the plan, just as you predicted. You have truly made history here."

"Oh, you are too kind, master! The real history is just about to begin: Titus will wish he accepted the gift while he still had the chance."