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rcer Frey was contacted by Maven Black-Briar one night and she summoned him to her estate outside of Riften. But once he arrived, there was no Maven eting him. It was a Dunr Wizard with a bald head along with a prosthetic arm and eye, cinar.
Rumors had it that Maven employed that wizard couple of months ago and he seed to be behind the chaos around Riften since he ca for a certain Artifact that he turned the entire hold upside down for.
Still, once rcer asked about Maven, he was shown to a withered old lady whose body is beyond the limits of its natural life. She woke up, spoke a few words, and the look on her eyes was filled with hate and malice, all before she collapsed again.
These eyes were Maven's alright.
rcer understood that sothing terrible had happened and now, his patron Maven is at open war with Jon Dare, a war she is losing.
The Thieves Guild seed to have slipped from Maven's hand now that rcer can't affect the big picture with Delvin breathing down at his neck. That's why he decided to use a branch of n he hired to empty the vault of the Thieves Guild that he was leeching on for years.
Getting to that Vault was not a problem since the Guild had a big heist planned for one night and all mbers were participating. All rcer needed to do was to use the secret entrance from the Graveyard to access the Guild vault directly and open it using the artifact he managed to reacquire as of late.
The Skeleton Key.
Now that he emptied the treasury, the Thieves Guild should be crippled and Jon Dare shouldn't have much use of it. Next on the list is to hurt Jon Dare indirectly.
Earlier, rcer assigned Jullanar with an investigation that he thought would yield nothing. It was about a certain sabotaging operation that was targeting the Black-Briars and the Thieves Guild at the sa ti.
At first, Jon Dare was the pri suspect in rcer's mind but knowing how much money Jon was pouring into the Guild, things didn't add up. However, after so investigation, Jullanar returned with a na… Karliah.
rcer Frey, Hlaalu Karliah, and Gallus Desidenius were the legendary trio of thieves from around 20 to 30 years ago. They led the Thieves Guild through its best tis and increased its popularity by leaps and bounds. Not only that, but those three were the Nightingales, a secret order within the Thieves Guild that serves the Lady of Luck and Shadows, Nocturnal.
With the Twilight Sepulcher being the sacred temple of Nocturnal on Nirn, the Nightingales were its sworn protectors and from it, Nocturnal blessed the Thieves with luck and fortune.
In the Sepulcher, there lies an item called the Ebonre. While it is simply a portal to Noctornal's realm, it is also so sort of a conduit that can pass the influence of Nocturnal into Mundus. This influence is what gives luck to the Thieves at night and shrouds them with mystery and shadow.
To keep this portal open, the Skeleton Key must remain inserted within it and remain there or else the portal shall be closed and the thieves of Tamriel shall be left without Luck.
This was the secret behind the Curse that haunted the Thieves Guild for long years.
rcer has been stealing from the Guild for years. He lived a lavish lifestyle and kept his actions without ever stopping. Gallus Desidenius found out and tried so hard to expose him but rcer was craftier and forced Gallus into a trap near Winterhold where he slew Gallus by Karliah's blade. Once he reached Riften, he used her arrows to injure himself and pinned it all on her.
Karliah escaped Riften and went back to the collapsed House Hlaalu in Mournhold where she spent years planning her revenge. The mont she amassed enough fortune, she started going against rcer from the shadows in order to bankrupt the Guild and make them all turn against him. There, she will be able to expose him as a betrayer to Nocturnal and the entire Guild.
But rcer caught onto that and realized who was the actual saboteur of his ongoing operations, and if it wasn't his old friend Karliah, not Jon Dare. He was even able to find that out thanks to Jon Dare's girlfriend who was hanging around with the other Thieves from Delvin's circle.
Still, once he wanted to seek help from Maven Black-Brair to eliminate Karliah, he found her in the sorry state she was in thanks to Jon Dare and realized that Jon's involvent in the current affairs of the Guild is not as minor as he was led to believe. According to Maven, he had to work with Arch-Wizard cinar to eliminate Jon Dare as well.
Maven had power over him and quite frankly, she had him by the balls for a long ti. She knew about his whole situation with Gallus and Karliah and convinced him that she could offer him protection if he was at her service in the underground world.
Still, rcer was reluctant to go against Jon Dare. Despite Jon being a junior to him and previously a mber of the guild, he is now a giant and with a lot of power backing him up. rcer researched Jon for the past two years before the appearance of the Dragons and tried to co up with a single-man heist in the Dare Tower but that was an impossible plan without the Skeleton Key.
At so point, rcer actually lost the Skeleton Key for at least 3 years, and recently did he recover it. According to what was told to him, Aedric and Daedric Artifacts have wills of their own and sotis can choose to appear and disappear. rcer really panicked when the Skeleton Key disappeared but a year ago, it erged from the shadows right in front of his eyes.
He knew it.
The Key calls to him, it wants to be with him.
They have a connection.
Nocturnal is the lady of shadows and two of her Artifacts are simply the most incredible tools any thief can have. One is the Skeleton Key which can unlock anything in the physical and ntal aspects and the second is the Gray Cowl of Nocturnal, a mask which its wearer can be forgotten from the mories of all those who know them.
If he was after anything now, it is the Cowl that would make him disappear without anyone knowing who he ever was.
But the Cowl is currently lost and if he wanted safe passage away from Jon Dare's influence, he would need to rely on Maven, or better, rely on the Arch-Wizard by her side, cinar.
cinar and rcer t on a few occasions and they managed to strike a good deal together to solve each other's problems. cinar seed interested in and terrified by Jon Dare and for so reason, he refused to speak about that thing that terrifies him but at the sa ti, he wanted to get rid of him almost as much as Maven, and thus the two of them got to work together.
First, cinar asked rcer to lead a small band of thugs and capture a living Vampire. A dangerous task but with the Vampire situation happening around Riften, rcer managed to ambush a Dawnguard caravan that was transporting a captured Vampire from a fortified carriage and brought him to cinar.
As for the next step of their plan, it was to capture or kill two figures that would lead Jon Dare to fly in rage and go to a place where they will lay a trap for him. Those two figures they are after were Jullanar and Karliah.
Jullanar is known to be one of Jon Dare's won and a very close person to him. The reason why she could hang around anywhere around Riften is that she is sothing of a monster herself. All the Dares are monsters by normal people's standards and that's why it had to be done where they least expect. That's why rcer led Jullanar to the Snow Veil Sanctum where Karliah was hiding in order to assassinate the two.
Jon knew rcer would try to assassinate Jullanar and warned her of the possibility. He also gave her enough items to kill rcer and blow him to dust along with Karliah whom she t once before in Morrowind. (When Jon was returning to Skyrim, Jullanar traveled to the Morrowind to aid the Old Woman of Mournhold as a Dare rcenary.)
What Jon didn't expect was the involvent of Arch-Wizard cinar and Maven in this affair with rcer. It was as if all the scum whose nas start with the letter M decided to work against him all at once.
cinar and the Maven's rcenaries attacked Jullanar in the Snow Veil Sanctum and tried to capture her. Even with all the preparation she had on her, Jullanar was cornered badly and couldn't defend against an Arch-Wizard for too long.
The attacks all ca from behind as cinar, rcer, and Maven's rcenaries were following her with all sorts of tactics. She managed to easily drop a score of them but whenever she kills one, two would co at her.
There, she ran into Karliah who found out that the back exit of the Snow Veil Sanctum was also surrounded by rcenaries. With the Evil M gang closing on them from all directions and cinar almost about to lay his hand on them, Jullanar dejectedly used her last card that she never imagined she would need.
An Escape Scroll.
She could take Karliah with her before the two got captured and the mont they erged, they were in Honeyside Manor in Riften. With her terrible injuries, Jullanar refused to go anywhere other than the Thieves Guild.
She needed to tell Jon.
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