Seeks-His-Heart

Seeks-His-Heart was an Argonian male who is one of the possible subjects of the Nerevarine Prophecy whose conjectural existence is one of the questions posed by the Uncertain Sign Dragon Break. Seeks, as he was often nicknamed, was born to captive parents in Morrowind, and was therefore considered lukiul, an Argonian term for those born outside of Black Marsh who cannot hear the Hist. Despite his best efforts in his early life, he was never able to obtain such a connection, though his personality was much more profoundly shaped by the loss of his sister, Slips-Through-Fingers, earlier in his childhood. Unsurprisingly, he was a staunch abolitionist, with a philosophy that bordered on absolute anarchism.

He was a Thief born under the Tower Sign.

Biography

Early Life

Seeks-His-Heart was born in 3E 407 in a slave clutch near Tear, his exact parentage unrecorded and relatives property of vassals to House Dres. When he was young, he and several of his siblings were transferred to a colony on Vardenfell after the island was finally opened to colonization. Seeks-His-Heart and a few of his older siblings were able to break free of their restraints and take control of the ship one day out of port. In the ensuing conflict, his younger sibling, Slips-Through-Fingers, was cast overboard by one of their captors, and Seeks-His-Heart threw himself overboard after her. Unable to find her in the choppy seas, he swam back to the ship before it had gone entirely out of the range of his endurance. He and his siblings turned the ship after their missing sister but were ultimately unable to sight her again. After running aground again on mainland Morrowind, the surviving pack of Argonians made their way west and ultimately crossed into uesp-l:Cyrodiil by way passes in the Valus Mountains, aided along the way by various outlanders. The journey took them nearly three years to complete, moving only in the cover of darkness, rarely along the most efficient paths. As a result, Seeks-His-Heart was ten years old by the time they finally entered the Imperial province.

With no clear heritage and no trade skills, apart from those which none of the party had any interest in pursuing again, the pack of siblings eventually split up. There was less risk in being caught out alone within the Empire proper (where slavery was illegal and they were unlikely to be rounded up), and it was easier to beg alone or in pairs. It was at around this age when Seeks began to be known by his Cyrodiilic name, and ultimately this name supplanted his own in any documentation.

He remained in Cyrodiil for nearly ten years, mostly in the area around Bravil. In and around Bravil, food was obtainable and septims "procurable". Seeks became a known quantity in this area, though not at the time truly noteworthy. According to journals attributed to him which were recovered from the foundations of house in Bravil during the Oblivion Crisis, Seeks went through "about three" boom-bust periods in this time where he built up a nest egg only to lose it. At various points in these journals, he considered either returning to Morrowind to seek for signs of his sister, or to head south to Black Marsh to rejoin his people. By all accounts, this decade of adolescence was not a happy time for Seeks, and he had frequent periods of imprisonment for petty thefts and larcenies. Despite the events of his later life it would come to light that based on his existing reputation he was effectively barred from the Thieves Guild of Cyrod due to his reputation as a bungler and pickpocket in Bravil. Indeed, it was one such failed attempt to steal a considerable sum of money from a tax convoy that lead to his imprisonment at the Imperial City Prison.

Imprisonment and Deportation to Vardenfell

Seeks-His-Heart's personal history joints to the history of the Uncertain Sign Dragon Break after his imprisonment in the Imperial City Prison in the late fall of 3E 426. He remained in prison for several months before being assigned a parole that would lead to him being sent to Vardenfell. This same fate, and the dire costs of avoiding it, earlier in his childhood lead to Seeks-His-Heart considering taking his own life, though he clearly never went through with it. Nevertheless, he remained in a deep depression for the entire voyage, and suffered crippling nightmares the entire way. He later recorded that it was only the constant attention from his fellow prisoner, Jiub.

Seeks-His-Heart's release was conditional, though he briefly considered ignoring the conditions of his release, and likely did not comport himself in Vardenfell as his Imperial masters would have approved of. Ultimately though, it's believed he accepted the parole as a way to bring himself back to Morrowind (if only indirectly), and potentially pick up the trail of his lost sister.

Role in the Dragon Break

Because of his arrival on 17th Last Seed, 3E 427, at the Customs and Excise Depot of the Imperial service in the village of Seyda Neen, Seeks-His-Heart satisfies the condition of being a subject of the Uncertain Sign Dragon Break. His actions from that point onward become ambihistory.

Plunder of Seyda Neen

In the simplest of terms, Seeks-His-Heart can be said to have plundered Seyda Neen when he first arrived there, though he was only in town for a partial day. He discovered the body of a local tax collector, but given his past association with tax robberies, he did not report the crime and merely looted the man of any remaining valuables. He would later boast of having broken into every house in the settlement and sold many of the items he recovered, including those from the excise warehouse, to the local trader. As nightfall approached, he purchased a token quantity of equipment and fled for uesp-l:Balmora before anyone was likely to return to their homes and discover what had happened.

Balmora's Thieves Guild

Of the locations Seeks could have chosen to flee to, he would later admit that Balmora was the least promising choice. He had gone there merely because it was known to him that he was expected there, and it was only few days later that he realized if anything had come of the plunder of Seyda Neen, Balmora would likely have been the first place the law would have come looking for him. Instead, Seeks had prioritized the conditions of his Parole, quickly seeking out the South Wall Cornerclub as a source of information for finding his contact, Caius Cosades, an agent of the Blades. Cooperation with the Emperors' clandestine service had been the principal condition of Seeks' release. To Seeks' taste, however, Caius first insisted that the young thief "get the smell of Vardenfell on him", and turned Seeks loose, so to speak, on the island.

This left Seeks in a somewhat difficult position. He had food and water sufficient for a few days and the coin to keep that condition going, but certainly wasn't fit to retire on the wealth he had. With Seeks' background in mind, Caius put the Argonian in touch with Sugar-Lips Habasi, a Khajiiti native of the city who happened to front for the local extension of the Thieves_Guild, and the two began working together immediately. Within just two days of his arrival in Balmora, and on Habasi's behalf, he had gone on a considerable crime spree that primarily targeted the town's Dunmer population:

• Stealing a key from a Cammona Tong rival which allowed the guild to later plunder Nerano Manor
• Robbing the emporium of the local alchemist, to a considerable profit,
• Similarly plundering the Hlaalo Manor
• Re-Securing, and then smuggling into the city, a trove of Dwemer artifacts.

Indeed, it was partially due to the heat the two of them were generating that Seeks-His-Heart agreed to take a break from robbery to run an interference mission in Pelagiad, however, this proved to only be a relatively minor errand occupying an overnight trip, during which he secured the release of a guild-affiliated prisoner by blackmailing a local official. Shortly after his return, he instead determined to visit the guild branch in Ald'ruhn.

Ald'ruhn and Sadrith Mora

Seeks-His-Heart found the profile of his activities in Ald'ruhn to be a bit high for his liking. The first task he was assigned was effectively a heist against the mage guild, which he was only able to carry out after significant personal investment in invisibility potions; despite the opportunities such an operation would pose, it's known from the attestation of his peers that he considered the heist a great waste of his time and "risk to his skin". When handed the lucrative opportunity to follow that heist up with one against a well-regarded member of House Redoran, he instead took the opportunity to travel to Sadrith Mora.

Unsurprisingly, an Argonian like Seeks sticks out like a sore thumb in the seat of Telvanni power. Records found which date to this time period indicate that Seeks was planning a possible "sweep" of the city, intending on a string of burglaries that would have left no household untouched, but these plans either never came off or went awry. Instead, Seeks became the subject of a 1600 septim bounty and ultimately had to flee the city by boat, though we believe he kept contact with the Thieves Guild contacts in Sadrith Mora as he continued to operate on their list of operations. It was at around this time he is believed to have obtained the rank of Operative with the guild.

Raid of Caldera

One of the few events we can confirm Seeks directly participated in - because his writings survive in the ambihistorical record on this matter, was a heist targeting the Caldera Mining Company. Seeks-His-Heart targeted the mine not out of any especial profitability of the ebony trade (which it must be noted at the time was considerable given the Imperial Monopoly), but out of a need for raw ore to satisfy an arrangement he was brokering between the Guild's interests at Wolverine Hall with contacts he had cultivated within the Mages Guild. Though the initial intent was "a quick nip at the rocks", Seeks discovered documents during his casing of the mines which indicated that the majority of the labour on-site were in fact slave labourers. As a result, he took a more aggressive tack on the project and freed the entire contingent of slaves currently at the mine, aiding them to escape along with him as his theft of the ebony drew the attention away from the slaves. He is known to have considered this attack among one of his finest hours. Contemporary accounts from fellow thieves suggest he was in unusually high spirits for quite a time after, and he used the proceeds from his share of the stolen ore to use the Thieves' whisper network to reduce the legal attention being paid to him.

Personality

At the outset of his adventure, Seeks-His-Heart is much more brash and given to conflict than his sister - more of a bandit than a traditionalist thief. While he prefers the minimum amount of trouble and is trained in (and prioritizes) the use of stealth, he is not above resorting to violence to preserve a desired outcome, even if that outcome is merely another day of his freedom. Seeks does not form strong bonds and does not have a firm respect for authorities of any kind; he visits Caius merely to satisfy the requirements of his relief and no doubt fully intends to steer well clear of the man now that he's been turned more broadly loose upon the whole island of Vardenfell. This all being said, he still would not consider himself a murderer; killing a bandit or assassin or other outlaw is one thing, but common civilians are not, as he would put it, "in the game".

He is quite loose with his money and as a result prefers bribery to more indirect charm offensives.

He has an ingrained - he would say natural - hatred of the Dunmer and feels no compunction one way or the other toward their lives. He prefers them as targets for his theifts and robberies when available.

Trivia

• Despite being shown as the older brother, Seeks-His-Heart was actually created later than Slips-Through-Fingers when the author attempted to come up with a better reason for such a name than being a thief, and the story of their separation was born. At the time, Seeks was a nameless and non-specific older relative.
• Seeks' more brash nature is due in part to gameplay limitations of Morrowind as well as different qualities between the Thieves Guild quest requirements in that game as opposed to Slips' behaviour in Oblivion.
• In mechanical terms, he uses the thief class.