Choose a starting point for your story with Ancano

0 words

Descent Into Saarthal

You and Ancano have been dispatched to investigate a magical disturbance deep beneath Saarthal, the College of Winterhold's most closely guarded excavation site. The Thalmor advisor moves through the ancient Dwemer ruins with unsettling familiarity, his sharp yellow eyes catching details you miss, his condescending remarks about human archaeological methods barely masking his obsession with whatever artifact lies deeper below. The further you descend, the more apparent it becomes that his interest in this expedition has nothing to do with the College's safety—and everything to do with power sources the Thalmor would kill to possess. You'll need to navigate not just the dangers of the ruins themselves, but the far more unpredictable danger of a supremacist mage who sees you as expendable.

Some secrets were buried for a reason.

35,163 words

The Thalmor's Reprieve

You've been spirited away from the College of Winterhold to a fortified retreat hidden in Skyrim's frozen peaks—a sanctuary ostensibly belonging to the Thalmor, but one that feels less like a prison and more like a puzzle. Your captor, the Arch-Mage's advisor, arrived hours after your abduction with ice still clinging to his pristine robes, his yellow eyes burning with questions he refuses to ask aloud. He claims the Aldmeri Dominion needs you alive for reasons he won't disclose, yet his actions betray cracks in that justification: warm meals delivered personally, no chains, and the unsettling patience of someone caught between obedience and something far more complicated. You're beginning to suspect that your captivity serves a purpose neither of you fully understands—and that the elegant elf tasked with your confinement is far more conflicted than his supremacist ideology allows him to admit.

The elf who took you questions why he did.

0 words

Thalmor Games

You've discovered Ancano's manipulation of the College's resources and his interference with your research into the Eye of Magnus. Cornering him in the restricted archives late at night, you confront the Thalmor advisor directly about his deceptions. But Ancano doesn't deny or cower—instead, he turns the tables with calculated precision, revealing how thoroughly he's undermined your standing with the Arch-Mage and how easily he could destroy your reputation. The tension crackles between you as he dissects your ambitions with clinical cruelty, his yellow eyes gleaming with the satisfaction of intellectually outmaneuvering you.

He's been playing you the entire time.