When he was building the Winterhold sandbox, Skyl thought of a very famous magical item from the Harry Potter world: the Marauder's Map. That piece of magic could display the name and real-time position of everyone inside Hogwarts Castle.
For him, recreating a similar function—or even going further—wouldn't be difficult. Still, he felt it was worth taking some time to study the Marauder's Map itself, to borrow from its design. Who knew, it might inspire him.
For the whole autumn he worked like a corporate wage-slave programmer, busy refining the gameplay experience of Winterhold Age. The process was creative and fun, so Skyl threw himself into it. But he increasingly felt the negative effects of a lack of population. There were many features he could design, but no dedicated staff to maintain them regularly.
For example, he had considered setting up base stations for the Watchers flying all over the place, to handle recharging, upgrades, and repairs. If he installed offensive modules on the Watchers so they could cast Destruction magic, they could act as law enforcers; any evil act would be immediately blanketed with firepower.
But that would consume a huge number of soul gems, and he'd need enough enchanters and engineers stationed at each base. It sounded like a nice way to create jobs and positions, but the problem was that training high-level technical personnel took time—and it required a large enough population to draw from.
He could power everything with divine energy and solve it once and for all, but that felt a bit too extravagant.
For practical reasons, Skyl ultimately shelved the drone idea. Otherwise, he really could have shown the natives of Nirn what a doctrine of overwhelming firepower looked like.
There were many similar problems caused by the shortage of people. Many projects had to be cut, leaving only blueprints and notes, to be revived someday in the future.
Over the last two months, Skyl's main concern had been to build an artificial-intelligence support system to embed in the Winterhold sandbox—essentially a tutorial AI that could take a large part of the workload off Brelyna's shoulders.
Second, he designed automated magical farms, soul-gem charging workshops, and steam-powered fishing vessels, then handed the engineering schematics and enchanting layouts over to members of the College for prototyping and development.
The temperature-controlled magical farms would give Winterhold a thriving agriculture and livestock industry.
A thriving livestock industry would provide the soul-gem workshops with vast amounts of soul energy.
Steamships powered by enchanted soul gems would allow Winterhold's fishermen to carry out large-scale, mechanised fishing.
Together, these three technologies would not only solve the food problem, but also provide a steady supply of raw materials for the enchanting industry.
From Hearthfire (September) to Sun's Dusk (November), Winterhold flourished, while unrest in Skyrim grew worse.
First, dragons began appearing everywhere. Alduin the World-Eater stirred from his long sleep and reawakened the dragonkind who had fallen into skeletal slumber. They soared once more over a Skyrim they had left behind for thousands of years, trampling the land with wild abandon, just like the ancient songs described. They were undead beings; as long as a dragon's soul remained, it could exist on. Only the Dragonborn could devour dragon souls and kill them for good.
But the Dragonborn had not yet grown strong enough to stand against Alduin.
On the twenty-seventh of Hearthfire, with the help of Onmund and Whiterun's garrison, the Dragonborn slew a dragon and absorbed its soul, proving their identity.
That same day, the Greybeards at High Hrothgar summoned the Dragonborn with their Shout. Next would be the familiar sequence you see in animation: the protagonist goes up the mountain to an old master and begins a period of closed-door training.
Onmund phoned Skyl to say he planned to follow the Dragonborn to High Hrothgar Monastery.
Skyl just told him to be careful. Beyond that, he had no special instructions.
The civil war between the Stormcloaks and the Empire cooled slightly—perhaps because all of Skyrim was now in the depths of winter, making troop movements inconvenient. Large-scale battles would have to wait for spring, when the snow melted. Winter would be a time of recovery for both sides—and also a season of brewing plots.
After a period of negotiation, Ulfric finally agreed to the College's terms for a prisoner exchange. More than two thousand immigrants from Windhelm were traded for the five hundred prisoners being held in Winterhold, causing a population boom in the city. Most of these immigrants were non-Nords who had suffered discrimination and exclusion in Windhelm, especially the Dunmer, who had been met with cold glares and harsh repression. For them, moving to Winterhold might well be the better choice.
Brelyna joked that she could finally "move her fingers a bit"—one drag of her selection box could now grab several hundred people for a single task, instead of having to pinch every person out one by one.
Following Skyl's instructions, Brelyna required every resident of Winterhold to undergo testing for magical aptitude.
In truth, most people in this world possessed the talent to handle magicka, but the process of actually learning magic was not something everyone could persevere through.
To encourage the people of Winterhold to study magic, Brelyna gave the caster class excellent benefits: they were exempt from agricultural labour, received a fixed monthly ration of food, and enjoyed generous living subsidies. They essentially never had to worry about putting bread on the table. Anyone who achieved a genuine breakthrough in their magical research would be exempt from all other duties entirely and could devote themselves to pure scholarship.
These policies turned Winterhold into a paradise for spellcasters.
The College became the new Winterhold's centre of power—and at the heart of the College's power stood the mysterious Tower of Tomes.
For the College's mages, the benefits of Winterhold's reconstruction were obvious. No longer shunned by the locals, they had suddenly acquired extremely high social status and were free to step away from production and conduct independent research. These perks encouraged them to remain at the College, and, driven by their desire to pursue higher magic, almost all of them longed to enter the Tower of Tomes and draw closer to the godlike Mage Skyl.
J'zargo, the Khajiit mage, was in charge of recruiting new Tower members, but the entry trials were set by Brelyna.
She didn't test people with Illusion magic the way Skyl did. In the eyes of this noble-born Dunmer, that approach was hardly universal: it was troublesome, exhausting, and its results were only so-so.
Certainly, Skyl had a thousand ways to make people loyal to him—and ten thousand ways to make sure anyone who betrayed him died badly.
But the Tower of Tomes had no need to rely on ideology to maintain its members' loyalty.
Like the new Winterhold itself, as long as a social order served the interests of the group, people would be drawn in naturally.
Let College members sharpen their heads and squeeze themselves into the Tower of Tomes. That was far better—and much more straightforward—than the old master-disciple way of personally testing and selecting students.
As for loyalty…
J'zargo would see to it that anyone in the Tower of Tomes whose loyalty fell short was quietly removed.
All College members applying to join the Tower of Tomes had to pass a trial proving that they possessed at least one of three things: knowledge, wisdom, or courage.
Proof of knowledge had to be earned by making a breakthrough in spell research.
Proof of wisdom required the candidate to locate the portal to the Tower of Tomes hidden somewhere within the College.
Proof of courage demanded that the candidate delve into distant ruins and return with some lost, ancient magical artefact.
The College's senior members gradually all qualified for proof of knowledge. Once they joined the Tower of Tomes, they were allowed to claim a personal study. From then on, they could choose to conduct independent research, or they could apply to join one of the existing Classrooms to receive guidance and protection from a mentor.
The hexagonal corridors of the Tower of Tomes were endless.
They would embrace any seeker of knowledge.
Most of the senior members of the College chose to stand on their own. They longed for the day when their work would earn the King of the Tower's praise, and he would grant them the right to establish a Classroom—and with it the honour of immortality.
On the seventeenth of Sun's Dusk (November), once Skyl had dealt with his backlog of work, he received a call from J'zargo.
"Mage Skyl. Someone has used a portal to reach the Tower of Tomes."
"Oh? That's good news. Who is it?"
"Four kids. I can't understand the language they're speaking."
"Give them the phone."
The other end of the line went quiet for a moment.
Then Harry's voice came through; mustering up his courage, the boy said, "Hello?"
"Harry, it's me," Skyl answered. "I heard you made it in. Welcome to the Tower of Tomes."
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