Day 126: Corprusarium

Today I toured Divayth Fyr's corprusarium. I would call it more of a dungeon. The caverns under the tower are damp and dark. Of course the denizens are so far gone with the disease that they really don't know the difference. Most of them anyway. Yagrum Bagarn is well aware of his surroundings, most of the time anyway.

My errand for the wizard took me deep into the corprusarium, to the home of Yagrum Bagarn. His corprus is far enough advanced that the other inmates leave him alone. It should be. He was the first guest of the corprusarium; the first case of corprus that Divayth Fyr ever encountered. Yagrum Bagarn is even older than the ancient wizard. In his younger days Yagrum Bagarn was an associate of Kagrenak, reputedly the greatest enchanter of all time. Kagrenak was the Dwemer master of the stronghold in Red Mountain. Yagrum Bagarn is a dwarf; quite possibly the last surviving Dwemer.

Other than my imminent descent into madness from the corprus disease I seem to be on an astonishing run of good fortune. I found someone to translate my Dwemer books, and now I have met and interviewed the last of the Dwemer. Should I survive I can look forward to Trebonius' response when I come back with the answer to the riddle of the Dwemer's disappearance. There is no doubt that it was an assignment he never intended for me to complete.

Kagrenak had a plan. His theory involved using very powerful artifacts to drive an enchantment that would improve the Dwemer race. Among the Dwemer there was opposition, with many saying that it would be too dangerous. Apparently, either on his own or with the approval of the Dwemer council Kagrenak began experimenting with his ideas, perhaps driven by the Dunmer invasion of Red Mountain. Yagrum Bagarn was on a mission to what he calls an 'outer plane'. He returned to find the great halls of the Dwemer desolate; the experiment gone horribly wrong. The opponents of Kagrenak's theory were afraid that the Dwemer could find themselves shifted to some inhospitable alternate plane of existence, if not destroyed outright. It would appear that they were correct.

If I do not survive I will forward this journal to Ranis in Balmora. It seems a waste for this information to die with me, or be lost in the madness of the corprusarium. Ranis will make sure Trebonius doesn't get to use it for his own aggrandizement.

In his lucid moments Yagrum Bagarn has been working on a pair of enchanted boots that Divayth Fyr acquired. I brought them to the wizard with the dwarf's well educated estimate that they are terminally flawed. Now I face a testing.

The wizard has a potion ready. He has made some minor corrections. He says it may work because of the improvements, and it may work because I may be the Nerevarine. Nothing he says even remotely approaches a promise that it will work, or even a suggestion that if it doesn't I will still be alive, though still with the corprus. My choice though is to knowingly consign myself to the corprus, letting my mind deteriorate until I am such a hazard to myself or others that I need to be confined below. The corprusarium protects the lost from the persecution that comes with the corprus, and Divayth Fyr says the victims seem immune to disease and blight, and age. If I do not get cured I may well outlive the Dunmer, spending uncountable years with my body growing more grotesquely distorted and my mind raving.

My choice is clear. In the morning I must risk the potion.