The Planemeld

In 2E 578, Molag Bal attempted what no Daedric Prince had ever attempted before. He tried to pull Nirn itself into Coldharbour - to drag the mortal plane into his own realm of domination and fuse them into one. The operation was called the Planemeld. Dark Anchors - massive Daedric machines forged in the Black Forge of Coldharbour - fell from the sky across every province of Tamriel. Each one punched a hole between Mundus and Oblivion. Each one dragged the land a little closer to the dark.

For Clan Lar, this was not some distant crisis. Molag Bal is the antithesis of everything Sanguine represents - domination where there should be freedom, silence where there should be laughter. The wards around the Bastion began to flicker. Deep below, in the chambers nearest to the sealed passage, the stone started humming at a frequency that had not been heard in centuries. Something in the ruins beyond the sealed passage - Abagarlas, a city that had once worshipped the very Prince now tearing the sky apart - was waking up.

None of it would have been possible without the Soulburst. In 2E 578, Emperor Varen Aquilarios gathered the Five Companions at the Temple of the One in the Imperial City to perform the ritual of the Amulet of Kings - a rite meant to rekindle the Dragonfires and legitimize his claim to the Ruby Throne. The necromancer Mannimarco, one of the Five, betrayed them all. He was an agent of Molag Bal, and the ritual he helped design did not light the Dragonfires. It broke them. The resulting detonation tore through the Temple and sent shockwaves across all of Nirn.

Mages across the continent dropped dead or went mad. Red Mountain shook in Morrowind. The earth split open in Skyrim. Storms battered Elsweyr and Valenwood. In the night sky, the constellation of the Serpent swelled until it threatened to swallow every other star sign whole. The barriers between Mundus and Oblivion thinned to the point of tearing, and Molag Bal did not hesitate. The Planemeld began.

The Dark Anchors were built in the Black Forge of Coldharbour from Tyranite Calx - an interplanar alloy that exists in no mortal mine. Each Anchor, when dropped onto Nirn, drove a tether between worlds. The land around them buckled and groaned as it was physically dragged toward Coldharbour. They struck everywhere. Dolmens of black metal and screaming chain slammed into fields, cities, crossroads - anywhere the barrier was thin enough to punch through.

Reality warped around every impact site. The ground cracked and bled dark fluid. Daedra poured through the breaches in numbers Tamriel had not seen in ages. The Worm Cult - Mannimarco's necromancers - maintained the ritual sites, feeding mortal souls into the machines to accelerate the merge. Each death on Tamriel weakened the barrier a little more. And with the Three Banners War burning across the continent, there was no shortage of dead.

The counter-assault was born out of desperation. Vanus Galerion of the Mages Guild and Countess Hakruba of the Fighters Guild put together a joint invasion force to strike Coldharbour at its source. The three alliance leaders - Emeric, Ayrenn, Jorunn - refused to commit troops, each afraid the others would seize the opportunity. So the Guilds went alone. With the aid of Meridia, whose hatred of Molag Bal predates the Eras themselves, they crossed into Oblivion.

The Great Shackle was destroyed. The Black Forge was dismantled. The Planar Vortex - the final mechanism pulling Nirn into Coldharbour - was torn apart by the Lights of Meridia. Valyria Lar walked the Wailing Prison, crossed the Shrouded Plain, and stood before the Endless Stair. At Heart's Grief, the seat of Molag Bal's power, she faced the God of Schemes with the Amulet of Kings and cut his hold on Nirn.

The barriers were restored. Not everywhere. Not completely. In places that had known Molag Bal's influence since the First Era - places like Abagarlas, connected through an ancient gate to the stronghold of a vampire clan sworn to his rival - the veil stayed thin. Thinner than it should be.

Long before the Planemeld, Meridia had already lost a city to Molag Bal - and turned that loss into a weapon. An Ayleid settlement devoted to her worship was besieged when Molag Bal opened portals to Coldharbour outside its walls. King Laloriaran Dynar held the defence as long as he could, but the situation was not survivable. So Meridia did something no one expected. She took the portals Molag Bal had opened and pushed her entire city through them, into Coldharbour itself. The Lights of Meridia - her sacred artifacts - warded the city against the Prince's sight. He could not touch it. He could not even see it. And Meridia stayed inside, disguised as a groundskeeper, waiting for the day mortals would need a foothold in enemy territory.

When the Guild invasion force entered Coldharbour, Molag Bal's defences scattered them across his realm. They arrived broken, separated, lost. The Hollow City saved them. It became a rallying point, a hospital, a command post built from Ayleid stone in the heart of Oblivion. Valyria walked its streets and recognized the masonry. The same proportions. The same carvings. The faint residual hum of Welkynd influence in the walls. She had seen this stonework before - in Abagarlas. The same Ayleid hands had built both cities, on the shores of the same lake, in an age when Meridia's faithful and Molag Bal's worshippers were neighbours.

Valyria was among those the Worm Cult fed to Molag Bal. Her soul was torn out and she was thrown into the Wailing Prison. She did not break. Vampires who serve Sanguine learn to find meaning in darkness rather than flee from it - and that discipline held, even without a soul. When the chance to escape came, she took it the way she takes everything: without hesitation and without looking back.

What followed took months and crossed half of Tamriel. She tracked Mannimarco's agents, broke into the Castle of the Worm, pulled Sai Sahan from the Halls of Torment, and fought through Sancre Tor to recover the Amulet of Kings. At Heart's Grief she faced Molag Bal and ended his hold on Nirn. She came back changed. The full account is recorded separately in the Archive.

After the Planemeld, the Bastion's wards stabilized - mostly. The upper chambers still hummed at a frequency that had not been there before 2E 578. Worse: the sealed gateway between the Bastion and Abagarlas, silent for centuries, had started radiating heat. Faint, but unmistakable. Ancient stone should not be warm.

Valyria ordered a full survey of the upper levels. The renovation crews were repairing a wall that had cracked during the tremors when they unsealed a temple room containing stonework that did not belong to the Bastion. The ancient gateway was uncovered within days. What lay beyond it changed everything the clan thought they knew about their home.