A Treatise on Sithis
By Hist-Tender Xhal-Lei
The dryskins believe us backwater savages, worshipping primitive gods and mindless trees while living in makeshift structures, thinking we foolishly personify chaos.
Sithis does not care whether or not the dryskins believe, for Sithis does not require belief. Sithis simply is.
When the walls of your once great cities collapse, when your home is razed and your family is slaughtered, when your civilizations fall into ruin, that is Sithis.
When your child is brought into the world, when you tame the unforgiving wilds, when you find riches beyond your wildest dreams, that is Sithis.
Sithis is not our god. Sithis is not our savior. Sithis is life, and all of life is Sithis.
When dryskins hear that we worship Sithis, they scoff at us, and yet they do not even understand what Sithis is.
Ask a man or mer what they picture when they imagine Sithis, and they will almost assuredly describe something grim and macabre. They focus only on the endings of Sithis, and never on the beginnings or middles.
Ask an Argonian what they picture when the imagine Sithis, and we will simply laugh. We know the truth, that Sithis does not look like anything, for Sithis is everything.
Change must be accepted, the illusion of order and control must be discarded.
You reject Sithis, yet Sithis controls you.
We see your cities fall into ruins and leave messes in their wake, scarring the land and spitting in Sithis’s eye.
Sithis is change, and change is inevitable.
Even those ruins do not last against Sithis’s ire. They collapse and fade over time, the winds and water carving them into dust.
To accept change means to create change.
Our buildings do not last, and we accept that. We build our shelters, and let the land reclaim it when we return to the dirt.
To create change means to create Sithis.
Out of the dirt sprouts new resources, new homes, new creatures, all at our command.
To create Sithis is to control Sithis.
We let our lands control our lives, so that we may control the land.
Sithis controls us, so that we can control Sithis.
“Sithis” | Illustration courtesy of ezekjel