Vvardenfell, Dagoth Ur

Day 24 (Years 427 of the Third Age)

After entirely too much debate, I was allowed to pass through the Ghostgate and gain access to the blighted mountains themselves. Armed with a supply of long-range offensive spells, various charms against disease, and an appropriately big stick, I set off through the looking glass, into the abyss.

The environment here is punishing: difficult terrain, choking ash, and very poorly mapped switchbacks mad exploring the region slow going, but it was worth it. Morrowind is littered with Dwemer ruins (a now-dead race that fill this world's "dwarf" niche), but the Dwemer ruins in the blight are among the most spectacular. They are also, however, the home of the Sixth House, House Dagoth. And Dagoth Ur is their greatest citadel.

The motivations of House Dagoth remain unclear. Their tactics, however, are easily understood. Using passages known only to them (probably passing beneath theGhostfence along some forgotten Dwemer highway), they spread their forces out from the blight to the rest of the island. They attack the infrastructure and operate in secret, using a cell structure to prevent the dissemination of information.

Commonly, people cannot understand zealotry. They ask, "Why don't they just settle down and enjoy life? What's the big deal?" My answer: the big deal is outrage. If someone considers themselves to be principled, and they are confronted with something that cannot abide, no amount of comfort or luxury will quell their outrage. It's the nastyflip side of having deeply held values: when those values are violated, the result is nothing short of emotional. And since deeply held values need not be either rational or realistic, people are overtaken by sadness, rage, or obsession whether or not doing so is justified.

Dagoth Ur wears that rage and contempt on its sleeve. Here, the conditions are barely livable: a hellish volcanic wasteland riddled with a terrifying plague. Becoming trapped in such a place and left to die changes a person, reshapes them in a furnace of suffering (to wax melodramatic). Though their attacks on innocents do nothing to address the crimes committed against them they see it, through a lens of spite, as the only path available to them.

But not all hells are so visible. One man's paradise can be another's perdition. Hate crimes generally stem from uncontrollable rage and disgust at the presence of the victim. Ecoterrorism (or alternatively, Ecofreedomfighting) is the act of the small minority that cannot sit by as they see the natural world "under siege." To be passionately committed to one's values inevitably means being either forced to act or forced to compromise, and those acts can be as ugly as human nature allows.

None of these things excuse the evils done in the name of higher causes. But know that people do not act without reasons. Bombs, fist, and words are thrown because of values, and without understanding those values, the attack appears random and senseless. There is no defense against random attacks - they, by their nature, cannot be predicted. So it is only through understand the attacker that the attacks can be anticipated.

And when the hell that drives someone to harm lives inside them, it isn't such an easy thing to see.