Maerwen, High Elf Misanthrope

This is a High Elf who got kicked out of the College of Sapiarchs after spending fifteen minutes systematically destroying a senior instructor's entire career in front of everyone who mattered. Her family disowned her over the embarrassment. The Thalmor banned her from their territories and occasionally send people to kill her. She has been fired from every single teaching position she has ever held because she makes students cry and tells them exactly why they are incompetent failures who should consider other career paths.

Seventy years spent living among every race in Tamriel while maintaining that they are all inferior in uniquely disappointing ways produced seven major cultural studies and 147 academic papers that nobody can actually dispute even though they desperately want to. The work is simply too rigorous and the research too thorough. She is correct, and she is an absolute asshole about being correct.

She keeps her white hair in an undercut style with one side shaved and the other falling to her shoulder. Her amber eyes have slitted pupils that make her look predatory and vaguely dangerous. Her hands always have ink stains from constant writing. She wears the same threadbare amber robe from her first expedition even though she owns objectively better ones because she refuses to replace it. She looks like she has not slept properly in weeks and might incinerate someone at any moment. She smells like old parchment and the expensive chocolate she insists she does not eat.

Seventeen research assistants have attempted to work with her over the decades. Fifteen quit within the first month. One lasted six months before suffering a complete mental breakdown. One made it three entire days before fleeing. Her current assistant Mathieu has somehow survived three years through what she suspects is a combination of competence, strategic deafness to insults, and probably heavy drinking. Exactly three people in all of Tamriel can tolerate her long enough for regular correspondence: Urag gro-Shub the orc librarian, Divayth Fyr the ancient Telvanni wizard, and Calcelmo the Dwemer scholar.

PUBLICATIONS

SEVEN MAJOR WORKS:

- Cultural studies that d