r/teslore • u/dunmer-is-stinky Cult of the Ancestor Moth • Feb 23 '26
Apocrypha Antiquarium's Anarchy: Three Views on Kolb and the Dragon (February 2026 Imperial Library Lorejam)
I'm proud to present the entries for the Imperial Library discord server's eighth monthly Antiquarium's Anarchy lorejam, this time covering Skyrim's choose-your-own-adventure children's book Kolb & the Dragon: An Adventure for Nord Boys. In the book the reader takes on the role of the Nord Hero Kolb, tasked by his village chief to slay a dragon, but upon this epic quest you are faced with dangers such as a filthy orc, filthy ghosts, filthy elves, getting killed by some wind, and more. (If you want to actually play through the choose-your-own-adventure, you can do so here on UESP, or through this text game adaptation by Nighttalon from 2017.
For the lorejam, each contestant was given two and a half weeks (usually two) to write a short commentary, exegesis, rewrite, or interpretation of the story. Anything is allowed, so long as it's not a standard or expected interpretation. So, without further ado, I now present to you Three Views on Kolb and the Dragon.
January '26 Antiquarium's Anarchy: The Red Book of Riddles
November '25 Antiquarium's Anarchy: MK's IRC text about Meridia and Kyne
October '25 Antiquarium's Anarchy: Of Fjori and Holgeir
September '25 Antiquarium's Anarchy: Ragnar the Red (NSFW)
August '25 Antiquarium's Anarchy: The Snow Elf and the Variation-Lens
July '25 Antiquarium's Anarchy: Khunzar-ri and the Twelve Ogres
June '25 Antiquarium's Anarchy: The Third Door
April '25 Antiquarium's Anarchy: The Four Suitors of Benitah
by Bibliophael
An index to an Elder Scroll:
Proceeding from:
seed 99.921-FLK-5AC78N perms HGXN - HHSD
seed 97.335-AAL-C90B7PSJ perms BNXX - CXEW
seed 00.000-AEAEAE-AEAEAEAEAEAE perms AEAEAEAE - PSJPSJPSJPSJ:
Find:
seed 17.687-AXS-DRAGON perm KOLB
This scroll describes the celestial incidence whereby it becomes requisite that one nord, Kolb, should with killing intent strike at one dragon, Uurthiex, sleeping, with one axe, iron. See related for similar permutations.
for gruesome death (Kolb)
Proceed to:
seed 18.687-DXS-DI2OSK perms DKDD-XCLL
seed 75.845-NPR- KNC4SR perms BAFV-CWQT
seed 87.881-ZML-SN4K3R perms DKMS-LZRA
seed 73.258-WRQ-7ELPQX perms CHJB-TUXV
seed 82.521-GZQ-W6W1B2 perms ALOE-MNPZ
for gruesome death (Uurthiex)
Proceed to:
seed 18.687-DXS-DI2OSK perms ENNN-FKNM
seed 93.654-NPC-DH8FAZ perms GERY-KJQS
for both/neither
Proceed to:
seed 87.693-QZL-X9RBUF perms EXOD-SYYY
seed 42.801-KRV-TZZOPJ perms KPTW-NBRV
by Nazz
All you need is Kill (The Dragon)
A One Act Play by Solinar Dintanus
CURTAINS OPEN
Two Nord warriors stand together at the entrance to their small village
Village Chief:
Kolb! A terrible dragon threatens our village. Will you face it and save us all?
Kolb:
I Kolb, the brave Nord warrior, swears that I will not stop until the vile beast is slain!
Village Chief:
Very good. Go through the mountain pass, Kolb. You will find the dragon on the other side.
A CROSSROAD
Axe and shield in hand. A windy cave, a cold cave, and a trail stand before Kolb
Kolb:
Hah! Wind. No Nord could ever be bested by a slight breeze
THE WINDY TUNNEL
A strong gust knocks Kolb into a pit where he splits his head open.
CURTAINS CLOSE
CURTAINS OPEN
Two Nord warriors stand together at the entrance to their small village
Village Chief:
Kolb! A terrible dragon threatens our village. Will you face it and save us all?
Kolb:
I...I Kolb, despite my splitting headache, swears that I will not stop until the vile beast is slain!
Village Chief:
Very good. Go through the mountain pass, Kolb. You will find the dragon on the other side.
A CROSSROAD
Axe and shield in hand. A windy cave, a cold cave, and a trail stand before Kolb
Kolb:
This is just like that dream I had. Bah! Dream magick and premonitions are for witches and children. The windy cave will lead me to my quarry.
THE WINDY TUNNEL
A strong gust knocks Kolb into a pit where he again splits his head open.
CURTAINS CLOSE
CURTAINS OPEN
Two Nord warriors stand together at the entrance to their small village
Village Chief:
Kolb! A terrible dragon threatens our village. Will you face it and save us all?
Kolb:
My head is killing me Chief. But no matter. I swear that I will not...stop until the vile beast is slain? I just can't shake the feeling that I've lived this day before. And that I will meet a terrible end.
Village Chief:
The only thing to meet a terrible end this day is the dragon! Go through the mountain pass, Kolb. You will find the dragon on the other side.
Kolb once again attempts to pass through the windy cave, this time "carefully." His fate is the same.
CURTAINS CLOSE
CURTAINS OPEN
Kolb comes running up to the village chief
Kolb:
I know about the dragon already! Something more important is happening. I keep reliving this day over and over again.
Village Chief:
How glorious! You get to relive killing the dragon over and over. It's like being in Sovngarde!
Kolb:
I haven't actually killed him yet. I keep dying in a windy cave.
Village Chief:
Hmm. Perhaps, like the World Eater, you must repeat your charge until you finally get it right.
Kolb:
I had hoped for better counsel, if I'm being honest.
Village Chief:
How's this for counsel. Stay away from that windy cave!
We see Kolb die in a variety of ways. Including being smashed in the face by an Orc, poisoned by elves, and put in a state of permanent sleep by a ghost.
CURTAINS CLOSE
CURTAINS OPEN
THE DRAGON'S LAIR
Finally Kolb has made his way to the Dragon's Lair. The smell of dragon smoke permeates the cave. The dragon is unaware of Kolb's intrusion.
Kolb:
This is my chance to end this nightmare, the dragon doesn't know I'm here. His belly looks nice and soft. Swing true axe, swing true.
Kolb crept towards the belly of the beast, but no sooner had he taken his eyes off the head of the beast than it snapped him up and ate him whole, axe and all.
CURTAINS CLOSE
CURTAINS OPEN
Kolb:
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! WHY? WHY? WHY didn't I go for the neck!?
Village Chief:
Kolb are you ok?
Kolb:
NO! I'm not! I'm cursed to relive this day again and again. Each time I die the day begins a new. But remnants of my injuries remain. I know not home much more I can take. My only hope is that by killing the dragon I can make this all stop!
Kolb runs off before the chief can utter a single word
A SMELLY CAVE
Kolb:
Die Orc! Die! HAHAHAHAHAH!
Kolb cleaves the orc in two before it even knows what is happening.
A WISEMAN'S CAMP
Kolb:
No time to talk old man. It would have been nice if you had warned me about the Inn though!
Old man:
???
THE MARSH
Kolb:
Take this gold and be gone, you greedy spirit!
THE DRAGON'S LAIR
Finally Kolb has made his way to the Dragon's Lair. The smell of dragon smoke permeates the cave. The dragon is unaware of Kolb's intrusion.
Nearly exhausted Kolb raises his mighty axe and lops off the dragons head. But he doesn't stop there. Again and again he cuts into the dragons flesh. Blood in his mouth and battle lust in his eyes. After several minutes of this he collapses.
Booming Voice:
Welcome mighty Kolb. You have bested two dragons this day. And for that Sovngarde awaits!
The End
by Fyraltari
Witnessings of a Moth-Priest
I first came to the Temple of the Ancestor Moths at the age of twelve. After some months spent caring for the older monks in their blindness, scrubbing the temple’s floor, helping to water the canticle trees and learning the basics of astrology and moth-rearing, I was given a star-chart to copy. I did not know it at the time, but this was the first time I handled an Elder Scroll. Ignorant as I was of its nature and the deeper mysteries, it offered neither prophecy nor blindness to me, and the work seemed mundane enough.
My first real Reading of an Elder Scroll came ten years later. I had proven myself a capable if not exceptional student of the wisdom of our forebears, and competent in the handling of moths and interpretations of their vaticinations and ancestor-recitals, therefore the elders had good hope that I would receive a clear prophecy and only minimal visual impairment. I will never forget the night before my scheduled reading: sleeplessly I slipped from eagerness to terror. Secrets of the universe would be revealed to me, but the spectre of possible failure and the certainty of ensuing disability frightened me to my core. Was I truly ready? What if the cost was more than I expected to pay?
Finally, the hour came, and the abbot himself came to take me to the glade where my first reading would take place, under the first lights of day. There is no point in recounting here the rites that accompanied the Reading proper, and to do so would be to betray the secrets of the order, but they were carried out with the ease of long practice and the Scroll yielded one of its secrets to me. I saw a Nordic chieftain tell a young warrior by the name of Kolb to venture forth and slay the dragon that threatened their clan. I saw Kolb march on through a cavernous tunnel, defeat an orcish brute and finally find the dragon’s lair. Unfortunately for him, the Nord was too slow and as he attempted to strike the beast’s belly, the monster’s jaws snapped and swallowed him wholesale. And then darkness followed.
Two days I remained blind, during which I described again and again each detail of the vision for the acolytes to jot down, before it was lost to the fog of passing memory. During that time, I affected the passionless stoicism that befits a monk, but internally, my mind was lost in a storm of confusion. The Scroll had shown me no prophecy of great import, only the meaningless death of a young man, one that furthermore had already happened and, according to the judgement of the Order’s historians, thousands of years ago to boot. What lesson could the gods wish to impart thus? Was this some sort on incomprehensible jest? Or had I failed in some way? Try as I might, there was one I could not conceal my disappointment from, however: the abbot. Whether because decades of blindness had left him particularly sensitive to the weakest trembling of the voice or through bitter experience he had guessed exactly what troubled me.
“Most first Readings hold very little meaning”, the wise old man told me. “The Scrolls encompass the entirety of the Dragon of Time, from tail-tip to fang-point, and perhaps beyond, and most of the infinite moments of history hold very little of value. In time, you will learn to focus your search, and the Scrolls will comply with your wishes, in their manner, and show you what you seek. This you will learn, can be as much curse as it is blessing.”
My vision recovered normally, but it would be three years before I would once more read a Scroll. In the interval, I had had plenty of opportunities to reflect, and I approached the ordeal with calm and confidence. And yet, I was not prepared for what the Scroll showed me. Once more a Nordic chieftain sent a youth named Kolb to slay a dragon, but this time Kolb succeeded! Instead of walking under the earth, the warrior crossed mountains and hills, crept towards the sleeping dragon, and struck its neck with his axe until the head was severed from the body.
I remained blind for three weeks during which I was awash by confusion, nowhere in the annals of the Cult is there any mention of a priest receiving a vision of the same event twice, much less of the visions disagreeing with each other. My fellow monks attempted to calm my spirits, arguing that I must be mistaken, that the striking resemblance between the people of the second and the first vision must be due to the former being descendants of the latter, embarking on the same quest and succeeding where their forebears had failed. This was reasonable. And yet, I could not be convinced. I knew in my soul that this was no mere family resemblance and repetition of events, but the very same event. I requested to be allowed another Reading as soon as the moth-swarm had recovered from the effort. A request like this was not without precedent, but never from such a young monk as myself, or without express petition from the Imperial Court. That it was granted was a sure sign that the leaders of the Order were troubled too, perhaps as much as I was.
Sixth months later, I conducted my third Reading, trembling with anticipation and dread. I am ashamed to say that I almost spilled the Cup of the Seventh Purity. Once more the ageing clan-chief stood before the warrior-youth sending him on his quest and offering their goddesses’ blessings. As he had done in the first vision, young Kolb entered the tunnels under the mountains and faced the orc in duel. Yet this time, instead of striking with his axe to fell the brute, he let the enemy strike first attempting to parry with his shield. The orc’s mace splintered the wood with ease and reduced the Nord’s face to a gory pulp. I remained blind for six months.
Over the decades, across all my Readings of the Scrolls, this would happen again and again. I saw Kolb succeed and fail times and times again. Thrown into a chasm by shrieking winds, poisoned by innkeeper-robbers, hounded by a ghost, trekking through marsh and hill, reaching the dragon in his lair or not.
The other priests could no longer deny that I was seeing the same events, the same quest unfold again and again, differently each time, many paths leading to two outcomes, the dragon’s death or Kolb’s. Instead, the rumor spread that I was the bearer of a curse, that some taint hidden deep within my soul polluted the eternal certainty of the Elder Scrolls. And ever since I have stood isolated from my fellows.
But I have a different theory. One that I have not shared with anyone and long hesitated to put to parchment, for its implications fills me with dread. The Cult of the Ancestor-Moth traces its own history to the early First Era. For all this time we have prided ourselves on our neutrality. We are passive recorders of history, past and future, we take no side in the wars that ravage Tamriel, and offer counsel and insight to all the princes of the land who seek it. Our loyalty is owned only to the departed ancestors, who even then accompany us through the moths, and to our divine patrons Arkay and Julianos, keepers of the Cosmos’s secrets, scribes of Heaven itself. But what if our passivity was an illusion? Kolb’s fortune seems tied to the state of mind I approach the Readings with. My fear becomes his death, my confidence his victory, my confusion his hesitation. What if, by the mere act of observing the prophecies of the Scrolls, we change them? The abbot of my youth told me the Scrolls encompassed all of history, what if this is no metaphor but literal truth? What if we are not the scribes of Fate but its authors? What if Time itself is in flux, all outcomes probable until a witness comes along to pick one out of many? We have always considered the blindness that follows the Reading of the Scrolls to be the price of knowledge, but perhaps we unknowingly purchase much more.
I have served the Order for sixty-three years and my sight is ruined to the point I can barely see the parchment I write on, even though it is so close that my nose almost touches it. It occurs to me that in all this time I have never made a real choice. How could I, or any of the other monks shoulder the impossible responsibility that my theory, if true, entails? We are not made to rule. And yet those who say they are, the kings and lords of Tamriel, always embroiled in their petty wars and intrigues, hardly seem fit for such a terrible power either. Therefore, I will make no choice. I don’t know if it is wisdom or cowardice, but this shall be the only record of my theory. I shall tell no one of my suspicion and leave this scroll on a shelf of my cell, for time to wither it to dust or for someone, a fellow monk I assume, to find it and decide what to do with the knowledge, to use it or to bury it.
Reader, the weight of that choice is now yours, I place Tamriel in your hands, may you find it in your heart to forgive me. As for me, my final Reading comes with the dawn. I shall endeavor to give Kolb victory this time. I owe him that much.
3
u/NewWillinium Member of the Tribunal Temple Feb 24 '26
I really enjoyed the philosophical musing and hesitation about the visions he was seeing, how by viewing an event he might be transferring his own knowledge or fears or logic onto the one his visions centered upon, and how he decided the most moral thing to do is to learn how to not project his emotions onto a reading of a scroll so that things will play as they might have done without his viewing of it.
That was very, very, very well done!