Songs of the Return, vol. XXIV: The First Tale of the Krilot Lok is a legend written sometime after the Return by an unknown author. It is the twenty-fourth book in a series of fifty-six volumes known as Songs of the Return, which tells of Ysgramor's Invasion of Skyrim with his famed Five Hundred Companions.
The volume The First Tale of the Krilot Lok tells of the journeys across Tamriel embarked on by the crew of the Krilot Lok, one of the many ships used to carry the Five Hundred Companions to Skyrim in the Merethic Era.
The known volumes of the book series Songs of the Return are ordered as follows: The First Tale of the Darumzu; The Forging of Wuuthrad; The Tale of the Jorrvaskr; The Second Tale of the Ylgermet; The First Tale of the Krilot Lok; Sinmur's End; The Fallowfire's Journeys; The Final Tale of the Chrion.
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hen the time came for breaking of camp, not all crews took southwards across the rolling lands. Some turned with quick eyes back to their ships, for their hearts were bounded to the waves as sure as they were bounded to each other as allied Companions.
One such crew was that of the Krilot Lok, sinewy long folk from the eastern edge of Atmora. Their ruddy skin matched the dawn and it was often said that morning herself learned her glorious colours from the first faces to meet her at the break of day. The great Kyne lifted their souls and their winds, propelling them westwards with the new lands of Tamriel ever beckoning to the south.
In time, these perpetual wanderers came upon sights fearsome and terrible. Entire kingdoms of Men beyond their recognition, skin charred like overcooked meat. Elves even more devious than the northern betrayers disgraced their horizons, until they learned the sheltered ways between. Great deserts the likes of which were never known in the homeland, peopled by beasts that spoke like men, with the savagery of elves. Many a notable and well-sung Companion met his end at the spears of the legged snakes of the southern marsh.
Among the brave crew of the Krilot Lok were of Roeth and Breff the Elder, the great Shield-Brothers (who often swapped spears), and their war-wives, Britte and Greyf (the fair child), Shield-Sisters in their own right who could bring the face of terror across the ice-chilled seas. Together these four stared into the abyss of trees that formed the foul-smelling homeland of the snake-men. And as they were blessed Atmorans who feared no shore of Tamriel, they ventured forth to seek out their glories in the most dangerous of these new lands.
Onward they flew, ravaging the swamplands, beating a trail between themselves and their ship such that they would never lose sight of the shore. In the far-off day when at last Roeth would fall, when Britte screamed her famed war-cry so that all the marshes were emptied, this trail would fill once more with the treacherous snake men. So began the burning march of these great captains of us all.