City-Swimmer of Oblivion: A Biography

“Does anyone see City-Swimmer?” asks the shabbily dressed Argonian female crouching before me. “Is he gliding beneath the silver water? Is he creeping ‘round a corner, hugging a wall, silent as a shadow in the dark? No! I am here! I stand proud before you, City-Swimmer, trainer of the prospective Sneaker, the sly sliding unseen!”

Her scalily delivered introduction raises more questions than it answers. How did she get such a strange name? Can she even swim? Is she really that stealthy? Does she know she’s a she? I endeavor to answer these questions as I uncover the true life story of the famously furtive, eminently elusive City-Swimmer.

It was in the 400th year of the Third Era that Seet-Meema, who would later become the City-Swimmer we all know and laugh at, was born to a fantastically wealthy (by Argonian standards) family at their “mansion” outside Lilmoth. Here, Seet-Meema was raised in the very lap of luxury.

“We always provided for our dearest little one,” says her father, Beet-Ei. “We had the nicest mud hut in the swamp, we lavished gifts of...well of mud and sticks and the occasional rock upon her, and we sent her to the nicest schools that Hist sap can buy. Still, she always had a rebellious streak.”

"We've actually started renting that old mansion to a little green fellow with big ears..."

This “rebellious streak” to which our reptilian friend refers was evident from an early age. Classmates of Seet-Meema recall her often sneaking around the one-room schoolhut, crouching under desks, and giggling mischievously. Her teacher, Nuleel, remembers her as being quite the handful.

“It was like she thought we couldn’t see her or something,” she says, scratching the fin atop her head. “And sometimes, she would crouch and do this stupid looking duck walk thing right out of the hut! We’d have to send a search party into the swamps to find her, and she’d just be swimming around in a pond somewhere. Seriously...is she still that stupid?”

"S-Mizzle" as she was then known, "posting up" with some of her "homies"...

Soon enough, young Seet-Meema dropped out of school and began running with a skooma cartel known as The Scaletails. Though the small-time cartel had previously limited their operations to Black Marsh, Seet-Meema was able to convince the bosses to expand into Cyrodiil. It was a decision that would prove fateful.

“That City-Swimmer is the reason this town is literally drowning in skooma!” yells Viera Lerus, captain of Bravil’s City Watch, as I imagined her frantically treading to keep her head above the ever-rising waves of skooma engulfing the poor city. I made her aware of her hyperbole. She gave me a rather mean look, then continued. “Anyway, as I was saying, City-Swimmer founded the skooma den here in Bravil. She got all those poor people addicted and supplied them with the stuff for years!”

Look at all the skooma around!

Apparently, City-Swimmer was even clever enough to bribe Gellius Terentius, the son of Count Regulus Terentius, with skooma, convincing him to look the other way.

“She’s the craziest bloody pondscum I’ve ever seen!” Gellius recalls. “The first time I met her, she was duck walking up to me, all but brandishing a bottle of skooma. Then, get this, she poured it into the flagon of ale I was holding, as if i didn’t notice her! What a loon! Still, I’m not one to turn down free illegal narcotics.”

"I mean, I can quit anytime I want!"

In time, City-Swimmer retired from gang life, spending her newly found free time swimming around in the various ponds of Bravil and sneaking very obviously, thus earning her non-Argonian nickname. But will this be enough to satisfy the former drug fiend and lifelong rebel for the rest of her days, or are there greater challenges ahead for our friend?

“One day, I’ll save up enough Septims to buy a nice big house in the country somewhere,” she says. “Then I can sneak around in it all day! Nobody will see City-Swimmer!”

Well... I guess that’s true. Oh well. We all have our dreams.






Original artwork provided by the wonderful and way too awesome artist, Christine I. Suggs! :D