The adventure unfolds in Skyrim, a cold and mountainous province in the north of the continent of Tamriel, divided into nine holds and long regarded as the ancestral homeland of the Nords. The once-mighty Empire that rules the land has been left weakened by a brutal war, and civil unrest simmers between imperial loyalists and rebels. The story begins with the player captured by imperial soldiers and mistakenly marked for execution alongside the rebel leader Ulfric Stormcloak. The grim proceedings are shattered when a fearsome dragon named Alduin descends upon the outpost, and in the chaos the player escapes. Soon after, upon slaying a dragon and absorbing its very soul, the player is revealed to be the legendary Dragonborn, and is summoned by the mysterious Greybeards to embrace an ancient and world-shaping destiny.