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Using the night as cover, Adriana quickly picks the lock of the old abandoned house in Markarth, slips in and slowly shuts the door, checking through the narrowing doorway that no-one has seen her.

“Adriana.” a deep dark voice fills the air. “It has been some time since we convened.”

“My Lord.” she acknowledges and continues deeper into the damp and unkempt stone house.

Reaching the basement, Adriana sees an old excavation deeper into the rock bed.

“Come. Deeper. Into... the bowels...” her master beckons, never tiring of the amusement at this choice of wording and indeed, causes a slight frown and pause in Adriana, and her master laughs.

She continues on down a narrow passage cut into the softer earth and remnants of Dwemer structures to see the shrine to her master, the Daedric Lord Molag Bal.

“Come...” he beckons once more.

Adriana strides up to his altar, his carved visage gurning at her from the dark, bloodied font and she
kneels prostate in submission.

“And what would you have of me, my Dreg?” he asks of her.

“I had word of the emergence of Daughters of Cold Harbour in Skyrim, my Lord. Our Lady Serana.”

“And you came to pay homage, like a good little Dreg?”

“Yes, my Lord.” she agrees but his tone evidently irks her.

“And I presume you also had word of my little shrine here somehow. How resourceful of one so weak.”

“Yes, my Lord.” she says through gritted teeth.

“Yet I sense you are still not happy with our arrangements?”

“I performed the ritual.” she begins angrily, “I...” she doesn't complete. “The whole family!” she shouts, “For nothing! To be just another of the herd.”

“None go into the ritual knowing for certain that they will be gifted as a Daughter of Cold Harbour.”

“Then why? Why not me? Why Serana?”

“Oh Adriana. Still motivated by courtly rivalry after all this time? Serana has something you've never learned: a sense of duty.”

“But-”

“What do you think I might want of my higher vampires and the Daughters of Cold Harbour? Hm? Those who I gift are responsible for ensuring equilibrium. I thought that my Dregs understood this?”

“I cull the herd when they become unruly! I know duty!”

“You know that duty. But not the duty to all of my children, the Daughters of Cold Harbour and the herd alike.”

“Yes, my Lord...” she give submission.

The Dregs of Cold Harbour, those who suffered the humiliating and degrading ritual only to be refused the dark lord's highest gifts, instead being cynically transformed by Molag Bal into a vampire of the herd and charged with policing the baser ones.