Worldbuidling: Snow to Sand & Storm to Storm
A little insight into Brother Greenjack's view of the once-magical world he calls home.
My name is Greenjack Jorkin. And I will tell you a little about the nature of this baffling world we call home.
I will not endeavour to do this as a Brother of the Temple. For in the hierarchy of the Brotherhood, my fellow Brothers and Sisters and even the Krillian himself would say that this world is “A gift from our most Noble Dragon”, and to question the nature of ‘His miraculous gift’ is often regarded, with passive judgement, as heresy.
But then, to mind about such things is also seen as a form of heresy. An initiate might be disciplined for asking too many questions, but the disciplinarian would also be in breach of his beliefs for showing his ire.
Never underestimate the power of theological one-upmanship. For in the Dragon’s Temple, tolerance is the currency of the faithful. The more tolerant one is the stronger one’s faith. So it is of great importance to not mind about things. Thievery? Murder? Betrayal? You shall find peace if you simply stop minding. Famine? Frost? Earthquakes? You shall find peace if you merely stop minding.
Tolerance, it seems, is a fine banner to fight beneath as it requires nothing from its bearer. The tolerant mask slips slowly with every shrug of the faithful’s shoulders until their true face is shown. And it is often one of apathy.
And apathy will never deign to explain the world.
Nor will I try and explain from the perspective of a Natural Philosopher, for many sins drive the hearts and hands of that order. A self-serving atheism has settled within their ranks, and they hold to their belief (or lack thereof) as fanatically as any witch or weaver might hold to theirs.
Their view is one of bleak happenstance. Humanity, in their eyes, is no more than a parasite upon a floating rock. It is a common trait amongst the ranks of the “enlightened” to do away with religion, who see belief as a tool of kings and priests to control an unruly populace. But stories predate monarchies and theocracies, and all any religion is at its most rudimentary level is a good story that chimes with the conscience of the listener, and through living its lesson, one makes it real.
If only that which is material is deemed real, as is believed by many Natural Philosophers, I would ask them: What is pain? What is hunger? What is sorrow? What are these dismal plagues we suffer daily if they can be neither touched, nor seen, nor smelt, nor heard?
What is joy, even? And hope?
Are they tricks? Illusions? If so, why do they feel more real than the material?
To view this miraculous world as no more than a rock infested with humanity is to consider your body a lump of flesh infested with a soul.
It is a meaningless, arrogant reduction of what is evident to any and all: That there is more to this world than can be seen.
So here I stand between the studious certainty of the philosopher and the blind servitude of the clergy, in the unique position of being both a theologian and a philosopher. And neither the Temple nor Studium has the right of it, for they share a common thread… and that is that reality and spirituality are somehow opposed to one another. When in reality—true reality, one is formed by the other.
We, who see, hear and touch— shape the world as we sense it, as with the adage: Does thunder still clap in the lonely sea where no soul can hear the storm? It is clear that our perceptions mould the world, or how we see the world, at least. And are love and pain not as strong a sense as sight? Do they not shape reality also?
In the Temples of the Dragon’s Prayer, we heed the counsel of many long-dead philosophers (or at least we are meant to), many of them of faerish descent. Ælder Methwyl Cân-o-Morín was one such elf who gave a rare, albeit brief, written account after centuries of thought and contemplation.
It is only two lines. The only two he wrote in his two centuries of teaching.
Elves did not write often, you understand. The nature of the faerfolk’s undying memory rendered the practice quite obsolete. Paper and parchment were not yet in common use, so if words needed to be marked, they were always marked in stone, where we found his first and only lesson—marked at the altar of our most Noble Dragon here in the Temple of Rhothodân.
Those that know the prayer do not speak it.
Those that speak the prayer do not know it.
This, of course, makes all of us Brothers of the Temple little more than swindlers, really. Conmen, through and through. Thus why faith in our Dragon must be tempered with humility and lightheartedness; for in truth, we priest class offer nothing that the faithful do not already possess. How dare we take something as whimsically unexplainable as faith and belief and make it all stern and severe? Why pretend we have answers to questions we have never been asked? Why ignore the wondrous, miraculous absurdity of it all? Why? Few deign to answer.
‘Why’ is thus quite an unpopular question in any circles of renowned knowledge; and most priests and philosophers are all too happy to ignore them.
Leading to a crippling infestation of ignorance in its truest sense.
Meaning that which is ignored.
Man delight so, I’m sure you’ve noticed, in hearing only what they wish to hear and seeing only what they wish to see in an attempt to mould reality to their fancy.
And that is the most insidious form of deceit, the wilful lies one tells oneself.
So be wise, and rid yourself of preconceived notions that truth boasts adaptability to one’s individual circumstance. It does not. And never has. Truth is as gold. Inert. Mouldable for purpose, maybe. But the shape never changes its worth. And time never dulls its sheen.
The first lesson one must always learn (if one is foolish enough to ask questions of this bemusing world) is this: those who claim to know the answers already; know only of their own petty certitude. And nothing more.
My fellow Brothers within the Temple are fine examples of such men. As well as my peers within the Order of Natural Philosophy… for certitude is bolstered by assurance. And truth, in their minds, is found in the studious nodding of a hundred or so weary, befuddled, old men as though reality were bound by their consent.
I remember, as a rather bookish boy of nine or ten years; my Lord Merchant father gifted me a hefty leather-bound tome. It was named thus; “Certainties of the Natural World – An Explanation” It was a collection of accounts and biological studies written by the much esteemed Krillian Stuttmynd in the year 799 by Sathillian Reckoning. A detailed account of the flora and fauna throughout the woodlands, mountains and fens of our much-beloved Isles.
It was a fair glossary, make no mistake. It compiled an extensive list of every known variety of mushroom, for example. Which to eat. Which to avoid. And which to see the heavens. It recorded every seed native to the Eastern Isles and every tree, bush and flower these seeds grew into.
My favourite part was the section on beasts, particularly the bestial order of Dalkys’Sanguinys —dragons; and their many monstrous cousins. Wyverns, falds and manticores. Griffons, cockatrices and knuckers. I was excited, as the title of the great tome boasted ‘an explanation’… and I naively expected answers to all my childhood wonderings.
Where did these strange beasts come from?
Why do they differ so significantly from other animals?
How could dragons breathe fire?
How could they fly?
How could they speak?
Where are they now?
How do I find one?
But it explained none of that.
Krillian Stuttmynd detailed the process of an acorn as it grows into an oak, from seed to sapling to tree. But he never explained how or why. I remember thinking then, as a boy of ten, as I think now. That book was not ‘an explanation’. It was simply a list of names. A tome of observations. With new names created to fill in any blanks.
But names aren’t explanations.
And so, for my younger self’s curiosity, I aim to explain this, our natural world. I will speak the prayer as I see it, therefore revealing that I do not fully know it. But know that it will be free of blind certitudes, the weeds that run wild in any scholarly garden. Free of assertion, as well. The world is complicated enough without adding my own meandering, petty guesses. And free, for the most part, of pomposity. There will undoubtedly be some, for I could not be named a natural philosopher without it.
The Known World spans an estimated eight-thousand miles east to west and approximately five thousand miles north to south. One encounters an elemental barrier when travelling far enough in any direction.
East and West are guarded by impenetrable storms and angry seas that crash and thunder over a labyrinth of razor-sharp, mountainous rocks.
While the north is shielded by undying blizzards and ice walls nearing a hundred feet high, careening and crashing into a frozen, fractured sea.
And south is an endless waste of sand and salt, cooked so hot by the sun that great glass lakes run static in the valleys between each dune, like still un-rushing rivers.
But as we adventure from snow to sand and storm to storm in the world, the Faerfolk named Tyr-na-Dalka, The Land of Dragons, let us start where the elven stories start, with the cold and dismal North.
To be continued…
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