From monk to friar

I have undocked the Indigatrix, and I am taking it to Munory in the Araz constellation. I plan to meet dr. Valate at the Ducia Foundry Mining Outpost there. I made a stop on the way, in Amarr, at the Theology Council Tribunal, to bring paperwork in order.

I have been given permission by my congregation to go leave the monastery and pursue my quest. However, this needs to be registered and ratified by the Theology Council Tribunal. The whole process takes a while, and to complete it I needed to do some administration at the Theology Council.

I am now officially a friar and no longer a monk. The subtle and theological difference is that a monk lives his scriptural counsels in the confines of a cloistered community, whereas a friar works among laypeople and is not bound to any particular place. To laypeople my new status is best described as a “wandering monk”.

To you who reads this, this change may seem a trifle. But to me, it is a momentous change. I have lived in the monastery, in the same cell, for over sixty years. The brothers, and father Abbot, have been my family, my anchor to humanity. I miss them so much. I have now, formally, by a stamp of some Theology Council clerk on a document, been severed from them. It affects me more than I ever thought possible. I am an orphan now. My new family will be the laypeople that choose to adopt me. I hope it will be the people of Aspenstar’s organization, they have reached out for me. I think they are fine people, and this would be my family of choice. But I am afraid they will not bond with me, because I am too old-fashioned, because I lack social skills and because I am too out-of-touch with what happened the past sixty years. And most of all, because I am investigating them.