Tales of the Keepers

My visit to the Book has been fully approved, and the necessary paperwork stamped and signed. I can enter with a Record Guide on Saturday morning, and have permission to stay up to three consecutive days in some selected sections.

To celebrate this, Keeper Thadron and some of his colleagues took me out for dinner and drinks. We first went to an area close to the Book, with a lot of small restaurants and bars. After a simple but tasty meal, they brought me to their usual after-work bar.

The Guides and Keepers have a vast supply of legends and tales about the Book of Records, and especially about the vast labyrinth of bookcases and scroll racks. I think they were trying to impress me with their campfire stories, knowing that I will enter this harrowed collection soon.

They told me about poor souls that get lost in the Book of Records and never return. And they have a legend about a cursed Keeper who mislaid a scroll and is doomed to forever wander the halls in search for that elusive scroll. She continues to search even after her death, as a ghost.

All this they claim with a certainty that grows stronger after each round of beers.

I asked about the legend of the tree at the heart of the Book, with a carving from our prophet Dano Gheinok. In their minds, its existence is a self-evident fact. Even though no-one of those present ever saw it with their own eyes, they believe old Guides that claim to have seen it.

The tale the Keepers believe is that St. Gheinok, when he arrived on what we now call Amarr Island, created two settlements. The first one he dedicated to God. The Keepers situate it near the Grand Basilica since that is where Dano Gheinok also built the first church. The second one he dedicated to his love, Marie. The tree stood in a garden at the edge of that second settlement, where nowadays the Book of Records stands. The second settlement turned out to be on more fertile land and in time became more succesful than the first, and it grew to eventually engulf the first.

I pointed out that this story is meant as an allegory indicating that dedicating one’s life purely to God is more difficult than dedicating it to worldly love but that in the end the two can merge. Keeper Thadron and his friends were almost offended, they believe in their tale as literal historical fact.

They added that since the second village was dedicated “to Marie”, or “à Marie” in an old tongue, its inhabitants were soon called Amarrians. And that, in their legend, is the origin of our name, Amarr.

At some point one Guide who had been pouring beer down his throat as if there was a small black hole in his stomach, climbed on the table and with a grand sweeping gesture proclaimed that “All of this great galactic Empire is nothing more than a lovestruck guy’s attempt to impress his girl!”. We quickly forced him back down from the table and concluded our evening out, blaming his blasphemy on drunkenness and a partially Gallentean ancestry.

The Book of Records

Maybe in your mind's eye the Book of Records is a massive tome, binding together pages of the thinnest paper, scribbled full of names in the tiniest handwriting.

Or maybe you do a bit of math in your mind, and then conceive of the Book of Records as a stack of books as tall as a mountain. A myriad of volumes, for no single book could ever hold the records of the uncountable billions of Amarr alive today and of the uncountable billions more that lived before.

You would still be wrong.

The Book of Records is a building.

It is an ancient building, stone and gold, in the old district of Dam-Torsad. At first glance, it is not very remarkable. Tourists walk past its facade without realizing it was built thousands of years ago. It looks like a very modest building, somewhat out of place. It is dwarfed by the modern shining skyscrapers around it. It did not grow along with the other buildings, since by law, no part of the Book of Records can be torn down or remodeled.

In the last couple of millennia it grew roots and expanded underground. The venerable building that you see from the nearby Square of the Records is just the tip of an iceberg stretching over half a kilometer down and branching outwards several kilometers in a network of catacombs of books, deep below the city. It keeps on expanding: even when the Book of Records became digitized, the tradition of keeping the paper and ink records was not abandoned. Still today, an army of Record Keepers use their calligraphy to add names and information on pages and cross-reference cards. On our home-world alone, half a million babies are born every single day.

The parts above ground contain the oldest records, only accessible to high nobility and clergy. And these nobles cannot enter it without a Record Guide. The facade of the building is just the outer shell - it was constructed around a building older still, that also by law cannot be altered. That older building is built around one yet older than it, and so it goes on, so that the whole edifice is like an onion layered in time.

Since no walls or floors can ever be rebuilt or changed, you go from one layer to the next by crawling through windows in the walls separating the millennia. The stacks of records are dense in the old regions. No space is left unused as subsequent expansions by enclosure were always postponed until absolutely unavoidable. 

The walkways between the stacks and shelves are tight and labyrinthine. It is easy to get lost in the old parts. Sometimes just to reach the shelves on the other side of where you are, you have to climb a ladder and walk around through several rooms and climb back down somewhere else. You can't walk upright everywhere, in some places you have to squeeze in, in order to spare yourself a long detour in this three-dimensional maze. Retrieving a record from an ancient and not digitized age is like a caving expedition, one only restricted to Heirs and the Record Guides that specialize in specific parts of the building.

The innermost building in this layered structure can only be visited by the Emperor or Empress, and hasn't been so for as long as anyone can remember. The oldest part of the Book of Records, so claim the Record Guides, is a small church. That church contains no cards or books or scrolls. It is covered on the outside by stacked records from the second oldest layer, and you can only go in on hands and knees through a small entrance. As you enter, space opens up to an almost empty church interior, a relief after the claustrophobic inner layers. In the middle of this empty church stands a beech tree that died a very long time ago. 

In its bark three words are carved. They form the first line of the Book, and the oldest Amarr biographical record: "Dano loves Marie".

The rise and fall of the Goners

Finally, my expedition to New Eden can draw to a close. Through the sparse interactions with the Goners and their former associates, and through a study of their manuscripts, I can now form myself a more or less accurate and complete picture of their history.

Brother Sarachem indeed wrote the main scripture that started the Goner movement. He received his revelations in a vision and wrote it down while he was working at Hedion University. It is a rather apocalyptic vision, those that use violence in New Eden will be struck down, and those that reject it will be saved and allowed to return to Mother Earth, guided by Goner Father who is an earthling that gave Amarr its technology.

 

His manuscripts were found to be heretical, and soon enough Sarachem found himself dismissed from his position at Hedion. Since he did not publicly recant, he was banned and exiled from Amarr. An inquisitor initially came after him, but Sarachem was deemed rather harmless, and other pressing matters at the time took precedence for the Theology Council Tribunal. So, after that initial interest, the council seems to have altogether forgotten about him, or chose simply to ignore him.

He fled to New Eden, the only logical place for him to go, as his revelation is about Mother Earth. This is a planet as well as a mythical protector goddess. The way to reach her and find redemption is to go through Eve gate – and use the “anticipator” key to open it. This key is stored at a hidden location somewhere in a Jove system with dense asteroid belts. The mythical Goner Father, an immortal person born on Mother Earth, is supposed to have access to it, and to use it occasionally.

Others joined Sarachem in exile, like Father Sartorius, the self-styled "Mentor of Eve constellation". Through preaching, their movement grew and soon they had a sizeable congregation. In addition to the pilgrimage to the gate, the Goners introduced a pilgrimage in nullsec in which the pilgrim must circle all the way around Empire space. During the pilgrimage around the rim of the cluster the Goners will take confessions of any nullsec passerby who talks to them. From this they received more donations and outside help, and with that influx of ISK a golden age began.

With the donations they constructed a home, a space station that was to be their Temple. To manage it, they started associate corporations for lay sympathizers. That way, they could continue to concentrate on prayer and preaching, while their lay corporations would handle worldly affairs for them. But, not all those that enlisted were as pure of spirit as the Goner monks. They started to accumulate wealth, used the station to trade in all sort of contraband. They grew greedy. They made enemies.

At some point, the Goner monks were betrayed and attacked. They cast out the traitors, but due to their vow, the monks could not fight. Luckily many loyal sympathizers still helped them, and in a fierce and valiant battle they were able to drive back the unholy horde that had laid siege to their home. However, their resources were rapidly depleted in comparison to the war coffers of the enemies aligned against them. They had won a battle, but not the war.

Their enemies regrouped and struck again. This time, their Temple was destroyed. Dejected, many left their congregation and joined other alliances, such as Red Alliance. Other monks remained in the station as fire blasted through it, and they disappeared into oblivion along with their burning Temple. Those that remained alive continue the pilgrimages to do penance for mankind. My impression is that they mainly do penance now for the acts of their apostate associates.

As for my own quest: they do believe that the ancient relics are not lost, and that the crown could have given Toth the insight to go to Mother earth. However, they could not offer evidence of that.

 

I'll wrap up my expedition and in a couple of days move back to the 24th Imperial Crusade station in Mehatoor and its very comfortable library.

A time of change for the Empire

The Yoiul celebrations are usually a quiet time in the cluster, and I used it to complete a short summary of the history of Empire in its early space-faring era. This is a period of great change, and it is also the period in which, as we know, many relics were spirited away from Amarr and scattered over the cluster. It is not unlikely that the Ametat and Avetat were among them, especially given the struggles between the Emperor and the institutes enforcing checks and balances on the throne. So, let's have a closer look at the period between 21134 and 21930, the fateful 22nd millenium that changed our Empire so thoroughly.

It starts with the discovery of a stargate in the Amarr system in 21134 and the realization that other interstellar civilizations exist. This will be confirmed a few centuries later with the discovery of the first alien culture, the Ealurians in 21423. This is a massive change in how we see the universe, and it caused three major shifts in our Empire.

The first shift is one away from tolerance of sects and towards repression and orthodoxy. The religious zeal, which had lain dormant for nearly a thousand years after the completion of planetary conquest, was rekindled by the realization that we are not alone in the universe. This rise of a more fanatic kind of faith soon led to clashes and bloodshed between sects and cults initially tolerated, and the newfound orthodoxy.

A new religious movement, the Equilibrium of Mankind, had formed in the bosom of the established sect of the Followers of God. Soon branded heretic for their destructive views – calling Amarrians to depart “this universe” to save themselves from God's wrath – a civil war ensues. It is only after the brutal repression by emperor Queron I following his ascension in 21310 that orthodoxy prevails. The repression caused many sects and divergent congregations to flee the Empire and try settling in space themselves or looking for our ‘origin’, the place beyond Eve gate.

Not long after, by 21340, the Sani Sabik were the next targets for a religious catharsis. Many Sabik held positions of power within the empire. The church launched a massive inquisition, purging many Sabik and sending the survivors scattering to the winds. Many of the survivors stole cryo-ships and spread to the corners of the cluster.

The second shift is one away from checks and balances and towards more power to the Emperor. Queron I is succeeded by Zaragram II, the Mad Emperor, in 21346. He tries to curb the power of the Council of Apostles, and at first he is successful. But, he overplays his hand as he tried to glorify himself building Mezagorm, the City of God, to his honor. He is assassinated by his grandson, St. Tetrimon around 21450. The power swings back to the Council of Apostles and the new Order of St. Tetrimon, and the Zaragram heresies are purged.

The struggle for power between Emperors and Council continues for the next four centuries, until the ascension of Heideran V in 21870. The Empire had began handing out the newly conquered stellar systems to prominent holders in the early years of exploration, and Heideran V allied himself with these powerful colonial Holders to start the Moral Reforms. Between 21875 to 21930, the power of the Council of Apostles was methodically dismantled and shifted it towards the Emperor and the Privy Council, formed by these colonial Holder families that we know as Imperial Heirs. After a painful civil war, the Council of Apostles was no more. The Order of St. Tetrimon was subjected to the authority of the new Theology Council, but many of its writings and relics were hid away by its grand master Tetrimon IV before they could be purged.

The third shift is the start of the Second Reclaiming, or interstellar reclamation. The planetary reclamation had been complete in 20544, and since then the Udorian, Khanid, and others who were slaves in these early times had become free during the golden era when the Empire was without enemies. However, the Ealur were new souls not yet blessed by the faith, and after their discovery, the Mad Emperor declared that the Reclaiming was to be restarted, this time for the benefit of the alien races. Slavery, which had almost become extinct, was suddenly on the rise again. Pressure from the colonial holders for manpower only fueled the expansion of slavery further.

Of course, there was also a shift in technology. The early ships from were indeed cryoships: it cost 50 years to travel from Amarr to Hedion, cruising at 2% of light speed. The first gate was functional in 21190, and by that time already cryoships had became much more efficient. In a timespan of only 240 years, the gate network would already reach Ealur and Shastal.

Prof.dr. Valate interview

Today I met with professor Valate, in Munory. She took the time to answer my questions and educate me about the Takmahl. She showed me her publications, containing a wealth of information on Takmahl history. I will carefully study it.

She dates the Takmahl departure somewhere between 21290 and 21450. I would argue for the end of that range. 

We discovered the Ealur in 21423, and before that time the Reclamation was a distant memory. Athra was fully conquered in 20544, so the planetary Reclamation was complete almost a millennium before we met the Ealur. Everything indicates that during this millennium, as we were the masters of the world with nothing left to reclaim, we became much more tolerant. Moderate Sani Sabik could do their thing relatively free of persecution. 

But the discovery of intelligent life outside of Athra changed all this: it revived the idea of a Reclamation, now on an interstellar level. We became much more zealous in our faith, and started to drive out sects. This must have been the moment when the sect members chose to leave in their cryoships. The religious zeal also led to internal turmoil in our own Empire, culminating in the Moral Reforms four centuries later.

The cryoships would travel at about 5 to 10% of light speed, and the gate network was not competely active (its status is not clear). Given the distance of 4.5 lightyears between Amarr and Aphi, as the photon flies, it means a trip of about half a century to a century. This is likely to be an indication of the extent of the diaspora of the Sabik. The Takmahl settled in Aphi and the surrounding systems, probaby around 21500. Their reach never extended out of the Araz constellation, so they most probably did not make it to Gamdis.

The Takmahl empire collapsed 800 to 1000 years after its foundation. We discovered the warp drive in 22821, and this kicked the expansion of the Empire into higher gear. My estimate is that the Empire would have reached the Takmahl heartlands three to five centuries after the collapse of their empire. Probably the Takmahl planets were still inhabited that long after the collapse, but the culture had reverted to a primitive form, like we did after the collapse of Eve gate.

I was also given the opportunity to inspect a statue of a Takmahl deity, a beautifully preserved relic. It is quite angular, and depicts a figure standing on an octagonal base. It has two carets or horns on its chest, and its head is pentagonal.

I am grateful and indebted to professor Valate. Although many in SFRIM frown upon her because she is Sabik, she is not the blooder caricature that some told me, but an academic mind trying to understand our history. Oh, and she confirmed the Aratake Research Consortium as the successor of the Arek'Jalaan, as a learned society with an archeology section.

Historical records on Ametat and Avetat

 No reply yet from Kernher.

I hired a personal assistant to help me get around in Dam-Torsad.

I spent my time wisely in the Imperial History Museum’s library. The Caretaker of Archives is a most kind and helpful woman. She has pointed me to the works of ancient historians who mention the disappearance of the Ametat and Avetat, and to the works of modern historians on the matter. I learned a great deal, which I must try to summarize here.

Below is a reproduction of the oldest depiction of the Ametat. It is also the only depiction that predates its disappearance. It is a gold-on-wood icon with inlaid gems showing a golden-masked Sefrim holding the Ametat. Not very visible on the reproduction is the red crystal close to the top of the Ametat. The icon is part of a diptych, and there was an accompanying icon showing a Sefrim holding the Avetat. This second panel is now missing.

The oldest depictions of the Avetat show it as a halo with something like crossbars surrounding the Emperor’s head almost like a helmet. It is only much later that depictions show a crown in the usual sense. The oldest written descriptions are fragmentary. They describe the items as made of a light, strong material that did not show sign of wear or rust.

The most complete early historian on the matter is Ashot of Iphria. He is also the first historian in the modern sense of the word, in that he not only relates one side of the story but tries to include different opinions and compiles different sources. However, he lived around 18500 AD, nearly two thousand years after the disappearance of Avetat and Ametat, situated around 16900 AD.

In “De Aurora Imperii”, Ashot lists the most common theories in his days, relating to the disappearance of these artifacts. The main theory – still today I believe – is that God took these items back because he was displeased by the behavior of us Amarrians. If that is true, then most certainly in this era we will not earn them back.

The second theory is that the Avetat is held in secret by the Speakers of Truth – and it is what gives them their wisdom. In this theory the Ametat was kept by the Council of Apostles, to keep it safe from the then warring heirs and to keep the power of the Emperors in check. If that is so, the Avetat may still be in the possession of the Speakers, but the Ametat has probably been moved during the Moral Reforms.

The remaining theories only agree on the fact that there was a theft. But they do not agree on the thief: some claim the Court Chamberlain, others claim this or that heir or warlord.

Several works from after the Reclaiming (so after 20078 AD) mention that the artifacts fell in the hands of the Sani Sabik. This theory of course does not explain what happened to the artifacts in the millenia between their disappearance and the origin of the cult in the early days of the Reclaiming.

The Sani Sabik think they are the only ones destined for greatness and worthy of immortality. If they’re worthy of immortality, the idea goes, they are also worthy of the other gifts of the Sefrim.

The group that absconded the artifacts ran away with them to create a New Amarrian Empire. They used primitive cryo-ships to escape and settle in the Araz constellation. They founded the Takmahl empire, which rose to some importance before collapsing. The flight of the Takmahl and the founding of their empire is well documented history, but the fact they would have taken the Ametat and Avetat with them remains speculation.

I believe now that Tertius Ausonius Bathana (Aspenstar’s father) adhered to this latter theory, which would explain his extensive research on the Takmahl.

I also take note that Lord Aslan focuses his search on the Araz constellation and neighboring Kakol, where Gamdis III is located. Probably he also researched the Takmahl lead.

The pieces of the puzzle start to fit.