Historical Oddities,
Volume the First
by Brant LaDorn
One of the most tragic things I ever hear is that history is boring. To be fair, I’ve sat and listened to sages who drone on and on about some historical marker or another, never adding life to the happening. But remember that it is the sage, and not the history, that is boring. Just to prove my point, I’m offering the first in a series of strange events from our own historical tomes for your enlightenment and entertainment. For instance, did you know . . .
14 Years after R Loredae, During the Reign of the Loredae family.
One day, Queen Alana Loredae achieved herself a pet monkey from Shavay. The beast was quite large, but she was overly fond of it, and set her trainers to teaching it the same obedience that she taught her dogs. She kept it on a leash all day, and by night she kept it in a cage.
Soon after its arrival, her dogs began to disappear from their kennels at night. Sometimes their mutilated, half-eaten remains would be found nearby in the woods. It did not take long for a nightguard to spy the culprit – it was the Queen’s beloved monkey, who was deftly letting himself out of his cage at night and then bolting himself back in after his murderous feasts.
Crushed, Queen Alana had little choice but to order the monkey slain. The laws of the time, however, declared that the killers of noble dogs must be hung on the public gallows. The entire escapade was public knowledge by now, and one of Queen Alana’s ministers insisted that the monkey be treated like a person and hung, seeing as the beast not only resembled a human, but obviously possessed an intelligence “in keeping with that of many peasants.” If the monkey was not hung, he argued, people might receive the impression that the laws were not strict.
After much deliberation, it was decided that the laws of humankind must apply to all creatures, else the world would slowly become more and more chaotic. Thus the monkey was hung.
Peasants, who were starving during those times (and evidently didn’t think that the monkey resembled a person), stole the corpse during the night and made it into what was no doubt an exotic and flavourful stew.
The Queen, outraged anew, promptly crafted a new law, and that is why, in the official Masallan Book of Law, it can be found that “No man nor woman shall, regardless of condition, eat anyone hung on the gallows”.
3 Years following R Alais.
It’s not so uncommon for a person to become famous after they are dead. But in the case of the Corpse of Ciirus, it would be more apt to say that they were famous because they were dead.
The explorer Arus Madon was famous during his time. Not for his great discoveries, but for his great, and sometimes ludicrous, claims. Lacking any funding from significant sources, he would leave on an expedition nearly every moon, disembarking in his small solo ship with much fanfare and noise. He would place up voluminous banners, hire musicians and criers, and attempt to sell scribed copies of his travel journals. Then he would be off, and never for long. He would inevitably return a few passages later with wild stories and wilder artifacts, most of which where quickly exposed as fakes.
For instance, on the return of one of his expeditions he announced that he had found an island where everything was soft, and where the people moved about like slugs, pulling their yielding, flexible bodies over the smooth ground. He explained in elaborate detail their religion, which despised anything hard and unforgiving, and their laws and customs, which had much to do with the preservation of good, anxiety-free feelings. And as evidence of this culture he produced a ‘finger bone’ from one of the inhabitants. Although clearly discernable as a bone, it was soft and flexible to the feel. Arus was famous overnight, despite the protestations of alchemists who insisted that the artifact was simply a chicken bone soaked in vinegar.
Arus remained popular with the common folk over the years, bringing back tales of new, strange lands and odd peoples and cultures. He always made displays of his artifacts, such as dyed furs, peculiar utensils, or preposterous articles of clothing. But one day he arrived back with an object that baffled all the sages of his day, and still remains a mystery. It was the Corpse of Ciirus.
Arus claimed to have found a most unusual land, where the ground was all of black, shining sand (an example of which he promptly produced), from which grew tall, pale trees and low, glossy-leaved bushes. From these the inhabitants took their favorite fruit, the ushi. This he could not produce, claiming that he had brought numerous examples of their fare, but all had spoiled during his journey back.
This land was called Ciirus, and was of a bizarre climate which he described as “not overly cold, and seeming dry in the air, and yet I could see my breath.”
The inhabitants were a remarkable people whose customs were very odd. He was able to attend a market, where the denizens of Ciirus traded with other clans and cities. It was there that he purchased the Corpse.
Arus was quite proud of the thing, and readily allowed people to observe it. He even allowed a sage to do a thorough examination.
The skin was blackened, but seemed unnaturally so, as if the flesh might once have been a deep brown. It was of a shriveled appearance, the skin tight over bones, and the whole of it was oddly preserved. Gold bands were around the neck, and had no method of removal. Also so for numerous wrist bands which could not be taken from the hand, even in its shrunken state. I can only conclude that the bands were artfully set onto the person, or even were worn from the time that the person was young, so that when grown into an adult, they fit snugly. Richly fashioned earrings were also present. I should note that the corpse was female. Arus, of course, made outlandish claims regarding the thing, none of which I believed. But they seemed to have affected my assistant, for once, when I left him alone to examine the corpse, I found him swiftly retreating from the room, insisting that he had felt a pulse emanating from the corpse. I, of course, could discern no such throbbing.
Among Arus’ claims were that the Corpse served as an oracle, and could speak words of relevance regarding future events if the proper herbs and liquids were poured down its throat and anointed over its body.
Sages could agree on only one thing. The Corpse was definitely not that of a Masallan woman, was preserved by unknown means, and must be a representative of another, unknown culture.
The Corpse was kept in Arus’ private collection for two years before it was sold to a museum in Mina’s Quay. Over the next hundred years, despite its unnatural tendency to avoid decay, it slowly disintegrated, and the remains were finally buried south of the city in one of the unmarked graves that denote the northern boundary of Grey Knoll Cemetery.
Undated.
Why undated? Anyone vaguely familiar with history will note that our Historical Markers, which comprise the usual dating system for historians, begin only about a thousand years ago. Did we not have history before that? Did nothing happen prior to that date? Well, the answer is yes, of course, but that date marks the founding of the Royal Guild of Historians, who set standards and began to accurately and reliably record significant historical facts. We have ‘history’ texts that predate the Guild, all the way back to about a thousand years before the Loredae family came to power in Masalla. But these texts consist mostly of personal journals and sagely writings which were not subjected to the standards of the Guild. Standards such as codes of truthfulness, accuracy, and a system of peer review. Before two thousand years past? We can piece together the puzzle of what life might have been like, but that far back, writing was rare, and manuscripts which have survived are rarer still. This, however, is a translation of one of those ancient texts. See what you make of it.
Lately the clans have been clashing over fishing rights on the Tulen River. I’ve no idea what the fighting is for, as there are plenty of fish on either side, but there have been plenty of stone-throwings and people rushing across to attack. I think it’s all about Mitisha, Kodorn’s beautiful daughter, who is always sneaking across the river. I’ve a locket of her hair myself. Doesn’t she fear a spell upon her? Yesterday snakes were seen in the clan-house, slithering right toward her tent! Maybe she is the wielder of power!
As you can see, manuscripts like the above, when pieced together with others, begin to give us some vague idea of what pre-historical Masalla was like.
But back to the Guild. Although the standards were, and continue to be, quite strict for any official historical documentation, in the early years the guild was plagued by what were called ‘Frosters’. They were named so after the effect of frost on an object – obscuring the true details. Frosters would attempt to make history more interesting by greatly enhancing the details of a true event. Enough of them were present in the Guild that they managed to get their documents reviewed by other Frosters, and so early Masallan official histories are enlivened, here and there, by wildly embellished tales.
Although the Guild has since attempted to mark all documents created by the Frosters, it is difficult to determine, in all cases, which writings are real. You must understand, however, that people were not as wise to the world as we are today, and so they tended to believe things that we would consider ridiculous. Here’s an example of a Froster’s account of what was, in truth, an attack by bandits upon a far northern Masallan village.
Just as the dawn sun touched over the horizon, it came. A sound such that brought great fear into the hearts of the villagers, who swiftly stirred from sleep and armed themselves with whatever was available. But when they emerged from their doorsteps, they moaned in despair, for what did they see but huge man-beasts, with the legs and body of a horse and the chest and head of a man! Wielding great spears, the horse-men descended on the hapless villagers, stealing most of the women and slaying over forty men. Where have these strange beasts come from? And how soon before they make their way south, ravaging more of our settlements? It is well known that the creatures of Fae allow us to be here at their own whim, and it has been suggested that the recent laws enacted by King Loredae, specifically in the claiming of ten round leagues of land from Baron Ryden which the Baron had set aside for the exclusive purpose of serving as a dwelling-place for Fae, is responsible.
As you can see, the Frosters did not make historical documents for the enlightenment of future generations, but for political or social gain. Such are the realities of officiality.
19 Years following the Loredae Uprising.
Perhaps the strangest ship ever built was the Eel, designed by Ardor, the famous Masallan war-inventor. Hailed by some as a genius far ahead of his time, he was hailed by most as an idiot who somehow managed to make his ideas sound feasible.
It was the time of the Alais/Loredae war. As both sides were quite wealthy and established, it was one of the most mechanical of wars, and hand-to-hand combat was shunned in place of battles with great war-machines, and especially with ships.
Still, the Loredae side was the poorer, and had to resort to smaller, lighter craft, while the Alais’ had a huge navy of massive war-ships bristling with weaponry.
Most would have placed their wagers on the Alais navy, but in fact, as time went on, the Loredae ships began to prevail, primarily because their superior speed and agility allowed them to organize combined strikes on a single ship. They would ram the hulls of the huge war-ships, confuse the crew with fire-bombs thrown on deck, and escape unscathed. The eastern coastline, from Amaralan to Calit de Om, is thought to be home to over forty wrecks of these massive Alais ships.
That is where Ardor came into the drama. With his allegiance firmly planted in the Alais camp, he set to work designing an ‘indestructible’ war ship. His primary objective was to make it ram-proof, and he suggested that to do this, the hull must be made flexible. Demonstrating with a small model, he showed how a ship with a leather hull, instead of wood, was able to withstand penetration by what he claimed were impacts equivalent to damage that a full-sized ship would suffer. Furthermore, the ship, although large and able to hold more armament than the earlier Alais design, would be much lighter, and therefore faster, able to match the speed of the small Loredae ships. It would suffer only in the arena of agility, since its excessive length would make it difficult to turn.
The length, Ardor explained, would be necessary. Despite the outer hull of leather, the skeleton of the Eel would still be wood, and to make the ship ram-proof, it was necessary to have a favourable ratio of leather-to-wood along the sides. The Loredae’s rams would bounce right off the long leather sides of the Eel.
When the concerns about the Eel’s agility were voiced, Ardor triumphantly displayed the final aspect of his design. The Eel would not have a front and a back as normal ships do, but would be equally capable of sailing in either direction. With an ingenious system that allowed the sails to be reversed and raiseable rudders on either end of the ship, a properly trained crew could swiftly change the ship’s orientation, allowing it to do what other ships could not – sail equally well in reverse.
Captured by the idea, King Alais began the massive slaughtering of cattle and hunting of deer that was necessary to make the skin-hull, which was to be over ten skins thick. On the docks of Amaralan a huge dry-dock was built which would lift the Eel out of the water between sails, since the leather would suffer if left in the water too long.
The one record we have of the Eel’s first and only battle was written by Alais historians. Still, if we can believe its accuracy, the Eel performed well in the fight, destroying six Loredae scout ships single-handedly before the crew fled back to Amaralan. The Eel was dry-docked, and its damage was surveyed – the extensive battering it had endured was blamed on the untrained state of the crew instead of the design of the craft.
That night, Loredae mercenaries set the dry-dock afire, and the Eel, despite the heroic efforts of its protectors to lower it into the water, was engulfed in a furious blaze.
The depletion of the Alais’ livestock and game used in creating the ship proved devastating, and probably served as one of the leading factors behind the great Divisioning in Masalla, where the province was separated into two territories, one held by the Alais family, and one by the Loredaes.
So the province would remain for the next eight years until the MorDuraans took power and reigned over the province for 99 years. But that, of course, is another tale.