The Fall of the Empire of Ever and Always, Vol XI (as dramatized by Lady Euphonia Winscort, based on Ns. Kint Farrow's third translation of the Rwallygi pom Wraskot manuscript): Introduction

A Foreword by Lady Euphonia Winscort

This is the Eleventh volume of my dramatic retelling of the rise and fall of the Empire of Ever and Always, covering the first generation of the Era of Heiritance: the discovery of the Five Heirs and the events that resulted from their investiture.

I was enamored of the Empire of Ever and Always from a young age, specifically when first viewing “The Great Exodus” by the famous Uumphoun painter Koothoonu. Whether zey used three canvases because, as it is argued, zey were commanded by zer patron, or because zey could not capture the grandeur of the spectacle in one canvas alone, I do not care to speculate. What I can say is, as a young child, I was enraptured by both the size of the Imperial vessels depicted, and the remarkable scale of the enterprise.

I remember being fascinated by the prow of the lead ship. (Any who have seen the original painting in its place at the Garm Museum of Ancient Art will know which vessel I mean; Koothoonu’s masterful handling of color and shade make it perfectly clear which of the three largest ships is in the foreground) Whether Koothoonu painted a specific vessel or from memory is open to debate, but as a child I could not escape the horribly sad face of the foremost figurehead. Its gaze was steady, but offset, giving it the air of one who has seen everything they have ever cared about collapse into nothing, a face of unbearable sadness.

Yet in spite of this, the figurehead pushes forward, leaving its history behind it. Its arms are outstretched, reaching to embrace this new universe, the Myriad Worlds it had turned its back on so many generations ago. It is a figure full of regret, desperation, and grief. Tears fell from my face, even as a child, though I did not sob. I wanted to share in that grief, to embrace the figure and tell them that I forgave them, that everything would be fine.

Oh, to have been there on the day the Aspectures collapsed, to sit on the deck of a Golden Howdah and watch the shimmering mirrors crumble to shards, aping the ice crystals that dot the Velvet so prettily. To see a thousand vessels crawling through the Velvet via some strange power we still do not understand, each carrying enough people to populate an entire country, must have been the experience of a lifetime!

As soon as I became old enough for the Countier and Countess Wainscort to permit my study, I delved into the history of the Empire of Ever and Always with a passion. I read everything I could about the Unhappy Empire, from student primers to scholarly dissertations, which naturally led me to the vital primary source of most of our information surrounding the Ever Empire, the Rwallygi pon Wraskot, or to use its more common sobriquet, the Librarian’s Text.

The Empire of Ever and Always has always been a mystery, to historians and layfolk alike. For centuries, it lay behind the Aspectured Wall, refusing contact with the Myriad Worlds. Scholars and visitors were turned away, and only the whispered gossip of smugglers and Gilbrim fed the legends of what lay behind its impenetrable borders. After the collapse of the Aspectured Wall, peasant’s tales, folk-stories, and personal letters became the primary source of information, due to the Empire’s burning of countless churches, libraries, and universities during its period of Inquisition.

It was only after three more generations that word began to spread about the Librarian’s Text; a two-hundred volume series of books detailing events in the Ever Empire from its inception to its ending, written and compiled by the Librarian of the Empire, an Aspanighoraji that had lived behind the Aspectured Wall for the entire span of the Empire’s existence. I will, of course, say nothing of the enigmatic nature of the Aspanighoraji that compelled this one to remain in such service to the Empire, but such a massive volume of information was an unimaginable windfall to scholars and historians alike; the only problem being, it was written in the undecipherable Aspanighoraji script.

While Noble Scholor Kint Farrow’s third translation of the Librarian’s Text is considered the definitive translation of the text, I myself, as have found myself disappointed with Ns. Farrow’s results. Not in their quality or scholarly importance, but in their readability.

The history of the Empire of Ever and Always is a story well worth its multiple volumes, and any who study its rise and fall will be astounded by the harrowing drama and tragedy that filled its days. Not that the layfolk would ever read such a history; even the prose of the most recent edition of Ns. Tanyo Rinstone’s History of the Empire of Ever and Always is, frankly, as dry as dust.

My brother, the noble Lord M___ Winscort, has always been the more intellectual of my siblings. He has spent most of his years studying the works of scholars from all across the Myriad Worlds. He can read seven different languages, speak three, and holding a reasonable conversation with him is quite impossible. When he meets with his fellows, I find myself at a most vexing loss: when surrounded by impolite hosts who insist on communicating in speech I do not understand, I bask in the aesthetics of an unknown language; when by brother and his peers converse, it is with words that I clearly recognize but certainly cannot be called ‘my language;’ the meaning as a whole is obtuse.

This is to say, I have noticed that scholars and sages tend to speak in their own dialect, full of facts and large words yet stripped of all poetry — or at least the easily recognizable kind. I am certain one could say that the learned professions have a language all their own, and it is into this language that Ns. Farrow translated the Librarian’s Text.

This is all to say, recently I found myself in want of a project. While my admiration of Ns. Farrow and his efforts in translating the Librarian’s Text into anything approaching a readable format is remarkable, I decided to take upon myself a bit of a translation myself; namely, to translate the scholarly prose of this pivotal text into an approachable narrative. What follows is the eleventh part of my first attempt at such an account, and I must say I found the effort quite exhilarating and worthwhile.

Yes, this is a dramatization of a history, and some may call it a fiction. I, on the other hand, would argue there is little in the histories that contradicts anything I have written, and while there is no doubt no one should take my account as a secondary source, I maintain that similar events must have occurred for the history of the Ever Empire to have unfolded in the manner we believe it did.

After due consideration, I have removed any and all possible bibliographical footnotes and citations, both to conserve space and to allow for a freer flow of prose. While this may remove some valuable context to both my choices and those of previous translators, I wish to keep this work as approachable as possible. I have, however, kept the foreword translation notes written by Ns. Farrow, both because they provide much needed context to my primary source, and because I find his bemusement charming. I think it does us all well to consider that even those who profess airs of consequence suffer the same vacillations as the less distinguished.

I have decided to retain Ns. Farrows translation of the Librarian’s Introduction, as I find it both a suitable preface to the narrative and window to the mindset of the author.

I must also spare a paragraph to both congratulate and thank the scholars and historians who gave me far more assistance than my amateur efforts warranted. Without their efforts, this text would have been far less accurate, to say nothing of embarrassing.

~ Lady Euphonia Winscort

Translation Notes by Noble Scholar Kint Farrow

What follows is the third edition of my attempt to translate the Rwallygi pom Wraskot, one of the most famous untranslated texts of the previous seven centuries. Written almost entirely in Aspanighoraji script, the Rwallygi pom Wraskot is the only known scholarly text to survive the collapse of the Empire of Ever and Always. All other recorded texts are reported destroyed by the New Royal Purificators during the Empire’s Age of Inquisition.

Believed to detail the events leading to the Empire’s dissolution, the Rwallygi pom Wraskot has been studied for years with slow progress in discovering its meaning. The Aspanighoraji have always been recalcitrant in providing any aid to scholars and historians for reasons as yet unknown, and have likewise proven stubborn about translating their language. In addition, scholars have noted the many differences between common Aspanighoraji script and that written in the Rwallygi pom Wraskot, leading many to believe that the author wrote in a kind of personal shorthand.

In this third attempt at translation, I adapted the process detailed by Ns. Lufi Potterlid, the preeminent Nobblefolk scholar of the Aspanighoraji, in his Treatise on the Lexical Gaps in the Discourse-Configurational Polysynthetic Aspects of the Aspanighoraji Written Text. The method proved quite useful, and resulted in solving several common problems in translating Aspanighoraji texts.

1. Subject and Object of many common Aspanighoraji phrases became easily identifiable.
2. Unusual or uncommon Aspanighoraji polysynthetic words were immediately evident.
3. The primary- and secondary-context elements that related to both Subject and Object of a sentence were finally discernible.

This third solution was perhaps the most influential, as ambiguous phrases such as Tak’chzajsi mon polichii yaChem wenvlAchooloo ¹ could now be more accurately translated; e.g. “His righteous fury grew as his liege stripped away his many honors.”

Sadly, there were still several difficulties that Ns. Potterlid’s process did not resolve, and in these cases, I continued to use the process detailed in the second edition of this manuscript; the Morrisbeq Oblique method. While in most cases this method proved satisfactory, with only minor discrepancies between the two resulting translations, the largest conflict (and systemic problem) still remains: The Fiction Declaration.

The Fiction Declaration — RaKoo’sh sh’a’veTch ju-tziim — remains the largest enigma in the entirety of the Rwallygi pom Wraskot. Repeated regularly in the Librarian’s accounts, across multiple contexts, tenses, and declensions, the resolution of this phrase can change the entire meaning of the text.

If translated as Ns. Potterlid suggests, as “So memories see,” the Librarian can be considered the only surviving primary source of the Empire of Ever and Always’ history. The Rwallygi pom Wraskot can be viewed as a compilation of all the pertinent and significant scrolls that existed in the Hall of Record, as chosen by the Librarian. This would resolve many other ambiguous phrases throughout the text, and answer countless historical questions regarding the Empire’s rise and downfall.

Alternately, if translated as “As my mind created,” the entirety of the text must be viewed less as a primary text and more as a secondary source. I find this translation more likely, as there is ample evidence that the Librarian began writing the Rwallygi pom Wraskot only after the Penultimate War, when multiple letters confirm the Librarian was no longer in the Hall of Record. Similar evidence points to the fact that the Librarian had access to only a small collection of its scrolls. While I understand many of my peer’s desire to ascribe supernatural abilities to the Aspanighoraji people, I myself find it far more likely that the Librarian engaged in at least some speculation and logical deduction, writing about events that it believed to have happened for its extensive documentation to logically follow.

Nevertheless, I am not unaware of the complex problems such a translation would cause, such as the conflict of context in all chapters relating to Desh the Kit, and the incongruities of the Librarian’s accounts connected to the Guilds.

Sadly, since the numerable scrolls of the Empire’s Hall of Record are long since lost to fire and time, there is no concrete primary text to compare the Librarian’s account to. As such, whatever your inclination, it is likely this argument will never be satisfactorily resolved.

I have also returned the Librarian’s Introduction to the more literal translation style of my first edition, as many have pointed out it may be construed as insulting to translate the distinctive Aspanighoraji patois into a more familiar dialect when it is so clearly the individuals own words.

Introduction by The Librarian

Complete is bargain. Leaving the land, am I; returning home to lands yellow and blue.

Gone now, Empire of Ever and Always. Rotten the walls, dust the floors. Writings and memories all that remain. Wondered, I, is past best forgotten? Honored Ever Lord did I. Fascinating found I his fool dream. Let dream fade, or is dream nightmare lingering? Questions have I, after years so many.

From pillar first to paper last, written have I the history of Empire. Know I each seed that bloomed weed and ivy. Saw I each crack pried by root and stem. Know I why the dream fell. Tell, I? Truth valuable. Flaws many. Mistakes inevitable. Dream impossible and yet achievable.

Truth is teacher. Student is problem. Learn to do it right, then forgive I? Better to not. Better to never. Better to salt the earth. Death returns.

Yet Truth as my mind created. Path must be followed. Facts have I, and must be shared.

Tell I of Ever Lord. Tell I of man, young and foolish. Place I not name. Person of hope and fear, he sought I. Meeting agreed. Offer of sour whiskey and foul meat, ring of iron, bronze jewel. Felt my teeth in metal, blessing received. Curious I. Why he seek I?

Reason not important, say he. Deal he offer. Promise I story of years. Record of generations. Blood flowing in veins of family upon family. Pure, promises he.

Ask I, why he want I in dream? Little worm apple chewing, foul fly ear buzzing, rotten core fang venoming. Dream never exist, say I, while watch I.

No, say he. Plan, say he. Wall, say he. High on High deal with he. So dream grow, blossom, bloom.

Know nothing, say I. Record into paper, craft water to stone, say I. Dream break like bubble, no more say I. So fragile this world be, we Aspanighoraji see. Collapse waves and crumble castles, carve lies do our eyes and polish gems through tears. Always in head glitter greater, but never under waves. Take time do dreams, and no time say he? So fall and fail say I. So runs the herd say I.

No, say he. Plan, say he.

Fool say I, but shows he I. Lets I touch. Lets I smell. Never forget I the sensations I hold. Bargain, say I? High on High never bargain. Give gift to I. Give riches, fame, knowledge say I. Better Bargain never from High on High.

No, say he. Plan, say he. High on High deal with he.

Strange jewel, he, so bargain say I. Need hall of records, say I. Need eyes many, say I. Need ink and paper, need worlds spinning, need cold darkness warming. You give I, ask I?

Nod he. Agreed I.

So begins as my mind created.