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These journal excerpts were submitted to the Alderist temple in Adelsburg, and eventually made available to the faithful public from within its libraries.
[!]
These journal excerpts were submitted to the Alderist temple in Adelsburg, and eventually made available to the faithful public from within its libraries.
[!]
Introduction
In order to prepare myself to assume the office of Archbishop, I decided to embark on a holy pilgrimage to each of the eight temples in the region. I was born in an all but forgotten and entirely secluded village in the outskirts of Eisarnknoth, and was raised as a generalist in a Warheit cult. My conversion to modern Alderism came well into my adulthood, and thus I never went through a Rite of Burning, nor did I ever choose a Sentinel to devote myself to. On this pilgrimage, I would listen to the guidance of each of the Sentinels individually in quiet prayer and contemplation, and allow their revelations to inform my choice. I was accompanied by a young woman planning to join the Sisterhood of Alda, young Minna. And although we parted ways at her destination, she helped me greatly through the hardest parts of the journey. The next few chapters are the journal entries I made along the way, and chronicle the revelations I was shown. I decided to share them with the public because another might find wisdom and guidance in them, but I emphasize: They should not be taken for absolute truths, but rather as interpretations of glimpses at it through the lens of my flawed mortality.
Chapter I - Salvor
The first destination of my journey was the temple which rests at the crossroads to Schloß Rosenberg. Even this short footmarch tore heavily at my resolve, for I’d been plagued by a wounded leg since my youth, when the muscle was withered by the Curseplague. I prayed to Salvor for the strength and constitution to endure this pain and soldier on. The young sister-to-be who walked with me aided me whenever she could, and waited patiently for me while I communed with the Sentinels. While I rested in the temple, my mind drifted to the chivalric virtues and the code of honor I was raised to adhere to. I thought also of the knightly training I enjoyed during my youth, and I asked myself why Salvor is mostly revered amongst gentry and soldiers, and yet otherwise thought of little by other walks of life. It became clear to me that in reality, all of us are soldiers, regardless of our birth, training or the circumstances of our life. Every day, each of us fight in a grander battle, one between Chaos and Order- A battle which is decided not by our strength and the quality of our steel, but by the righteousness of our deeds and the purity of our hearts.
Chapter II - Aristea
The next stop on my journey was the temple in Bergwald, one passed by by many due to its location between Adelsburg and Lionne, and yet frequented by few. It lies amidst sprawling golden fields and plentiful pastures, and the air is pure and rich with the fragrance of wheat and barley. Naturally, my thoughts and prayers were addressed to Aristea, and my time spent out in the fields, rather than within the temple. Many reduce her to the sentinel of farmers and women who aspire to motherhood. In reality, she is the nurturer of very life itself, and keeper of the cycle of life and death. By her grace do the crops that feed us grow in the fields, and when she decides it is our time to wither, our very lifeblood seeps into the earth, and the mortal coil we leave behind in death returns its essence to the soil, in turn giving bloom to new life. It is Aristea who lends us our worldly bodies, our vessels with which to pass through trials and tribulations while on this earthly plain, and it is she who takes them back once our time has run out. Here, I gave away all the provisions I had packed for my journey, for I knew that the land would provide me with what Aristea intended me to have.
Chapter III - Volker
As I left the western gate of Adelsburg, I was overcome with a vision. An old man sat in the sand and plucked the strings of a driftwood harp while the waves lapped at his bare feet, and the sea parted at the behest of his melody. I decided to follow this divine guidance, and thus I shed my boots and walked along the beach towards Königstein as opposed to following the road. On this path, my leg did not ache, and the cane which normally supports it became an obsolete stick. I watched the waves erode the very sand on which I walked, taking a fraction of it away with each lick, and realized even the solid ground beneath our feet, which we trust as a reliable constant of our lives and those of our forefathers, is ever changing. At the end of the path, a zephyr blew from the sea and ruffled the tall grass by the shores, to snap me out of my transe, and lead me to the feet of a statue of Volker. There, I offered a prayer in thanks. Within the temple proper, I came upon the musings of one Aleksander de Tiri, and reflected on his words for a while. He spoke about how we, humble members of the flock, have the power to shape our destiny with the power of our faith, and that basking in the light of truth is a choice we make. I would disagree. The paths we may tread through our mortal existence are predetermined, out of our mother’s wombs into the light of day, all the way unto peaceful oblivion in the halls of Alder. Even the paths which lead to sin, evil, corruption and heresy have been laid before us at the crossroads, to test our faith and conviction, and to weed out the chaff hidden amongst the grain. The only choice we have is which fork to take, and to trust in Volker to lead us down the right one.
Chapter IV - Mortius
Now that I had surrendered myself to Volker’s guidance and committed to the pathways he revealed to me, I longer needed my cane, and thus I left it behind. I next found myself in the soothing shadow of the Black Abbey. There, at the foot of the graven hill upon which it rested, I was once more blessed with a vision, and visited by the Danse Macabre. When the moon hung at its highest point in the ebony skies above, the doors to each of the crypts opened, and out came a procession of cadavres. They seemed to hail from different walks of life, kings, bishops, soldiers and farmers, and yet they all danced together merrily into the night with hands interlaced, to a mourning but likewise cheerful melody carried by the very wind. I awoke with the first morning rays, rested against an unmarked gravestone, and found that neither the Gravewardens nor my traveling companion had awoken me from my dream- Perhaps they realized its significance, and opted not to disturb me. It was here that I learned that although we may hold different stations in life, in death, we are all equals. Death is the only constant of life, and lies at the end of every path laid out before us. Mortius does not weigh our names based on wealth and reverence we commanded in life, but on the worth of our actions and the righteousness of the paths we chose to walk, and Asmodai writes the name of an Edelmann on the same page as that of a lowly farmhand.
Chapter V - Alda
The next stop of my journey was the Red Abbey of the Sisterhood of Alda, which despite its architectural beauty sat hidden in a valley, in the shade of a towering mountain. It was here that I and young Minna parted ways. After I paid my respects to the sisters, I requested the privilege of sitting undisturbed in the gardens for a while, while my traveling companion was taken inside to grow familiar with her new home. Here, I was not shown a vision, unlike the last few holy sites I rested at. Instead, my worldly eyes were opened to the beauty of creation, which is hidden even, especially, in the places we would not normally look. While the fragrant flowers in their myriad vibrant colors drew my attention at first, it was a small, brown recluse spider which thought itself well hidden between the planks of the bench I sat upon that left me most in awe. Many would squash it without thought, thinking it a disgusting parasite. And yet, it is a miracle of creation, lovingly designed with form and function, and holding its own important niche in the natural order. I watched this spider catch a mosquito which would otherwise have stung me, and it did so with incredible patience, instinctual decisiveness, and surgical precision- things we could all stand to learn from it. I was also led to notice its shape: The eight legs and its elongated spinneret formed a nine pointed star, the symbol of our faith. The signatures left behind by creation are there to behold, for those who can look deep enough. Once the spider crawled away, my thoughts drifted to my late wife and the love I once held for her, as they often do, and I dwelt upon these memories with renewed perspective. A fair maiden or a handsome lad, in their mortal coil, are little more than sacks of skin stretched over a mound of stinking entrails held up by a frame of porous bones, yet we find them beautiful regardless. So why then, is the concept of love and beauty reserved for wives, husbands, sons and daughters, flowers or beloved pets? Why do we spare none for the lowly spider, handcrafted by divinity just as we were?
Chapter VI - Reimar
On the road to Norbüren, I came upon a large statue under construction, and the toiling of the stonemasons brought my thoughts to Reimar. Many would deem him the least significant of all the Sentinels in the grand scheme of things. And yet, he stands for the one gift we were given, which separates man from beast: The capacity for creation. It marks us in the image of the greater will and its chosen representatives, Alder and his Sentinels. We were never given the predatory instinct of the wolf, the natural defenses of the porcupine or the environmental adaptation of the cameleopard. Instead, we survive by our industriousness and creativity. A cobbler made the boots that keep my feet from bleeding on the road, a mason, slater and carpenter keep the rain from drenching me when I lay to rest, and a bookbinder crafted the journal in which I write these very words so that the following generations may profit from the same wisdoms revealed to me on this pilgrimage. It may be Volker that sets the path, but it is Reimar that builds the road.
Chapter VII - Elric
Outside the temple of Lünburg I came upon what remained of the statue of a Sentinel, now reduced to rubble by a destructive force of chaos. I sat upon the ground and leaned my back against the pedestal to rest, and while my mind ruminated on possible punishments for such a wanton act of destruction, I drifted into a slumber. In my dream, I was visited by a man who stood over me but casted no shadow. He had no eyes, and in his hands which were forged from iron, he balanced a scale. He spoke to me in a voice which bore no warmth of emotion or intention, and said I should not presume to be judge or jury, only the guillotine which enacts the sentence. When I awoke, I was at first confused by his words- Until they made perfect sense to me. It is Mortius that weighs a mortal soul and decides to guide it to the halls of the afterlife, or then bar it from entry. But it is mortal man who must send them to meet him. It is not ours to decide the guilt of a man’s heart, but it is our duty to swing the ax in accordance with the Sentinels’ guidance. We are instruments of the rule of order in the fight against chaos, and were gifted our mortal coils in order to hold the sword and tie the noose.
Chapter VIII - Rosatia, and thus Conclusion
It had been my intention to conclude my pilgrimage at the Grand Temple in Adelsburg by asking Rosatia to lend me her wisdom, to order my thoughts and help me choose which Sentinel I should devote the rest of my life to. However, Rosatia found me first, working through a young woman, one of her devotees, which I ran into on the road to the temple. I told her of the things I had learned throughout my journey, and Annelie, the young woman in question, had precisely the right words of wisdom to share with me. And although her words held a different meaning to her than what I gathered from them, they served to cement my convictions and lead me to the choice I would ultimately make. I had always felt deeply connected to the concept of death as a celebration of life, and the capstone to our time on this plane, which is our chance to prove our worth and earn our place in the Halls of Alder. I have always seen beauty in death, and felt a strange comfort in the thought of its impending approach, its arrival the only trustworthy reliability in life. So, I knew the Sentinel I chose to devote myself to would be one that governed a significance to it. My first and most obvious thought fell upon Mortius, but Mortius resides only at the end of the path as gatekeeper to the afterlife. He is the final destination of life, but bears little influence on its course. Aristea then, who shepherds life from its inception to its zenith and through its many ups and downs- But her influence extends only to the physical body, not our mind, our grace, our soul, and brings no higher meaning to life itself. Under Elric’s guiding principles has many a life been righteously claimed in the name of Order, and on Salvor’s battlefields blood is shed in the name of honor and duty, but justice and virtue alone do not fill a life with joy and meaning. Love, art and beauty may make a life worth living, and yet they are temporary and do not accompany us into the afterlife, and thus I would not swear myself to Alda at the Rite of Burning either. It is Volker who guides us through every path in life. He maintains the roads, and all roads end in death, but lead us through battles and strife, learning and wisdom, mourning and sickness, love and creation, and the very trials which prove our worth and test our mettle. Love, death, inspiration, and virtue are merely stops we make along the way- Wisdom is what informs our choices at the crossroads, but destiny is the road itself. With this newfound clarity, I find myself looking at life through a different lens- One that refracts the light shining through it into innumerable facets. This ordeal is complete, but there are many more to come. I have learned much, and yet in the grand scheme of things, I find myself no wiser.
In order to prepare myself to assume the office of Archbishop, I decided to embark on a holy pilgrimage to each of the eight temples in the region. I was born in an all but forgotten and entirely secluded village in the outskirts of Eisarnknoth, and was raised as a generalist in a Warheit cult. My conversion to modern Alderism came well into my adulthood, and thus I never went through a Rite of Burning, nor did I ever choose a Sentinel to devote myself to. On this pilgrimage, I would listen to the guidance of each of the Sentinels individually in quiet prayer and contemplation, and allow their revelations to inform my choice. I was accompanied by a young woman planning to join the Sisterhood of Alda, young Minna. And although we parted ways at her destination, she helped me greatly through the hardest parts of the journey. The next few chapters are the journal entries I made along the way, and chronicle the revelations I was shown. I decided to share them with the public because another might find wisdom and guidance in them, but I emphasize: They should not be taken for absolute truths, but rather as interpretations of glimpses at it through the lens of my flawed mortality.
Chapter I - Salvor
The first destination of my journey was the temple which rests at the crossroads to Schloß Rosenberg. Even this short footmarch tore heavily at my resolve, for I’d been plagued by a wounded leg since my youth, when the muscle was withered by the Curseplague. I prayed to Salvor for the strength and constitution to endure this pain and soldier on. The young sister-to-be who walked with me aided me whenever she could, and waited patiently for me while I communed with the Sentinels. While I rested in the temple, my mind drifted to the chivalric virtues and the code of honor I was raised to adhere to. I thought also of the knightly training I enjoyed during my youth, and I asked myself why Salvor is mostly revered amongst gentry and soldiers, and yet otherwise thought of little by other walks of life. It became clear to me that in reality, all of us are soldiers, regardless of our birth, training or the circumstances of our life. Every day, each of us fight in a grander battle, one between Chaos and Order- A battle which is decided not by our strength and the quality of our steel, but by the righteousness of our deeds and the purity of our hearts.
Chapter II - Aristea
The next stop on my journey was the temple in Bergwald, one passed by by many due to its location between Adelsburg and Lionne, and yet frequented by few. It lies amidst sprawling golden fields and plentiful pastures, and the air is pure and rich with the fragrance of wheat and barley. Naturally, my thoughts and prayers were addressed to Aristea, and my time spent out in the fields, rather than within the temple. Many reduce her to the sentinel of farmers and women who aspire to motherhood. In reality, she is the nurturer of very life itself, and keeper of the cycle of life and death. By her grace do the crops that feed us grow in the fields, and when she decides it is our time to wither, our very lifeblood seeps into the earth, and the mortal coil we leave behind in death returns its essence to the soil, in turn giving bloom to new life. It is Aristea who lends us our worldly bodies, our vessels with which to pass through trials and tribulations while on this earthly plain, and it is she who takes them back once our time has run out. Here, I gave away all the provisions I had packed for my journey, for I knew that the land would provide me with what Aristea intended me to have.
Chapter III - Volker
As I left the western gate of Adelsburg, I was overcome with a vision. An old man sat in the sand and plucked the strings of a driftwood harp while the waves lapped at his bare feet, and the sea parted at the behest of his melody. I decided to follow this divine guidance, and thus I shed my boots and walked along the beach towards Königstein as opposed to following the road. On this path, my leg did not ache, and the cane which normally supports it became an obsolete stick. I watched the waves erode the very sand on which I walked, taking a fraction of it away with each lick, and realized even the solid ground beneath our feet, which we trust as a reliable constant of our lives and those of our forefathers, is ever changing. At the end of the path, a zephyr blew from the sea and ruffled the tall grass by the shores, to snap me out of my transe, and lead me to the feet of a statue of Volker. There, I offered a prayer in thanks. Within the temple proper, I came upon the musings of one Aleksander de Tiri, and reflected on his words for a while. He spoke about how we, humble members of the flock, have the power to shape our destiny with the power of our faith, and that basking in the light of truth is a choice we make. I would disagree. The paths we may tread through our mortal existence are predetermined, out of our mother’s wombs into the light of day, all the way unto peaceful oblivion in the halls of Alder. Even the paths which lead to sin, evil, corruption and heresy have been laid before us at the crossroads, to test our faith and conviction, and to weed out the chaff hidden amongst the grain. The only choice we have is which fork to take, and to trust in Volker to lead us down the right one.
Chapter IV - Mortius
Now that I had surrendered myself to Volker’s guidance and committed to the pathways he revealed to me, I longer needed my cane, and thus I left it behind. I next found myself in the soothing shadow of the Black Abbey. There, at the foot of the graven hill upon which it rested, I was once more blessed with a vision, and visited by the Danse Macabre. When the moon hung at its highest point in the ebony skies above, the doors to each of the crypts opened, and out came a procession of cadavres. They seemed to hail from different walks of life, kings, bishops, soldiers and farmers, and yet they all danced together merrily into the night with hands interlaced, to a mourning but likewise cheerful melody carried by the very wind. I awoke with the first morning rays, rested against an unmarked gravestone, and found that neither the Gravewardens nor my traveling companion had awoken me from my dream- Perhaps they realized its significance, and opted not to disturb me. It was here that I learned that although we may hold different stations in life, in death, we are all equals. Death is the only constant of life, and lies at the end of every path laid out before us. Mortius does not weigh our names based on wealth and reverence we commanded in life, but on the worth of our actions and the righteousness of the paths we chose to walk, and Asmodai writes the name of an Edelmann on the same page as that of a lowly farmhand.
Chapter V - Alda
The next stop of my journey was the Red Abbey of the Sisterhood of Alda, which despite its architectural beauty sat hidden in a valley, in the shade of a towering mountain. It was here that I and young Minna parted ways. After I paid my respects to the sisters, I requested the privilege of sitting undisturbed in the gardens for a while, while my traveling companion was taken inside to grow familiar with her new home. Here, I was not shown a vision, unlike the last few holy sites I rested at. Instead, my worldly eyes were opened to the beauty of creation, which is hidden even, especially, in the places we would not normally look. While the fragrant flowers in their myriad vibrant colors drew my attention at first, it was a small, brown recluse spider which thought itself well hidden between the planks of the bench I sat upon that left me most in awe. Many would squash it without thought, thinking it a disgusting parasite. And yet, it is a miracle of creation, lovingly designed with form and function, and holding its own important niche in the natural order. I watched this spider catch a mosquito which would otherwise have stung me, and it did so with incredible patience, instinctual decisiveness, and surgical precision- things we could all stand to learn from it. I was also led to notice its shape: The eight legs and its elongated spinneret formed a nine pointed star, the symbol of our faith. The signatures left behind by creation are there to behold, for those who can look deep enough. Once the spider crawled away, my thoughts drifted to my late wife and the love I once held for her, as they often do, and I dwelt upon these memories with renewed perspective. A fair maiden or a handsome lad, in their mortal coil, are little more than sacks of skin stretched over a mound of stinking entrails held up by a frame of porous bones, yet we find them beautiful regardless. So why then, is the concept of love and beauty reserved for wives, husbands, sons and daughters, flowers or beloved pets? Why do we spare none for the lowly spider, handcrafted by divinity just as we were?
Chapter VI - Reimar
On the road to Norbüren, I came upon a large statue under construction, and the toiling of the stonemasons brought my thoughts to Reimar. Many would deem him the least significant of all the Sentinels in the grand scheme of things. And yet, he stands for the one gift we were given, which separates man from beast: The capacity for creation. It marks us in the image of the greater will and its chosen representatives, Alder and his Sentinels. We were never given the predatory instinct of the wolf, the natural defenses of the porcupine or the environmental adaptation of the cameleopard. Instead, we survive by our industriousness and creativity. A cobbler made the boots that keep my feet from bleeding on the road, a mason, slater and carpenter keep the rain from drenching me when I lay to rest, and a bookbinder crafted the journal in which I write these very words so that the following generations may profit from the same wisdoms revealed to me on this pilgrimage. It may be Volker that sets the path, but it is Reimar that builds the road.
Chapter VII - Elric
Outside the temple of Lünburg I came upon what remained of the statue of a Sentinel, now reduced to rubble by a destructive force of chaos. I sat upon the ground and leaned my back against the pedestal to rest, and while my mind ruminated on possible punishments for such a wanton act of destruction, I drifted into a slumber. In my dream, I was visited by a man who stood over me but casted no shadow. He had no eyes, and in his hands which were forged from iron, he balanced a scale. He spoke to me in a voice which bore no warmth of emotion or intention, and said I should not presume to be judge or jury, only the guillotine which enacts the sentence. When I awoke, I was at first confused by his words- Until they made perfect sense to me. It is Mortius that weighs a mortal soul and decides to guide it to the halls of the afterlife, or then bar it from entry. But it is mortal man who must send them to meet him. It is not ours to decide the guilt of a man’s heart, but it is our duty to swing the ax in accordance with the Sentinels’ guidance. We are instruments of the rule of order in the fight against chaos, and were gifted our mortal coils in order to hold the sword and tie the noose.
Chapter VIII - Rosatia, and thus Conclusion
It had been my intention to conclude my pilgrimage at the Grand Temple in Adelsburg by asking Rosatia to lend me her wisdom, to order my thoughts and help me choose which Sentinel I should devote the rest of my life to. However, Rosatia found me first, working through a young woman, one of her devotees, which I ran into on the road to the temple. I told her of the things I had learned throughout my journey, and Annelie, the young woman in question, had precisely the right words of wisdom to share with me. And although her words held a different meaning to her than what I gathered from them, they served to cement my convictions and lead me to the choice I would ultimately make. I had always felt deeply connected to the concept of death as a celebration of life, and the capstone to our time on this plane, which is our chance to prove our worth and earn our place in the Halls of Alder. I have always seen beauty in death, and felt a strange comfort in the thought of its impending approach, its arrival the only trustworthy reliability in life. So, I knew the Sentinel I chose to devote myself to would be one that governed a significance to it. My first and most obvious thought fell upon Mortius, but Mortius resides only at the end of the path as gatekeeper to the afterlife. He is the final destination of life, but bears little influence on its course. Aristea then, who shepherds life from its inception to its zenith and through its many ups and downs- But her influence extends only to the physical body, not our mind, our grace, our soul, and brings no higher meaning to life itself. Under Elric’s guiding principles has many a life been righteously claimed in the name of Order, and on Salvor’s battlefields blood is shed in the name of honor and duty, but justice and virtue alone do not fill a life with joy and meaning. Love, art and beauty may make a life worth living, and yet they are temporary and do not accompany us into the afterlife, and thus I would not swear myself to Alda at the Rite of Burning either. It is Volker who guides us through every path in life. He maintains the roads, and all roads end in death, but lead us through battles and strife, learning and wisdom, mourning and sickness, love and creation, and the very trials which prove our worth and test our mettle. Love, death, inspiration, and virtue are merely stops we make along the way- Wisdom is what informs our choices at the crossroads, but destiny is the road itself. With this newfound clarity, I find myself looking at life through a different lens- One that refracts the light shining through it into innumerable facets. This ordeal is complete, but there are many more to come. I have learned much, and yet in the grand scheme of things, I find myself no wiser.
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