Excerpt from the autobiography of Samson of the Blackened Forge: How I learned to stop worrying and love Vigilance:
“I left High Chalcis with my pouches full of the brightly hued Roseweald that grows there. It was my intent to sell this onwards to perfumers along my journey but as you will see it served quite another purpose. I thought I was acting in Prosperity – but it turned out Vigilance was in my actions.
We call at the chapterhouse of the Sentinels Tower who lay claim to being the oldest chapter in Reikos, boasting a foundation that predates the Imperial Conquest of the territory. I was to learn that their history says that when the Patricians still ruled Highguard and many chapters moved to the wilder borders to investigate virtue they went even further into wild unclaimed lands. It is a claim made all the more believable upon sight of their formidable chapterhouse – built around one of the largest constructions of the Sentinel I have ever beheld.
It is perhaps because of their age that their customs are odd. For they live their days in a fixed virtuous pattern. They have linked each hour to a virtue, and each day they repeat this pattern seeking in that hour to live their lives with that virtue in mind. This they do, day after day, for their entire lives. For those that have done the maths and have a question, in addition to three sets of the seven virtues there are 3 hours of the Labyrinth.
We were fortunate enough that we arrived at the hour of Prosperity and so were offered food and drink before we carried on our way. They were friendly enough but their rigid lifestyle would not be for me. As we left we joked about what our greeting would have been like if we had arrived at the hour of Vigilance. Ruth joked the most, evidence perhaps that she never did take Vigilance as seriously as she should.”
Hazeleponi, head Archivist of the Shattered Tower sends this extract out to all of our expected Pilgrims over the the early part of winter, with the following letter:
Some people ask me why I am an archivist. Someone of my disposition may be bettered suited to the Unconquered life, and a lot of people who have met me say I should be a priest. Believe it or not, my true passion is our history. And there are very few things more satisfying than uncovering a piece of my own Chapter’s history, and I can’t wait to share it with everyone.
It’s been a long and arduous task, trying to recover all the history we’ve lost. Most of the documents recovered in the area where our Chapter House once stood were fragments of the much larger texts. Then of course, the Mushroom People destroyed anything we couldn’t salvage. I was left with practically riddles, and if you’re as inpatient I am, you’d tear your hair out over that pretty quickly. This is however, what I am here to do. Well, what we are here to do. There are several archivists who work with me, whose help has been invaluable during this particularly puzzling time.
Despite being Head Archivist, I walked away from my desk and back to the White City in Bastion, the place I had called home these past 14 years. I knew these libraries well, and surely other Highborn in our great past must have passed through and possibly hold the answers to some of these mysteries. I wont bore you with the countless months I spent looking through autobiographies and describing my trials and tribulations in the most boring way imaginable – something a few of these authors could do with learning – and I will instead jump to the part where fortune came in unexpected corners.
I had promised to look into a few autobiographies of artisans for Sister Maya whilst I was making one of my many trips to Bastion and I came across the autobiography of Samson of the Blackened Forge: ‘How I learned to stop worrying and love Vigilance.’ I do recommend it; he doesn’t tarry around with waffling exposition. Anyway, my heart did a little skip when I saw the Sentinel’s Tower mentioned and I practically pressed my nose to the page. He was describing a tradition we had practised and one that I had vaguely recalled myself: Keeping the Hours. It spoke of the days that we lived our lives in a fixed Virtuous pattern, whereupon each hour was practised with a Virtue in mind. Samson himself called this pattern ‘odd’, but I felt a sudden rush of… well, home.
I slammed the book shut and ran from the Pilgrim’s Rest Library in Bastion and practically ran the whole two hundred miles back to The Shining Towers – much quicker if you pass through Therunin and take up the hospitality of our friends in the Peakedge Steadings. There may have been a trod or two on the way, I actually can’t really remember. Upon my arrival, one of my Brothers was looking through some of the archival documents. I snatched them from under his nose – I’d apologise, but he is used to this – and gathered the rest from the secure lock boxes we keep them in. We’d kept everything: waterlogged scrolls, scraps with only a handful of words on, mostly intact books but with some peculiar pages missing, and what I am pretty sure was a note passed around by two courting Sisters during a lecture (alongside their loving words, there were some rather unsavoury doodles of a lecturer).
Anyway, I reported my finding to the Archivist Brothers and Sisters who were in my library at the time and went straight to work. I looked for the obvious, anything with numbers on it whilst others combed the documents to find anything to do with timekeeping and the virtues. Once again, will not bore you with how long this took, enough of my Chapter had to put up with my complaining.
The important part is that we endured and we formed the structure over the practise of Keeping the Hours. I look forward to being able to share this with visitors to our great Chapter House now it had been presented to the rest of my Chapter. I have such Pride in myself and the rest of my Archivists over what we had achieved. Together, we had truly recovered a piece of our history and lifestyle, which we can now draw inspiration from as we move forward in Virtue.
Seven Hours Productions 