"If we accept the worldview of the Narti immigrants [which is to say, the Iskandrans and the Cilanese]--and there seems to be wisdom in doing so, if for no other reason than to establish a base line from which we can examine the development of the region, as long as we acknowledge the historical instability of that tradition--then the first immigrants to Isumbras came more than a thousand years before the Sacrilege and the First Crusade, which is to say more than two thousand years prior [to the inception of the merchant's reckoning of time, or Merchant Reckoning, MR]."

The Migrations--2200-2000 prior
The "Sacrilege"--944 prior
The First Crusade--926 prior
The Second Crusade--903 prior
The Third Crusade--795 prior

"Though many groups have claimed the honor, the truth is that no one really knows who was the first group to migrate from the North into the so-called Golden Horn. To be sure, the most vocal claim comes from the Iskandran priests, which is to say the descendants of the Narti refugees from some nameless, forgotten war in the land beyond the Gate. And just as sure, the Iskandrans themselves were not the first. Even they grudgingly admit that the ancestors of their hated cousins the Cilanese--who were also Narti refugees, apparently fleeing from the same war--arrived in the region first, which ultimately led to the bitterness and intolerance that has become so characteristic of the Iskandran personality (a statement that is defended in the following sections on Iskandra).

"The Narti, however, do not have the only claim. Of course, the gipsy people (who are sometimes referred to as aborigines or in their own tongue as the Children of Asan, or the asanir) seem to have inhabited the realm since long before any of the other peoples, perhaps even hailing from the ancient kingdoms that once controlled the Horn.

"But there are yet other peoples to consider. Evidence is mounting from the West that the Castillians were here for some time before the Narti, and I have spoken with more than one arcane culturalist who claim that the Madar clans in the south, once thought to be splinter gipsy tribes, are actually more akin to the Narti and the Castillians, and that further more, their cultures seem to predate the canonical dates of the Migration taught in Iskandran schools."

The vast veil of time is truly difficult to pierce.

[Perhaps I will address these topics more thematically than I had originally planned, for as I set about my library for a place to start, beyond those mere scraps that were the beginning of this all, I came to the first books I owned of my own accord. Certainly, at the palace there was an unparalleled library, but in the wild, so to speak, books were, for a time, difficult to come by. It is appropriate that those first volumes, which I procured from a strange old man in the grim foothills of the Frostgate, make up a nearly-complete set of Saxo Merkado's The Golden Horn: A Geographical and Occasional Cultural Survey, ca. 147 MR. It was to these that I first turned when Nicodemus left my door, and thus it seems fitting that it is to them again that I turn in this new undertaking]:

"From what I can gather, the common usage of the term Isumbras is far from its original intent. Today, when you or I refer to Isumbras, we are of course discussing the entire region, from the Frostgate to the Southern Sentinels, from the ocean to the Skybiters, and everything contained therein.

"As has been likely passed from parent to child through countless tales and lore, in every village and homestead, the word "Isumbras" means simply "The Golden Horn." Of course, the origin of such a name is described in as many tales and pieces of lore, each of them with their own national or cultural flavor. In a trading post in Cilan, I heard a story about a hunter in the days when the demons were men who sought a wild bull with golden blood and a single horn, which was its only weakness. The men there said that the hunter's attempts to capture the bull, and the animal's subsequent attempts to escape led to the formation of the border mountains, as well as many other geographical features."
I haven't been able to discover where this story came from. It is not, as far as I can tell, a part of any of the usual Cilanese traditions, nor does it appear to have Narti roots. It must have been a very local tradition, perhaps a modification of the aboriginal hornless bull of the harvest, which ironically makes it closer to the truth of the origin of the name Isumbras than one might think.

"The truth of the name is found in the roots of the word itself, not surprisingly. Isumbras comes from the gipsy words is and ras which do, literally, mean 'gold' and 'horn.' But they mean much more in the context in which they were originally coined. Gold, in this case, means something really more like 'rich,' or 'valuable,' or even 'abundant,' while this particular usage of 'horn' refers to an old gipsy legend about a horn from a ram that kept its starving master alive without giving up its own flesh (and thus saving its own life) by pulling off one of its horns, from which continually spilled food and drink of all kinds.

"The beginning usage of the word, then, in relation to the known world is, sadly, quite mundane. The gipsies spoke of the Gold Horn, namely the land close to the shores of the Irisidesian Sea, which, if one looks at a map, resembles somewhat the horn of a ram, indicating both its shape, and its abundance of sustenance and life. It was not until much later, after the Migrations of course, that the term began to apply to everything from Cilan to Castille."
Only the gipsies, who were immune to the corruption effects of the Netherwild, could refer to that region as an "abundance of sustenance and life" without jest.

[I do not intend for these musings to be thematic, but in this case, there seems merit in following through. In all the resources available to me, I have only found two references to the origin of the Avatars. Here is one, followed by my notes]:

"Because the pact was broken that was made with Them by the Titan and thus he was himself betrayed, there came forth aspects of Them, full of the passion that was absent from Them in Their own Forms, and of their coming none now speak, for its destruction is writ in fire and blood in our skin and our blood and our bones..."

What is he talking about here? The Avatars? What is the significance of "Them/Their" versus "their"? Is there some connection here between the Avatars and the Materials? Is the destruction he is speaking of Zhe'ir-disna'ib? [Even now, I struggle in translating from the Elemental tongue, but I've been working on this one for a long time; it means something like (literally) the many-death time that led to the falling from the sun-place of the sun-people; I prefer direct, more literal translations from Elemental, as it captures better the fundamental nature of the tongue, but I have seen the same term, Zhe'ir-disna'ib, translated simply as the War of Heavenly Condescension.] If he is, he is right. I can find barely enough words on the beginning of that war to fill a thimble. Did the Avatar's start it? Nicodemus said something to me once that made me wonder if Mitsaru had once served stagnation. I don't remember what it was. The Avatars are aspects of the Materials. That seems to be the conclusion.

[From a book on Tubaloth]:
I have seen this before, though I cannot recall now where. What--or who?-- are "the Materials"?

[Evidently I found the answer, or an answer, later. The following was in newer, different ink]:
From an old scrap, I think probably older than the Migrations, and possibly even Eochaid. It still amazes me how much was lost, to everyone:

"In the vaults of mortality, the creation was thrust into the hands of the Materials. They are larger than even the highest snows of Mount Axi [I still am unclear where this is] and are terrible in their countenances. They are fundamental, or rather, elemental, for of them, in the embrace or dance in which they engage, come all the falling and settling and sleeping things of the world. To the meddling of the lesser mortals they are indifferent, instead working toward some vast, unknowable end of their own."

[I located the old scrap and found that I had also marked it with my pen]:
The Materials may be indifferent but it seems the folly of men to turn toward those who are always turned themselves away. I infer, rightly I believe, that it is the various cults to these grey beings that led to many of the great darknesses of the past. Was Kezhkaman one of these?

[And further down, from the same scrap]:
And the Avatars? There seems to be a relationship here.

Years ago, before any of this started, my son foolishly tipped a bottle of ink. It toppled and rolled about on the ledge whereupon I store all my ink, and by some hidden cunning, the force that impelled the flask to fall found in its expensive glass some fault. By the same cunning, this fault was exploited and the neck of the vial gave way, allowing the black flood within freedom and doom in the same instant. For as it burst from the crystal prison, the direction of its flow led it from the glassy trough and into the empty air.

My son fled, of course, as the sable waterfall--or rather, the sable inkfall- -poured from the shelf onto a blank leaf of paper that lay on the desk beneath it. It was at this point that I entered the room, confused by the boy's sudden and terrified exit, and though the shadow liquid was, in its death throes, seeking the destruction, not only of the expensive paper, but of the many pages scattered beneath it, upon which were recorded various pieces of history and lore, I was unable to move as was I watched.

It was not many days after that Nicodemus came to see me. (I suppose if I had been summoned to him, it would be more appropriate for me to refer to him as the Archpatriarch, but as he came to see me, I lay hold on the many years of friendship that open up beneath us and call him by his given name; given his history and circumstances, I am certain he does not mind.) When he called me to this task, I told him that I had already been called. He was not surprised by this, but asked to here of my call anyway.

I will not speak of such sacred things here, but I will describe the curious thing that happened when my boy clumsily destroyed nearly a year's worth of work, and more, when one considers the cost of materials. I will not describe my call, but I will describe the context of that call, for it is of context that I wish to speak.

The paper upon which that ink fell was of uncommon lineage, and thus quite expensive. It came from far in the south, from one of the renowned paper mills in Mechevale, made from the pulp of one of the exotic southern trees. I would not normally discuss the quality of my materials in such a way, but I do so now solely to illuminate the nature of the paper, particularly its texture. It was paper constructed to hold a certain type of paint, also from the south, so the fibers of the page are particularly salient. The significance of this becomes apparent as the ink ended its life on the face of this Mechevali paper.

I watched as the ink was swallowed into the page and, deflected by the fibrous dams, expanded across the surface like frost on the surface of lake touched by a single reed, or the accelerated expansion of a root system, black roots in a field of pale cream soil. As the stream of black from above continued its descent, the shadowy tendrils consumed nearly the whole of the page. At this point, I rushed forward, suddenly liberated from whatever spell the scene had initially placed on me. I have already suggested at the amount of labor it cost me to create the various notes on the desk, and though I am no enemy of work, I knew it would be an ornery task to recreate it. And indeed it was, for it quickly became clear that the page, pregnant with ink, was soon to release its bounty to the pages adjoining it.

And so it is with context. When Nicodemus spoke with me concerning his request, it quickly became apparent that to tell the story he wanted me to tell, I would have to provide a context, I would have to tell the stories that led to the story, the lore that underlay the decisions of those great men and women who we now revere as saints.

So Nicodemus was the falling ink, and that first page, filling up is what eventually became the Empyrean Corpus. But now, as I look back on the volumes and scrolls and notes and everything that led me to the Corpus, I am reminded of those other pages, those other leaves that too were embraced by the tendrils of ink, for in those volumes and scrolls and notes are contained a vast library of marginalia, notes written to myself as I struggled to understand. It is indeed the context to the context that I present here, taken in no particular order, but as I find itand can find the luxury to transcribe it.

I find that as I grow older, as the glory of timelessness draws closer, the Stagnant One in his anger consumes the time I seemed to have once had and the moments in which I used to scribble these notes are now more than a luxury. It seems I can more easily obtain paper from the south than a moment to work, but such is the nature of this Exile.

The name should be obvious, but if it is not, it will be soon.