The document that you’re about to read, the Saga of the Errth, is translated from the original text into the language you’re reading now. Where it comes from, and who wrote it are a mystery to me, the translator. Please understand that the language of the author was different from this one, and as such, there may be times when the prose falls down and loses any sense of being well written and easy to read. This is because I will, at times, need to explain concepts and words that the author and his peers are familiar with but are unknown to you. My group has managed to translate a good number of documents from the cache of information we found, and from that we have pieced together the following about the world and time which the original author lived in. This text appears to be written as though it’s true, despite the more fantastic elements, despite even the fact that it’s a great deal younger than my time and Humans, to the best of my knowledge, have never historically had the abilities described. Is it a real account of a set of events? I can’t say for sure, and I’ve done my best to keep the translation as true to the source as possible, inflecting no judgement of validity or truthfulness. In order that you may understand something of the world you’re about to invest into, We felt that I should give you some background.
The Errth, as the author calls it, at the time of his beginning has no central authority. It’s ruled by principalities by and large, and where principalities don’t have sway there is a sort of guild system. It appears that there are a great many secret societies as well and they exert a great deal of influence on governance. The main method that rulers use to keep people under control appears to be something that can best be translated as \”magic\”. We all understand that there is no magic, I believe, but in the texts of the time, it is referenced a great deal. Clearly either the people of the time are referring to something real, that humans are capable of, but have lost, or this is a collection of fairy tales. We don’t care to give an opinion.
The largest and most powerful group on the planet is referred to as the Brethren. The Brethren is the name of the over-arching society of magicians and witches. It only exists to legislate magic and its use. It’s made up of a great number of smaller orders, for example, the Ordo ab Draconis Argentius numbers roughly 50 members according to our source material, but they are politically very powerful in the Brethren. They loosely govern the use of magic and attempt to keep the use of hostile magic against non-magical humans to a minimum.
As best we can decipher, there are seven kinds of magic, and most people who are magical in nature have only one or two kinds at their disposal. There are some who have two, and even three, and there are records outside of the maunscript I translated of people having 4, and having special gifts related to them. There also appears to be a way for non-magical people to learn one kind of magic, referred to most often as Ritual. Learned Ritual can take the form of a spoken liturgy combined with action to produce a specific effect, or it can take the form of music. Magical music appears to be the most powerful form of magic that a non-magician can learn. The other forms of magic are called Chaos or Focus, Energy, Grounding, Mental, Light and Time.
As you read this text, it’s suggested that you pay close attention, as I’m taking as little license as possible with it to explain or expound things that may be confusing. The author is very specific in the words he chooses, indicating to me that he means what he says very literally, and that he perhaps disguises things in semantics. Of course, there’s no guarentee that anything he’s saying is true, however he clearly thinks that it is. Combined with the specificity of the verbiage and the over-all preponderance of evidenciary witnesses*, I’m forced to conclude empirically that there may be things outside of my experience being described here.
Given the recent scientific affirmation of validity, the nature of some of the text that the author shares with us, and the use of certain word combinations, We have concluded that the author was probably real, and probably telling the truth most of the time. There are places it’s clear that he’s lying, to what end we can’t be certain, but overall he seems to think he’s telling the truth.
The final oddity that I feel I should explain prior to allowing you to read the manuscript is this: The sun is characterized as being tinted orange at that time. At first it was assumed that this body of work had been translocated here from another planet based on that information, and the term Errth was added to an alien story. Further forensic investigation has revealed that the body of work here is certainly terrestrial in origin. The only explanation is that the author lived in a time after the Yellow Sun, and before the Red Sun, when the energy of the sun is just beginning to expire. These texts may be the only record of our planet at that time, so their significance is very great indeed.
Humbly,
Frater Shomer Sangreal
Prime Translation Co-Ordinator 7,
Ministry of Temporal Information Reclamation and Education
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