By: Benjamin "Pilpus" Lacasse
The Rook’s Forum
A Forward
Lords, Countrymen, and Allies of the Crown,
When King Saegan ascended to the Throne of Blackwood, he created a position in his Royal Court to serve as his personal advisor and assistant in all matters His Eminence finds need of perspective on. He lovingly named this position his “Rook” in honor of all of the advisement, guidance and compassion that the Leaders of Eagles Rook have always provided for the crown, lands and people of Blackwood. The King entrusted this role to me, Sir Pilpus Jainrose, and I have the great honor of being The Stag’s Rook, so in the spirit of my title’s namesake, I have found that transparency and community in the face of impactful issues are the most important tools in a leader’s arsenal, especially when The Crown’s decision on certain matters will have effects that echo across the lives of all of whom’s ear I seek in this Forum and those to come. Today, I use my quill to share my eyes and ears in the Great Halls of Blackwood, from Dark’s Keep to Castle Blackstag, in hopes that our countrymen and allies might offer their voices to us. That we might make not just a decision, but the right decision as often as we can. I caution in this Forum that as in all things, the King’s Will is absolute in our great nation, whether it aligns with your wishes in the end or not, but the very existence of my role should serve as evidence that King Saegan values the perspective of his people and comrades. The topics and opinions of today’s Forum and others to come are curated and adapted by myself, but I encourage you to engage those I cite, however loosely, as it’s their opinions, stories and experiences that shape these conversations at their inception. Lastly, I will do my best to delineate what my own initial opinions and biases on these topics are from recounts, quotes and other’s general opinions. The Crown appreciates your contribution to our home so dear, and looks forward to your voice joining The Rook’s Forum.
In Service of Country, Crown and Blood
Sir Pilpus Jainrose
The Stag’s Rook
Today’s Quandary
The Book of Blackwood
Our Past or Our Future?
As the brilliant dawn of the Platinum Age breaks across the ramparts of holdfasts nearly 4 decades old, The Kingdom of Blackwood finds itself in a peculiar position. Where we have spent the better part of these years deeply embroiled in a variety of conflicts, we have found our parchment record keeping to be lacking relative to our many great successes. Though there are sparse accountings of a variety of important events in the Library of Ivory in regards to our Kingdom’s refounding and sprinklings of our people’s deeds in annals across The Realms, there is a disturbing lack of officially recognized written historical materials in our own libraries. The earliest dated piece of literature our nation possesses in regards to its history is The Book of Blackwood, a collection of thoughts recorded by Prince Nigel with a few unbound records from other prolific leader’s of Blackwood, but even this artifact’s logs only hold old ceremonies and an essay or two on topics personal to Prince Nigel. Regardless of content, it’s been treated with respect and has been used to officiate marriages, and has been the icon of choosing for many a Knight of Blackwoods connection to Edaone`. It’s currently in the possession of the Order of the Owl, the faction in charge of Blackwood’s lorekeeping and matters of internal importance.
As snow set in around the Keeps this winter, I sought a solution to our lack of records and eventually decided to propose the use of the Book of Blackwood to record the happenings in our nation, picking up from where it stops recording, and continuing ever onward. Though the concept of this idea resonates well with many of our Knights and Officials, in looking at this solution in a different light, this decision has implications that span beyond the quill that writes the records. All of that is to not even mention the variety of methods of which we could curate and record these historical events, or any of the other subtle nuances that go into such a wide-spanning project as telling the story of Nation and its people. For the sake of generality, after my many conversations, I feel comfortable dividing the majority of opinions into one of two camps; Those who believe that the Book of Blackwood is a relic of a bygone era that should be left untouched, and Those who believe that The Kingdom of Blackwood is the grand legacy of the Blackwood the book originally recorded, whose story should stain the same parchment its forefathers did. I will use the following sections to elaborate on some of the arguments I’ve observed in either direction
Our Past
The first person who’s input I initially sought on this topic was that of Sir Nos, Duke of Heminshire, or The Dukey as he’s affectionately called in the echoes of the Great Halls. As the named heir to Sir Dark, and one of the first Knights of Blackwood made when the order was rebuilt, I felt that he might have some of the most pertinent insight to the desires of our forebears on this topic. Namely, I sought for him to speak to what he believed Sir Dark’s intent was when he declared Prince Aeryk deceased and took up the mantle of Archduke all those years ago. Did Sir Nos think that it was Dark’s intent to be the legacy of the Nation that he grew up in, or was Dark’s intent to seize the power behind the name and build something new in his own vision? Confidently, The Duke stated that it was his interpretation of those events that Dark saw Blackwood as a conquest of Idaris, but that it was for the best of the whole nation. Sir Dark’s available road to ascending in rank only existed within the confines of his homeland without risking a territory war, and Prince Aeryk’s disappearance meant that the land of Blackwood needed someone with a strong vision to come in and steer it back into the fold. The acquired territories, while convenient for expansion endeavors, were subsidiary to the legitimacy the nation’s history offered, and Sir Dark/Santiago being a part of that history already made him one of the few who could do what, in Nos’ opinion, needed to be done to keep the lands alive, as Sir Dark was duty-bound to do by his knightly tenets.
While Nos believes The Archduke bore no particular ill will to any of Blackwood’s past rulers, it was Nos’ opinion that Sir Dark’s intent was to drop a hard divide between the times before Blackwood’s involvement in The Empire and the events that preceded that time. Duke Nos at this point said that his own opinion, based on Archduke Dark’s original vision, was that we should create a new book. He proposed we could organize it in a more efficient way that makes it easier for future generations to write in an organized way, commission binding with the spectacle worthy of our Kingdom’s great achievements and in the same fashion as Dark, take the important sections from the original, but leave behind that of which didn’t shape us. The past would die with the disappearance of Prince Aeryk and we would let the original book serve as a reminder to never squander what we have built, lest it become a relic.
Our Future
Hearing Duke Nos’ rebuff of my idea, and deeply resonating with wanting to honor Sir Dark’s original intentions, I felt that I had to seek the sage advice of Sir Tao, Duke of Clontarf- a man dedicated to the preservation of Blackwood’s history, as the Book of Blackwood’s previous keeper. Most importantly though he was the man who squired not only to Sir Dark, but in the aftermath of Dark’s death sought the tutelage of another original Knight of Blackwood (Gold-Belts as they’re often referred to inside of our order) in Sir Guilliam. If there was anyone with an informed opinion on this, it certainly would be him.
Sure enough, when speaking over dinner and hearing my pitch, Tao agreed that the Book of Blackwood should be kept up to date. His own reservations of doing so himself came from the same place, of not wanting to violate the Book’s sanctity without assuring we were in the right to do so, opting to leave his own ceremonies unbound in the back of the book. While Tao didn’t venture to assume Dark’s intent, he argued that regardless of intent, the result of Dark claiming the lands of Blackwood as his own ties us to that Book. Dark could have just as easily claimed that Idaris would become the nation’s namesake and taken Blackwood’s lands all the same, but by claiming Blackwood, Dark gave future generations a history 2 decades richer, and we would be fools to effectively throw that gift away by putting it on a pedestal to mold.
Sir Tao also spoke at length on what it meant to keep that torch alive, how even though he was not a part of Blackwood before Idaris’ resurgence, he felt very personally that it was our duty as leaders to keep those histories alive in some regard. People could say the same thing of Edaone`, of whom Sir Tao was the High Priest of since he became a Knight of Blackwood. When Blackwood on its surface could have become faithless in regard to Edaone`, It was Sir Tao who read the scriptures and wore that mantle, because even if the way she was worshipped had to change, it was important she survived, because in some way, we are her and she is us. It is Tao’s opinion that the same is true of the Book of Blackwood, The Kingdom of Blackwood is Blackwood, and the Book of Blackwood is, and should be, our story too. Regardless of whether or not some of the older entries seem archaic, or out of place, those entries are equally as important, lest we set those entries and risk repeating their follies.
It’s important to clarify that Tao was also not necessarily opposed to making a new book for the sake of organizing the entries better and potentially mass dissemination, but did maintain that every entry should be directly implanted into the new print, even if not in the same order as the original page wise, the text should be transplanted as written. Tao did maintain that the history of the original book would make up for the bells and whistles of a new official print.
Curation, Method and Subject
Beyond the physical question of where this history should be logged, there lies one, more mechanical, question in this process. Seeing as how this history has not been actively recorded, save by Traditional Northern Oral Tradition, Blackwood as a nation finds itself in the predicament of not having particularly detailed reports of events to transcribe into the book. While we are not fully without literature, as I expect the Knights of Blackwood have some level of pen and parchment accounting to reference, we are left with the question, what is the best way to preserve our legacy, literarily speaking.
It will be my recommendation that the transcription of whatever words we choose to enter into our new historical text be transcribed by The Order of the Owl as to ensure our history is being accurately recorded and litigiously scribed by the people to whom the King has entrusted our other sacred tomes already. Beyond that point though, in this endeavor, do we desire the unadulterated first hand accounts of our witnessing knights to be what is recorded for all generations beyond ours to read? Or do we desire to enlist the aid of bards to make the facts a more palatable and concise read? In this first recording, is there a place for art, and if so, what pieces do we include?
If we choose to use the Knights of Blackwood’s record, there is also the question of our knights' available faculties to dig through their own archives for the appropriate records. For example, in cases such as Sir Trent, finding a first hand written account of the nature of Blackwood’s alliance with The Empire from 2 decades ago could prove difficult or, at the minimum, time consuming. On a plane still spinning with wars to be fought on many fronts, relying on our knights to take time away from their campaigns to curate or create anew a wide breadth of documents from ages past could leave us or our allies vulnerable in the wake of our work. But that temporary vulnerability may be the price we have to pay to ensure our children’s children and so on may use our knowledge as their own. Conversely, hiring bards for a task this momentous could lead to a host of issues all on its own. While embellishment and grandeur in art can prove to be captivating, in historical documentation, we could risk glossing over vital details that our ancestors might never be able to parse. That says nothing of the bard’s likely inability to create first hand accounts of these events- which are essential to this kind of work.
Of course there is always Subject matter to consider as well. I will not waste ink individually scribing our long list of national escapades and adventures, but deciding together which of these tales are worthy of being passed on as legend, myth and fable is of great importance to us in the Royal House as well. While we can’t dedicate the time to meticulously record every campaign our last age had in store, finding the moments within those quests that shaped us as a nation, as a family, are what we need to identify in this endeavor. Once we’ve found those moments in our hearts and minds, we can move back to curating literature for them.
View from the Tower…
At this moment in time, I’ve had more conversations with people on this topic than anyone else, and while I look forward to having my vantage point shift by engaging with you fine folk in the coming weeks, I’m going to share with you my personal opinion in an attempt to synthesize everything we’ve gone over these last few pages.
While I love having the Book of Blackwood to look at as a piece of history, having read through its contents multiple times over in the process of writing this query, I do believe it needs an update in format at the very least. Prince Nigel conceived this book as a stream of his own conscience, and sadly left some of his work in it unfinished. While I have no problem scribing all of the content in the Book of Blackwood word for word into a new grimoire, I do think a table of contents and a consistent calligraphic style is called for.
I also don’t think we specifically need to record the Order of the Peacock’s founding pages into a new tome, though I’d be happy to gift copy scrolls of those pages to the Order in good faith, a mention of its founding in our history would be enough. Blackwood doesn’t claim any ownership of that order, so I don’t think it should be the most written about thing in our master historical text as it is in the Book of Blackwood.
As for the argument of Sir Dark’s intent and how that plays into all of this, in reading Dark’s other writings and speaking with Sir Seeker about his and King K’s memories of their brother, though I’ve never personally met him, he speaks in the candor of a conqueror. Dark did assimilate the provinces by force initially, and while he respected his forebears as best he could while bringing their former holdfasts to heel, it does seem to me that there is a clear contrast in the leading philosophy that refounded our kingdom and saved it from being snuffed into obscurity. While I feel the text in the current book is important to speak to the upbringing and mindset of modern Blackwood’s first two great leaders, I believe our achievements warrant a Book that we get to call our own, and build together from scratch.
I won’t go too deeply into what event’s I’d like to see focused on, but I do think we should start our new recordings at our time fighting alongside The Empire. An argument could be made to start our recording at the declaration of Prince Aeryk’s death, but we still have knights in the field who fought in wars before that particular occurence and I believe it to be a slight on their valor to not give those wars their due in our writings. It’s for this same reason that despite the workload it would entail on our knights, I would love to see our knights bring in their individual reports on event’s they witnessed first hand. Rather than contracting bards, I do think that hearing individual knights perspective on specific happenings is far more informative and interesting, though I would love to commission art installments to accompany those recounts with relevant themes- be it poetry, painting-prints or music.
I thank you for taking the time to hear my thoughts and look forward to discussing yours in the ravens that surely will fly for this inaugural installment of the Rook’s Forum! Until the horn sounds once more-
In Service of Country, Crown and Blood
Sir Pilpus Jainrose
The Stag’s Rook
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