The Legend of Broken

Goths as well as smaller groups, and all must have had some contact with Roman military detachments before Broken’s establishment: despite Caesar’s vehement warning that Rome should never try to conquer the region north of the Danube and east of the Rhine, some ambitious emperors and generals did dispatch scouting and punitive parties into those areas, usually with mixed or disastrous results. At least some of the tribes of those areas evidently came to associate Rome itself with one of the most effective and time-tested Roman instruments of war, the scutum, or large rectangular infantry shield, which was usually embossed with some representation of lightning bolts. Hence Lumun-jan, apparently a Gothic-based Broken term for “lightning-shield,” and Lumun-jani, or “people of the lightning shield.” Thus deriving a name for a people from a weapon that they commonly use is not unique in world history, or even in the history of the areas making up and surrounding Broken: perhaps the most famous example is the Saxons, who are believed to have been named after a comparatively small, if still fearsome, weapon, their characteristic seax, or single-edged combat knife. —C.C.

‡ “the Mad King” It should not strike us as strange that the people of such a kingdom would refer to their founding monarch as “mad,” nor is the case by any means unique, in history or in legend — and it was certainly not inspired, as we will see some of the kingdom’s officials try to state, by his apparently heretical religion alone. “Madness” was often equated with vision or genius of any kind, particularly in less intellectually developed societies, which Broken evidently was when Oxmontrot began his reign; and the fact that the term would later be used, at least by many, in a pejorative way does not change this fact. Nor does the frequent use of the phrase “Mad King” in countless popular works of legend, fiction, and history from later periods: whether the very real, as in the case of Mad King Ludwig of Bavaria, or in fiction, as in Edgar Rice Burroughs’s The Mad King. Indeed, there were apparently many in Broken, Sentek Arnem among them, who looked back on this supposedly “mad” king with great admiration — something they would certainly not have done, had they considered him simply insane. — C.C.

† Thedric This is another distinctly Gothic name, suggesting that Oxmontrot married a woman of those tribes. —C.C.

‡ Isadora Arnem Isadora is one of those rare Gothic names to have survived intact into the modern age. It is also a useful tool for helping us understand why the influence on Arnem’s wife of certain persons considered “exotic” would have been so frowned upon in Broken: like Amalberta Korsar, Isadora Arnem appears to have come from good Gothic stock, although in her case, the blood had definitely thinned, and the family had fallen on hard times, even before the deaths of her parents. But the notion that more northerly influences would have been viewed, in Broken, with the kind of suspicion usually reserved for persons from sunnier, more southeasterly lands is a noteworthy variation on the very old story of European distrust, prejudice, and arrogance. —C.C.

† Reyne Niksar Reyne appears to be either an archaic or a Broken dialectal spelling for Reini, the shortened version of Reinhold, or “counselor [to the ruler].” Niksar, however, is more obscure: it seems, at first, a variation on Nikolas, and therefore yet another obvious confirmation that the influence of classical antiquity on the society of Broken was pronounced, Nikolas being a Germanization of the Greek Nicholas, or “victory of the people.” But there may be an alternate meaning, as sar may have been the Broken dialectal version of saller, which means, literally, “one who dwells by a sallow,” sallow being a type of small willow native to Germany. —C.C.

† khotor and fausten See note for p. 00, for Broken’s military organization; in brief, here, fausten were, perhaps obviously, detachments of some fifty men, ten of which made up a khotor. Some may take issue with translating fausten to “fists,” because the spelling does not precisely match that of modern German; but then, it is not to be expected that it would, given the many influences on the Broken dialect that have already been discussed. —C.C.

† “at attention” Although this phrase did not come into common use, among armies, until the fourteenth century, there were and are generally analogous phrases contained in nearly every language, ancient and modern, all of which are descendants, not surprisingly, of the Roman command, which Oxmontrot would have known and respected; but, because the Broken dialect remains lost to time, the Broken Codex having disappeared with the translator, we will likely never know what the specific term was. —C.C.

† “… the Merchants’ Council.” The close identification of the patron god of Broken, Kafra, with the city’s merchant class and leaders reinforces Gibbon’s earlier point about the way in which the kingdom’s rulers and citizens gave a “decidedly Germanic treatment” to what was originally, in all likelihood, a mere cult of hedonism and materialism, turning it into “a pragmatic and highly organized system of theocracy”—a theocracy whose most visible and powerful underpinning was a determined merchant oligarchy, rather than the kind of warrior-based aristocracy that could be found in most barbarian states and tribes of the time. —C.C.

† “‘… let alone a sacred bull—’” Gibbon writes, “The close association of lunar worship with male cattle — or, indeed, horned animals of almost any kind — was common to societies as ancient as early Mesopotamia, and likely existed in the vicinity of Broken long before the city came into being. Animal horns were identified with the ‘horns’ of the crescent moon, and from this comes the mystical association with virility and sensuality that was, evidently, a part of Old Broken’s lunar worship, and which survived among the Bane long past the arrival of Kafra. Indeed, in many parts of the Far East even today, high prices are paid for the horns of exotic animals, which are ground to powder and form the ingredients of traditional virility tonics; only one of the many paradoxes afflicting such Oriental peoples as the Chinese, who are capable at once of great works, great learning, and yet absurd, even vicious and exterminating superstitions.” It remains only to be said that this traffic in the horns and other parts of endangered animal species, illegally, brutally, and immorally harvested, has only grown with time; and that various peoples of the world — but especially, as Gibbon states, those of the Orient — will pay unheard-of amounts of money for such “virility tonics,” the efficacy of which has been found to be absurd again and again by modern scientists. —C.C.

† “‘Blast it’” Etymologically speaking, the persistent use of various oaths based on the word “blast” is interesting — and again, adds plausibility to the Manuscript — as it is one of the few words to originate in Old High German that has survived intact, but into English (by way of Old English), rather than into modern German: thus it becomes, in a sense, one of the “ghost words” of a dead language. This may seem implausible, if one assumes that the expression is somehow associated, as it usually is today, with explosives; but in fact, “blast” is another example of a phrase that might seem an anachronism, on first look, but which dates back to the early Middle Ages, where “blasts” of wind or man-made air (as in horn-blowing) occurred long before Europeans had divined the secret of how to blow each other up with gunpowder. —C.C.

† “‘… your accursed city was built …’” Gibbon writes, “We ought not think that the Bane are speaking, here, in any but literal terms. As our great British explorers — most recently the late and much lamented Captain James Cook — have discovered, the exile of tribal members who have proved unable to contribute to the advancement of a given society, onto some neighboring island, or into some wilderness or other in a remote location, is a practice found the world over — as are societies formed by those same exiles. The fact that, in this case, the exiles appear to have taken on a distinctive physical feature — reduced height — ought not surprise us, either: we have only to look to advances in, say, the breeding of livestock within England itself to understand the physical ramifications, positive as well as negative, of the careful selection of mating partners. If the citizens of Broken deliberately bred their progeny to grow tall, strong, and handsome, it only stands to reason that those exiled from the city would produce a significantly smaller — and less attractive — race.” Thus did one of the great historians of his own or any era instinctively anticipate a major scientific principle. —C.C.

† “‘… our unfortunate new recruit.’” Gibbon’s claims about the cultural mimicry of the people of Broken continue to be borne out in small ways: use of the word “recruit,” rather than simply “warrior” (or some one of the many similar terms used by barbarian tribes in Europe at the time), further calls to mind a society in which military service had been highly systematized and regimented along Roman, rather than early feudal, lines — a theory confirmed by the fact that such service was not, evidently, compulsory, even for the lower classes. — C.C.

‡ “‘Hak’” It is impossible, of course, to determine if the original