The Legend of Broken

Europe’s most ancient and thickest virgin forests, of which the Thuringian certainly was one, and in parts remains so.

Perhaps the most intriguing clue regarding both of these animals is their classification: like modern lions and tigers, and unlike the smaller wild cats that existed in Europe, they belong to the Panthera genus (the European jaguar is the Panthera gombaszoegensis, the cave lion the Panthera leo spelaea), making the Manuscript’s consistent reference to them as “panthers” not at all far-fetched. —C.C.

‡ “… the neck and shoulders …” Two additional facts about the narrator’s description of the “panther” are significant: he has apparently never seen a true “mane,” the male European cave lion having possessed only a short, wispy approximation of the version found on their African cousins (less, even, than the infamous cave lions of Tsavo, Kenya), and he consistently refers to the animal as “he” rather than “it.” This and other clues reveal that, if he was not a Moon worshipper himself, the narrator is for some reason very familiar with the customs of that faith, which included, as we have heard Keera say, deep reverence for the souls of animals, especially the Davon panthers. —C.C.

†† “… red velvet.” Here is an indication of how advanced Broken’s textile production, or its trade with other kingdoms to its south in Europe, or both, must have become: velvet had only just reached that continent from the Islamic empire at the time that the Broken Manuscript was most likely written (the late eighth to early ninth centuries) and was considered an enormously rare and valuable fabric, worn only by the elites of the countries it made its way into. —C.C.

† “… the cavernous Temple.” Gibbon writes, “This description of the High Temple of Broken is revealing, and further confirms the notion that the city and state were something of a stewpot of cultural and aesthetic influences: while termed a ‘temple,’ the building has the evident design and attributes of a European — and Christian — church or cathedral. We know that, in the Eastern Roman Empire during this same period, rulers beginning with Constantine were devising ways to adapt the Christian faith to the pagan rituals of the various populations contained within the empire’s borders, and vice versa. Is it possible that the royal family of Broken was involved in some similar enterprise, or, even more intriguingly, in a precisely opposite undertaking, that is, in adapting Christian architecture and rites to their own faith of Kafra? Certainly, we cannot exclude the possibility — particularly as we know (and I myself have seen) that the ‘Broken Codex’ used by the Manuscript’s translator consisted of portions of the Bible written in the Broken dialect. It has been heretofore assumed that this was for missionary Christian purposes; but what if the intention was to alter the biblical text, and make it serve the purposes of the priests and priestesses of Broken?”

† “… a distant region of Davon Wood by the Bane.” Gibbon writes, “The narrator’s consistent references to the quarrying and mining activities of the Bane will not surprise anyone acquainted with the Harz mountain range, as they are rich not only in fine quality stone, but in silver, iron, lead, copper, and zinc; and although the exploitation of these deposits is generally thought to have begun on a systematic scale only in the tenth century, it is by no means overly imaginative to think that a people living in the mountain and forest wildernesses around Brocken during an earlier age should have developed the means to create a primitive series of mines and quarries, all evidence of which would have been overtaken by Nature in the centuries following Broken’s downfall.” What Gibbon could not have known was that, during the early Industrial Revolution (within, ironically, mere decades of the great scholar’s death), the mines of the Harz Mountains would rapidly be worked to complete exhaustion. —C.C.

† “… glittering, durable mortar …” This was likely either stucco or concrete — both of which were evidently used by Broken builders — mixed with reflective flecks of the many kinds of granite and quartz that were mined from the both the Harz and the Tombs (that is, the Harz and the Erz mountains) by the Bane. — C.C.

‡ “… every society that surrounds Broken.” As Gibbon writes, “The importance of this seemingly obscure detail of Broken craftsmanship cannot be overstated: the ability to maintain the production of glass windows throughout much of the Barbarian Age, when its secrets were thought to have been lost to all of Europe, was aesthetically, religiously, and governmentally significant.” Modern archaeologists and industrial historians agree that, while many barbarian tribes and nations maintained the skill of manufacturing glass beads and receptacles of various kinds, their ability to fabricate far more complicated window glass, whether clear, opaque, or colored, largely disappeared from Europe in the Dark Ages, confirming the enormous role that the ability to produce such glass played in how the society of Broken “saw” both itself and the world around it. Cf., for instance, Macfarlane and Martin, Glass: A World History. —C.C.

† “… known across the Seksent Straits as ‘ermine.’” “For the first time,” says Gibbon, “we are given the impression that the narrator’s journey to our own region may have brought him into contact with persons more majestic than mere scholarly monks.”

† Grand Layzin Gibbon writes, “Again, we are forced to suspect a mere phonetic approximation in this word Layzin; for the sound is identical to the German lesen, ‘to read,’ but seems almost certainly to imply, in this more ancient form, a gerundial noun, ‘reader,’ for this appears to have been the Grand Layzin’s responsibility, as well as the source of his power: to read and give practical meaning to the thoughts and pronouncements of the God-King, as well as, presumably, to those of Broken’s god, Kafra. This ability — to translate divine intent into pragmatic action — was the source of authority for many similar pagan holy men (or what German scholars have taken to calling schamanes [shamans]), although few seem to have had the executive authority of Broken’s Layzin.”

‡ “… brocade mantle …” Here we get an idea of just how many intrepid foreign traders and raiders ventured to Broken’s ports and borders to sell their goods, and vice versa: brocade originally appeared in Persia during the Sassanid Dynasty (ca. 225–650 A.D.), and was evidently quite common in Broken by the time that the Manuscript was written (presumably the eighth century). It is possible that the techniques involved in producing brocade had been mastered by Broken textile craftsmen by this point, or that the city’s merchants were still bringing it up from the river Meloderna. Whatever the case, the fact that it is viewed by the narrator as an item worthy of remark only in reference to an important state figure is important. —C.C.

† “… his raiding sword …” The names given to weapons, among both the soldiers of Broken and the Bane, seem to have been determined either by the names of the peoples they borrowed their design from, or, more simply, the names and/or activities by which those foreign peoples were themselves known. Ergo, “short-sword” refers to the Roman gladius, a weapon that the Romans adapted from a Spanish blade, but which was often referred to among even Romans by the more descriptive and informal term — simply “short sword”—that the soldiers of Broken used. “Raiding sword,” meanwhile, seems to link the weapon to a people — in this case, to the early sea- and river-faring raiders that the modern world would come to know as Norsemen and Vikings. The straight blade of the “raiding sword,” along with its length (longer than the late-imperial Roman spatha, a weapon that was a compromise between traditional Roman and barbarian weapons), matches the simple yet devastatingly effective design that the Scandinavian tribes and nations employed for nearly the whole of their history. —C.C.

† Visimar Another solidly Gothic name, although the man’s assumed name, as we shall see, was not, suggesting that at some time, perhaps in the distant past, the Gothic- and Old High German — speaking peoples who inhabited the area that would become the kingdom of Broken lived in some unidentified (and now unidentifiable) state of animosity. —C.C.

† profilic and freilic Gibbon writes, “These words offer us some insight into the development of the Broken dialect in its later period. As at other points in the Manuscript, we find, here, words that are more Germanic than Gothic, and more like modern German than Old High or Middle High German; yet the suffix ‘ic’ may well be a holdover from Gothic, if we accept that the two terms refer, respectively, to flanking wings of cavalry (profilic) and the free-roaming (freilic). The former were units literally on the flanks, or ‘profiles,’ of the army, the latter those ‘free’ to reinforce weaknesses in lines of battle, as well as exploit openings in the enemy’s lines. Why the translator should not have been able to divine as much, I cannot say, save that his knowledge of things military seems to have suffered from severe limitations, as is often the case with deeply cultured men.” This analysis — and the questions regarding the translator’s apparent limitations — have endured, and time has affirmed Gibbon’s interpretation of the words; although it ought to be said