» Mon May 14, 2012 5:06 pm In Pedo Impedimenta
or
In Soil Stymied
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Table of Contents
Prologue
(forthcoming)
Prologue
Dispatch to the Assemblage of Provincial Oversight
College of Whispers, Miscarcand Cynosure
Dynamistographic Transcription of Urfe's Seventh Harmonic Spectra-Sphere
Date: 13 Second Seed, 4E XXX
Perhaps least well known and most under-appreciated of all the myriad intricacies of traditional Altmeri thaumaturgy is that of the edaphomancer, or soil sorcerer. Indeed, despite the foundation of intellectual voracity I share with so many of my colleagues and the recent establishment of scholastic embassy between our College and Alinor's School of Thoughts and Calculations, I had never encountered the term, in all my research, until our parallel-purloined Thalmori clerk-overseer placed a perfunctory pamphlet on the topic in my hands and informed me that this would henceforth be my area of occupation. I have read, in all their angst-tempered effervescence, the reports of the previous Collegiate Ambassadors after their returns to Cyrodiil; I have seen the fantastic accounts of magisters of infinities both con- and divergent, of the lachrymosaic masterpieces of the temporal excavationists, of thaumatovestors and pearlescent chronographers and clepsydrics; but in all of that incredible deluge, not one reference have I seen to the existence of agronomic sorcery in the isle of the Altmer or its corollaries. Still – according, at least, to the brief brochure I peruse as I etch this report – it does exist, and has from the Dawn and the beginning of linearly recorded history.
But it is not so surprising that the knowledge of the existence of an entire school of magical technique has eluded Cyrodiilic wizards – well, all human practitioners, I suppose, when it comes down to it – for so long. Consider the foundation of widespread professional magical study in mainland Tamriel; our predecessors in the Mages Guild. Galerion did indeed study in the land of the Altmer, but he did so in the demesne of the Psijiic Order – and they are mystics; little given to concern with the more practical aspects of magic. However much more prone toward applicative magic Galerion’s approach may possibly have been, he was still known as ‘the Mystic’ – and so it is but to be expected that both the College of Whispers and our rivals, the Synod, like the Mages Guild our common ancestor, deal but little with what one might call ‘earth’ magic. We concern ourselves with higher quandaries than the fulfillment of basic human needs - with the nature of our world and its manipulation, with the why and how of creation; where did it all come from, and where is it going? How to eke out a few more bushels of grain from the same plot of mediocre land is a question we leave to those less intellectually bestowed – and rightly so. It is much the same in Alinor.
It cannot be denied, however, that agronomic magicks – ‘earth’ magicks – do exist, both in Alinor and in Cyrodiil, and – we can assume – throughout Tamriel. I can speak personally for the Heartlands of the Empire, as my parents – even now that my position provides them with income ample enough to live more suitably to their son’s station – still maintain their speck of a farm in the rusty soil of south-central Cyrodiil. They, along with most of their neighbors, do indeed utilize sorcerous practices in their management; insect specific wards along field margins, incremental cold treatments to harden off seedlings for transplant, heat sterilization of the soil, limited imparted disease resistance, etc., etc. Their techniques are so crude and uncouth, so inefficient and of such limited effectiveness that I hesitate even to name what they do as ‘spellcraft;’ it is inferior even to the efforts of the least skilled of the bungler Synod’s acolytes. I detect much the same attitude as I have evinced toward the ‘soil sorcerers’ of humanity from the Altmer toward their own earthy embarrassments; they write of these ‘edaphomancers’ with a contempt that is veiled in window silk, when it is veiled at all. There can be no doubt that the Thalmor behind my assignation intend it as an insult and assumed me incapable of detecting the slight in their words; for this pamphlet is written in old Aldmeris, of all things. But I am not the College of Whispers’ premier specialist in poly-spectral comprehension for nothing, and this latest insult was as clear to me as all its precedents. The Dominion may have opened the shores of Alinor for the first time in centuries to honor our scholastic partnership with their institutions, but neither that nor the peace brokered by the White-Gold Concordat has lessened their elvish arrogance a single whisker; the citizens of the Skeining City barely acknowledge our existence in their own self-absorption, the Thalmor and their lackeys in the nobility insult us with impunity, and the scholars with whom we are supposed to be collaborating do not even seem to realize that they have guests. It is enough to make one wonder why, exactly, the School of Thoughts and Calculations even extended its offer to the College in the first place.
For, truly: the Dominion invites us to their homeland, mouthing lulling words of diversity and the inclusion of cultural variability – and when our ambassadors arrive in the isle of the elves, they are shut away for months at time in the bowels of the capital, to rot in idleness and isolation, doing nothing but feeding our own frustration and angst with the situation. They respond to our requests for excursion days late, if ever – and until today, always negatively, citing delays from their desire to provide us with the best possible experience in their nation. But when finally they do dispatch one of us, to what sect is he – am I – sent? To that of least possible respect in the eyes of intelligent Altmeri society; to a group of parlor wizards who are - no doubt - more respectable and honorable than their more culturally refined overlords, but who are held in contempt by even the laymen magicians of the cities, to a cult of ‘sorcerers’ that refuses footwear in order to maintain a ‘connection to Nirn,’ or some similar superstitious nonsense. One can hope that they possess more skill than the average Cyrodiilic ‘dirt’ mage – being, after all is through, Altmer, and inherently given to magic – and they have, apparently, the advantage of organization over their human counterparts – in Cyrodiil, this type of magic is passed down based solely on heredity; no farmer has the slightest inkling what ‘spells’ his neighbors are casting – but the bald insult remains as intended; in a land of unparalleled magical skill, in the very birthplace of professional spellcraft, I have been assigned to study the practices of the most simplistic field possible, the most basic fundamental there is: the magic of dirt.
It is the crowning insult to the hundreds the High Elven people have issued in the months since my arrival in the College’s ‘embassy.’ I can only hope that some, at least, of the as yet unassigned ambassadors (Odfrin, please and thank you, Mara) will be directed to join me in this agricultural purgatory, that we may, together, cope with Alinor the country as we have with Alinor the city; by cleaving ever tighter to each other, human to human, in spitting spite of elvish disregard. The Thalmor clerk, Lorund, who brought my dispatch earlier today, hinted that decisions had yet to be finalized for the others. With luck, the damned elves will make up their minds before I leave, so that, at the very least, I will be able to pass along the information of their locations. I am the only one here still able to communicate with you in Miscarcand, after all – as you are, of course, aware. For now, there is little for me to do besides brood and pack my few possessions – not that there has ever been much with which were allowed to occupy ourselves in the accursed twisted city outside these chambers. By the Eight, but I had better have some company in this journey, or I swear these damned elves…
… my apologies to the Assemblage. In the heat of my ire, my thoughts have veered from the thread of my report. I am here to increase the College’s stores of knowledge, not to weave petty tales of elven injustice to men; that is well established. Were the mechanisms of dreamsleeveish transmission not long lost in the rubble of the Arcane University, I would request the above passages expunged from the records – but, alas, it is, and my dynamistograph has no such capability. The Assemblage will simply have to endure the transcript as it stands, with my apologies.
To return to the true purpose of this report: edaphomancy. Perhaps I should begin with a clarification, as my emotions may have skewed the Assemblage’s perception of the topic thus far. While I do doubt that Alinor’s soil sorcerers possess the capability to advance the knowledge of the College much, if at all, I do have hopes that they will exhibit some capacity for intellectual discussion and theoretical discussion of more esoteric magical topics above what we would expect from the characteristic human ‘dirt magician;’ and if this is the case, it may be that they will prove a more valuable resource than some of the true masters of Altmeri sorcery, if only because the (supposed) agricultural simplicity of their nature will preclude the guile and reticence of the more intelligent and allow the extraction of more detailed comprehension spectra. That notwithstanding, perhaps this report may have some value of its own – perhaps it may prove of some small use to some young apprentice for some trivial essay in some distant future. One can only hope.
As strange as it may sound to us in the Fourth Era, having been exposed only to the wondrous face of High Elven militant magnuscience and the dark glamour of the Emperor’s Thalmor ambassadors, agriculture is, in fact, the primary occupation of a large segment of Altmeri society. It would have struck our ancestors of past Empires just as strangely, no doubt, as Alinor – or Summerset, as the isle was known as a province – was always among the least humanly-frequented regions of Tamriel, even when under Imperial rule – but the fact was just as true then as now. And for all that time, soil sorcery has been the heart of agriculture in the heartland of the Altmer. The ‘Kemendelia,’ they name themselves – ‘soil offering,’ in Aldmeris. They are – from what I can tell so far with the information I have been given – regarded as an exceedingly backward bunch by most of society, spurning the company of almost all outside of the agronomic sphere, even disdaining the formal education system which provides a unifying thread through each caste of Altmeri society. Instead, the Kemendelia recruits and trains its members – whether destined for edaphomancy or some other discipline of agricultural magic – independently, and usually on a hereditary basis. Yet again we see that, irregardless of their purported ancestry, inherent arrogance, and ‘ears of great stature,’ elves differ little, except superficially, from the races of men; in Alinor, as everywhere else on Tamriel, the foundation of an individual’s life almost always dictates the form of its course – the sons of farmers become farmers in turn, their flesh and blood tied eternally to the land. Some escape, of course, but only rarely. I am one of the lucky few.
Perhaps embarrassingly for the inbred Altmeri intelligentsia of urban Alinor – presupposing that elves are capable of being embarrassed, of course – the Kemendelia seems to exemplify many of the traits foundational to the society as a whole. Primarily, I speak of their stagnation, here; for as obstinate and resistant to the recombination of ideas as the elves are in fields of intellectual merit, so too are their agromancers unwilling to accept new practices. The claim – the boast, from Altmer – is that agriculture in Alinor has existed without change since nearly the beginning of recorded history. The island and its corollaries are divided into the same twenty-four geographical regions today as they were when the Dominion was conquered by the Empire in the Second Era. What that says about the progress of elven thought in that time is self evident. Purportedly, the isle was delineated according to formulae from the Dawn, and thus the original divisions remain ‘the pinnacle of managerial sublimity.’ Ridiculous claims, naturally, but we will leave the question – if you can call it a question – aside until I have evaluated the situation firsthand.
The agricultural activity of each of these two dozen regions is meticulously managed by a local central agency, headed by the region’s edaphomancers. Housed in a facility the Thalmori pamphlet calls a ‘Solum,’ this agency regulates how, when, and what the growers of the area will produce in any given season. Again, note how perfectly the Kemendelia exemplifies Altmeri society on the grander scale; even their agriculture is bound in pointless formal rigidity, removing free will from the individual owner and alienating him from his product. To be clear, I say ‘pointless’ only in reference to the formality of the institution, for there can be no doubt that agricultural productivity benefits from the implementation of explicitly formulated management – only leave the specifics to the landholders’ private decision. To remove choice from the hands of the individual, as is done so pervasively in Altmeri culture, is blatant injustice; the traditional, collective merish model is but one more form of tyranny, however its proponents may claim otherwise.
Of specific regions, their crops, and of agronomic practices – sorcerous or mundane – I am as of yet unable to explicate. I never did make my way round to the study of temporispatial geography the way I intended, to my regret, so all but the foggiest of spectra on Alinor’s physical composition are unavailable to me at the moment – aside, naturally, from what I have seen with my own eyes. Which means, in sum: the country’s titular citadel, Alinor. And as for that – well, despite my ignorance of the field, I can say with perfect confidence that the Skeining City could fill an entire course with its dicephalic-dimensional vagarity. I know only that I have been consigned to Arbasdiil, supposedly the oldest of all Alinor’s Soli, and the birthplace of edaphomancy. The site is located in the main island’s central valley, sheltered from the seas by mountains on all but the eastern front. Who and what await me there, in which degree of endurability, I shall learn within the week. You will be informed.
With repeated apologies for my lapse in temper, I conclude my report. As ever, this is:
Jon Urfe
Specialist in Poly-Spectral Comprehension Techniques and Phenomena
Collegiate Ambassador to the School of Thoughts and Calculations and the Aldmeri Dominion in Alinor
College of Whispers
