Pocket Guide to the Empire, Second Edition/Preface
Developer's text Real author : Michael Kirkbride, Kurt Kuhlmann, Darya Makarava (Illustration), Halil Ural (Illustration), Others Publication date : 2012
By Imperial Geographic Society, 3E 331
EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is a transcription of a note folded inside a manuscript of the Pocket Guide to the Empire, Second Edition. The manuscript, commissioned by the Empress Morihatha in the fourteenth year of her reign, was infamously left unpublished due to the scandalous nature of its contents – a product, many would say, of the Imperial Geographic Society taking far too literally its assignment to “modernize the claim that [Tamri-el] was in fact a unified Empire” (the role of the Septims in suppressing this vital document cannot be overstated; it is but one of many pieces of evidence against the Empire burnt to ashes by the Dragon’s acrid breath). The note, along with the manuscript, was found in the bowels of a forbidden library of the Moth Chantry, hidden from sight between two massive tomes of indecipherable paleographemes. The discoverer was a confrater of the Temple installed in a convenient position as an agent provocateur. Upon recovering the texts he immediately channeled them to Temple Zero via high-priority glyphstream, as per Null Oath protocols. Unfortunately, contact with him was subsequently lost. Yet even more unfortunate is a delay in the propagation of the Truth! While the Temple’s mnemographers were able to decrypt the abnegaurbic doctrines of the note, the Pocket Guide remains a puzzle to our scribes even as you read this. Certain complications that arose at the end of its transmission have made the transcription process difficult – in passages, it can be difficult to distinguish the original text from the sender’s hectic fever dreams. It is the work of the Empire’s sleepers, no doubt: their touch venomous, their tendrils crawling through every pocket of the dreamsleeve. The note appears to be the minutes of a secret meeting of the Elder Council held in 3E331 in which the membership of the Geographic Society were convicted of treason and the Pocket Guide was suppressed by Council edict. How they fear the Truth, who came to Power by clawing it to tatters! But they failed, of course, for the lovers of the Truth are many; though we know not who spited the Dragon by saving it, they who preserved these texts have embodied the heart of our Manifesto (and, indeed, may have helped bring it about.) And now the Temple has found it appropriate to publish its contents, that all of Tamri-el might see the Truth with eyes unveiled – for it is in the Truth that we are free from the mythopoeic enslavement of Talos and his co-conspirators, free from all Opression! NU-MANTIA! FREEDOM! NU-MANTIA! FREEDOM! NU-MANTIA! FREEDOM! NU-MANTIA! FREEDOM! NU-MANTIA! FREEDOM! NU-MANTIA! FREEDOM!
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