We're authors

Marrishland has a long and violent history. Several civilizations have risen and fallen, here, and the book tells about events during one of the most turbulant periods - a period whose events determine whether a civilization survives or dies.

More than just authors

OTHER PROJECTS

HANGOUTS

COMICS

Vangard's Rules of Governance (ca. 710 I.D.)

It was during the dark years after the last warship had departed that Vangard Moreh composed his immortal Rules of Governance. Though this work has since become the foundation of Mar law and religion, it is important to understand the context in which it was written. Wizards, in the modern sense, did not yet exist, and mundanes were a tiny minority that lived almost exclusively in large cities. Further, Vangard was attempting to blend the ideas of two very different cultures — the Hundred Tribes and the Kalkorae — in order to foster cooperation between everyone who opposed the Totanbeni. As it was clearly composed in the wake of the Erden Revolt (ca. 710 I.D.), it works to promote hatred of that tribe even as it addresses the problems that caused such a staunch supporter of the Kalkorae to rebel against them.

The Rules of Governance include the first written account of the entire mythological history of Marrishland, though many portions of it were clearly not a part of the traditions of the Hundred Tribes. Most notably, it exalts Marrish as the creator of all the other gods and places him above all others — obvious Kalkoraen propaganda clearly intended to encourage the wint tribes to obey them.

Had Vangard stuck to this patronizing revision of wint mythology, however, he likely never would have entered Mar history. Instead, however, he set out to create a legal system and mysticism exactly between those of the two dominant cultures of his time. The result was a legal code so radical by the standards of both cultures that he soon had them united in their condemnation of it. The wint priests condemned it as heresy for its treatment of their gods and heroes. The Kalkorae dismissed it as the brainchild of a deranged mapmaker who had spent too much time among the Hundred Tribes, and though it circulated among the medes as a curiosity and object of derision, it never received any serious consideration.

Some believe Vangard's eventual escape from obscurity was a mere coincidence — a freak accident of history. Others claim Vangard simply recognized that the half-bloods, though incapable of magic, would eventually become a majority the magic-wielders could not merely ignore and was the first to seriously cater to them. Devout Mar, of course, regard the Rules of Governance as a work with such uncanny insight into the future of Marrishland that it could only have been inspired by the gods. A few scholars have even postulated that the gods chose to alter their relationship with mortals in accordance with Vangard's Rules of Governance — whether because they saw the wisdom in the Rule, recognized that they represented a significant change in Mar culture, or found the way they made governance compliment mythology pleasing. Whatever the reason, Vangard's Rules of Governance are the first recognizably Mar work.

(Contributed by Weard Leif Gesyk)