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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.

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Veravenaton (ca. 1700 - 1900 I.D.)

First Generation (ca. 1700 - 1800 I.D.)

During the long dark age, the ability to recite Vangard's Rules of Governance from memory became the mark of a learned Mar. One group of Mar scholars were especially interested in this text. Calling themselves the Veravenaton ("hunters of truth"), these scholars set out at some point in the 18th century to find the most complete version of Vangard's Rules of Governance in the original Medien.

This painstaking project took half a century to complete, as it required scholars to memorize multiple versions of a fairly comprehensive religious and legal text without recourse to a written language, as the Mar had not yet developed one. After a few false starts, the Veraveneton began to realize that none of their founding members could ever forget the incomplete versions of Vangard's Rules of Governance completely enough to maintain the purity of the oral tradition. To solve this problem, they decided to pass on their "pure" version to their children and apprentices.

At the end of the 18th century, the Veravenaton declared their work a success and taught their perfect version of Vangard's Rules by rote to their successors. Of course, not all Mar agreed with the final version, but the labor was useful in that it unearthed many segments in the text that had not been widely circulated. It was certainly arguable whether these sections were lost in the passing of the work from generation to generation or whether they were fabricated by scholars who wished to alter portions of the text.

Second Generation (ca. 1800 - 1900 I.D.)

The second generation of Veravenaton made their own mark on Mar culture. They set out to document the differences between their own perfect version of Vangard's Rules of Governance and other versions. Serious scholarship on the subject, in the absence of a written language, soon broke down, and the Veravenaton instead focused on the degree of difference between texts using a largely arbitrary scale of variance. Under this scale, two versions of the Vangard's Rules that were very different from each other could share the same degree of variance from the perfect version exalted by the Veravenaton. This lapse into absurdity quickly made the Veravenaton a laughingstock among other Mar scholars. It hardly helped that the Veravenaton took their work so seriously, to the point of arguing fiercely over the variance value of one detail or another. As all the versions of the text were committed to memory, there was no way to determine whether the analyzing Veravenat had correctly recalled the details of the version in question. Certainly, no one can claim to be able to memorize a hundred or more versions of the same text without getting some aspects of the different variations confused, at least occasionally.

For a few decades, the Veravenaton supplanted mapmakers as the primary targets of ridicule, at least among urban Mar. The jokes told at their expense depicted them as self-centered, obsessed with arbitrary numbers, and willing to exchange blows over which of their faces was the perfect version and which was the variation. Vervenaton characters spout such lines as, "According to my calculations, you are a 1,732 variance from being correct" and often mathematically come to the conclusion that the average rock is a has a lesser degree of variance from themselves than most other Mar do.

(Contributed by Weard Olga Fydelis)