Hey everybody,
I’m doing a little bit of Magiqverse research, in my spare time! I’m trying to compile everything we know about The Lost Age, before magiq was erased. For example, think of Deirdre’s account of Mr. Wideawake’s explanation. Can you guys help me out? Thanks so much.
Such a Thornmouth.
I know Sullivan mentioned it a few times in the journals, and then there’s Mr. Wideawake’s account of it being more like an edited book than two “timelines.”
I feel like us '94s knew something about it but I still have this mountain-shaped hole in my head from the spell we cast, and even just reading back on your interactions with them/us I go a bit fuzzy. Wish I could be more help, but I’m sure the mountaineers will step in.
For anyone who needs abit of a reminder like me:
http://www.deedsdone.co.uk/2017/09/21/mr-wideawake/
“I for some reason thought the Silver or the Storm had changed things but he said that no one knows who did it. But he knew it all came back to the Briar Books. The Little Red House. He said there’s something at the core of those books. They think it’s the source of great magiq. Magiq that someone changed all of history to erase. They don’t know who it was but they believe sometime around the early 2000s history was changed, and the ripples of that change moved outward until it had altered all known history. As far as they know only the wells, a handful of memories, and Neithernor survived.”
While I was exploring the Thornmouth Library, I found a stack of papers on a rather dusty chair, tied up with orange ribbon. Strangely, although the chair and surrounding shelves had a thick layer of dust covering them, these papers were completely clean. There is no indication as to who wrote them, but the entire stack is in the same hand, with numbers on the bottom right hand corner. I can’t actually read whatever language the author used, but with some Tome Kindling, I was able to understand one of the pages. Please forgive my mistakes, I am new at spellwork. If I have something to say during the passage, I will put it in square brackets to differentiate it from the words of the original document.
“…As evidenced by the tales of unicorns and Fair Folk, magiqal being do sometimes appear outside of Neithernor. As of yet, I do not know if they originate from our world, or simply have the capacity to exist outside thier own realm for a time. While I originally set out to witness the Wild Hunt for myself, my plans were abruptly derailed when, apon discussing local faery sightings with a young child, she abruptly remembered that this was the first day of the month and had forgotten to say “Rabbits”. She was quite dismayed, but swore to attempt it later. As such, I have chosen instead, for the time being, to investigate this tradition…”
[At this point, a candle sprite broke my concentration and I missed a few sentences]
“…as simple as this ritual may seem, it does work. I endeavored to summon it for myself, calling “Rabbits” apon waking on the first of August, and to my delight, there was a strange shimmer in the air, followed by a single stocking that had been missing for nearly a fortnight dragging itself out from under the bed with no apparent means of locomotion. The shimmering figure then dissapeared entirely. Whether this is a creature or a spell, I do not know, but for the time being, I will investigate the phenomenon thouroghly. In regards to my inquiry at the tailor shop supposedly run by elves…”
The page ends there. That page is labeled 31 and although I sifted through the whole stack, I couldn’t find page 30 or 32. I believe this has much in common with the tradition of saying “Rabbits, Rabbits, Rabbits” on the first day of the month in order to receive either good luck or a present. I hadn’t heard of it before I found the stack of papers but some quick research led me to this article:
I expect plenty of folk traditions have magiqal origins since forgotten. I can’t go back to the library today but I’ll keep looking.
Not going to lie. That’s an awesome find.
Nice find @Sellalellen! Neithernor definitely comes in handy.
I just remembered that Brandon Lachmann and Those Who Didn’t Die were also connected to “the lost age” that Devin’s researching.
From what I understand, Brandon crossed over and left “the forest” in the other age, but he died and his body was found in ours, right?
And Those Who Didn’t Die magically survived in the other timeline, but not in this one.
I have been digging but, I think the Gossmere must be more oral traditions based than written stories because I have found little in the way of documentation around Rythems Hearth… However, I do have a working theory.
Does anyone remember The Travelers Coin? I know it feels like ages ago now but bear with me. I was able to acquire it, or a version of it, with the help of a trusted Weatherwatch. The Last Traveler was Lachmann, right? So from what I can tell Lachmann was very active during this time in magiq history… I couldn’t help but wonder if the numbers on the back are somehow tied to the age of the wild… So I checked google.
I think I got a hit.
The numbers, when typed into a google search browser, rendered the book title “In Search of Schrodingers Cat”. I am not all too familiar with Schrodingers work, but I do recognize the name as the man who put the cat in the box to test a wild theory. His work is tied to quantum theory, which at the time was so outlandish Einstein couldn’t even bring himself to accept it. I wonder if the same theory could be tied to The Book of The Wild. Thoughts?
Hi, so I’m new at this and still catching up on everything so I’m not sure if this is what you are looking for, but shortly after you posted this I got to the part of Deidre’s blog where she gets information about Neithernor and I thought the paragraphs about Anne of Brittany might be relevant? I’m still fuzzy on the timeline so I’m not sure if this info is pre-hidden-magiq or post, but if I’m on the right track let me know?
My research of Neithernor goes back to Anne of Brittany’s death and the eventual splitting of her court of artists’ secret guild into the paths of wool and silver. At some later point in our current history the path of wool became Monarch’s Mountain so that’s what I’ll call them going forward.
The two groups split, searching for illumination and beauty and magiq in their own ways… I don’t know how or when exactly, but it was the Monarchs who first sought out Neithernor ( I believe the destroyed eighth unicorn tapestry may have held clues to its location and is the true reason it was destroyed.)
Thanks so much, everybody! You wouldn’t believe how helpful this has been. Keep the research coming, if anything else occurs to you.
So, as I understand it…
And @echomoon, you might not have gotten this far yet, but someone revealed to us earlier this year that stretches of time are sometimes called “Books.” So The Book of The Wild was the time when our world had much more magiq and “the lost collection” had been published. The Book of Kings is our time, now, which had most magiq and memory of magiq erased, and the lost collection was… lost. It never happened?
The paths of wool and silver happened here in our timeline, The Book of Kings. They were searching for something (some of them probably had memories of The Book of The Wild) and set out to find it, for different reasons and with different methods.
Neithernor is the only place that still exists that is completely (as far as we know) untouched by whatever happened to erase magic. It was protected from the change because it’s in its own little pocket universe (thingy.)
Those who originally went to Neithernor in The Book of The Wild, The Lost Age that Devin mentioned, were magic users (the six guilds) who wanted to practice magic away from judgment, or maybe even prosecution, because although the lost age had magic it was still hidden away in large part. We’ve had hints that it was “frowned upon” or perhaps even not “allowed.”
So I wasn’t sure I had anything to add to this, and it’s been a few months since I went over some of this stuff, but then I also got to thinking yesterday about the old Ackerly Green Publishing, and the MAGIQ Guide, and it’s all sort of spiraled into something else here, so…
If I have all my threads straight, the Lost Collection includes both the MAGIQ Guide, which we knew of because somehow at least one copy ended up existing in our age to spark the Mountaineers, and now The Little Red House, a copy of which was preserved somehow in Neithernor. There were almost certainly other books as well, but I’m not sure if we have some concrete list of book titles people still remember that they can’t find in our time. It also seems likely that in the current age AGP published other books in place of the Lost Collection? Which is funny to think about, that we would have “replacement” books that might only exist in the current age to fill in the gaps left by the LC.
When I looked over the Guide yesterday, I also started to wonder about why the Guide would have been produced in the Lost Age in the first place. I guess the “Magimystical Assessment and Guild Identity Quantification” doesn’t sound as odd in the age of Internet personality quizzes (although I think we here can agree that something bigger than pop psychology is going on in that book, given what it’s lead us into this past year and change). But a publishing house in the '50s setting out to mass-produce something like the Guide still raises an eyebrow, especially given Saberlane’s point that even in the Lost Age, it seems like magic was still a secret, possibly even taboo. (Not sure if this is helpful at all but it was on my mind.)
Oh, and another thing I thought of! During the course of unlocking the BoB, we received a series of journal pages over several Fragments, as early as Fragment 1 (says a Mountie who showed up just in time for the Third Assessment, but my scanning in the older posts suggests this is correct.) It seemed at one point like those pages might have been from another book published by AGP in the Lost Age. But it also seems like the author of the journal maybe travelled between the two Ages? Between magic and not-magic? I can’t find enough in my scans to make a good guess as to which age it’s from, but maybe looking at those pages could be helpful?
I remember the coin.
maybe small things and tools have survived over the timelines, creating little eddies where they sit squarely on the shores of either before being interacted with in one. I’d think those things might congregate in wells of magiq energy. places like the Ramble, and other small wells. places where the leylines meet and create the fonts they would have in the other timeline. Maybe Stonehenge was once a great magiqal tool, its use and functions lost to the ages? and it’s sense of odd mysticism that pervades the area around it is a hold over from the other timeline.
I havent checked the small library in the Main Hall of Ebenrest, but couldn’t find a lot on our traditions. most scrawlings i’ve found talk of spirits and memory. maybe the underground will hold more answers. our lessons seem to come from little in the ways of written materials.
I haven’t found the library just yet in the Guild tree just yet; that is if we even have one. I did manage to open a door in Living Quarters though. It appears it hasn’t been in use for some time from the layer of dust in it, but there were pieces of parchment and I did manage to decipher a bit of what was written.
"J… 1., 1822, Base of the Sapling.
The creature came back again in the night. The only reason I even noticed it this time was the slithering sound it made against the fallen leaves. I have no idea what it is, but like many of the creatures in this world, it seems to be some type of chimera. It has what appears to be the front half of a horse with the tail of, what appears to be a fish. Because I was closer this time I did manage to get more details on it. The front half of is indeed a goat, more specifically from a black horse in the Appalachian breed. The tail I had to take a double look at. At first, it appears to be fish, especially the tail, but the pattern of the scales and the way it moved I would have to say it is from the Nerodia sipedon or Northern Water Snake. The fins were most definitely from a… It appears to be a Hippocampus, astounding. I was about to step out when a pale … holding a lantern…"
[A light glow started to come from the doorway now, so I put the parchment down and went to see what it was when I heard the slithering sound also. I totally didn’t panic and hide under the bed. All I saw from here was the light glow stop at the doorway for a second, almost as if it was looking in. As soon as I heard it had gone, I got back out and continued transcribing.]
The Hippocampus definitely knew the person. It was rubbing its head against them almost like a cat. I would have gotten closer if it wasn’t for the candle sprite that lit my hat on fire. Once I was done pounding the flame out, I looked back up to see the pair staring directly at me. I’ve never felt more unnerved in my life and I do admit to running away at that point."
[I dropped my cookie here. The light appeared again but this time there was the sound of something running, so taking the parchment and its folder with me, I ran to the entrance.]
Had to fix this, didn’t realize that Herman was a hipocampus, not a capricorn until afterwords.