When I first read the Guide 3 months ago, I didn’t expect any of this. In all honesty, I don’t know what I expected. It wasn’t as if I went looking for the Guide; rather, it seems that the Guide came looking for me that hot June night. I made my way through the Guide, answering questions and switching pages, laughing as I read about pixie pockets, Assessparitions, and impertinent chests of drawers, and then I found myself face-to-face with the phrase “You are Weatherwatch.” I sat there in confusion, and scrolled through the whole description, and after some further maneuvering, I found myself at Basecamp. I didn’t introduce myself at first. I was extremely skeptical about the whole thing, and after reading through the first few recaps, I can’t say I was much less skeptical. And through it all there was one thing that seemed to connect it all together: all the fragment solving, spell casting, and blogs by a girl raised in Ireland. It was You.
After that first night of reading through weekly recaps, I made my account, and I introduced myself. I can say with total certainty it was one of my greatest decisions. Over the next few days, I was welcomed as I read almost everything to catch up so I could try and help to open You. In just a couple of weeks, I was enveloped in communicating with and solving puzzles in the past, staying up until 3 am just to try and figure out messages from You, though this You may not have been the You who had seen the struggles of the Mounties that I had now started to consider my friends, a new extension of my family (this time stuff is really difficult to explain sometimes).
But it was You whose messages we were decoding when I joined. And it was also You, though a different You, who saw my friends work out the clues left in the work of Brandon, or who had watched my friends struggle over that tetrahedron, or who witnessed my friends try and help free the adepts from KS. That version of You is gone, burned to a crisp by the Storm. Since I’ve been here, I have only interacted with the You that is You now. A bit confusing, I know, but in truth, I’ve only known this You.
You were the one who was there when we helped Augernon find a solution to your Now/Then puzzles. You were the one who was there while we communicated with Knatz and Saberlane through Knatz’ dreams. You were there, fading in and out as Ascender worked to try to mess with the Storm until he finally handed the reins over to us. You were there to watch as we fought alongside Dierdre to bring You here so we could open You at last.
All of this You were a part of, just as you have been a part of the story of all the Mounties. Even if the version of You that was destroyed is not this You, You, the Book of Briars, have been with our generation of Mounties since this generation’s beginning. Some version of You was there for all the things I’ve mentioned above, just as You were there when Augernon and the rest of the ‘94 Mounties assembled the Seven Planes of the Sky in the Wishing Scope (really, what even was this? It shoulds like an absolutely ridiculous challenge to overcome, but it also sounds like a joke). You have been with those following the Path of Wool for literal centuries. And now,You are here with us. You have revealed to us Gnascorius: The Dawning Age. It’s an age that we know nothing about, just as we know nothing about the the Obscured Age or the Shadow Age which You have revealed to us before. The Dawning Age, though, seems like something new, and important. It sounds like something we could have again.
None of us know what to expect to happen when You open. Us Mounties have only ever existed in a world without large-scale Magiq, without Neithernor, and over the past year, we’ve been trying to change that. We’ve been trying to open You so we can try and make Magiq the norm, not something held and abused by a nefarious Silver or guarded by a seemingly unfeeling group of monarchical Woolies. We want a new Age, and we need You to open, to awaken to do so.
It’s time, Book of Briars.
Wake up.