NOVEL FROG Chapter 702 – Relayed History and Details Lost along the Way
“When information was passed down from one generation to the next, some discrepancies could be expected. Maybe it was just a tiny bit, where ninety-nine parts out of a hundred were passed down correctly. Maybe it was worse, depending on the situation, but either way, some discrepancies tend to be inevitable in the process of passing down knowledge, especially with the older, less reliable methods.
At first these discrepancies might not affect much, if anything at all, but as time went on and generations passed by, many such discrepancies tended to compound together and create larger discrepancies to the original message. This is often how we get multiple versions of the same event from history, with each group often sticking to the version they prefer the most over the generations.
One thing it did was to make ascertaining what happened in the past difficult, unless you happened to have some witness to the event still around to clarify things.” - Aideen deVreys, the Silver Maiden, circa 220 FP during a debate over history in Levain.
“And so, defeated but far from broken, our ancestors chose to seek an end to the bloodshed by evacuating their people. They sailed away from our ancestral lands, some tribes disappearing and never seen again, while the rest found themselves upon the southern beaches of Alcidea before the azure moon had gone through a cycle,” narrated a young therian whose features resembled a mixture between a hound and some sort of bear animatedly while pointing to a series of murals painted on the walls of the largest building in the center of the city.
The building itself was called the Remembrance, a monument to the past that the people of Boroes had left behind when they evacuated from their ancestral lands in Ur-Teros. Inside the building were many relics from the aforementioned past age, some of which were easily millennia old, only maintained by a glut of preservation enchantments that kept it stable.
In effect, the building functioned as a museum to the past of the people who became residents of Boroes, one that told of their history, long gone by but not forgotten, given how it was likely that every Boroesian child above the age of ten could recite said history from memory. The building itself allowed visitors, other than the innermost parts which housed some artifacts considered sacred by some of the residents.
Which was why Aideen’s group – along with a larger group of random visitors – were taking a tour of the place, guided by the enthusiastic young therian whose job was to elaborate and explain on each of the displays on the Remembrance to foreign guests.
“Alas, even after finding new lands, our ancestors discovered to their dismay that the land already had owners, people who already lived there for centuries and built their nations on the region they landed on. They were forced to continue traveling in search of a place to call home as a result,” continued the guide as they pointed to another part of the mural on the wall. “Over the journey, many tribes broke off from the main group. Some chose to submit to the locals and settled down where they were, yet others believed that better land could be found in other directions… In the end, it was our ancestors who founded Boroes where we are today and raised the city with their own hard work.”
“Funny, if I remember right, didn't the therianfolk back in the Kingdom Down Under say that they split up from the main group and settled there after something close to a civil war because they couldn’t agree with each other over many things and were even persecuted about it?” whispered Eilonwy to Aideen under her breath as the guide continued their presentation. “Not seeing any mention of such conflicts on these records.”
“Could be that they remembered wrongly, or that it went missing as the tales were passed down over the generations. Neither are particularly unlikely to happen when we’re dealing with timespans longer than an elf’s lifespan like these,” said Aideen with a shake of her head. “An equally likely possibility is that one side just washed the incident out of their history to make their ancestors look less like assholes. Very commonly done by the winning side of any such conflict, everywhere.”
“Fair point. Which do you think is more likely in this particular case, Aunt?” queried Eilonwy once more while quietly shaking her head at the animated and clearly prideful way the young guide recited the history of their ancestors.
“Hard to say without being there, though they likely portrayed their ancestors as more heroic and noble rather than as losers of a conflict who were forced to run away from Ur-Teros,” said Aideen after some thought. “We did have plenty of historical tales from Elmaiya about that period, and most of them didn’t portray it as any sort of conflict between good or evil or anything like that. More like it was just another case of disagreements escalating into armed conflict. It wasn’t even the biggest war they had in their tales.”
“Considering their history, it makes sense, I guess. This war they talk about is before the Elmaiya Empire even existed, no?” asked Eilonwy. “At least that’s what I’m getting from their tales. No mention of some big, evil empire or the like, so chances are the Empire was not even around yet at the time.”
“Most likely, yeah. The timeline’s a bit hard to place with certainty when you get to history that old, but this exodus of theirs should be from before even that time. Honestly, if they had just been more willing to live alongside others they could have thrived like the folks we saw back at the Kingdom Down Under, but that’s what pride gets you sometimes,” noted Aideen. “Foolish choices that hurts yourself more than others, and often hurts your next generation even more than it would hurt you, like a curse passed down the family line.”
