#12 Forget the Language Dying in Your Mind

[Aesopian 1639]

~| The Filthy Tongue |~

 

   

 

Ink fades.

 

The immortality of the written word is fleeting. A single spark caught in dry roof thatching can undo a lifetime of effort. Nature is, and always will be, a force for order and chaos in equal parts. We cannot escape it, just as we cannot escape the passage of time. We will always be made to endure change.

 

Many worldly religions espouse their texts as truth. The Church of the Canon bears scrolls. It is not my role to doubt their content. The revelations to the authors of the scrolls may very well have been from the creator. However, dictated truth is imperfect. Language is imperfect. When I say 'red', the color represented by the word in your mind may be a shade different than that in my mind.

 

It is simple to know that the holy scrolls, or any other physical representation of moral truth, is not the ultimate source of moral truth prescribed to us by the creator. This is because the physical world is fleeting. There will come a day when every scroll has turned to dust. What will we turn to then to know how to be Good?

 

The purest representation of any creator's will can be found in their creation.

 

In my last missive, I asked you to break pieces of the city with your firsts. Axios was a fine land when I came across it first in my travels, long before I ever came to the prime diaspora. Now, Axios is being corrupted. The city pervades its nooks and crevices. Roads cut through once-beautiful fields. It pains me in my soul. The ravens told me of broken fences and shattered masonry all throughout Oren -- but I heard little of similar activity in Sutica, Urguan, or the other nations. I am disappointed. I will expect you to do better next time. Our message is best delivered in action.

 

Moral truth must be self-evident in nature, because nature is the only thing that is eternal.

 

We have an imperfect duty to find moral truth in nature outside ourselves. The hunger that gnaws in a wolf's belly. The crow's caw above a rotten kill. The trembling of a brook. They teach us, and give us strength. This duty is imperfect because moral relativism pervades reality. We all find different truths in nature, and they are all correct, but they do not supersede the truths we find in ourselves.

 

We have a perfect duty to find moral truth in our natural selves. Our passions and our hates. Hunger. Thirst. Lust. These are the base pursuits which were given to us through our creation, and they are the purest form of the what the creator wills us to do. When we act naturally, without consorting our higher faculties, we ensure we behave in a way which is moral -- otherwise, it only might be moral.

 

Now, I will place another task in your hands. Any of you, or all of you. Memorize a religious text, and then burn it. A poem or a prayer, a psalm or an ancient obituary. The moral truth of a text can be ratified in your mind and forgotten. The unnatural reality of a book may be destroyed. Destruction and preservation are in two halves a whole, and comprise the cycle of life and death together.

 

Show that you are dedicated to the cause of restoring balance to this world. I ask this of you.

~ March Ash

You find a message on a sheaf of bark, scrawled in animal blood.

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Join the author.

[HurferDurfer1 2978]

"God dammit its this guy again."  Coltaine yells in the distance.

[Heff 2460]

aYaa! 

[__WaterFox__ 636]

"The March Ash condemns words yet they use words to convince others of their philosophy, just like any preacher. Why do they not embrace their own words and prove their philosophy is correct by presenting their life instead" Alirya commented to her son-in-law

[Cave_Creature 467]

Faeinn added the tract to her small, precious bundle, treasured under her pillowcase. As she slipped the brittle, fragile bark scroll under the rough cotton, she gazed at her collection. Her little holy book.

The elf brought the stuffed pillow outside. She passed her eyes across the words, each one in succession from the earliest to the latest missive. She drank in their meanings until the sentences were meaningless. She swam in the concepts that she felt beating in her chest.

She set her sacred text aflame. She had no need for its physicality, being imprinted in her soul. The next words of truth would meet a similar fate - consumed, and discarded, more permanent in her mind than in the world.

[floop 147]

*A message written in ink on a rough parchment finds it’s way to you. It seems to be from an address in Saint Karlsburg, Haense.*

 

Dear Reader,

 

I am Alister Wailer, and I present freethought on the letter circulating by one March Ash. Heed not this foolish figure’s opinions on morality and nature. He’d have us unravel the fabric of our society, burning texts, and succumbing to our lesser urges. This animal blood treatise he presents decries the moral weakness of the city, poppycock. I will, without a shadow of a doubt prove that this March Ash is incorrect about the source of moral truth, that he is incorrect morality of cities, and that ultimately he is incorrect about the balance of the world as he puts it.

 

The treatise I seek to address, originally published with animal blood on bark, claims that the highest form of moral authority comes from nature because it is the only eternal thing, a pure unfiltered version of the creator’s will. He claims that holy texts can be corrupted by those writing them, and so they can not be as inherently moral as nature. The fallacy here is assuming that one gets their morality from holy text, when in truth holy text is simply humanity placing its morality in ink. Morality is not something you derive from nature, or text, it is inherent in the heart of every man, woman, and child. The original text states “the purest representation of any creator's will can be found in their creation.” The hypocrisy in this statement is unmatched, We are a creation of the creator as much as nature is, and he instilled these indelible morals in us to separate us from animals. In nature if something threatens you even slightly you kill it, if you feel hungry you steal food from the mouth of the sick, or children yet we all know these things are wrong, because the inalienable moral code instilled in every sentient being by the creator tells us that it is wrong.

 

This man claims cities are immoral, that we should break them apart, and live the way we first came into this world. This is entirely silly, and were we to live in a world such as the one this Luddite is promoting most people simply wouldn’t be here. Cities prevent disease from spreading, help feed those who are starving, provide shelter, and ensure that children can grow up far more safely, among innumerable other benefits. Cities as an institutions thusly are undoubtedly morally good since they facilitate many actions that are morally good.

 

As I stated previously, we are children of the creator, our actions are all done using the tools the creator has laid on this world for us. Mister March Ash attempts to assert the idea that progress, and technology have unbalanced the world, but that is foolish, and short cited. If the creator wanted the world to stay untouched he would have made us as simple as sheep, yet he gave us the cunning to form nations, and the ingenuity to found cities. The things we have accomplished collectively are simply part of the balance of this world. Mister March Ash for somebody who seems to revere nature seems to forget that the sentient races are nature, and that the things we do are part of the ecological system just as the nests of birds, the hives of bees, or the burrows of badgers.

 

Moral, and sensible people of this world I ask you to please ignore the words of one March Ash, do not burn written works, do not succumb to your lesser urges, do not dismantle cities, or attack poor millers, and farmers. Simply take this man for what he is, a fool, and disregard everything he has written on his tree bark treatises.

 

With great Regards

~ Alistar Wailer of Karlsburg

[Areln 199]

Faieya would come across one of the newer tracts, her expression contorting into a pained grimace as she silently crushes it with her boot. The bark soon ground into little more than dust, she'd mutter curses quietly towards the author.

 

It had been so many years since the day she encountered them, and yet her own appearance wouldn't let her forget. Her knuckles would turn white as her grip tightens almost painfully around the cane she carries, the pain that had been idle for so long fresh in her mind as she turns away from the remains of the bark.

 

[Mavromino 514]

Anaklusmos would see the message and read it "I wonder if I'll ever if this person is undead or a creature of dark magic. Hunting it would be rather fun. With this remark the witch hunter would continue his journey to wherever he was going.