Book of the Keeper

[Draiden 326]

The Book of the Keeper

Book I of the Red Scrolls

Translated to Common by High Keeper Tyr Faretto

 

 

 

Foreword: The Red Scrolls

   The Red Scrolls are a collection of writs of Red Brothers and translated to Common by the Keepers of the Red Faith. There are several writs and essays on our ethos written by several sources. The Red Scrolls are considered to be the minimum writs and ethos required to functionally understand our Faith and our dogma. If a question exists involving a specific topic, I’d recommend seeking out a Red Priest or reading into other essays and writs

-Tyr Faretto, High Keeper

 

 

 

BOOK OF THE KEEPER

    I ask unto you, my faithful children, look into the fires of my Hearth. Tell me truthfully, what do you see in it? There is much and more to learn from the nature of the fire before you, for it is also your nature of which I speak. Mankind is not without flaw, as is every other race of sentience upon these lands I have created for you. With the elvenkind is lust and desire leading to folly and pride, with the Dwarvenkind is greed and vanity in treasures, and with the Orcish there is wanton aggression and anger, vanity within might. Mankind, being the child race amongst them, is doomed to these inequities on every front, victim to these elder races and their vanities. Tell me, my dearest child, what do you see in these flames I have given unto you? Do you see destruction? Chaos? Do you feel its warmth and know that it is by the Hearth’s fire you are kept safe from the beasts of the night? Do you see visions? Fool, I say unto you. The visions given to you through the Hearth’s fires are an extension of your bloodlines and the combined devout inheritance that is given to you from my sacred gifts.

 

    The world is, indeed, not without folly, and any sentient race cannot proclaim in truth that they are not without folly. Look into the flames and see the purity of your intentions. The culmination of the actions you take may never reach these purities, but look unto the logs, coals and embers from which they leap - they will never be pure. My fire, my passion, that I give unto you freely, will forever be assaulted repeatedly by your actions and good intentions, led astray by the evils of the world. This is not necessarily a wrong thing to admit, nor is it something to look upon your life as bleak or desolate. I ask you to think of these things in more of an abstract - less of a reality. The world is bleak and desolate, yes… A vapid throng of actions and lives that will ultimately make no differences in the footholds of rememberance. This reality is not a set of irons to shackle you down, but rather is the key to these shackles, and paramount to your self-fulfillment and realization that if nothing may truly matter, then you are free.

 

    You, the fuel unto my fires, hold in yourself the potential to see life in its fullest capacities. You, who live so shortly, and so brutally. I ask that you look from the fires to the home you find yourself in. To the nations and peoples you find yourself amongst. So many of you live so short and die so young, but look at your accomplishments and greatness. Indeed, in such a short span, you manage to create holds and maintain lands with such tenacity to rival even the oldest of elves and dwarves. Your ferocity and passionate fury rivals the most savage of orc, and you accomplish these things decades and centuries before any of them could even conceive of the idea. This is the power I give to you. Through your blood, I give to you the perfect mix of all in perfect harmony with one another. It is by far my greatest feat imaginable. Fire and water coursing through you, earthen vessel, fed constantly with the air you breathe. All the elements, all of the pieces of the world, put into you, my dearest child. I ask you not to look upon the dark unknown and weep. I know into your heart of hearts, you are weak and afraid, but I ask you to feel the fires inside of you and beg to differ.

 

    Do not look upon me with excuses for weakness, sorrow and cowardice. These words shall fall upon deafened ears. You feel this heat upon you always. You may become aware of it when you grip your blade, staring down oblivion in your metal shells. You feel the heat come off of your back, as you hold another for the first time as a lover and companion. You feel my heat as you step, uncertain and apprehensive, into the unknown. My fires compel you to continue to step forward, to continue to fight against uncertain and perhaps insurmountable odds… I do this out of love for you, my child. I do this because without this force compelling you to stride into the darkness, you are without hope… And without this hope, your short lives would surely have burned out amongst the ashes long ago.

 

    Through these trials and tribulations, I ask that you do not look at these horrors with sorrow, for these sorrows only feed the monsters and compile the desolation of your own mind. I command you, my child of passion and courage, to look upon these horrors with a face of hopeful, cocksure arrogance and the defiance that I would expect of you. The pessimist would infer that life is full of pain, sacrifice and anguish. My truth that I tell you now, is that with the darkness of life, there must also be light. The life I give you will undoubtedly hold its share of tears, but with each tear I command you to have two hearty laughs and bright smiles, and find that there may yet be lights within the darkness, as the storm clouds hold silver linings.

    To be less eloquent, my child, I simply command you to enjoy yourself in spite of the weight of the world upon your shoulders. When you decide that another soul upon this earth is yours, and they decide that yours is theirs, I command that you celebrate and revel in your happiness and stand before the Hearth fires so that I may yet see and consecrate this joyous bonding. When a man is chosen by his people as a rightful and just ruler, I ask that he kneels before the Hearth as you lay his laurels upon his head, so that I may recognize his rise to the potential of greatness and judge him thusly. When the lost souls around you, betrayed and forgotten by their creators come unto your keep, I ask that you accept them into your fold as I place you into mine own. To these orphans of their creators, I say now that the fires of my love may spark and catch in anyone. Mankind is, indeed, the primary fuel to my light, but when bared before the Hearth, the light may ignite in anyone, and I shall accept you as my adopted child that I love as my own.

 

    This is the first step of combating the crushing and surrounding darkness that I have damned you to, my children. To flee from the darkness is to submit to its bottomless emptiness and to give yourself willingly to your darkest temptations. I command that you do not allow yourself to be at the mercy of these outside entities, but rather to study and understand the world around you. For when the darkness is lifted and the unknown becomes known, my light will shine through and reveal what is wicked and decayed with undoubted certainty. The paths to avoid these testaments to madness will be made clear by your own temperance and shrewd assessment of these things made known to you. What is forbidden and what is not is an item to be discovered through meticulous decision, not decreed on a whim. To damn what you do not know or simply understand invites fear and doubt into your home and Hearth, and limits your growth and understanding of this world I have made for you, which I will not allow.

 

    These trials, these problems, these obstacles within your path before you. You look at them in anger and contempt. You see the path not as a path, but as a gauntlet of life, do you not? I tell you now that these things are put upon your path to me because I will them to. These trials are not always easy. In fact, they seldom will be… But take heart, my children, for my guiding light is always there, and I see into your heart of hearts and know for the truth that these obstacles are not going to break you, if you are willing to steel yourself for the next burning step into uncertainty. You will find that you may bend, you may twist, you may be pushed to your deepest limits… But you shall not break. You shall come out on the other side stronger than you were when you entered. If you find yourself in the midst of conflict, confused and disoriented, I tell you to look upon the light of my Hearth in your hour of need, and I shall light your way forward… If you have the eyes to see it.

 

    With these ideals in mind, you may think me a malevolent and hypocritical creator for damning you to a life where you must laugh and smile and make peace, whilst simultaneously weep and beat the drums of war against the evils of the world. I ask you to look upon one of your favored objects - the die. I command that you look upon the die, and know it for it’s dual natures. The die is an instrument of chance and chaos - what someone loses or gains in a roll of the dice is dependent only upon what they deigned to wager. With this, also realize that the die is also a cube. With its straight lines, flat faces, even design and weighting, it is a symbol of perfection and order in design. With order and chaos being in conflict, but held within the same vessel, I will ask of you to be the same. My child, wracked with burdens, I command you to be of the same ideals as the die - to be beings of both order and chaos - of peace and war. These are not easy ideals to follow, but you will do so. You must do so or you will either be consumed by rage and fall against the world or you will be no better than livestock, and be consumed by the world. So I ask you to welcome the stranger and wanderer with wary kindness, and offer them the opportunity to be kind and courteous in return. If the stranger and wanderer take this kindness for weakness, however… Break them.