The Imperial Library

To be read by all novitiates of the Temple:

The Order of the Ancestor Moth is as ancient as it is noble. We nurture and celebrate our beloved ancestors, whose spirits are manifest in the Ancestor Moths. Each moth carries the fjyron of an ancestor's spirit. Loosely translated as the "will to peace," the fjyron can be sung into the silk produced by the Ancestor Moths. When the silk is in turn spun into cloth and embroidered with the genealogy of the correct Ancestor, clothing of wondrous power can be made.

Adepts of our order are gifted with prescient powers. The wisdom of the ancestors can sing the future into the present. For this reason, our order and our order alone has been given the privilege to interpret the Elder Scrolls. These writings exceed even the gods, both aedra and daedra. Such insight into the inner fabric of reality comes at a price. Each reading of the Elder Scrolls is more profound than the last. Each leaves the priest blind for longer, and longer periods of time. Finally, the last reading achieves a nearly sublime understanding of that scroll's contents, but the priest is left permanently blinded to the light of this world. No longer can he read the scrolls.

This Monastery is dedicated to the service of these noble members of our order. They now live out their lives with the Ancestor Moths that they so love. Their underground demesnes are well suited to the moths. They raise and nurture the fragile creatures, singing to them constantly. They harvest the silk and spin it into bolts of cloth. They weave the cloth, embroidering it with the genealogies and histories of the ancestors that spun the silk. This is their new life.

As they tend the Ancestor Moths, so we tend the blind monks. While they toil in dark, we serve in the light. They need food and water. We provide. They need tools and furniture. We provide. They need secrecy and anonymity. We provide. They need purveyors to sell the fruit of their labors. We provide.

At one time, we also provided protection. Many generations ago, Gudrun came to our temple. Newly blinded by visions of what was to be, she brought with her new teachings. The visions of the ancestors foresaw the need of the monks to defend themselves. They train and practice the teachings of Gudrun constantly. They are masters of the sword of no sword, the axes of no axe.

As a novitiate, you will learn the teachings of Gudrun. You will learn the way of the peaceful fist. You will learn to serve the blind monks. You will learn to provide. In time, you may attain the peace and insight of the Ancestor Moths.

RUMINATIONS ON THE ELDER SCROLLS
by Septimus Signus, College of Winterhold

Imagine living beneath the waves with a strong-sighted blessing of most excellent fabric. Holding the fabric over your gills, you would begin to breathe-drink its warp and weft. Though the plantmatter fibers imbue your soul, the wretched plankton would pollute the cloth until it stank to heavens of prophecy. This is one manner in which the Scrolls first came to pass, but are we the sea, or the breather, or the fabric? Or are we the breath itself?

Can we flow through the Scrolls as knowledge flows through, being the water, or are we the stuck morass of sea-filth that gathers on the edge?

Imagine, again, this time but different. A bird cresting the wind is lifted by a gust and downed by a stone. But the stone can come from above, if the bird is upside down. Where, then, did the gust come from? And which direction? Did the gods send either, or has the bird decreed their presence by her own mindmaking?

The all-sight of the Scrolls makes a turning of the mind such that relative positions are absolute in their primacy.

I ask you again to imagine for me. This time you are beneath the ground, a tiny acorn planted by some well-meaning elf-maiden of the woodlands for her pleasure. You wish to grow but fear what you may become, so you push off the water, the dirt, the sun, to stay in your hole. But it is in the very pushing that you become a tree, in spite of yourself. How did that happen?

The acorn is a kind of tree-egg in this instance, and the knowledge is water and sun. We are the chicken inside the egg, but also the dirt. The knowledge from the Scrolls is what we push against to become full-sighted ourselves.

One final imagining before your mind closes from the shock of ever-knowing. You are now a flame burning bright blue within a vast emptiness. In time you see your brothers and sisters, burnings of their own in the distance and along your side. A sea of pinpoints, a constellation of memories. Each burns bright, then flickers. Then two more take its place but not forever lest the void fills with rancid light that sucks the thought.

Each of our minds is actually the emptiness, and the learnings of the Scrolls are the pinpoints. Without their stabbing light, my consciousness would be as a vast nothingness, unknowing its emptiness as a void is unknowing of itself. But the burnings are dangerous, and must be carefully tended and minded and brought to themselves and spread to their siblings.

It is widely known among scholars that the Elder Scrolls entail a certain hazard in their very reading. The mechanism of the effects has, at present, been largely unknown -- theories of hidden knowledge and divine retribution were the subject of idle speculation with little investigation.

I, Justinius Poluhnius, have undertaken to thoroughly document the ailments afflicted by the Elder Scrolls on their readers, though a unified theory of how they manifest continues to elude me and remains a subject for future study.

I have grouped the effects into four, finding that the avenue of experience depends largely upon the mind of the reader. If this is unclear, I hope that a proper dichotomy will lay it plain.
 

Group the First: The Naifs
For one who has received no training in the history or nature of the Elder Scrolls, the scroll itself is, effectively, inert. No prophecy can be scried nor knowledge obtained. While the scroll will not impart learning to the uninformed, nor will it afflict them in any adverse fashion. Visually, the scroll will appear to be awash in odd lettering and symbols. Those who know their astronomy often claim to recognize constellations in the patterns and connections, but such conjecture is impossible to further investigate since the very nature of this study necessitates unlearned subjects.
 

Group the Second: The Unguarded Intellects
It is this second group that realizes the greatest danger from attempting to read the scrolls. These are subjects who have an understanding of the nature of the Elder Scrolls and possess sufficient knowledge to actually read what is inscribed there. They have not, however, developed adequate discipline to stave off the mind-shattering effect of having a glimpse of infinity. These unfortunate souls are struck immediately, irrevocably, and completely blind. Such is the price for overreaching one's faculties. It bears mentioning, though, that with the blindness also comes a fragment of that hidden knowledge -- whether the future, the past, or the deep natures of being is dependent on the individual and their place in the greater spheres. But the knowledge does come.
 

Group the Third: Mediated Understanding
Alone in Tamriel, it would appear that only the Cult of the Ancestor Moth has discovered the discipline to properly guard one's mind when reading the scrolls. Their novitiates must undergo the most rigorous mental cultivation, and they often spend a decade or more at the monastery before being allowed to read their first Elder Scroll. The monks say this is for the initiates' own protection, as they must have witnessed many Unguarded Intellects among their more eager ranks. With appropriate fortitude, these readers also receive blindness, though at a far lesser magnitude than the Unguarded. Their vision fogs slightly, but they retain shape, color, and enough acuity to continue to read mundane texts. The knowledge they gain from the scroll is also tempered somewhat -- it requires stages of meditation and reflection to fully appreciate and express what one saw.
 

Group the Fourth: Illuminated Understanding
Between the previous group and this one exists a continuum that has, at present, only been traversed by the monks of the Ancestor Moth. With continued readings the monks become gradually more and more blind, but receive greater and more detailed knowledge. As they spend their waking hours pondering the revelations, they also receive a further degree of mental fortitude. There is, for every monk, a day of Penultimate Reading, when the only knowledge the Elder Scroll imparts is that the monk's next reading shall be his last.

For each monk the Penultimate Reading comes at a different and unknowable time -- preliminary work has been done to predict the occurrence by charting the severity of an individual monk's blindness, but all who reach these later stages report that the increasing blindness seems to taper with increased readings. Some pose the notion that some other, unseen, sense is, in fact, continuing to diminish at this upper range, but I shall leave such postulations to philosophers.

To prepare for his Ultimate Reading, a monk typically withdraws to seclusion in order to reflect upon a lifetime of revelations and appoint his mind for reception of his last. Upon this final reading, he is forever blinded as sure as those Unguarded ones who raced to knowledge. The Illuminated one, though, has retained his understanding over a lifetime and typically possesses a more integral notion of what has been revealed to him.

It is hoped that this catalog will prove useful to those who wish to further our mortal understanding of the Elder Scrolls. The Moth priests remain aloof about these matters, taking the gradual debilitation that comes with reading as a point of pride. May this serve as a useful starting point for those hoping to take up such study.

---- Dictated to Anstius Metchim, 4th of Last Seed in the 126th year of the Second Era

An Accounting of the
Elder Scrolls

by
Quintus Nerevelus
Former Imperial Librarian

After the supposed theft of an Elder Scroll from our Imperial Library, I endeavored to find any sort of index or catalogue of the Scrolls in our possession so that such situations may be avoided (or at least properly verified) in the future. To my dismay, I discovered that the Moth Priests are notoriously inexact when it comes to the actual physical manifestations of the Scrolls, and had no idea how many they held, or how they were organized. Merely asking the question evoked chuckles, as if a child was asking why dogs cannot talk.

I will confess, my jealousy of the ones who can read the Scrolls grows, but I am not yet willing to sacrifice my sight to alleged knowledge. The older Moth Priests I attempt to engage in conversation seem as batty as any other elder who has lost their mind, so I fail to see what wisdom is imparted from the reading.

In any case, I set out to create my own index of the Elder Scrolls, in cooperation with the monks. Day by day, we went through the tower halls, with them telling me the general nature of each Elder Scroll so that I might record its location. Always careful never to glimpse the writings myself, I had only their word to go on. I meticulously drew out a map of the chambers, where Scrolls relating to various specific prophecies were located, where particular periods of history were housed. In all, it took nearly a year of plodding, but at last I had rough notes on the entirety of the library to begin my collation.

It was here that things began to go amiss. In studying my notes, I found many areas of overlap and outright contradiction. In some cases different monks would claim the same scroll to be at opposite ends of the tower. I know they have no taste for jesting, or else I would suspect I was being made the fool in some game of theirs.

I spoke to one of the older monks to relate my concerns, and he hung his head in sorrow for my wasted time. "Did I not tell you," he coughed, "when you started this that all efforts would be futile? The Scrolls do not exist in countable form."

"I had thought you meant there were too many to be counted."

"There are, but that is not the least of their complexities. Turn to the repository behind you, and tell me how many Scrolls are locked therein."

I ran my fingers over the metal casings, tallying each rounded edge that they encountered. I turned back -- "Fourteen," I said.

"Hand me the eighth one," he said, reaching out his hand.

I guided the cylinder into his palm, and he gave a slight nod to acknowledge it. "Now, count again."

Humoring him, I again passed my hands over the Scrolls, but could not believe what I was feeling.

"Now... now there are eighteen!" I gasped.

The old monk chuckled, his cheeks pushing up his blindfold until it folded over itself. "And in fact," he said, "there always were."

It was then that I enrolled as the oldest novice ever accepted into the Cult of the Ancestor Moth.
 

In an earlier volume I discussed the vagaries and influences of the Aedric prophesies, more commonly known as the Elder Scrolls. Readers wanting to know the history behind the highly inappropriate appellation 'Aedric' can refer to chapters 23 through 27 of my previous work for a full explanation as well as the incompetencies of my good comrade Therin of Mournhold, who named them thus.

The influences of the archivally historic Elder Scrolls cannot be understated. Once a prophesy contained in an Elder Scroll is enacted in Tamriel, the text of the parchment becomes fixed. All readers ingest the same divine message. It becomes an historical document declaring the unequivocal truth of a past event. Scholars, even those as dim-witted as Therin of Mournhold, cannot argue the bias of the writer, like he has with my earlier works. Not even magic can affect the word written upon those ancient pages.