Histories in the Dusk

PART I

by Lizete Booker *

* an alias of Myra Keel, used in the libraries and lecture halls of Duskwall’s schools of higher learning.

The Problem of History

The rationalists will tell you Fact is easy to isolate, Truth something that can be distilled from our collected record like plasm from crude leviathan blood. In a rationalist framework, history can be written as a linear story, known events unfolding naturally to conclusions that close the questions of one era and open up the questions of the next.

This rationalist understanding of history is the standard for education in Duskwall. I, like many of you, learned my letters in a workhouse schoolroom. We can all sketch out a basic story of this city: from coal-mining outpost, to Cataclysm and survival, to the prominence it enjoys today in Imperial trade and, most importantly, hunting the Leviathan blood that powers an empire. It is a story book-ended and driven by the energy needs of industrialization, a heroic tale of a piece of nowhere brought to greatness. This narrative places our toil neatly into a greater context: the glory of Duskwall and the Imperium.

So, where does this idea come from? And what, if any, are the alternatives?

Modern Theories for Modern Times

To greater or lesser degrees, the three colleges at Doskvol Academy have always worked together. The year 753, however, saw the beginning of an unprecedented inter-disciplinary project, bringing together academics from all three colleges and luminary of the Sparkwrights, Erelyn Morvaine. At that time, understanding of the electroplasm refinement process was based on a complicated framework of practices whose origins had long been forgotten and principles now deemed too superstitious to merit serious study. Members of the project, later dubbed the Morvaine School, searched out, recorded and cataloged every piece of lore relating to plasm it could get its hands on – and then began the work of analyzing it.

The Morvaine School is best remembered these days for the scientific theories which developed out this analysis, which are still the basis for our current understanding of plasm. It inspired a generation of alchemists-turned-scientists who laid out universal laws that helped explain and predict phenomena we previously understood through stories and ritual. But as Morvaine and other Sparkwrights studied etheric phenomena, Laud Temeste was turning this new lens on history.

In 762, Temeste published A Rational History of the Imperial Restoration. While historians had previously looked to the words of the people they wrote about, they also made heavy use of mythological cycles, folk tradition, and even the later testimony of spirits. In the introduction to their work, Temeste argued that “a true history” could be written only if one relied as much as was possible on contemporary documents. From the data of primary source materials, one could build a narration of things precisely as they happened; from there, find patterns in the events of human history that would reveal great truths about the world.

The decades during which the Morvaine School project ran changed how we describe the world around us. Academics moved from half-forgotten lore and arcane processes to clear-cut facts and universal laws. However, as the old saw goes: the councilor knows everything, and the sailor knows the councilor’s a fool. Some truths evade rationalization.

Counter-Rationalism

In recent years, some historians have begun to deviate from strict rationalist approaches. Last year, the Society for Cataclysm History published a special issue of its journal dedicated to what the editor called “counter-rational histories.” It is the first description I saw of this emerging approach, which returns to mythology and so-called superstition as sources, along with primary documents. More interestingly, historians using this approach eschew the pursuit of one definitive narrative.

This second concept is most apparent in Mari Markelsen’s paper “Two Crowns for Aldric,” which re-examines the night of the Second Coronation that sparked the Unity War by telling two versions of the story. One is the conventional history: Aldric is ready for leadership, greedy to exert power over Skovlan. The other, based on a wide array of interviews and the conspicuous lack of any documents from Aldric’s hand referencing Skovlan sovereignty before the mustering of the militia, suggests an Aldric who went reluctantly, urged on by a populace eager to assert their wish for independence from the Imperium. Markelson asks, is it possible to see the early days of the Unity War not as a territory dispute, but a popular uprising?

Markelson’s paper is also an example of how the neat histories of rationalism can serve those in authority. One of the core assumptions of rationalist histories is the permanence and infallibility of the Imperium. By digging into the cracks in our histories, we can begin to see the cracks in our world.