Chapter I: Introduction u pon The m aTTer of The e mpIre
Being a noble Contemplation to fortify the mind for duty, encourage the spirit for worship, and steady the hand for battle, also to warn the unwise against neglect of vigilance or piety. So declaimed by Fra Albus Dominus of Wolfenburg, priest of Sigmar, this three hundredth day of the year 2520, to a great congregation of good folk in the high temple of that burg, and writ down as perfect testimony by R. Josephus, rubricator. Commend me, oh lord, to his Imperial Majesty Karl Franz, hammer of the heathens, everlasting in Sigmar’s grace, world without end. Gather close and listen now, be you ploughman or warrior, high-born or low. Attend me now. These words are meant for you, for are you not all men born of the Empire? I see you nod. Aye, listen then, and consider. To be a man born of the Empire is to be one little part of a greater thing, and to play that part, a man must know his place in the workings of the World. The first duty of a man is to rejoice! For the Empire is a glory upon the earth! It is the light by which the outer dark may be driven back! Never before, since the birth of the Ages, has man wrought such a great and civilising estate upon the face of the World! To the common-born man, this is a thing he must know, even though he cannot see it. Even the blessed Emperor himself, from the highest battlement of his palace, yet even from the loftiest tower of Middenheim, cannot see the edges of his dominion all of a whole. It has been said that a man, even with a good mount, will ride for a full half-year of his lifetime if he wishes to cross the Empire from one margin to another. And how many men, of the base and common kind, never venture further than the limits of their village, or the boundaries of their parish? Such men know nothing of the greater thing, except that which they are told by travellers and scholars; such men never behold a building more splendid than their own burg’s small guild hall, or a tower more massive than the spire of their poor village church. Yet, as the thinkers of antiquity have taught us, just because we cannot see a thing, does not mean it is not there. We do not see the lamp of the sun at night, but we know it sleeps safe in its cavity beneath the earth. We do not see almighty Sigmar, yet we do not doubt that He watches over us always. So it is with the Empire. We are girt about by its vast domain, wherein are mountains and moors, forests and pastures, rivers and vales, and many towns and greater cites, peopled by the common crowd and the noble born both. But we never see it whole and all together. To imagine it in full, imagine this in its part. In fair Altdorf, in the gleaming halls of the most royal palace of all, there is a chamber of most wondrous beauty. The pillars of the walls are wrapped entire with gold leaf, and the great casements look out across the River Reik itself, a splendid vista. Upon the walls hang many an arras tapestry on which are threaded scenes of hunting and sport, of war and victory, of Lord Sigmar and the Unberogen. Marvellous to behold! But it is the floor which most arrests the eye. Into this wide surface is inlaid, by means of handsome craft, a mosaic of lacquered wood and polished metals, forming in all detail a mappa mundi, a chart of this world that is the Empire. Few men have had the privilege of seeing this mappa mundi, but just because you cannot see a thing, does not mean it is not there. I have seen it. I have seen it lit about with tapers. Such a thing it is... The limits of the Great Chart are made of satin wood and silver thread, showing the icy bounds of our domain. Almost unbroken, a majestic circle of mountains surrounds the Empire, like the high brim of a vast chalice. Within that chalice bowl, the precious life-blood of the Empire and all its wealth is cupped. Lime and rose wood segments interlock with burnished panels of green copper and ruddy brass to represent the extents of the eleven provinces, and rosettes of oak and maple, wound with gold wire, mark the places of the great city states. Each town or prosperous burg is a flat button of ivory. The web of rivers and their tributaries is chased out in bars of pearl and loops of spun steel. Lakes are slivers of looking-glass. The mighty forests of the realm, chevron darts of ebony, speckle the entire floor like the coat of a brindled mare. Admire such craftsmanship! Here is Nordland, facing the sea. Here, if you look, Ostland, and Hochland too, dressed in forests, athwart the jumbled masses of the Middle Mountains. To the east there, Ostermark, guarding the line of the north against the cold encroach of Kislev, there rural Stirland and the Moot, the World’s Edge Mountains climbing beyond them. To the south, Averland and Wissenland, contained to the east by the Black Mountains and to the west by the ancient forest tracts known as Loren. And there Talabecland, Middenland and Reikland. Look closer now, at the proud cities: Nuln, pungent with black powder, the foundry of the Empire; Talabheim, the Eye of the Forest, its impenetrable wall protecting its pasture lands from the woods without; Middenheim, the city of the White Wolf, a craggy bastion raised above the world; and Altdorf, royal Altdorf, jewel of the Empire. And here too Wolfenburg, our own fair city, stalwart guardian of Ostland’s reaches. Marvel at it; rejoice! This Empire of man! Picture that fine chamber again, picture it as on a fair summer’s evening, such as was the occasion when I witnessed it. Servants appear, dressed in fine livery. Flaming candles are brought out on golden sticks—one! two! a dozen! more!—and placed, each one particularly, upon the Great Chart to indicate the mighty cities and city-states. Then smaller tapers too, aflame also, carried in by more servants and set upon the mark of every noted town and burg. Such a sight! In the last rays of the sunlight falling in through the casements, the Great Chart is
ablaze with a thousand points of light, a constellation that shapes out in scintillating glory the immensity of our domain! Thus may a man rejoice. But attend me now. If a man’s first duty is to rejoice, his second is to beware. For all the golden splendour of the Empire, for all its worth and lore and monuments of stone, there stands against it great and perpetual jeopardy: enemies more numerous than all the trees of the forest. They coil in the darkness; the ice-darkness beyond the rampart mountains, the shadow-darkness of the deep forests, the tomb-darkness of the pits beneath the earth. They lurk in ruins, in desert places, in the long grass of forsaken fields, in the creaking, green-black shade of forlorn woodlands. They scuttle in dry catacombs, they claw beneath the flint and granite of the lonely hills, they haunt the tumbledown ruins of villages long since abandoned by man. They even stalk our own dreams. And, as night comes, they keen with the whippoorwills and move against us; curious, greedy, wild, rapacious, hungry. The enemies are older than us, older even than the tribes we men of the Empire sprang from. Knowing only the clarion-cry of “Murder All!” they would set the world ablaze, make doom upon us, and carry off our heads on pikes! You quake and you tremble! Justly so! They would make battle trophies of us, cast down our walls, and burn our crops! Our womenfolk, our children, none may be spared the dreadful butchery! So we must watch for their first stirrings, and sharpen our blades. Place sentries on the walls. Close our gates at nightfall. Listen to the whisper of the wind and the sounds it may bring. Trust not the dark, or the scratching of rats, or even the neighbour whose ways seem alien. The enemy comes in all shapes and guises. Some are beasts, some are wild, barbaric tribe-kin, some are vermin within our very walls. Most know nothing of our proud, fair gods, or if they do, know them only as bright things that they yearn to tear down and trample. They have spirits of their own, feral godlings and daemons which they worship with gleeful lust and to whom tributes are made in blood. In the name of Sigmar, we renounce all such misbegotten spirits! What enemies, you mutter. I work my craft and pay my tithe and sleep soundly, and I have not seen the like of them. Just so? Yes? Beware! Just because you cannot see them, doesn’t mean they are not there. Consider their handiwork. There are bleak places in the Empire, out of the way of man, where certain ruins stand, open unto the elements. I have seen a few such edifices myself, and can attest to them. Time and weather have worn them plain, but it is still possible to discern that these ruins were not raised by human hands. They are the work of other kinds, other races that dwelt in these lands long before the rise of the Unberogen. We may suspect they are the relics of the fading races; the halfling men, the indomitable Dwarfs we sometimes welcome as allies, even, perhaps, the Slight Ones themselves, who linger in the ancient forest paths. Whatever their makers’ identity, they are just ruins now. Cold and dead. But they tell of huge strength and formidable defence. Indomitable bastions, high towers, earthworks, siege walls. Yet none remain. For all their strength, they were overcome in the early times, and put to flame, and ransacked. Even they could not withstand the feral onslaught of the enemies in the dark. Even they could not withstand! But we must. This I say to you with the force of my heart. We must beware at all times, and be ready, peasant farmer and spurred knight alike, to fight, for Sigmar, for the Emperor. The Empire has stood for twenty-five centuries. It has driven back the green-skin brutes from the mountains, the tribal hordes from the north, the incursions of the blasphemous Dark Gods themselves. If the Empire is to stand for another twenty-five centuries, it depends on each and every man born its son! You, and you, and you! Rejoice, but beware! Rejoice, but beware! That is balance every man must keep in his mind. Picture the Empire again, the glorious chart, lit by a thousand candle flames. Its achievements are manifold, its power great. No feat of mankind is more worthy of protection and safeguard. But now the evening light fades, and night closes in outside the casements. In the splendid chamber, shadows gather, deeper, darker, until we cannot see the map at all anymore. Only the taper flames burn, a thousand furious, fragile lights in the dark. How small they seem now, how far apart from each other! What tracts of darkness separate one flame light from another! And in that darkness, we cannot see. But just because we cannot see, doesn’t mean there isn’t something there. The night wind picks up outside the casements. Close them fast, before it is too late! The scattered flames flutter, frantic in the black. One by one, they sputter and die. How quickly they go out. How easily they are extinguished. How total the darkness that remains. Go from this place. Praise Sigmar, and go about your lives. Peddler, provost, woodsman, soldier, barkeep, coachman, chandler, goodwife... go to your varied callings and prosper. But keep the holy days and the festivals, bar the door at night, whet your blade’s edge, and, in the name of Sigmar, keep watch against the dark. How quickly the lights go out! Here ends the lesson.
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