Looking Southward and Backward, Part 18.

This is the part of the narrative which would be enormously abbreviated, or completely omitted altogether. Partly due to the fact that it is somewhat of an awkward subject to recognize that Deneroth's area of influence ends so abruptly such a relatively close distance from its walls, facing southward, and partly due to the fact that many writers find the succeeding days of travel quite empty and dull. I do mean this generally, but I can also point to the accounts of Hirmant & Steppos as personal influences of my perspective on this.

Unfortunately for my dear readers, I will not exercise the same degree of brevity.

... As if the rest of my writing career is not an indication.

We are currently half of a day out from Janskurf's Place and the spot where curious Elrusyo separated from us. The seats of our wagons are growing less and less comfortable, and in the interest of spairing ourselves as well as staying warm, we've taken to walking beside the caravan. At the rate the sluggish animals are traveling, it is not so strenuous that I am incapable of writing- though some of my colleagues and I have already begun to sweat, or in my case, exude a pasty sort of glow. The end result is that our backsides and our legs hurt, rather than feel rested, from alternating sitting and walking. This comes with the natural exception of Hraela. In fact from this point onward, whenever I refer to any sort of physical hardship, the reader can be assured that I am not including her among sufferers or belly-achers.¹

The land south of Deneroth is not empty wasteland. Not in the sense of climate or natural life, and certainly not in the sense of human population either. These regions, once struck the hardest by the long winter of the Rupture, have been reclaimed by nature and by mankind alike over the past two hundred years or so. Small farms and communities like the one where we first encountered Elrusyo exist here, dotting fields, rivers, and hills. Organization between them is present but relatively minimum, except when the rare intermarriage or dispute over particular facets of land draw them together. They do more than subsist and survive, contributing to the north-south trade which keeps the road between Deneroth and Porylus from deteriorating into overgrown divots.

The people here are knowledgeable enough of the cities to know where we hail from and where we are likely bound, but they are ignorant enough to treat us kindly regardless. They speak a language based in Ersuut, but with a heavy admixture of Esgodarran words, as is quite common up north. In fact I would venture to say that they belong to the same continuum of mixed populations living in the region. A rare noun or highly irregular verb leaves Ciudo groping for possible Gertish or River-folk influences, but more often than not he becomes tangled in his own web of morphology.

The people here also sing, and those ethereal sounds are what we now listen to, carrying clearly over the cold air farther than they would in warmer seasons.

Their style of song isn't performative, although I don't doubt that they have a time and a place for that in their day-to-day life as well. Rather, it is one closely associated with physical work. Every profession, it seems, has its own little canon of songs, rhymes, and patterns of rhythm. Many of these songs, in addition to assisting in keeping the pace of work going steady, whether alone or in a team of individuals, also possess a mnemonic quality.

The women and their children harvesting herb gardens almost indistinguishable from the surrounding undeveloped land sing to recall which plant is safe, what each part of the plant is used for, and how to spot weeds or invasive species creeping into their respective habitats. The men elsewhere in groves keep up with one another on short but thick two-person saws as they gather lumber for the winter, and a periodic shout of a refrain alerts those nearby to falling boughs. Shepherds of both sexes stream a soothing series of notes which names and numbers each animal in their flock, yet with surprising fluidity it changes into a staccato litany of curses aimed at us when the caravan gets in the way of their road crossing, or one of the horses spooks a ewe. We cannot now hear them as we keep to the road, but a knowledgeable guide explains to us that songs also exist for domestic, culinary, and even legal matters at home. Their oral tradition is a strong one, with the wars which saw the deaths of the last Haraalians being just recent additions to a landscape of folklore.

It is an almost entirely illiterate world that they live in after all, and everything must be trusted to memory.

As terrifying as that prospect sounds to someone dependent upon writing like myself, I also can't help but see a certain seductive appeal in it. An axiom associated with Laizij holds that absence is the father of creativity, just as adversity is the mother of innovation. And I believe that these people have demonstrated that, though not according to the traditional models of progress. Rather than filling a preexisting void with a new mechanical thing, they have simply negated the void's existence by re-purposing something which they already possessed and knew well. It is enticingly simple.

But I must stop before I begin romanticizing rural populations of whom I know almost nothing about, like some simpering noble from the second tier reading a popular novel. I am sure that the world has a way of delivering just as much frustration and tedium to their lives as ours. Hopefully we hurry on our way before we contribute more of either to these shepherds.



¹ Granted, none of our professional porters and animal handlers are very likely to be in significant pain either. And since Ciudo and Sarq at least have youth on their side, I am without a doubt the least physically fit person within miles. Perhaps just keep that in mind as you read ahead, and allow me to maintain the illusion of dignity by subsuming myself within a tired collective.

Ko-Fi CuPost #1.

"How about a peek into ITU's hierarchy and faculty?"

-TheLawfulNeutral

Why is it that the farther away from the University I travel, the closer I seem to be linked to it?

Very well. I will do my best to illuminate the nature of my lodgings.

The exact hierarchy and composition of the echelons of the Ivory Tower University are an impenetrably convoluted mystery, even (and sometimes especially) to its own members and higher-ups. At the time of the school's consecration during the life of Grand Scholar Laizij, the bureaucracy was already a broad and robust machine with many lateral offices divided between a considerable number of tiers of authority. In concept it mirrored the specialized and staggered structure of the whole of the city of Deneroth, embodying the perfect form and function of Laizij's greatest creation.

In practice, it introduced bloat and chaos into the mix forevermore.

I use "chaos" in its literal, mythological sense of undifferentiated formlessness, rather than in its sense of randomness, anarchy, and/or man-made lawlessness. The red tape and regulations in place, however arbitrary they may have been in origin under Laizij, are dutifully followed by all members of staff and faculty centuries later, especially in regards to the procedure used to determine where exactly one falls in the hierarchy relative to another individual. You might ask "why would one's position in the hierarchy be in question at any given point?" And that would be a perfectly valid question for which you would be fired, demoted even lower (and then tasked with finding your new ranking), or banished to the libraries in exile on "probation".

You would not be removed before you got the full answer, however. The faculty is quite proud of it.

Here at the University, every position held has a numerical value attached to it. These numbers range from 76 at the lowest, to 0 at the highest. You read that correctly- seniority increases as the number decreases, with various thresholds limiting or enabling an individual's privileges. The first guidelines for the scale were put in place by Laizij himself, and while the number range has remained unchanged in the centuries since, the means of navigating it have ballooned into a textbook's worth of formulae and rules for irregularities and exceptions. Because raw number overrides position within the spine, it is very possible for someone of quite low standing to achieve a very high rank through a combination of judicious school politicking, dumb luck, and bureaucratic blunder.

For example, a freshman student with zero involvement in any clubs or extracurricular activities possesses a 76, which entitles them to room and board, lavatory access, and basic utility and facility usage across campus within the weekly minimum curfew hours. A 5th-year senior who is head of their dormitory's division of the sporting club however, might have a number closer to 52. This would potentially place them above the ranking of their own nontenured professors starting at 55, assuming the student was still enrolled in entry-level classes of course. But if one such professor possessed the title of Committee Head, which is worth a score minimum of 40, then those scores would be averaged together to a respectable 47.5, which would enable them to shut down just about any student attempting to call a referendum on their course materials.

There are ten tiers of importance making up the "spine" of the University, if you will. Various departments confined to each hence radiate outward like "ribs". The topmost rank is made up of the deans of each supra-department, the composition of which is a constantly changing thing, as well as the head senior administrator. These individuals, alongside the biggest contributors to the funding of the University (including at least one representative of the family of the Stewards of Deneroth) make up a Board of the Directorate which modifies all member's rankings to a flat 0, or alters their average, depending on whether or not the Board has been in session in the past eleven days. The Directorate is the single highest decision-making body in the University, and each member enjoys approximately the same weight of importance, involvement, and irritability. Each semester, a vote is conducted by the Directorate to determine who besides the investors has earned the floating title of Inheritor of the Grand Scholar, which among other things possesses a rank of -1. Therefore, the highest seniority number achievable is -0.5 for a period of about sixteen weeks.

The next three tiers are the proper bureaucrats and administrators of the University, who oversee the valuing of titles and positions, the tenuring of professors according to those values, the allocation of funds not decided upon by the Directorate, the regulation of all clubs and committees and their rules, and other matters. Tier three is the level to which my infamous colleague Senior Editor Adelbramp belongs, as both the Provost of the Board for Historical Ordination and Associate Vice-Dean of Affairs for ITU Publishing. He currently sits at a lofty 12, but the latest rumor is that the venerable Chairman Lomeus Bielo of the Treasury is contemplating retirement¹, and acquiring the right position or title left behind in that vacuum would allow Adelbramp to ascend to 8, the threshold for becoming an audience member to the Directorate's meetings.

The next four tiers include the actual professors, instructors, teachers, and graduate students in the University's employ. This vast army of educators is at times even more severe and cutthroat than the realm of bureaucrats, which goes a way toward explaining how hidebound some individuals within these tiers may become- their very livelihood often depends on whether or not the theories they built their careers on remain unchallenged or not for the rest of the year. I am often derisive and hard on many of these men and women (and the occasional squirrel in a waistcoat), but I do not envy the razorwire on which they must balance while also battling for the respect of their walleyed students. Diverse fields dealing with every conceivable consideration or recreation of the sciences, as well as the study of humanity and its many arts, can be found espoused within the classrooms of this at times vexing, other times delightful mess of scholars.

The last tier is composed of the thousands-strong student body itself, but as many introspective pieces produced by students and alumni alike will suggest, a whole separate and intricate web of hierarchies and social dealings is imbricated within, hidden just beneath the surface. At the risk of being over-reductive, I will observe that most of these hierarchies derive from some permutation of clique, academic performance, gang club membership, and family status/background. The seemingly placid, anemic masses of nebbish university-goers is far more vigorous than one might expect.

"But Mr. Litte," you might ask once more, wonder and amazement still etched upon your face, "where is the tenth tier? You've only described nine of them."

Well, my observant reader, you are correct.

Officially there are ten tiers, but the proper tenth receives something of a False City treatment in day-to-day life. The lowest tier is occupied by any and all members of staff deemed to be menial in nature. This includes tenders to the campus grounds, physical laborers, janitorial and/or custodial staff (with the exception of the keepers of the Ivory Tower itself, who are in fact Tier Two administrators), and those who are employed from outside of the University proper work to in or manage various supply offices and commissaries, an exception to the general rule that "outsiders" are not permitted within the gates outside of designated hours. The lower level of Gatekeepers who perform the opening and closing rituals each day while being barred from University entry also occupy this tier, as do stationary adjuncts such as myself.²

All of this is a simplification of a system which must be articulated in several volumes rather than on a few sheets of parchment, of course. One or two nuggets of lore on the subject may have escaped my memory, but I hope I have still made an appreciable contribution to a topic which I have less than absolute fascination for.

¹ It was recently discovered that for the last decade, Bielo had been accidentally sending redeemable treasury checks to University business partners in triplicate, rather than sending records of the transaction down to the Office of Finances. Thus his "retirement" may in reality be mandated. Then again, someone probably should have started to ask questions four years before that, when he turned 89 years of age and began to become confused as to whether he worked at the ITU, or its cousin campus twice removed at Porylus Mons.

² Yes, this is why I am able to maintain the same approximate role and status within the campus despite being dematriculated and then unofficially expelled from the Humanoid Ecology program eight years ago. No, I will not go into this in any greater detail than I absolutely must.

Looking Southward and Backward, Part 3.

My assistants all turn to me with a variety of questions as we advance through the vast disk of lowland cityscape.

Most of them have been outside of the city walls of Deneroth proper at least once in their lives, but true knowledge and understanding of the place tends to be scarce for people who lair within. That the University where we all dwell keeps strict regulations on the availability of information pertaining to the False City does not help either. But they know that I have been outside numerous times, or at least would not be surprised to find that I did, having heard so many other rumors about my person.

One question sticks out in my mind as I write, and I will take the occasion to commit it and its answer--or the closest to one which I can conjure--to writing.

"How did the False City come to be? Why is it named so?"

Admittedly these are two questions rather than one, but their answer returns to the same moment in history.

Nigh on nine hundred years ago, according to the official Imperial Narrative¹, the city of Deneroth was founded by Laizij, who was in life the companion, adviser, and close friend of Haraal, renowned god-emperor and wooer of women who would unleash a hundred generations of sons upon the Ersuunian Basin. Laizij was the most brilliant mind of his day or any which has come after, and he was highly valued by Haraal as inventor and philosopher both. But he was also wary of the then-mortal Eternal Scholar's mind. While enormously creative, he also tended to drift from subject to subject without completing a project into which huge amounts of resources had been channeled, and he was prone to revealing state secrets in mumbled self-conversation regardless of company.

Additionally, Laizij was somewhat mistrusted by the horse peoples and Gertisch tribes whom Haraal had united under the banner emblazoned with his own image. They saw him as a moon-touched sorcerer whose mind was at risk of spilling over with magic at any given moment, eradicating any who had the misfortune to be close by at the time. That Laizij's own personal retinue of followers was at best stubbornly devoted and at worst slavishly worshipful of him and his person, did not help matters at all. Nor did the fact that there was, officially, an imperial ban on the practice of any and all occultism, witchcraft, and conjuration (read: mathematics, calculation, and rhetorical discourse).

So, Haraal decided to give his scholar a monumental task of busywork to distract him with, while he continued with his own personal crusade against the universal tyranny of governments which didn't have him as their head. A lonely pinnacle of rock in the middle of some recently de-Esgodarrified Esgodarran flatland was given to Laizij, and the Grand Scholar proceeded to have an equally grand place of learning and repository of knowledge erected upon its summit. But as his floor plan for the labyrinthine seminary blossomed and ballooned, Laizij quickly ran out of pinnacle to build upon. So he devised a way to build up the rest of the mountain around it by constructing massive concentric circles of white stone and grey earth outward from the protrusion of bedrock. Soon the nameless mountain was completely swallowed up by the edifice, and the Eight Ivory Tiers² of Deneroth were created.

"Deneroth", meaning "Leaving of the Dark/Black", has been hypothesized to refer to the dark onyx or obsidian color of the original peak vanishing under the city's construction. In the canon of the University, it refers to how the benighted minds of the Ersuunian lands would at last know the bright light of truth and learning. Alternatively, and more to my liking, folk etymology refers to how Laizij's dark brown head of hair grayed to stark white from stress and obsession over the creation of his city.

Laizij, being a decent employer despite his eccentricities, ensured that each and every servant and laborer involved in this great project was then housed within the city. But Laizij, being an eccentric despite his decent traits as an employer, adamantly refused to allow his city to be altered in any way after the final capstone had been placed. Despite the fact that the size of the city tiers exactly matched what was comfortable for their population densities, there would never, ever be any expansions or additions to this perfect city-from-a-hill.

As one might expect, populations fluctuated as families shrank or expanded, as they are wont to do, yet Laizij's administration rigidly maintained the deeds and demarcations of the city's founding. Palaces of declining families stood nearly empty for decades, clustered together mere yards away from a household perpetually filled to bursting.

But it was still a beacon of wealth and learning, and that drew outsiders. Outsiders who legally had no right to anything in, around, or related to the city, but who would damn well try their best anyway. And so, less than ten years after Deneroth's founding, the first cottages were built outside of the city's prodigious outer walls. These first "intrusions" were tolerated but conspicuously ignored, for many were farmers who would reclaim the plains from the wilderness after they had been depopulated by the passage of the Haraalians. Soon after, tradesmen and other skilled individuals came to cater to the needs of the farmers, and of the city-dwellers, whenever possible. Like a mass of camp followers surrounding its immovable vanguard, folk of all walks of life but scholastic nobility came and built the ground-level up and out.

There were once whispers of this place having the potential to become Deneroth's "Ninth" Tier, but Laizij went to his grave defaming the idea of his greatest creation being altered for the sake of convenience. Eventually one of Haraal's thousand sons was appointed as governor of the city, but the elite was so deeply entrenched and reliant upon the memory of the newly-deified Eternal Scholar for prestige and legitimacy that no one with half a desire to could change the official policies.

Unofficial incorporation occurred from the very start, of course. The denizens of Deneroth were thrilled to have such a vigorous connection to the outside world then as well as now, even if they didn't (and still don't) like to admit it. Luxury items form afar could be tidily delivered to the city's doorstep thanks to the False City and its exploding economy, as well as very real necessities of life which would otherwise have to be imported over long distances. The land on which the False City was built was incorporated into the burgeoning Province of Deneroth as the Empire consolidated and regulated its internal organs. It only took about a half-dozen bandit raids and a districts-wide conflagration to convince the city administration to include the wider area within its military and firefighting jurisdictions. Unfortunately, incorporating the land into the domain of Deneroth also meant that the denizens of the False City were considered to be squatters, and more than a few governors in past centuries have drummed up the political support of restless traditionalists by sending "pacification units" into the outer districts in order to help clear them out. Of course these have been pointless gestures up to now. Pointless, but quite adept at bludgeoning nonetheless.

And so the dogged False City continued to grow. It saw hardship and retraction just like any other province when the Rupture thundered over us from the south. But it also bounced back with the startling alacrity unique to people who seek self-validation instead of denied recognition. For nearly three hundred years now, it has provided the Successor-State of Deneroth with a much-needed buffer against the outside world, as well as a vital (if undesired) link to it.

Now that we are more than a few miles out from First Gate, the exclamations and heckling of locals  thrown in our caravan's direction evokes another question which I am far more loathe to try and answer.

"Why does everyone out here think that the University is full of wizards?"

¹ Curiously, research conducted on artifacts preserved within the Ivory Tower's Sanctum of Self-Reflection suggest that urban habitation of the Denerothi Plain did not begin until approximately six hundred years ago, and efforts to reconcile this sizable gulf in dates has been met with limited success. The University's official response to these and other inconsistencies has been "Shut up, Litte."

² An urban myth persists that Laizij was initially content with only seven tiers in his city, but that he later changed his mind after he heard tell from one of his underlings of another far-off majestic city of white stone with exactly seven layers. Not to be outdone, or gods forbid, matched, Laizij demanded that the eighth tier be created. When it was explained to him that they had already reached ground level at the bottom and completed the University at the top, he explained that they simply needed to lift everything up and then slip it underneath. This legend, though amusing, remains unsubstantiated.