The Good Book - Charms and Rituals of Frewyn is now available!
Many thanks to Twisk, who did such a sensational job on the artwork. You can buy prints of the art and other artwork pieces HERE.
Both digital and physical editions of the book are fully illustrated and you can buy them HERE.
In celebration of the book being out at last, here is the inimitable Baronous Hodge, to tell you about why he decided to translate The Good Book for the masses:
"Everyone who visits Frewyn will tell you the kingdom is deeply religious.
This is only somewhat true.
As someone who has made a home of the place, I will not say it is an entirely
false accusation, but the definition of what constitutes as religiosity is a bit bemired
in the southern countries: Frewyns look at Galleisians as being the more religious of
the two southern nations and will therefore tell you they themselves are not religious
at all; and Galleisians, though oppressively devout, will call Frewyns eccentric for
maintaining a wealth of Gods with an abundance of rituals when one God
worshiped with fervent supplication is enough for their tastes. How can all these
accusations and protestations be set to rights? As someone who was born in
Marridon, a country that prides itself on the secular and scientific, I suppose I am
much the best person to comment on this. When compared to Marridonians, every
other nation must be viewed as more religious than themselves, excepting the few
who still adhere to the Old Adiethian Ways and still claim Myrellenos as their deity,
but even they will tell you that Adiethian magical practices have nothing to do with
religion.
What, then, constitutes as religion on the Continents? Is it a system of beliefs
and observances? Does it entail devotion and a God? Frewyns should say no, and yet
all those standing at the walls wrapped round the Beacons and looking in will say
that all Frewyns are indeed pious, whether they say prayers and attend church or no.
Frewyn has a prodigious selection of deities, though not everyone here is disposed to
believe in them or invoke their favours, but every Frewyn from the towns to the
farms will tell you, “Just because we know the Gods exist does not mean we believe
in them.” A Marridonian would call this nonsense, a Galleisian would call this
heretical, but to a Frewyn, this spiritual indifference, this strange non-belief, this
sense of accepting divinity and not needing to do anything about it, is perfectly
natural in a country that does not believe their monarchs are divine, that does not
enforce holy days and theocratic doctrines, that does not encourage faith as an
absolute.
Frewyns believe more in the powers of fields than they do the Powers That Be:
a Frewyn farmer, with his slane and his seeds, is the most revered creature in the
kingdom, because they are said to be Doing the Work of the Gods with their hands,
their Means of Creation; a farmer is in a constant state of manipulation, by planting
and nurturing, improving and harvesting. Winter is their annual feriation, Menor’s
Great Slumber, as they call it, and though it is a coveted time for them, a long
period during which no work is to be done, they are not required to be at church or
say prayers or make offerings to the Gods. If you see them making effigies of Chune
and placing them in their fields, they will call that a ritual of assurance, but you must
not say it is religious; they should scold you for bringing the idea of faith into it.
To them, religion implies obligation, and nobody in Frewyn is compelled to
believe or make offerings to anybody. They simply call their customs ‘traditions’,
things that they have always done as a matter of course, habits born out of being
born a Frewyn, but say not that this is religion, if you please. They might attend
church on Gods’ Day, but that sort of thing is done as a social formality, to see all
their acquaintances they would not otherwise speak to for the better part of a week,
but this is not a religious gathering. They have no priests nor preachers, only
Brothers and Sisters, those who devote themselves to a life in service to the Gods,
who shelter the wretched and shepherd the young, but this not religious— this is
vocational, just as my summons was. As a Marridonian, I knew nothing about the
various gradations of belief until I saw the Frewyn church for the first time: the
vibrancy of the glass, the magnitude of the halls, the rows of Gods and Goddesses
lining the processions all served to improve my understanding of the Frewyn holy
hierarchy. I had no idea what Gods were nor what they wanted, if they wanted
anything at all. All my experience with theology came from our old Adiethian
manuscripts, where the Goddess Myrellenos and the Realm of Mlys was talked about
and explained away as a faerie land, and consequently as something Marridonians
no longer believe in, but I was never educated about her or her realm otherwise.
Marridon has no social gatherings that can be said to be religious, no rituals that can
be blamed on God-worship— even our funerals are shortened down to a rather
unceremonious dirge. We have no buildings devoted to deities, unless you should
like to consider the Grand Marridon Library as a mausoleum for the great
abandoned volumes no one but the ancient lucubrators can bear to read— but when
I became curious about the Frewyn pantheon and all was explained to me by the
Head Brother at the Frewyn church in Marridon capital, I was thoroughly intrigued,
more in an academic sense than a mystical one. I thought it must be some very great
story, a something to go along with the magic that Frewyn clerics practiced, but I
read the Good Book and all its sections, and realized then why Frewyns do not
consider Frewynism, as I call it, a religion.
Frewyn is not a theocracy— it is not even a true monarchy, in the Marridonian
sense of the word: in Marridon, the kings work in absolutes, despite the advice from
the magistrate and the chirps of the Chambers; and in Frewyn, the king must solicit
the votes of his lords and ladies and accept their counsel— outrageous! Frewyn is
even allowed to have queens, and I should not wonder why many of the old sods in
the Chambers quiver in their seats during the official stately visits; the moment
Marridonians see a Frewyn monarch and realize how amiable they are, they become
immediately interested in rebelling against their own gentility, and the Chambers
should never allow the First Sons and Daughters of the north to raise their eyes to
their southern inferiors. All the tea in Marridon should be spent in the prevention
of ceding the gentry over to an agrarian culture, be they gentleman farmers or no.
Everyone loves a prince, but nobody likes a landlord.
Frewyn monarchs do not demand that everybody choose a patron God and
make offerings in their name, and yet Frewyn tradition cannot be separated from the
society: everyone celebrates holidays in the names of the Gods, everyone fashions
charms and marks the comings and goings of the seasons; and to a Frewyn, this is
simply the Way of Things, as though the country and its people have never been any
other way. Some might quarrel with me over this point, but it is roundly asserted by
persons in the Royal Archaeological Society that Frewyn was a completely different
place sometime ago: before the Kingdom was established, and long before the Great
Unification, Frewyn was a collection of clans, most of them getting on well with one
another, some a bit cool towards their neighbours, but nothing too violent, as I
understand (the violence came later). It was during this time that the Frewyn Gods
were said to be walking amongst their children. They met with worshippers, sat in
the midst of great congregations at the Wyn Na Dail, the fabled High Seat, and
offerings were made and prayers answered with direct dispatch. Each clan claimed a
patron God, and each had their godstone, where offerings were placed and rituals
were performed, some of which have been lost over the centuries. There is a theory
that one of the godstones is in Marridon, a curious feature to have on the northern
landscape. The story at the time of my writing is that the rift the Gods had amongst
their own ranks, when they fought to cast Uscen out of the Realm, cracked the
continent in two, creating the formation we have today. Many theorists do not hold
to this, but in the Marridon annals, which were recorded during the time of the
Adiethians landing in Old Marridon, it is said there was an indigenous population
living on the land, one not entirely unlike Proto-Frewyns. Much of what happened
during that time must be conjectured now, I’m afraid; languages have changed,
writing systems have vanished, and who knows how far the speculation about that
period of the continents’ history goes. Those at the Archaeological Society like to say
they know, but they also claim that many unexplained terrestrial phenomena are
‘ritual’ when facts elude them. I never go in for half and half explanations; it is far
too easy to fabricate things and have people believe them that way.
The Good Book gives us some insight as to what Frewyns have lost over the
years: a few gods that have slipped out of the ranks are still mentioned in songs and
prayers, a few who are still remembered but who once claimed greater importance
are glorified, but the chief of Frewyn’s Gods and their accompanying rituals have
remained almost unchanged since the time of First King Allun. His Majesty, the
First King of Frewyn, was an absolute wonder on his time: a young man out of the
tribes who managed to unify most of them under one banner and catalogue their
customs for everyone to observe, a feat many men in modern days could never hope
to accomplish. He was an avid character, a man who would not yield to threats or
villainy, who let people go their own way, who succeeded in retaining the promise of
the Gods’ returning, and if he could so boldly domesticate Westren and tame the
fervent fevers of Karnwyl while still understanding their dialects— I am sure my ears
have been broken by their accents a dozen times— I am convinced he could do
anything. Many claim he was divinely chosen to unite the clans, others believe the
Gods would never have willingly given such instruction, but some claim that Allun
did have their favour, and being a nation that accepts the existence of Gods without
needing to supplicate themselves to them, that Allun should have seen and spoken
to the Gods is perfectly reasonable. In this regard, Allun is no singular, however; the
Gods have appeared to many of their children over the years, even to a heretic like
me, which is how I came to discover Frewyn culture from the first."
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