Foreword: An upside-down song
Before I had the opportunity to formally come into contact with microlinguistics research, I was a junior bachelor majoring in the analysis of undead residual messages under Ritualism, which is what we usually call a "Tower Keeper".
During those days, I had just passed the mage qualification examination, thus temporarily gaining extra leisure and money, but at the same time, I faced more continuous pressure from the regular tasks of this tower. Like most new tower guardians, I am full of yearning for a new and broad learning career, but at the same time, I am terrified because of the uncertainty about my future. In order to cope with this pressure, what I have done is to use as many professional skills as possible within the scope of my authority.
Considering that there may be readers of this book who do not know much about the White Tower spell system, I will use a more popular and exaggerated way to describe my main entertainment activities at that time: I collected those from outside and have not yet formally identified them. The sealed magic items are simply classified, ancient artifacts with obvious characteristics are taken out, and the residual information of the undead contained in them is extracted in the name of property testing. The specific manifestation is that I often sit in front of a round table made of elderwood (this material is not a necessary step), and spend one to two hours using as little etheric paint as possible (as a resource that the tower guardian can mobilize) Very extravagant) draw the Homegaon rune, then guess its origin based on the material and appearance of the ancient object, and find the incantation corresponding to the language family. If I can do everything in this process, and this artifact does have some special history, then a ghost from the past will appear on the table and show me its last scene before death. .
My limited knowledge of the history of ancient languages in various astral realms often leads me into blind alleys of clues, and I have to rely on luck and intuition to stumble around. Ninety-eight times out of ten these attempts would end in failure. The rare successes made me ecstatic, and I attributed them to my own talents because of my youthful recklessness. Looking back now, I need to point out that there were many accidental factors.
I am willing to spend a lot of space talking about my few successful experiences. For example, I once heard a knight guarding the Witch King roaring at an enemy before he died. The fragmentary message extracted from the mithril armor showed that he had an angry face at the last moment of his life, but his eyes were directed towards the low ground. of ground. Combined with the various slang words he used in the Toriel Celestial Wall system, I concluded that the recipient of these last words was most likely a Stoneheart Hatcher.
Another time I tried to extract some bones that were ground into seals, and got the image of a Valkyrie with three heads and twelve arms. Her two heads are ferocious in appearance, but the one in the middle is extremely beautiful, and is the medium used to cast charm spells. At the end of her life, she was covered in blood, with a human head and the Dark Moon Rune of the Silent School hanging on her waist, and she chanted many aliases of King Lagogon. This must also be a martyr.
Based on the characteristics of the spells I use, all the new friends I make in the antiquities often die brutally and are full of resentment. But this was not the case for once. That day a forest demon found me in front of the tower gate where I was responsible for reception. She handed me a broken mirror and complained that its song frequently aroused curiosity from passers-by and caused trouble for the forest. She tried to throw it away many times, but the mirror always returned to its original place - an ancient royal mountain tomb exposed by the earthquake. (Afterwards, identification proved that there was a return spell written with the powder of the returning stone on the inside of the mirror. ). The repeated returns of the mirror angered her, and she was willing to travel across three worlds to find the legendary white spire that was willing to collect all kinds of cursed items.
I dutifully accepted her request for safekeeping and immediately noticed something unusual about the mirror. It is undoubtedly ancient, and has an obvious elf style in style. However, its craftsmanship and material processing are very different from the elf methods. It can almost be determined to be an imitation completed by a combination of human craftsman skills and mage enchantment. This made me have no hope for it, but I still extracted my remaining trust in it out of boredom.
For the sake of reading interest, I will omit here the tedious and boring spell-casting process, as well as the heraldry and material science examination process that is a hundred times more time-consuming than the former. During that time, I was particularly grateful to two people. One was my microlinguistics instructor, Flute Feng Yuyin, who was the fifth-level key-holding mage of this tower at the time (by the time this book was completed, he was already a powerful mage at the top of the tower). One of the candidates); and the respected Mr. Dadadake from Durand. He and his candy shop, due to their location advantage and extremely thoughtful and prompt delivery service, prevented me from fainting and dying during the long battle with ancient books. .
In the end, I relied on a fairy spell that was traced back from the Elf language of Essen Island to successfully extract the remaining letter on the ancient mirror. The results, while not of great academic significance, were enough to open my eyes on a personal level.
The main part of the residual letter extracted from the mirror is an aging elf witch woman. Since most elves age, die and weather in an instant, I have never seen an elf as aged as her. I was deeply impressed by her human-like aging figure and her calmness about it. In the last moment before her death, she did not comment on her fate, but sang a song in Elvish language similar to the Essen Island language.
At that time, because I ignored an important factor during the casting process, every lyric she sang was completely reversed, and I was still unable to understand the meaning of the lyrics. It was not until a few years later that I assisted Master Benta in a project on refraction. After studying magic, I suddenly realized that the element of "mirror" would most likely interfere with my independent ritual of taking out the remaining letters, adding the concept of "inversion" to this process. I immediately dug out the singing records I left back then and tried to decipher them again.
The lyrics of the song were reviewed by Di Feng·Yu Yin and translated simply and straightforwardly by me. The main idea is as follows:
The elf knight came to the girl's door,
I saw her washing clothes in a basin.
He knew that love was connecting the two of them,
But mortal oaths cannot be trusted.
He would not remain in the mortal village,
Put on pale and humble gold and silver rings.
So he said:
I am willing to swear to marry you,
But first please make me a jumper.
It cannot reveal pleats or stitching,
Wash in a dry well without water.
Finally, it is hung among thorn bushes to dry.
The thorn has not bloomed since the creation of the world,
In this way we are the destined couple.
The girl heard what her lover said,
Know what is in his heart,
So she said:
I would sew this jumper for you,
But first please find materials for me.
It must be chosen between the beach and the ocean.
Let the billy goat plow the ground with its horns.
Sprinkle pepper seeds when sowing,
Then take the leather sickle to harvest.
Please plant something for sewing,
Coriander, sage, tansy and thyme,
Then come to my door with a bunch of peacock feathers,
In this way we are the destined couple.
There is no sequel to this song so far, so I have no way of judging the ending of the two protagonists in the lyrics. But the plot described in the process reminded me of a theory about the origin of the White Tower, which is the "Elf Origin Theory".
In view of the fact that the White Tower has always had a positive attitude towards academic disclosure, I will explain it directly to non-mage readers here: Although the Camarilla currently claims that the White Tower originated from several alliances of the Toriel Celestial Wall system, Wizard city-state, but the major mainstream schools have never given up their claim to be the original originator. Except for the council organized by the Camarilla, Silverlight, Tongshi, and Holy Oak are the three most powerful factions, and other theories have not been completely rejected. One of them is particularly popular among the people, that is, it is believed that mages first originated from The union of elves and humans. The marriage between an elf knight and a human girl gave birth to the first generation of wizards with magical qualifications, thus leaking the secrets of the ether into mortal society.
This origin legend, or folk tale, fits perfectly with the Song of the Dead that I heard. This coincidence aroused a high degree of interest in me, and at that time I was very ambitious and prepared to apply to build my own affiliated mage tower. That means I must produce commensurate research results and be able to independently withstand any level of mage questioning.
This is like an arrangement from somewhere. I immediately decided to use this as a starting point to trace the origin of the legal system from its linguistic characteristics and thoroughly explore the history of this period. The journey took far longer than I expected, and eventually led to me traveling to almost every star plane in the Alliance. The process is tedious, but looking at the source of it all, that upside-down song was the initial motivation that inspired me to set out.
Taking into account the possibility of legends mutating in the process of spreading, I expanded my search scope and pursued any approximate legends about the "combination of humans and gods" in various star realms. In the end, it did not help much in my thesis proposition, but it unexpectedly made me notice another interesting fact: all these legends, as long as their definite prototypes can be locked, are almost all ancient creatures and low-level creatures in nature. The union of civilized creatures in the etheric region.
That is of course not an absolute assertion, but in the large amount of information I collected, nearly 90% of the cases conform to this rule. The more typical ones with regional characteristics are: the legend of the elf knight in the dream world, the legend of Chonghong Township The legend of Never Island and the legend of the Yuyin Girl in Neverland.
More legends have a certain degree of universality, especially in the trap zone area, which shows an extremely mixed state. The common point is that the intellectual side is often described as the side of "human beings" (or the local dominant species), while the legal side is given many identity descriptions that are not actually accurate (or even completely wrong). Common identity descriptions include: goddess, princess of the god-king, celestial knight, demon, mermaid, immortal, nature or elemental elf (the ancient laws described in this way are often not true elf types).
I roughly divide all story types into the following categories:
1. Knights of Heaven. The core image of this type of legend is that a "knight" with some kind of military function comes for a certain mission, marries a local member of the opposite sex, and eventually leaves forever because his partner breaks some kind of commandments.
2. Feathers. Legends of this type are often associated with the image of a "goddess" (but not necessarily a woman). Compared with the first type, its union with mortals is involuntary to a certain extent, and the key image that controls whether it stays or goes is "feather clothing" - or leopard skin, feathers, gauze skirts, etc., depending on the protagonist. Depends on the identity. In the end, the "Goddess" will also leave because of the recovery of "Hagoromo". There are also more unique branches in this type, such as fairies born in snail shells, or cases where magic potions, spells, and blessings are used to transform from mortals into "gods" and therefore have to leave the mortal world. In addition, "being discovered by elders to be a taboo marriage" and "being forgotten and betrayed by one's partner" are also common reasons for leaving (or even death).
Three fish. The core element of this genre is not the species of "mermaid", but the initiative on the side of "gods". In such legends, there is often only one-sided desire for union, which fails to receive a response from "mortals", which ultimately leads to devastating consequences. Similar cases include the Legend of Sunflower and the Legend of Epiphyllum.
Four,……
The above types are not enough to summarize all the stories I have collected. However, with this general introduction, I hope that it is enough to enable all readers to jointly understand how the phenomenon of type II bonding is described and understood in the star realms of the Alliance. Regarding the unprecedented, complex and chaotic world structure we have faced so far, although conquest and analysis are common methods, so are acceptance and integration. Although ancient covenant laws often did not have a civilized system to guarantee economic and personal relationships, they still attached great importance to vows, including love words and marriage. That kind of disregard for the necessity of contractual flexibility and breach of contract compensation clauses often leads to tragic endings, and the alliance's laws and institutions often fail to include them. To understand how this fact happened, it is more convenient and quick to refer to folklore.
For this reason, I wrote this book using all the information collected during my travels. Although its content is far from my research goals, and the venerable Flute Feng Yuyin regretfully informed me that these materials cannot provide any form of support for my independent tower construction, I still decided to publish it to the public free of charge. As the final result of my journey.
At this point, I would like to thank again the respected Flute Wind and Fish Song, and Mr. Dadak, who found a suitable publisher for me out of friendship. If I have any hope for this book, it is that it will bring some joy to these two people and complete the story of the Upside Down Song - not only for the Elf Knight and the Maiden, but from what I gather In every legend that ends in misfortune.
