Grey Book

The Grey Book of the Selæ is one of the few records that survived Mankind's Great Migration to Laredhidan. The Selæ were a literate people who took especial care to record their history, particularly during and shortly before the Great Migration. The original book has survived to this day, being now a personal possession of Eramgol, who has kept it in his Great Library of Saræ. So many copies of it were made that they can now be found in libraries across the known world, though the great number of copies has also introduced versions which took excessive liberties with translations, or were rewritten in order to service some aim of the copiers.

The book is so-named because of its coloration, with the leather having been taken from a great reptile. Though it is tempting to suppose that this reptile was a dragon, the Selæ had never before encountered anything like a dragon until they joined the Great Migration.

Author

It is unknown who the author of the Grey Book was. It is probable that it was written by multiple scribes as a collaborative work, or perhaps by one scribe and his many assistants. It was customary among the Selæ for important historical works to go unattributed, as their belief went that no Man could lay claim to history, and that writing down something imparted some measure of ownership of it. Selæan scribes therefore wrote all of their works under the name of 'Selæ', the reason being that it demonstrated that the Selæ people, and not individuals, had ownership of the subjects about which they wrote.

A secondary author is believed to have amended the Grey Book with additional details, gained perhaps through his own experience or through other means. This second author took no care to disguise his handwriting as that of the first, and his manner of phrasing differed from the original author. There is a possibility that the Grey Book that survived to the present is a second edition, and that the second author amended the work after the Great Migration ended. This possibility was accepted as fact by the Brotherhood of the Loremasters of Selaminæ, whose members supposed that it was posterity that provided the second author the requisite knowledge to make his additions.

Contents

The Grey Book numbers eight hundred pages covering the whole of the history of the Selæ during the Great Migration and shortly after it. The sections pertaining to their pre-Migration life is one of the few written works of the Old Homeland that survive to this day; the majority of information regarding the Selæ old territories would have been familiar to the intended audience, and future generations - for whom the book was primarily written - would have benefited most from the history of the Migration.

It was customary among the Selæ to furnish a list of names and genealogies in their histories of all those whose names and families are known. The authors took especial care in this task, providing the names and personal history of both Men and nonhumans, and the extent of their knowledge is beyond the ken of Men. It is therefore probable that the authors enlisted the aid of necromancy in acquiring this knowledge, and the Selæ believed there to be no fault in calling up the souls of the dead to gain knowledge.

Particular attention is paid to the conquest of the Tú and their last king, Tá-nabaris, whose funeral poem was preserved by the book's author. From the Grey Book is derived much knowledge of the Tú and their subject races, as the Selæ had an interest in preserving their history and recording their culture in an attempt to gain possession over it.

Lost Ætæramunaí

Ætæramunaí was the old homeland of the Selæ, as written in the Grey Book. A total of thirty pages are devoted to this lost land, first explaining that it was 'paradise on earth' and later detailing its descent in barbarism and the loss of paradise. The book's author admonishes feeling nostalgia for this lost land, instead saying 'most deserved was it of its fate, for Man had succumbed to evil and made the land drink bitter poison. Why then should Men feel a longing for that which we have destroyed?'

An extensive history of the genealogy of the kings of Ætæramunaí is preserved in the Grey Book. Most notably, the old kings of the Selæ were all slain for evils described as 'too poisonous to write', and the new kings who replaced them were chosen because they had no known genealogies as a symbolic abandoning of the past.

The Last Book of the Selæ

A definitive and final history of the Selæ was written by an anonymous scribe after the downfall of Selæamunaí.

These so-called 'Books of the Slain Races' were written by anonymous authors and attributed to the kings that exterminated them, such as Golthær Silver-hand and his son, Authón the Just.