text. un: archivist.

[question]

A moment of your time, if I may. I only just arrived, so I'm endeavoring to answer all the requisite stupid questions — I've never been in space before, I don't remember coming here, I want to go home, and so on. But I understand that we're all in the same boat, so I'll spare you the crisis.

However. I looked over the staff positions, and after some exploration through this filthy maze of a place, I have come to the conclusion that offering to play librarian is pointless when I cannot find the damn library. Has anybody come across it? If not, have we managed to open anywhere that's locked off? Several of the crew floors have recreational facilities, but not the 5th, so that's my best guess for our missing library.

Finally. I'm actually recording this from spoken word to text as I appear to have superglued my fingers together with this- this space glue-gun. Does anyone know how to dissolve the stuff? Or should I resign myself to losing the skin of my fingertips?

Message ends.

Comments

[question]

Jon's brows raise, and he takes a seat with her as requested. "Please. From the sounds of it you come from somewhere quite different to my own world." And then he pulls an old-fashioned black tape recorder out of his pockets. "Would you mind terribly if I recorded? I'll use this, so you don't have to worry about it ending up public or anything. Might even end up recording over it, since I've only got one tape. But it would be useful, to have something I could listen back to when I read the book."

[veristitalian]

"By all means."

She agrees, at the prospect of the recording, and reaches for her water, taking a sip.

"Shinovar is a small country on west side of the main continent of Roshar. It is shielded from the highstorms the rest of face by a range of mountains. Where Alethkar is a land of rock, covered in polyps and retracting vegetation, the Shin people walk on soft soil, carpeted with a kind of grass that doesn't retract under their step. Geography and religion isolate them. My country does a little trade with the Shin- mostly for horses and chickens, which can't live in the wild outside of their basin. Sometimes, I pay a caravaneer to bring back a few books, as well. This is how I found Shauka-daughter-Hasweth."

[question]

Jon doesn't bother with an intro spiel — this isn't the Archives and he doesn't have the tape space. Instead he just clicks the recorder on, and she proceeds apace. The recorder he lays on the table. Jon himself puts his chin in his hand and just listens — not quite reverently, but when you're part of a weird cult to a knowledge deity you don't take unique stories lightly.

"I see," he says, and then, nosy motherfucker: "And what's your country like?"

There's just the slightest resonance to his voice, the barest and most unintentional sprinkle of his (extremely opt-in) compulsion abilities. The question isn't urgent, but it does also seem like a digression from the topic of the books, so he's prone to be slightly ... encouraging.

[veristitalian]

"Alethkar is, first and foremost, occupied."

She answers, grimly. Jasnah would have told him this without the nudge; she sees herself as a source of knowledge, a part of the historical record, so has no objection to answering questions. But maybe it's the help of his little nudge that means he gets these details rather than some polite fluff about geography or the history of the church.

"Our people have evacuated, and our capital is held by enemy forces. But until this year, it was a proud country. The Alethi are a famously warlike people, a race of conquerors. A generation ago, we were only a group of Highprinces, competing for territory. We were recently united under the banner of a single king, and since then have experienced great instability; periods of peace, prosperity, and good trade, backed up against years of chaos and famine and poor governance, during the early days of the monarchy. Now this latest subjugation, by the Parshendi- the non-human sentient species native to Roshar.

"As well as being a warlike people, the Alethi are religious. We follow the Vorin church, which has strict prescriptions that seem entirely unique to our planet. I do find myself fascinated by the flexibility of gender roles in other worlds. I take it you're able to read? It would make you a heretic, among the Alethi, as surely as I'm one for knowing how to use a sword. The Vorin Ardents would say you should have a wife, to read out loud to you. When I lend you my Alethi texts you'll see a line of script, and a line of subscript, where we the scribes communicate with one another.

"It's an elegant solution to the ego of men and its' impact on our record of the past. A wife taking dictation on her warlord husband's biography will render what he has to say, and then in a small hand, beneath it, will provide her own commentary. Inaccurate; what he describes here as his insight was the work of a second general in his employ. History should never be written by the victors. The existence of the subscript is a closely guarded secret, among all scholars- all of whom are women."