Origin of the Enchiridion?

[UAnchovy]

Would it have led to questions? Surely not any more than the version they did use? On the face of it, "we lived together with dragons for a while until they betrayed us because they're evil" is not less plausible than "we travelled into this region and then dragons came out of nowhere and attacked us because they're evil". Both versions contain the possibility of a hidden act of provocation that contextualises draconic aggression as well. If you were going to concoct a false history to justify the war against the dragons, wouldn't you try to concoct a false history that is more convincing or more morally compelling than the truth?

Similarly for other issues. You mention extending the length of the ruse. If I wanted a ruse to last a long time, wouldn't I prefer a ruse that is as consistent as possible with visible evidence, and which requires me to convince the fewest number of people of new facts? If I want a long-standing ruse, a lie that explains the existence of ruins from a time of coexistence is, ceteris paribus, preferable to a lie that doesn't. If I'm going to try to undertake a mammoth task like convincing thousands upon thousands of people that they (or their parents or grandparents) didn't really live alongside dragons after all, I should at least have a pretty good reason for trying something so difficult and so implausible. Here, it seems like it only weakens the overall integrity of the lie by introducing new inconsistencies into it.

It's particularly baffling, to me, because characters in-game portray the issue rather bizarrely. Take Aymeric's confrontation with Thordan VII in 'The Sins of Antiquity'. Thordan says, "No reparations shall ever suffice. This fact alone should serve as ample justification for our actions, yet some refuse to see it as such. For men like you, who yearn to commit themselves to a nobler cause, a more compelling narrative is required."

The first half of that statement is, in itself, perfectly reasonable. Nidhogg cannot be negotiated with. No reparations are possible. The only viable course of action is to fight back. Lies about history are irrelevant when you're dealing with a berserk dragon driven by hate. The second half is very strange. They need a more compelling narrative in order to convince idealists to defend the people of Ishgard? Surely idealists are already committed to defending the many innocent people of the city-state? Thus when we got to patch 3.3 and the Final Steps of Faith, there was no issue whatsoever of people like Aymeric or Lucia laying down their arms, or fighting only halfheartedly. They believed Thordan I was a monster who provoked the war, but they still laid down their lives to defend the people. The lie has no utility.

Yet Aymeric's reply to Thordan VII is little better. "This is how you protect our people? You have given us a lost cause! A death sentence! With your compelling narrative, you but doom our countrymen to give their lives for a lie!"

Really? I thought they were giving their lives to defend their home and their people. I don't think I ever saw the Dragonsong War framed as a battle to defend the honour of the noble King Thordan. That always seemed secondary to the issue that Nidhogg wants to kill everyone. Thordan VII hasn't given anyone a doom that they didn't already face. There is nothing Thordan VII could have said or done to prevent Nidhogg continuing the war.

Which gets back to the wider issue, for me. So, if I take most of the game's description of history at face value... a group of people concocted an extremely implausible lie and somehow convinced thousands of people of it, they obtained absolutely no benefit from this lie, and then the lie isn't even a more compelling narrative than the truth! If you tell the truth with the sole modification of claiming that Ratatoskr struck first, or perhaps that Thordan I uncovered evidence of a pre-emptive dragon attack, or somesuch, you get a story that is just as good for everything you want the lie to achieve, and you don't need to convince everyone of an implausible false history. Why lie about centuries if you only need to lie about five minutes?

Well, I can try to think my way around parts of this.

Firstly, as I said, this makes more sense to me if dragon-human cooperation was not actually widespread, and that most of the population of ancient Ishgard had relatively little contact with dragons. Secondly, I think you have to reject the idea that all this lie was produced by a small band of conspirators at the founding of the high houses. If much of this narrative grew in small accretions over centuries, it seems more logical. (For example, why would the founders of the high houses lie in order to say that Thordan I brought his people to Coerthas after receiving a vision from the Fury? That story is irrelevant to anything they might want to say about dragons, and obviously false if told to contemporaries of Thordan I who have been living in Coerthas for generations.) Over a longer period of time, however, there's more room for legends to grow. Thirdly, well, I would just be deeply skeptical of anything anyone tells us about that time. I don't think I trust Hraesvelgr's or Nidhogg's accounts. Dragons are an oral culture, without writing (EE p. 269), both of them have strong emotional biases, and memories can be unreliable. So when I encounter something that doesn't seem to make sense, I try to be open to the idea that perhaps the story is inaccurate. The church version is distorted and self-serving, but the dragon versions may be too. Piecing together the truth is very difficult.

Well. Feel free to consider me mad, or simply obsessing over minor issues. I will do my best to reach the Scholasticate quests, though. I'm sure they have a lot of fascinating additional content about Ishgardian religion and history.

[Berethos]

They need a more compelling narrative in order to convince idealists to defend the people of Ishgard?

Remember that those comments are coming from two individuals at the 1000 year old tail of a war that has defined their country since long before either was born - for one, continuing the war with as many advantages as are possible because there is ultimately no stopping the war (thus far anyway) is par for the course and certainly influences his beliefs, and for the other a good and noble cause is worth fighting for but so is seeking peace to end the suffering if it's possible, and continuing a war when peace is the most possible it has been in centuries is perhaps unthinkable...and thus influences his comments.

As for the founders...I think you're on to something regarding how much of what is seen/believed now was changed over the course of time, but I think it's worth considering that those who betrayed the peace after 200 years did so to seek power against those that were at the time not their enemy (I'd have to double check, but the Ascians may have had a small influencing hand in that belief...a nudge in the wrong direction if you will), so going the extra step beyond what was necessary to start a ruse if it would ultimately benefit them (and a nation fueled by fervor against an enemy would be a benefit) is certainly not unthinkable. Also, while logic might dictate that reducing the chance of the ruse being discovered to the smallest chance possible is the "correct" course this is meant to take place in an organic world where the characters don't always choose based solely on the most logical choice...especially if said logical choice didn't come with additional potential benefits in their eyes.

On dragons - they might actually be the most reliable when it comes to memories, believe it or not. They don't perceive time quite the same way...their "history is yet part of [their] present" in a way we can't comprehend. It does mean that they are influenced by emotional bias (potentially) to a far greater degree, but it also means that their memories of events are perhaps greater than any creature alive (at least for the Firstborn, like Nidhogg).

[UAnchovy]

To be fair as well, after that scene Aymeric does tell you that he thinks he expressed himself poorly. Perhaps he was kicking himself afterwards, and thought he could have made a better argument.

On what is believed now: I suppose my point is that it doesn't make sense, to me, for there to have been a single lie produced by a cabal of deceivers. Rather, we are probably dealing with a growing tissue of falsehoods. At the time of Thordan's death, perhaps all the founders of the high houses said was that the dragons turned upon them and slew their beloved king. They omitted, but didn't lie directly. Over the coming centuries, the details of Thordan's death passed into legend and were exaggerated. I don't know where the story of the elezen first coming to Coerthas came from; perhaps that was bundled into the Thordan story centuries later. To bring us back to the topic, this question about the textual history of the Enchiridion is fascinating.

On dragon memories, I am sure that they remember some things extremely clear, but as you say, their psychology is not like human (or elezen, hyur, etc.) psychology. Their history is part of their present. There's something Hraesvelgr says to Estinien atop Zenith that springs to mind. Estinien asked Hraesvelgr why he should believe Hraesvelgr's version of history over the church's, and Hraesvelgr answered, "What thou choosest to believe is immaterial. The betrayal that yet haunts mine every waking moment is no less than the truth to my kind. And Nidhogg meaneth for Thordan's people to suffer for this sin till the end of days."

That makes an interesting point about truth, I think. Nidhogg is not driven by a historian's truth, so to speak. He is driven by a personal and subjective impression of Ratatoskr's death, that he constantly relives. The impression of how it felt to know that his brood-sister was murdered by treacherous elezen is a permanent brand on his spirit. That's not something that can be changed. If, perhaps, someone were to find a reasonable historical argument that cast Thordan's actions in a new light, or even justified them, that would do nothing to alter this vengeful memory. Or neither is there any gift, apology, or recompense that could be offered that would alter the memory itself. Nidhogg is haunted by the sense of how it felt at that exact moment in history. The memory is eternal.

I find that much dragon behaviour makes more sense if their strongest memories are eternal in this way. It especially contextualises their tendency to brood. When you first meet Hraesvelgr, he is a broken dragon, sorrowfully reliving both his memories of Shiva and his memory of Ratatoskr's death. Or we can consider Tiamat, who is so consumed by the shameful memory of what she did to Bahamut that she is prepared to sit motionless in an Allagan prison for eternity. I would not not be surprised if the oldest dragons usually do end up consumed by memory. They are monomaniacal beings, whether Hraesvelgr for lost love, Tiamat for guilt, or Nidhogg for rage.

Anyway, so I don't think the elder wyrms lie to you, and neither do I think that their memories are false as such. But I think that their memories are of limited usefulness when it comes to discovering exactly what happened.

[LineageRazor]

I think that you're correct in assuming that the great lie was one that developed over time. In all likelihood, the charade started simple, using half-truths and whole truths to unify Ishgard against Nidhogg and his horde. The original four knights most likely did not try to convince everyone that their beloved friend dragons were secretly evil and plotting to kill them. The original lie was likely simple, and based MOSTLY in truth: That Nidhogg wanted to kill them all, and had a horde of loyal followers to carry out that wish. However sympathetic some dragons might be, there were enough adversarial that war was inevitable, and the humans needed to band together for their own protection. In the early days of the war, it's even possible that some dragons allied WITH their human friends, maybe even with the full blessing of the Knights Four.

The problem is, though, that half-truths and whole truths were not enough. After a century or so of war, with no end in sight, it's little surprise that the Ishgardians would have begun to tire of it and yearn for the days of cooperation between the races in the past. Folks would begin to question the government, start calling for overtures of peace. The folks in charge know that peace would never be possible, due to their inside knowledge of Nidhogg's motivations, and all this anti-war rallying was tearing Ishgard apart. So, they started a long-term campaign to change the history books: The anti-war protesters are ruthlessly silenced, and the government starts taking steps to stymie such uprisings in the future by rewriting history to paint dragons as a whole in a negative light. There is no hope for peace with the dragons, so don't even try to find allies among them. All dragons are our enemies. Rumors of long-ago friendship are lies, perpetuated by the dragons to bring dischord. All who consort with dragons are heretics, and must be purged.

While it might seem illogical to try to hide the fact that the two races were once allied, in the face of blatant evidence as close by as the Dravanian Forelands, the leaders saw it as necessary in order to keep Ishgard constantly united against a foe that they knew would exploit any lack of solidarity on their part. After centuries passed, things that were common knowledge became folklore and myth as their leaders relentlessly ground the lies deep into the public's consciousness. A thousand years is a very long time, after all, and the Ishgardian leaders knew they'd be playing the long game with Nidhogg if they were to win at all.

Of course, the idea that history can be so easily changed is based on the arrogance and cynicism of powerful, yet flawed leaders. There have been many throughout history who believed they could change history simply by flexing their political muscles - Stalin being one notorious example. I don't think anyone here seriously believes that Ishgard's policy of writing draconic friendship out of the history books was a viable plan, or the correct thing to do - but it's certainly possible that the lords of Ishgard were convinced that it was.

[UAnchovy]

Would you even need an organised, top-down attempt to change history? The story around heretics seems like it could arise quite naturally.

Suppose that a few generations into the war, some Ishgardians start agitating for peace, and want to negotiate with the dragons. On the face of it, this isn't actually a problem. Those negotiators will go off and either they will succeed (which is great; Ishgard doesn't have any reason to want to continue the war), or they will fail (in which case Ishgard has lost nothing). As it is, they will either encounter Hraesvelgr's brood, who will at best tell them to go away and at worst kill them, or Nidhogg's brood, who will kill them. A few naive kids lose their lives, and everyone gets a valuable lesson in the continued evil of dragons.

There's one problem. Nidhogg knows how to convert Ishgardian elezen into more dragons. Presumably this is where the idea of heretics comes from, right? Nidhogg's brood can reply to these idealists with, "Of course, let us tell you the truth, here, please receive our hospitality, drink this." Then they can start to produce aevises. Aevises are extremely valuable for Nidhogg: not only do they represent a reclamation of Ratatoskr's blood, they can provide intelligence on Ishgard, they provide more troops, and they provide an exit for any desperate elezen who may wish to surrender. After generations of brutal war, an elezen might despair and feel that the war is unwinnable. The promise that you can join the Dravanian Horde might be appealing, especially to any Ishgardians who might feel a desire for revenge against a nobility that is sometimes abusive or oppressive. You can even produce cults, so to speak: small groups of Ishgardians who collaborate with the Dravanians in the hope of one day being rewarded with ascension into dragonkin.

Once it becomes established that it is possible for people to cooperate with the Dravanian Horde, and indeed to become Dravanians, everyone else in Ishgard suddenly has a very good reason to try to teach everyone that cooperation is impossible. The person who wants to negotiate with the horde is no longer just an idiot throwing their life away, but a grave threat to Ishgard itself.

So of course Ishgardians will teach that it is always wrong to cooperate with a dragon. They tell stories about the depravity of heretics, and they will develop institutions (the Inquisition) whose job it is to prevent heretics. None of this actually has to be a deliberate lie. It's actually, well, true. For almost all of the Dragonsong War, there is no real hope of diplomacy, and the only attempts lead to betrayal, transformation, and slaughter. The best lies are built on truths, and so too here. In any case, once the concept of heretics is firmly part of Ishgardian culture, that will contextualise how you remember a figure like Shiva. If you are in a culture where you have extensive experience of people betraying their kin to join with dragons, and you are aware of ancient stories about the first elezen to join with a dragon, the connection is fairly logical.

Which then leads you to a pretty coherent view of Thordan's life, doesn't it? If dragons are all malicious, and they can recruit and transform people for their agenda, then pre-Thordan Ishgardian civilisation could easily fit into that pattern. A long time ago, there was an entire heretic civilisation. Then Thordan I destroys that civilisation and heroically separates out the races. Anyone who might object, whether dragon or human, by claiming that actually elezen and dragon once lived together as equals, can be seen as pushing a heretic agenda today. Heretics pose a real threat, so inquisitors will be rightly skeptical of anyone who preaches dragon-human cooperation.

This is a similar conclusion to yours, but it doesn't require any long-term project of deception from the top. I think I prefer a model where the view of history changes organically, from every part of society. The alternative feels too much like a conspiracy theory, to me. As I said, the best lies are based on truth, and I can well believe that the false history of Ishgard is actually 90% true.

As a side note, most of the above is about what I think of as 'Nidhoggian' heretics. Ysayle and her group are different. I might term them 'Hraesvelgrian' heretics. Nidhoggian heresy does involve transforming into aevises and is aimed at the victory of the Dravanian Horde and the destruction of Ishgard (e.g. the false Guillaime), while Hraesvelgrian heresy involves no transformations and is aimed at peace. It strikes me as possible that there have been many Hraesvelgrian heretic groups before Ysayle's, but they usually don't live for very long. Hraesvelgr's brood don't seem terribly determined to protect them, and Ishgardian persecution is relatively efficient. It is also worth remembering that, from the Ishgardian perspective, Hraesvelgrian heretics can be just as dangerous as the Nidhoggian kind. (Ysayle is responsible for attacks on large numbers of innocent non-combatants, after all.) I doubt anyone in Ishgard bothers to differentiate between types of heretics, but both types do present real threats to Ishgard.

On a side note, looking up aevises before, the EE notes (p. 288) that the word 'aevis' is from the Enchiridion, and seems to imply that the word was there before it was discovered that some elezen could be transformed into dragonkin. This doesn't seem to tell me anything about the composition of the Enchiridion - apparently it means 'devil who flies', and worshippers of Halone in the Fifth or Fourth Astral Eras had surely encountered flying voidset - but it is one more clue as to the contents of the text.

[Berethos]

This is a similar conclusion to yours, but it doesn't require any long-term project of deception from the top. I think I prefer a model where the view of history changes organically, from every part of society.

I think that conclusion would hold more weight if it weren't for the Echo vision we received.

In the one following their betrayal, we see Sylvetrel de Dzemael say "We shape our nation anew with a history of our own making - and let the truth of this dark day die here, upon the battlefield." While various aspects of the changes almost certainly did grow organically over time (say, perhaps, an increasing hostility toward "heretics" as the years passed and the need grew to keep men fighting instead of changing sides), that moment right there does strongly suggest that the intent to craft a compelling narrative specifically to hide the truth came from the top and from the very beginning.

Not a necessary act, but one they took regardless.

[LineageRazor]

I think that it's dangerous to assume that Ysayle's group was "different" in the ways that you claim. While there are clearly factions among the heretics (evidenced in part by the fact that there are still heretical hold-outs even though most heretics have now surrendered), Ysayle clearly considered herself to be an ally of Nidhogg when her crew paved the way for the assault on the Steps of Faith. It wasn't until she witnessed the indiscriminate savagery of the attack against civilian, military, and clergy alike that her convictions were shaken and she began to wonder whether assisting Niddy was really the right thing to do. Her Echo had given her the knowledge that the Church of Ishgard was in the wrong - but it wasn't until then that she considered the fact that the dragons could ALSO be in the wrong, and that helping them to win the war might not solve things the way she thought it would.

Claiming her group as being non-transformative seems wrong, as well, as the quest leading up to your meeting with her explicitly involves a fight against a group of heretics who transform during the fight in order to protect Ysayle from you. They are clearly her people, and possibly even her personal guard. It is implied, too, that Ysayle is considered a leader figure among heretics in general, not just a small group of them. Even if not all factions obey her directly, she seems to be something of a prophet to them.

On the topic of aevis, note that Bahamut had a couple diresaurs (another result of Elezen transformation) assisting him in Coil 13, and the Allagan/Meracydia conflict LONG predates the whole Ratatoskr drama. There are apparently other methods to transform people into dragons than transforming Elezen descended from the Knights Four, so there could well have been aevis, as well. What those methods might be is currently a mystery.

[UAnchovy]

To clarify, I am not positing any visible political distinction. Heretics aren't organised enough for that. I do not think heretics deliberately identify themselves with either elder wyrm. Most heretics probably don't even know there are these two elder wyrms. I'm suggesting, rather, that there are different ideological trends among heretics. They don't all want the same thing.

Thus, for instance, the false Guillaime spoke about being "blessed with power far beyond your ken", and when defeated, said, "Blood has been repaid with blood, and for that I am content". (Both from 'The Heretic Among Us'.) The impression I got there was that heresy was both about vengeance, making Ishgard suffer because all Ishgardians are complicit in an injustice, and about gaining more personal power. By contrast, while Ysayle embraced a plan that would harm innocents, that harm was not the point. Guillaime denied that any Ishgardians were innocents; Ysayle granted that some were innocents, but felt that ending the war was worth the collateral damage.

So I think you can talk about different heretics having different goals and different methods. Some want peace and coexistence, while others want revenge and the destruction of Ishgard. There isn't a single heretic creed. I linked these different views to Nidhogg and Hraesvelgr more because those are the two visible political factions among the dragons. (I think a few elements of Ratatoskr's brood survive as well, but never mind them.) If heretics take their cues from dragons, they are likely to come from one of the two major dragon factions.

I didn't recall any transforming heretics when you battle Shiva in 2.4. Very well, I stand corrected there.

Her Echo had given her the knowledge that the Church of Ishgard was in the wrong - but it wasn't until then that she considered the fact that the dragons could ALSO be in the wrong, and that helping them to win the war might not solve things the way she thought it would.

I remember, on those quests, feeling that Ysayle had gotten her idea of what dragons are from Hraesvelgr, and Estinien had gotten his idea of what dragons are from Nidhogg. Thus to Ysayle, dragons are tragic beasts of great nobility and even greater sorrow, and to Estinien, dragons are vengeful monsters possessed of a hatred beyond mortal comprehension. Both of them are correct. (To an extent; I think the game wants you to be more sympathetic to Hraesvelgr than I found I could be. But let's not go into that.)

But yes, Ysayle was clearly ignorant of quite a lot about the true nature of the war at the start of Heavensward, and rather naive to boot. (Her objection to just killing Nidhogg springs to mind.) Ysayle had a glimpse of Hraesvelgr and a couple of Echo visions, and then she jumped to conclusions and did some quite awful things. She and the heretics who follow her do not have any moral high ground.

[UAnchovy]

To be honest, I found that vision by itself to be rather strange, not least because they didn't craft a new history of what happened on that day. What happened on that day is that Haldrath drove off Nidhogg, and that's exactly what they publicised. As far as I can tell they never directly lied about anything. They omitted certain facts - that Thordan slew Ratatoskr, that they consumed Ratatoskr's eyes, that Haldrath took both Nidhogg's eyes not just one, and that three additional knights survived and renounced their nobility - but the basic history was, well, quite true. Nidhogg killed Thordan, Haldrath drove off Nidhogg, Haldrath renounced the crown, and the four remaining knights set about ruling Ishgard in stewardship.

So I have some trouble with what Sylvetrel might have meant there. What truth did he feel had to die? Surely nothing about what they'd done on that day itself? Does he mean specifically that Haldrath refused the throne in penitence for Thordan's crime, since publicising Thordan's crime would cause civil unrest? What did Sylvetrel or Haldrath even understand Thordan's crime to be? (I have never quite been able to get it straight what happened then. Thordan killed Ratatoskr, yes, but the context of that act and Thordan's motives have been relatively obscure.)

In any case, I suppose I think you are pinning a lot on one somewhat obscure phrase. I also find it a bit difficult to posit that Sylvetrel (and Flavien, Geunriel, and Driancoin) began this huge conspiracy then, at a time when Haldrath and the other three surviving knights were still around to contradict them. At the least, those four other survivors must have tacitly consented to whatever the four founders did, and that suggests to me that the founders weren't too blatant. I also understood the Knights Twelve in general to be men of relative integrity, Thordan's crime aside, which furthers my preference for a gradual evolution.

[Berethos]

To be honest, I found that vision by itself to be rather strange, not least because they didn't craft a new history of what happened on that day. What happened on that day is that Haldrath drove off Nidhogg, and that's exactly what they publicised.

When he said shape their nation anew with a history of their own making, I don't think he was necessary limiting himself to just the events of that one day...and even if he was, he references it as the "truth of this dark day" and that strongly suggests the betrayal and consumption of the eyes for power happened on that day as well (along with what they thought was the final defeat of Nidhogg, which was very nearly true...they had no idea Hraesvelgr would give up one of his own eyes to help Nidhogg). Certain elements of the lie were almost certainly created in later years, perhaps centuries later, but there's a strong indication from this scene that decision to begin that narrative was made that day and not born out of minor changes to the events that eventually spun out of hand as you seem to suggest. In fact, where they are talking is in the Churning Mists (The Rookery), not far from the area where Ratatoskr is most likely to have been killed (Tharl Oom Khash). Leaving only to return to the scene of the crime on a different day? Not terribly likely.

I also think you might be pinning too much on the belief that these were men of integrity. They were all complicit in the partaking of the power of the eyes to take the fight to there own allies (though clearly even after 200 years there were those among the Elezen who resented the Dragons for one reason or another), and that scene shows - with the exception of the Lord of House Dzemael, who was in fact quite pleased at the idea of Haldrath ruling with his newfound power - a great deal of guilt and shame among the survivors. It was a decision to hide the truth born out of shame and cowardice for a terrible act...not something men of integrity would do. While the others did walk away from it all and give up being knights...they were just as complicit, and it's likely that their guilt and shame kept them silent as well.

Eventually that guilt might (a word I've chosen carefully, but to explain why would be spoilery) lessen over time for those few privy to it as they are born further and further from the date of the transgression, and such knowledge coupled with more organic developments could certainly impact how the Enchiridion was taught (to pull the original discussion of the thread back in a bit) if not actual changes to the text in the 1000 years of the Dragonsong War.