House of Books

The House of Books, Sanctuary of House Shaea

History

The origin of the House of Books or Hall of Khesef-hra-khemiu goes back into the mists of antiquity, but the first known sanctuary was at Hermopolis where the Order of Seshat quietly carried out their work under the formal protection of the Temple of Thoth. However even before the end of the Old Kingdom the Order of Seshat had spread across Egypt, establishing important chapters in Thebes and Heliopolis.

Then came the chaos of the First Intermediate Period, not only did central control collapse, but sanctuaries were sacked and travel became very difficult. For decades the Order debated what they should do, weighing the alternatives against each other, but in the end they decided to create a Sanctuary. In modern terms they created a Horizon realm, but they perceived it as bartering with Hapy for a small piece of the Nile to be carried up into the heavens and hidden from mortal eyes. The Sanctuary of the Hall of Books was both a library and a communications hub, allowing the Order of Seshat to freely travel and exchange information. However it was also a sanctuary for the members of the Order and their families, in extreme situations they could evacuate into the Hall of Books and stay there for extended periods of time. For that reason the realm was made large enough to conduct agriculture and support a large temple, also in a concession to their religious worries it included a rocky valley to the west suitable for performing burials.

For centuries to come, indeed for over a millennium, the sanctuary of the Hall of Books served them well, providing a library and fast travel in good times, and a place of shelter in bad. During this time a permanent settlement sprang up inside the sanctuary, made up of descendants of the Seshati as well as servants who had decided to stay rather than leave. Life here was better than elsewhere, food was more plentiful, the inundations less harmful, and the Seshati provided both guidance and practical aid. However the settlement never became large, partly due to secrecy and partly due to a strong sense that the community had achieved the right size.

Unfortunately the stability of Egypt would soon be rudely disturbed by the foreigners. Certainly Egypt had been conquered before by the Hyksos, but they had assimilated very quickly and didn’t really have any ideas to call their own. The Persians however brought Zoroastrianism, at first it seemed like a distraction, but in hindsight this was the first time the Celestial Chorus was able to bring their forces to bear since the days of Akenaten. Still, the Persians mostly left Egyptian religion alone, and respected Egyptian teachings. No, the real horror came from the Greeks...

Now the real problem wasn’t the Greeks themselves, even if their view of women made things harder on the Seshati. The problem came from the way that they viewed death and the dead, seeing the Kingdom of the Dead as a gloomy underworld irreparably separate from that of the living. Furthermore their incessant syncretism obscured the metaphysical underpinnings of the Egyptian religion. However the Egyptians were always open to new ways of seeing magic and religion, and the Seshati set about educating these newcomers. The result was a fusion between Greek and Egyptian lore, indeed you could say that what we today see as Hermeticism was born during this period.

However despite the Greek admiration for the antiquity of Egypt the Ptolemies failed to support the old temple system as much as they should. Certainly the temples lingered on, but they never regained the importance that they had in earlier days. This had a rather adverse effect on education, the knowledge of hieroglyphics grew rare, and priests declined in number and quality. So despite the respect the Greeks had for Egyptian lore they were slowly strangling the source of said lore.

Still within this framework the Seshati were able to spread enlightenment and little by little the Ptolemies grew increasingly Egyptian. This culminated with Cleopatra VII who became the first fully initiated pharaoh in generations. The native orders saw this as a chance to cleanse Egypt of the foreigners, the Seshati remained fairly neutral. Whether their involvement could have saved Cleopatra or not is uncertain.

The Roman age which followed was one where the entire Mediterranean basin opened up to peaceful commerce and the spread of knowledge. The Isis cult and the Seshati cult were both able to make great headway, indeed the Seshati often rode on the coat tails of the Isis cult and other Egyptian movements. It was an age of learning, of culture, of civilization, and thus the sort of environment where a group like the Seshati can prosper and thrive. However throughout the period the temples in Egypt proper continued to decline, so much so that in the first century AD there was almost no one who understood hieroglyphics.

This allowed the Celestial Chorus to make great headway, preaching their religion of Christianity, and offering a way for the people to be saved without temple rites or mummification. Initially the Seshati paid little attention, not seeing how Egypt was lost to the old gods. Despite their complacency the Edict of Tolerance in 313 didn’t really come as a surprise. What did come as a surprise was how the Celestial Chorus and Christianity was able to take control of the educational system, as well as the introduction of a revolutionary new technology: the book.

Pushed out of their traditional stronghold of education, denied any possibility of finding new recruits, and subjected to semi-active persecution for the first time in their history, the Seshati were in dire straits. So they did something they never had before, they decided on heavily supporting a political figure; Julian the Faithful, known by posterity as Julian the Apostate. Intelligent and intensely pious he tried to reverse the gains Christianity had made, much to their delight he pushed the Christians out of education and let them temporarily regain their lost position. Indeed his decree banishing Christians from teaching the Classics was to a great extent inspired by the Seshati.

Needless to say this drew the ire of the Christians and when Julian was murdered there was an intense backlash. Increasingly the Seshati were forced to withdraw to their pocket realm, bringing with them what scrolls and sacred artefacts they could, often only days ahead of angry mobs or hostile magi. The last straw was Theodosius’ decree in 390, by then it was clear that only the Hall of Books would offer safety. A few mages of the other orders fought on, but Hypatia’s death in 415 made most of them go into hiding or convert.

By the mid sixth-century Philae was all that remained, though the Seshati saw that the struggle was hopeless the remaining Egyptian orders insisted on inciting the Blemmye into attacking Byzantium. Though tactically the war went surprisingly well, forcing the Byzantines to tolerate Philae somewhat longer and letting the Blemmye visit, it was still a strategic defeat. This was when the Seshati turned their back on any effort to defeat the Christians by use of force.

Of course the Seshati had not been idle or purely focussing on military matters, they were teachers and they sought to teach. They helped promote Coptic, partially to separate the Egyptians from Greek, but also to preserve the ancient spells. As long as people called upon the names of the gods, even if they were delusional about their powers and nature, then as long the gods would still be active in Egypt and the Order of Seshat could recruit among the people there. They were however only delaying the inevitable and they knew it.

The last straw was the Arab invasion in 692. Already recruitment was almost impossible, from sheer necessity they were forced to throw their net wide; Germanic volves, Hindu Tantraists, and those few African tribes not yet converted. As Islam and Christianity spread even those recruitment possibilities dried up, unlike many other occult orders the Seshati were incapable of deceiving new recruits as to their true nature or changing themselves into a pseudo-Christian / Muslim tradition. This however was a very slow process, but by the 1200s it is safe to say that recruitment was effectively non-existent.

However the Muslim conquests had another horrible consequence, it cut off the trade routes across the Mediterranean and stopped the trade in papyrus. If you had wanted to destroy knowledge you could hardly have found a better method than the Muslim conquests. It was like a firebrand thrown into a great library, burning all. That may have been the Ahl-i-Batin’s intention, or maybe the Hermetics, or maybe some other group, but now knowledge became something to be hoarded and concealed. For mages it was a splendid age, where they could be certain that their students couldn’t get a bundle of books and run off to learn on their own. For the rest of the world it was the Dark Ages.

Due to the lack of recruitment the order was forced to stimulate the population within their sanctuary. Through contacts among the scholars and what connections they still had they brought in waterwheels and better grains, but most importantly in 934 they brought the art of printing with metal plates. The latter was very controversial, it seemed to attack the very heart of the scribal arts, but at the same time it allowed them to distribute knowledge far more effectively. Indeed it was the latter that made them adopt metal plate printing and even try to use it to spread books outside their sanctuary, though these efforts were largely fruitless. Other ideas and thoughts also made it inside in fits and jerks, but they were altered, egyptianized, to preserve the sanctuary as it were. After all they were always willing to learn new things, to expand their minds, to educate, but never to sacrifice what they knew to be true for a momentary advantage.

It was only after exhausting all of these possibilities, after enduring for centuries on local recruits and life-extending magic, that they finally asked to join the Order of Hermes. Even then they were insular, unwilling to let the Order in on all of their secrets, and quite willing to be tucked away in a corner and ignored. So long as they got what they wanted; the ability to poach promising female recruits, to gather books from every continent, and to gain the additional security that came with the Order of Hermes. What few people know is that they were for a while thinking of the Order of Reason, indeed had the Order of Reason been willing to set aside their fanatical monotheism the Seshati might very well have gone there instead. As it were they became the librarians of the Order of Hermes.

From now on the history of the Seshati and the sanctuary mostly follows that of the Order of Hermes in general. The next significant step forward for the House Shaea began with the dawn of the 19th Century. Though the Order of Reason viewed it as their greatest triumph the increased women’s rights, the romanticising of the pagan past, and the overall restlessness of the age finally allowed House Shaea another opening into western civilization. Much to the chagrin of traditionalists their power grew the most in the former Greek and Christian world, while Egypt itself lingered in darkness.

Of course their arrival on the scene and manipulation of the educational system didn’t go unnoticed. The Order of Reason and later Technocracy have the destruction of the Hall of Books as a priority, maybe not a very high priority but it’s on the list. This of course has forced a greater emphasis on defence and security; or rather many of their old security precautions are now for real. Despite that they have consistently refused to become a war-chantry, dedicating themselves to research and public relations.

Geography

In simple terms the realm is a slice of the Nile valley. The known, settled area has a fairly well determined size roughly 40 by 20 miles. This is mostly a large flat flood plain, most of which is devoted to agriculture. Further away from the Nile, in the areas reasonably safe from inundation, lie countless small villages. The two main towns of Iunu and Khnumu lie roughly three miles apart towards the middle of the realm, both of them on the eastern side of the river.

Once you move past the western banks of the Nile and into the interior you reach a set of barren hills cut by the occasional wadi. Here lies the necropolis, stretching on seemingly forever, with the only life being the jackals and the Sem-Priests tending the tombs. Strangely the oldest tombs are the ones further away from the river, as if the hills are slowly shifting towards the west.

North and south of the settled lands lies only wilderness, the only people who go there are fishermen and hunters. The area is rich in fish and fowl, but there are also crocodiles, hippopotamus and other dangerous animals that rarely stray into the inhabited area. The further from the settled land you get the stranger and larger the beasts. East and west lie the desert, the Red Land ruled by Lord Set. Few people ever head out there as only monsters and strange tribesmen live there. Also the land seems to trap unwary travellers, sandstorms come out of nowhere, the heat is oppressive, and odd mirages rise up of the desert.

Should you persevere and push on to the north you will after an indeterminable period reach a thick, dense swamp. Much like what the delta would look like if utterly untended. Here you can find both monsters and good game, but it is very difficult to persuade any native to come along. Past the swamp lies a huge green lake filled with monsters and subject to horrid storms, huge storm clouds always rest over said lake. In short oddly reminiscent of how the Egyptians viewed the Mediterranean.

Continue further south and you will eventually spot an enormous waterwheel lifting up water from an unseen source and depositing it into the Nile. No one has been able to actually reach this waterwheel, though expeditions have been sent. Legend has it that this is the home of Hapy, the Nile god, and that the waterwheel also irrigates his legendary farm.

The cautious traveller should note that the further you go from the settled areas the more arbitrary travel times and distances become. However it is invariably true that it is much faster to move towards the inhabited lands than away from them.