My esteemed colleagues, members of the college, esteemed guest from the library. After a decade of field research and countless hours in the depths of the lowest halls I could reach of our fair city I come to you with more questions than answers.

How is it possible that after untold years of ardent and powerful worship that we cannot name a single god in what Al accounts say was a bountiful pantheon? How is that manuscript and edifice, pillar and scroll have been scrubbed clean as if a bandit with chisel and brush swept through?

I challenge you. Find your oldest elder and ask them the gods their parents’ parents prayed to. Find an altar. It is as if the very identities of the gods were eaten along with their power.

Yes. Murmur and scoff. But you cannot argue. I call on this august body to instead glance to the ramifications! What malfeasance or chicanery caused the very fabric of our knowledge to be undone. What crimes have been hidden under the fog that has been draped over our eyes to what gods were tackled and bound? Could a god have therefore escaped? We will never know for we do not know who came before!

The last lecture of Ava Scipnra, once professor of Rivershear’s college of history.