Huh. What to use for this? Oh, right! There's this blog thing. That will do.

So it seems that at some point in 1999 or thereabouts, I decided it was a good idea to write biographies for the first hundred magi of the Order. That's what I've been shovelling on line these past few days.

Interestingly enough, though, it seems that while I did create files for both Pilafian and Vir Macer, the eldest students of Savacion, I left both documents utterly blank.

I don't really clearly remember this, but I'm guessing that my reason was that on some fundamental level, I always thought of Pilafian and Vir Macer as Kip's babies, and I didn't feel entirely comfortable dealing with them.

So. Their vital stats, and all of the really important stuff that is known about them, are in their wiki entries. There are a couple of other things about them mentioned in the Big Black Book. There's a story about Pilafian rescuing his first apprentice, the future Proclamator, from execution in Evasendia (Proclamator idolized Savacion, and was following in his footsteps by playing at demagoguery and revolutionary politics). There's a bit about the dispute between the magi of the Ultorum and Pilafian's group when Pilafian leads them out of Rhythnor to found Isrillion in 256, and also a bit about how Pilafian's championing of Vindex to the rest of the Order makes everyone really unwilling to mess with the kid. And although there's nothing terribly specific about Vir Macer, there's a whole lot of implication, at any rate, about his character: he's reclusive, he's creepy, he's scary mofo you don't want to mess with, because he won't just kill you- he'll fuck you up, yo.

Oh, yeah, right. And there's also a story about Vir Macer fucking someone up. He messes up an Eleanorean who dared hurt his filius Strabo. And then he goes and gets himself killed at the ambush at the Dove's Nest.

But that's about it, more or less.

I seem to remember that I was particularly loathe to touch anything dealing with Pilafian at Isrillion—and especially with his death in 270—because I'd been under the distinct impression that Kip had very specific ideas about what precisely went down there, and I wasn't entirely sure what those ideas might have been. I do remember that there were...implications, at any rate, during the first Isrillion game, that Iassitor finally made good on her bargain with the Mountain King and was turned into Jasper's Seat in order to escape from Pilafian; and I also remember getting the impression that Pilafian somehow died at Isrillion in that same set of occurrences--although I could be mistaken about that last part. But I wasn't sure, so the history surrounding Pilafian's death is rather strikingly blank.

Which isn't to say that I didn't imagine possibilities, of course. I remember thinking that it was possible that Pilafian met his doom at the hands of that quiet little librarian Causidicus Solitarius, he who adopted Iassitor's orphaned student and passed her off as a Manerean, thus saving her from the Purge. I was getting a bit of a "hopelessly in love with Iassitor" vibe from old Causidicus—don't ask me why—and perhaps also something in me relished the mental image of The Great Pilafian choking out his life on the cold floor of Isrillion's Solarium, his lungs filled with water from that nasty aquam spell that Causidicus Solitarius' parens Ebriola Pretia had invented and used to gain her sigil from her own master Ledo back in 240, while Isrillion's tiny little librarian just stands there, an infinitisimal smile on his face...

(Why, yes! I was bullied by jocks back in grade school! Why do you ask?)

But of course, I don't know if that's really what happened. My little imaginary scenario occupies the same part of my mind that conjecture about future in-game events always occupied: it's not quite world creation, but something more like daydreaming. It's not history in the making, but merely conjecture. It's guessing about the world as it might turn out to be, not discovery of the world as it is.

Anyway. So if anyone wants to write up bios for Pilafian and Vir Macer, please please do! I don't think that I'm quite up to the task, myself: they've existed in the "hands off" realm for so long for me that I've got a serious block about them.

Hrm. Should this go under 'meta-,' do you think?