Musings on the Silence of the Gods
The following is an excerpt from Loraphine Enthrintannosh's Musings of the Silence of the Gods, the first genuine effort by scholars to understand the events leading up to the Final Word. The work also exposed the structural failures in the Elican government's response to the crisis through the lens of the author's daughter, who was murdered by a mob of people who wrongly believed the clerics were at fault for the lack of divine influence.
Musings began a large-scale cultural reform within Elica. Much of the nation's culture had incorporated aspects of the Elican pantheon into daily life, and this movement sought to see those references excised from the nation.
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It was the morning of the sixteenth of Teldyn, year 4,715 AB. The final day of the final year of the Fifth Era, though none knew that yet. Those who stirred from slumber in the morning hours woke to a world that was yet untouched, the events of the day yet to unfold. My eldest daughter, a cleric for the goddess Pailox, performed her rites as she always did, blessing the many voyagers and travellers to her sanctuary at Allora. Though we did not speak that fateful morning, the goddess blessed me with warmth on that frigid morning, so I might know my daughter was well.
The light of Teld had just begun to cast itself full across my field when it became clear that something had shifted. My faithful companion, Escudo, was restless. Normally one for basking in the first rays of Teld's blessing, he instead avoided its light, moving throughout our home to cower in the darkest of corners. If I had been more observant on that morning, I might have noticed the silence of the birds, or the frightened aggression of my livestock. Had I been more observant, I might have felt the chill racing down my spine for what it was: an absence of the warmth. An absence of my god. An absence of my daughter.
By nightfall, the warmth I had been blessed with had all but vanished. The flames in the hearth did little to comfort me, as I'm sure it failed to comfort my daughter. They had already come for her. They had exacted their twisted form of revenge on an innocent girl who only wished to help. From what her friend in the sanctuary told me, the guards had done little to disperse the crowd. Many had joined it, abandoning their duty to the people whose blood was being spilled.
It took days to restore order. Days where I sat alone, waiting for news of my daughter. I had no gods to turn to, no comfort in divinity or worship. The gods had forsaken us, abandoned us, so who am I to still venerate them? Who are we to give to the gods what they seem unwilling to give us? They had left us without hope, without recourse. My daughter lay dying for six days. If the gods could not help one of their most devout servants, what business do we have giving our lives to them?