Holding V, Stars.
Last corrected Year 400 by Yshara Voidweaver Longwatch, Keeper of Record.
We were founded to find Remnari unaccounted for after the Separation. The founding assembly put it in one sentence and never changed it:
We are the ones who arrived. We will not be the only ones who arrived. The Charge, Year 1
Among the unaccounted is a company of our kin, several generations removed by the time we were founded, last reported bound for this part of the Astral Sea. Finding them is the longest thing we have ever done and the reason this holding exists.
What has actually come in
Across four centuries, arrivals have brought us reports. We wrote every one down. No two agree in detail and none has survived close questioning.
| Recorded | The report | Standing |
|---|---|---|
| Year 44 | A Remnari seen at distance. No fix on place or year. The trader was never found again. | Unconfirmed |
| Year 88 | A settlement described secondhand, placed in three different regions weeks apart. | Contradictory |
| Year 122 | Wings against a lit body, seen by a Hadozee crew. They were sure about the wings and unsure about everything else. | Unconfirmed |
| Year 169 | A trader’s account of a people who would not come down to a ground. The details do not match how we live. | Doubted |
| Year 236 | A name heard at a port, close to one of our lineage names. Never heard again. | Thin |
| Year 283 | Lights reported where the charts hold nothing. Region searched twice. Nothing. | Closed |
| Year 347 | The same region, from an unrelated source. Searched a third time. Nothing. | Closed |
We keep them all, on the principle that thin evidence is still evidence, and that a report thrown away for being inconvenient cannot be looked at again when it stops being inconvenient.
On the weight of these, we came to treat Rolaraspace as the likeliest sphere to hold our kin. The charts of it are the most worked we keep and carry our most recent corrections.
Sael Anthek Coldchart’s objection of Year 125, that these reports are what a people wanting to find their kin will always produce and that we have no test to tell the difference, is in the register and has never been answered.
The arrival from the Ground
Entered Year 392. Corrected Year 394, 397, 398, 400.
A young Remnari came to the fortress from the Ground of Rolara and gave his name as Ami. Alone, unannounced, not found by any search of ours, and, so far as we know, the only Remnari on that world.
He came as a boy. He has come back since at intervals, briefly, with long gaps.
He is not a result of the search and is not entered as one. One person is not a settlement, and an arrival we did not produce is not a finding we can claim.
Entries elsewhere about the same person
Cross-referenced here because they sit in other holdings and someone working the search will not otherwise meet them.
| What was done | Holding | When |
|---|---|---|
| Room 41, Block One, held empty on standing order, not to be reassigned. Four sessions of argument. | IV | Year 395 |
| Ami entered on the register of Given Names. Three children born here since have been named from it. | IV | Year 394 |
| Named our authority on the surface of Rolara. The only first-hand source on any inhabited ground in this Archive. | V | Year 392 to Year 397 |
| Four corrections entered in his hand against the chart register. | V | Year 394 to Year 400 |
| Elder credentials granted, over a recorded objection. | IV | Year 400 |
| Rite of Echoing moved, deferred twice, then held. All three parts now stand. | IV | Year 396, Year 399 |
The governance record does not show any of this being told to him. He is aboard some twenty days in a year, and all of it was transacted while he was elsewhere.
Assessment
Entered Year 398 by Yshara Voidweaver Longwatch, Keeper of Record.
He is not a result of the search.
He is also the only Remnari not of this fortress that we have located, been located by, or established to exist, in four hundred years of looking.
Coldchart’s objection holds on the evidence available in Year 125. It does not hold on the evidence available now. A Remnari was in this sphere and has been found, which means the search has been aimed correctly the whole time.
I ask that the objection be marked answered in the register, and that the charting programme continue at its present strength.
Addendum
Entered Year 400 by the same keeper.
Holding III says the radiant ray is available only on a plane that is neither Astral nor Material, and that flight is gone on such a plane.
Four of the fourteen tellings in The Ones Who Went Ahead say the company that went ahead carries light in their hands.
If those four preserve anything at all, that company came to rest on a plane that is neither. No chart in this holding shows such a place and no instrument aboard would register one.
I have no method to propose and I am entering the difficulty rather than a solution. The question goes to the next seating and stands open against the charts.