‡ “A small, circular piece of brass …” It should surprise no one to learn that the metalworkers of Broken, as well as those of the Bane, were capable of producing such alloys as brass, bronze, and steel (although the Bane were, of course, laboring with far less advanced equipment than was available in Broken, and therefore were unable, up to the time of these events, to achieve the kind of alloys that were available to their enemies). The mountains of the area, as has been noted several times, are rich in all the ores necessary to produce these important materials, or rather, they were, at the time: again, the originally plentiful deposits were exhausted relatively early in the Industrial Age. —C.C.
† Atta Pass Gibbon would have been unable to do more than guess at the full meaning of this name, which is perhaps why it goes unnoted by him. Now, however, we can reliably translate atta as one of many Gothic terms for “father,” this one in the sense of “forefather”—but it may also have been intended, in the case of such an important and deadly physical location as this mountain pass, to carry a religious interpretation; and, while any reference to a masculine deity may at first make us think of Kafra, the state of religious flux that dominated Europe (even, to some extent, in and around Broken) at the time poses intriguing alternative interpretations, and suggestions of the Christian “Father” who is more familiar to us today — and whose faith was spreading throughout the Germanic tribes. —C.C.
‡ “‘… dwarfish exiles …’” Obviously, given the repeated explanations of the Bane’s height as having not been, in the main, a result of dwarfism, references on the part of anyone in Broken — especially Lord Baster-kin — to “misshapen dwarves” must be taken as a slur. They also offer consistent reinforcement of the fact that the Bane were not de facto dwarves, at least in the main: had they been, “dwarf-ish” would hardly have been such a common insult used in reference to them. We return, then, to the notion of “miniature” human beings, as well as the more likely question of genetic adaptation. —C.C.
† “‘… the Varisians with their longboats …’” Gibbon writes, “Once again, we must consider the words Frankesh and Varisian to be, like Torganian, mere phonetic approximations: the first for ‘Franks,’ or more precisely, the ‘Frankish,’ tribes who, as I have said, may already have driven the Torganians (‘Thuringians’) from the region south of Broken. Varisian, meanwhile, is clearly another such approximation, this one for ‘Frisian,’ a northern tribe notorious for their sea and river raiding.”
† “‘… our enemies.” It is important to understand that this discussion of torture, while it may seem anachronistic, is anything but, if one understands the history of warfare in any sort of detail. The torture of enemy combatants and noncombatants, and the question of whether any useful information gleaned by such methods outweighs the risk to the soldiers and people of the torturing side, is hardly unique to our own era: it is, in fact, at least as old as the Roman Empire, where it was debated in much the same fashion as it is today. The arguments have resurfaced regularly throughout Western history ever since; and we should therefore not be surprised to find it cropping up in these pages. Indeed, Gibbon himself is so familiar with it, apparently, that he does not even deem it worthy of mention. —C.C.
† the Lenthess-steyn Gibbon writes: “I must repeat, would that we had sufficient knowledge of the Broken dialect to comprehend the meaning of every phrase, particularly some of the most obscure yet revealing. One such is this place where the healers among the Bane, who appear to have been skilled in the use of herbs and the extracts of forest plants, did their noble and comforting work, and also, apparently, achieved advances in the knowledge of anatomy that religious superstition prevented in more ‘advanced’ societies and tribes — Galen himself [the father of Roman and, many believe, Western medicine] would have envied their freedom, in this regard!” Gibbon’s frustration over the lack of a precise translation perhaps prevented him from reasoning out the strange but appropriate meaning of the title of these caves. The phrase Lenthess-steyn can be pieced together from Gothic, Old High German, and Middle German (the usual mixture of the Broken dialect in its later phases): it seems to translate as “the Soft Stones,” implying caves in which the aged, the ill, or the wounded either recovered or had their journey to the Lunar afterlife eased, or “softened.” —C.C.
† “… effective in battle …” Before proceeding with any detailed discussion of the armor, helmets, and swords employed by the Bane and the army of Broken, one scholarly fact (best argued by Ewart Oakeshott in his Dark Age Warrior) must be reiterated, particularly regarding this region of northern Europe during the period under consideration: there are no definitive sources on the subject of just what “Dark Age warriors” employed for armor and helmets (and precious little concerning their manufacture and use of swords), and we must therefore judge largely by what we read in individual accounts — of which the Broken Manuscript is one of the most elaborate. Hence, we can infer, in this instance, that the presence of scale armor among the Bane is further evidence that Oxmontrot likely fought for the Roman armies of the eastern empire, as well as the western, since such “scale mail” was preferred by the formidable Byzantine (or Eastern Roman) armies. However, while the armorers of Broken appear to have been able to reproduce effective examples of this alternative to chain mail (an alternative that offered greater protection but limited range of motion), the Bane were apparently less able to do so. They likely had some quality examples (captured or stolen from Broken soldiers), but, as the narrator says, their craftsmen simply could not yet work in such detail, largely because of the quality of their iron — which, although about to improve, limited them to merely a few such suits, probably used more often for show than for combat.—C.C.
‡ “… the iron itself.” Again, the Bane were not, at this point, able to produce steel of a high enough grade to make the manufacture of truly quality blades and helmets possible, although they would soon gain the capacity to do so. This subject will be discussed in greater detail later in the story itself, but it does not spoil that story — and, more important, it is necessary — to note here that their swords were either of low-carbon steel, or steel laminated onto simple iron cores, as was common in barbarian Europe. Their helmets, meanwhile, were based very generally on those of the Broken army, which appear to have been within the family of Germanic adaptations of Roman helmets (and known collectively, as has already been discussed, as the Spangenhelm design) which included roughly conical or rounded helmets onto which were riveted or welded segments to cover the nose, cheeks, and sometimes the lower neck. The hinges in such designs were almost universally leather, save in the case of the highest-ranking soldiers, who could afford metal hinges. Without the latter two features, the Bane would have been left with something closer to the Norman helmet, a simple one-piece, conical design with a fixed nose guard as an organic extension, not a component: a sound enough protection, if the steel was of sufficient grade, which the Bane’s was not — a condition that was, again, about to be altered. —C.C.