37 Life with Irvin

During the next few months, I tried to explain what exactly warfare should be like from my meager experience, while learning from Elder Irvin the written language and about the gods.

I told them about ambushes and supply lines, while he told me about heroic tales from the villages and what precisely that story tells us. Mostly it was about how an honorable fight is fought, and what the gods do for us - even though they rarely appear in those stories.

One thing I could tell from those stories was why the small people managed to attack even though the villages were once superior steadily. First, the villagers don´t have supply lines. That means they won´t get attacked, but that also means that a prolonged war is not sustainable. The villages had to retreat in order to hunt and collect food. While the small people probably had supply lines and could feed their troops constantly. Secondly, the villages do not attack retreating forces. Once they run the villages assume that they won and didn´t pursue. This means that they won´t get baited into traps, but also that the majority of soldiers of the small people did survive and could return. and lastly, the villages often enough decided to leave forts alone as they resemble villages and the villages don´t attack the young. That means they will often get sandwiched by two or more armies. Coupled with a lack of armor or weaponry I could see why we get pushed back by weaker people.

Elder Irvin and Engilde both looked disturbed by, my suggestion to ambush or maybe even lay fire to their forts - or as they call them villages. As they don´t have a word for fort they simply call it a village. But it is not! Probably. While there should be some civilians like smiths, cooks etcetera most of the people there are soldiers. So why not attack them? Why are there no night attacks? Why do they not attack supply lines? The list goes on and on, but all ideas get shot down by them telling me that it is either against tradition or cowardly. I get it tradition is nice and all, but as soon as it stands in the way of progress then it is bad to hold onto it.

For example, in the early years of Christianity, most priests were men. Not because women are not able to or even not because they weren´t allowed to. There were women as at least deacons and one of them is even written down in the Bible - even though later translations turned her male. So there were women in this position and just to add to that in the four-hundreds women in Rome had a lot to say about which Cleric would get promoted or not. The reason for that was money. Rich men in Rome married late because they first focused on their political careers and they married young women. So old men married basically teenagers. It is disgusting but that is not my point here. The point is if the woman survived giving birth, then the old men died first of natural causes. So suddenly there are a lot of rich women who society told to marry again, but why should they? Tradition? That is where the newly emerged church comes in because they also promote a life devoted to god and only god. Meaning that rich women did not have to marry again and it was accepted by society. So rich women sponsored a lot of clerics and helped them advance in their careers. The clerics sponsored would be able to raise the ranks easier. Another effect is that women who do not have birthed an heir would live in luxury and in the end give their fortune to the church. That is the founding of the riches of the catholic church. The women had quite some power but did not often enter the ranks of the church because they were rich. Why would they need to? But those notions started a long tradition that is holding the church back even two thousand years later. Why? Only because of traditions.

If somebody comes to me with the argument: we do this that way, because we always did so. That's not an argument, but laziness to think for themselves just a little bit.

Not changing doesn't mean success. You want morals and traditions to change with the times without losing their original meaning. The underlying message needs to be kept, but not the tradition exactly as written. It is easier said than done as most things are.

Sure enough, I lost my temper more often than I would like to admit as I described the pros of my so-called cowardly tactics. Everybody knows that in war everything is fair game.

Though we often argued at least I got some information about the elements. The four elements make up all of our world and are not only air, earth fire, and water, but additionally, to those, there are some concepts bound into them. Like air is movement and soul. Earth is power and gravity or space? There is a lot to question still, but I think those are at least associated with them. Water is definitely change and growth. For fire, it is energy and what I would call devouring. Then again every element is able to basically eat up some other elements, but not on the same scale as fire does. For example, why does the fire burn, if the wood is set on fire? Wood is mainly made out of earth and water, even if we take note of the air that the fire needs to burn how could water the opposite element, and earth that contains all the fire of the world burn to a crisp at such low temperatures?

The easy answer would be that after mixing with each other the magic magically disappeared and physics and atoms now rule the world. Perhaps I am thinking about it the wrong way... like in my old world where theology did not equal science. But it is confusing especially when I am able to take some form of power from the wind around me. That should not happen if the world isn´t magical anymore. So many questions and no answers as Elder Irvin and Engilde stared at me like I lost my mind.

And there is another thing that comes to mind as I remembered my conversation with Aer. I had two different souls inside me, apparently. Basically mine, the cursed one, and Aer´s when I turn the power in the wind into my own for a short while. And if I can control Aer´s wind or soul can´t I control my own?