The Relics - A Lecture by Dr. Khafra Phix
The Relics are not your friends.
Oh, to be sure, they were created to aid humanity and to help them progress to a remnant of the glory that they once knew, but an important distinction has to be made. A distinction between the Entities that inhabit the Relics, and the Relics themselves.
The Entities, such as Jinn and Ambrosius, are the personalities inhabiting the various Relics. They’re in the driver’s seat, so to speak. They are the consciousness, the “soul” (though whether the Entities themselves actually have souls is a matter of debate) of the Relics. They handle the nuance of the requests they receive, they’re the creativity behind Creation, Knowledge, Choice, and Destruction.
Think of them as the A.I. operating a supercomputer.
The Relics would not be able to get anything done without their Entities, but the power itself does not come from the Entities, it comes from the Relics. But the Relics are not conscious. They are not sentient. They are essentially machines. Machines on a level beyond anything the human mind can comprehend, powered by divine providence, but machines nonetheless.
Why make this distinction? The Entities are bound to their Relics, a part of them, so why get so specific? There can’t exist a Relic without its Entity, right?
Wrong.
Oh so very wrong.
There is another facet to the Relics which rarely gets commented on. While any one person being able to encounter each Entity and make note of certain patterns is highly unlikely, keen observers will note that each Entity has chains and shackles on their persons. This is not coincidence or mere aesthetic choice.
The Entities are prisoners.
The Relics are their prisons.
The implication is obvious. Prisons do not come into existence with prisoners. When the Relics fell to Remnant with Ozma those many thousands of years ago, the Entities as we know them did not exist. The Relics were hostless.
So where did they come from?
The simple answer is that we, that is being Doctor Ksenija Sydren and myself, do not know. The only Entity that we have any knowledge of their past on is the Entity most eager to sate the curiosity of man, Jinn. Since the revelation of the secret war roaring in the background of history was revealed to the world during the Fall of Atlas, much research has been poured into this subject. Suddenly, confusing aspects of history and mythology made far more sense.
Jinn has the distinction of being an important mythological figure in her mortal life: Amateru, the founder of Mistral. Usual mythological sources also attribute to her the role of “goddess of the sun”, but as we can see, that was a bit of an exaggeration, to say the least.
Still, the revelation that Amateru was a real person who existed and did quite a bit of what her legends claimed was a bit of a smack in the face for historical scholars. But we know all of this because the Entity of Knowledge told us about this and then claimed to be her, along with the tireless work done by Doctor Sydren utilizing her psychometric semblance on the Lamp.
Some have accused Jinn of lying, but all the evidence that we have about the Entity of Knowledge concludes that she is physically impossible of lying. We’ve gathered up records of every question that she’s answered as we possibly could, and then the answers to those questions, and near as we can tell... There’s not a single mistruth among them. Doctor Sydren’s research corroborates the tale as well.
So here’s what we can glean:
After the founding of Mistral and towards the end of her life, Amateru happened across the Relic of Knowledge. The Relic, at that point in time, was hostless. Whether it previously had a host that somehow escaped the Relic or whether Amateru became the first host is unknown. Regardless, when the former slave queen touched the Relic... well, something happened. Obviously. The exact process and transformation is not privy to us as of yet, but it is at this point that Amateru vanishes from the historical record and Jinn enters it.
Assuming that the rest of the Relics act like the Relic of Knowledge, that has vast, troubling implications. That means that every Entity was once a mortal who came into contact while the Relic was hostless and became trapped inside, thrust into a role that they likely had no knowledge of. Stuck for an eternity.
As stated before, the Relics themselves are amoral divine machines, likely merely following a sort of programming directive. It does beg the question, though... Is there some sort of screening process for a compatible host? Or is it simply the first sentient being to come into contact with a Relic?
We don’t know.
We likely won’t know until Jinn becomes active again in the next century.
Efforts have been made to approach the other Entities and get their perspective, but the other Relics have been staunchly guarded by their protectors, and rightly so. Still, it makes the scholarly pursuit of knowledge... frustrating, at times.
I know that this is a lot to take in, but I will conclude this lecture by leaving you with this thought to ponder over the weekend:
If the Entities are prisoners, is it possible for them to escape?
- Doctor Khafra Phix, Head of the Pre-Remnant Archaeology Department at the Imperial University of Levante Made possible by research done by Doctor Ksenija Nasreen Sydren
