(Thanks for your patience, everyone. Next chapter 9/4/24)

Part 7: The Zodiac Brave Story

Last Interlude: A Historian's Lesson

The work of living is the work of choosing paths.

We are, all of us, on a journey. We did not choose this journey: we were born into it, born upon a path we do not know, carried along by others until we could stand upon our own two feet. For a time, we walk alongside those who brought us here. But sooner or later, we step out on our own. Sooner or later, we start choosing our own paths, and our own companions on the journey.

It is years after our birth, years after those first toddling steps, years after we begin to walk the path with confidence, that we begin to understand just how little of our journey was up to us. How many paths were taken, to lead us where we stand today. And how many paths abandoned, over which we had no say.

To be a historian is to consider all those paths—the ones taken, and the ones left untrod. But every human being learns something of this truth as they grow. We never have as much say on where were walking as we first believe. And even after a lifetime of study, it is almost impossible to understand how much history truly precedes us. How many decisions, small and large, by a countless multitude, that built the world we live in today.

But the truth has a corollary I have always found comforting. If we ourselves are the products of an unimaginable infinity of choices, then by extension we must also be capable of making choices that will cascade down far into the future, far past the point our eyes can see.

Given the history of my family, and our long efforts to uncover hidden truths, I do wonder if I ever had much choice in becoming a historian. Olan Durai chose this path for all of us, in writing in the report that left him burnt at the stake for heresy. Those of us who survived him, even centuries down the line, could not help but try to give that sacrifice meaning. To try and uncover other truths, whatever the cost.

In my last book, I concluded my tale with the revelation that there was always more to the Germonique Gospel then first meets the eye. In another era, such revelation would have seen me burnt for heresy, as Olan himself was burnt. But the Church's star has waned, and anyways, such brutality is not tolerated in the Republic of Ivalice. I have my quarrels with this Republic—with its corruption, with the names of our senators so often taken from the same family lines as the old nobility, with the ways it quashes dissent under pretty fictions of a far-too-imperfect democracy—but I am a historian, and if I can complain about the world I live in, I can also concede that the Ivalice I live in today is a far better, brighter place than the Ivalice I describe here.

But the world we live in today was built upon the one I have spent so much of my life in studying—the one of war, savagery, and treachery, even disregarding the Lucavi who spun the chaos for their own ends. And that world inherited problems even without the Lucavi—the poverty and weakness left in the wake of the 50 Years' War, the paucity of knowledge and resources swallowed in the fall of Mullonde and the Ydoran Empire. And in the days of the Empire, who knew what decisions were made for them that they never had any say in? How much say did even the Lucavi have in what they were, and what they became? How much say had even men like Xande, and Germonique, and Ajora himself?

And yet we do have a say. The corruption of my time is a problem to be challenged, not excused simply because the powerful are less likely to murder those who speak out against them. The men who engineered the War of the Lions—men like Dycedarg Beoulve, and men like High Priest Marcel Funeral—could have chosen other ways to power that did not built their castles on the bones of the innumerable dead. And speaking of Dycedarg Beoulve: every Lucavi has a choice in what they become. As with the Lucavi, so with men. With Emperor Xande III, who murdered his own father to seize the horror his grandfather had set in motion for himself. With Ajora, a revolutionary who was willing to seize that horror in turn to realize his revolution once and for all. With Germonique, who believed that horror could not be permitted to exist, and burned the guilty and the innocent alike to stop it.

And so it is with Ramza Beoulve, who set out to stop the War of the Lions, and to put an end to the last relics of Project Ultima. And so it is with Alazlam Durai, who wants to share these truths with a world from which they've been hidden for far too long.

When last we spoke at length, I warned you that we were stepping firmly off the path of history now, and into tangled mix of myth, legend, history, story, and guesswork. Sometimes, ever so briefly, we have crossed back into documented historical fact—the Beoulve attack on Bethla Garrison is well-known, as is the burning of the Beoulve Manor and the sight of Zalbaag Beoulve battling a monster among the flames—but it is left to us to try and fill in the blank spaces on the map. Likewise, on this final stretch of our journey, we will have moments where we cross back into the historical record—when we arrive at Mullonde, at the Daravon Estate, and at Orbonne—but much of what I share here rests on the thinnest of foundations.

As a lifelong historian, I hesitate at every step along this path. My life has been spent in the earnest search for truth, and I do not easily admit how muddy such truth can be. Yet if I felt Germonique's warning most keenly when he spoke of truth and lies as tools, whose virtue depends on those who use him, I also felt something else. A lie can be useful, or necessary...but it is never good. Like a sword, even the best lies are only necessary evils, to be treated cautiously. Because the more you use a lie, the more lies are required to sustain it.

Truth can be terrible, as water can be terrible—as ocean waves can break an unready ship, or a river's flood can drown a village. But it is also necessary, and fundamental. Truth is powerful. And that power can be misused, yes...but that does not make it at less essential.

The path I lead you on is one that few others have walked. The truth we seek may drown us, or break us. But this is the path that was chosen for me, long before my birth. And it is the path I chose myself, when I was old enough to choose. And looking behind me, I see the signs and stories of so many others who have walked this difficult, dangerous path, to reveal essential truths. People like Ramza Beoulve, and the Zodiac Braves he assembled, to stop a terrible evil, and stem the tide of bloodshed that once threatened to drown Ivalice.

And as always, I am not alone upon my path. There is you, my faithful reader, bearing with me as I doubt and hesitate and struggle. Watching how I choose my paths, and choosing to follow me upon them.

I was set upon this path well before my birth. It is nearly 40 years since I first learned of Ramza Beoulve, and heard the secret truths my family had kept among themselves even before the Durai Report became public knowledge; it is 30 years since I began to study history, always with the secret truth I hoped to reveal to the world at the back of my mind; nearly 20 years since I began my work in earnest, and nearly 10 since I began sharing this work with the world. So many paths have passed beneath my feet. So much has been lost—my mother, and my brother, and more besides. I have often been weary. I have often been scared. I have often doubted whether this was a path worth the walking. A truth worth the telling.

But I believe I owe it to those who walked this path before. I believe I owe it to you, dear reader, who has joined me on this weird and winding path. And I believe I owe it to those who will come after, and will count on those who came before to chose wisely, so the paths they may walk may be better ones. Paths founded upon truth.

So one last time, dear reader. Join me on my own strange Zodiac Brave Story. Join me on one last search for the truth.