Goblin Diaries, Vol 24: Apology
From the 09/19/25 newsletter:
I need to issue an apology to my readers
for possible errors in our previous excerpt. To explain, let me give you a
little background.
The story of the adventurous love affair
between Erin Callen and Theon Alanis, chronicled in the Song of Tsing trilogy,
has been pieced together mainly from three different sources. Two of them were
originally oral ballads transposed into the written word thousands of years
later by historians. The Illisandra, an ancient Persian epic about an
antediluvian prince, contains accounts of battles in which the protagonist
fought against a mighty king with a singing sword. The Orcanis Heraldanus,
a somewhat disjointed collection of folk tales from across Saharan and
sub-Saharan Africa, has a number of versions of the affairs of both Erin/Theon
and Shia/Mustava, plus related references to places like Azurith, Zemburith,
and Arleanne.
But the document that ties the stories
together and links them with the activities of the Fae Protectorate is what I’m
attempting to publish here as The Goblin Diaries. Archeologists
uncovered the ancient text in what is believed to be the ruins of the Library
of Al’ahan. Though there are some dissenters in the academic community, most
scholars agree that it’s a translation of a journal kept by a goblin named
Trevor who seems to have been personally connected with both Erin Callen and
Theon Alanis.
The original journal must have been kept
in some sort of digital format, but the document found at the Library of
Al’ahan is written in the original High Elven, with a side-by-side translation
into an ancient form of Arabic. The team that found the document hailed it as the
Rosetta Stone for High Elven.
In fact, when my good friend Sir
Christopher Redding, a member of that archeological team called me, he said,
“John, we’ve found the Rosetta Stone for High Elven!”
Sir Chris is one of the foremost scholars
in High Elven, and it’s been a tough nut to crack. It has a logographic system
of characters a thousand times more complex than Chinese. I was happy for him,
but I wasn’t sure why he’d chosen me to share the news with. When he told me
what the text they’d found was about, I was ecstatic.
Sir Chris knew I was working on the Song
of Tsing, and he figured what he’d found would help. He was right, and he’s
been feeding me the results of his findings as he goes along. Trevor’s journal
shed a whole new light on Erin and Theon’s story. The journal has filled in so
many gaps. I wouldn’t have been able to write what I’ve written so far without
it.
But there have been some problems. As Sir
Chris dove deeper into the text, he began to suspect errors in the Arabic
translations within the document. And when he saw what I’d published in Episode
24, he called me right away. The character translated as ‘angel of mercy’ in
ancient Arabic is something akin to what might otherwise translate as ‘rescuer
with suspect intent’ or even ‘demon warrior’, which gives a significant change
in context to the entire passage.
I’ll publish any necessary corrections for Excerpt 24 as soon as I can. But, for now, I’m going to hold off on publishing
any further excerpts until we’re confident we’ve got the translations right.
Thanks for your understanding.
