Hall of Ancestry
“Every House keeps a wall of its names. The sernî do not draw their ancestors as a tree.”Jedîyah · Chapter 30, Section XI
The Houses of the sernî
“What is a House? A House is the people who share a fire and answer for one another.” Every sernî belongs to a House. The ruling house is House Korah.
The law of kin is the Second Protocol, the Protocol of the Bond, with its three rings: the Hearth Ring, the House Ring and the Line Ring.
It has a fire
It keeps a hearth, even if that hearth is a single lamp in a ship’s cabin, lit ember-from-ember from the House’s own flame.
It has a table
It eats together as often as the road allows, and keeps the Open Chair.
It has a door
It knows who is within its rings and welcomes the guest across the threshold.
It has a wall
It keeps the names of those who went before, and reads them aloud.
“A House with these four is whole, though it be only two people in a small room. A great mansion lacking them is only a roof.”Jedîyah · Chapter 30, Section I
The marks of the House
“Every sernî carries at least two dejr upon the skin: the House dejr and the personal dejr. The House dejr is the House’s own sign, the same for every child born of it… It is carried with honour, as a sign of the people, and it is never an image to bow to.”Jedîyah · Chapter 30, Section I
The wall, not the tree
2 The sernî do not draw their ancestors as a tree. A tree grows from one trunk and divides, and its branches grow apart from each other and never meet again; and it has a great trunk and lesser twigs, as though some of the dead were more and some were less. That is not how a people is made.
3 A House is made like a wall. Every stone in a wall holds up the stones above it and rests on the stones beneath, and if any one stone were taken out, all above would fall. No stone is a twig. The grandmother who kept a small inn on the grass road and is remembered only by her name and one story holds up the House as surely as the famous ancestor who crossed the western sea.
4 And a wall can be built upon. When a child is born, there is room on the wall for their name; and the wall, unlike a tree, is never finished, but grows higher with every generation, a shelter for those who live beneath it.
So the lineage viewer below is a wall: the oldest names are the foundation at the bottom, and each generation is a course of stones laid on the one before. Touch a stone to read it; the stones it rests on and the stones that rest on it are lit.
An example wall, from the Jedîyah · Chapter 30, Section XI
Touch a stone.
Walls shared with the Temple
No walls shared yet
Members may share their House wall here. Each one is read by a keeper of the Temple before it opens.
Build your House wall
Members can lay their own line, stone by stone: the name, the hearth name, the birth, the death, the account, and who each one was born of. Every wall is private by default. You may later ask for it to be shared in this Hall; a keeper reads it first.
Sign in or create an account to begin.
“Remembered by the Shared Fire, which forgets no one.”