The Scattering at Babel

Chronicle Entry For The Secret Annex
Recorded by Brother Wyn of Caermynach,
Anno Domini 922
Known As: The Fall of Babel
Location: Shinar
Primary Source: Merchant reckonings preserved by the Cwmni’r Llwybrau

The City

It is necessary to set down what the later tellings commonly lose. The holy book offers us the guidance we need, but it is incomplete. Babel was a city for fourteen summers, demonstrating the very best and worst of our people. The leaves handed to me place it in seven rings, growing up from the riverbank like a mountain, with the spire towering above. Clay roads, and the Buranun itself (later known as the Euphrates in the Greek tongue), carried timber, stone and metals from the Zagros mountains, the lands around the gulf, or the hills to the north.

Shinar has little stone of its own. What was needed for the higher work came by barge and passed through the gates. The bronze was a new invention, and kept for the most precious of creations, including the central spire. This is why the old accounts concern themselves so often with the river. For I believe without it, there would have been no Babel.

The Great Flood scattered the Clayborn survivors and children of Adam alike, and eight generations after the waters fell away, it was Nimrod’s dream that united them in a single tongue. For one purpose.

To build to safety, beyond any second flood.

Even after the promise of the rainbow, many believed the survival of forty of Cain’s line had broken Noah’s covenant. Babel was to be the answer.

The Spire

The spire was completed during the fourteenth summer, sitting proudly above the inner ring. Its crown carried a cap that held a bronze rod, the height of twenty men, forged in the lands beyond the north. Some believed the rod did not come from this world, instead forged in Aether, the otherworld beyond the Eastern Veil.

The first warnings came from the north, tremors reaching the outer rings and moving inward. When the lightning hit the rod, it returned to the same place each time, like a mallet to a fence post.  The force passed into the bronze and through the tower, then the stone failed in the upper work. It is reported that the rod fell through the levels beneath it, and the spire came down within the ring that had held it in place.

It is alleged that over a hundred thousand people lived at Babel, and one wonders if it would have reached the scale of Constantinople had it held for only a few more years.

Alas, it fell.

The four main roads leading from the city filled before the smoke had cleared. Those who fled Babel carried all they could, but most of the city was left where it fell.

Thousands who lived in the upper rings were less fortunate and were crushed beneath the spire, struck by the lightning storm, or trapped by falling debris.

The Eastern Witness

The three merchants who brought this account to Caermynach did not receive it from the same house. One came by the western sea, one by the roads south of the mountains, and the third by the old route through the Greek lands. Each named Zeus. Each placed him beyond the Buranun while the rod drew the lightning. They differed over what the people of Babel saw. This was not among their differences.

Only one of the leaves gave a different reason for the spire. According to my source from the Greek lands, Zeus raised it to hear the Song of the Stars. The bronze rod, the cap, and the height of the work were made for this purpose, and Babel was to be his instrument. When the lightning struck, the Song passed through the tower, and this is the source of the scattering itself. This version of events had set down the song, or some of the song, and I am able to cross-reference it with my findings from the Western Veil.

There is more to this that I simply do not understand.

The king will not perceive the throne,
Thunder shall break and suffer alone.
What cannot bend shall surely break,
The road remembers all that they take.

When mountains bow to higher peaks,
Resistance shall fall when the silent preach.

The crown will break where rivers run,
The last prince falls before the sun.
All roads lead to the Second Dawn,
When the moon will turn, and all is undone.

The Tongues

The Book of Genesis says that the language of Babel was confounded, and the road accounts preserve this consequence.

Those who could speak were not understood. A word reached the ear, but the resonance failed. Instructions could no longer pass along the road. The count that had governed the work was of no use once speech had broken.

Those who left the city did not remain together for long. Scattered north and south along the river, forging new, smaller settlements upon the Babel trade routes.

Final Entry

Babel was left in ruins, and the spire lay broken within the inner ring.

The men, women and children who escaped did not return to the lives their parents had known, and Nimrod’s dream lay in tatters. They had spent fourteen summers at the river, in the yards and upon the roads, and this knowledge travelled with them.

South of Babel, where the river spread through low ground, the settlements grew into the new cities of Sumer. Their rulers kept their own courts, and a man could leave one city by boat and find another within a day.

The names Sumer and Akkad came after the fall, but were borne of the people who remembered Babel. For not all was tragedy.

The Lion’s pride endured the failing of the ground, and the sons of empire set their hand upon Shinar.