Family History

Sir Method

Lived in Era 14, got 1 heir(s) (Method) and was a member of The Falcons
As you take a look the book lying before your eyes, you can’t help but wonder if you are mistaken. This plain old brown book, almost falling into pieces surely cannot be the journal of a nobleman. You can feel it through your fingers, this book never was of high quality. The cover, made of cheap material, is barely holding the pages together. The pages themselves would be better used to polish wood than to be written on. Yet for those in the known, there is no mistaking. The family crest, a sword slicing a piece of wood in half overshadowed by a Falcon’s head, is about the only thing still holding up on this book. Far from being a work of art, it resembles more the work of a young child learning how to carve wood. Nevertheless this is the right book and this crest indeed represents Sir Method of The Falcons Kingdom.

When you start to read the content, you quickly find yourself skipping pages and only reading a couple of words here and there. The stories found in this book aren’t very impressive, let alone interesting: peasants writing about their peasants life. Some of them seemed to enjoy writing more than others as you can tell from the level of details (but most importantly by the size of each entry) written by each men. The dates follow each other with absolute precision: twice a year every year, an entry is written. Writers succeed each other, sometimes because the last writer finds himself too old to perpetrate the tradition, sometimes because he had died, most often from some illness.

After scanning through the majority of the book, you haven’t learned anything important. Your knowledge of the family is barely enough to know that they have been peasants ever since they arrived in the Utopia region. The first writer didn’t seem to deem important to reveal where he had come from and the reasons that pushed him to leave. Perhaps the only hint is the evolution towards a more Standard English as you go further in the book. Wherever this family comes from, they weren’t speaking english when they got here. So the most important information about this family cannot be found while there is hundred of pages worth of petty details such as the growth of corn and vegetables. Be it luck or a fate of boredom, it seems nothing important ever happened to any members of this family. Until Mr Method came into possession that is.

You notice right away that Method inherited this book at a younger age than most of his descendants. It seems his father died from pneumonia when Method was only 10 years old. You quickly realise his first entries weren’t different from what any other 10 year old would come up if you asked him to resume the last few months of his life. Details about the neighbours cat, someone named Josephine, a big bug that haunted Method’s nightmares, this sort of things. All very important things perhaps from his perspective at that time but nothing of any importance now. Reading his entries, you notice that as he grew up a feeling of desperation grew as well. Desperation about his boring life leading him nowhere his ancestors didn’t already go. You can feel it in his ugly little writing: he isn't suited for this kind of life.

All of a sudden, pages are left blank. After following the evolution of Method’s thoughts, you could easily fear a suicide would have brought these memoirs to a sudden halt should you not have known he still is alive. His last entry was as depressing as could be and he wasn’t seeing many solutions to end it all. Yet, the entries are back a few pages later. He even seems brighter than ever. It isn't very hard to see that the dates from the last entry to the next one after the skipped pages aren’t right: entries have been skipped. It is easily noticeable, as there is now a world of difference between the usual entries and the new ones. The writing is now much more fancy, with well made letters and well thought out presentation. Where as in the earlier entries the text would just come in a block, paragraphs have now found their way into the book. Drawings also start to appear, although Method’s artistic doesn’t seem to go beyond writing nicely formed letters. But perhaps the most important change is the vocabulary he uses to write. Bizarre words can now be found here and there in his texts and he doesn’t use the first person anymore. After reading a couple of lines, you indeed notice that when he says: “We knew all along we had made the right choice.”, he is actually talking about himself alone.

The reason for this change soon becomes clear. Whereas before he wouldn’t even sign his name at the end of his entries (he actually only wrote his name once in his very first entry and that was it), he now makes sure to sign “Sir Method” every chance he gets. The entries have resumed at a normal pace, but no words on why many have been skipped. The first entry after the absence merely consisted of him expressing his joy of being knighted by King Plokoon, describing the ceremony and the powerful men who took part. Other than that, no words on how he had found himself worthy of being knighted and no explanations about how he ended up the head of his very own towns and was looking to expend even more for the glory of The Falcons Kingdom. The next entry is last one he wrote as of yet. In it you find out that he isn’t shy to dream of bigger and better things for him, his people and his kingdom. He believes he is destined to do great things for his kingdom. He doesn’t look like he has any ideas what is waiting for him in these lands. It seems to be quite clear for him: he will one day accomplish great deeds that will forever go down in history. He knows it: his name shall not be forgotten.