A Note from the High Flamekeeper

#sacred-flame #order-of-light #drakzen #handout #lore

A Note from the High Flamekeeper

Folded into the scroll case beside the chapel map. The hand is careful and unornamented — the writing of a senior officer, not a calligrapher. The paper is good but plain.

Drakzen —

What follows is what the Order's records contain about Saint Brenna of Aldernach and the brothers of your tradition who fell with her chapel. I have copied it as honestly as I can. Some of it is older than the war; some of it comes from the last reports we received before the meteor. The rest has been pieced together by Flamekeeper Vance at our archive, who has spent the better part of three years trying to reconcile the Drakkenheim records with what survived in our own.

I give you this so you have names to speak. The rite of your order asks for names. Where I could give them, I have. Where I could not, I have said so plainly.

— Ophelia Reed

Saint Brenna of Aldernach

(b. ca. 1005 — d. 1040, age thirty-five)

Brenna of Aldernach was a Sister of the Sacred Flame, not a knight. She took her novice vows at fourteen and her full vows at nineteen, both at the Cathedral of Saint Vitruvio in Drakkenheim. She trained as a healer at the infirmary attached to the cathedral and served there for ten years before the fighting reached the eastern districts.

When skirmishing moved into the residential boroughs in the spring of 1040, Brenna petitioned to remain at her infirmary rather than withdraw to the cathedral with the rest of the sisters. Her petition was denied. She refused the denial and stayed. By midsummer the infirmary had become the only working aid station in the eastern districts and was receiving wounded from both sides of the conflict. Brenna gave them all what care she could.

She was killed in late autumn, when the infirmary was overrun by a raiding party that did not honor the Sacred Flame's protection. The accounts differ on the details. What is agreed: she refused to leave a wounded man she was tending. She was killed at his bedside. The raiders did not finish him; he survived and reported what had happened.

She was canonized by the Council of Flamekeepers seven years later. Her relics were returned to Drakkenheim and interred at the small chapel in the eastern borough that came to bear her name. The chapel was built around her, in honor of what she had refused to leave.

The body in the tomb is the body she died in. Her order wrapped her, and the brothers of your tradition stood her vigil for sixteen days before her interment.

She is remembered, in the Sacred Flame, as the patron saint of those who stay.

The Brothers of the Order of Light at the Chapel

When the meteor fell on the 16th of Autumntide, 1111, six brothers of the Order of Light were inside the Chapel of Saint Brenna. They had been tending the wounded who had been brought there during the early days of the city's collapse — the chapel was the nearest working sanctuary in the eastern borough, and its infirmary tradition, inherited from Brenna's own work, had been kept active for some seventy years by the time the sky came down.

None of the six walked out.

Our records identify three of them by name. The other three were almost certainly novitiates or junior brothers whose enrollment papers were lost in the cathedral fire that followed the meteor's impact. I am sorry I cannot give you their names. The rite of your order will hold the space for them regardless. I am told it is meant to.

The three we know:

Brother Casimir Vanth

(b. 1074 — d. 1111, age thirty-seven)

The senior brother present. A friend of the late Flamekeeper Janus Hale. Vanth had served at Castle Drakken in his early years and transferred to the eastern borough after his health declined. He was known for keeping vigil on nights when others would not. The records describe him as quiet and devout. He carried a small ember on a chain — the same kind of relic your order has always carried.

Brother Anselm Reeve

(b. 1082 — d. 1111, age twenty-nine)

A field brother. Reeve had served three years at Saint Selina's Monastery and was assigned to the Chapel of Saint Brenna six months before the meteor fell. He was a healer in the Brenna tradition — he had asked specifically to serve at her chapel and had been granted the assignment. He had family in Aldernach, the same village Brenna came from. I do not know if they ever knew each other in life, but the records suggest he believed they did.

Brother Theodric Vail

(b. 1077 — d. 1111, age thirty-four)

A scholar of your order. Vail had been writing a history of the Order of Light at the time of his death — a work meant to preserve the contemplative tradition's practices for a generation he correctly believed would forget them. His draft did not survive. We know of it only because his correspondence with the cathedral archive mentioned it three times. He was, by the testimony of those who served with him, a kind and patient man.

And three others whose names are lost

The records were too damaged. The rite holds space for them.

A Personal Word

I will not pretend to know what it is to be the last of your order. I have buried two flamekeepers in my own years here, and the loss of them was different in shape than what you are walking toward. I will not compare them.

What I will say is this. The brothers you will name in that chamber were not the whole of your order. They were six men in one chapel in one borough. Your order has buried many more than that, in many other places, and not all of those graves are sealed. There may be work ahead for you that I cannot see yet.

But Brenna's chapel is the first. And the first matters.

You do not have to do this rite. The Order will not punish refusal. If you stand in that chamber and decide it is not the day, that is a faithful answer too. Walk out. Come home. We will speak.

But if you do choose to do it — read the names slowly. They have waited fifteen years.

The Flame keep you.

— O.R.
High Flamekeeper, Camp Dawn

(folded inside the note, on a smaller slip of paper:)

A practical reminder — Brenna's tomb has candelabras still standing around her slab. They will need to be relit before the cleansing phase begins. The infirmary at the chapel may have lamp oil. If not, your own flame will suffice.

— O.R.