Travel

CHAPTER 33 – III

The following is an excerpt from Victor Strife’s Lineal Champions of History, a book chronicling the known history of the Champions of Light and Dark, pieced together by the Vicars Salamander throughout the centuries…This entry focuses on the leadership of the Vicars Salamander…

Victor Strife’s Lineal Champions of History
Circa 11304-11369 Champions Era (1304-1369 AD)
The 79th Leader of the Vicars Salamander: The Traveler from modern-day Morocco

From northwest Africa he ventured eastward and down along the east coast of the mother continent and then back up through the fertile crescent stretching to the Balkans before heading back through the birthplace of civilization and around the Arabian peninsula and then through Persia and the Indian subcontinent before navigating southeast Asia and heading further east up into the Chinese mainland…and back home again…only to then cross the Mediterranean to travel along the coastal regions of Europe and then returned back to north Africa and ventured into its southwest, facing the Sahara head-on.

Taking the mantle of the Vicars Salamander at the age of twenty, he wasted no time researching the lineages of the Champions of Light and Dark. The Traveler had seen it all. Empires of the ancient and contemporary world were explored and enjoyed. Not since their founder had the VS had such a dedicated researcher, chronicler, and adventurer at their head. His predecessors had done a thorough job in identifying their present-day Champions and their immediate ancestors. It was The Traveler who took it upon himself to fill in the back catalog, confirming and disconfirming intuitions along the way. He connected dots that would have been otherwise erstwhile.

Well-versed in the Championship rules of lineage (that Championship reigns followed hereditarily to the first born, but lacking an offspring would sprout up geographically-randomly when the next terrestrial child was born), the VS was aware of Champions over the past few centuries that had sprung up in Arabia, Europe, China, and the Eurasian steppe. The Traveler had identified the individuals who were only loosely known to the VS: The Whisperer, The Archer, and The Interpreter, among others.

Never one for stillness, toward the end of his life he ventured into the African interior, combating some of the planet’s most unforgiving terrain, simply to follow up on some leads and hunches, trying evermore to fill in the gaps in his historical record. The Traveler will go down as the greatest VS since the original VS. He was a completist of the highest order.

Movement-Rest
Sameness and agitation
Change of orientation
Wonder is fleeting
Sameness repeating