the Book

The Book is a disciplinary text invoked by hierarchs when assigning penance. Avout speak of authorities "throwing the Book" at someone, meaning the person must complete a specified range of chapters, often immediately and without returning to other activities.

First Appearance and Context

During the closing festivities of an opening at the Concent of Saunt Edhar, the Warden Regulant warned of "throwing the Book" after a confrontation in the meadow and then formally assigned it to an avout, directing him straight to a cell in the Mynster. In subsequent days it remained the centerpiece of a penance carried out in a Regulant cell while rites and bell-changes continued elsewhere in the hall.

Roles/Actions and Affiliations

• Penance tool: Completing assigned chapters functions as a formal penance administered by the office that oversees internal Discipline.
• Procedure: The assignee studies, copies, memorizes, and then answers questions before a panel of hierarchs; work is done in seclusion within the Mynster.
• Oversight and appeal: Because the Regulant's office is a branch of the Inquisition, use of the Book is understood as part of maintaining Discipline; sentences at the higher levels may be appealed through the hierarchy.
• Deterrent in speech: Senior figures also invoke "studying the Book" as a threat to enforce compliance even outside routine concent life; at a Convox in Tredegarh a loctor warned an avout that failure to serve as instructed could mean "spending the rest of the Convox studying the Book."

Relationships

• Office: Administered by the Warden Regulant; at Saunt Edhar the current holder is Suur Trestanas, who has recently assigned a multi-chapter penance.
• Community: Invoked in connection with discipline following incidents during the opening, including warnings delivered to prominent Tenners.

Descriptions/Characteristics

• Structure and escalation: The Book comprises twelve chapters whose difficulty and burden increase steeply; each level is markedly harsher than the last.
• Early chapters: Initial levels are manageable (the first can be completed in hours; the second in a long day or an overnight); by the fifth, assignees typically face weeks of work.
• Content design: After an early section of digits (e.g., a chapter of pi), later writings are crafted to be maddening—almost but not quite sensible—so that they resist mnemonic tricks and demand exhaustive, demoralizing study.
• Compilation: Texts judged "the right kind of awful" have been reviewed and refined over centuries under inquisitorial oversight and folded into later editions, producing a maze-like corpus with no satisfying exit.
• Extremes and consequences: The highest assignment amounts to life at hard labor in solitary confinement; only a handful are remembered to have finished it across millennia, and survivors were said to be permanently unbalanced. Many assignees choose to leave rather than endure the later levels.

Current Status/Location

Active at Saunt Edhar and administered from the Regulant's quarters. Recent use has seen an avout sequestered to complete a fifth-level assignment in a penance cell within the Mynster; panel examination marks the end of such a sentence before the assignee returns to communal life. The Book is also referenced as a possible penalty during Convox proceedings at Tredegarh.

Notable Mentions

• During a hazardous overland journey, an avout imagines spending five years with nothing except the Book for company if he is not admitted at a gate, reflecting the Book's association with extended, solitary study.