Pondering Truth In Sequence. Part 0: At Right Angles To The World

Over in another a discussion, /u/Jonny_Anonymous and myself got to talking about Truth In Sequence (TiS). TiS is a sort of Sermons for Sotha Sil, except that they're penned by one of Sotha's followers: Deldrise Morvayn, Fourth Tourbillon to the Mainspring Ever-Wound. And before we get to the detail of the text, it's worth talking about that title a little.

I looked up Tourbillon since I'd never encountered the term. Essentially, if the Escapement is the part of a clock or watch that keeps the hands moving at the correct speed, then a tourbillion is a way of mounting the escapement in a rotating frame so that any distortions due to gravity and a the angle of the timepiece are evened out over time. Particularly well-made watches might have had a double tourbillon so that the effects of gravity could be compensated for in two dimensions. It's possible that some existed with a triple tourbillion. A Fourth Tourbillon then has no function in a three dimensional world. It would have to rotate the escapement through time.

So that's Deldrise Morvayn - Fourth Tourbillon. His job description is that he rotates things through time to compensate for environmental influences that might cause inaccuracies in their operation. So he's not just Number Four Priest; the chances are there is no First, Second or Third Tourbillon - their work would be far too mundane. But there is a Fourth and his job is to stand and an impossible angle to the world and rotate something, possibly the Truth, through time.

If trying to think about that makes you feel a bit weird ... well, that's probably the right frame of mind to be in when you think about Truth In Sequence.

... and it's rapidly becoming clear that I'm going to need more than one lunchbreak to write all this down, so I'll leave this here and follow up later.