{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2359",
    "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it.  Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
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  "archive": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 2359,
    "subject": "Lives and Times of the Master Torturers I; and Sister Pia",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2000-08-19T13:25:10+00:00",
    "last": "2000-08-19T13:25:10+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0029-0174@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Talarican",
        "address": "exultnttalarican at mindspring.com"
      },
      "date": "2000-08-19T13:25:10+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Lives and Times of the Master Torturers I; and Sister Pia",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Mr Arimini:\nEnjoyed your idea about Pia as Severian's lost sister, and your reasoning is\nintriguing. You are hereby nominated for the Borski Award. Now, if a\nplausible explanation can be found for Pia's presence among the lake people\nof Diuturna (with some solid indication she was not born among them - or\nthat Sev WAS), and how Pia might turn out to have the true name Severa, you\nmight blow the lid off this mystery.\n\nRoy Lackey:\nNow you've done it! You've lured Sieur Talarican from lurking and stoked his\nmadness to fever pitch.\n\nIt so happens we had been working on a chronology of the guild and its\nmasters prior to Severian's lifetime, such project being inspired by an\nexchange between Shannon Wilde and ourselves when a question regarding\nPalaemon's age and exile arose.\n\nAll we lack, alas, are any solid conclusions or discoveries arising from our\nresearch, other than to reinforce suspicions that the guild was\norganizationally a shambles and could no longer provide itself enough\nmasters by the traditional route to sustain itself, and, possibly as a\nresult, that Gurloes, particularly, was quite young to be a master.\n\nIn hopes other Urthlings might spot something significant, we submit the\nfollowing:\n\n\nThe Old Masters: When Did Palaemon Begin Teaching?\n\nConstructing a consistent sensible chronology of the torturers' guild\nmasters in the generation immediately prior to Severian's has turned up\nanother set of enigmas\n\nMantis, in _Lexicon Urthus_  (hrta \"LU\"), asserts Severian is twenty years\nold at the time of his masking and elevation to journeyman, which of course\nwas followed immediately by his disgrace and exile. LU uses the year Sev\nascends to Autarch as the datum point for its chronology under the \"history\"\nentry. I shall stick with that convention, the \"years of the Autarch\nSeverian\". Therefore as LU has it, Severian was born around 20 p.s. and his\nnear drowning occurred during about 2 p.s.\n\nSeverian has told us of exactly three masters he knew in his lifetime, of\nwhom two were alive at the time of his masking and subsequent disgrace. All\nthree apparently had been masters at least since Severian was old enough to\nremember them. And, because of Sev's phenomenal memory which at times\nreaches back to his infancy, we must conclude that all of the three had been\nelevated before his birth, and that all other masters were dead by then or\nvery shortly afterwards.\n\nAny chronology of the guild and the lives of Masters Malrubius, Palaemon,\nand Gurloes, in the decades preceding Severian's masking, must take into\naccount all of the following:\n\nAt the time of his masking, Severian is approximately nineteen years old,\ngive or take a year or two (implied, Shadow I and III, et al; also see\n\"history\" entry in _Lexicon Urthus_).\n\nMasters Malrubius, Palaemon, and Gurloes all had been masters so long as he\ncan remember, meaning presumably since before his birth. Severian evidently\nremembers no other masters during his lifetime, ergo there were none, at\nleast since his very early infancy. Ergo, the last \"other\" master died\nbefore 19 p.s (Shadow ).\n\nPalaemon had seemed elderly for all of Severian's life ( Claw ? ), ergo, he\nmust have been at least in his fifties when Sev was born.\n\nMalrubius died when Severian was still a boy, \"several\" years before Sev's\nmasking. After Malrubius took to his bed, Palaemon succeeded him  (Shadow\nII, XI, and XXXIII, et al).\n\nWinnoc related that he had been whipped approximately thirty years before\nSeverian met him in the lazaret, by \"Journeyman\" Palaemon, who told Winnoc\nhe had been exiled from the guild (Citadel XII). This of course works out to\nabout ten years before Sev's birth, or 30 p.s.\n\nGurloes seems to be a man in prime middle age at the time of Sev's masking.\nGurloes indicates his own youth was about forty years prior to Sev's year as\ncaptain (Shadow VII).\n\nGurloes had evidently been taught by Palaemon, at least as an older\napprentice (\"Since Gurloes rose to journeyman I have had no better scholar\"\nShadow XIV), in spite of the fact Malrubius was clearly the teacher of at\nleast the younger apprentices for so long as he was able, well into Sev's\nlifetime. It was only after Malrubius took to his deathbed during Sev's\nboyhood that Palaemon assumed the title 'master of apprentices' (Shadow\nXXXIII).\n\nAutarch Maruthas closed the roads when Palaemon was about twenty, that is,\nabout the same age as Severian when he lectured him on the morning of Sev's\ndeparture to exile (Shadow XIV). Unfortunately, so far as I could tell,\nthere doesn't seem to be any independent corroboration of the date on which\nthis occurred. LU's assertion of  c. 70 p.s. seems based on LU's estimate of\nPalaemon's age, about ninety, at the time of Sev's expulsion. (Mantis - ?)\n\n\nFurther speculations require some conjectures about the norms of seniority\nand promotion in the guild.\n\nFor an apprentice who has demonstrated competence in the Art, chooses to\ntake up the vocation, and otherwise has comported himself tolerably,\nelevation to journeyman seems to be almost automatic at around age 19 to 21.\nA journeyman might remain so for the rest of his life.\n\nThere is, however, a small corps of what might be termed \"specialists\" who\nseem to be journeymen whose vocation is in non-torture service to the guild.\nExamples include such personages as Brother Corbinian the apothecary,\nBrother Aybert the cook, and \"Brother Porter\" who guards the Corpse Door\n(assuming this isn't merely a functional title whose incumbent could be any\njourneyman). One might speculate that these could be 'civilians' who gained\ntheir employment through some connection to the guild (such as being\nex-apprentices who rejected masking but went to work for the guild in one of\nthese capacities instead?), but then why would they be referred to as\n\"Brother\"? One might speculate that Palaemon might have served, prior to his\nown elevation to master, a term as a specialist in research and scholarship,\na \"graduate assistant\" if you will.\n\nElevation of the journeyman to mastership is a rare honor bestowed only on a\nchosen few (Shadow ). Mastership doubtless traditionally followed many years\nof unimpeachable craftsmanship in the practice of the mystery of the guild.\nThe Seekers presumably followed the Earth medieval model in bestowing\nmastership on one who has not merely accumulated seniority and become highly\ncompetent, but who has advanced the art in some way, producing for his guild\n's approval the proverbial \"masterpiece\". What a \"masterpiece\" in the\nTorturer's Guild might consist of, I'd rather not imagine. Once so elevated,\none is a master for life, unless there is some provision for revoking\nmastership for misbehavior. It is seriously doubtful that masters normally\nwere elevated younger than about fifty or so. However, the results of an\nattempt to systematically construct a chronology of the guild's recent\nhistory strongly implies Palaemon and especially Gurloes were elevated at\nsignificantly younger ages than was probably customary.\n\nSeverian states plainly that the major policy decisions of the guild,\nparticularly the elevation of new masters, are made by consensus of the\nincumbent masters. Probably it would be very awkward and embarassing for\nthere to be only a single master ruling as a dictator rather than a\ncommittee of at least two masters (as with Gurloes and Palaemon). For there\nto be no masters would of course spell the effective extinction of the\nguild, absent some kind of fudging.\n\nOne  master holds the office of  \"head\" of the guild, a sort of\nfirst-among-equals executive, who makes the day-to-day administrative\ndecisions. Gurloes clearly had occupied this office at least since Sev's\nbirth. But  how long could Gurloes possibly have been a master and \"head\" of\nthe guild ?"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}