Lexicon/CouncilForthrightTongue
Council of the Forthright Tongues
Commentary penned by Nikos Vallay (S2,L3,T4) of the Mad Quill Society
The Council of Forthright Tongues arose as a direct result of the Guide to Magical Creatures. Once that monstrosity reached a certain pinnacle of size and popularity it turned into a quagmire of scholastic knowledge and pedantic commentary. Trying to reference or cite anything from it was purpoted to be a nightmare and certain portions of it became so entangled with clashing opinions and dozens of sub-pages as to be near indecipherable. The fact that new, compiled editions were being produced seasonally and in a multitude of languages and formats only complicated matters further. Outraged scholars and scribes, many of whom banded together and formed the Council of Forthright Tongues to establish and codify a set of grammatical rules and formatting standards which could be applied universaly throughout Creation. "Many Scribes; One Pen" became their motto and after a year of deliberation, they produced the Manual of Elucidated Style. Needless to say, those lorekeepers, scholars, and researchers not on the council, many of whom were contributors to the Guide, flew into a self-righteous fury over the Council's announcement that everyone should follow their rules. Academic debate and dialogue erupted across the salons, schools, universities and libraries of Creation. The work which precipitated the entire fiasco, the Guide to Magical Creatures, suffered its one and only standstill in evolution as no one worked on the project for two whole seasons, so embroiled were they in the linguistic war.
The situation reached a breaking point when a massive public debate and consortium held at the Proskemiological University went awry. It is said that about halfway through the proceedings the debate became a riot which resulted in hundreds of pitched battles, physical, verbal, and mental, between groups of veteran and respected Academians as frightened and bewildered students ran amok across the University's grounds. When the smoke cleared, (University custodians maintained that it took days to put out all the fires), the Council had the most members standing and won by default. As time progressed, wounds mended, scars ceased to ache, and the community as a whole sheepishly came around to the point that the Manual wasn't that bad and that having a set of rules everyone could follow probably was a good idea. The Council became an elected body whose duty was to keep the Manual amended and contemporary.
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