Capitolo VIII, in che la storia vera & famosa del naue 'Beata Amaltea' finirà

There is little that can be said about the tremendous impact that Cavalcanti had at Val Royeaux that has not already been said. From the earliest days of Exaltations scholarship, historians like Eschhardt, Visconti, and Corriell have recognised this one mage-scholar's disproportionate contribution to the intellectual project of the Exaltations. This is all the more telling in that Cavalcanti was, himself, not an author on par with the great humanists of the time, such as Leone Rossi or Giorgia Varassi. But rather, the triumph of Exaltations thinking and humanist ideology sprung from the thirty-eight printing presses Cavalcanti was allowed to set up in Val Royeaux. First, of course, came the first edition of the Royan Chant of Light, set in an entirely new type based on the Divine's handwriting and designed as much as a tech demo as a book in its own right. But we know from surviving copies that this first print run was never intended to achieve mass circulation so much as to advertise the Divine's grand project to the pious aristocrats of the Empire.

No, it wasn't until Cavalcanti and his successors had refined their technology, their type, and their organisation enough to produce the third edition of the Royan Chant that any copy of the Maker's word spread more widely outside the learned echelons of society. Miniscule and efficient, not many of these tiny, cheaply-printed books have survived into our time, but we do know that the wide dissemination of Chants to village chantries across Thedas made clerical and lay literacy skyrocket over the Steel and Storm Ages. With it came a voracious appetite for reading material, an appetite that Cavalcanti and his rivals now springing up all over the Empire were more than happy to feed. In 5:68 Exalted, Cavalcanti issued a new edition of Gallian translated into Orlesian Common, followed by the orations of Vigilius and Stabion Misenon's Natural History and a host of other classics dear to the humanists' hearts. The effect they had on readers in Orlais, and the imitations and home-grown scholarship they sparked, are arguably a key impetus for such far-ranging changes as the development of the arts, impressive scientific advances, the birth of the modern state and the reformation of the Circles.

One cannot help but wonder what Marsilio Cavalcanti may have felt when he first set foot on the ship that was to take him to Val Royeaux. He left no diary, memoirs or ricordanze, and his letters to his friends are conspicuously silent on what transpired during the journey – leading one to suspect that the reclusive landlubber spent much of the voyage in ill health. Regardless, he must have felt a sense of trepidation at the changes he was about to facilitate, and pride to see his work validated by the highest religious authority in Thedas. Or perhaps he was entirely unaware of what significance history would assign his work until much later in his life, when he wrote to a friend who was considering moving to Val Royeaux: "in this city, which has been much improved since my arrival by the tireless efforts of its prefect, one yet still lives quite badly. Yet I am not discontented to be here, for I have had no small role in occasioning many changes for the glory of the Maker, the human race, and our endeavour of bringing light back into the darkness. If, my beloved friend, you should come here, you would no doubt find as I did that here your talents and ideas are held in greater honour than at home, and people are eager to listen to your advice, as they did to mine."

– Jean Dury, Marsilio Cavalcanti: Mage of His Age (Val Royeaux, 9:28 Dragon)

We do not know much about Curtis Darmond's early years. In the National Archives of Ostwick, a deed certifying his entry into the Templar Order as a squire survives; his mother paid nearly twenty-four sovereigns for his admission and her own entry into a monastery. This suggests that the Darmond family was not altogether wealthy, and that his father was either dead or absent. It was, however, in the Templar Order, which at the time maintained a small fleet of galleys, that young Curtis presumably acquired the navigational knowledge that would later make him famous. It is not known on what ships or in which actions he served, or when he got his first command, as the records of the Templar Order's admiral's office were lost in a fire in 7:21.

He must, however, have conducted himself with some renown, for in 5:79 he was given command by the Divine of a small flotilla of three caravels, to scout east across the ocean for the legendary homeland of the Qunari then threatening Thedas from the north. Setting sail the next year, he finally reached around noon of 12 Harvestmere 5:79 Exalted the archipelago that would come to bear his name, and was thus the first person known to have set foot on the New World since the exodus of the Qunari an age and a half before.

As is well-known, early hopes for a prosperous settlement and exploitation of these lands soon proved overly optimistic – after the arcane disaster that resulted in the ecological devastation of their homeland, the Qunari had been right to flee, and what few of their people had remained were soon all but wiped out by Thedosian diseases and arms. Only now, using modern technology, has it become possible to permanently settle in large parts of the New World. Darmond's discovery did, however, fundamentally shift the worldview of all Thedosians. Suddenly, the old paradigms of the world were shattered. The exploration and charting of the New World, arduous though it was, and the ordering and discovery of its native species of flora and fauna ultimately was one of the key causes of Thedosians' exploding interest in the natural sciences. From advances in mathematics and astronomy via alchemy and magic to anatomy and medicine, nothing remained as it had been. Curtis Darmond's discovery of the New World was the discovery of the Old World, as well.

– A.E. Collins, A Brief History of the World, vol. 3: The Age of Reason (Denerim, 8:12 Dragon)

La Tour de Montsalvat, Justine Celest[ine] Genevieve (* 5:25, † before 5:60). Fourth daughter of -Celestine Marguerite and -de Cremons, Ferraud Argent. Joined the Templar Order 5:38, knighted 5:43, possibly captain 5:45. Little is known about her life and her ashes are not located in the family crypt.

– Dictionnaire de la noblesse orlesienne à l'époque exalté 29 (Val Royeaux, 9:12 Dragon)

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