Ultimate Sacrifice

Roggan and Matilda Are One

Roggan has sacrificed himself to keep us all alive. I feel lucky to have known such a great soul, someone that tried to remind us all that happiness and joy are weapons of the Light! Palladium has truly lost one of the truly good souls, a beacon of Light. While he will be with CrIsis throughout their trials, making Matilda even more magical, his smile, his dance, his tongue, and his outlook will forever be missed.

This hurts more than all can imagine- so I leave you with some prose that does not come close to recognizing one so magnificent, whose sacrifice was so great. I hope you find many rock friends Roggan!

And as who in the Ma’at avenue,
Sphinx ranged by Sphinx, goes awestruck, nor may read
That ancient awful creed
Closed in their granite calm:–so dim the clue,
So tangled, tracking through
That labyrinthine soul which, day by day
Changing, yet kept one long imperious way:
Strong in his weakness; confident, yet forlorn;
Waning and waxing; diamond-keen, or dull,
As that star Wonderful,
Roggan, for ever, dying and reborn:–
Blissful or baleful, yet a Power throughout,
Throned in dim altitude o’er the common rout.

Children of Light! If, in the slow-paced course
Of vital change, your work seem incomplete,
Your conquest-hour defeat,
Won by mild compromise, by the invisible force
That owns no earthly source;
Yet to all time your gifts to man endure,
Gods being with you, and the victory sure!
For though o’er Gods the Giants in the course
May lord it, Strength o’er Beauty; yet the Soul
Immortal, clasps the goal;
Fair Joy triumphs by her inborn force:
Thus far on earth! . . . But, ah! from mortal sight
The crowning glory veils itself in light!

Yet his the dangerous posts that few can mark,
The crimson death, the dread unerring aim,
The fatal ball that whizzes through the dark,
The just-recorded name—
The faithful following of the flag all day,
The duty done that brings no nation’s thanks,
The Ke Kontan of some grim and gray
A Salvator of the ranks.
These are the things our commonweal to guard,
The patient strength that is too proud to press,
The duty done for duty, not reward,
The lofty littleness.
And they of greater state who never turned,
Taking their path of duty high and higher,
What do we deem that they, too, may have learned

In that baptismal fire?
Not that the only end beneath the sun
Is to make every sea a trading lake,
And all our splendid Palladium history one
Voluminous mistake.
They who marched up the bluffs last stormy week—
Some of them, ere they reached the mountain’s crown,
The wind of battle breathing on their cheek
Suddenly laid them down.

Like sleepers—not like those whose race is run—
Fast, fast asleep amid the cannon’s roar,
Them no reveille and no morning gun
Shall ever waken more.
And the troglodyte passed from off the face
Of those who lived, and into it instead
Came proud forgetfulness of ball and race,
Sweet commune with the dead.
And thoughts beyond their thoughts the Spirit lent,
And manly tears made mist upon their eyes,
And to them came a great presentiment
Of high self-sacrifice.

Submitted by Terramore Gleba on the 25th of Selestra in the 22nd year of Emperor Voelkian Itomas II.

This poem, in actuality, is a mixture of a poem from Archbishop William Alexander, “Is War The Only Thing That Has No Good In It?” and a poem from Francis Turner Palgrave, “A Churchyard In Oxfordshire.” I added a small amount of text. Go read some Poetry!!

First 3 pictures of Roggan from the player himself, Gaitkeeper. Final Roggan picture from Syreene.