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"Codex Derynianus"
"Being a Comprehensive Guide to the Peoples, Places, & Things Of the Derynye & the Human Worlds of the XI Kingdoms: Including Historyes of the Mayor & Minor States & the Occurrences Which Have Been of Most Importance to Them: With Compleat Biographyes of the Prominent Personages & Holy Saints of Gwynedd, Torenth, Meara, Bremagne, Mooryn, Howicce, Llannedd, The Connait, R'Kassi, Orsal and Tralia, Fallon, Byzantyun, The Forcinn Buffer States, & the Other Countryes of This Region From the Birth of Our Lord Jesus Christ unto Anno Domini MCXXVI: Together with a Detail'd Chronological Historye of the Great Sovereign Kingdom of Gwynedd & All Her Neighbours: Also Including a Liturgical Calendar of the Saints of Gwynedd: With Many Lists of the Patriarchs, Primates, Kings, Princes, Dukes, Earls, Counts, & Other Nobles & Notables of These States: With Much True Opinions & Observations Regarding Same."
The Codex was published in March 1998 by Borgo Press/Underwood Books. There were five hundred signed and numbered copies of this book available for the public to purchase. A number of further copies of the book, marked by letters, were produced for the authors. The Codex is cloth covered and comes with a cloth covered slipcase. On the front of the slipcase is an illustration of a stained glass window depicting Saint Camber offering a crown to King Kelson. The book was sold by Borgo Press and Amazon.com. A trade size paperback version was scheduled to be released in 2000, after the publication of a new novel called "King Kelson's Bride". Both of these books were to be published by Del Rey, Ballantine Books. KKB is now to be published by Ace Books and Del Rey will not be publishing the paperback version of the Codex. Ace Books may decide to publish the Codex if KKB is sucessful. The new Codex has been updated with information about the deryni world up to, and including, the events in KKB and is now 300,000 words long. The Codex is so astonishing that it can really knock you flat. (Well, with the hard back and the slipcase it is very solid and heavy.) It has been created as a modern copy of an old book that was written, lost and buried, and then discovered in recent years. So this book is published by people in the Deryni world as a copy of a book that they have found. The introduction to the Codex is written by a person of the Deryni world in the year 1996. The introduction explains that the possible original compiler of the Codex called himself Brother Theophilus and he produced the book in the fifth or sixth year of King Kelson's reign. The identity of Brother Theophius has been subject to intense speculation by the newsgroup and remains a mystery. Suggestions have been made that the book was written by number of people and then compiled by a person using a pseudonym. The book contains detailed information about Deryni people, as well as releaving the true identity and history of Alister/Camber. Thus leading to the conclusion that an unknown group of Deryni preserved the history, perhaps within the Camberian Council so as to explain the source of knowledge for Coram impersonating Rhydon. Another posibility is simply that a source of information is discovered in Kelson's time and that this explains much of the history around Camber's time and the years after.
ERRATA
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