"The essence of our law is to protect our brothers from their own weaknesses."

- attributed to Hagg, "protomendicus" or "prince of beggars".

An excerpt from Sophos the Mendicant's illegal tract, The Unperceived World:

"Just as there are visible empires, ruled over by emperors, kings and princes, so too is there an invisible empire over which the lords have no jurisdiction - an empire extending to every part of the Loskalmi realm and far beyond, traversing all national boundaries to the end of the known world. Its subjects are known only to one another. They have laws, secret signs, even a language of their own, and they know everything, and pass on the knowledge, so that news of a movement of wild Uncolings beyond the Janube, or a revolt in foggy hills of Sartar; a murrain among the herds of Prax, or a new schism among the contentious theologians of Ralios; travels in ever-widening ripples of communication, often coming to the ears of the protomendicus long before the royal service of information has made the capital aware of the events. That secret empire is the world-wide Brotherhood of Beggars, and their leader is Hagios, master-almsman of the decaying metropolis of Sog, who sits at the base of great Milion."

Adapted from
The Female City,
an historical novel about the life of Empress Theodora by Paul I Wellman (Werner Laurie, 1954).

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