Annals

Croaker adding to the Annals.

For the hardcover omnibus see: Annals of the Black Company (1986)

For the Tor ebundle see: Annals of the Black Company (2018)

“	It's told a hundred ways, poorly and well, according to the skill of the particular Annalist, but, except for the occasional interesting detail, it was the same old march, countermarch, fight, celebrate or run away, record the dead, and, sooner or later, get even with the sponsor for betraying us. Even at that place with the unpronounceable name, where the Company was in service for fifty-six years.	”
–Croaker, Shadow Games, ch. 11

The Annals are the written history of the Black Company. They are recorded by the Company Annalist, a position considered so important that it carries an officer rank. Croaker once described the books as the "soul of the Black Company" and an outsider named Surendranath Santaraksita later told them they were "like snails, carrying your history on your back" after reading many of the group's modern tomes.

Most of the Annals are written in the first-person perspective. The published selections from the Annals, combined with Case's private journal for The Silver Spike, constitute the bulk of the Black Company series.

Some individual books of the Annals are named after their Annalist, such as the Books of Croaker, Lady, Murgen, and Sleepy. Croaker wrote in the Jewel Cities dialect, whereas Murgen and Sleepy wrote in the Taglian language. Others take their name from unknown sources, such as the "Book of Set", which was recorded by Annalist Coral; and the "Book of Kette", which recorded by the Annalists Lees, Agrip, Holm, and Straw.

The older Annals were also often fragmentary or entirely missing due to several defeats in battle where records were abandoned or lost. Examples of this include the Battle of Urban and, decades later, the Battle of Queen's Bridge, although in the latter case they were recovered by the Lady and subsequently returned to Croaker. Shortly after the Company arrived in Taglios, the Taglian language became the written language of the Annals.

The modern Annals, beginning with Croaker's, benefited from meticulous revisions, fact-checking, and proactive translations across numerous languages:

“

Murgen had ... a thing about copying stuff over, in cleaner drafts, and one of his great projects had been to revise Lady’s and the Captain’s Annals for accuracy, based on evidence provided by other witnesses, while rendering them into modern Taglian. We have all done that to our predecessors, some, so that every recent volume of the Annals is really an unwilling collaboration.

”

The known volumes of the Annals are listed below.

The first three Annals

The legendary first three books of the Black Company Annals had been missing for about 300 years by Croaker's lifetime: they were "referenced in later works but not mentioned as having been seen after the first century of the Company’s existence." They were named:

• The Book of the Company
  • Describes the time when the Company first emerged from the glittering plain. Was lost by the Company but a copy was made and saved in Taglios. Later translated by Master Santaraksita.
• The First Book of Odrick
• The Second Book of Odrick

Rediscovering them had been one of Croaker's fantasies for years. At the Temple of Travellers' Repose, he found copies of 9 other lost books of the Annals, but was disappointed that the first three books were not there (Shadow Games). About 20 years later, one of his successor Annalists, Sleepy, finally received the 2 oldest books when they were smuggled by Goblin out of the Palace of Taglios (Water Sleeps). A significant portion of them were soon translated, apparently from the first book, by Surendranath Santaraksita and Baladitya. Whereas Sleepy, and Croaker before her, were hoping for an explanation of the Black Company's origin, the contents were actually quite underwhelming:

“	There’s nothing earthshaking in there, Dorabee... The things you want to know are just the things the writer assumes any reader of his own time would know already. He wasn’t writing for the ages, or even for another generation. He was keeping track of horseshoe nails, lance shafts and saddles. All he has to say about their battle is that the lower-ranking officers and noncommissioned officers failed to demonstrate an adequate enthusiasm for appropriating weapons lost or abandoned by the defeated enemy, preferring to wait till the next dawn to begin gleaning. As a consequence, stragglers and the local peasantry managed to scavenge all the best... This book gives us no reason to be afraid. This book is about a troop of crabby little men who marched off somewhere they didn’t want to go for reasons they didn’t understand, fully believing that their unstated mission would last only several weeks or, at most, a few months. Then they would be able to go home. But the months piled into years and the years into generations. And still they didn’t really know.	”
–Master Santaraksita, Water Sleeps, chapter 38

Subsequent Annals

Annals fan art by Melysoph

• Book of Kette
  • Written early in the Company's second century, predating even One-Eye's enlistment.
  • Recorded by the Annalists Lees, Agrip, Holm, and Straw.
  • During Annalist Straw's time, the Company numbered more than 6,000 strong and consisted entirely (or mostly) of black men.
  • A major portion of the Book of Kette describes the time when the Company was in service to the Paingod of Cho'n Delor: the Pastel Wars.
  • In Bleak Seasons, One-Eye confirmed that "Kette" was not the name of an Annalist, but was interrupted by Murgen before he could explain the meaning of the word. Speculatively, "Kette" could refer to a Black Company Captain, an intermediary sponsor between them and the Paingod, a place-name, or a time period.
• Book of Woeg
  • Chronicles a time after the Company was almost destroyed in the fighting along the Bake in Norssele.
  • Mentioned in Shadows Linger, chapter 40.
• Book of Set
  • Recorded by Annalist Coral.
  • Describes the time when the Company was in service to the Archon of Bone, during the Revolt of the Chiliarchs, which Croaker summarized as "that darkest hour in the Company's history". It seems to have involved a crisis in which the Black Company "met the letter of its commission" but at a steep cost.
  • Mentioned in The Black Company, chapter 1.
• Book of Cloete
  • Describes the time when the Company was in service to the Syndarchs of Dai Khomena.
  • Given the context in which the Book of Cloete was mentioned (the end of the Siege of Dejagore and the phrase "...and they were delivered...") it is certain this historical event involved the Company surviving a protracted, dangerous siege.
  • Mentioned in Dreams of Steel, chapter 71.

9 lost Annals recovered at the Temple

Copies of 9 lost volumes of the Annals were recovered at the Temple of Travellers' Repose in Shadow Games. The names of 3 of the recovered volumes were given:

• Book of Choe
  • The Company's copy was destroyed 50 years before Croaker enlisted, and had only been poorly reconstructed.
• Book of Te-Lare
  • This book had been known to Croaker only through a cryptic reference in a later volume.
  • It describes a fateful battle when the Company was overrun and the first three books of the Annals were stolen. The Annalist and his understudy were both killed so the work could not be reconstructed.
• Book of Skete
  • Lost and forgotten but later rediscovered at the Temple of Travellers' Repose.
• 6 other volumes of unspecified names

It is not specified if any of the Annals recovered at the Temple were among those that had been lost at the Battle of Urban. Those lost there accounted for a 70-year stretch of time. At some point during this time period, One-Eye and Tom-Tom joined the Black Company. However none of the recovered writings could have included any chronicles that were written after the Company's first departure from the Temple, back when One-Eye was a younger man.

Annals shortly before Croaker

• Book of Miller Ladora
  • Considered by Sleepy to be poorly written and containing a disappointing paucity of detail
  • Miller Ladora was one of "Croaker's more immediate predecessors"
• Book of Kanwas Scar
  • Considered by Sleepy to be poorly written and containing a disappointing paucity of detail
  • Kanwas Scar was one of "Croaker's more immediate predecessors"

The Books of Croaker

These books were recorded in the language and alphabet of the Jewel Cities dialect of Beryl.

• The First Book of Croaker
  • Prior to and during the Company's service to the Syndic of Beryl (The Black Company ch. 1)
  • The name "First Book of Croaker" was stated by Murgen and he read from them at one point after the Siege of Overlook (She Is the Darkness ch. 93)
• The Books of the North
  • When the Company was in service to the Lady's Empire and then to the New White Rose Rebellion in the northern continent (The Black Company ch. 2–7; Shadows Linger; the short stories of the On The Long Run arc; and The White Rose)
  • A portion of the Books of the North, spanning the latter four years of the period between the Battle at Charm and the Company's deployment to Tally and primarily detailing the Company's time in Aloe, vanish and are forgotten. Fragmentary copies are recovered in Aloe decades later. (Port of Shadows)
• Croaker's Book of the South (Shadow Games)
  • Speculative name of Croaker's Annals after the Company left the northern continent and before Lady and Murgen picked up their pens

Subsequent books

• Book of Lady (Dreams of Steel)
  • It is specified that the Lady's writings were the last chronicle to be composed in a language other than Taglian. Murgen later translated her writing into Taglian.
• Book(s) of Murgen (Bleak Seasons and She Is the Darkness)
  • Murgen wrote in an unspecified language at first, but then he rendered his work and the work of his recent predecessors into Taglian.
• One-Eye's Annals
  • One-Eye kept a number of poorly maintained notes of his campaign in the Shadowlands alongside the Khusavir Regiment, though they were fragmentary, and made little reference to the major events going on at the time. They refer to several drunken incidents, including the theft of a minor noble's brandy reserves after he offers them hospitality, and as a result the Prahbrindrah Drah is required to repay the lord for the damages. One-Eye eventually gives the haggard papers to Murgen upon request, and they are integrated into his own book with amendments (Bleak Seasons ch. 32).
• Book of Sleepy (Water Sleeps)
  • Written in the Taglian language, including the ecclesiastical High Mode alphabet
• Final Book of Croaker (Soldiers Live)
• Book of Arkana and Shukrat (Soldiers Live ch. 148 and onward)