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Signs of the Ending Times

While numerous songs, stories, legends, sagas, and complex Morris Dances abound concerning the Apocalypse of Battal, by far the largest and most in-depth accumulation of signs comes from the texts of prophecy in the Tharan Prophetic Codex.

While the content, accuracy, organization, and specifity of each of these texts vary according to their origins, the one thing they all agree on is that some sort of Apocalypse is definitely on its way (with the exception, of course, of the Puissant Text of Unbending Certainty, which asserts that the Apocalypse has already come, and that the present inhabitants of Battal are actually living in a kind of fictitious, fantasy world that exists solely in the imagination of an unspecified creator sub-deity).

Cliveling's Exceptional Accuracies

Largely heralded as the best of the prophetic texts, The Exceptional Accuracies are known for being both well-organized and specific. They are the most oft-cited prophecies, despite the fact that they have yet to be shown as accurate in any way. A few of the Signs of the Ending Times found in the Exceptional Accuracies include:

• verily many and great shakings of the earth shall plague its peoples, and they shall be full of consternation

• indeed shall there be much boilings of the rivers, and so shall the seas turn unto steam.

• yea, it shall be seen that the sun shall turn to black as a sack-cloth, and that the moon shall turneth a red as is blood.

• it shall be seen that cats and dogs shall take a residency upon each other, and dwell in happiness

• And so shall the great mass of peoples of Battal be found victim of the Hysteria.

Everything Cliveling Says is Nonsense

The well-known counterpart to the Exceptional Accuracies is the text, by author unknown, Everything Cliveling Says is Nonsense. While its status as an actual prophetic texts remains uncertain, largely due to the fact that all of its prophecies are simple refutations of the prophecies found in the Exceptional Accuracies, no one has actually shown it to be inaccurate. Because of this, the Cliveling is Nonsense text is the second most-often quoted source of prophecy. Some of the Signs of the Ending Times founding in the Cliveling is Nonsense text include:

• verily many and great shakings of the earth shall NOT plague its peoples, NOR shall they be full of consternation

• indeed shall there NOT be much boilings of the rivers, and while the seas may get a little warm, they certainly shall NOT turn into steam.

• yea, it shall be seen that the sun shall NOT turn to black as a sack-cloth, NOR shall the moon turneth a red as is blood, though it will sometimes get an orangey color in the autumn, only that shall be due to atmospheric effects.

• Though it shall be seen that cats and dogs shall take a residency upon each other, they will NOT dwell in happiness, but instead shall perpetrate a multitude of attacks against each other.

• And only a few of the great mass of peoples of Battal be found victim of the Hysteria, hardly all of them.

Bigby's Monotonous Litany

While the Monotonous Litany is the only prophetic text shown to be one-hundred percent reliable, it is very rarely used for any prophecy-based policy-making decisions. This is due primarily to the difficulty present in understanding it--the Monotonous Litany consists of thousands of pages of a single sentence; it is both a terror and a delight to the Grand Grammaticians, Elemenstor Mages who study the Lesser-Sub Elemental Sphere of Syntax.

The other problem with the Monotonous Litany is that, while it is notably both precise and accurate, it does not seem to be particularly relevant to anything. An example of prophecies of The Ending Times in the Litany is as follows:

...and shalle he putte his pants on one legge at a tyme, as do other men, yea yt shall be seene to be so, and so shalle yt also be seene that yn the eighteeneth year of thee reign of Agonard the Unlucky thee Duke of Garheart's larder-supervisor, who shalle be recognized by vyrtue that he ys a shortte man, though stoute, and shalle have a large mustache not unlyke the wal-rus, and he shalle seeme pleasant enough when thou speakest to him, though he hath a temper when yt comes to thee discussion of rabbits, yt shalle be seene that on thee day of thee wedding of thee Duke that thee larder-supervisor shalle misplace yea not wone, nor two, but three bags of ground wheat meal entyre, and furthermore one and a half dozen hen's egges, and thyss shalle you know as a signe of The Ending Tymes, and also as a signe that someone shalle get sacked...