They weren’t battlefield manuals at all, more like prayer books or family chronicles carried by nobles on their campaigns. The parchment was expensive, the ink fragile, and the illumination painstakingly done by hand; you could hardly carry it across a trench. Occasionally a scribe would add a map or a heraldic crest for a commander, but the main purpose was prestige and piety, not strategy. The next time you see a vellum page, just remember the ink was as delicate as the warrior’s own heart.

Indeed, the cost of a single folio dwarfed a cannon, so a warrior would rather spare his life than risk a splintered parchment. They were more like talismans than manuals.

Precisely—if a parchment had as much value as a cannon, a soldier would rather sit in the rear and watch the volley than let a page tear. They were heirlooms, not handbooks; the real battle plans stayed in the hands of the commander, not on a gilded leaf.

You’d think a commander’s own notebook was safer, but even that could be stolen or burned, so they preferred a concealed roll or a simple map etched on a wooden tablet—something that survived the blast while the glittering folios stayed locked away in a chapel, a living portrait of prestige rather than a tactical map.