[This is part of an ongoing series of book my character Galim Aeltus is currently writing, relating its travels for the past months/years and all the discoveries he made during that time. This is about ancient history of Altera, and is not canon lore, based only on fictional writings, characters, places and events of old (and others not so old) Alteran times.]
The names, locations and people I will be using and quoting in this very book are for most of them not part of recent Altra history, and came to my knowing only through a long succession of oral and sometimes written passing on between various people of various origins, sometimes separated by several centuries and very opposite cultures. I will be using the names of people and places that were used at the times I'm writing about, and will let at the discretion of the reader to find the recent equivalents for them. The Order of the Whites was an ancient Order of Priests, that thrived in the far south of Altera, in the desert regions then called the "Silting".
This area got its name from the fact that long before being a desert, it was apparently a lush and fertile area, that gradually receded to give way to the great dry expanses we know today (as seen on multiple temples carvings, as well as some references in old manuscripts, from between years 850 and 1230).
Hints to the Order of the Whites were first picked in "Ancient History of Altera" (Galoor Hymedis, 1944), as well as on many scriptures and illuminated manuscripts by several anonymous copyist monks.
But then the area of influence of the Order was very vague, only mentioning, and I quote : "somewhere south from the grouped Mountains".
As imprecise as it was, it still allowed to narrow the search to the southern part of Altera, by assuming that these were the central mountain range of Altera's main continent.
This theory will further get confirmed when finding another scripture, namely the "Third Altera's Tribes Compendium" (Herenn Thalidee, somewhere around 1620, exact date unknown) that listed amongst others the infamous Krawen warrior tribe, that revered the Whites for their "dedication to silence, harmony, and blood" (not actual quote, translated from Krawen's language to Elven by Herenn, then translated with the help of an Elven fellow).
This tome was to be found during my travels to the great snowy area that lies west of Queen's Port, where and old now ruined Dwarf fortress would still hide some secrets, namely and old and crumbly library.
Very few tomes were to get in my hands in reading shape, but some of them still revealed their treasures (this very travel can be read in one of my other books, "The warriors Dwarfs of Far North").
The Krawen being known to live near the drained Tialaren river bed, it was just a matter of time before finding the actual location of the Whites main temple, which is now situated on the shore of the south part of the main Altera continent, west to the dried river bed that crosses the desert.
There, is to be found the crumbling remains of and old desert city, which apparently was built on top of the ruins of the Whites temple. After several days of digging the city soil and underground, our team had the chance to break directly into one of the few still intact temple's rooms.
The Silting, turned to hot and dry desert, had helped keeping intact the wooden parts of the temple, in which some engravings and carving could be found and read (please refer to the appendix for a more detailed description and figures of some of the most conserved parts of the engravings).
In these rooms were to be found several tunics and ceremonial items that were used for the Whites proceedings, even with a sacrificial dagger almost undamaged, which I brought back with me.
Some of the carvings actually depicted the sacrificial ceremony, portraying the choosen victim in company of the Priests of the White as well as the other fauna offerings. The carvings were still in a very bad shape, and only a few information were drawn from them.
But the final treasure the old temple was to hand to us, was in the form of a condemned room, probably after the fall of the Order, by the barred by people that founded the city that lied above. On the blockade, there was another half-preserved carving that informed us upon the final fate of the Order. According to them, the Order had been challenged by one of the sacrificed victim to a duel of wit and faith.
The stranger, asking for guarantees that the Order would keep their word if they lost, would have asked to see the High Priest demoted, for him take the lead of the Order should he win.
And what followed is now straightforward: the stranger won, and disbanded the Order at once, sheltered from the Priests retaliation by the fact that the High Priest was Godsend, and that no Priest whatsoever would dare to act against him.
Since he had won in a fair way in the duel, nobody questioned his authority, and the Order of the Whites was disbanded.
What is even more surprising in this story, is that several references to a man similar to the stranger depicted here were found in various scriptures, carvings and books in various places of Altera, every time in important eras and events (see Galoor Hymedis's "Ancient History of Altera", p.685, on the increase of the Old Gods worships, or in Pyrel O'taen's "The Fall of the House of E'erten", chapter 5).
But the year in these various sources does not actually correspond, and that raises different theories:
- either the dates were mixed while being copied over and over by copyist monks, which is a common mistakes on hundreds of recopies
- or the specifics of the man appearance bled on various writings, coming from one single source that is maybe yet to be found (the Whites temple blockade could be the one ? It is apparently old enough for having given birth to the other versions.)
- or, which hypothesis is the strangest and disturbing, this is the exact same man each time, and we are in the presence of an unearthly entity, a higher individual that is not affected by the common rules of our world, such as space and passing time.
This last theory is expanded further in my other book, "Occurrences of possibly Divine intervention through History in Altera, part 1".
Unfortunately, as can be seen with the remains of the temple, very few of the history of the Order of the Whites had come to us. But references in various scriptures mentions other locations that the Order might have been, which could denote of the possibility of other temples existing throughout Altera.
I live in Thiil of course ^^