The Three Sacks

First Appearance and Context

The Three Sacks are mentioned in mathic accounts as past calamities that affected the concent and its central buildings. In current narrative context, they are referenced while describing the Mynster and the great clock, and in a note from The Dictionary concerning usage shifts after the Third Sack. They are also invoked in discussion of security preparations for Apert, where avout distinguish between smaller "local sacks" and the broader "Sacks-General"; some speak of a hypothetical next one as "Number Four," while noting there have been three in roughly 3700 years and judging both a local and a general sack improbable at present.

Description and Role

“Three Sacks” refers to three separate instances when the concent was sacked or otherwise overwhelmed. They serve as historical markers that explain certain absences and changes in the present day, such as missing fittings in the Mynster and shifts in usage or standards noted by scholars. The Sacks also figure into operational lore of the Clock, which keeps time for the community. In discussions of rapid, decadal change since the Reconstitution, avout note that two such periods culminated in Sacks.

• Second Sack: Cited as the time when a pipe-organ that once stood in the east nave was torn out. Later changes to the Discipline banned other musical instruments thereafter.
• Third Sack: Followed by a long decline in standards noted by stonecarvers and lexicographers (e.g., confusion between U and V in inscriptions). In the decades after, the Thousanders (the Millenarians) stayed on their crag while the rest of the concent stood uninhabited for many years.

Specific dates, causes, and detailed narratives of each Sack have not been provided in the text so far.

Relationships and Functions

• Clock operations: The clock’s sealed reserve drive is said to have kept it ticking only during exceptional circumstances, including the Three Sacks, when the daily winding could not be performed.
• Built environment: Evidence of damage or removal—such as the missing organ—are attributed to the Sacks, helping explain the present arrangement of spaces within the Mynster.
• Historical memory: The Sacks are recurring points of reference in the mathic community’s recollections and explanations of practice, terminology, and standards, noted in internal histories and in The Dictionary.

Current Status

The Three Sacks remain historical events invoked to explain institutional memory, physical remnants, and linguistic notes in the present. Full accounts (origins, timelines, outcomes) have not been presented in the available text.