Saunt Cartas

First Appearance and Context

Saunt Cartas is invoked by Fraa Orolo in a kitchen conversation, who urges study of her Saeculum (Treatise) in Old Orth, noting that excerpted translations can soften key passages.

Roles/Actions and Affiliations

• Author of a foundational framing of the mathic community as a counterbalance to the Saecular Power, as presented in her Saeculum.
• In the Discipline, Cartas is cited as enumerating types of liaison and forbidding all of them in early codifications; later formulations differ on which are sanctioned.
• The Eleven: entries in The Dictionary record that Cartas originally drew up a short list of plants forbidden within maths (only three species at first), which was expanded in later centuries as more were discovered.
• Cartasian principles from the Old Mathic Age are cited by avout as foundations for many current practices; later currents (such as Sconic thought) have influenced the tradition without displacing Cartas’s role.
• Invoked in daily practice: avout are described opening communal meals with an Invocation of Cartas that affirms reliance on one another for bodily sustenance while minds are nourished by the ideas of earlier thinkers.

Relationships

• Referenced and explicated by Fraa Orolo, who recommends consulting her work in Old Orth.

Descriptions/Characteristics

In the Hylaean Way exhibits, a statue depicts Saunt Cartas cradling a few singed and tattered books in one arm, looking back over her shoulder as if beckoning visitors toward a narrow exit. Frescoes nearby show the Sack of Baz and the burning of the library. Beyond that exit lies a high, bare, stone-walled chamber intended to symbolize the retreat to the maths and the dawn of the Old Mathic Age.

Within the community she is invoked as a symbol of austerity; avout joke that hidden comforts would make her 'roll over in her chalcedony sarcophagus.'

Legacy and Influence

Later sources characterize other traditions as defining themselves in relation to Cartas’s framework. For example, The Dictionary describes a Bazian Orthodox system that arose after the Fall of Baz as a mathic structure parallel to—and independent of—the one inaugurated by Cartas. Avout in the present continue to trace central features of their Discipline to Cartasian principles.

Current Status/Location

A historical figure known via texts. Her Saeculum continues to circulate in the community, and her positions on liaisons are quoted in in‑world references to the Discipline.