Fourth Sack

The phrase "Fourth Sack" is used by avout to denote a feared future recurrence of the historical sackings remembered collectively as the Three Sacks. In this usage it would be a new sacking of a mathic concent—often imagined in reference to the Concent of Saunt Edhar—on the scale of the great calamities commemorated in mathic memory.

Context and Current Usage

• In recent debates about how the maths should respond to unfolding events, an avout warns that agitational talk about taking power back from secular authorities could provoke a "Fourth Sack."
• Others, taking an opposite stance, argue that even if such a crackdown occurred it might draw outside intervention to their side—some explicitly naming the Geometers as would‑be allies. This is presented as opinion and aspiration, not established fact.
• At the Convox, one avout recounts lying awake out of fear of a "Fourth Sack," reflecting personal anxiety amid present tensions.
• In messals attended by observers of the Sæcular Power, open discussion of responsibility for the Third Sack is treated by some as taboo, underscoring the sensitivity around the subject.

Relationship to Prior Sacks

• The term echoes the earlier sackings and is invoked as a measure of scale and danger. Speakers compare present tensions to the devastation and isolation remembered from the Third Sack.
• While the First, Second, and Third Sacks are treated as settled history, a Fourth Sack remains hypothetical and disputed: a cautionary label for some, a calculated risk for a few.

Status

• No such event has occurred in current accounts. The "Fourth Sack" functions as a rhetorical and cautionary concept rather than a documented happening.