Third Sack

First Appearance and Context

The Third Sack is recounted in narratives given while leading visitors through the Unarian Math. A wedge‑shaped tumulus within that precinct commemorates those who returned; it is oriented inward toward the Clock to emphasize their coming back. The event is one of The Three Sacks remembered by the community.

Mathic sources also describe rising disputes between Procian and Halikaarnian orders in the years leading up to it; shortly before the event, the Knights of Saunt Halikaarn were Thrown Back.

Avout narratives also situate a notorious "parking‑ramp skeleton" discovery near Muncoster roughly three months before the opening of the Third Sack. Popular retellings credit the Rhetors with "starting" it and the Incanters with "finishing" it; within the maths these labels are treated as Sæcular folklore, and accounts emphasize uncertainty about details.

Course of Events

• Opening phase: A week‑long siege of the Concent began the crisis. With the walls too long for so few to defend, the lower cohorts (Tenners and Hundreders) withdrew to the Unarian precinct, which had a smaller perimeter with water barriers. The Thousanders were safe on their crag.
• Sortie and return: Before dawn on a later day, most of the avout formed up behind the Year Gate, threw it open, and stormed out in a flying wedge. For one hour they sacked the town and the besiegers’ supply dumps, gathering medicines, vitamins, ammunition, and specific chemicals and minerals unavailable within the walls. Then they formed a smaller wedge and fought their way back across the plaza, re‑entered the gate, and dropped the bridge by explosives.
• Losses and memorial: Five hundred stormed out; three hundred returned; of those, two hundred died immediately of their wounds. The wedge‑shaped granite monument is their tumulus.
• Outcome and aftermath: The gathered supplies were sent up to the Thousanders. The rest of the concent fell the next day; the Thousanders then lived alone on their crag for about seventy years. In this telling, the three maths remembered as “Inviolates” during the Third Sack were Saunt Edhar, Saunt Rambalf, and Saunt Tredegarh. During the siege it had become clear that the Sæcular Power would not come to the concent’s aid.

Relationships and Affiliations

• Part of The Three Sacks; referenced alongside general lore about prior and later sackings.
• Connected to the Unarian precinct’s gateworks—especially the Year Gate—and to the Thousanders’ crag above.
• Frequently cited in accounts mentioning Saunt Alvar as the sole survivor of his concent during the Third Sack and as a captive for three decades thereafter.

Descriptions and Tone

• Memorial orientation: The wedge monument faces inward toward the Clock, symbolizing return rather than escape.
• Tactical notes: Contemporary accounts emphasize the wedge formation, the one‑hour limit, and the focus on obtaining medical and material necessities that could not be produced intramuros.
• Commemorative statue: A life‑sized bronze of Amnectrus, the Warden Fendant at the time, depicts him kneeling behind a parapet with a rifle amid a lake of spent shell casings; its pedestal serves as his sarcophagus. It stands along the walkway of the Warden Fendant court in the Mynster.
• Memorial plaque: A plaque at the Flying Wedge monument in the Year Gate precinct recounts the sortie and lists the three Inviolates as Saunt Edhar, Saunt Rambalf, and Saunt Tredegarh.

Current Status

• Historical and commemorated: The event is concluded; memory is maintained by the wedge tumulus and related statuary and plaques.
• Annual observance: Within the maths, the Third Sack is marked each year by a lament sung following a week spent fasting and reciting the names of the dead and the titles of the books burned.
• Post‑event reforms: In the reorganization that followed, Lineages within the maths were eliminated.
• Plundered holdings: Accounts mention that rumored hoards kept by certain lineages—for example, a legendary sub‑basement beneath Shuf’s Dowment associated with Shuf’s Lineage—had already been discovered and emptied during the sacking.
• Later references: Centuries after the event, members of the Reformed Old Faanians quietly returned to the ruin of Shuf’s Dowment, refurbishing its above‑ground rooms while leaving most of the old cellars largely untouched.
• Institutional note at Orithena: One account states that shortly after the event, a wealthy outside patron purchased Orithena and established a foundation to run the island; that body governs Ecba through a mixed board of governors drawn from both outside and cloistered scholarly communities.
• Convox tradition: Avout accounts say a Convox was held at the end of each Sack; by that account, this event was followed by such a convocation.
• Benchmark in speech: Avout invoke the Third Sack as a touchstone for scale, comparing especially tumultuous times to it (e.g., describing present upheavals as the greatest since the Third Sack).
• Political shorthand: In current discourse, some avout invoke “Third Sack politics” as a pointed analogy for dangerous, fraught maneuvering reminiscent of the tensions surrounding the event.
• Discourse and taboo: Within mixed company, assigning blame for the event is widely treated as taboo; raising it can be seen as reckless or provocative.
• Inviolates clarified: Some accounts now state that the Three Inviolates were nuclear waste repositories and so were likely protected by the Sæcular Power.
• Matarrhite memory: Matarrhite sources describe evacuating to a southern polar island and surviving on local plants, birds, and insects; their cuisine remembers the hardship.