The Silence of the Ancients: When White Harbor’s Mine Did Close Its Eyes

By Eleawen Galathiel

Dear readers, grant me leave to pose thee a question: what dost thou do when a door long forbidden to thee doth open at last… and nought remains behind it? Dost thou search? Dost thou flee? Or dost thou, like mine humble self, take up thy quill and whisper: « Here be a riddle worthy of ink and much coffee. »

For sooth, that is what this is, is it not? An enigma. Thou dost surely recall our columns: « The Great Offensive: When Oloth’s Shadows Dance o’er White Harbor. » Therein we did recount the fierceness of the battles round that central stronghold, beating heart of a war that did set aflame the ports and forests of Arche Terre. At the centre of the harbour city, a castle. And within that castle, a mine. And within that mine? The Ancients.

The Ancients… that people who did tread the lands of Arche Terre millennia ere we others – diverse folk come from the far reaches of the multiverse to colonise and found our cities – did arrive with our banners, our quarrels, and our vexing habit of calling « ruins » that which we do not comprehend. The Ancients, known for the vestiges of their vanished civilisation: the Arche Tower, the four Arche Gates, but likewise mysterious laboratories and machines of unknown and perilous use. The sort of devices one doth not handle without a prayer to Erevan and a life insurance.

What folk such as thee and me do know of this mine doth fit in few words: Ancients, pods – those sarcophagi of survival – and a strict prohibition. ‘Twas said one could be « infected » therein, fall under insidious control, and be led as a puppet to the Arche Tower to accomplish the Ascension of an Ancient – his, not thine. The effects? As troublesome as they be unknown to the common folk. And ‘tis precisely the refusal of certain Olothian citizens to free these Ancients from their mine that did kindle the powder keg. Van’ya Shadowkyss had been arrested following her intrusion, and other members of Oloth, led by one Harper, did then attack the garrison of Port Elysium, drawing Elysium and the cities of the Defence Pact into a war none did truly desire – yet all had, visibly, prepared.

So wilt thou ask me, wherefore do I stir all this today? Because we have received two tidings concerning the place, and neither should let thee sleep soundly.

The first: the troops of Oloth did seize the mines themselves – not the castle, but the interiors of the mines – defending the access with a determination that did surprise none. What did surprise, however, was what followed. An offensive as incredible as incomprehensible, after which all simply… vanished. The guards. The Ancients. The installations. The pods. Naught. As though the mine had drawn a deep breath and swallowed its own contents – or spewed them forth elsewhere.

The second tiding, more troubling still: some do wonder if this disappearance doth link to the « displacement out of the box » whereof we did speak in our article « The Displacement – When the Box Did Open. » Call it to mind: a strange event, a breach in the order of things, a cosmic commotion of which even the mages of Che’El Oloth, who do know all things, had not foreseen the scale. The temporal sequence of these events doth remain opaque: what came before? The vanishing of the mine or the opening of the box? Did the pods empty themselves before the troops did enter, or after? Time, herein, seems to have drunk the same wine as the merchants of Port Saban: it doth stagger, it doth contradict itself, and on the morrow, it doth swear it touched naught.

What we do report in any case – and this is the tiding that should set thy teeth on edge – is that there do remain Ascended Ancients a-roaming in Arche Terre. None doth truly know what hath come to pass. But if the shadows of Durakiss do sometimes lie, those of White Harbor have just fallen silent all at once. And the silence of a mine, dear readers, is ever more disquieting than its noise.

If I did tell thee that I know thy secret… wouldst thou believe me? Nay? Then believe at least this: what hath passed at White Harbor is not done. Erevan doth know it, and he doth smile already.

When the Ancients do close a door, ‘tis rarely to sleep: ‘tis to open a window we do not yet behold. And the cunning of Erevan doth teach us that the deepest silence ever precedeth the most thunderous jest.