The White Order

When the winds warmed and the rains and snow fell less heavily upon the Westhorns, fewer needed the protection of Westwind, and the summer heat prostrated those of the chill heights, and their crops and their flocks.

Lacking the dark talismans of order borne off to Recluce by Creslin, the Marshal of Westwind attempted to persuade the folk of Sarronnyn and Southwind to stand behind her and to offer more coins to her.

As they feared the double-edged twin blades of the Westwind guards, those of the lands beyond the Westhorns pledged their allegiance yet again to the Marshal.

Yet even as they pledged, they gathered together in the darkness they had brought to the once-fair lands of the west, and they plotted as how they would bring down the Marshal and split the plunder laid up over the generations upon the Roof of the World.

For honor had they none, even after all the years that Westwind had protected their dishonor from the efforts of the Guild to redress the ancient wrongs.

Following their custom of dishonor, they invited the Marshal to Southwind, where she might receive gold and tribute and grain. The Marshal traveled from her black tower to the great banquet, and flower petals rained upon her, and then arrows from behind the screens of flowers.

The Marshal had not been without forethought, and had left upon the Roof of the World her daughter the Marshalle and the mighty arms master of the guard. And the Marshalle gathered together all the guards of Westwind and vowed that those responsible for the devastation would pay.

As the Marshalle prepared her retribution, there came a traveling minstrel to Westwind, a minstrel known of old as of trust and worth-save the minstrel, for all that his face was of old and his voice as well, was not as he had been, but enslaved to the tyrant of Sarronnyn.

As he sang, the minstrel lit a candle, a marvelous candle wrought as a model of Westwind-and then the candle exploded with the ancient fires of the West, and claimed the Marshalle and the arms master, and the senior guards of Westwind.

Yet this treachery did not repay the tyrant, for the remaining guards, they packed the treasures of Westwind, and they took their blades and cut a trail of blood to the sea.

There they seized a ship and forced it to Recluce, where they laid all the coins of centuries at the feet of Creslin and swore their blades to his service. .

Colors of White, (Manual of the Guild at Fairhaven), Preface