Manktor was an obscure little place-name in the Wilds of the Four Borders. It was a beautiful field covered in dill and marigolds, but it was uninhabited and untouched by any important trade routes. The wilderness stretched across an unknown land. Travelers who occasionally passed through would discover that the sky above the fields was vast and the clouds high, with a solitary Sacred White Stone Tablet standing on the horizon.
And that was the Monument of the Sacred White.
A history known to all had made it famous. More than a thousand years ago, the Four Sages—Gilt, King of Flames; Saint Osore, the Wind Empress; Saint Fanzan; and Ailanta, the Earth Sage—led their people here to sign the Sacred Oath with the Silver Elves, Buga people, High Mountain Dwarves, Hazel people, lionfolk, and dragons. They carved their vows into the stone tablet, and during the century of war that followed, they finally brought the Dark Rule of the Min'er People to an absolute end.
Although the High Mountain Dwarves, lionfolk, and Hazel people had withdrawn from the alliance one after another over the years, that did not diminish the radiance of the Sacred Alliance itself. People even compared it to the vow of the People of Order against the Twilight in the Epic of Azure. The alliance had not only allowed the Black Iron People to become the dominant force in the world; more importantly, it had secured several hundred years of Peaceful Times afterward.
Although the alliance itself had faded somewhat by now, and later generations had gradually forgotten the glory and integrity of their forebears, people had at least not completely forgotten what had happened in the past. When the Twilight Dragon once again became the enemy of every Child of Order in the world, they remembered