The White

A mid-term Politics and Intrigue paper

by Bernadette FissleRocket

To understand The White, one must first understand Arcadia, which The White was once a part of.¹ Arcadia is the shining beacon of the Five Realms run by High Elves as a monarchist society, its leadership held by the highest of all families as it has been for thousands of years. Everything in Arcadia is perfect, almost disgustingly so. Even the great historian Flom Literatcher once described them as "the most snooty group of people you can ever meet."
Arcadia could take over the rest of the world, but really, why bother? Its so great there, who would want to be anywhere else? The Arcadians are isolationist by nature, thus not caring that they are right by the Bone Empire because they also have no need of imports or exports. After all, they can make anything better than anyone else.²
The White split off on its own when Arcadians began eschewing religion, believing they themselves were becoming perfect beings all on their own. The religious devout felt that Arcadia was creating religious persecution, and they left and formed their own country.
Everyone in The White is highly religious, but the religions vary heavily, from the worshippers of the normal Gods of Light and Darkness, to pacts with otherworldly or planar beings, to religions based on inanimate objects, or primordial forces. I hear there's even a religion based on "The Rock By The Lake, Which I Have Named Dave."³
The reason why I am considering The White a lawless place is because while Arcadia is a land of complete lawfulness and organization, The White has swung too far the other way, their motto being “we don’t care what you believe in, just believe in something!”⁴ They have no official government or even hierarchy, as doing so would be seen as favoritism for one person's religion over another. And while most places of religious tolerance follow the concept of "Do what you will, err it hurt no one," the overly aggressive religious freedom of The White has caused a lot of infighting with some of the more evil religions actively hunting down sacrifices for their dark gods, not to mention the recruitment practices of the more direct zealots of various worshippers.
The White struggles as an economy, considering their chief export is missionaries which isn’t really a great way to bring in money, but also most live as simple religious folk, so there is very little wealth hoarding or classism⁵. Despite the formal lack of organization, the road systems are well maintained as one thing that everyone agrees upon in The White is the need for ease of travel for their various missionaries. Rather than a city/town/village structure, most congregations of inhabitants of The White reside in any of a large number of religious compounds, and all other infrastructure is localized in and maintained by those individual compounds.
One would think that such a loosely held together population would be ripe for takeover, but The White continues to enjoy their freedom for two reasons. First, Arcadia has made it known that despite The White's seceding from them, The White remains under their protection as they consider The White an interesting curiosity and social experiment. Second, invading parties tend to be met with either armies of crusaders to push them back, or zero resistance, kind acceptance, and then a hard pressed recruitment drive by whatever religion they run into that normally is more effective than any military force in driving back the invaders.
This ends my report on The White.⁶

Teacher Notes/Markings

Prof. Auritax

¹ Bad grammar, also did not state purpose statement

² All opinion, need more facts here

³ Needs reference

⁴ This should have been your first sentence

⁵ The assignment asked you to talk about what could be improved in the economy if anything, you could put something here about possibly making religious objects to sell..

⁶ Missing conclusion. Paper seems rushed. Come see me after class if you wish to do a rewrite.