History of Alteria
Alteria was discovered in the 1620s by intellectuals who felt social unrest was building up and were looking for a safe place to migrate to.
This group of intellectuals were from dozens of countries around the world, and they formed a society outsiders called The Free Society, because they acted as if they were free of the tyranny of the world rulers at the time.
The Free Society had scouts that would look into any case, no matter how insignificant. They were tasked with finding a suitable place to migrate to. Away from kings, queens, emperors and tsars. More often than not, there was a scout nearby – fully versed in the language, culture and traditions.
Here enters John Clark, a scout who lived in Portugal at the time. Portugal then was a ripe place for expeditions and so many Eagles were there, local and foreign. John was approached by a housewife who looked for help locating her husband, a fisherman lost at sea.
As much as he was a part of the local community, John did not have the men to send that time. Fisherman get lost all the time, he told the housewife, it’s part of life’s way.
But this wasn’t any fisherman.
Two winters ago, that fisherman went out at night, in the middle of a storm, to rescue his friend who was missing. He went alone, and they both came back. “He knows these waters like the back of his hands”, his wife said.
John Clark have heard of this fisherman. It was weird that he didn’t come back. And even weirder is that no one had reported a storm. However, it didn’t change the fact he had no men to send, except one – his nephew Everett, 19 at the time, whom he was training.
So he sent Everett along with Carolina, the daughter of the missing fisherman and the person who knew best where to look for him. Everett also had something else – a world map drawn by The Free Society.
According to Ellie [Israeli keeper at the time of publishing this], that was the most accurate map of the time.
John Clark went on a scouting mission of his own for a couple of months, and when he returned, Everett and Carolina were still away. John was sure something was up. He gathered his best men and with 3 ships, they left to look for Everett and Carolina.
A couple of weeks in, they saw a coast that wasn’t on their map, and sure enough – Everett, Carolina and the fishermen were all there. The fishermen were so cocky they all went to sleep and crashed on that coast they assumed wasn’t there. That is how Alteria was discovered.
When Everett got there, he knew this place was what his uncle was looking for all those years. He and Carolina were busy mapping the coastline, and have discovered two things. One, the place was only accessible through a certain route, what we today know as the gate to Alteria. Second, if you breath the air and drink the water of the place, you get stronger.
Everett told his uncle that the water and air where they were make people stronger. His uncle, in proper scout fashion, did not dismiss. He asked for proof. Everett gave it by winning a tug-of-war against his uncle’s 10 strongest men.
Some of them thought it was luck, so Carolina challenged them. If Everett was young enough at 19, Carolina was 16, and a girl. They underestimated her, didn’t really pull, and almost lost when the tug-of-war started. At the last second they went all in, pulled their hardest, and it was a tie. Carolina on one side, 10 of John Clark’s strongest men on the other, equal. A statue of that stand-off is in every fort’s lobby.
The Free Society had diverted all of its resources into Alteria. People migrated from all around the world, and in the following years three important things happened:
1 - They figured out how to control the altered state better, and also that it’s gone when one leaves Alteria.
2 - The Alteria Trading Company was founded by Everett and Carolina, who by then known by her shorter name Carolyn. It helped people move, and do business in Alteria.
3 - Oddly enough, all of those people running away from monarchies, instated a monarchy.
Those three were the beginning of what Alterians call “The Prosperity Era”. The place flourished – quality of life was up, people were healthy, they had food and shelter – they lived a good life. By the end of it Alteria was maturing, and even though Alterians agreed on the topic of freedom from tyrants, they disagreed about practically everything else.
They needed space so people could live their lives as they see fit. Alteria was split into areas called lands, and each land had like-minded people living in it. Alteria changed from the home of the free people, to the home of the free peoples.
Along the years, Alteria has been raided several times by bandits. The raids were small, because no one believed Alteria actually existed.
Either way, It did slowly caught on, raids got bigger and more frequent, and that worried Everett and Carolyn Clark and pushed them to action. They were quite old at the time, and determined to make sure Alteria will stay safe after they’re gone.
They have somehow transferred Alterian water to earth, still substanced, dug holes in dozens of locations around the world, filled them up with water, and built a fort above each one. They trained the best people they had, and at any given time, there were 5 manned forts.
The reason the king and queen didn’t build it but, was that the monarchy is strictly confined to inside Alteria and can not operate outside of it.
One year after the keepers were established war broke. An organization codenamed O.F.D. attacked the forts and had one under siege. A keeper o f another fort went to fight and end the siege. He was successful. O.F.D. was defeated.
That war was the first time a keeper died. The keeper who went to fight the siege did not survive the battle he won, a battle the gave Alteria peace that still lasts today.