Founding Records
In 831, the Alliance of Wandering Scholars was created. The founders created a series of documents, describing rules for members, guiding principles of the organization, and everything that experience taught them about human nature. For years, these constitutional documents grew, with rulings and addendums and old principles applied to new situations. If you were looking for the collective wisdom of the first archive, the founding records would be where you'd find it. An earthquake in 1230 destroyed the first archive. A massive collection of artifacts, records, and wisdom were lost. None of the Rooted Abettors who'd studied and added to the founding records survived. But-- it couldn't have been lost, right? It couldn't all be gone in a single hour, in a stroke of bad luck. Not four centuries of work. Surely, someone had thought of something. The scholar of laws, Serhan Demir, had put some safeguard in place. People debate about the true location of the founding records. Maybe they were under the rubble, trapped in a place that no sensible person could reach. Maybe they were hidden in the desert, in a cave or some such, hidden with a map that-- there was no point in hypothesizing about a secret map without assuming the map survived the earthquake. Maybe they were hidden with a secret code, a password Serhan took to his grave, but those who studied his life could guess. Surely someone could find them, and know exactly what it should mean to be a scholar, and what plans our wise fore-bearers had for us. Right?
Historical Basis
There were, at one point, a series of constitution-like documents created at the start of the Alliance. Historians can prove that opinions and judgments were written based on these documents because some of them were transported to other locations before the earthquake. There was probably a scholar of laws living in the first archive who was killed in the collapse. The name (and life story) of Serhan Demir doesn't show up prior to the 1500s. For all the searches of the desert, no one has found any evidence of a safeguard, or a map, or any other possible hiding place. Technically, no one can prove that there wasn't a well-protected desert hiding place, or even that there wasn't some document in the first archive leading Scholars right to the records.
Spread
The legend of the founding records (specifically, the legend that they survived the earthquake) drops away and resurfaces among Scholars every 40 to 50 years. It's more commonly believed by scholars outside of the region; it's easier to believe the survival stories when you haven't seen the wreckage in person (or the Swiss cheese maps of all the places nearby that have been searched). As often as the legend spreads among Scholars, it's nothing compared to the spread among Classical Mages. Specifically, almost all Classical Mages are taught that the founding records (which are said to support the Classical Mages' goals) were found in 1270 and are kept secret to ruin the Mage's claim to legitimacy.
Variations & Mutation
Some variants replace Serhan with a supposed Scholar of science, Themistos. There are shield theories, copy theories, desert theories, and time travel theories. Some people believe that the records are not technically destroyed, but that the chaotic magics sent the records into a pocket dimension that they likely cannot be retrieved from. Some people bring up ley lines (which don't pass through the first archive) or Atlantis (nowhere near the first archive, also too damp to keep parchment scrolls). It's almost like a rite of passage for a young scholar to become curious and create their own theories.
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