Adytum

Adytum (Argilian: ἄδυτον áduton, Literary Vitrian: Ⰰⰴⱆⱅⱁⱀⱏ adutonŭ) was a secretive body that acted as the highest religious and political authority of Costeny during much of the middle Cositene expansion period from 1151 to 1227, an era known as the Adytic period (Literary Vitrian: Adutonĭska epokha). Its appearance in 1151, known as the Reappearance, was able to stop the internecine infighting between different nascent Cositene states that had appeared after Tastanism and its associated social order's destruction in the 11th century following the Panoles plague. The uniform doctrinal and political authority that Adytum held allowed the Cositene world to concentrate resources on a new wave of outwards expansion, and thus the spread of the religion. The 1183 Investiture of Peregnevy delineated the Cositene states with recognition and regulation by Adytum itself, stabilizing the regional order temporarily. In 1227, Adytum disappeared in an event known as the Occultation, which was swiftly followed by the Empire of Razaria establishing supremacy over Cositene West Borea.

Adytum claimed itself to be a circle of Mstis's original students from the 10th century who had apparently attained immortality, omniscience, and other supernatural powers thanks to their religious accomplishment. This was apparently accepted without question by the warlords of the period upon the Reappearance, and all decrees made by Adytum were also seemingly unquestioningly followed with perfect compliance. None is known of the actual composition of Adytum, not even the number of individuals making up of it despite its purported origins. Adytum supposedly convened in the Cathedral of the Darkest Void, a secretive temple located in the eastern Gozars of which approach was apparently impossible for much of the time, and their commands were relayed by equally mysterious messengers. Only religious and military leaders of the period are said to have ever seen Adytum members in person or set foot on the Cathedral, and the accounts of these encounters are highly apocryphal. Overall, Adytum's existence is heavily shrouded with mystery, complicated by Cositene historiography which insists on obscuring descriptions of the body and its context; scholars have proposed theories to the actual composition and structure of the body, as well as its true role of the period, while others have disputed its historicity altogether.