From the History of Loss and Hope, by Llanawi Puresoul of the Halls of Care, Chief Physician of the Office For Cleansing.
A tragedy for the present Age is that so many learn the wrong lessons from history. The New Light are foremost in this error.
In the Second Age, the Order of Silver Light brought peace, prosperity, stability and order to these lands, but failed to keep control over their subjects. After the Sundering, surviving mages, hedge-witches and sundry practitioners of secret arts came together to rebuild the Order.
These optimists called themselves The New Light, and they embraced all manner of occult practitioner. Where the Order of the Silver Light had included only the most powerful and most intelligent mages, the New Light included every manner of magical practitioner from shamen to alchemists. Where the Order of Silver Light understood the supremacy of Elves, here Humans and Orcs are accepted alongside their natural betters.
Still, many of the goals of the Order of Silver Light live on in this more diverse gathering. These mages understand that the wise should rule the foolish, and believe that an educated class of rulers should be schooled to provide leadership for the ignorant masses. They also believe that magical power is supreme above all others, and magical study the greatest intellectual endeavour. And so they continue the work of the Order to impose upon the lesser peoples the wise rule of potent mages.
These mages are obsessed with their magical power, and determined to rebuild a civilisation akin to that of the last Age through the rule of wizards. But this is muddled thinking. They have failed to learn the correct lessons from history.
The fall of the Order of Silver Light did not come from a lack of diversity. It came from a lack of commitment to maintaining order. Faced with a choice between keeping order and gaining magical knowledge the New Light will choose knowledge. This is a fine way to build a college of magicians, but an inadequate way to build an eternal empire.
This is why the New Light will never build a civilisation to rival the heights of the Second Age. And this is why we Argiri, not they, are the best hope for a land too free, to fractured and too foolish to prosper.