Ice rattled, bounced into the frosted tumbler. A pour of clear liqueur followed, thick and sugary. It rolled, diverted like the spill of a waterfall over riverstones, became milky clear where it touched weeping water.

A thumb and middle finger, all what remained of the drinker's digits, wrapped round the condensing glass, upended it through whiskery lips.

"Another, per favore," he said, voice gummy, squinting to the barmouse.

The furry barman nodded, tipped the bottle's end to pour again.

A shadow crossed the gleaming bartop, covered the glass. "And this one is on us," said a voice beside. Young, accented like a Southern grandee.

The drinker crinkled his eyebrows, turned his greying head. Beside stood a pair in junior Navy uniforms. A young man and woman, both with the ear-length curtains of black hair so popular amongst cadets. They grinned awkwardly, yet eagerly, leaning against the otherwise empty bar.

"Elias, you brought a friend," nodded the barmouse. He poured again, caught a drip off the bottle with a serviette. 

"Gottmus, Giorgio, hola." said Elias, bobbed his head in turn to the mouse, the greying man.

"You again," grumbled Giorgio. He squeezed his glass, hunched.

"This is my friend, Peral," said Elias. Peral waved, grinning widely.

"Bah." He did not look at her.

"You are hard to find, friend. What are you having?" said Elias, moving to occupy the stool beside him.

"Anisette," grumbled Giorgio.

"Again? I will have one, too." Elias raised a finger to Gottmus.

"You will not like it."

"He likely won't," seconded the barmouse. "Only Giorgio likes it this way."

"Sure he will. He likes drinks that hurt," giggled Peral.

Gottmus retrieved another glass, some ice, poured. "Salud," said Elias. He knocked it back, considered it, frowned, stuck out his tongue, sticky. "My Lord."

Peral covered her mouth, chuckled. Gottmus squinted, twitched his nose. "I warned you. Not meant to be had on ice."

Peral sat as well, turned to survey the man across from Elias. "How did you acquire such a taste, eh?"

"Off. Do not bother me," insisted Giorgio. "Gottmus," he snapped a finger. "Do not let these two buy my drinks, understand?" The mouse shrugged. 

"But Giorgio," said Elias, raising his eyebrows. "This place is practically empty." He waved a hand about the bar, empty save for some quiet sorts in booths of dark wood and colored glass. "Let us give you some company."

"It is empty because it is late," snapped Giorgio. "Go. It is past your bedtime."

"Gior–"

"Why do you want to buy me drinks, eh?" snapped the aging man. He half rose, taller than his hunch suggested. He snapped his cold eyes to each. Peral shrunk a little. Elias went agape.

"Because, well," started Elias. "Eh…"

"Elias says you told him the most exciting stories, last time," said Peral, quiet.

Giorgio frowned. "Oh." He seemed to shrink a mite. He grumbled, frowned more. "Why do you want to hear old cutter nonsense? Eh? No happy stories."

"We don't want happy stories," said Peral, quick. She shifted forward. "Happy ones are boring."

Giorgio's brows met, bushy. "You like the scary ones, then?"

The cadets bobbed their heads, eager. Giorgio sighed. He plucked up the mouse's next pour, tossed it down. "Fine," he grumbled, voice sticky. "You pups cannot account me for your bad dreams, though."

"Yes!"

"What did I tell you, last?"

Elias perked up. "You told me about how you lost your fingers."

"Ai, that was nothing."

"Cannibal ragmen biting off your fingers is nothing?" said Elias. Peral's eyes widened.

Giorgio shook his head, slow, lip downturned. "Not compared to the worst."

"Lord. What is worst, then?"

"Hm," hummed Giorgio.

"Banshees?" suggested Elias.

"Never fought a banshee." Giorgio shook his head.

"Wolf spiders?" said Peral.

"No. They just keep you up at night."

"Sirens?"

"No. Hate sailing, anyway."

"What is it?" said Peral, anxious.

Giorgio looked blank. He gestured for another pour. Slow, he put it down in three sips, breathed the licorice fumes with relish. Then, he huffed, nodded. "I recall."

Both cadets leaned close, eyes wide. Across the bar, even Gottmus, occupied decanting a dusty bottle through a straining cloth, perked his ears.

"It was an expedition on Illa Corvoy, south of the Peninsula," said Giorgio, slow, as if remembering. "I was young as you both, and I had signed on with a green bunch of poor bastardos to delve a cave in the deep jungle slopes." He nodded. "We were in good spirits when we set out, for the bank assured us it was an easy venture. Just a scrape of some old buried gold. Work for the back, not the sword arm."

Giorgio shook his head. "But it was not that way."

"What went wrong?" said Peral.

Ice clinked as the old cutter swirled it round his glass. "Have you heard of the Asp of Sorento?" Elias and Peral nodded, quick. "No one's ever fought it and lived," muttered the latter. Across the bar, Gottmus shivered. 

"Ai, well," said the old cutter. "Before he was the Asp of Sorento, he was the Serpent of Corvoy, though none knew him by that name, at the time, and he lived in a cave all covered over with ivy."

Giorgio paused, swallowed. The others kept quiet. "We walked into the island interior for a day, until we could see the place we were meant to scrape. Set a camp, there, and designed to work come the morning. Kept an eye on that cave, all the while, though, for we saw a light inside, in the dark. We were curious, wondering what glittered in there," he paused. "In the dark past the ivy."

"We were impatient," he said. "Kept guessing about what measure of gold could be so large to glimmer after sunset. So we went down after supper to see." Giorgio blinked, slow. "When we got to the cave, and they started crawling inside, I lagged back, for I wanted sleep. Glad I did."

"Why?" said Peral, soft.

"Because it wasn't much time before they started screaming."

Across the bar, Gottmus jumped. Something clattered to the bartop. "Sorry," he said, picked up a spoon.

"Go on," urged Elias.

"They were quiet, soon enough. Likely a blessing, for by the sound of how they suffered, I would not wish it upon any man," said Giorgio. "And from what I saw."

"You saw the Asp?" said Elias, sharply, breathless.

"Yes."

"What was it like?"

Giorgio squinted at the cadets. "You know how the heart panics when you see a little serpent in the grass?" They nodded.

"It was much the same way, the beast which came through the ivy." He nodded. "But coiling, and huge, and black as jet, with reaching arms, and fires in its eyes." He shut his eyes. "And the bodies of three young fools melting in its jaws."

At this, the cadets breathed shallow. Giorgio squinted, furrowed, eyes near obscured. "I will not forget the way a serpent makes a man comes apart; burning, dripping. Nor the way his flesh smells." He winced. "Nor how long you can see the life in his eyes, even after he stops his screaming."

He swallowed twice, dryly, hastily swallowed the watery licorice dregs. "That is the worst I recall," nodding.

Covertly, Elias looked Peral in the eye. She met his look, mouth drawn down, unnerved. Giorgio looked at them both, sneered. "Is this the kind of story you like?" Tentative, both still nodded.

"Bah."

Under the bar, Bottmus squeaked. "Certainly not the sort of story for me."

Giorgio chuckled, wetly. "My good baristo, I will refrain, in the future, for your soft ears' sake. Now, pour me another, per favore." Awkwardly, Elias giggled, too. Peral stayed silent.

"But Giorgio," she said. "How can it be true? No one has ever fought the Asp of Sorento and lived."'

At this, the old cutter laughed again. Long, harsh. He quit. "Ai, I didn't fight the serpent," said he. "A certain fear is a cutter's friend. How else do you get to grow fat and grey and tell silly children their bedtime stories, eh?"

He grinned at the cadets. They shirked at that expression, at the cutter's cold eyes. "No, I did not fight it," he said, after a moment. He swallowed his drink.

"I ran the hell away."

Horror

The following is a mechanism from the Incunabuli Playtest:

If something described as horrible, terrifying, or any synonym thereof is encountered, the encountering character may opt to give into Horror. They roll a d12 on the table below.

• 12-9: Fear spurs the character's heels. They receive a speed bonus of 1 for one round and must flee until they can no longer sense the horror.
• 8-7: Irrational Rage. The character must attack the horror, if possible.
• 6-5: Unreasonable Panic. The character uses their next turn to grapple a nearby ally, or, failing that, dive for a hiding place.
• 4-2: Lockup. The character is frozen in a contest between fight or flight. They are stunned for 1d3 actions.
• 1: Violent Confusion. The character attacks their nearest ally with the weapon most easily at hand. A horrified character gains +5XP at session’s end. They may be horrified thrice in a session. Horror in excess gives no XP.

Certain monsters may give more XP when used as a horror trigger.

Horror may be remembered in Nightmares.

Author's Note

"It is a royal sport, Clemensa," said a dark and sunbaked man. With manicured fingers, he thumbed flechette rounds into a squat magazine. Sweat beaded on his forearms and lined brow.

Across the folding table, Clemensa, clutching a thick demitasse of coffee, nodded slackly. He peered under his pith hat out into the jungle, blinked 'gainst heavy sun amidst dark trees' fronds. Their camp, attended by two tan and pith-clad servants, lay alongside a muddy and algae-slicked path through a steaming labyrinth of trees.

He blinked away sweat. "So you keep repeating, Elizar."

Elizar pursed his lips, knowingly. "I do, I do. Those haughty Firls, for all their queerness, have discovered even in our own country the best sport."

"Yes, where it is spoilingly hot."

"Drink more espresso. You will sweat better."

Clemensa harrumphed, swallowed the coffee. Foam stuck to his moustache. He curled his lip, frowned into the thicket. "And they are in there, Elizar? The storks?"

"Yes, but higher up the slopes." He took up a long gunspring, furnished in walnut and filigree, from the table, clapped the magazine into its well. "We will go to meet them after lunch."

"At siesta," whined Clemensa.

"Yes. When they soar low to hunt. The islanders sleep inside, to avoid them."

"How wise."

"Ai, you will not complain so, with a stone* for your mantelpiece and a great beak for your wall." He grinned. "In any case, your beau, my dear sister, will find you a more impressive husband, for it."

Clemensa's look did not improve.

Down the path, a burble of grumbling voices and sloshing boots swelled. Clemensa watched them approach, dully. 

They were grim, sweated folk. Eight in all; all ragged, poor, bitten red by the sun and slicked by ceaseless jungle steam. Many had blotchy bandages round fresh wounds. Four in the lead supported something slung heavy and swaying neath two poles; a large, hidden carcass covered in tarp. Two followed, carried bundles of long clubs. And after them followed two more. They lugged a limp, brown woman in their wake, slashed through her leaking belly as if by claws.

Clemensa's eyes widened. "Lord," he said, running a thumb over his moustache. "Look, Elizar. What are they?"

Elizar turned to look, briefly. "Oh, hunters," said he, turned his eyes back to polishing his gunspring.

Rapt, Clemensa watched the small parade go by. He craned to look neath their tarp. Naught but a sliver of smooth, taught flesh showed below, smooth and matte as a rose petal. "Of what? What beast have they caught, there?"

"Lion poppy."

"A flower?"

"Yes, but more leopard than pixie."

"Are they maneaters?"

"They kill a few dozen farmers, yearly," said Elizar, disinterested.

Hair rose on Clemensa's arms, lifted beads of sweat. "Sounds righteous prey. Ferocious, too. Look what it did to that woman," he gestured to the passing group.

"Ferocious: Yes. Refined sport: No." Elizar blinked at him. "Do not tell me you are thinking what I think you are thinking."

"But, Elizar," said Clemensa, raising his hands. "Look at them. They are poor, they hunt with clubs, and yet they take more righteous prey than us." He opened his palms. "We aim to shoot down silly birds while they better mankind."

"Come, now. The storks are maneaters, too."

"They eat nearly no one, these years."

Elizar frowned. "Bah, the lion poppies are policed well enough."

"But not yet well enough, so you admitted. Why do we not join in hunting them, Elizar? Why do you disapprove, so?"

Elizar set down his gun, pointed a hand, palm up, at the retreating parade and their kill. "Because, Clemensa," he said. "Poppy hunters are wretches. Lowlives."

Clemensa frowned. "But, they are so brave."

"Theirs is the courage of greedy men," Elizar said, leaning forward. Clemensa frowned, listening.

Elizar walked two fingers over the tabletop. "They go to the poppy's haunts with but clubs, and they do not track; they do not stalk." He shook his head. "They play the lion's roulette."

Clemensa's lips parted. "They act as bait?"

His friend nodded. "They wait for the beast to come. All know they are bait, but all are comforted that only one will become prey."

"And when the poppy strikes?"

"They strike, too. Leap and pummel it down before it can take one of them away." Elizar crossed his arms. "Often, it works. Often, a successful hunt requires a traded life."

"But why clubs? Have they no other weapons, they are so poor?"

Elizar shook his head, drummed his fingers over his elbows. "Clubs, for they do not wish to pierce its petal-hide."

"So they do not spill its blood?"

"Exactly."

"What blood is worth a life?" Clemensa looked offended.

"The poppy's blood, of course. Pink blood…" said Elizar, drawling. He squinted down the path where the hunters had gone. Naught remained of them but footprints and dribbled gore. "Is worth its weight in gold."



"Oi, Borl."

A boot nudged Borl's midsection. He didn't respond. "Your watch, greenhorn**," mumbled an adenoidal, gruff tone, loud in the night.

On the stick-strewn forest floor, Borl's scruffy head emerged from a pile of blankets. He looked blearily up, groaned, shut his eyes again, yawned abundantly.

"Eh. Can smell your breath from here," said the boot's owner,
a pasty woman in a steel cap tugged over a woolen hat.

A great map commanded the room. A gridded realm of canvass and ink stretched over continental furniture. Mice in suspenders and shirtsleeves scurried, titans, over the tiny landscape, plucking up and setting down pins, miniatures, and labels. Others bore inkpots, pens, fine brushes, delicately altered the surface of the painted land. Beady eyes peered through thick spectacles, intent. Ash dribbled from cigarettes lodged in rodent jaws. Ears and whiskers twitched, concentrating. All in quiet, save a few gossipful mutters and the brush of footpads on taught canvass.

Someone spoke up. The mice perked their pink ears. 

"Report: Expedition to Caircollin amended. Expunge," said a woman with an open ledger in hand.

A mouse rushed to comply, snatched a label from the relevant grid-point. "Done, Smithers."

Smithers nodded. She ticked an item off her list. "Prospective numbers in Draum have risen again. Amend, plus three score."

Another mouse rushed to the continent-table's edge, removed a ledger from shelves neath its lip. He rifled through, adjusted a figure, skittered to plant a new pawn on an inked frontier town.

Nearby, in the rose-paneled wall, a door clicked brusquely open. Hard-toe flats passed through. 

"Master Smithers. Updates from the cashiers. The estimate from this morning's return from Leeland Haunt is corrected to five thousand, and they are still degilding* the walls," read a spectacled woman from a clipboard.

"Thank you," said Smithers, pointing to a mouse, who nodded, obliged, corrected yet another record.

"And the casualty rate was seventy percent, not eighty. A cutter presumed missing reported in, said the others tossed him off a bridge on the way back in hopes their shares would increase."

The table of mice chuckled. Smithers shook her head, disapproving. "Animals. Dock their benefits."

"Of course." She departed.

At the table, a brown mouse stood. She wrung ink from her clawed paws with a rag. "Any chance of an update from the Sansevie Raid?"

"Afraid not, Tiff. Communications are still down after the breakout."

"Shame. We were enjoying following that," said Tiff. The others, noses bent to work, nodded.

The door opened again. A bearded man swung through, panting. His tie was askew. He held a scrap of typewritten paper. "A tele from Sommersault Consortium," he heaved. "From the Yawn of Auld expedition." Smithers and the mice looked up with interest.

"Go on. Do breathe, Wilkins," said Smithers.

Wilkins gulped. "The cutters have withdrawn. They encountered an eidolon in the first hall."

The mice began gossiping minutely. Whiskers twitched, excitedly ablur. "Casualties?" squeaked one. Smithers glared at them, resignedly at the bearded man.

"Fifty percent."

The mice cringed. "Damn," mumbled Smithers.

"They request immediate reinforcement," said Wilkins. "The Firm has heavy infantry** on retainer nearby."

Smithers curled her lip, frowned. "No need for that."

Wilkins gaped at her. "It tore them apart, Master."

"If it's an eidolon, Wilkins, it's probably been there two millennia. It's not going to leave, now." She turned to the mice. "Do we have any known errants, nearby?"

The mice scrabbled, opened a half-dozen ledgers. "One put up in Sommersault town, Sir Courtebank," squeaked one. "And a Sir Hewn, of Tort is in Country Persecht, with squires. Very good standing."

Wilkins frowned. "A knight team? Is that an appropriate thing to do?"

Smithers drew a thin squint of a smile. "Wilkins, I realize you are new to the Firm," she said. "But there are traditions to be upheld, for the sake of respect." The mice at the map-table all nodded. "To kill a knight, you must use a knight."

Smithers snapped her ledger shut. "It is the most appropriate thing to do."



A grating of steel shivered through the halls. Rasping, sparking; bounced off moldering grey walls and vaulted ceilings, round occluded corners sconced with skull-faced statuary. The sole sound in bleak passages, save a crunch of bootnails on ancient tile.

Three pairs. Three walkers down the high, dark corridors. Two were attendants; armored, laden with packs. One of them held a lantern. The other: A broad, rectangular shield, thickly pitted. They kept close behind a towering third. 

This, their charge, ground cracks into the tile with every steelshod step. A towering man, queerly long of trunk and limb, clad completely in interlocking, scalloped steel. His every move hissed, whirred softly, driven by the armored mass of hydraulic arms hidden close, connected to his broad back and every armored appendage. In the hinged elbow of one arm, he couched a plain helm of forged plate and steel mesh. Large, metal fingertips ground into the dome, nervous.

"It's close," he said.

"The sound?" said one squire, behind. She peered round the gigantic shield's burden.

"The eidolon," said the Knight, pointing ahead. Ahead, just visible in the lamplight, showed stained lumps strewn over and against the floor and wall. Some dozen corpses, blotchy with fresh rot.

"Oh," startled the lantern-bearer. He jumped, caused weird shadows to writhe over the walls.

"Plague?" said the other, breathless. The two poised nervously. 

"I would wager not," said the knight, keeping on. "These cutters had standing. Could afford their salt." He sneered, grimly. "In too many pieces to live again, anyway."

Only meters farther down showed an archway. Chipped, flanked by carven, cracked statues of death. Past it, the grating sound originated. "This'll be it. See that?" said the Knight, pointing above the arch. A stone plate was graven there, written in ancient speak and near-indecipherable. One squire squinted, read the words aloud.

"The litany?" she said, frowning. *** "That's meant to come at the beginning. How can this only now be the mouth of the tomb, after so far?"

The Knight shook his head. "Can say neither why, nor whom built it this way." He extended a free hand to his shieldbearer. "We have but one purpose here."

Wordless, the attendants set to work on their ironclad master. They slid his shield, oiled, into its T-shaped mount upon his forearm plate. It took fast, buttressed by reinforcing spokes up to the shoulder. They set and rotated the helm, locked it into its armored neck ring. Its mesh eyes peered only just above a great, banded alloy gorget. They disengaged and carefully withdrew a mailcoil, whispering with the contained energy of a hundred meters of vibrating alloy hairspring, from the man's steel back, replaced it with a fresh surrogate. Then, they proffered the hammer.

This weapon, a meter and more long and cruelly beaked, the knight took up himself; locked it fast in the chainmaille pad of his paw. Steel scraped 'gainst knurled steel as he gripped it, breathing slow, helmet bowed. Listening.

From beyond the dark arch, the grating still came. Short, close. The Knight looked up.  

"Put the flares in quick, for me," said he, hollow within his steel casque. He stretched, rolled his shoulders. The armor complied, pliable, produced a chorus of small clicks and pressurized squeaks as plates and pistons ground over and within each other.

"Aye."

"Wish me well," he said, breathless with sudden energy.

"As ever," said the shieldbearer. Her fellow nodded, smiled grimly. 

The Knight nodded. With loping strides, incongruously light, he made for the arch, ducked beneath. For a moment, darkness surrounded him. Then, a set of stars arced in from behind: Flares, bright white and near-smokeless, tossed by the squires. What they revealed gave the Knight pause.

An open plain of pillars on grey stone. Bleak, unadorned, shedding shadows like trees into the immense black beyond the flare's light. And midst them, a crude marble throne with three corpses slumped at its side.

There sat the eidolon. A creature of wrought iron, plated all over with iron studded thickly with decorative rivets. Humanlike, queerly elongated. It hunched where it sat, knees higher than shoulders, long neck bowed to where spider-hands worked an oblong stone over two meters of gleaming steel. With every strop, the stone, whetted with some red liquid, scraped a grating note from the cruciform blade.

At this sight, the Knight paused, gripped his hammer. A breath caught in his throat.

The eidolon's flat-hopped helmet rose, turned to face the sound. No eyes showed in the long, tall faceplate. Only two conelike divots for ears. A crack and a clatter of stone echoed under the pillars as it released the whetstone. Then, a breath. A long, drawn-out pull through dry tubes of flesh. And as it inhaled, it stood. A hundred layered plates of black iron clinked and slid into their place on the willowy limbs of that protracted form. It stood like an iron lamppost, straight, cast a spare line in the flarelight. 

Dwarfed by a meter or more, the Knight swallowed, straightened.

"Eidolus," he pronounced, voice too-quiet within the helm. "Fratrem in ferro," louder. He lifted his hammer, pointed it at the iron guardian's sword. "Perform for me the task for which we were made."

The eidolon nodded. Slow, it approached, blade lax at its side. The Knight raised his shield to match, bent at the knees, on guard. With his every move, a series of mechanical retorts followed.

"On your guard," declared the Knight.

 The eidolon kept on, head cocked.

"On your–" he yelped. The eidolon swiped at him, fast. A stab, hooked so far round from the right it would have connected, save the shield's right corner. A gouge showed in the steel slab. Heels crunched over the stone, driven by the weight of the blow.

Without pause, the eidolon pulled its huge blade into both hands and struck again, overhead, down at the Knight's back with the point. Pistons spat and groaned, jerked to lift the shield and absorb the blow. Hinged knees buckled, momently. 

This proceeded a half score times again. The eidolon, towering and erect, whipped its great weight of steel thought the stale air with casual ease. The Knight, hunched under his now-battered slab, groaned. Black and silver steel glimmered with countless pinpricks, reflecting the flare's stark starlight.

Another swing. This time, the Knight, already croached, leapt aside. Steel rippled through the space he'd occupied, came back around too late. The eidolon, legs locked, could not dodge the beak of steel which punched greedily through a plate above its hip.

The wrought-iron creature staggered, but only briefly, righted itself. The hammer ground free, pulled with it an arc of dark ichor smelling of putrid almonds. It stood hastily, sword fending, before the panting Knight. Purple-red gore and a wash of some clear oil trickled from neath its plates. 

They stood a moment, silent. From the archway, stifled cries of encouragement sounded. The Knight heaved, gasped, grinned at the squire's cries. With every breath, with every movement, his armor whirred, clicked.

Dry breath rattled in the eidolon's long, iron helm, canted to listen. It began to circle, fast, sword still extended.

Abruptly, it feinted. The Knight jerked to parry, groaned at the false move. He leapt back, crashed his heels into the tile, expected a counterattack. He armor screamed with the motion. The eidolon's head swiveled, followed.

It feinted again. Again the Knight leapt, but forward, retaliated. The eidolon made little attempt to mitigate the plates and hunk of gristly flesh torn off its thigh.

"What are you doing?" gasped the Knight.

It swung again. The Knight countered, but met air. The eidolon had pirouetted. A rush of air and speeding steel rippled behind his back, inches close.

They still circled. The eidolon's head faced sideways, ear to its opponent. It feinted again. The Knight dodged, armor groaning and shrieking with pressure.

The eidolon stopped, lept a step back, sword limp.

"What?"

It came at him again, slow. "Are you listening?" said the knight, as it neared. "Listening to my armor?"

Still it came. The Knight remained in place. He scoffed. "Trying to listen out a weak spot? Though you'd have some better trick than that!"

Before him, the eidolon jerked its sword up. The Knight struck as soon as it did, expecting a faint. It wasn't a feint. 

The eidolon struck down, overhead. As the Knight's hammer bit again into his foe, the eidolon's great blade cracked deep into the mechanisms of his back.

There was a shattering of steel, a crack like a whip and a thunderbolt combined. Hundreds of yards of alloy hairspring exploded, shattered and sinuous, from their housing in the Knight's armor, tore chunks of steel plate, flesh, and mechanism with them. The armored man was thrown up and into his foe, who swatted him limp from the air with a counterswing. 

From the arch, the squires cried out in dismay, watched the wiry, wrought-iron giant bend over their motionless knight; his chest-plates now caved, his armor ruined. They watched as it seized him by the helm, and, with shock, dragged him, limp and grinding to the arch. They scampered back, watched the eidolon deposit their charge within reach. At that, it stopped.

Slow, bleeding, the eidolon resumed its throne. Rasping, battered, it bowed its helm, set to waiting.

Waiting, to perform again the task for which it was made.

Knights

In all the courts and orders of civilization, there belong knights. 

They are human exemplars. Paragon soldiers. Men and women made literally larger than life by traditions honorable, martial, and chemical. Nobles, bound by heritage and respect. Soldiers, unmatched in might and cunning. Inhumans, tempered and crafted by rare armor and obscure, terrible processes of augmentation.

They are a legendary caste. In peace, they sit the courts and parliament-houses of nations, lend to their leaders the level surety and wise ears of heirloom wisdom. In war, they accompany fellow soldiers in battle, make an inspiring and devastating vanguard. In uncertain times, they venture; live as mighty errants seeking use in troubled lands.

In all these actions, knights hold to various forms of chivalric code. Regardless of origin state or brotherhood, these are invariably doctrines of honor and respect for mankind. † They are also condemning codes of justice for inhuman and human alike. Knights view these traditions, these limits and cautions, as necessary strictures; for only they reckon the true, augmented might at their disposal.

From their smallest days, prospective knights, chosen from the most apt of young squires and nobles, are raised for singular purpose. Among their studies in science, tactics, and history, they are taught restraint, honor, and level-handedness. These facets of character and education are deemed necessary accompaniments to the terrible processes of physical manufacture which they simultaneously undergo.

What these processes are, precisely, varies greatly from one state or knightley order's tradition to another. Most include obscure and painful enhancements by way of tincture, surgery, and decoction to height, muscle mass, and durability during key developmental phases. †† A given knight will stand head and shoulders above his fellow man, weigh three or more times their mass. His or her blood will run thick and dark through taught veins, large under strengthened skin.

These enhancements, these augmentations, are not the sole provider of a knight's titanic power. Nor even are they the best known. †††

Clockwork armor, as it is commonly known, is the most chiefly recognizable icon of Coastal knighthood. Suits are custom made and immensely heavy, suited only to a knight's enhanced resources and strength. The combination of hydraulics, whose accumulators are pressurized by a maincoil similar to those used in gunsprings, and mechanical aids which drive a suit's limbs provide the knight within an even greater degree of physical supremacy.

A knight and his suit, both huge, ornate, and expensive, are maintained by a parade of squires. These are not common folk. Rather, they are themselves soldiers and experts in the fields required to maintain their augmented charge. Armorers, ballistics specialists, scouts, and, most notably: Doctors learned in the strange processes which gift a knight their strength. The secrets known by these workers are thought by most to be closely-held marvels of modern science. They are not.

Knighthood's origins are secret, not because they are guarded patents or private procedures, but because they are sorcery. Artifact-methods, relics, reverse engineered from the corpses of all knight's progenitor: The eidolon.

Eidola. Deathless guardians in tombs and ancient places. Twisted knights of old, made strange and single-minded by sorcery and millennia-long posts at past ages' forbidden gates. Creatures, presumably once-human, made horrific and durable for the ages. These knights of old, with their steel skin, corrugated veins, and misshapen, mighty frames, are the basis for all of modern knighthood.

For this hideous truth, the knightly codes of chivalry exist. To separate today's knights' in both thought and potential action from the terrible nature of their progenitors. To clad and reassure them so profoundly in their purity and exemplary human status as to enable them to face fellow knights on the battlefield, justified by the coda, and to even face their ancient brothers in single combat, assured of the other's inhumanity. All without doubt.

Yet, with every passing decade, with every knight made stronger and more inadvertently inhuman than before, swollen by the weal of ancient sorcery, some begin to question. They question, for they see reforming the terrors of old. The ways by which the folk of millennia past removed their own humanity, brought themselves up as sorcerer-kings. 

For now, the codes of chivalry hold. Inhuman knights still respect their mortal lords. And they will yet, until the day one begins to question.

Author's Note

Footnotes

** Most banks, in addition to their bevy of hired cutters, maintain not-inconsiderable private security forces. They utilize these for purposes outside those typically entrusted to cutters. Usually, defense of bank officials and locations, and, rarely, the clearing of especially stubborn tombs. They are paid a salary, unlike cutters, and are primarily composed of heavy infantry personnel.
† Followers of Aveth claim their humanocentric faith as the basis of such tradition. Northern knight-brotherhoods denounce this, claim instead that their tradition was formed to serve all of civilization, regardless of kind.
†† A knight cannot be manufactured after puberty. The human body is insufficiently pliable to mould, after this stage. Even a successfully generated knight requires frequent and unpleasant medical maintenance of a dire nature to maintain their augmented bodies.
††† Their presence is paid carefully small attention, by many states. Suspicion of unnatural enhancement of such paragons, especially in the South, would be frowned upon if better known.

"Jorge."

Author's Note