https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7OdI-b61qg&ab_channel=EpicMusicEmpire - Acclamation<span class="mu-i">“I so swear it.”</span> The three of you speak in tandem. You are a knight, not a butcher. But you will obey as honour demands.
<span class="mu-i">“OBEY THE DRAGON.”</span> The room echoes with the words of every warrior and knight present in the great hall.
The great claymore comes to rest on the next Sir Cedric. <span class="mu-i">“Do you swear to honour the ancestors, to discharge Adam’s Mercy and bring no shame or disgrace upon the memory of those who came before you?”</span>
<span class="mu-i">“I so swear it.”</span> The small part of you not overawed at the momentousness of the occasion wonders whether the term ‘Adam’s Mercy’ is meant a deal more literally here than at home.
<span class="mu-i">“HONOUR THE ANCESTORS.”</span> The great hall rumbles as the Black Knight comes to a halt in front of you.
You feel the weight of the Black Knights greatsword on your shoulder, one of his dozen squires ready to adorn you with the purple cloak and golden clasp of the office of your new rank. <span class="mu-i">“Do you swear to die well, as a warrior should, to fight and rage in honourable battle until life and limb should fade from thee?”</span>
<span class="mu-i">“I so swear it.”</span> With the holy undertaking that the Almighty has charged you to carry out, you find it harder and harder to imagine a peaceful death in the comfort of your own bed at the end of a long life. And you are, for the most part, at peace with that.
<span class="mu-i">“DIE WELL.”</span> If the Angel wills it, you would not have it any other way.
<span class="mu-i">“Then rise, Lances of the Dragon Guard.”</span> The Black Knight shoulders his greatsword with practised ease, raising his voice to address the rest of the standing hall in old words that you’d swear carried a tinge of a Romani accent. <span class="mu-i">“Mort Avant Déshonneur!”</span>
<span class="mu-s"><span class="mu-i">“IMPERATOR! IMPERATOR!”</span></span>
Five hundred hands raise five hundred goblets in a toast to your newfound comradeship, five hundred throats cry out in five hundred voices a battlecry that has been roared across battlefields, in one tongue or another, long before your nation was even an idea. Long even before the written word, ever since mankind first carved out its mark of civilization on the world.
<span class="mu-i"><span class="mu-s">“DEATH. BEFORE. DISHONOUR.”</span></span>
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