>>6002439>A ring adorned with a red ruby, the symbolic gem of House Cecil. A gift from your father on your sixteenth birthday, he wished you never to be meek and to understand the responsibility of noble virtue. [+10 DC in general speaking rolls against nobles]The sunrise’s light refracts through the gemstone, creating red marks where it passes through and touches the wall. The band is a silver link. You slip the heirloom onto your left ring finger, or begin to, before realizing you’ll be wearing gloves. Instead, you place the ring into the belt pouch that comes with your armor. It’s still your lucky charm, you’d just rather not risk losing it.
You recall your father, the patriarch of your bloodline, granting it to you as symbol of your nobility. It is minor nobility, but its worth can still be felt in the honor you feel gazing upon the ring. House Cecil makes its home on the southern coast of Wymund. Your lands a few harbor towns. Reigned by a manor, not a castle. It’s always harder to sleep, without the sound of the waves from Gillian’s Landing there to lull you…
You peek out of the opening of the tent flap. A banner has been erected, one of several, marking this encampment as belonging to an order of knights known as The Stork’s Transmission. They’re a noble order led by your uncle, Metzen Cecil. Though, rather than representing a region such as the one your father lords over, the Storks take after fraternal orders. Operating across the realm like nomads. This has made them rather controversial among Wymund’s knight-nobility. Their goal is to act as a sort of advanced courier service. Utilizing the rites and status of knighthood to make deliveries between nations, particularly in times when two kingdoms are on rocky terms politically. Some call them honorable servicemen, some call them rats circumventing foreign policy.
You call them the group that separated you and your brother.
Five years ago, Milo ran off to become a squire of the Storks. Now, just around ten hours earlier you estimate, you’ve sworn the same oath.
Why? Why have you joined them, and why have you found yourself in lands north, in a region a bitter-rivaled house holds dominion over?
You recall the ominous summons home your father gave to you, interrupting your scholarly travels, and the task the patriarch bestowed you with…
<—>CONTINUED<—>
