Knights & Mages (The Illustrated Edition)

by Thomas Lim

  Most Bretuns today are Elohimians; those who aren’t are either non-human or on the waiting-list for the nearest local lynch mob. Not that Holy Elohim ever actually recommended this course of action for showing heathens `the light’, but who am I to deny the rustics their entertainment?

  One of the new arguments is settled around the battle of the sexes, a new fad just recently started in Camelot. This adds a whole new dimension, naturally, to Bretunic theories of life. The usual assortment goes rather like this:

  1. Elohim is Almighty.

  2. Elohim is male.

  3. Therefore men are mighty.

  4. Therefore women are not mighty.

  5. Therefore men shall show their might while women stay at home to make babies.

  6. Therefore women who do not stay at home to make babies are harlots, strumpets and shameless hussies.

  7. Therefore they are imminently desirable.

  * * * * *

  Do you see the common undertone here? Of course, that’s not the only theory. The other theory goes rather like this.

  1. Elohim is Almighty.

  2. Elohim is male.

  3. Therefore all men are male chauvinist pigs.

  4. If you can make stupid assumptions, so can we.

  Somehow, in between the nagging and the grunting, they manage to co-exist.

  Mercenaries

  The mercenaries in Erets and also in Bretunia include bounty hunters, assassins, spies, and assorted banditry willing to do anything for a fee. Mercenaries appear to be particularly plentiful in Britannia, second only to pickpockets. Both bounty hunters and assassins kill for money, but bounty hunters are different from assassins in that, while assassins need to be hired by a specific person, bounty hunters are free to pursue bounties offered by kings and noblemen to the general public as well. Assassins also have a highly organized network and code of honor, while bounty hunters tend to work alone, under only their own dubious moral guidance.

  The mercenaries used to have their headquarters in the city previously known as Harvon (now Torpann), once the messiest, ugliest, most brutal city in Britannia. After the city was cleaned up - which took a great deal of effort - the mercenaries scattered their operations through various towns and cities, even into Camelot itself. Mercenaries are usually either born or raised into the craft; few ‘pick it up’, so to speak, along the way. The business of organized crime is not something that can easily be ‘picked up’. The bounty hunters are the most openly noticeable of the three main types of mercenary; often wearing masks or partial masks to hide their faces, they frequent waterfronts and taverns and look out for potential clients; usually heavily armored and armed, often with the most vicious-looking tools and implements in existence, the bounty hunters tend to lurk in the shadows of their chosen watering-holes, and eye the crowd in silent scrutiny.

  Their occupation is thus quite unmistakable. Only a person (though usually male, there are several female mercenaries around, who tend to use their gender as a distinctly advantageous weapon) trained to capture, kill, maim, disfigure and so forth for a living can lurk with such obvious panache.

  Assassins and spies are not so easy to spot. A real assassin (as opposed to your average cutthroat, who is usually a thug with a handy dagger looking to make his way into another round of ale) can only be found through a long list of contacts, and will turn away anyone who is looking merely to cut up indiscreet lovers or rude loudmouths. Assassins will only accept serious jobs, usually of a political or feudal nature, and expect to be well-paid.

  Anyone who tries swindling an assassin will receive a short and unpleasant demonstration of the services he has tried to undermine. Killing people for money being a job rather short on jocundity, assassins are usually serious and unrelenting people, with a tendency to believe that a smile is simply a quieter form of threat.

  Spies, on the other hand, are usually very talkative and arrogant - and, for the most part, good-looking. To be a spy one must be able to easily infiltrate and integrate into all kinds of society, and nothing is more ingratiating than a stream of flattery attached to a beautiful face. Spies, unlike the more solitary assassins and completely self-reliant bounty hunters, tend to work in groups; their network is even more complex and involved than that of the assassins, which allows them to share all kinds of useful information. Spies also charge exorbitant fees, but they do not kill for money. They do kill in self-defense, or to keep their disguises secret, but their main specialization is infiltration and information.

  If a client wishes something more, he or she must then hire an assassin to work in tandem with the spies. Bounty hunters never work with spies - if any spying is to be done, they will do it themselves. Spies are capricious and can easily turn on their clients and blackmail them, particularly if the said client makes himself too disagreeable. The assassins are probably the most reliable, for their strict code of honor not only guarantees secrecy under pain of death, but also firmly instructs assassins to complete their jobs or repay their clients double the fees they received.

  The criminals of Bretunia run their own complex system of hierarchy, complete with rules, codes of honor, secret unofficial guilds and underworld politics. The criminals include smugglers and pirates, who provide weapons and supplies; thieves, robbers, bandits, burglars and others involved in the art of theft, daylight or otherwise, who provide a regular revenue; black marketeers, closely involved with smugglers, who distribute supplies and keep tabs on items and profits; and mercenaries, the most dangerous and prolific of them, because of Bretunia’s rather rigorous-minded, ambitious nobility.

  Not all mercenaries are criminals of course, for few are those who eventually made it into Camelot’s knighthood. Mercenaries are the everyday hired-hands-in-arms. While the average kid playing with sticks and wooden swords may dream to become a knight, more often than not, it is the life of a mercenary that awaits him, or her for that matter - since there is no sex discrimination in this occupation.

  * * * * *

  All mercenaries are experts in long-range weaponry and hand-to-hand combat; all, especially the spies, are able to disguise themselves very convincingly, often escaping even magical scrutiny, especially since some may actually study rudimentary magic themselves, but solely for the camouflage advantage. They are known to learn any art that helps to keep them alive, for practical reasons, of course. Of them all, the bounty hunters are the least reliable, for at the shortest notice they will ride off and never be found again, often just after failing to complete a mission; however they are the only ones who can be convinced to perform certain jobs the others will not; it is only a matter of finding a hunter with the right kind of moral scruples (or lack thereof).

  Mercenary Combat Skills

  A mercenary’s hand combat skill is the most varied as it is not constrained by the formal Orders that permeate Bretunia. Mercenaries favor simple but lethal handheld weapons or a simple projectile weapon as their primary weapon. They do not typically specialize in strokes like Knights since they have to handle such a great variety of weapons. But more often than not, mercenaries are really far better off being a Jack-of-all-weapons!

  Hence mercenaries by-and-large do not specialize in weapon-type skills, preferring to be able to execute a blow regardless of weapon. There are limitations to this of course, but for hand-held weapons with at least one sharp edge, or, in the usage of shields, they generally fair reasonably well. Other than for combat-reasons, many mercenaries are also hired for ‘non-combat’ tasks, and there are a variety of traits one might offer as a mercenary, as shown below:

  Aura, Alchemy, Art, Blacksmithing, Bestiary, Gnosis, Battle Gnosis, Embroidery, Sociology, Charisma, Earthlore, Signs & Symbols

  Horsemanship, General Gnosis, Linguistics, Mentoring, Theology, Pathfinding, Music, Weather Gnosis, Survival, Nature Gnosis , Ocean Gnosis, Structure Building, Castle Siege and Warfare

  * * * * *

  THE MAGICAL ORDERS OF BRETUNIA

  The Magical Arts
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br />   by Mage Guildmaster Romayne of Camelot

  Mages practice what is commonly known as defensive magic - magic used to avoid combat rather than challenge it. We prefer to hide from the enemy with cloaking spells, to manipulate his mind with fear spells and hallucinations, to taunt him with telekinetic and telepathic spells till, if he is eventually destroyed, he effectively destroys himself. This is in direct contrast to sorcery, which focuses on pure destructive power of Fireglobes, of floods and other elemental forces.

  Magic involves the focusing of magical fields. There are magical fields all around us, acting as media for possibilities to become realities, emanating from every living thing, every substance on and off the planet, surrounding us. Magical fields usually lie dormant and useless until a magician channels them through their minds and bodies, shaping them into spells to accomplish a specific purpose. Some magicians are powerful enough to create their own magical fields, useful in areas where fields are weak, or where they are disrupted through magic or the presence of ghosts and spirits, who exude their own natural fields and tend to absorb others from the atmosphere around them.

  Runes - magical symbols - are used to focus magic. Although there are other forms of magic in this world, runes are the basis for all of them. There are over sixty thousand runes recorded, each with their own specific meaning and function. Simple verbal spells do not require rune-foci - these are mostly telekinetic spells such as `Go’ and `Lift’.

  Focusing runes is not easy. There are no comfortably general runes such as `Heal’ or `Burn’. When a mage wants to conjure up a campfire, he must first draw the rune-combination for fire, which goes something like `Matter-kindle-heat-source’. Joined to the `matter’ construct would be `earth-plant-matter’, meaning, of course, wood. And the direction must be specified - in this case the mage need only direct it to his hand or finger rather than an actual geographical location (necessary even to light a match two inches from one’s eyes): `being-mind-open’, meaning human, the mage’s name, and a description of which part of him he wishes to direct the magic to.

  It is the runes that often foil would-be novices in their first year of training, but after they get used to it the connections, even for new spells, can be made almost instantly in a well-practiced mind, and traced equally briskly in the air.

  Some spells must also be pronounced - a similarly tricky venture since a rune in one spell is almost never pronounced in the same way as the same rune in another spell, and a slip of the tongue can cause quite alarming mishaps.

  * * * * *

  Extremely complex spells call for three-dimensional runes - these are usually the sort of spells left over certain areas the magician wishes protected. Three-dimensional constructs, if not properly combined, are easily broken.

  Many mages create new spells using the three-dimensional construct, only to find it so weak that it falls apart the moment it is spoken. The firmest construct is tetrahedronal, but not all rune-combinations can be teased and squeezed into that specific shape.

  For a rune-focus to work properly, the focus must be whole - gaps and breaks and bits and pieces sticking out will render a spell useless, no matter how meticulously researched. In instances like these, many mages have gone so far as to take a rune apart and fit the pieces in, or even use magical artifacts in their place.

  Orders within the Bretunic Magical Arts

  1. The Basic Guild Order

  The Basic Guild Order teaches a general repertoire of spells, usually for the training of a town mage. It consists of a two-year novitiate and an additional three years to complete the course, after which, the mage-in-training must choose an area of specialty under the other orders. The Basic Order also teaches the spell Truth-sense, the ability to detect lies, which lasts throughout the mage’s entire lifetime.

  2. The Order of the Spheres

  Surely the most prestigious of the orders in our guild, for the Archmage Merlin himself was a part of it. As I have mentioned before, the tetrahedronal rune-focus is known to be the hardest to break; but Merlin also discovered that a spherical construct focuses the highest amount of magic. Forming runes - which are admittedly very oddly-shaped at times - into spheres may sound difficult, and it is. However, graduates of this Order are among the most powerful mages in the world, and Merlin is a testament to that.

  The Order’s levels are measured from First to Fourteenth Sphere, with an addition of two years’ novitiate in the beginning for those who did not go through the Basic Guild training. Many stop at the Eighth Sphere, after which one is quite powerful enough to be a Guild Mage, the sum of the aspirations of the simply-contented. The more ambitious become High Masters in the Tenth, Twelfth or even Fourteenth Sphere, after which they must prove their ingenuity and prowess in the application of the skills they have learnt, and any others which they might invent. Once they have proved themselves so, they are bestowed the title Archmage.

  3. The Meniscus Order

  The Menisci are thus called because of their golden badges which they usually wear as cloak-clasps or rings, to mark out their membership in that order. They are the least conspicuous of mages, and spend most of their time huddled away in monasteries or hermitages, researching old runes and recording the discovery of new ones, studying magical artifacts and compiling spell-books and magical tomes. They are, in fact, more like a monastic order than anything else.

  The Menisci are different from the other Orders in that they are the only ones who draw a regular salary from the Guild treasuries, and demand the most money for their research. Their incessant need for funding has led the novices of the Guild schools to pay them a dubious tribute in the form of a mocking tongue-twister : “The Menisci menagerie of mendacious mendicants is mainly made of muttering madmen.”

  4. The High Earth Order

  Those of the High Earth Order specialize in nature magic and the control of the weather and elements. It is the closest thing to what is often called `Fairy Magic’ that we have.

  The High Earth Order calls for great dedication and discipline, rewarding this with great power and unique abilities that no other Order may boast. High Earth mages require intensive study, especially in the area of weather control, as such forces are liable to get out of hand if even the slightest slip-up is made and the mage loses control of his spring breeze and allows it to turn into a typhoon off the coast of a small island on the other side of the planet.

  High Earth mages also dabble in alchemy, being the most knowledgeable about earthen ores like gold, and are not restricted by level-promotion; after a certain length of apprenticeship - which the master himself decides to end as and when he feels fit - the newly-initiated mage merely continues learning more and developing his skills at his own pace. The devotion required of them to become skilled mages is enough to keep their noses to the grindstone without the added weight of examinations and rote-training.

  5. Order of Corporeal Transcendence (The Octi)

  The Octi are thus named for three reasons - it is a phonetic pronunciation of their official abbreviation.

  They customarily use octagonal rune-foci in their magic, and their full name sounds extremely ostentatious. The Octi are involved with shapeshifting, teleportation, scrying (both past and future as well as present) and plane-shifting, and are currently doing research into the possibilities of time-travel.

  All in all, the Octi area of specialization is anything that has to do with the moving or transforming of particles of matter by magic (as opposed to telekinesis, in which you are using magic to manipulate the laws of physics). They can shapeshift themselves and others into varying forms, some of which are normally inanimate, and can alter the appearance of whole landscapes if enough of them put their minds to it; theirs is an actual alteration, not a mere illusion.

  They are foremost experts in teleportation and plane-shifting. The heart of their magical prowess is the identification of what they call the whit - tiny particles of which everything in the world, they claim, is made of. In using magic
to change the nature of particular whits, the substance which is made up of those whits accordingly changes as well. Teleportation, for example, is explained as follows in one of their manuals:

  “...and thus it follows that, if the human whits are transformed into that of light, the human being is thus transformed into light, and can be moved as light to any part of the world by sending the human-light into the light of the sun, and through that light pinpointing the area of the globe which the sun shines on that the human wishes to be at. If in that area it happens to be night, a simple expedient would be sending that person’s light into the moon’s, or a star’s. Equally feasible would be to turn the person into sound waves, or particles of air...”

  Principally, a person is turned into light, beamed to another place, and turned back into a person; no-one, however, has yet exactly identified what a whit of light really looks like. It still hasn’t seemed to dampen their enthusiasm, though.

  All the constant sojourns back and forth between planes and countries in different forms has perhaps made them light-headed, and the Octi are usually an extremely excitable lot, and tend to rush up and down hallways a great deal with paper trailing them several feet and their shoes on backwards. They are also the only magical Order known for the members’ sense of humor; when chided for their untidiness, most reply airily, “I don’t care one whit.”