Knighthood

**Knighthood** is a rank and honor given to warriors who perform exemplary service for a lord or the realm in the Five Kingdoms. Its members are known as knights and use the title "**Ser**", though this may be superseded by other titles such as "lord", "prince" or "king".

Knights are religiously influenced by a code of chivalry and honor. This code states that knights must defend the weak and the innocent, must protect women and children, must fight fairly and honorably, and obey their lieges. How closely a knight follows this code varies immensely from individual to individual. It is difficult to obey one law while trying to uphold the other.

## History and ties to the Faith of the Vecronasl

Knighthood originated in Andal culture, and was introduced to Soothereos during the Andal Invasion six thousand years ago. As a result of this, knighthood is intimately tied to the Faith of the Vecronasl, and the ideal of knighthood is to be not only an honorable warrior but a devout follower of the Vecronasl. And with any knight, honorable conduct and level of piety varies from person to person.

## Becoming a knight

Typically, young men must undergo many years of extensive and expensive training to become a knight. A young knight-in-training is known as a "**squire**".

Pursuing a knighthood is one of the few ways for a member of the smallfolk to achieve rank and standing amongst the nobility. However, such a task usually involves the expenditure of significant sums of money on armor and weaponry which puts it out of the reach of most commoners. The rank of knighthood is not hereditary, and thus a knight's sons must go through the whole process of becoming knights themselves. Of course, a commoner who has been knighted will have greater opportunity to gain the wealth needed to put his sons through training as knights.

It is not unheard of, however, for commoners to be knighted after significantly distinguishing themselves in combat. This skips the typically large costs of training to be a knight, though it happens more often in wartime.

Even a common sellsword that has fought valiantly in combat may be rewarded by being dubbed a knight, though this occurs infrequently.

## Types of knights

In theory, all knights hold an equal rank, but in practice knights who own their own lands or who serve major lords are much more highly respected than a landless commoner who happened to be knighted after fighting valiantly in a battle. It is also seen as more prestigious to be knighted by a king, a major lord, a Kingsguard, or another highly respected knight. Any knight can theoretically make another man a knight if he is willing to say the vows, though respectable knights would not hand out the title lightly. A sellsword might get knighted for fighting well in a battle, and he might dishonorably knight all of his drinking companions who did nothing to earn it. They would *technically* hold the title of "knight", but no one would take their title seriously due to the low prestige of how they became knighted.

Most often, young men who have finished their training and just recently been knighted are landless and not in the service of any lord. There are three stages of service that knights hope to work their way up through:

* Hedge knights are typically commoners who have risen to knighthood. They have no fixed abode and wander the Five Kingdoms looking for a cause to fight for. They are disparagingly called "hedge" knights because it is said that they are so poor that they just sleep under hedges by the side of the road as they wander from one prospective employer to the next. They frequently travel around to different tournaments to show off their prowess, in the hope that a lord in attendance will then hire them - many lords do use tournaments as recruiting grounds, though how well an individual hedge knight performs in the tournament is up to him. Many consider hedge knights to be not much better than sellswords.
* **Sworn swords** are knights sworn to a particular lord. Sometimes this is permanent, but mainly it is temporary, with hedge knights joining a lord for a particular purpose and then being released from his service afterwards.
* **Landed knights** are knights who have been rewarded for their service by a lord with land, typically a smallholding, large farm or small manor with servants. They form the minor nobility of the Five Kingdoms. Successful landed knights who expand their holdings or continue to perform exemplary service for their liege may be raised to the rank of "Lord" in time, gaining the right to dispense justice on his lands (including executions) without consulting a higher lord.

Herren, the first Rhaek of Northember and the founder of Castle Herrenhall in Atholnar, was believed to ride against the night with nine riders, and they dealt out death to those who were deserving of it. Long after his death, when House Herrenhall would take the mantle as Kings of Soothereos, these riders were once again spotted, though since then they were just a old wives’ tale, it was believed to just be a story.

## Practices

In wartime, mounted knights form the backbone of major armies in southern Soothereos. The skill of each knight varies, but they are typically elite professional soldiers, with extensive combat training, and often equipped with the finest arms and armor available to them. Even dismounted, a single knight is considered to be worth several dozen men-at-arms, who are forced to serve and are often poorly trained and equipped. Knights are very useful for carving through and running down enemy infantry, though they are also the best weapon against the enemy army's own mounted knights. Personal combat aside, knights also serve as officers to whomever side they serve.

In peacetime, knights prove their martial valor through training soldiers as the master-at-arms in the holdfasts they serve in. Others choose to prove it by participating in contests of skill known as tournaments (although knighthood is not always a formal requirement for participation in a tournament). The highlight of tournaments is the joust, in which mounted knights charge at each other, each knight trying to knock the other off of his horse using a wooden lance. Knights at tournaments frequently fight to win the favor of nobles and potential spouses if they prove victorious. While some knights do fight for such romantic reasons, others may be more interested in the large sums of prize money awarded to the winners, often numbering in hundreds or thousands in Goldpieces. Others fight at tournaments to win general social prestige, or for the excitement of victory, though a few, such as Ser Christof Godrey, fight simply to indulge in violence.

Knights often formally swear fealty to lords by exchanging formulaic vows. In one commonly used formula, the knight kneels before a lord in supplication while holding up his sword in offering, and they give the following exchange:

**Knight**: "I offer my services [Lord's name]. I will shield your back and keep your counsel and give my life for yours if need be. I swear it by the Vecronasl"
**Lord**: "And I vow that you shall always have a place by my hearth, and meat and mead at my table. And I pledge to ask no service of you that might bring you dishonor. I swear it by the Vecronasl. Arise."
Men who have been knighted, even those not originally from noble Houses, gain the legal right to display their own personal heraldry.

Since the Sootherian conquest one millennia before the current times, the seven-man royal bodyguard known as the Kingsguard have been considered to be the pinnacle of knighthood. In theory, the Kingsguard are the elite of the elite, more skilled at combat and more honorable and virtuous than any other knights in the entire realm. At times, this ideal has been matched, in great and honorable knights such as the legendary. Other times, Kingsguard members have been skilled warriors but behaved controversially. In the worst occasions, some Kingsguard members were appointed simply as political favors, and are neither honorable nor particularly talented fighters.

## Fighting style

Mounted Sootherian knights on heavy horse typically charge enemy infantry formations using war lances. Cavalry charges can devastatingly kill a large number of infantry drastically out of proportion to the number of cavalry present.

On foot, the fighting style of Sootherian knights consists of powerful slashing attacks and strong blocks using a heavy sword, alternating with quick thrusting attacks meant to penetrate armor. Sootherian knights wear heavy plate armor which provides them excellent protection, particularly against the crude weapons of basic infantry conscripts, albeit at the cost of making their movements relatively slow. The weight of their armor slows them down enough that they cannot rely on speed to win against unarmored opponents (though the armor will keep them alive longer than their opponent), thus knights must rely on the raw power of blows from heavy swords, designed to deal damage not only due to their sharpness but their sheer weight. Broad hacking and slashing movements are not merely dramatic, but combined with the raw weight of the sword, will drastically increase the force behind the impact of the blow. A lightly armed and armored opponent may hit a knight multiple times but for little damage. Conversely, it may take a knight some time to pin down an unarmored opponent, but once he does, his blow will be absolutely devastating. The agility of a knight also depends highly on its wearer, as veteran fighters are often seen to be moderately unrestricted by their armor.

The greatest threat to armored knights is actually *other* armored knights, and their weapon design and fighting style evolved to reflect this. The best way to penetrate through plate armor is with a thrusting attack using a long, heavy sword. A curved blade could not apply as much pressure on a single point, and a thinner blade would snap under so much pressure. Thrusting attacks are best at actually penetrating armor, but the sheer force behind a powerful slashing attack is often still quite useful against even an armored opponent, as the force of the blow may stun him, possibly dent his armor, and sometimes outright cleave through weaker plate armor. Sometimes penetrating a high quality suit of armor is almost impossible, even with strong thrusts. In this case, impact weapons such as warhammers or maces are good at delivering powerful blows that can crush bones without actually having to penetrate the armor. By far, the best way of dealing with an armored opponent is to simply attack the areas in which there is little or no armor.

### Spelling and pronunciation

"Ser" is not a typo: the title for knights is spelled "S-e-r" with an "e", *not* as "sir" with an "i" as in real life. This is just a quirk of their culture. In the Italian medieval world, *ser* (a contraction of *messer*) was a form of address for a gentleman. It is cognate to "sir," the word *messer* being derived from Old Occitan *meser*, meaning "my sir."