Every court dreams, but Hollowmourne grieves. Its knights ride out beneath tattered banners in the grip of a sorrow none of them can name: a conviction, shared and unshakeable, that their line suffered some monstrous betrayal in an age none now remember, and that the traitors must be hunted wherever they hide. Oathbreakers, cowards, deserters, the craven of every stripe: these are its quarry, and its crusade against them is as tireless as it is grief-stricken.
The court fights with the heavy, mournful fury of the wronged; there is no joy in its charge, only the grim satisfaction of a wrong being answered. Villages that never swore an oath are punished for breaking it; garrisons that never fled are cut down for cowardice; and the court rides on, certain each time that justice has been served at last.
But the wound was never real, and so it can never close. The betrayal it mourns is a phantom of the same delusion that gilds its rusted halls, so the grief has no bottom and the crusade no end. Among the Flesh-eater Courts, Hollowmourne proves that a court need not imagine a feast to be damned. It need only imagine a grievance, and ride out forever to avenge it.
Order of battle
The Hollowmourne field the units of the Flesh-eater Courts, a detachment from the roster:
Other Flesh-eater Courts formations
BlisterskinSeared by the pitiless light of Hysh, the Blisterskin believe themselves radiant beings: angelic knights whose scorched hides are haloes of glory. They are the swiftest of the grand courts, favoring winged deliverance from above, and they descend upon the benighted as saviors bearing illumination. Few of the saved survive their gratitude.
GristlegoreThe most savage of the grand courts, rooted in the beast-haunted wilds of Ghur, where even the delusion runs red at the edges. Gristlegore's kings are peerless beast-lords who ride terrorgheists and worse from their royal menageries, and its knights measure honor by the size of the quarry brought down. Ambassadors from other courts visit rarely, and count themselves fortunate to leave.
MorgauntThe oldest and greatest of the grand courts, where the delusion runs deepest in the bonds between king and vassal. In Morgaunt every serf believes himself kin to his lord, every knight would die for the commons he imagines he protects, and that terrible loyalty makes the court's hosts nearly impossible to break. Whole generations have been born, ennobled, and buried within its dream without once seeing the ruin around them.
Discussion
- No comments yet. Be the first to reply.