THE INDEPENDENT CITY OF
THE INDEPENDENT CITY OF
The governing duties, hierarchy, and standards of the order.
Issued by order of the New Church of Jonas Falx, Independent City of Temporis
To the one who now holds this book:
You are not yet a Knight. You may never be one, and that is no shame. The wall needs its stones as much as it needs its watchmen. What you are, from this day, is a Squire of the Forlorn Hope, and this manual is yours to carry, read, mark, and return to when the answer is not obvious.
It will not always be obvious. Read it again when it isn't.
The Forlorn Hope are the knights of Temporis.
Not lords. Not a bloodline. Not a reward for birth. We are a duty that anyone can be called to and no one is owed.
We are named for those who came before. The knights who stood on the surface of a dying world while what remained of humanity sheltered beneath it. They held the line when holding it made no sense. They did not do it because they expected to win. They did it because someone had to, and they were the ones standing there.
We do not worship them. We study them. We ask what they did right, what they did wrong, and what was lost when they were gone. We do not seek to become what they reached for. We seek to live up to what they were.
Our purpose is simple, and it is threefold:
Everything else in this manual is instruction on how to carry out these three things without losing yourself in the carrying.
A note on scope, Squire, because it will come up: our charge is Temporis. Its people, its archives, its walls, its roads, its future. We are not saviors of the world, and no oath in this book asks you to be one. Help offered beyond our walls is help given freely, not owed. Do not confuse generosity with duty. Know which one you are giving, and when.
The Forlorn Hope has three ranks. There is no shortcut between them, and no rank is beneath respect.
The post. The wall's daily face.
Squires are the Forlorn Hope that Temporis sees every day. You will walk the walls. You will stand the gates. You will check the papers, settle the disputes, escort the shipments, and be the first face a frightened citizen finds. This is not a lesser duty. It is the most constant one, and it is where you will be watched closest, because how you carry small authority tells us everything about how you would carry large authority.
You are not expected to be fearless. You are expected to be steady. Fear that makes you careful is not a flaw. Fear that makes you reckless, or fear that makes you cruel, is what ends a Squire's advancement.
Rank 1: Newly assigned, serving under instruction at gates, walls, patrols, and escort work.
Rank 2: Proven in the field and trusted with more direct danger, but still under a senior watch.
Rank 3: Trusted in active danger and among the first Squires expected to answer when fighters are called.
The blade. Trusted with what cannot be replaced.
A Knight has proven, through years on post, that they can be handed the situations where a mistake cannot be undone: a war company, the high posts of the city garrison, the guard of the Archive's restricted halls, the lead of an expedition into ruins where a scholar's life and a lost text may hang on the same decision.
Knighthood is not a reward for skill at arms alone. Plenty of Squires can fight. Knighthood is given to those who have shown they know the difference between a fight worth having and one worth walking away from, and who have shown they will walk away, when walking away is what preserves more than standing does.
Rank 1: Entrusted with the blade in dangerous situations, but still proving judgment.
Rank 2: Established trust and issued the armor of the Forlorn Hope, carrying greater responsibility in command and defense.
Rank 3: Among the most trusted Knights, assigned to the most consequential decisions and dangers.
The choice. Trusted with deciding for others.
A Squire is trusted with a post. A Knight is trusted with a blade. A Captain is trusted with a choice.
Captains hold command judgment. This is the decision of when an expedition turns back, which of two fires gets the company first, whether a line is held or given up to save the people behind it. There are few Captains, by design. Captaincy is not seniority and it is not a rank you rise to by simply lasting long enough. It is given to those whose judgment has been tested, under real weight, and found sound.
Knights answer to a Captain, not to one another's opinion in the moment. When the worst happens and several of us converge on the same disaster, there is already a chain, already a voice that decides, because an order that argues while the building burns is not an order at all.
Rank 1: Entrusted with command and responsible for the actions of those under their direct charge.
Rank 2: Proven judgment through command and experience, carrying the burden of choosing under pressure.
Rank 3: The highest standing. Only one Third Rank Captain exists at a time in practice, and when Captains must yield to a single voice, that voice decides.
You may have heard, by now, what it means to be a Seraph. If you carry this book, you likely are one, or will become one. So, in truth, is nearly every citizen you are sworn to protect.
Hear this clearly, because it is the single most dangerous thing you will learn as a Squire:
Return is not a promise. It is a chance.
Most of Temporis can fall and rise again, the same as you, and it would be easy, knowing this, to let a fight run longer than it should, or to let a blade fall a little less carefully, telling yourself that the person on the other end will simply open their eyes again. Do not let this become how you think.
Return is not owed to anyone. A Seraph who falls does not always wake. We do not know why, not fully, and no Archivist has yet written the answer down with any certainty. What we know is that every fall is a wager, and the odds do not favor the reckless. A citizen who does return still felt the sword, still lost the hour, the day, sometimes longer, and still had a family standing over them not knowing, until they stirred, whether this was the time they wouldn't. We do not get to treat a wound as small simply because it is survivable. Survivable is not the same as safe.
And some among us hold no chance at all. What remains of true humanity in this world carries only one death, and it is certain. They are rarer now than any of us like to admit, and every one of them we fail to protect is a loss with no wager attached, only a loss. Whether the one behind you might rise again or will not rise at all, our duty does not change based on the answer, because in either case, we do not get to be the reason they find out.
This must never become an excuse for carelessness, in any direction. A Seraph who has fallen twenty times and walked away twenty times, and treats the twenty-first as certain, has forgotten what they are for. We are not reckless because return is possible. We are careful because it is never guaranteed, for us or for anyone standing beside us.
The old Forlorn Hope reached for what we now carry, and were changed reaching for it. We do not say we became this to be worthy of them. We say only: we remain here, and therefore we have work to do. Do not let what you carry make you forget why you carry it.
The question every Knight and Captain will ask you, sooner or later, is this one. Learn to ask it of yourself first:
Did you fall because you had to? Or because falling felt noble?
There is no glory in this order for a fall that could have been avoided, our own or anyone else's. A Squire who protects another day without gambling a life, theirs or another's, has done their duty better than one who falls with a song sung over them. We are not looking for legends. We are looking for people, and the people they guard, who are still standing tomorrow, not merely hoping to rise again by nightfall.
Whichever you are given, understand this: there is no lesser posting among these. A Squire on gate duty who turns away the wrong stranger has done more good that day than a Knight who never had to draw a blade.
You will be asked to speak this when you are formally taken in as a Squire of the Forlorn Hope. Read it now, so that when you speak it, you mean it.
I will guard the living. I will preserve the dead. I will defend what is known. I will seek what is not. I will not surrender while there remains something worth saving.
You are expected to remember this and recite it when a Knight or, by extension, Captain asks you to recite the creed.
PROTECT. PRESERVE. ENDURE.
While one stands, hope remains.
Carry this book. Read it when the answer isn't obvious. It usually won't be. That is why we still need someone standing at the wall to work it out.
Welcome to the Forlorn Hope, Squire.
Order of the New Church of Jonas Falx, Independent City of Temporis
Reach out In Character!