Timestamp: Day 51 of Fall 513 Shane's enthusiasm had ran out two weeks into his employment. He'd never had a real job before and the woman at the Employment Office had given him one within seconds. It made his years of living by on charity seem utterly meaningless. For how long had Shane sat in some overcrowded passage begging strangers for money all the while looking out for the ever present Knights who frowned upon such 'laziness'. Shane was beginning to wonder if it had been lasiness. Brun had written that there were things in every settlement in the mortal realm that constituted power. Some were different but most were similar place to place. Shane had been instructed to go out and observe the city. To see who and what commanded power and try to summarise it into distinctive categories: Pillars of Success. Brun had used the example of Riverfall: Skill, Lineage and Eldership. According to Brun in Riverfall a man's power was assessed on his martial abilities, the amount of children he could sire/the strength of his lineage and his age. Without one, all, a combination or none of these things one could go nowhere in that society. In fact woman in Riverfall held such an odd and unique position in their society because of their influence in the lineage pillar. By identifying these pillars, Brun had written, a plan of action to achieve some measure of success could be attained. So Shane had went out and, over the next year, he kept his eyes incredibly open to all of the things that happened in Syliras. What he saw, mostly, was the Knights and they had power. They owned everything, they had a say in everything and each and every one of them was law unto themselves. One only had to earn the Knight's ire to be punished. One did not actually have to perform a crime. Even the squires had more power than the average man or woman. In fact simple association with the Knighthood elevated you above the common peoples. Shane had his first pillar noted: Knighthood. However time and time again he saw the wealthy of the Citadel issue orders to the Knights. Most of the time the Knights seem to follow their orders and, indeed, appeared to do the bidding of the wealthy. Pillar two: Wealth. It also seemed, when he asked around about the wealthy that the answer was often synonymous with nobility. People who were wealthy married other wealthy people, had children and passed their wealth down to those people who went on to do the same thing. Nobility and wealth were intertwined but the established money always seemed to win out over the newer money. Pillar three: Nobility. And there Shane had the Three Pillars of Syliran Success: Knighthood, Wealth and Nobility. At least this was what he had come up with. The book was simply a book and had little way of checking his answer. Once he had come up with it Brun had written that he should look at the pillars and asses them in terms of availability right now (not if he did a million push ups and took up swordsmanship like a pro). It was obvious to Shane that Wealth, though a difficult pillar to climb, was most likely the only one he could ever aspire too. Nobility required more than a generation and he had no formal training of any kind. In fact the only way to even get in as a squire was to acquire some wealth in order to train relevant skills assuming he would actually be good at them. As Shane wandered along a dark, empty corridor of the vast castle he wondered what his original point had been. He was often losing his thoughts like that these days. Perhaps he had picked up something from Mr. Ariva after all. He'd been working for two weeks now at the dusty old shop handling artifacts which his boss was only semi-sure the safeness of. Despite his official position being a clerk he seemed to do everything for his boss but sell things and it seemed a rare day when anything was sold at all. His point, he now remembered, was that he'd known these pillars for some time and known Wealth was his ticket. Begging wasn't going to get him wealth so why did he delay? Perhaps he was lazy after all. Shane stopped suddenly and looked about himself. This wasn't the right corridor. He must have taken a wrong turn somewhere. For being the lace that was his home Shane wondered if he would ever remember the right way home. He always slipped up at some point... |