[Isana's Plotnotes] Knight and Day

[Isana Lin]

'twas a dark and stormy knight...

Knightly Skill Goals

• Riding: Horse – 21/30
• Unarmed Combat – 1/30
• Weapon: Arming Sword – 9/30
• Weapon: Crossbow, Light – 0/30
• Weapon: Lance – 0/30
• Weapon: Heater Shield – 5/30
• Weapon: Round Shield – 3/30
• Weapon: Shortbow – 5/30
• Weapon: Shortspear – 18/30
• Weapon: Stiletto – 7/30
  Rather than specialising in one weapon, I'm looking to have Isana learn a wide range of weapons and fighting techniques – she loathes the specialisation that she's come to see within the Order. As far as Isana's concerned, a tool is only good as long as circumstance permits it to be – when the latter changes, so should the former.

Green Company Skill Goals

• Tracking – 0/15
• Trapping – 0/15
• Wilderness Survival – 0/15
  Not strictly speaking knightly skill requirements, but as a former member of the Green Company, Isana should have at least a basic understanding of what life's like outside the walls.

Magic Skill Goals

• Leeching – 0/15
• Summoning – 0/15
  Leeching, unintentional though it may have been, has been a part of Isana's life for a fair while now. Summoning is something that she'll be looking to pick up later, as quietly as possible. The possibility of instantaneous communication and knowledge storage offered by Swalden might just be too much to resist.

Short Term Goals

• Complete enough job threads not to die of starvation.
• Build up at least the four basic knightly skills (Spear, Shortbow, Shield and Riding) to a point at which Isana is no longer an embarrassment to the order.
• Search the Syliran Archives for documentation on the nature of the creatures that attacked her group years ago – while avoiding drawing attention to the fact.
• Provide what ridicule training she can for the squires.
• Flashbacks! Isana's a scribe's daughter – she ought to have a level of knowledge reflective of that.
• Complete Isana's Knighting Quest flashback.

Long Term Goals

• Travel to Taloba to study the art of war under the guidance (or blades, depending on the impression she makes) of the Myrians.
• Become a Weaponmaster of the Syliran Knights.

Planned Threads (In no particular order. Feel free to PM me if you'd like to be a part of one.)

• Absent Friends
  Isana visits a clearing outside the city borders during the day to pay her respects to the fallen, in particular Karla – a Drykas mercenary she befriended during a lengthy hunt for raiders in the Sea of Grass (shortly before commencing her stint as a player character) - and comes across the native wildlife.
• [Flashback] Mightier than the Sword
  Isana's farther introduces her to writing, giving a lecture on the importance of keeping records as he does so – using the Gods as an example. Isana points out that the Gods walk among mortals already, so what's the point? He eventually relents and resorts to more mundane records – namely the origin of Syliras.
• [Flashback] The Nature of Mercy
  A young Isana is called upon to give the death blow to a deer shot by Cawdor. She fumbles the blow, and the knight has to step in and end the creature's suffering.
• Misericordia
  Isana visits a local doctor to study the art of the coup de grace.
• [Flashback] All in All (You're just another shield in the wall.)
  Vathan introduces Isana to the concept of formation fighting.
• [Flashback] The Night is for Hunting
  Isana and Bryce (a merchant's son travelling with the knights from Mithryn) see a flash of a strange, mouth-less something in the forest. Something that may not have their best interests at heart.
• [Flashback] Family Ties
  Panicked by the threat of a travelling Aurist, Isana's father drains far more djed for his summoning from his young daughter than he intended to, inadvertently initiating Isana as a leecher.
• [Flashback] Fever Dreams
  In the immediate aftermath of her inadvertent initiation, Isana spends the next week bedridden. When her mother arranges for her to visit a roving physician and aurist, sparks fly.
• [Flashback] Away With Words
  In a rare bout of physical wellbeing, Isana runs letters around Mithryn. She's ridiculed by other children and challenged to climb the interior wall on a dare.
• [Flashback] One Knight, Two Knight, False Knight, True Knight
  Isana is inducted into the order as a squire - and meets some strange individuals besides.
• [Flashback] Chasing Shadows
  Isana and her newfound classmates have their first training session with a proper knight (Titus Maximus), and the young squire quickly learns that the Order is not all glory and cavalry charges... When she closes her eyes that night, she finds the nightmares waiting for her - and mocking room-mates waiting when she opens them.
• [Flashback] Cold Iron
  Isana discusses swords with Mona Reeves - and visits a blacksmith to learn the difference.
• [Flashback] Snare and Deadfall
  Ser Cawdor takes a recently-squired Isana beyond the walls to learn the basics of trapping. What they find are traces of something far more worrying than animal trails. (Yukmen.)
• [Flashback] Back to the Mud
  Two days after their last foray into the wildlands, Ser Cawdor drags her out yet again on the trail of the yukmen. (Note. Yukmen to be slain by Cawdor's Wing prior to Isana leaving the city. Not that she knows, of course.)
• [Flashback] Beyond the Wall
  Survival training in winter. Are we barbarians?
• [Flashback] Mares at Midnight
  Unable to sleep and plagued by her nightmares, Isana sneaks out of the night-shrouded dormitories to the stables - and earns a burning reprimand from Marianna Ogson for her troubles.
• [Flashback] Fighting Words
  Brooding in the training grounds, Isana finds a solution to her horse problem in an unlikely form - that of Ser Verellin. All things; however, come with a cost.
• [Flashback] The Art of War
  Isana meets her decidedly dour patron - One Sera Merana Taylor. An intensive quiz on tactics and the nature of warfare ensues.
• No Good Deed...
  Finally free of the shield games Isana returns to Windmount stables to settle a grudge with a certain Paintedmount. Her visit is interrupted by a page bearing a message from one Sergeant Corbus Stanlinsa and summons to Mithryn. With rumours of a mysterious beggar stealing horses on the roadside, Isana's troubles are only just beginning.
• Homecoming
  Following Corbus' directions, the prodigal daughter returns home to Mithryn - only to find a squire waiting for her. When the pair come across the tracks of a would-be horse thief on the road to Syliras they risk a detour into the wildlands surrounding the city.
• On Cu-res
  While sourcing medical supplies in anticipation of the upcoming shield games, Isana runs across one Alessia Price - a worryingly affectionate healer.
• Before They Are Hanged (What's the cost of a secret?)
  An intruder makes it into the Windoak's Courtyard, only to be captured by Isana and the other knights on patrol. An unarmed kelvic, whose only crime was possessing an overabbundance of curiosity. But for those who violate the order's most sacred of places, there can only be one reward...
• Labour Pains
  Isana finds a heavily pregnant beggar pilfering food from a stall in the bazaar. What to do?