A Squire’s Challenge
I began my journey in the Realms as a scared kid who didn't know who he was or what would become of him. In my comparatively short lifetime I've suffered many cold winters and cruel summers alike, but who was once an illiterate farm boy writes this account to tell you what it means to find a home, or at least what it means to me.
Amazing experiences are few and far between, and amazing people even rarer. In the last decade, I have been graced with a plethora of both. Being a part of Blackwood, even as a petitioner, has been chief among the blessings I count every night before I rest my head. When I received my shield I was barely a man, in age and words alone, but the people of Blackwood put in the effort to respect me anyways, and treated my happiness, well being, and progress as paramount, so I made sure to repay their kindness with the effort I felt it was due. When that loyalty and time spent made me a Squire I was elated. To know that the Knights I looked up to considered me worthy of special trainings and their sage advice brought me a joy even I hadn't anticipated.
Like many other people in this world, I'd worked countless hours towards a variety of goals, and it was in that moment that Sir Mathias wrapped his belt around me that I suddenly felt something I'd never felt before- Acknowledgement.
Acknowledgement seems similar to respect in concept but in my brain, they exist separately. There are people and things that you respect but never feel the need to say aloud or expound upon. Respect is a given, but Acknowledgement is a choice. Having Acknowledged many other people myself since then, the distinction is that to Acknowledge someone, you are moved deeply enough that the respect you harbor has transcended the innate expectation. The fact that someone who looms so large in our world looked at my relatively miniscule actions and saw something worth supporting and taking a stand for moves me to this day, and fueled me in every endeavor beyond then.
To be a Squire is to pay the debt of gratitude to those who care enough to pluck you from the metaphorical rabble and pour their time, energy, and resources into helping you build the foundation of your very being in many ways. For me, it's my sworn duty to prove that I am worth that investment. Making connections, fighting wars, educating oneself; everything one does from the moment someone champions them in this way is in some way a service to the people who you one day might rank among.
It becomes your duty to become not what the order or your Knight wants, but what the order needs. A squire is one whose duty is to reciprocate trust with innovation. A knighthood that needs fresh blood is not a knighthood, but a club, so as a Squire it is your job to become something unique and useful. Whether the knights you service need craft training, insight, or strength, to truly be someone's squire is to support them the way they support you through any weather that may confront you as a team, and face it head on. Being a squire is not only to follow your Knight into battle, but forge on where they cannot, or have never been before.
It’s on those path’s never walked that one’s final task starts, and it’s in this unspoken assignment that one defines who they are, not just as a knight but as a person. It’s on this road that one must realize that the reason this whole process begins with Acknowledgement is because this process ends, or more accurately continues on forever, in setting an example. Attention is called to you in the beginning because from that moment forth you are expected to be worthy of having Attention on you at all times. And that is why you must learn, so that the others walking behind you may do the same.
My last action as a Squire was fastening the Knight Commander's Gauntlets to my own knight’s wrist. I was blessed enough to watch him rise to command two different cohorts of Knights in my time as his squire, and I've seen him win victories and suffer hardships as he was gracious enough to let me stand behind him. We've fought alongside wolves, treated with Roawns (both metaphoric and literal), drank with demons, and together battled the very gods themselves in some cases. I've walked in the footsteps of a few gallant heroes and far more morally gray men with good heads on their shoulders, but without taking the weight from each of the rest of those steps, I would not be half the man I am now without Sir Mathias' love and guidance.
My knight has always told me that of the belts he wears, His Knights of Blackwood Belt is not only his most treasured but his most important and I'm fortunate to echo that statement. In becoming a Knight I have been so deeply moved by the notion that the pillars who hold the nation I love on their shoulders have asked me to stand with them, but even as a belt I get to call my own is fastened to my waist, I tell the Realms to know that I plan to be proving my worthiness of this leather until my bones are ash in the soil. I entered that feast hall a battletorn, soulless husk but I left proudly bearing the future of our order and nation on my shoulders and around my waist and I've truly never been more excited for what comes next.
For King and Country, and For the Realms.
Sir Pilpus Jainrose
Knight of Blackwood
Steward of Eroewan