Champions
| "Magic accomplishes nothing when you are beaten to death before you can cast."
-- An inscription found upon a plaque in the Hall of Noble Steel |
In a land where the natural bounties are just as likely to turn into lethal elementally-charged abominations, a fairly demanding need for warriors springs up. The Champions are this need given form, battle-hardened men and women as renowned for their distinction and strength as their reckless disregard of 'formal' fighting procedures.
Though the Champions lack a singular background like their brethren in the Sovereignty, the Paragon Circle has attempted to guide them under the Teladiri banner with moderate success. Their training regimens have been widely adopted among the fledgling divisions that are cropping up in Teladiri holdings, and as a result the Accord seems to be on the cusp of having their own fully loyalist legion of puissant soldiers.
The Steel Lions, however, represent an 'old guard' of Champions of elder generations - though their popularity amongst new recruits wanes, they still enjoy an unexpected longevity: as they lacked the unified training procedures of their descendents, they are an excellent source of learning for more esoteric (and some would say reckless) methods of fighting... at a cost, among them forced listening to rhetoric, discussions about the 'old days', and their disdain for the methods of the Paragon Circle. Their dissenting voice has become somewhat of a thorn in the side of the upper echelons of the Accord, but for now they survive untouched.
The prospective recruit with just the right blend of wits and strength may well have the broadest future of all the Accord's professions, but it is one fraught with the most pitfalls as well.
| "Do pardon me, but I think you're forgetting something important. Do you see this? This is the crest of the Champion. The fact that this is engraved on my chest and not yours means that you listen to me, not the other way around. I suggest you turn your little caravan right back the way it came before I do so for you."
-- Blademaster Valk Terada |