Page 1 of Brighter than Scale, Swifter than Flame

MANY TALES ARE told of the masked guildknight of Mithrandon.

Tales as grand as the mountains and lofty as the moon, tales of conquest and triumph over evil.

Heroic tales of dragon-slaying, where a fire-breathing fiend the size of a castle, a burner of fields and villages, is taken down by a single guildknight carrying the banner of the Sun Empire.

The glacial wyrm over Studhern, who set a months-long winter over the town, freezing children in their beds: the masked guildknight cut its head off with one blow of their sacred weapon Varuhelt.

The scourge of Callenden, who emptied the pastures of sheep and turned to cribs by the hearth instead: the masked guildknight chased it down with their wyrmhound Sage and tore it to ribbons in its lair, before smashing the five hundred eggs it had laid, five hundred beastly whelps that would have gone on to terrorize countless subjects of the Sun Empire.

Elandis of Shereton sings of the knight’s first conquest, a wyrm they vanquished as a mere child of five, cutting it in half as the beast stood on some rocky outcrop by the fields of the mystical village in which they grew up.

Whether or not such a place exists is not important.

The guildknight’s triumph: that is the real story.

Picture them parading through some city they have just saved, its streets frothing with joy like a brook after the spring rains.

Imagine the glorious sunbeams leaping off their helmet and unblemished armor, giving their form a perfect and pleasing silhouette.

Drums are beat and petals tossed into the air in ebullient bursts of color.

Their winged carriage is white and peerless, pulled by their fearsome gryphons Carys and Meteor with their high arched necks and glossy flanks.

A painter’s canvas would be elevated by the depiction of such a glorious scene.

Yet for all that is told about the guildknight of Mithrandon, what do we truly know of them? In all of these stories nothing is said of the person who they were: not their name, their age, nor where they came from.

Who they were raised by and who they loved.

In every story the guildknight of Mithrandon remains neatly silent as the ocean and faceless as the wind.

No one describes what lies beneath the armor.

Some go on to say no one has ever seen what that polished metal shell concealed.

The guildknight of these stories seems to have burst from the earth itself, as though lightning split a rock and out jumped a creature already clad in the accoutrements of the Imperial hunting guild.

After all, these tales are really about good versus evil, about the triumph of the will, about the indomitable strength of the servants of the Sun Empire.

What does it matter who is at the center of them? In their tellings, the masked guildknight never shows any weakness.

They are never hurt and they are always victorious.

As they should be.

But we know better, of course.

How could we not? We, who are kin to the dragons, surely know the names of our own grandmothers and of the lives they led.

Listen now to this tale, written the way it was told to us by our foremothers, who in turn learned it from their own foremothers.

Hear now the tale of Kunlin Yeva.

Hear now the truth of the guildknight of Mithrandon.