Honour Bound
Cost: 3 XP Requirements: None
One’s word is their bond, but your vows are more severe — a pledge to a higher power, that you would sooner die than violate. When you choose this Talent, detail the moral code or binding oath you are committed to upholding. Examples include a god’s strictures (page 139), faithful service to your lord, the arcane laws of the Hexenguilde (page 154), or the Code Chivalric and Rules of Knightly Honour followed by the knights of Bretonnia.
You may activate this Talent once per session. Activating the Talent whilst making a Test to fulfil your oath makes the Test Glorious; alternatively, you may spend Fate (instead of burning Fate) to make the Test an Unmitigated Success (page 111). Other Talents may allow you to activate Honour Bound to achieve different effects.
Should you break your oath, you cannot activate the Talent again until you have undertaken a suitable penance, agreed with the GM. Known oathbreakers are viewed with disgust, perhaps met with drawn blades by those most committed to the cause.
Bretonnian Knights swear the Knight’s Vow, a pledge that commits them to uphold the Code Chivalric and the Rules of Knightly Honour. A Knight-Exile might consider themselves exempt from the latter, but usually attempt to uphold the former.
The Code Chivalric
- To serve the Lady of the Lake.
- To defend the land and those that dwell upon it.
- To protect the weak from the wicked.
- To always oppose the enemies of virtue and order.
- To never give up the fight, your foes unvanquished.
- To never break faith with a friend or ally.
- To always display honour and courtesy.
The Rules of Knightly Honour
- A knight must honour the purity of hand-to-hand combat. An honourable knight must never meet a foe with slings or arrows.
- A knight must strive to accept every challenge to personal combat.
- A knight must never draw sword against a fellow knight, except in trial by combat or tourney.
- A knight must never submit to being taken captive.
- A knight must never retreat in fear, only to replace a shattered lance or retire a wounded mount.