Pick a god and you pick a side. That choice makes you one of their order, and their hall in Suncradle is where their masters teach you to fight like them. You can only ever be sworn to one god at a time. Seven of them are waiting.
“The wall is not stone. The wall is us.”
Aegemar builds walls to shelter what is inside them, and stands outside all of them. His order holds the line so everyone else can go home.
Barracks built into Suncradle's wall, not against it. Cold stone, warm lamp oil, one long room that shudders very slightly every time the gate opens below, so the whole hall breathes on the town's schedule. The far wall is the name-board: every keeper who ever stood a watch, carved by the one who stood the watch after them. The covered banner hangs above the board, and the board's carvings stop respectfully short of it.
Stand one full night's watch on the wall. Nothing attacks. No one checks on you. You do it anyway.
Grannock, the Gate That Fell. The only gate Aegemar ever lost, still trying to close.
“She wrote the world in a night. We have been reading ever since.”
Caelendra wrote the world in one night of falling stars and has regretted exactly one word of it since. Her order reads what she left behind.
A library tower that leans, and was built leaning, because the goddess's needle went into the world point-first and the Spire is an argument about the angle. Books are shelved by the night they were written, not by subject, which makes the catalogue a work of astronomy. Every apprentice gets one lamp. The topmost floor is swept by nobody, by rule. The covered banner hangs behind the great sky-map, where you only see it if you step back far enough to take in the whole sky.
The Magistra sets you to find a book she insists does not exist. Every catalogue agrees with her. The shelf numbers agree with her. They simply skip one, cleanly, in three separate hands across two centuries.
The Misread Word. Something the world wrote down wrong and then obeyed.
“Under the Veil, nothing moves unseen. Over it, nothing sings alone.”
Sylvara hunts a wild that obeys nobody, herself included. Her order tracks, sings, and refuses to be led.
At the meadow's edge, half building and half thicket; the roof has been grown through twice and repaired around the tree both times. No doors, only ways in. There is always supper, and it is always somebody else's turn to cook. The song board is meticulously organised. The weapon rack is not. The covered banner is the only thing in the Lodge that ivy has never touched, and nobody has ever explained why.
Rook unhoods the blind hawk and lets it go. Follow it wherever it lands. Bring back what you find. Sing about it, or don't.
Bramblecrown. A crown of thorns wearing the wood that grew it.
“Keep the hearth lit. Someone is always still walking.”
Aurelith is the dawn that was never allowed to end. Her order keeps hearths lit for people still walking toward them.
The oldest fire in Suncradle, never once out. Benches worn shiny by generations of the same three families. It smells of bread, because it is partly a bakery, because a hearth that only prays is a hearth nobody visits. One place is always set at the hearth table and never used. The covered banner hangs where the morning light hits it first.
Carry one lit candle, hand to hand, across the whole town in a storm.
Aurent, the Unended Morning. Dawn with nothing after it. Nothing you heal stays healed.
“The night is kind. We keep it that way.”
Vesperine offers quiet endings and keeps the name the others struck. Her order works in the dark and does not explain itself.
A shop that is not there in daylight. Cold tea, clean linen, lamp turned low. Everything on the shelves is something somebody lost, priced at what it was worth to them, which is why most of it never sells. The covered banner is the only thing in the room without a speck of dust on it, and the Aunt dusts it herself.
That's it. That's the quest.
The Long Kindness. It is only trying to let you rest. It will not take no.
“Nothing is yours until you've made something with it.”
Ignivar says every mortal talent is one of his escaped sparks. His order makes things, and mends what the fighting breaks.
Not a building; the whole forge quarter. You cannot hear yourself, and everyone shouts pleasantly. One wall is the giveaway wall, where every master hangs the thing they will hand to a stranger at the next Sparkfair. The covered banner hangs where the heat is worst and has never scorched, and nobody in the quarter finds this interesting enough to discuss.
Mine the ore yourself. Forge your own oath-token. Dromgar judges it in under ten seconds, hands it straight back, and tells you to use it.
The Masterwork. Ignivar's finest piece, and it has opinions about being finished.
“No one walks alone. That's the whole oath.”
Fenriel the Packmother gives the bond between a soul and a wild thing. Her order never walks anywhere alone.
Outside the walls, on purpose. Mud, straw, warmth, and about thirty animals with opinions. Anyone in Suncradle who is grieving gets handed a puppy without discussion and without being asked. The covered banner hangs low enough that the dogs have worn a shine into the bottom of the cloth by walking under it.
No food. No rope. No commands. Take as long as it takes.
Oathfang. A bond whose other half never came back.
Seven spent their share of the First Light making things: walls, words, wilds, hearths, mercies, forges, bonds. The eighth could not bear to spend his, and light that is never given fades. What was left of it hardened, and the coins learned to walk.
The seven sealed him and his glittering vaults beneath the world, and struck his name from every record. The Starspire keep a book with one word crossed out. The Dawnflame set a place at the hearth for someone they will not name. The Moonveil keep the name itself, and will not give it up. You will hear him called the Sunless King, and the table where the seven still meet has eight chairs. Nobody moves the eighth chair.
