04 Night's Watch.pdf - Chaos Bleeds

CHAPTER 1: The Night’s Watchhave been known to send a defeated foe to serve in the Night’s Watchrather than see their talents bled out into the mud.Despite the fact that the brotherhood welcomes the experience andtalent, these great knights and fallen lords make up less of the Watchas the years pass, and have dwindled to the point where they numberfewer than one in every fifty men. Those who accept a position with theNight’s Watch do well for themselves. Even though the brotherhoodis ostensibly a meritocracy, it is also true that those with useful talentshave more chance to advance. A noble trained in the arts of war faresbetter with a sword than a common-born man whose hands were usedto hoe and plow. It is no coincidence that many of the officers of theWatch wore a noble house’s heraldry before they wore the black.Some nobles have no family to forsake. Remnants of destroyedhouses, they take the black out of pride, or honor, or sheer stubbornnessand continue on when their bloodline is lost. Such a man carrieson, holding his family name in his heart even if he never utters it inthe presence of his brothers, taking comfort in the fact that he stilllives. Others joined while their house and family thrived, then had tosit idle on the Wall as tales of their family’s misfortune traveled northby raven and ship. Some harbor a bitter grudge against the Watch forbeing forced to the sidelines of their former family’s struggle, but mostaccept the fate of their friends and relations with the same stoicismthat they accept their own. With nothing left but the Watch, they giveeverything to their adopted family and often burn with fierce loyaltyto the brotherhood.In the lands north of the Trident the nobility still harbor a strongsense of duty to the Night’s Watch and the further north one travelsthe more true this becomes. Among these families it is still considered amatter of pride to send a younger son to join the black brothers. Othersecond- and third-born children grow tired of the political machinationsand the great game, choosing to travel to the Wall of their ownaccord. For some, the brotherhood becomes more of a family than thefalse smiles and hidden agendas of their abandoned homes.Respect for the Night’s Watch deteriorates the further south oneheads. For sons of noble houses south of the Trident, being condemnedto take the black is seen as harsh punishment suitable for criminals andlowborn. Safe in the warmth of their great cities and castles, they givelittle credence to the stories of wildlings and the Others. Tales of suchcreatures are dismissed as the fantasies of peasants and the wanderingminds of men forced to stare too long into snow-swept wastes. Whenthe Sworn Brothers come south to seek recruits, they are given the runof prisons and poorhouses, but it is rare that an anointed knight orhighborn lord joins their retinue for the journey to the Far North. Inrecent years, however, several have gone less than willingly—while KingRobert Baratheon’s pardon excused many of the families that stoodagainst him, those who fought against him directly were sent to theWall as part of their House’s pardon.Some recruits are part of both worlds and neither. Numerous bastardsare sent to serve the Wall. The oath to forsake their family makesit difficult to use a bastard against his family, and the Night’s Watchoften serves as a dumping ground for the by-blows sired by promiscuoushighborn nobility. For bastards weary of their treatment, the Watchcan become a welcome home where their lineage is irrelevant and soonforgotten.Some wildling women, abandoned by their men and unsure howthey will feed their babes abandon their children at the edge of the9