![[DQ]](dq.gif)
12/26/99
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There are a few ways to become a knight. The easiest way is to be born into a noble family.
Another method is to find some sponsoring knight who will offer knighthood, usually as a reward for heroism and bravery in the sponsor's service. Ideally, the sponsor would be well known and respected, and there'd be a public knighting ceremony. Otherwise, especially if the individual is known to have been a commoner, people might not take claims of knighthood seriously.
Technically, any knight can confer knighthood on any commoner any time, but a knight who hands out knighthood freely and lightly, or who won't make a public ceremony of it, is likely to lose his own knightly status.
Another way for a commoner to achieve knighthood is first to move to a new area where the commoner is unknown and then to act the part. If the commoner can look and act like a knight, and nobody has any reason to suspect, the new "knight" can acquire a liege lord and otherwise start living a knight's life.
No matter how an individual becomes a knight, a knight is expected to look and act like a knight, or risk demotion. A knight should have metal armor, a lance, a knightly hand-to-hand weapon (ideally a sword), at least one decent horse, at least one squire, and a noble lord. The more of these that a knight lacks, the more likely it is that the validity of the knight's status will be questioned. Usually, a new knight acquires these things during or shortly after the knighting ceremony.
King Arthur wants knights to live up to his ideals of chivalry (bravery, mercy, generosity, modesty, and a sense of justice), but many knights fall short of this mark without being demoted.
Anyone who departs from any of this is asking for trouble -- unless they don't get caught. Even then, there are those who fear cosmic justice.
Challenges fall into about three categories: friendly duels, duels for conquest, or fights to the death.
Friendly duels are just for fun; the weapons might be real and therefore dangerous, but the two challengers are not out to maim or kill each other. Whoever gives up first loses, but there aren't supposed to be any hard feelings afterwards.
A duel for conquest has stakes. The loser might have to give up his armor, weapons, or mount, or he might become a prisoner held for ransom, or he might be forced into some agreement as a result. When one yields, the other wins.
A fight to the death is usually when one person has a strong desire for revenge against another. Even if one person yields, the winner might still slay the loser. If it was a reasonably fair fight with a reasonable justification, the authorities aren't likely to raise a stink. It's just a combat death.
At a tournament, challenges are usually friendly or for stakes, although someone with a serious grudge might choose a tournament as a time to challenge a particular foe in a fight to the death.
For those who have a grievance when a challenge is inappropriate (e.g., a peasant who has a grievance against a knight for kidnapping his daughter), the usual approach is to appeal to one or the other's lord. For capital crimes, you usually go to the county sheriff.
Regardless of all this, how you play your character is up to you of course, but your character has to live (or die) with the way NPCs and the other players respond.
Common punishments for petty crimes include fines (a third for the one assessing the fine, and the rest for whoever was wronged), a day in the pillory, a ride of shame in a cart (around town for all to see), flogging, the removal or maiming of body parts (e.g., chopping off a thief's hand), or just locking someone away. Usually imprisonment is for those awaiting ransom or the payment of fines.
Some knights will dole out justice for petty crimes on the spot, and others prefer to turn miscreants over to the local lord or to the culprit's master.
Anyone who behaves in a highly suspicious manner, such as fleeing when spotted or sneaking around at night, can be apprehended for acting like a thief. Usually, the punishment is lenient if there's no evidence of further crimes.
The usual forms of execution are:
Marrying someone in similar circumstances is usually pretty easy, as long as the two families/lords are willing. Marrying out of class is tougher, because one or both sides will fail to see any political or financial advantage in the marriage. This being a medieval setting, the wife usually leaves her family to join her husband's, so if a common man takes a noble wife for example, he would probably drag her down to commoner status, unless he can arrange a sweet deal during the course of an adventure. It might even become the main focus of an adventure if one of you sets your sights on an "unattainable" partner.
Initially, the kids have the same social status as the parents -- probably the same status as the father since the mother is likely to have been pulled up or dragged down to the father's level. Here too, if you let "normal" events unfold, the kids would stay at that social status, but you can try to improve their situation during adventure. A commoner might convince a noble to take on a child in fosterage, or a noble might knight a commoner for acts of heroism.
In a pagan, non-feudal area, druids have very high status, commanding respect from all levels of society, even kings; they have rights that cross all tribal boundaries.
In a pagan feudal area, druids are still accorded respect, and they're regarded as an almost-noble class.
Non-pagan realms usually view druids as an odd or even dangerous sort of commoner. In Salisbury, where major pagan sites like Stonehenge are found even though Salisbury is mostly Christian, a druid is going to get mixed reactions, anything from high respect by those who respect pagan ways, to fear from those who see pagans as anti-Christian.
Ogham is by custom reserved for pagan matters -- tomb markings, inscriptions, and so on. Among the Irish, this is the only use for written Irish, so they don't write Irish in Roman characters. Those few Irish who have been influenced by British or Roman ways might write in British or Latin using Roman characters.