Volrath: You all are looking at me as if I’m going to impart some sort of transcendent knowledge upon you. The truth is, I doubt I can tell you anything you don’t already know. You don’t need me to know that there’s something terribly wrong with our world. Most of you are probably here because you have seen it.
Most of you have probably experienced it. I remember as I approached adulthood, I began to look around the Solendian Knighthood and notice things I felt did not fit into our pious claims about fairness and justice. How could any group claim these values while excluding others for reasons so superficial as race or gender?
Child that I was, I assumed that simply talking to enough people about my concerns would result in a change. Such ignorance on my part earned me nothing but befuddled stares and conspicuous whispers. They speculated at length about what was wrong with the society within the knighthood to produce someone who would dare suggest that the old ways might be showing their age.
Eventually, they learned that I had an interest in magic and was reading books on that subject. Suddenly, they had an answer. It had to have been the content of what I was reading that shaped these delusions of mine. It’s always easier to focus on something peripheral, isn’t it? Nobody wants to admit that the problems may lie in how we treat one another. Instead they focus on the material we use as an escape from that treatment.
Growing up, we can be punished for challenging our elders. We can be punished for damaging someone else’s goods, or going to the tavern before we’re mature enough to deal with the results. Yet there was no punishment for young knights who sought to crush the dreams and ambitions of their peers. No punishment for breaking down a boy’s spirit….stifling his self-worth.