Roland Montpensier

Of the sable measure

I forgive thy treason - I redeem thy fall.
For Iron - Cold Iron - must be master of men all.

About

An adopted son of a House Haillenarte vassal, Roland Montpensier renounced his chivalric oaths and rose-crested shield upon the Dragonsong War's bitter conclusion.Destiny called to this masterless gendarme, and from the blackest night he found purpose in the forbidden disciplines of Tryphaniel's sworn.Reborn a Dark Knight and clad in sable battlegear, he prosecutes his secret brotherhood's cause with the bloody zeal of a convert.

OOC

I'm a PVP main.

BASIC INFO

Age: 30
Birthday: 16th Sun of the 1st Astral Moon
Height: 6 fulms, 8 ilms
Weight: 185 ponze
Eye Color: Slate
Hair Color: AshPatron: Halone, the FuryNotable features:
- Duskwight ethnic tattoo over left eye
- Dark Knight's soul crystal, worn on a tarnished silver chain

HOOKS

He who fights monsters

Following his departure from feudal service, Roland plys his sword as a Clan Centurio hunter for daily provender; associates of the mark boards might know him by reputation or appearance.

If you gaze for long into an abyss

Dedicated body and soul to the example of Tryphaniel the Unshod, Roland is a novitiate yet bears the arms and armor of a master Dark Knight. Other travelers of the forsaken path may recognize the aether of his soul crystal, or the wrathful flame that tempers his blade.A rare sort may even know of his instructor, Giraud de Rochefort - who once wore the horned helm that now rests uneasy on Roland's crown.

An instinct for rank

Years of leal service as a knight to Ishgard are not easily forgotten, as much as Roland would wish otherwise. Veterans of the Dragonsong War or retainers to House Haillenarte may remember Roland for his valor on the field - and his disreputable oathbreaking after the end of the thousand year war.

BACKGROUND

The legend of the Unshod extends some seven centuries into the past, where history and myth stand ilms away in distinction. Accounts that retell the origin of the Dark Knights who followed 'Tryphaniel' are naturally colored by the prejudice of their authors. No deacon of any standing would admit to the monstrous crime that drove him to denounce the church he so faithfully served. Nor would a resentful sort concede the sins his heirs embraced in their pursuit of justice denied by the powers that be.This record, penned by a walker of the Dark Knight's path, makes no claim to neutrality. It stands as a testament to a man that dared defy the Holy See to avenge the honor of a foundling, and the terrible price so paid in blood and infamy by he and all his successors.Much of the traditional narrative as recorded by the Halonic Church remains intact: In the year 960 of the Sixth Astral Era, a lowborn raised to knighthood by force of arms was subject to trial by combat for the crime of murder. He won reprieve from the headsman, and found the wage of his defense to be banishment from his homeland, his name damned by historians to be corrupted in form and synonymous with treason and heresy.Hardly any registers of this knight's name or life remain extant. Toriphaniel features in no hymns, his deeds are not heralded in song nor story, and what tomes tell of his motivations in falling from grace are condemned to censorship and obfuscation by the Inquisition. Oral history, spoken from the mouths of Dark Knights true to aspirants and passed down through the generations, is subject to the natural decay wrought by imperfect memories.I've no illusions that this record shall be complete and accurate, for the sources I condense are fragments of the truth. But, I commit these events to the page, as best as they were told to me, and pray that some shard of the real may survive the passage of time. - R.M.
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Toriphaniel's epithet, 'the Unshod', itself represents a stain on his legacy. Where archivists claim the title was granted for his acts of courage on the battlefield in his days before his disgrace, Dark Knight tradition holds that he carried the moniker from the first day he held the accolade, when knighthood was granted to a commoner of such poverty that he could not afford sollerets and instead fought in leather duckbills.Scarce little survives from the days of his leal service to the Holy See, a great void for his name in celebrated histories of feudal heroes. It is generally agreed that the Church consigned the original documents of his life before his court-martial to damnation in fire."Her Holy Body of Decency", a collective of living archivists for those facts too dangerous to store in parchment and ink, were then entrusted with the truth of the matter. What few expurgators recall from the ages hence brought with them no new insights into the man - only a confirmation that he did raise his sword to scourge a wicked evil.Toriphaniel's example became inspiration to generations of Dark Knights who tread the road he first paved. Despite the mortal sin of heresy and oathsbreaking, goodly men cast aside their colors to take up his blade - a blackened standard that shelters the innocent and the weak, no matter how dire the foe or impossible the task.
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The vanguard knights to follow his lonely crusade are even less well-remembered; not even their names have been passed down after their attainder, forgotten to time and the Inquisitor's pen. Lore of Dark Knights transmitted between the Calamities suggests that Toriphaniel's first acolytes were a cadre of four gendarmes from the High Houses - one from each pillar of Ishgardian society.I know not their motivations. Some legends recount that they were in line to inherit great estates and power and forswore their comforts for the righteous cause. Others, that primogeniture denied them any stake in their own House's fortunes and so gave opportunity to seek adventure from spiteful tedium. The path has ever been walked by the outcast, the vagabond, and all manner of reasons, good and ill, drive men to discard their shields and embrace the abyss.Mine own was one of the latter, though I'll not recount it here. All that we were before the shadow's fall matters not to our path.What we give of ourselves becomes who we are in the end. The great lords of the past surrendered their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor to walk behind a baseborn rogue; I had less to lose and found much more to gain when I swore to blackflame.
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As the distant mist of forgotten years recede into the present, tangible history begins to take shape. A corpus of knowledge, passed from master to disciple in secret and under the threat of death, solidified - techniques to make war without an gendarme's trusty shield. Some of this lore is said to have originated from Toriphaniel and his legendary cohort; much more was contributed by bitter lessons learned in dubious battle.Breakthroughs in metallurgy and aetherological science during the Sixth Astral Era made possible the modern, recognizable form of a Dark Knight. Our distinctive image of spiked platemail and horned casque with greatsword in hand was the final product from decades of refinement, that enabled one man so arrayed to carry into the melee with the agility of a dragoon and the stolid protection of a paladin. Ours is a lonely path, bereft of bannermen to shelter beside - yet free of the limitations of serried rank and file, rare is our match in the fray.Wherefore the genesis of "dark arts" wielded by abysswalkers remains largely unknown. The Halonic Church claims that the first of us trafficked in demonic forces, and taught the vilest sorcery of blood-manipulation to his pupils. Such lies are easily dismissed, for it is known that the first generation of Dark Knights were but men clad in mail and plate wielding the swords at their hips.One of the first lessons a Dark Knight will learn is that the soul holds far greater power than any other weapon or tool at our disposal. Armour may break, steel may shatter, flesh may bleed, but the will to power persists even beyond the veil of life, so long as our resolve holds fast. The inner darkness of the abyss, where dwells our true-soul, is the boundless wellspring from whence we sup in our darkest hour.Strength is pain. Strength is suffering. Strength is sacrifice. Our credo is warning... and promise.
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Olivier the Fearbane is the first knight my master's annals record in any detail. A pioneer in the development of our martial disciplines, he was one of the first to use his own life's essence to empower his blade, the 'Souleater' that every Dark Knight learns in their time. Soul-weaving remained an immature mystery during his era. Even today, drawing upon the darkside remains more art than science, though his early interpretations are considered authoritative and foundational to the craft.He believed that dread terror was a Dark Knight's first recourse, and paradoxically his greatest weakness. Like a twin-edged blade that cuts foeman and wielder alike, the fear in a man's heart might drive him to flee in shame and disgrace - or be unleashed upon his enemies with overwhelming force. The former was a constant threat to a novice's discipline; Olivier was known to be a martinet, subjecting his students before their most secret fears, to deaden their nerves and harden their hearts.This study of the heart's nature and its hidden recesses in turn uncovered the nexus of inner darkness for he and his heirs. It is a curious thing, that our true souls, who know us better than any other, take on forms that reflect what we hide from the world's eyes. There's no small irony, that our worst selves become our closest companions in our crusade.
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Not all subscribed to the proto-orthodoxy that Olivier espoused. One of his students, an outcast child born of dragons-blooded heretics, found his instruction to be anathema. Lietta the 'Nightingale', diverged from her master and taught the sword in her own right, developing a school of thought distinct and often opposed to her erstwhile mentor.Her vision of the Dark Knight's path embraced a certain freedom of action, one that rejected the strictures of best methods in favor of practical improvisation. One disciple's soul was as unique and different from another's as one snowflake to the next-fallen, and so were their roads to walk the abyss, she argued; Olivier and his clique might be useful reference, but no absolute authority.Lietta's beliefs - that all Dark Knights are ultimately masters of their own destiny, their own souls - led her to open schism, though it was little more an amicable parting of ways in the relationship between these knights of eld.Matters of philosophy however, became substantive differences in practice. Where the Fearbane sought to bind his adherents' shadows with strict regimens and the bite of the lash, the Nightingale encouraged her followers to reconcile their inner selves, seeking to reach accord with their truest natures. The former believed that the darkness was to be harnessed and controlled; the latter, that the abyss was an extension of the mind itself.Their competing schools of thought have remained in tension ever since, and all manner of derivative syntheses, reconciliations and deviations have emerged in time.My own sect traces its lineage to the Nightingale's teachings, though we have taken her command of valuing outcomes over method to a degree she herself might not have accepted. Rather than challenge openly those we would strike down, ours is a way of daggers in the dark, of the false name and the surprise attack - sins of perfidy we gladly accept to see justice done.
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A noble paladin of the Holy See would say that we are all monsters, twisted mockeries of knighthood and virtue. In truth, we are. A Dark Knight is not beholden to any oath, save what we give to our shadow - what we admit to ourselves. The abyss claims whatever we sacrifice, and returns that strength to us tenfold.As we walk this road to perdition, we begin to... forget. The very ends we seek become clouded, and the sacrifices take on a meaning all their own, distortions of purpose and identity till all that remains is the hunt itself, the scent of blood that drives us on, and on, and on, to death's embrace. The rites of communion with our true-soul becomes ever more vital as we advance, to align Toriphaniel's gifts with his measure and his example.We must remember the ends we swore to uphold, as the means to those ends become ever-more terrible, their demands upon body and soul ever-more absolute.The ends justify the means. This precept has been core to our way, as knights past and present abandon chivalric honor to guard the light amid the darkness without. There is no promise we will not foreswear, no limit we will not break, to see those we cherish safe and hale. Upon the pyre of blackflame do we render up our souls, subsuming who we were to become who we are: the flame in the abyss, a beacon of hope for the weary and cleansing fury for the wicked.