Morngorrald Yard

Grounds:

Morngorrald Yard is technically a demi-fortress in the middle ring of Terrasquestone. It consists of a large, low-walled barbican surrounding a large training ground. This is Morngorrald Yard proper, though the entire facility shares the name and prestige. On the training ground mostly men are drilled and trained in the art of swordsmanship, teamwork, and the use of other weapons. The sword might be a pinnacle of melee weapons, but a sword can break, and a warrior might have to take up a simple cudgel, an elaborate mace, a spear, or even an ax. The true weapon is the man holding a tool of destruction.

The barbican is thick and houses the barracks for the youths being trained, as well as a healer's center, store rooms, and kitchens to feed the several scores of students who are present at a time. The students are also expected to assist in setting up the dining tables in the yard for meals, breaking them down, and cleaning both the kitchens, the grounds, and helping to maintain the Yard itself.

Purpose:

Morngorrald Yard was established over two centuries ago to initially train youths in the city to be prepared to fight and defend themselves and others, and it quickly established itself as a premiere training center. It didn't focus on the chivalric combat favored by nobility, nor did it spend itself on training for weapons and equipment that were not commonly available, most would be adventurers who could afford plate armor and similar grade weapons could already afford tutors. Thus, the Yard was made for the emerging middle class of Terrasquestone who had martial interests or family traditions.

Agenda:

Train youths to become martial fighters so they can protect others and not ended up sheep at the slaughter.

Leader:

The current leader of the Yard is Lord Edvard Heldt, an older man with salt and pepper hair, broad shoulders, and orange eyes. Heldt has good relations with the Civil Guard of the city as well as two of the three major adventurer's guilds.

Founder:

The Yard was founded by Oren Morngorrald, a man of large stature and crude manners, though a good heart. He saw several close friends perish over the course of several years as they were unprepared for the innate danger of the city on the Unholy holidays, forays into the dungeon, or worse, lost when they were conscripted to man a position beyond the walls of the city to fight an invader or hostile ravaging force. He saw their lack of training and experience to be more of an impediment than their poor gear and lack of armor. He would start a training group in the shell of the Palme Barbican, which was already long vacant and only used to host gladiatorial blood fights after hours. He started with a few students, and by the end of the season, he had thirty he was teaching the sword and shield.

By the time Morngorrald passed at the advanced age of 130, he was recognized as a hero of the city. After his three day long funeral, he was placed in the Vaults of the Hallowed Dead so that if the time and need comes, he might rise again to serve the city.

Membership:

The Yard currently is overseen by the Headmaster, and there are fifteen to twenty instructors. All know the sword and shield, and the majority have another weapon they are proficient enough with to teach its use. There is a facility staff of approximately fifty, mostly women, who tend to the injured, cook, and clean the Yard. They do not handle repairs, this is the job of the students while being led by the instructors.

The Yard has a prestigious list of alumni, including ranking officers in the Civil Guard, the Guild of Champions, and the Guild of Adventurers-Upon-Return. There have also been two graduates of the Yard who have become Lords of the City, and gained great local renown and fame for their actions and fairness.

Resources:

The Yard largely subsists on donations from its alumni, and grants from the Council of Lords. It has a large but mundane arsenal of weapons and good quality light and medium types of armor. While small, the Yard can request favors from the Council, as well as from the Guilds, such as taking on a promising student as a temporary mentor. This gives the students more hands on training, and lets the guilds see the best of the Yard. Because of this, graduation at the Yard can look like Draft Day for professional sports, with the guilds being present to see who they can recruit.

Creed:

If you aren't willing to fight for what you love, you cannot claim to love it

Symbols:

The Yard flies a red fringed flag of Terrasquestone (Orange terrasque rearing on a green field)

Yard swordsmen also will wear a red tassel on the scabbard of their swords, and many affect a stiff-sided hat known as a Glengarry

History

As mentioned previously, the Yard started as a single man teaching the sword to anyone who would show up and lift a training sword. The first students did well with their training, and unlike many others who tried taking up the blade, they survived. This led to more and more students seeking Morngorrald's teaching. In less than a decade, he had to take on new instructors to help handle the number of applicants. There are only so many training fights a single man may do in a single day. Some of these were his first students, seasoned by the dungeon or fighting as mercenaries or for the guilds. The city would grant the barbican to Morngorrald, but left its repair and care to the students.

While Morngorrald initially preached an ascetic lifestyle to go along with the sword, he found that speaking about love as motivation and denying its expression were contradictory, so he reduced the severity to just excluding alcohol, recreational drug and potion use, and excess fornication (no brothels, no whoring). This brought more harmony to the Yard as the number of injuries from training made the place prime for training healers, testing apothecary potion making (healing potions), and otherwise giving non-combatants experience with what actual violence and injury looks like.

Empathic healers, usually younger women, tending injured young athletic men, that was a recipe for plenty of Nightingale romances.

Morngorrald would name a replacement, the first headmaster and one of his first students. Dangelo Bright was an usual choice, as he was nearly crippled from fighting in the field first as a mercenary, and then a captain in the Civil Guard during a war Terrasquestone was caught in two decades prior. When students learned the new headmaster was a one-armed man with half a face who could beat three swordsmen in a stand up fight, the Yard had to have applicants go through testing to see who was worthy to stay as students and who would be turned away.

Higas Willowhain was one of the uncommon women who made it into the Yard and accomplished herself as a competent swordswoman, spent thirty years in the Guild of Adventurers-Upon-Return, retired from the dungeon and spent another two decades as an instructor at the Yard, and then as needed, a colonel in the Civil Guard. When she hung up the belt and baldric, she found herself approached by the council and raised to the postion of being a Lord of the City.

Morngorrald would pass, leaving behind a great legacy, both in the Yard, and in blood, having a score of grandchildren.

Valgard Martin specialized in two-handed swords, held the Yard through a dark period in the history of the City, when it seemed evil held sway. During Martin's tenure, he would start as student, turn instructor, and then Headmaster while the Yard went from school to a fortress within the city, and his bands of students would patrol the neighborhoods around it keeping peace, killing the strange monsters the seeped up from the Devouring Deeps, and keeping street banditry to a minimum. He was part of a coalition of local people of importance who allied together to overthrow the junta that had taken over the Civil Guard, and released the surviving members of the Council of Lords, reduced to a history low of three. Following this, things improved, and Valgard was made an honorary Lord before unexpectedly being forged into the first High Lord in a generation.

The current headmaster of the Yard is Verron Vellon, a dark and imposing man covered in scars and missing an eye, and he teaches his students endurance and how to handle pain and betrayal. He has strengthened the Yard's connections with the Civil Guard, and the Mercenary Guild, which has alienated the dungeoneering guilds. This has mostly been because of a feud between Vellon and a sitting master of the Guild of Champions, Ellundre Vellondra. They were married before Ellundre almost wiped out their entire dungeoneering band as youths in exchange for access to a valuable dungeon drop, then fleeing to leave the survivors to make their way back to the surface badly injured and more than half left behind in bloody pieces. Ellundre forsook their marriage and was accepted as a master of the guild, respendent in her wightpewter plate armor and holding a Dungeon Soul charm.

Tensions remain at a simmer.