The sun baked the stone yard as Captain Nora Greyhelm stood with arms crossed, eyes narrowed beneath her helm. The sound of crackling echoed sharply as the unfamiliar weapon fire, a sharp crack and recoil, louder than any crossbow. A heartbeat later, the armor-clad dummy fifty paces out snapped backward, its breastplate torn open.
The weapon hadn’t come from Guild stores. William had bought it himself, quietly, out of his personal stipend. No requisition. No signature. Just a long ride east, a modest payment, and the gamble that this time, something would land.
William had pitched other initiatives before - some clever, some costly. A few showed promise. Most did not. Each time, he’d been heard, but never followed.
This time, he brought proof instead of proposals.
Nora watched the target sway, smoke drifting on the hot wind. She said nothing. But her silence, for once, was not disinterest.
She turned, slow and steady, and began walking back toward the Brotherhood’s keep a squat, stone-walled structure that served as both barracks and bastion. Her boots crunched softly over the packed earth, weaving past target dummies and half-abandoned drill lines. The shadow of the keep stretched long ahead of her, like the weight of the question still unresolved.
Then came footsteps. Fast. Eager. Familiar. His voice arrived before he did; picking up where a dozen old proposals had left off.
“We have to buy them,” Lieutenant William Book called, catching up at a jog. His coat flared as he fell into stride beside her.
Nora kept walking. Eyes forward. “We are not in the business of collecting curiosities, Lieutenant.”
“That’s not curiosity,” he said, breath quick. “That’s leverage. That’s momentum. That’s the first new weapon we’ve been offered in a decade. And it works.”
“So do swords.”
“Not like that. You saw the armor. It tore clean through. And it says something. You want recruits? Retention? Give them a reason to believe we’re not relics.”
They moved past the inner courtyard. Crossbows lined the racks. The drills had quieted. Too hot. Too tired. Too old.
William glanced at her. “You know, I’ve heard it too. Talk in the council hall. They say the Adventurer’s Guild could take over the goblin front. It’s just whispers, but the kind that don’t go away. If that happens, we’re not just trimming scope. We’re gutting the Brotherhood.”
Nora’s jaw tightened, but she said nothing.
“”Eighteen percent drop in enrollment,” William continued. “And the ones we keep? Half of them are looking sideways at the Adventurer’s Guild. They see gold, glory, fancy gear. We offer? Routine. Orders. Salary.”
“Stability,” she said. “We offer a code.”
“And they want to survive.”
She didn’t respond right away. That word, survive, stuck. Not because it was wrong. Because it was too close to right.
Then, quieter: “Tools change tactics. Tactics become doctrine. And doctrine… becomes myth.”
She looked toward the keep. “If these weapons don’t deliver, we’ll have sunk coin, time, and trust into something that weakens us. But if they do, and we hesitate too long, we may find ourselves explaining why someone else was ready while we waited.””
A pause.
“Discipline is not inertia. But it can be camouflage for fear. I won’t be ruled by that.””
William’s voice softened. “I know what this place means to you. And I know I’ve missed before. You remember the glue bags. The alloy plate. That training drill that made three veterans sick as recruits. I know I’ve been wrong before, Captain. But this? This isn’t theory. This isn’t a sketch on a board. It tore through plate. It works.”
He stopped walking just long enough to face her directly. “If this fails, I’ll carry it. But if we do nothing; if we keep waiting for change to get convenient we’ll already be replaced by the time anyone thinks to ask what we could have done differently.”
Nora nodded once, grimly.
“And how will we maintain them? How many quartermasters have the skills or the time to strip down a blackpowder weapon between shifts? How many field teams can afford to stop training drills to chase misfires?”
She didn’t wait for an answer. And she didn’t expect one, not from William, not really. The last time she’d trusted a supplier’s quote, the replacement spears had arrived warped and short-stocked. The last time she’d approved a rushed training protocol, two Watchmen had lost fingers to a failed gate brace.
“How long will training take? Who writes the manuals? How many hours before a recruit can shoulder one without flinching at the recoil?”
A breath.
“And where does the powder come from? East of the salt road? Smuggled in barrels we can’t inspect? What will a single crate cost once every guild member decides they need thunder at their hip?”
They reached the west arch. Wind off the stone. Smell of iron and sweat. The yard stretched before them, quiet.
Nora stared at the training dummies. Crossbows rested at ease. So did the Watchmen.
“Where do you propose we find the coin for such an investment?”
“I don’t know yet,” William admitted. “But I’ll find it. Noble backing. City purse. Quiet donor. Doesn’t matter. What matters is we act.”
She said nothing. Just stared. Beyond the arch, a young recruit sat in the shade cleaning a crossbow string already frayed at the nock. She wasn’t meant to notice, but she always did.
She remembered delays: ravine towers held in review until twelve Watchmen never came home. And the mage-lanterns? Rushed into use. Three injuries, one lost hand. That call had been hers.
She imagined a future where recruits lined up, not for matching armor, but for something that might keep them alive. And a different one, where they clung too long to certainty and watched the world pass them by.
She thought of the senior stewards; those who praised stability, who saw the danger of change but not the risk of stagnation. Who read numbers, not winds.
‘One day,’ she thought, ‘someone will ask how we vanished. And they’ll find a ledger. Columns neat. No alarm raised. Until the foundation cracked beneath us.’
“And if we don’t? The Adventurer’s Guild gets there first. They’ll source it themselves. And we’re not just behind - we’re humiliated.”
Nora exhaled slowly. Her voice, when it came, was quiet.
“You want us to stake our name on a tool we barely understand.”
“No,” he said. “I want us to still be standing in five years, with something worth standing for.”
Silence.
Then, she paused. The silence stretched.
“This isn’t Guild issue,” she said at last. Her tone was colder now, not cautious but clipped. “You misused your stipend. That fund was meant for field contingencies, not for freelance arms deals.”
William hesitated. “I didn’t see another way to prove it. If I’d filed the request, it would’ve died in a queue.”
“That queue exists for a reason,” she snapped. “You’re not a rogue agent, William. You wear the crest. You don’t get to freelance the future without consequences.”
She exhaled, then added more quietly, “You’re lucky it worked. Or you’d already be stationed at the northern docks counting barge arrivals.”
William didn’t argue. He just nodded, jaw tight.
Then, softer: “I don’t want to leave this place, Captain. But I’m running out of ways to help it survive.”
“Just enough for two units and one test firing,” he repeated.”
Nora’s eyes narrowed. “If that thing had failed in front of command, with recruits watching, it wouldn’t have just been a setback. It would’ve made us look reckless. Desperate. That’s not a risk you take lightly, not with our reputation hanging by a thread.”
“Then I’d have stood for it. Publicly. And likely found myself sweeping floors at the eastern signal tower. But it didn’t.”
She considered that for a long moment.
“And training? Manuals?”
“Already in draft. I had notes translated from the engineer in Westmarch. If we go forward, I’ll finish it. Personally.”
She didn’t reach for the weapon again. Not yet. But her voice shifted, less steel, more stone.
She squinted at him, caught off guard but only slightly. “And the funding?”
“Give me three days. I’ll find it. Quietly. No compromises.”
“If it works,” she added, “I’ll take it to the High Stewards myself. But not before. And not without proof.”
“One squad. Structured pilot. Maintenance oversight. No public announcements. You fund it, quietly. The rest follows proper channels.”
William blinked. Then nodded, fire rekindled.
“Yes, Captain.”
Neither of them said it, but both knew: this was only a beginning. A step across a line they’d never be able to unmark.
Nora turned back toward the yard. In the distance, the recruit still worked at the frayed string. The drill master barked a command, but the rhythm was off, an echo of a formation too long unchanged.
“Go.”
- -
Author’s Note
The Honorable Brotherhood stands at the edge of irrelevance, not for lack of courage, but for its faith in systems that once served well. This story reflects a moment many guilds, teams, or tech leads face: when the old tools still function, but the world has shifted beneath them.
Nora is the leader who’s seen what hasty change can cost. William is the report who’s run out of sanctioned ways to make things better. Their disagreement isn’t fire, it’s weight. Risk on one side. Irrelevance on the other.
This isn’t a story that tells you when to jump on a new technology. It’s a story that asks: how do you know? How do you tell the difference between a lasting shift and a passing trend? Between prudent skepticism and fear wearing armor?
I wrote this because I’ve been in Nora’s seat - responsible for something that still technically works. And I’ve been William too, trying to prove a change that felt obvious, but wasn’t safe.
There’s no clean answer. Only tension. Only tradeoffs. Only trust.
And if we’re lucky, someone willing to listen before the foundation cracks.