Dragonwilds:Wild Knights

The Wild Knights were an order of scouts who served Dragonwilds:Guthix, roaming the wild areas of Dragonwilds:Ashenfall. Their primary task was to act as guardians, protecting both the people of Ashenfall from the dangers of the wilderness and the wilderness itself from the encroachment of civilisation.Template:CiteJournal They were renowned for their ability to traverse treacherous terrain, and their hunting skills were said to be unmatched, even by the Dragonwilds:garou.Template:CiteJournal

History

Foundation and the Schism

The order was founded during the Dragonwilds:First Age of Dragonwilds:Gielinor around the time when Guthix and his followers established Dragonwilds:Bramblemead in the same age, and the order was at work on the continent even after he left to spread Dragonwilds:runes to the rest of Gielinor.Template:CiteJournal During the Dragonwilds:Schism, when some of the humans turned on the Dragonwilds:Amalgamated humans, the knights entered the villages by night and snuck the persecuted out. Some that were rescued became Wild Knights themselves, and others found new places to live. Their armour was quiet enough to cross a village unheard and light enough to allow a fast escape, and its hardened leather turned aside the knives of the poorly equipped captors.Template:CiteJournal

Rain and cold made the leather creak, so the knights covered the noise with spells that called animal spirits, like crows, ravens, and magpies to caw at anyone nearby.Template:CiteJournal When Guthix returned, and witnessed the horror committed, he would gather the humans who did not participate in the murder, while leaving those that did behind. His last instruction was that the order keep its oaths, shielding the settlements from the wild land and the wild land from the settlements.Template:CiteJournal He then covered the region in a misty veil, to hid it from the world. The order continued its work after his departure.

The Third Age conflict

Iron reached Ashenfall in the Third Age, brought by smiths who came over with the Saradominist priests. The Wild Knights alone opposed the new material, fearing that its sudden popularity would damage the continent's ecosystem.Template:CiteJournal The knights urged Bramblemead toward more sustainable methods, but the village exhausted the deposits of Dragonwilds:Brynmoor regardless. Militias then moved into Dragonwilds:Ghornfell to prospect, wrecking woodland as they went in breach of the standing treaties with the garou.Template:CiteJournal War became inevitable when the wild knight Dragonwilds:Kessel cut down a young garou prince during a battle against garou hunters.Template:CiteJournal

Dragonwilds:Studded leather armour proved a liability at first, because the garou could follow its distinctive smell across long distances.Template:CiteJournal Hunters answered by walking into the wind so that their scent carried away from their enemies, and the wild mages cast subtle air spells to steer the breeze when the weather did not oblige.Template:CiteJournal The bronze crossbow grew out of the order's practice drills, in which archers were routinely beaten by comrades carrying shields, since a shield stopped blades, arrows, and spells with equal ease and left the shooter open to a counterattack.Template:CiteJournal The people of Brynmoor learned of the design, refined it, and rebuilt it in iron, producing a weapon that delivered powerful ranged attacks while leaving its bearer a hand free for a shield.Template:CiteJournal Metal weapons were generally shunned, though the order set that aside for bronze shields, which its members had carried into battle since before the peace treaty with Dragonwilds:Lougrim, on the philosophy that a life was worth more than a principle.Template:CiteJournal

The knights fought alongside Saradominist forces. The Wild Knight commander Dragonwilds:Vemmeck besieged Dragonwilds:Ashien's Watch, the northernmost garou stronghold, joined by the paladin Dragonwilds:Sir Lear and a large force of goblins. The magic of the garou druid Dragonwilds:Ashien held the attackers at bay until a Dragonwilds:dragon entered the fight and Sir Lear found his mace useless against its scales.Template:CiteJournal The site is remembered as a battleground into the present day.Template:CiteNPC

Decline

Dragons were abroad in the realm by the time the garou war closed, when an order of assassins calling itself the Dragonwilds:Glass Knives began to hunt the knights. The assassins took their name from the serial killer who had murdered so many Amalgamated, and judged that the knights were more of a threat than the dragons.Template:CiteJournal The order's own numbers thinned as the Guthixian faith declined, and with fewer knights to hand it leaned on potions to bring recruits up to standard quickly.Template:CiteJournal

Abyssal demons reached Ashenfall from the Abyss after Dragonwilds:Zamorak cast them out of their homeworld during the demon uprising on Infernus.Template:CiteJournal The Dragonwilds:Bloodblight Swamp was poisoned later, when Dragonwilds:General Velgar's blood spilt through the land after defeating Dragonwilds:Bandos, he then rampaged through the land, cursing ground that had been a fertile garou farmland.Template:CiteJournal Dragonwilds:Aidan met one of the demons in that swamp while searching for a fugitive criminal, found his blade and his spells useless against its chitinous hide, and took the wound that killed him.Template:CiteJournal A group of his siblings in the order went after the creature.Template:CiteJournal One of them later took up an abysmal whip against it in vengeance.Template:CiteJournal

The order kept a fortress of its own at Dragonwilds:Silverthorn Keep, in the east of Dragonwilds:Fellhollow. When the Dragonwilds:Withering raised the dead across the region, its garrison held the walls, wearing amulets of accuracy as they poured arrows into the horde.Template:CiteJournal The knights pushed the horde back as far as they could, then sealed themselves inside the keep, until none was left alive to hold it.Template:CiteText Dragonwilds:Ravanna later placed a fragment of Dragonwilds:Imaru's curse within the ruin, guarded by the last of its defenders still living.Template:CiteText Those who fell rose again, and the Dragonwilds:skeletal archers of Fellhollow were scouts, hunters, and Wild Knight archers in life.Template:CiteJournal

Organisation

The order fielded archers, warriors, and mages, and druids served within its ranks.Template:CiteJournal Its mages could cull threats before the villagers even saw them coming.Template:CiteJournal Scouts formed a further branch, taking mixtures that sharpened the senses and quickened reactions as they worked the forests.Template:CiteJournal Commanders led the order's forces in the field.Template:CiteJournal Members spent long stretches alone in the wildlands and could go weeks or months without speaking to anyone, so gatherings of the order were rare.Template:CiteJournal

The order taught villagers to shoot. A visiting knight would oversee the crafting of a first Dragonwilds:ash shortbow from naturally fallen branches and flax spun into bowstring, and most of those bows broke almost at once.Template:CiteJournal Those who proved themselves were led into the forest for oak, and told that a good bow was an extension of oneself rather than merely a weapon. Each villager was encouraged to put something personal into the wood, by decorating the grip or cutting a poem into it.Template:CiteJournal

Culling wolves was part of the order's remit, since their teeth could pierce the armour of Brynmoor villagers. Knights killed pack leaders and lured larger groups away from settlements with fresh deer kills.Template:CiteJournal Dire wolves were treated differently. The knights preferred to spare them, holding that a dire wolf turned from a course of action would take the rest of the pack with it.Template:CiteJournal When a Dragonwilds:rat king grew large enough to threaten Bramblemead, the knights and the Saradominist paladins allied briefly to kill it, at heavy cost.Template:CiteJournal

Equipment

Dragonwilds:Studded leather armour was the order's usual choice ahead of plate metal, since moving through forest demanded grace as much as protection.Template:CiteJournal Hunters working the forests of Brynmoor took hard leather instead, which Amalgamated rangers could shape around their mutations.Template:CiteJournal Archers tended their leathers every morning, since the material broke easily and the upkeep became part of the order's routine. They worked alone, stalking a quarry across the land for days at a time between kills, and hunted monsters and people with the same focus as the order's commands directed. Their motto was simple: to harm the wilds was to make yourself a target.Template:CiteJournal Their helms narrowed a wearer's vision onto the target so that nothing else remained in view, and rumour held that archers so equipped never missed.Template:CiteJournal The order also wore leather refined from dragonhide, which the villagers of Dragonwilds:Emberwood treated as blasphemy against the dragons that protected them.Template:CiteJournal

Some of the order's bows were treated with a resin of ground runes and plant oils that let a knight work magic through the weapon as though carrying runes. The recipe was lost and the enchantment has since faded.Template:CiteJournal The order used poison on its arrows, holding that any advantage in a fight was worth taking and that a poisoned shot could still bring down a beast when the first hit was not mortal.Template:CiteJournal

Several enchanted items were made for the order. Amulets of accuracy kept a hunt smooth, since a quarry that survived the first arrow could escape or gather others to it, and a wolf pack could tear a small group of knights apart. With an amulet, an alpha wolf went down to one well-placed shot.Template:CiteJournal The water-Amalgamated jeweller Dragonwilds:Lochlan left a gemstone in the gathering hall, which hunters touched after a successful hunt until the stone took on their pride and skill as an enchantment, and he then cut it into an amulet that shared the effect with any wearer.Template:CiteJournal Knights who hunted alone were fond of hermit rings, worn on long missions into the forests.Template:CiteJournal

Some knights raised gyrfalcons from the egg and trained them for scouting and hunting.Template:CiteJournal In the earliest days of Bramblemead the order raised oakfeather raptors from the moment of hatching, which produced an imprinted bond between raptor and knight.Template:CiteText The order also bred mossbreak hunters, a Dragonwilds:terrorbird raised for pursuit rather than speed, whose stamina allowed it to run a dangerous quarry to exhaustion.Template:CiteText

Notable food

The Wild Knights have created many types of food for hunting, travelling, and preparing to adventure and face challenging monsters.

• Dragonwilds:Dwellberry crunchies: The Wild Knights were particularly fond of Dragonwilds:dwellberry crunchies, though they referred to them as “Dwellberry splats” because Dragonwilds:Olis, their inventor, wasn’t a particularly good chef.Template:CiteJournal
• Dragonwilds:Dwellberry glazed roast flank: Another chef named Dragonwilds:Orik the Bear excelled in cooking a dwellberry-glazed roast flank. This led many Wild Knights to seek his expertise on recreating the dish.Template:CiteJournal
• Dragonwilds:Grilled mushrooms: The Wild Knights are known to forage for the best mushrooms to grill while on their long hunts.Template:CiteJournal
• Dragonwilds:Fortifying soup: Wild Knights would prepare Dragonwilds:fortifying soups before heading into the Dragonwilds:Bloodblight Swamp or when facing venomous monsters. The mushrooms in the soup would absorb some toxins from the Bloodblight Swamp while satiating their hunger during a long journey ahead.Template:CiteJournal
• Dragonwilds:Raw rat meat: Dried into a snack for long patrols by the knight Dragonwilds:Ilom.Template:CiteJournal

Notable members

• Dragonwilds:Aidan: A Wild Knight who died while hunting a beast in a poisonous fog, sacrificing himself to save his brothers. After his death, his brothers bore his name in honour of his sacrifice.Template:CiteJournal
• Dragonwilds:Ansel: A loner who used the shelter spell to camp on the highest peaks and in the deepest crevices. He never woke after resting in the Dragonwilds:Bloodblight Swamp, in the same late period as Aidan's death.Template:CiteJournal
• Dragonwilds:Frode: A Wild Knight who was so skilled with a bow that he never returned from a hunt empty-handed. He would hunt before every gathering of the Wild Knights so they could feast. His arrows were marked with his symbol, an owl. One day, he didn't return, and his body was found in five separate locations across Brynmoor. His arrows were never found.Template:CiteJournal
• Dragonwilds:Kessel: An Amalgamated Wild Knight whose skin glowed like burning coals. She favoured a bronze greatsword in battle and could channel her fiery nature through it, setting it ablaze. Her attack on a young garou prince helped trigger the war between humans and garou.Template:CiteJournal
• Dragonwilds:Meya: The Wild Knight mentioned in the Dragonwilds:Heartstrings quest who fell in love with an elven bard. The two built a home together in Dragonwilds:Ghornfell.Template:CiteText
• Dragonwilds:Orik the Bear: A Wild Knight known for his cooking expertise, particularly his dwellberry glazed roast flank.Template:CiteJournal
• Dragonwilds:Olis: A Wild Knight who invented what are now called dwellberry crunchies, though he called them "Dwellberry splats" due to his poor cooking skills.Template:CiteJournal
• Dragonwilds:Ulv: A boy who was rescued by a Wild Knight after being beaten by bandits. The Wild Knight taught him to use a bow. Later, Ulv killed a wolf that attacked Bramblemead and fashioned its skull into a mask. He became a Wild Knight who partnered with a necromancer who had a knack for bones.Template:CiteJournal The pair worked together, she making the arrows and he firing the bow.Template:CiteJournal He was ambushed during the war by a patrol of six young garou hunting the bloodmark that marked adulthood among them, and killed two before they took his throat.Template:CiteJournal
• Dragonwilds:Vanida Mox: An archer and inventor who saw that the order's archers were outmatched in the close quarters of the courtyard, where all its sparring was held, and built a device delivering an arrow's power with one hand left free for a shield. She named it a crossbow out of temper when she put a bolt into Roliker Hallister, a duellist who could beat some of the order's commanders by the age of twenty.Template:CiteJournal
• Dragonwilds:Vemmeck: A Wild Knight commander who led a siege against a northern garou stronghold alongside Dragonwilds:Sir Lear.Template:CiteJournal
• An unnamed female Wild Knight who wielded an abyssal whip in vengeance against the demon for a fallen sibling. Despite her name being forgotten, there are still creatures hiding in the shadows, afraid that she may come back with her whip.Template:CiteJournal
• An unnamed female Wild Knight captain who took in abandoned Amalgamated children after Guthix left.Template:CiteJournal

Trivia

• The wild archer cowl closely resembles the appearance of the Template:RSL Knights. It is believed that their leader, Template:RSL, might have been inspired by the design.