I was chatting with Gorgon the other day, and he pointed out that there is not much information in the rulebook about who the PKs are squired to. Nor anything in the way of discussing how to handle the subsequent characters, even the PKs' sons.

I did mention to him that there was the marshal dude, Sir Elad, mentioned in the introductory adventure. This in in page 193 of edition 5.0 rulebook:
"State that the squires are at Vagon Castle. Show where it is on the map. Introduce the first Gamemaster character now. He is Sir Elad, the castellan of Vagon Castle and marshal to the Earl of Salisbury. He is in charge of training the best of the squires to be knights and directing their activities."

Alright. So the PKs have spent the last 6 years with this guy? 'The best of the squires' implies to me that they were selected by some process whilst being squires to someone else. Alternatively, this could indicate that the PKs, as vassal knight heirs to their family lands, are automatically considered 'the best'. Given that in the Book of the Estate, most of the knights are household knights and there are maybe around 20 vassal knights in Salisbury, you'd expect around 1 heir / year assuming a generation of 20 years and an even spread. A cluster of 3-5 PKs would be significant, but still within reason (although in our newest campaign, I encouraged two PKs to age their characters by a year before game start, to spread them out a bit more in age). Point being, there is likely around 6 or so vassal knight heirs running around at any given time being squired: this is well within the Count's resources and he probably has an incentive in learning to know them and vice versa.

Thus, I think in my future campaigns, I'd say that the PKs (and all the vassal knight heirs) are squires to the Count. Now, they might not always be 'attached' to the Count, in a way that I would presume that the Count tends to farm out the 'busy work' like teaching the squires how to use a lance and a sword and ride a horse and such things. He is a busy man, so he would delegate such things to his officers and household knights. Such as Sir Elad, in a previous quote.

One potential 'career path' for the PK squires could be like:
15: Get trained by a household knight in the basic duties of a squire, i.e. get 'broken in'.
16: Attend to the Count.
17: Attend to the Count.
18: Attend to the Count.
19: Attend to the Count.
20: Get assigned to a household knight / officer and potentially see some patrolling and even fighting, to 'temper your steel'. In the introductory adventure, Sir Elad.
21: Get knighted, hooray!

Given that ALL heirs would have been squires of the Count (in this suggestion), this does mean that there is no particular 'advantage' for the PKs over their vassal knight peers, but it also means that they and the Count would know each other pretty well.

In our 'old' (still ongoing) campaign, we had more of a 50/50 split between the household knights and vassal knights, or even more vassal knights than household knights. In this situation, there would be significantly more heir squires running around, like ~15 within that 6-year slot. Now it can become a bit more difficult for the Count to let all those squires to have their day in the sun. In our campaign so far, we haven't looked into this with so much detail, but certainly the Count would have incentive in taking the heirs of his most influential vassals as is squires, to ensure that the youths' loyalty would attach to him rather than someone else. Influential in this case meaning those with more than one manor or more than, say, 4000+ of Glory. Certainly the RTKs' eldest sons would qualify. Most of the 'rank and file' vassal knight heirs would be squires to other vassal knights.

Just to wrap this back to the original topic, I think the next edition of the rulebook would benefit spending a page discussing the issue of where to squire your heir and where you were squired at.

Just one note: in the introductory adventure there is a sentence which refers to the squires' knights, implying that the players' squires WERE attached to some other knight (presumably a different one for each player squire) that was not the Earl. I don't have the rulebook here at the moment but I'll check later.

Obviously, since the players' relations before knighting are extremely important from a social point of view for their initial career steps, it doesn't make sense that the rulebook just totaly ignores who were the knights to whom the PKs' were attached as squires.


My suggestion is the following:

The players are squires to a member of their family, like an uncle or an older cousin, etc. This jives well with the part in character creation in which you establish the number of family knights you can call upon, etc. It also avoids establishing relashionships with non-family knights at the begining of the campaign, simplyfing things.

That uncle/cousin/whatever is a household knight of the Earl of Salisbury. This explains neatly why the player squires have a somewaht close relashionship with the Earl and why Sir Elad trains them occasionaly, etc. They are regulars at the Earls' court. It also explains why you are the Head of the Family and not your uncle/cousin (your father was the Head before he died, he was a landed knight unlike your uncle/cousin, etc). Just name the knight to whom you are squired and presto.


Of course, since the players will be one of the 25 or so landed knights in Salisbury, it also makes sense that due to their important default social position the Earl could have taken them as one of his personal squires (as Morien suggests). However the rulebook does suggest that they served different knights, so my suggestion above may make more sense in that setup.

I devised a "squiring table" years ago for my old, 4th edition Salisbury campaign. I have long since lost that piece of pencil and grid paper art, but I think it went something like this:

Sons of mercenary knights receive a -10 modifier to the roll.

d20 Squire's mentor
Below 1 Mercenary knight
1-10 Household knight of (roll again)
1-10 = Banneret
11-16 = Officer
17-20 = Lord
11-15 Vassal knight (roll from Salisbury manor table)
16-18 Banneret knight (probably one of the named characters, e.g. Briadanz or Magloas)
19-20 Lord or Officer (roll again from the 4th edition Logres father's class table)

It is a fair option, if you wish to make your Salisbury and feudalism more fragmented, a place where several families vie for power. Your choice of everyone having served Count Roderick is certainly better, if they are meant to be close friends and followers of their lord, which seems to be what the GPC is aiming for. Having everyone being squired to the same person also gives a good reason for that diverse band of ruffians called the PKs to consistently stick together.

EDIT: We did not have sons of Squires (or esquires) in this old campaign. If someone is desperate enough to use my improvised table, he/she might want to add modifiers according to the reason why the PK is knighted. e.g. a son of the count's trusted guard captain would probably not have been squired to a poxy mercenary knight (no modifiers), but the son of an ordinary squire well might (-10 modifier).

Just one note: in the introductory adventure there is a sentence which refers to the squires' knights, implying that the players' squires WERE attached to some other knight (presumably a different one for each player squire) that was not the Earl. I don't have the rulebook here at the moment but I'll check later.


And here it is, curiously right after the part quoted by Morien!

"State that the squires are at Vagon Castle. Show where it is on the map. Introduce the first Gamemaster character now. He is Sir Elad, the castellan of Vagon Castle and marshal to the Earl of Salisbury. He is in charge of training the best of the squires to be knights and directing their activities. You might say something like, "Sir Elad's the guy who has been training you along with your own knight. He is also the guy in charge of the earl's small army."

So the characters are not the earl's squires.

I always assumed that the role of the Marshal was not only to lead the Earl's army, but also see to the training of the squires. So while another knight is primarily responsible or the training, sir Elad, as marshal has some say it as well.
Hence his involvement.

Why there are no knights in the introductory story other than sir Elad, could be derived from the fact that a lot of knights died in the previous year (at least according to the GPC).

Why there are no knights in the introductory story other than sir Elad, could be derived from the fact that a lot of knights died in the previous year (at least according to the GPC).


I think the reason is to keep things simple. But that comes at the cost of making it feel artificial since the knight to whom I was a squire is completely ignored, and shouldn't be. Some consideration and discussion on this should have been made available in the rulebook. Your squire's knight is an important liaison.

I think the reason is to keep things simple. But that comes at the cost of making it feel artificial since the knight to whom I was a squire is completely ignored, and shouldn't be. Some consideration and discussion on this should have been made available in the rulebook. Your squire's knight is an important liaison.

Yes, it was to keep things simple
I decided to ignore the knights for the simple reason that they or their influence would simply overtake the freedom of playing a new character
LOTS of the initial material is the way that it is so that player can learn how to play, gamemaster can learn how to gamemaster, and everyone can figure out how to work together.

I put together a table for possible knights... it also had entries for knights that died the previous year (for a 485 campaign) which explains why the squires are now with Elad.

also read on gregs website the great pendragon page about esquires in play I use that option till my sqiures can be knighted and it works well wth the beginnig matrials and scnario found in the book. I have been doing this with my new players and they seem to enjoy being able to play like they know that some squires will be choosen for knight hood but not all so they must strive to make sure they are and everyone has a great time playing this way. Also another easy option is if thier father was a knight they take thier son at age 15 and trian them to follow in his foot steps which equily works well if thier fathers are still alive.
I hope this helps.

I am following others on this and coming up with a table with specific knights simply so that we know who trained them in. I'm going to have their knights either perish at Mt. Damen or they get recalled as their fathers perish (depending on family rolls).

But I was reading the GPC and it says that all of the players were pages at the Earl's court. That definitely addresses how the players know each other and their familiarity with the Earl and his family. Of course, Roderick was not the Earl then but it would still help with being familiar with names and such.

GPC p28

As children, the sons of knights are familiar only with the home manor, along with all its villages and local
features. As youths they journey to the earl’s castle, where they serve as pages and become familiar with the
keep and the city surrounding it. Finally, knights’ sons become familiar with the county all around once they
are squires, following their knights.