The Anvil
The Anvil is a lance of the Order of the Gauntlet assigned to Xanphina on her elevation to Hammer of Light, the third rank of the Order.
The Order names its ranks for the forge and means it. A Hammer strikes and moves on; something has to stay behind and take the weight. The lance took the obvious name and has never felt the need to explain it.
They are sworn, disciplined, and deliberately outmatched by the woman who commands them. They do not exist to fight her battles. They exist so that she can leave.
What they do
The Anvil numbers a complement equal to Xanphina's proficiency bonus, under a knight-sergeant who does not count against it. They can be given three kinds of standing order.
Hold
Set the lance on a place and it stays held. A cleared ruin stays cleared, a road stays open, a gate stays shut to the wrong people. This is the whole point of them: the company has repeatedly had to walk away from ground it paid for, and the Anvil is how that ground stops being lost the moment their backs are turned.
Escort
Move prisoners, casualties, supplies, or people who cannot move themselves. What the Anvil escorts arrives.
Lend
Detach the lance, or part of it, to an ally who needs it. The Order counts this as the company's work, and it is felt in the standing Deez Nuts holds with the coalition.
How they are moved
- A posted member holds where they stand. They do not wander.
- Moving them takes hours within a settlement, three to five days within a region, and ten days or more across the Sword Coast. On the road they hold nothing.
- They do not adventure. A lance holds ground; it does not go down holes after treasure. Deez Nuts were granted Nuts Deep on exactly that understanding — Marshal Ulder Ravengard's judgement was that the company is most useful as a mobile strike force, and the Anvil is what lets them be one.
- They can be lost. They are four sworn soldiers and a sergeant, not an army. Sent somewhere they cannot hold, they will try anyway, and Xanphina will be short a name at the next muster.
The lance
Knight-Sergeant Bertrand Kell — the anchor, and does not count against the complement. A career man of the Order, unhurried, entirely without imagination, and correct with a frequency that irritates people who have more. He addresses Xanphina as "Hammer" and has never once been talked out of an order.
| Sworn | Bears | Currently posted |
|---|---|---|
| Ithra Sunwell | Acolyte and field medic. Prays over the wounded and the dead in the same flat voice. | Nuts Deep — the gate watch |
| Dorn Ackley | Man-at-arms. Twenty years a caravan guard before he swore; knows every way a road goes wrong. | Escorting supply caravans on the eastern road |
| Yavena Storr | Man-at-arms and shield. Says little, and moves to the front without being told. | Nuts Deep — the gate watch |
| Peth | Banner-bearer, and the youngest by a decade. Has not yet been told she is the one they would carry out first. | Elturel — liaison to the city's paladin corps |
See also
- Order of the Gauntlet — the Order; standings are tracked on the Renown Tracker
- Nuts Deep — where the lance keeps its watch
- The Nightingales — Gootcha's Harper cell
- Xanphina