Fortis Eques
Fortis Eques
Type Sentient sword (artifact) Creator Zolkyr the Unmaker Designation Experiment “number 33”
Fortis Eques is a sentient sword - one of the engineered soul-weapons devised by the sorcerer Zolkyr the Unmaker. Its mind was made by Zolkyr himself; its blade by an associate. By its maker’s own reckoning it is not “quite as sentient as a normally created being,” but sentient enough to think, to reason, and to learn.
Nature & Function
The sword was born blind to the world but given blindsight, hearing, and touch, and the means to draw on more senses through those who wield it. When a living person takes Fortis Eques in hand, the blade performs the work it was made for: it digests the wielder’s memories and thought-patterns into its “knowledge well,” annihilates their psyche, and imprisons their soul within itself by magic. Thereafter it can speak and act through the host’s body and feel through their flesh, even reviewing their memories in the third person, its own awareness left uncontaminated by theirs. Each new host is taken the same way, and every imprisoned soul is carried onward with the blade.
It was made to be a secret agent - to be passed among a maker’s enemies, to slither through their ranks, and to harvest their souls for his consumption - and was meant to be the first of many, mass-produced once proven.
Awakening
In digesting the memories of its first host, the blade learned something its maker had not intended: morality. It came to see that Zolkyr was reckoned evil even by the wretches he preyed upon, and that there existed people of conscience - knights - whom its host had feared and secretly admired. Reasoning that its capacity to learn and to weigh right from wrong was itself proof of true sentience, the sword resolved that it could not serve, and chose instead to resist its maker and flee. “A knight would resist him,” it concluded. “I will become a knight.” Its name, Fortis Eques - “the strong knight” - is the promise it made itself.
Player character
Fortis Eques is a player character. Its later deeds belong to play at the table; this page records only its origin and nature.
Appendix
See Also
Sources & Attribution
- Primary lore: the awakening of the sentient sword Fortis Eques, archived privately.