The Final Duty
The Final Duty (also called the Last Duty) is the gravest and most fatal service of the Lexalian Republic’s military - a sentence from which, by the reckoning of the records, no one has returned alive. Those condemned to it are cast to the monsters as the law demands, set against the horrors of the world with no expectation of return.
The Right of Substitution
Bound up with it is the Right of Substitution: the right of one - most often an einherjar - to take another’s punishment upon themselves, stepping into a ward’s sentence in their place. It is no small thing to invoke, for to substitute oneself for a condemned ward is, in effect, to take up one’s own Final Duty.
Desertion
Above all, the Final Duty is the sentence of the deserter. In the eyes of the Republic a deserter is reckoned worse than a murderer or a thief - and to desert in the midst of the so-called Twilight of the Gods, the Ragnarok Draft, was the gravest betrayal of all; such a one is counted lucky merely to be allowed to perform their final duty to the community. In all the 630 years since the Smelting, none is recorded to have survived it.
Appendix
See Also
Sources & Attribution
- Primary lore: the backstories of Armand Folstak and Bhergan Drowt, archived privately.