Hydra Warrior Code

From FiranMUX

After numerous humiliations during the years leading up to Belik's death and directly after it, the Hydra Clan was much in need of change. Tired of being called cowards by the Gold Dragons, Hydra warriors and scholars began to distribute a supposedly ancient document that was only just rediscovered. Hydras, keen to embrace anything seen as traditional and eager for some kind of answer to their modern identity crisis, quickly began to adopt the dictates of the 'Hydra Warrior Code,' and it has become integral to the clan's culture since. It has been reproduced below.

1. Every man has two aspects of himself. One that is the savage warrior and one the civilized father and husband. When a Hydran man readies for battle, he must leave behind his civilized self. He must say goodbye to hearth and home, tenderness and mercy, for that part of him is dead within him. Only after the battle, when he marches home to set his armaments in his trunk is he reborn. So it is that a woman must never touch his armor or armaments, for women are a reminder of his dead self, and threaten to pull both halves of him into oblivion. If such touching occurs, his weapons and armor are cursed and ritually unclean until they can be purified in a temple and even then some superstitious men worry.
2. A Hydran man is forbidden foods made with grain, for cereals are the feed of livestock and slaves. As a free man, he will eat meat and vegetables. Fruit and spirits with their corrupting sweetness, are to be saved only for holidays.
3. Sneakiness pursued for personal ends is a sin, but in war it is no vice. It is strategy. God does not frown upon strategy, but requires it in the service of training and martial activities. So it is that Hydran men do not buy their weapons and armor, but steal them. If caught in the act of stealing arms and armaments, a man will still be whipped--but not for the theft; for being such a poor strategist to have been caught.
4. No Hydran man may consider himself a true warrior until he has a son. Until he has a son, he is still a cadet, a trainee, aspiring to the noble status of warrior. On dangerous missions, only warriors will be chosen, so that if they fall their line does not end with them.
5. A Hydran does not show his wealth and endeavors to dress and behave as his fellows do. Should a Hydran man flaunt his wealth, four or more Hydran warriors may call for a purging of his sin, and together beat him, raid his home, and have his wife. This is not considered a crime, but a correction, for which the disciplined man will thank his comrades and they will begin anew in good spirits, lesson learned. Should God find too many undisciplined men in the Hydran Realms, he will take his vengeance.
6. Hydran men shun warm clothing in winter, for the icy air on their skin makes them used to deprivation and pain and will make them better warriors.
7. When a man's child disobeys him, whether boy or girl, he must send the child into a dangerous situation. If the child lives, the parent may accept them back into the family, stronger for the experience. If the child dies, the family honor is restored.
8. Hydran women are entitled to give challenges to men to test their battle courage. If the man refuses or fails this challenge, he must live in dishonor for a year's time and live as a beggar. If the man succeeds at this challenge, then the woman's life is his to take.
9. Until a Hydran girl becomes a woman it is her role to help harden the boys. She is to taunt them, fight them, humiliate them, and hurt them without consequence from adults, for a Hydran boy must learn to master women and himself before he can be a man.
10. A Hydran man does not weep, cry out in pain, or complain about privations. If he is told that his enemies arrows will be so thick as to blot out the sun, he will say, "Good, I prefer to fight in the shade." He will not seek glory or promotion, but accept it only grudgingly if offered. "I like commanding only ten men--I get dizzy when I try to count past ten," he might say. And if a Hydran man should die in battle, then his name along with the three things he would like to be remembered for, shall be carved into a plaque in the temple. A Hydran woman may have her name remembered in such a way if she dies after having produced three sons.

In 39 A.U. the Warriors of the Hydra Clan reorgainzed their members into three 'Paths'. The Path of the Day, Path of the Twilight, and the Path of the Night.