Back to Organizations

The Cohoris Guard

Led by The Staffmaster General (previously Gyntyllion – the identity of the current incumbent is unknown), the Cohoris Guard comprises the primary defensive force of the Cohoris. Virtually every Cohoris capable of elemenstation becomes a Guard – in fact, if one has any talent in this area at all, it is considered bad manners not to. The Cohoris are typically most skilled with Life, Stream and Earth Elemenstations, though of course there are exceptions, and most Guards are skilled in all eight Elements to some degree.

Fighting Style

All Guards are extensively trained in Enil-setholc, a defensive discipline similar to the real-life martial art of Kendo. Like Kendo, Enil-setholc centres round the use of a blunt staff as a defensive weapon – except that the Battlestaves of the Cohoris Guard are magical. Thus the training to become a Guard demands not just physical fitness, but a degree of mental control sufficient for proficiency at Elemenstation. A skilled Guard should be able to change a two-handed clubbing strike into an eldritch battlestaff-related pose the very instant the situation demands it, if not sooner.

Many of the technical aspects of such posing are detailed in the book Weapons and Tactics of the Cohoris, though the Cohoris themselves claim that their natural, fluid grace is not done justice by the crude crayon stick figure diagrams contained within this tome.

Initiation

Every seven years, every Cohoris child recognized to have potential as a Guard is taken from its parents and transported to the Cohoris Guard Barracks and Tearooms at the Western edge of the Tiny Forest of Minuaten. For the next five years, all Potentials, as they are called, receive the same training regardless of ability. Only once these five years have elapsed does the Initiation begin.

The Initiation consists of six trials over the course of two years, each of which tests a different aspect of what it takes to be a Guard:

1. Posing: Potentials must traverse a narrow platform, made entirely from resin-encased cats, suspended 300 feet above the barracks. Whilst blindfolded and twirling a dummy training staff, each Potential flounces to the end of the platform and executes a signature battlestaff-related pose that they have invented themselves. Should they make it through the rest of the trials, this pose will become their primary method of identifying themselves to other Guards. Points are awarded for balance, flair and poutiness.
2. Resilience: The most dreaded of all the trials, a Potential’s mental resilience is pushed to its limits by a full year of Macroeconomics classes from Mrs Tubbles. Mrs Tubbles is 347 years old, smells like burning hair and is wracked by arthritis. In an effort to spare her joints, she never erases anything she writes on the blackboard, instead opting to write on top of what is already there. Whenever she is asked a question she does not know the answer to – which is every time – she screams the word “steamboats” in the student’s ear over and over again and then licks the side of their face. Potentials are told that they need to score at least 80% in her class to become a Guard, but in fact they only have to make it to the end of the final exam without stabbing their brain out with a pencil.
3. Strength: To pass this trial, Potentials must bench-press Mrs Tubbles. This is no mean feat, as for a tricentennarian she tends to thrash around a fair bit.
4. Battleweaving: Actually the easiest test, the remaining Potentials must each weave their own Battlestaff from materials they have collected themselves. However, it is forbidden to attempt more than one staff or to ever make a second staff if the first one is destroyed or lost (though they may upgrade to an Elemenstave if they live long enough). Only one unnamed Cohoris has ever failed at this stage, supposedly because he stopped concentrating and made a basket by accident.
5. Battle-Readiness: Equipped with their new Battlestaves, Potentials are thrown into a pit with a pair of giant zombie wombats. They must kill one in purely physical combat and the other, only with Elemenstation and battlestaff-related posing. (The use of zombie wombats, which are fearsome-looking but entirely herbivorous, in this trial is a recent change from the more traditional pair of Twelve Fisted Evils, whose population in the Tiny Forest of Minuaten had been driven to the brink of extinction by exactly this practice. Zombie wombats, on the other hand, are plentiful and can usually be rebuilt and reused several times over.)
6. Self-Knowledge: At a random time during the initiation, usually on the way back from one of the final trials, an older Guard will engage the Potential in small talk, during which he will casually mention that the Potential’s shoelaces are undone. (The Cohoris only wear boots or sandals.) If the Potential looks down at his feet, he is deemed to have failed this test and is immediately expelled from the barracks.

Any Potential who makes it through the Initiation is deemed to have officially become a junior member of the Cohoris Guard. They can then look forward to seven or so years of cleaning out latrines and serving tea to the older Guards (not necessarily in that order), because the older Guards had it done to them and by gum it made a man of them, go fetch the jam and crumpets now, there’s a good lad.

The Cohoris Guard and World History

Aside from defending Tiny Forest of Minuaten from domestic threats, the Cohoris Guard have played only few major roles in the history of Battal at large.

Perhaps most notorious was their intervention in the Siege of Arkleaf in 17,970, wherein three-quarters of their entire force came to the aid of the wood-archers, having initially retreated five years previously. Led by Gyntyllion, they were slaughtered to a man by the Higgerath. It took more than a hundred years for their numbers and morale to recover.

In 18,080, When the Khith-Cohoris-Wutel undertook the Siege of Trembaloo, the Cohoris Guard took to the task with relish, acting as shock troops when the walls were finally breached. This surprise success restored their reputation to the point that now, barely any small children point and laugh at them in the street.

Additional Trivia

The Staffmaster General still technically holds a seat on the High Council of Arkleaf and lists it among his titles, even though Arkleaf itself was destroyed in 17,973.

Also, the remainders of the Cohoris Guard are reputed to have sung “Waning of the Cohoris” as they retreated from Arkleaf 17,965, though records disagree on whether this actually happened or not.