Poet Paladins is an annotated anthology, compiled by Arkos, of verse by three paladins from different companies and eras: Maristo, Benetton and Lirio. The texts are kept as they arrived, with their original spelling and punctuation.
| Type | Work (anthology) |
| Compiler | Arkos |
| Authors | Maristo, Benetton, Lirio (attributed) |
| Eras | The Descent; Antiterra 1889 A.D.A.; Jerusalorium 1120 to Paris 1889 |
| Spanish entry | Paladines Poetas — antología anotada |
I. Maristo: the distich
Solemn face. White, monastic tunic. A bloodied red cape.
- Origin. Composed in the fourth circle of the Descent, on the road to the city of avarice, when each companion was asked for a five-word self-description in the manner of a haiku. Maristo opened the round. Between the two lines a single word came from outside, Rojo (“red”); Maristo returned it complete. The verdict: “That is the example of a haiku.” See Distich of Maristo, Maristo the Condemned and Ante-Inferno.
- Form. Two lines, not seventeen syllables: a distich. Maristo is the one “who must be killed” under the formula of the Contest, an assembly having sentenced him with his own name.
- Earlier portrait. Two circles before, in the cave beneath the storm, he described himself at length in prose: a skull-like face bathed in silver with Doric filigree, beneath it the saddened face of a middle-aged nobleman with a trace of salt on his cheeks “as if he had been crying”; bloodshot eyes; a sword “in total disproportion to his body and strength”. Only the tunic and red cape survive into the distich.
II. Benetton: three pieces and a threshold
All of Benetton’s pieces exist in a single place: Events of Antiterra, in the block for 1901, between “finish off Barbatos. They succeed.” and “1946?“. An anonymous compiler introduces them as “the reflections that the august paladin Benetton had left in writing twelve years earlier”, with the attributions placed after the texts as a colophon.
Letters to Caro Cuore (sorrel mare):
“The damned we deal with by cold steel. Nothing, not even hell, is indispensable, but it will never fall while someone believes it necessary. Let the souls of the dead go elsewhere; if we all believe in that, so it will be; someone will come to tell us where that new place is.
Slaves of their beliefs, lacking all faith. These regulators, at the first chance, make pacts with demons, trade their souls; that’s how it is.”
The Reflection of the Soul (short poems):
and I say and believe that it is not looking into the dark pit with clenched fists that makes us heroes. but day after day, with clear conscience set on doing good, that will finally be our song let us act! and act above all with an attentive, giving and generous heart, for that is what is lacking! companions. regulators!
“..the greatest problem of a warrior of the faith is wanting to be a hero…”
The threshold of Hela (unattributed):
As long as there are evil beings in the universe, there will always be a hell awaiting them. Not everyone had the luck of so pleasant a stay in Hela’s Underworld.
Chants for Desperate Sailors (fragment, “Last poem”):
”… sing, sailor, row now, row, for your head is still upon your shoulders
don’t lose your bearings, little sailor now, for that way your head will go to the bottom…”
The compiler adds outside the verse: “(like Barbatos’s)“.
Tournament apocrypha: “Wherever God puts his finger, I am going to cut it off.”
Notes on Benetton
- Single source. No other copy of these texts exists.
- Dating. Twelve years before 1901 is 1889 A.D.A., the year of the Labrador, when the gates of Helheim opened and “a new white-winged ally emerged from the cold mists, the paladin Beneton”, and the year of the crossing with the three hundred Atlanteans toward the Mediterranean coast. See Brightwind, the Regulators and Atlantis.
- Anachronism. The second letter fits poorly: in 1889 the band was barely forming on the fall of the Deep Ones, and the pact with Lucifer dates to 1901. The compiler used a text of 1889 as a fulfilled prophecy. See Letters to Caro Cuore and Black September.
- Open quotation mark. In the copy the quotation opening “The damned” never closes; the archive closes it at “that’s how it is”.
- The aphorism elsewhere. Thirty years later, at the end of Antiterra, Benetton is Mr. Norton, runs the Benetton College, forbids discrimination and usury, and once paid many people’s debts as a lesson; his pupils do free repairs in the town. In Caldero, 1825, Teo, whose name is Benetton’s with the letters changed, quotes the aphorism before charging (“and I am going to make that mistake”). See also Timmy, Child of the Void.
- The severed head. “(like Barbatos’s)” supports the version in which Barbatos died beheaded but names no agent; neither does Events. The archive of the end of Antiterra gives the beheading to Ariel, in the rotten paradise of Avernus, fulfilling the pact with Lucifer.
- The recipient. Caro Cuore is a sorrel mare and never answers. Benetton also had a usual steed, Sombra Gris, and a mount given by Gela that he refused; whether either is Caro Cuore is not recorded. In Caldero Teo rides a black horse named Caro Cuore. The form “Carísima Cuore” has no source.
- The apocrypha. A line current in the company, which the record of the Eiffel Tower Tournament associates with Benetton as he strikes Seth with his sword, outside any contract. It is not considered his writing.
III. Lirio: the prayer of the sword
“Let the ancient spark return, let the steel burn once more, not for glory nor for anger, but to be again.”
“Black stone, steady grip, prayer beneath the breath, and in each insistent stroke the oath awakens.”
“It is not the shine it seeks, it is the soul beneath the rust — for there is faith that does not rust though the metal met its end.”
“And when the spark leaps, even if only one, Lirio will know the sword never stopped praying.”
- Four stations. The Prayer of the Sword survived one stanza at a time, each tied to an object: the first with the blessed sword on the shelf of the Sancta Sanctorum in Jerusalorium, 1120; the second with Jerusalorium’s smith, who knew it by ear; the third with the fall of the cursed helmet outside Paris, 1889 (or, in another copy, in the fountain of the garden of the Alpha and Omega); the fourth on winding the clock, at the end. See Temple (Complex, TE) and Templars of Time.
- Inferred readings. The archive relates the “black stone” (whetstone) and the rust to Lirio’s reappearance in the snow mound of Sogol, armor covered in frost and rust, and “to be again” to his renunciation of his God’s powers and his oath to Kronamon (see Chronomon). Lirio’s sword blessing is a resource that may or may not be “active”.
Common thread
All three paladins write against heroism: Benetton’s aphorism, Lirio’s “not for glory nor for anger”, and Maristo naming only his tunic and cape.
Open questions
- The Hela passage, between two colophons, may close Benetton’s short poems or be the compiler’s bridge to the chant.
- The prayer names Lirio in the third person; whether Lirio wrote it of himself or someone else composed it is not settled.