One by one, your horses, carraiges, or feet bring you to the Curassier's Barracks, an isolated Army post far on the eastern border of Verdania, on the steppes where the semi-autonomous tribes breed the sinewy, spirited horses that are then trained as steeds for the Verdanian cavalry. It is early spring, and cold.

Once you arrived, you were boarded in a grey stone building that may or may not have been a prison at one time, instructed to spend your time with your thoughts in your cell, with only the momentary companionship of the elderly orderly that brings you your bland meals of oat bread, tubers, and morsels of meat from some small flightless bird. He's not much for conversation. You occasionally watch the curassiers training in the distance.

Finally, one evening the orderly (who says you can call him "Old Jack") tells you to take your possessions and follow him. You walk about a half mile to long, low adobe building and go inside.

In the longhouse you see a stack of thin mattresses that must have been white at one time, a row of large pine chests with padlocks with keys in them, and a long table with grey woolen pants and tunics, folded and stacked according to size. The far half of the longhouse is obscured from view by a ragged curtain, made of the same wool as the clothing.

Old Jack
"Each of you get a chest. Put all your possessions in it except for holy symbols and small irreplaceable items such as spellbooks. That includes your clothes - find yourselves two sets of uniforms each over there and put on one of them. You also get these:" He hands each of you a piece of leather cord. "Lock your chest and hang the key around your neck with this. Oh, and you can keep your footwear, we don't have any uniform boots for you right now. Some troopers will arrive shortly."

He turns to go.