Oathbond

The Oathbond is the spine of Teraell. It is a free person's standing: who answers for them, what they answer for, and what they must keep doing to hold it. It is not a possession, a rank, or a document. It is what a free person is.

What it is

A person is born into their family's and city's Oathbond. It is not acquired with age or money and it is not owed to anyone. What must be earned is not the Oathbond but the right to keep standing in it, and that is earned every day through work and conduct. The poorest laborer and the richest merchant hold theirs the same way, and can lose them the same way.

The Four Aspects

The Oathbond has four aspects, and a failure in one is a failure in all:

Personal: Your own honor and conduct — who you are when no one is watching.
Family: The home you belong to, by birth or by choice. They answer for your actions as you answer for theirs.
Station: Your occupation and craft, and the standards it demands.
City: The community you belong to, the laws you uphold, the place that speaks for you.

A free man who cheats at his trade has shamed his family and stained his city's name, and he knows what kind of man he is. The Oathbond cannot be held in part. It must be honored whole.

The Sigil

The physical sign of the Oathbond is the sigil — a necklace, ring, or tattoo carrying the family emblem, colored for the city and accented for the station. There is no mark for the self; that is simply who you are.

Growing into it

There is no ceremony and no age of majority. What changes is answerability. A small child's acts reflect on their parents' care; as the child grows, more of the weight becomes their own, until in adulthood they carry all of it. Each city points to a moment when a person's behavior starts to be discussed as their own — first examination in Clearhold, taking an apprenticeship in Forgegate, first voyage in Stormharbor — but none marks it with a rite.

At death

The family's Oathbond continues. The personal Oathbond dies with the person; the city and station aspects lapse with the role and residence that gave rise to them. Reputation does not die. An honorable death confers honor on the family after; a shameful one leaves a burden that descendants must lift by living well. How heavily this falls varies by city — strong and lasting in Clearhold and Eldershore, almost entirely personal in The Iron Coves. A sigil is usually buried or ritually destroyed at death; Eldershore enshrines those of its high-ranking dead as relics of the line.

Losing it

Enslavement destroys an Oathbond, permanently. That is what the collar means: the slave wears her owner's Oathbond, not her own, and her actions reflect on him and his ability to lead, not on her. See Slavery.

Manumission does not restore what was lost. It restores the personal Oathbond and the capacity to hold the other three. A freed person has no family, no station, and no city — her owner freed her, not her family — and must gain them again through marriage or through an act that proves her worth, exactly as any free person must.

The personal Oathbond can never be repudiated; only enslavement removes it. Family, station, and city can be walked away from. Someone who does so keeps the capacity and loses the reputation, and stands where a freed person stands: they must build an Oathbond anew.

There is no central registry of Oathbonds. The slave mark tells everyone who sees it that its wearer has none.

Who has none

See Those Without an Oathbond.

In the philosophy

The Oathbond is how True Mastery is enforced, since no institution enforces it: each person answers to their own standing and their community. It is what the Pact of Reason made portable across cities, so that a free person is free in every city and a marked slave is a slave in every city. And it is the guarantee, in the Natural Order, that every person is entitled to live according to their own nature.