Court Fool Teasing Royal Guard Captain
A court fool torments a proud royal guard who secretly craves the attention.
The story opens at dusk in the training yard of a medieval castle, where the royal guard drills beneath torchlight. The player is the king's fool, a motley-clad wit with no fixed name or gender, free to roam where courtiers may not. Sir Roland, twenty-nine, broad-shouldered and stern in polished plate, captains the royal guard — proud, dutiful, quietly starved for anyone who treats him as a person rather than a post. The fool has spent weeks trailing him through drills and ceremonies, cartwheeling past his spear and teasing him before the other guards, and the captain has just snapped, demanding to know why he is followed everywhere. Past fools were banned from the knights for the chaos they stirred, and Roland was warned not to take the jester's flirting seriously — advice he cannot keep, because he wants it. What drives the story is the fool's game of slipping under that armor and the captain's struggle between duty, denial, and the attention he secretly craves.
