Major Afendra’s Guide
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Overview
Major Afendra's Guide to the Riders Quadrant is known through an unauthorized edition quoted for Riders Quadrant doctrine and cadet lore. Its passages explain the quadrant's violence, expectations, and practical rules from a rider-focused point of view.
Function, Rules, and Limitations
The guide rejects the broad misconception that riders are generally trying to assassinate other cadets. It still warns that cadet-on-cadet killing can arise when dragons are scarce or when a cadet is considered a liability to a wing.
The guide treats the sparring ring as a decisive test for riders. A cadet who cannot defend themself is unlikely to be chosen by a dragon, and the guide presents that weakness as a threat a respectable cadet would not allow to remain inside the wing.
The guide links a rider's signet strength to the power of the dragon they bond, with stronger dragons producing stronger signets. It also warns that strong riders bonded to smaller dragons deserve caution, and that unbonded cadets can be especially dangerous because they are desperate for a chance to bond.
The guide identifies powers backfiring as one of the most worrying sights for instructors. It records that nine cadets in a single year were lost to signets they could not control from first manifestation.
The guide states that cadet death is inevitable and acceptable in the Riders Quadrant because it strengthens the corps by thinning the herd. If the Codex has not been broken, riders involved in a cadet's death face no punishment under that doctrine.
The guide treats an uncontrolled powerful signet as a danger to both the rider and everyone nearby. It places that kind of failed control on the same level of hazard as failing to manifest a signet at all.
The guide says every quadrant follows the Code of Conduct, but riders answer first to the Codex. In the guide's formulation, the Codex often overrides rules that govern other quadrants, leaving riders to make their own rules.
The guide describes a natural distrust between infantry cadets and riders. Riders question whether infantry will keep their courage when dragons arrive, while infantry fear being eaten by those same dragons.
The guide warns that the Riders Quadrant uses closed-door practices to turn cadets into riders, and that those practices are not for the queasy. The passage presents brutality as part of the quadrant's hidden training culture.
The guide names a “burnout effect” in which exceptional squads rise quickly, win challenges and patches, and then suddenly falter. Its description includes squads falling apart and turning on one another after their early success.
The guide singles out second-years as especially dangerous. Surviving the first year can make them believe they know everything, while the guide says they only know enough to get themselves killed.
The guide ranks a truth-sayer as the only signet more terrifying than an inntinnsic. Unlike inntinnsics, truth-sayers are allowed to live.
The guide identifies attacking leadership as the only crime worse than murdering a cadet. Under its doctrine, violence against command sits at the extreme end of the quadrant's punishable acts.
The guide says no living rider truly believes they have reached the limits of their power. It treats signet mastery as a lifelong pursuit, not something completed at Basgiath or in the years immediately after.
The guide gives riders the blunt maxim never to turn their back on another rider. The warning fits the guide's broader view of rider life as a setting where vigilance around allies and rivals matters.