The Mallardine are the knightly order of the Surface — duck-descended knights sworn to a code older than any of them.
Speed 110% · Health 100%
A Drake is a bipedal knight descended from ducks: billed, feathered in the colors of their lineage, webbed of hand and foot, broad in the chest and stout in the legs. They wear full plate shaped to their build — the helmet housing the bill — and carry a longsword (almost always named), and a shield. They speak among themselves in quacks and honks: a true and ancient language, where pitch and rhythm carry the meaning, and they learn the common-tongue for outsiders, speaking it with a clipped, nasal accent. Their armor is engineered for water, and they swim faster and longer than any other people on the surface, even in full plate.
In battle Drakes are the surface’s finest heavy fighters: disciplined formations, unmatched armor, supporting battle-magic, and a code-given certainty that does not panic. But they are slow, predictable, and bound by their code — a Drake will not strike a fleeing opponent in the back or attack the unarmed, and a quick fighter on dry, broken ground can stay ahead of them all day. A traveller who arrives openly and behaves honourably receives formal hospitality and a fair test in tournament; one who wins by treachery is remembered by the whole order, in writing, forever.
The Mallardine have tended the ancient arenas called Crucibles since before any living memory, raising their fortress Citadels beside them — shared, grudgingly, with the Hammerborn, who hold the same ground sacred for very different reasons. They are the most numerous ordered creatures on the surface, and wherever the surface still keeps law, it is mostly Mallardine law.
They hold that Vox Maxa is the code: the binding pattern of right conduct — keep your word, salute your opponent, accept defeat with grace, defend those who cannot defend themselves, never strike from behind, honor the names of the fallen. The tournaments they hold at the Crucibles are courts of honor where the code is tested and refined, and their greatest champions are canonized after death, their names kept in the chapter rolls.