Cobalt Squire
3 energy · 2 attack / 5 health
The List Beside the Shield
January on the roster
The yard clerk could not prove when Alden was born. His parents kept no formal register, and the practice-house did not record the children who came through its back door to carry water or sort buckles. Rilka chose January 12 for him because that was the date the older roster first called him by name instead of “the repairer’s boy.” The year is unknown. The Ledger Crow keeps the date as a birthday, not as proof of a birth year or a place in any official roll.
His mother said he had arrived during a morning of blue frost, when the yard’s painted line looked darker than the stone around it. His father remembered a kettle that would not stay warm and a blanket borrowed from the armory laundry. Alden grew up hearing two accounts of the same cold morning. Neither parent insisted the other was wrong. He learned that a memory could be shared without being identical, a lesson he later carried into the marks he kept.
The family lived behind the practice yard in two rooms over a leather repair bench. From the front window Alden could see trainees cross the painted square before the first bell. He did not imagine that he would always belong there. As a child, he thought every place with a gate had a yard behind it, and every yard had a person who knew where the spare straps were kept.
The room behind the armor racks
Alden's father repaired ordinary work gear: boot loops, cart harnesses, the leather inside a shield grip. He was not a knight, and he did not want his son to confuse access to the armory with a promise of glory. His mother took washing and meal work from the practice-house. She knew which trainees were old enough to carry a scalding pot and which ones would pretend they were not hungry rather than ask for another ladle.
They did not have much space, but Alden was allowed one shallow drawer for objects he had found or fixed. Its contents changed every few weeks: a bent buckle tongue, a chalk nub, a broken wooden practice token, a ring of blue thread. His parents asked him to return anything that belonged to someone else. He learned to remember the difference between a thing nobody wanted and a thing whose owner had not yet come looking.
At supper, his father sometimes described the day by the condition of his hands. A split cuticle meant a strap had been too tight; a blue mark on the thumb meant a shield grip had shifted under pressure. Alden listened more carefully to those small reports than to stories about famous victories. Work left evidence. People sometimes did not. He began wondering how an ordinary repair could keep a person from being hurt without ever earning a line in the yard's official book.
The word squire
The practice-house called the children who cleaned, fetched water, and learned basic defense “junior squires.” It was an administrative label meant to group their chores, not a promise that each would be knighted. Older trainees received a name on a board and a place in the morning line. Alden wanted to be included, but not because he expected a title to make him important. He wanted people to know who had tightened the strap they were trusting.
On the first day the instructor asked what he hoped to become, Alden said he wanted to learn which piece of armor a person should never ignore. The other children laughed because it did not sound like an answer to the question. The instructor said it was a useful question anyway. Alden kept it, then quietly learned the names of hinges, rivets, buckles, and straps before he knew the names of the banners hanging above them.
He was shorter than several of the older trainees and had no gift for making a practice sword look graceful. He could carry a water bucket without spilling, spot a loose stitch at a distance, and remember which shield had come back from the yard with a new dent. He sometimes envied the children whose families had a crest to sew onto a sleeve. He wore a plain blue work tunic until the elbows thinned and his mother patched them with darker cloth.
The blue-painted square
The yard had a blue line painted around its outside edge. The color was mixed from inexpensive mineral pigment and faded unevenly where rain collected. Trainees were told that crossing the line meant leaving the practice area; in a real attack, they would need a different way to tell where safety ended. Alden liked the worn patches. He could see where people had dragged a shield, where a teacher had knelt to adjust a stance, and where the stones were too slick after rain.
He learned the yard's sounds: the hollow tap of a loose practice post, the flatter knock of a shield held correctly, the scrape that meant a buckler strap was twisted. He could not always explain what he heard, so he would ask the trainee to repeat the movement. Sometimes the second sound proved him right. Sometimes it proved him wrong. He wrote both outcomes down in a small slate book instead of changing the note to make himself look certain.
Alden liked sitting on the low wall after the drills ended. He would arrange loose rivets into pairs, trace the blue line with a piece of chalk, and watch the senior trainees return the gear they had borrowed. He did not daydream about being the strongest person in the yard. He pictured the end of the day when every shield was back on its hook and nobody had to wonder whether the next person would be handed something safe.
Rilka at the next hook
Rilka arrived in the practice-house after her family moved across the river. She was quick, impatient, and able to learn a sequence after watching it only once. She was also willing to say when a demonstration made no sense. The two of them were assigned neighboring hooks because they were the same age and because Rilka repeatedly forgot which peg was hers. Alden tied a small blue thread around the lower hook. She said it looked foolish. She kept using it.
They became friends in the way children do when the same daily inconvenience keeps putting them together. Rilka borrowed chalk and returned half a piece. Alden asked her to test a grip before he marked it repaired. She told him when he was turning a practical rule into an excuse to avoid the sword drill. He told her when she was treating a loose buckle as if courage could hold it closed. Neither was always right, which gave them reasons to keep talking.
Rilka wanted to pass the gate watch trial and earn a place on a real route. She was not interested in a famous name, though she practiced the salute until it looked effortless. Alden liked that she wanted a job with a clear purpose. When she asked what he wanted, he said he wanted a person to come back from a training day with the same number of working fingers. She said he had set a low bar. He answered that a low bar was still worth clearing.
A shield with a shallow dent
The cobalt shield belonged to the practice-house, not to Alden. Its round face had a dark blue enamel coat and a simple gold crest, worn pale along one edge. The wooden backing was sound, but its metal rim had taken a shallow crescent dent during an old drill. An armorer had tested the curve, found no crack, and marked the back with a small repair notch so later workers would know it had been checked.
Alden was asked to clean it because the shield was too heavy for the younger trainees to carry to the wash bench. He noticed that the dent caught a strip of afternoon light and made it look larger than it was. He checked the rim with a gloved thumb, then wrote “crescent, upper left; safe after inspection” in his slate. When he returned it, the quartermaster said a shield was not a person and did not need its own history.
Alden answered that a shield could be useful without having a history, but people deserved to know what had happened to it. The quartermaster gave him a look that could have meant agreement or exhaustion. The shield stayed on its hook. Alden did not claim it, and he never wore it outside instruction. He felt a private fondness for its imperfect edge because the dent showed that someone had once trusted it and then taken the time to inspect it afterward.
The first time it caught
During a late practice, a storage frame shifted after a trainee struck its support post. A rack of wooden bucklers tilted toward Rilka, who was returning the blue shield. Alden pulled it from her hands and raised it between her and the falling frame. The wood hit the cobalt face and shoved him backward. Rilka ducked behind it, then helped lift the rack off his legs.
Nobody was badly hurt. The instructor stopped the drill, checked Rilka's head and Alden's knees, and sent for the armorer. The old crescent dent became wider by a finger's breadth. A new shallow mark appeared beside the gold crest. The armorer confirmed the backing had held, replaced a loosened grip strap, and sent the shield back to the rack after the repair was tested.
Alden added the incident to his slate. Beside the new dent he wrote “Rilka, clear; rack caught before second fall.” Rilka told him the list was foolish. She had been standing there; she did not need proof that he had pulled her out of the way. Alden said the note was for the next person who checked the shield, not to make her owe him. She rolled her eyes, but did not ask him to erase it.
How a dent got a name
After that afternoon, Alden began recording who a piece of gear had protected when a repair revealed the story. He did not write every name he heard. He asked first, especially when the mark involved an injury, a mistake, or a private family. If someone did not want a name beside a dent, he wrote only the object and the repair. The list was not a roster of heroes. It was a record of why the equipment had mattered.
Rilka continued calling the practice foolish. She did not understand why a shield needed a note after the armorer had certified it safe. Alden tried to explain that a repair label answered whether it would hold, while a human name answered who had trusted it before. She said a shield did not know the difference. He said that people did, and people were the ones reading the marks. They argued and then split a stale apple at the yard wall.
Alden's list grew slowly: a practice buckler that kept a trainee's nose from breaking; a strap that stopped a shield from slipping during a fall; a repaired gate brace that held long enough for a cook to carry a boiling pot clear. Some entries recorded a bruise, some a near miss, many only an ordinary moment no one else had noticed. He never wrote a person as if they were property of the equipment. The person had a name of their own, and could choose whether it appeared.
Work that did not earn a salute
Alden became reliable enough to be given more responsibility, but not enough to receive a senior's title. He counted practice shields at dawn, carried repaired pieces to the right hooks, and checked that the wash area had not left leather damp. In the afternoon he joined the drills. At night he helped his father mend harnesses and listened as his mother described which young recruits had eaten enough.
He learned that people could be kind and still miss what mattered. A senior knight might remember a trainee's stance but not the name of the person who repaired the strap. The quartermaster could keep an accurate inventory and still treat the list of dents as clutter. Alden did not decide that everyone who overlooked a name was cruel. He kept asking that they look again. The work demanded a patience he did not always feel.
His parents worried that the yard had made him believe his worth depended on preventing every accident. His mother asked him to leave one evening without checking the hooks. His father hid the slate under a folded cloth. Alden found it, then sat with them at supper instead of going back to the racks. No shield fell that night. The world did not collapse because he had stopped watching it for an hour.
Armor too large for him
A winter repair left the practice-house without enough fitted armor for a scheduled gate exercise. The quartermaster handed Alden a set intended for a taller trainee who had gone home sick. Its shoulder plates hung low; the chest sat loose even after the straps were drawn tight. Rilka pointed out that he looked as if he had been swallowed by a suit of armor. Alden laughed, then asked whether she would say the same if he fell under its weight.
The armorer adjusted the straps and added a folded liner, making the kit safe for slow practice. It still did not fit him well enough for a fast drill. Alden wore it only because the group needed a person to test the load, and he learned quickly that an oversized plate could catch a hip or block a turn. His body was not a smaller version of the knight the armor had belonged to. He needed equipment that met him where he was.
When the exercise ended, Alden cleaned the kit and wrote its fit limits on the inside tag. The quartermaster removed the note, saying the armor would be reassigned after proper alteration. Alden put the tag back in the repair tray instead of arguing. Rilka saw him do it and said that keeping the note was different from making the gear his responsibility forever. He kept that sentence, though he did not know yet how to act on it.
A life that went beyond the yard
The practice-house was not Alden's whole world. On rest days he took bread to his parents' friends, played a clumsy dice game with the leather workers, and walked with Rilka to a bridge where she could watch the gate traffic. He liked the market's repair stalls, where a broken buckle did not care what crest a person wore. Some sellers knew him by name. Others called him “blue yard” because of the dye on his sleeve.
He and Rilka disagreed about the gate trial. She thought passing it would let her help people directly; he worried that the route-watch would teach her to trust orders more than what she saw. She told him he could not inspect every decision from the repair bench. He asked her to promise that if a real danger contradicted the exercise, she would speak. She said she would try. They did not turn the promise into an oath. Each knew the other was allowed to fail and try again.
Alden began looking for an apprenticeship in armor repair. He wanted to build and mend things that fit the person who used them. The work would have taken him away from the yard, at least for part of each week. His father was proud and his mother worried about the lower wages. Rilka told him he should go if the place offered him honest teaching. For the first time, the future he imagined did not place him beside the blue shield every morning.
The watch before the alarm
The east gate served a working district where carts entered before dawn. The practice yard sat just inside it, with a side passage leading to the kitchen court and a narrow stair descending to the old store rooms. Senior guards rotated between the wall and the market route. Trainees learned to clear the yard in pairs, but the drill assumed an instructor would be present to call the steps.
On the morning the attack came, the senior guard had gone with a supply party to escort a medicine wagon across the south road. The remaining staff were splitting their attention between a damaged latch and a group of new trainees. Rilka was at the gate for her watch trial. Alden had brought the cobalt shield to the inspection table because its upper rim had begun to flex after the last practice. He had written a request for a deeper check and was waiting for the armorer to return.
The first signal was a hard strike against the outer gate. It did not sound like the yard bell, and nobody mistook it for practice. A second blow followed before the watch officer reached the stair. Someone had brought a ladder to the wall near the east hinge. The defenders shouted for the inner lane to clear. The youngest trainees froze where they stood, uncertain which door was still safe.
The gate attack
The attack was brief, chaotic, and aimed at forcing the gate before help arrived. Alden never learned who had organized it or why they chose that hour. He did not see a general, a banner, or a plan. He saw dust falling from the hinge, a child with one boot untied, and a line of trainees waiting for an order that could not reach them over the metal noise.
Rilka began moving the younger trainees toward the kitchen court. She called them by the names she knew and gave the new ones a direction they could follow: keep the wall on your left until you reach the blue-painted doorway. The watch officer was still outside the inner passage. Alden carried the cobalt shield from the inspection table, its old dent widened, its grip strap newly checked, and placed himself where the yard narrowed between the gate and the safe passage.
He did not decide that he could defeat the attackers. He used the shield to cover the opening while the trainees crossed behind him. The round face turned the first falling stone; the rim caught the edge of a beam thrown against the gate. The equipment did what it had been repaired to do, but it could not stop the hinge from breaking. Each impact sent another vibration through Alden's too-large armor and into the arm that held the shield.
One name at a time
Alden had learned the evacuation drill, but the actual yard did not follow its neat order. One trainee dropped a shoe. Another refused to leave without a younger cousin. A cook had hurt her ankle on the stair. Rilka counted them aloud, stopping whenever the count changed. Alden listened for each answer while keeping the shield angled toward the gate. The names gave the retreat shape; without them, a person could be mistaken for an empty space.
The larger armor caught under his elbow when he tried to turn. He could not lower the shield without exposing the passage, so he shifted his feet and used the wall to brace the loose chest plate. Rilka told him to move back as soon as the last trainee crossed. He nodded. She did not ask him to swear he would be safe. She needed him to hear the instructions and keep enough strength to follow them.
For several breaths the old shield held. The new dent became a bright line across the blue face. Alden could feel the repaired strap pulling at his palm. Behind him, the trainees reached the kitchen court, where the cook and a washerwoman opened the next door. Rilka called the final name. The child answered from the far side of the threshold. The yard was almost clear, but the gate beam had begun to split along its lower bracket.
The last brace
Alden saw the bracket give before he could turn away. The outer gate shifted inward, carrying the loose beam with it. If it fell across the passage, it would crush the last trainees or block the only route into the kitchen court. Alden drove the shield's rim against the beam and pushed his shoulder into the wall. The old metal dent folded. The round face held a narrow gap open just long enough for the watch officer and Rilka to pull the last child through.
Rilka reached back for him. Alden told her to keep the path clear. The shield was still between the gate and the courtyard, and the attacker on the other side was pulling against the same beam. Rilka called his name. He answered once so she would know he had heard. She moved the child toward the store-room stair, then turned to help the officer brace the inner door. It was a choice made in the space of a few seconds, not a decision to abandon her friend.
The cobalt rim broke where the old crescent dent met the new crack. The beam came through and pinned Alden against the wall. His loose armor twisted under the pressure and trapped his breath. Rilka reached him after the gate had stopped moving. He was alive long enough to ask if the trainees had crossed. She said every name had answered. He tried to smile, then could not speak again. His body died in the practice yard beside the shield he had inspected, carried, and never owned.
The list in the armory
The defenders drove the attackers away from the gate, but the yard did not return to its old order. The east wall had to be shored. The kitchen court became a temporary shelter. Rilka was treated for a cut on her hand and asked the watch officer to record the names of every trainee who had left. She could still hear Alden's last question. She did not know what to do with the fact that he had made his final concern a count of other people.
When the armorer sorted the broken equipment, Rilka found Alden's slate tucked under the cobalt shield's inspection tag. The familiar list was there, including the note about the falling rack: “Rilka, clear; rack caught before second fall.” She had called the list foolish because she assumed the line made her a debt Alden expected her to repay. Now she understood he had written it so the next repairer would know why the shield mattered, and so a person would not disappear inside a description of damaged gear.
Rilka copied the list carefully and placed it on the public board in the armory. She left space for recruits to add names only when the person named agreed. Beside the shield's last damage she wrote that Alden had held the opening until the trainees crossed. The record did not turn his death into a lesson that others had to imitate. It made visible the human cost of equipment that held, a gate left unrepaired, and a boy whose name had once been missing from the roster.
The shield that waited
Alden's spirit did not leave with his body. The first sign was a blue reflection on the shield's darkened face after the armory lamps had gone out. No one saw a full figure. A new trainee heard the old inspection tap from inside the repair room and found the shield's broken rim angled away from the entrance, as if it were making room for someone to pass.
The armorer repaired what could be repaired and marked the shield unfit for training. The crack across its cobalt surface could not be hidden. Whenever someone carried it toward the scrap bin, the weight shifted toward the open armory. It was not heavy enough to hurt anyone, only stubborn enough to be set down. The shield remained by Alden's list, and people began to notice that the air felt colder when a frightened recruit stood alone beside it.
Rilka returned many times. She spoke to Alden as she had when he was alive, though she did not expect a reply. She told him the trainees had moved into safer rooms, the gate had been replaced, and the watch trial now included a second route. She brought no order for him to return. The shield still answered the same way: a low blue glint, then the inspection tap. The repair had ended the danger; it had not ended the moment that held his spirit.
What a public list could not mend
The yard rebuilt the east gate with a crossbar that could be released from inside. The trainees practiced evacuating from two different directions, and the watch officer posted a plain map beside the bell. The changes came from testimony, not from a haunting. Rilka insisted that Alden's slate be kept in the armory where recruits could read it, but she did not ask them to repeat his final act or wear armor that did not fit.
Alden's spirit remained tied to the cobalt shield because his death, the broken rim, and the final pressure of the gate had met in one place. The list helped the living know who had been protected; it did not become a key that could release him. He continued to turn the shield toward the passage whenever someone entered the yard in fear. Sometimes the visitor was an apprentice who had never heard Alden's name. Sometimes it was Rilka, now old enough to train new watch members herself.
No one could tell whether Alden understood the repaired gate or the years that passed around it. He did not appear at his parents' home or follow Rilka beyond the armory. His spirit returned to the shield, the list, and the narrow place where the trainees had crossed. The unfinished part was not a demand that he save everyone forever. It was the held instant in which he had used his body as the last brace and could not hear the count continue beyond him.
A friend keeps the record
Rilka grew into a watch instructor and taught the evacuation route without calling Alden a saint. She told new trainees that he had been a boy who asked for equipment that fit, wrote down who had trusted a shield, and could be impatient when people dismissed small repairs. She told them he had died in the gate attack. She did not pretend she knew what his spirit wanted, and she did not say that courage required anyone to stay behind.
The list stayed in a blue-backed folder near the equipment ledger. Names were added with permission; old entries were not used to measure who deserved protection. When a shield was retired, the armorer copied the relevant repair history and let the person who had been named choose whether their name should remain. Alden's note about Rilka stayed because she asked for it to stay. She finally understood the difference between being seen and being claimed.
The armory became a room that could hold grief without turning it into a command. Recruits read Alden's list before their first gate drill. Some recognized a relative's handwriting; most did not. They learned that a mark on a shield could tell them how the metal failed, who it had sheltered, and what the next person should inspect. The list kept living names visible, but the spirit beside it still waited for an answer to the moment it had never been able to leave.
The Crow at the repaired gate
The Ledger Crow came to the armory after Rilka had placed the copied list on the public board. He did not arrive during the attack, and he had not chosen Alden's death. He asked the armorer to leave the shield where it was and asked Rilka whether the names on the slate could be read aloud. She said only the names whose owners had agreed to be recorded. The Crow listened to the account without adding a title to the people who had survived.
He explained that he could make an official Cobalt Squire card, carrying Alden's spirit in a portable form. It would not repair the shield, return the dead, erase the unfinished gate, or release Alden from the mortal world. It would give the spirit a new tether and let people meet the remembered squire through play. The card would contain Alden alone; Rilka, the trainees, his parents, and the other names on the list would remain living or remembered outside it.
The Crow set the blank card on the repair bench and waited. The shield's blue reflection moved toward it, then returned to the list. Rilka did not answer for her friend. After a long stillness, the shield's broken edge touched the blank surface. The Crow recorded the choice as Alden's acceptance of a new tether, not as a promise of peace. The cobalt shield remained in the armory, and the names remained on the board.
The official card and the armor it gives
The Ledger Crow recorded Alden alone as Cobalt Squire. The official card is a two-copy, 3-energy 2/5 Folk with Iron affinity. Its printed Enter effect grants exactly 1 champion armor, up to the game's cap of 5. The armor belongs to your champion, not to the Squire. It does not increase the Squire's attack or health, heal anyone, protect a friendly creature, grant Guard, or give the Squire Rush.
Armor matters only when it is present before champion damage resolves. For example, if your champion has 12 health and 2 armor, playing Cobalt Squire for 3 energy raises armor to 3. A later 4-damage hit consumes those 3 armor and deals 1 damage to health, leaving 11 health. If the champion already has 5 armor, the card cannot add a sixth point. If the attack happened before the Squire entered, its new armor cannot undo that damage.
The 2/5 body remains useful after its entry effect, but the card does not become a personal shield around another creature. Use it when the body fits your field and one point of champion armor can matter; do not spend 3 energy for protection that has already been consumed or expect a large shield to solve a poor attack. Golden Acorn Knight (C103) carries a separate story about armor and chosen care. The two folios are linked by that question, not by a meeting or shared spirit.
At the table
Printed effect: Enter: gain 1 champion armor.
Place one armor before the next champion hit
Cobalt Squire is a two-copy, 3-energy 2/5 Folk with Iron affinity. Its Enter effect grants exactly 1 champion armor, up to the game’s five-point cap. Armor belongs to your champion and absorbs later champion damage before health. It does not heal, protect a creature, change the Squire’s 2/5 stats, grant Guard or Rush, or undo damage that resolved before it entered.
One move, shown
Play the Squire before likely damage to your champion when one armor can change the next exchange and the 2/5 body is useful. Check your current armor first: at 5, the effect adds nothing. The entry point is a small buffer, so it is not a reason to allow an otherwise avoidable champion attack or to expose the Squire as if the armor belonged to it.
Spend 3 energy to play Cobalt Squire. Apply the printed effect exactly as written.
Your champion has 12 health and 2 armor. Spend 3 energy to play Cobalt Squire: the 2/5 enters and your armor rises to 3. A later 4-damage champion hit consumes the 3 armor and deals 1 to health, leaving 11. If you already had 5 armor, it remains 5; if the hit happened before the Squire entered, the card cannot reverse it. A 4-damage attack on one of your creatures is not absorbed by champion armor, and the Squire gains no extra health or protection.
The example explains a legal choice, not an additional card effect. Check the live game for current targeting and timing.
Chibi mode
This is the current game’s chibi rendering of Cobalt Squire. The alternate art changes presentation, not the printed card rules.