Hainish Honors
The Hainish Honors System is a way for the Kingdom of Hain to record and quantify the noble and glorious deeds of its nobility. These deeds range from displays of battlefield courage and prowess, to monster-slaying, to charitable works, to the construction of infrastructure for the public good. Each deed is recorded, evaluated, graded, and archived by the Autumn Court. These Honors are tied to both the individual who accomplished them and their extended noble lineage, and can be used in various Hainish social and political contexts.
The number of Honors a family has is linked to their standing in Hain's royal court, and Honors directly translate to voting power in the Hainish Crown Diet that elects the Hainish Monarch. Honors do not expire, and the Elector-Prince dynasties have managed to accumulate vast quantities of honors over the years.
The exact system of how Honors are weighted is kept purposefully obscure by those who calculate it. It is considered shameful and corrupt to openly discuss Honors as a currency to be measured rather than as an abstract form of glory. The Lunar Pantheon and the most well-connected Hainish families know the metrics, but they similarly avoid open discussion of the matter. Many smaller families and con-artists claim to know how it works, but they often are only part-right at best.
Honors are collected and judged by the Autumn Court's Chamber of Glory, by a group of secluded monks devoted to the task in Vruhafen. Once evaluated and 'scored', the Honors are looked over by an auditor for any major inconsistencies, stamped by a high-ranking Autumn Court priest, and then copied down to be sent to Ozaren for formal declaration. Incoming Honors are read daily to the rump council of the Hainish Crown Diet and to a representative of the Hainish Monarch known as the Royal Master of Honors. The Royal Master of Honors typically is in charge of sending messengers to recipient families notifying them of their honor (and implied tier of honor), flying banners relating to received honors in Ozaren's St. Minessa's Square, and choosing which honors are notable enough to be sent to the Monarch and Ozaren town criers directly. The Rump Council of the Diet, meanwhile, ceremonially recognizes and thanks the honored heroes and has their Secretary of Heroics store the honor-score for future votes. Copies of Honors are also sent to Ozaren's Hall of Memories, which serves as both a museum and an archive of Honors. Most noble families keep a close eye on their Honors and maintain their own records.
Honors are incredibly important in Hainish Politics and falsifying an Honor in any way is considered both illegal and deeply shameful. The authenticity of any deed must be attested to by at least three honorable witnesses for the Honor to be evaluated; witness names and accounts are kept by the Autumn Court and witnesses also face extreme shame and legal liability if the deed turns out to be false. It is not uncommon for significant Honors, or Honors that act as hinges in political votes, to be scrutinized and even contested in legal battles.
Honors can be revoked if proven fraudulent, or can be effectively nullified by Marks of Shame. Marks of Shame are often issued by Hainish courts as part of punishments for nobles who commit crimes. Some minor crimes or interpersonal lawsuits may be only punished through Marks of Shame. Marks of Shame cannot give a family a "negative score" of Honors, though a family with only Shames is likely to face political repercussions. Shames are not as widely distributed and announced a Honors, but are still recorded by the Hainish Crown Diet's Secretary of Heroics.
Honors can also be revoked by royal edict, but revocation requires a clear and provable act of corruption (such as embezzlement).
History
Hainish traditions with remembering and recounting honors goes back to the ancient clans of old, who would recount the heroic deeds of their ancestors and kinsmen every year. Every family had at least one Henfrensonter, a pseudo-priest whose primary role was placating and protecting the ancestral dead and heroic present of their clan. This was done through the relentless memorization and recitation of good deeds and the creation of shrines embodying those deeds, which would serve as shelters for the returned dead. The Cult of Hiku the Muse who belonged to the ancient Empire of Andrig reached out to these Henfrensonter to organize and empower them through the works of the Heavenly Muse, leading to some of them becoming Lunar intermediaries. This went beyond just Hiku; soon, Henfrensonter took on new roles working with the entire Lunar Pantheon. Every family's was different, and the difference between Henfrensonter traditions grew. Many Henfrensonter began to clash with the Druids taught by Vetka in the late 400s ME, as both groups claimed superior abilities in communing with and interpreting the words of the Lunar Pantheon. Henfrensonter lost that cultural battle but found a new niche as a proto-Exorcist's Guild calming and exorcizing Ghosts. These groups became allies and local coordinators of the formal Exorcist's Guild in the 680s ME. This role shift and slow integration into the Exorcists changed the Henfrensonters to shamanic artist-historians to bureaucratic scribes; old elements remained, but the focus shifted from memory to written archiving.
The 1100s and 1200s ME were a period of massive cultural and political transformation in Hain. Hain was recovering after centuries of terrible war and the mass death of the Mageplague, and had stabilized into a united kingdom. Hain settled into what was called the "Kofalin system", where monarchs were chosen from among the elite warrior class by their deeds fighting Hain's common enemies. The Henfrensonter were called in a great council to create a method of measuring deeds and to create a body of chroniclers to list the deeds of all the renowned warriors and leaders. This was the beginning of formalized Honors. These early Honors were politically individual (rather than by clan), but the Henfrensonter retained their clan allegiances and Honors took on a dynastic quality very quickly. In this Kofalin system, Honors were everything: the top three candidates for the crown were those with the highest individual Honors, and the warriors of the crown voted for which would replace the recently-dead monarch. By the 1300s, it had even become standard for lands, treasures, and titles to be inherited by the most Honored within a clan. The Honors council and Henfrensonter were contested by some as being biased towards the great clans (and favored families in those clans) and being influenced by the Lunar Gods; this was also a time of great religious discontent in Hain. In 1201, the Starlight Assembly created formalized Uvaran religion - and the Henfrensonter were totally absorbed as part of the early Autumn Court. The Honor-counting system became less formally clan-based, but the practice of families counting and archiving their Honors had already become tradition. Families compiled their own archives and kept the spirit of the old Henfrensonter alive, even after the order had been consumed by state religion. The question of whether a family's total Honors should influence an individual candidate's claim to the throne was still a contested one.
In 1323, the Hainish monarchy fell and was replaced by the Savad dynastic dictatorship (or Spring-Monarch period). Honors ceased to have a role in electing monarchs, but retained a cultural-religious value. For centuries, Honors continued to be counted and treasured even though lands and titles became more hereditary than deed-based. When invaders seized the capital city of Artoril, burned the accumulated recorded Honors, and slaughtered the Honor-Keeper priests in 1390, the Honor system was thrown into crisis. The terrible wars of that time left the entire government in shambles and caused many ancient Honor-chronicles to be lost. The entire old system could no longer function, and all claims to old Honors lacked any process for authentification. Perhaps the Honors system could have died then. But in 1480, the Uvaran Archdruid Wilgen Greatwolf began to expand and reform the Autumn Court - with the idea of a "Return of Honor" being a key rhetorical point. Wilgen controversially began the formal scoring of Honors fresh: he brought the great families of Hain together to ritually sacrifice their old Honors to Ustav, ending the great winter of the old age to begin a new spring. There was an implied promise that Honors after this would be a path to a closer relationship with the Uvaran Priesthood. This represent a sharp pivot from prior policy, as the Savad dynasty had been working to monopolize religious power over the 1300s. When the Savadan monarchs tried to consolidate power in the 1500s, they were called tyrants for restricting the great families from accumulating Honors freely. Honors came to represent the legitimacy of the noble houses in their rebellion against a central monarch. In 1600, several noble houses and notable priests launched an uprising that overthrew the Savad dynasty in 1603. A new system was made, in which Honors would represent family voting power to select new monarchs. This is what is now considered to be the basis of the Hainish political system and Honors system.
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