Speech
A thunderous cracking resounded through the building as Beau slammed open the door of the westgate barracks. Heads of numerous guards jerked to the direction of the sound. “You,” Beau jerked a finger at a nearby guard. “Gather everyone here”.
The man singled out hesitated briefly confused before running off to retrieve more of the guards currently stationed in the barracks. The other guards present began glancing around at each other as the man ran further into the building to assemble more guards. Over the next several minutes more guards trickled into the main room from the depths of the barracks.
“The guard, that’s us, we don’t get nearly the respect that we deserve.” Beau surveyed the room to uncertain glances. “We’re seeing it in full swing. It’s a zoo out there crew. We saw that when the crowd flung the preferred projectile of primates at Galdar today’s eve when he only sought justice for the poisoning of one of our own.”
“They gathered it right quick, yas think they were carrying it around with em?” A chorus of chuckles broke out among the assembled guards. It’s probably a good thing that they are still able to joke with everything going on in town.
Beau tilted his head in a noncommittal attempt to mask his smirk. “Aye. It would certainly explain the smell!” After a brief pause to allow those assembled to quiet themselves Beau continued. “Merave lies stricken with this poison as we speak, for an unknown reason at that, and they didn’t muster enough empathy at that to not toss feces. So I compel you to stand tall, do your duty,” this line garnered a few more chuckles from those gathered. Children the lot of em, “and take to the field against any who would block your march.“
“The eyes of the entire town are on us. We must do everything possible to quell the tempest that envelopes Mythrite, we can not allow our sacrifices and those sacrifices of the townsmen to be in vain. March to the end for if you falter this frontier will topple around you.” The guard nodded began nodding along, “Now go out there, and make sure you’re seen. Be visible to the people and give them the impression that they’re secure.”
The assembled guards began moving out, they seemed more prideful of their roles.
This is an interesting insight into what the guards are doing as of now. It’s short and to the point. While this story does give us a reason to care about the guard, Beau himself does not particularly stand out, outside of being a leader. You have so much room to work with here, so you can absolutely go more into why Beau cares so much about guard duty. He says it in his speech, but you can absolutely lengthen it, and maybe give some insight into Beau through internal monologue. Maybe he has a selfish reason for wanting this. There’s a point in the middle of the story where the guards joke around, which Beau seems to laugh at. My confusion is that this seems to break the tension or mood of the speech itself. While I kind of got the impression that being in the guard is not entirely devoid of emotion, it seems like the point of the speech was to take the job seriously. I don’t know more about Beau than you, but I can imagine that this might not go over well. The ending statement of the speech confused me. Are they attempting to pretend to be good at their job by giving the impression that they’re secure, or are they taking it seriously and actually making the people secure? There’s so much more room to build here, keep going!