The Chronicles of Gnawnia and its Surrounding Territories

Chapter One-The Tutorial

Mark Honor is an average sixteen year old. He was a tall teen, around six feet tall, with brown mousy hair and blue eyes with some freckles on his left cheek. He had two younger siblings, thirteen year old Josef, and twelve year old Kathleen. His parents were Abraham and Vanessa Honor, journalist and stable master respectively. Mark was from a middle class family, with a yearly income of about seventy thousand gold a year. He lived in the town of Gnawnia, went to the local high school, Gnawnia Area High School, helped do chores, hung out with friends a lot, and finished his homework on time (in general). Mark also was about to go through a ceremony like every other sixteen year old.

Every year, every sixteen year old graduated from 10th grade, the final grade, and became an adult. In the ceremony, every teenager would receive a job that had been carefully selected for them. From then on, they would be in that profession forever until they died, retired, or if the job was deemed inappropriate to them.

On the night of the ceremony, after the evening meal, every teenager sat in alphabetical order in formal golden robes, which was fine by Mark, he didn’t have to wait that long. They were in the theater of the school and a podium had been set up on the stage. There were thousands of people there for this special event; family, friends from other schools, strangers who wanted to see this new generation of workers, and even some knights! Mark hoped that he would get to be picked as a knight, defending the kingdom from unknown attackers, dining with the King himself, and earning a nice income with a happy retirement assured.

A woman walked up to the podium and introduced herself as Kathy Perseverance, one of the people who decided what jobs you got. She gave a speech on how each job was carefully selected to match the person’s needs, about how each job was just as important as another in its own way, for without people doing all of these jobs, the kingdom would fall apart. Then finally, she began the roll call.

“Altruism, Jacob! Architect!”

Jacob walked up to the lady, shook her hand and taking his certificate and his roll of paper that was his job information, grinning.