Template:The Wording

The Grand Knight-Convenor of ISDA’ s crack CDS drafting squad surveys the scene. Exhausted ninjas — bruised, battered, soiled, scarred and punctured during the savage thrust and counterthrust that goes on within those august cloisters when The Wording is upon them — this is all speculation, for the proceedings of this society are mortally secret, but surely this phrasing is wrought by martial combat, isn’t it? No-one could perpetrate such syntax with a sound mind and from a state of peaceable reflection — but at last, the hall falls silent. Echoed scuffles, bootfall and clankèd chainmail sublimate into the musty vaulted beams — perhaps a saucepan lid lazily circles. A curl of incense wafts up, the chimney smokes white and before the exhausted combatants there lies, upon a table, this careful calligraphic parchment.

The Grand Knight-Convenor surveys the wreckage. “Are we — are we done then? My brother, sister knights: are we done?”

The rambunctious Ser Jaramey Slizzard, a young knight from the court of Milbank, stirs. He gets unsteadily to his feet. His countenance is dark. He reaches for the conch.

“As the case may, for the time being, be deemèd —”

Before he can take the conch, the Grand Knight-Convenor cuts him off. “No. This must stop now. The time for pedantry is over, Ser.”

But the young knight is hot blooded, wild. We can hear him mutter the Swappist Oath, “what is dull is never done.” Suddenly he draws from his scabbard —

But the Aïessdiyé have seen all this before. They are faster. They anticipate his stroke and Ser Jaramey is cut down with a blow to the back of the knees. He buckles and they escort him away to the Protocolia where he will serve a period of nettance.