And by choose I mean.. prob something quite unlike what we normally think of "choice" and more like "harrowing extremes of desperation"
Anyway knights are terrifying assholes with weapons and armour that cost more than your village (the people anyway) and exemplify the moral identity of your culture while more or less operating above it.
At their very best they keep bad things from happening to you because of their potential to do bad things back. Hopefully at worst things , or atleast far away things.
Some of the time they will do bad things to you. This will be your fault.
At the worst they do bad things to you because they can . The idea of knights is still more important than you so whatever happened to you doesn't matter.
Hell Knights are worse. Somehow. Maybe it's because people can learn to accept and understand why knights are important and why they do things. Hell Knights you will never be able to.
Yet ,somehow , their nature makes you want to accept their actions as just and reasonable even as the unsense of them snakes in you like cold rotten oil.
Maybe some created them as a "dark mirror" , to make people realise how shitty knights are. If someone did this for this , there is only a sliver of success in it.
Maybe they are result of a concept diffusing to its furthest point.
Or just demons in mocking iconoclasticism, or devils in insidious mummery .
Maybe they are a bit of Nothing dressing up as the world and getting it wrong.
DRYDROWNING : domain : interzones: fog , tide, twilight Punishes the unvigilant , the vulnerable, the unprepared Those that will drag others down when they drown
Wields: Isolation , Crushing thine mantle: salted and moaning iron
WRACK: domain: broken things that spread their breaks ; dams, exhausted fields, fallen borders punishes: the neglected and the neglecting wields: crack hammer, entropy thine mantle: choke coal
WARFLOWER: domain: shifting borders, no man's lands, contested and conquested land punishes: the victors at rest wields: fields of broken blades, weapon womb thine mantle: brittle blade hide
GRIMGUARD domain: tombs, monuments punishes : remembrance , irreverence wields: grindtongue, winds of loss thine mantle: heart chilling stone
THE HOOK: domain: promises, roads punishes: the trusting, the confident wields: your words, hooked needle and fate thread thine mantle: organ seeking horror hair
GORILLASLOUGH: domains: feasting, the leftbehind punishes:the lazy, the hungry, the desperate , the indulgent wields: wasting hands , the devouring of air thine mantle: ablative sick glazen dough