In the New Dark Ages, one can still find a stronghold against its emptiness and its deprivations.

Towering neon cities spew forth pollution both spiritual and physical. Real evil rears its head everywhere, and good men who would otherwise strike it down utterly are ground between the cogs of the machinery that serves the Great Dragon.

Imprisonment, ruin, death, exile - all are weapons at the disposal of the servants of the Dragon and the Bull, and the Scarlet Woman.

Their lies are written on glowing signs a thousand feet tall, and beamed like sorcery into the home, into the school, into the brain, and to make war against these ideas can seem like an impossible battle.

But we know that with a righteous cause, nothing is impossible, and we do not lose heart.

One of our saviors in this brutal campaign for truth and honor in a time of deceit and treachery is the Joyous Gard.

This is something akin to a spiritual cousin of the woods in which the forest rebel has always dwelt in the lore - a place set apart, a forest passage wherein stands the woodland stronghold.

However - it must be not *only* spiritual!

It is not the nature of this new order to be content with things of a metaphysical or hypothetical nature, nor to endlessly philosophize about what good could be done in this age - but to actually do, and achieve, in this physical reality, the change we are seeking to make in the world. 

Joyous Gard is a place that should be acquired, or visited often, by you and your brothers in arms, and kept apart from the world itself. 

It should be developed to regenerate the soul, and to vanquish the slow grey creep of apathy or despair. 

Visits there should involve rites of strength and joy, of truth and togetherness - these things are like arrows between the scales of that Great Dragon whose breath is iniquity and whose gaze is the solitary death and the meaningless existence. 

In the legends, Joyous Gard was once called Dolorous Gard - the Fortress of Grief. 

From this, we can take hope, and know that even those locations and places in the world that are shot through with banality, ugliness, and may even be in the heart of the monolithic metropolis wherein the Dragon has his utter dominion…can be turned to our use, and become Joyous. 

A ruined building on the edge of a place once humming with industry, covered now in vine and marked with obscenity and garish paintings…an abandoned mill on some lonely riverbank…a normal seeming warehouse, on the inside hung with tapestry and decked with the tools of brutal chivalry. 

A mountaintop seldom frequented by servants of the triune principalities of this world…

All are potential places for your Joyous Gard, where you and your brothers can engage in a life given color and blood by a higher meaning and a righteous cause. 

Seeking it, finding it, and claiming it is an important aspect of the Grand Campaign. 

Ride out.