Add three of the mentor's other former squadron members

Introduces Strider (a merc who protects those who can't afford real
protection, and has found genuine peace in it), Downes (retired to
farming and family, forced back into one last fight), and Egor (Royal
Guard, honor curdled into blind devotion, dies still certain of
himself). Together with the party leader, they give the same
mentor/same night four distinct answers to what honor means. Updates
themes and open questions accordingly.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

story.md

@@ -360,7 +360,9 @@ way.
 
 Further chapters will follow up with other surviving members of that same
 squadron, now scattered across the world, each having drawn their own,
-different lesson from their mentor's example of what honor means.
+different lesson from their mentor's example of what honor means. Of the
+five other survivors, three are met over the course of the story: Strider,
+Downes, and Egor (see below).
 *(Name and background: TBD.)*
 
 ### The Mentor
@@ -373,6 +375,46 @@ Great Explosion. His true reasoning is never stated outright; the party
 leader only pieces it together well after the fact.
 *(Name: TBD.)*
 
+### Strider
+Former squadron-mate of the party leader, now a merc who's found his own,
+settled definition of honor. Runs a protection business for merchants who
+can't afford a teleporter's price - riding along their carriages,
+guarding their goods, and fending off bandits the whole way. Has found
+genuine peace in it: protecting people who have no one else looking out
+for them and no way to afford real protection. He's welcomed, loved, and
+respected in that niche precisely because his care for the people he
+protects is real, not transactional. The clearest example of the
+squadron's shared "honor" being taken somewhere quietly good.
+
+### Downes
+Once one of the strongest fighters the squadron had. Now fully retired
+from soldiering, living as a farmer in a quiet village, and won't so much
+as pick up a weapon. His honor is his family - protecting them, and
+building them a life away from all of it, is the whole of it for him now.
+Tends his crops and animals, and wants nothing to do with his past.
+Represents the opposite lesson from the rest of the squadron: that there
+are things in life more important than fighting. That said, the story
+brings him to a moment where he has no choice but to fight again - proof
+that even he can't outrun what he used to be forever.
+*(Circumstances of that fight: TBD.)*
+
+### Egor
+Once part of the same squadron, now a highly respected member of the
+Royal Guard, decorated for his power and his devotion. He's the story's
+clearest villain among the three, though he'd never see himself that way:
+he genuinely believes honor *is* following orders, full stop. He considers
+his former squadron-mates - the party leader especially - to have gone
+rogue, and is completely blind to what the king actually is, misreading
+their old mentor's final act as some kind of failure of nerve rather than
+its own form of honor.
+
+Egor ultimately faces the party and the protagonist directly, and is
+defeated. He dies still certain his honor was sound to the very end -
+deluded about it right up until his last moments, when something finally
+breaks through: a flash of understanding that his blind devotion earned
+him nothing but pain and misery. Whether he actually regrets it, in the
+end, is left unknown - even to him, maybe.
+
 ### The Detective
 Deliberately kept thin by design - this entry should stay short even as
 the rest of the document grows. The less the audience (and we) nail down
@@ -411,7 +453,17 @@ intentionally undefined for now.
 - Blind loyalty vs. conscience - orders followed even as faith in them
   erodes.
 - Honor redefined as judgment, not obedience - real honor sometimes looks
-  like disobeying orders, and can go unrecognized as such for years.
+  like disobeying orders, and can go unrecognized as such for years. The
+  same mentor and the same night produced six different soldiers who each
+  landed somewhere completely different: quiet self-doubt (the party
+  leader), care for the unrepresented (Strider), retreat into family and
+  peace (Downes), and honor curdled into blind, fatal devotion (Egor).
+- You can't outrun who you were - Downes builds a life as far from
+  soldiering as he can get, and the story still forces one more fight out
+  of him.
+- The tragedy of unshakeable certainty - Egor never once doubts himself,
+  and it kills him without ever teaching him anything, except perhaps at
+  the very last second.
 - The crown's disregard for the people who prop it up - a distant king
   extracting from a region (soldiers, subjects, this mage) that owes him
   nothing and gets nothing back.
@@ -457,9 +509,13 @@ intentionally undefined for now.
 - Whether/how the protagonist eventually learns the truth about her
   parents and the Official Story's lie.
 - Names for the party leader and his mentor.
-- The other surviving members of the mentor's squadron: who they are,
-  where they ended up, and how each one has interpreted their mentor's
-  final act of disobedience - which chapters/movements they show up in.
+- The two remaining, still-unnamed survivors of the mentor's squadron -
+  whether they're ever introduced, and if so how.
+- Which chapters/movements Strider, Downes, and Egor each actually appear
+  in, and in what order the party leader reconnects with them.
+- The circumstances that force Downes back into a fight.
+- How Egor and the party actually cross paths, and what leads directly to
+  their confrontation.
 - How and when the party leader pieces together that his mentor already
   knew what the king intended that night.
 - The Detective's name, true loyalties, and how much he actually knows