Knightly Orders

 

The Granite Battalion

In 381, Torbjorn Kostevic was leading a dwarven rebellion against the orcish armies in central Golanicja, accomplishing his first major victory by retaking Fort Granite from the orcs, and holding it against several serious attempts to take it back. But Torbjorn's goal was not to hold Fort Granite, it was to begin liberating central Golanicja, so he formed the Granite Battalion as a Knightly Order to stand as the defenders of the city while he led the bulk of his forces ro retake Coal Harnour, and from there to work their way along the shores of the Bay of Bones and Kovstepovi Bay to retake the capitol.

The Granite Battalion, formed from less than two hundred of Torbjorns best troops were tasked with holding Fort Granite not matter what, so that Torbjorn's flank could remain secure while he liberated the capitol. The orcs, who were starting to fall into disarray by this time, united in central Golanicja in the fall of 382 and laid winter seige to Fort Granite, and then swarmed it in the spring. The Granite Battalion wwere outnumbered ten to one, but managed to hold the city and repel the orc advance, enabling Torbjorn to complete his manuevers, capture Kovstepovi, and ultimately form the Dwarven Kingdom.

One of Torbjorn's first acts as King was to declare the Marshal of the Granite Battalion as Laird Protector of the Realm, and the war commander of all the military forces of the Kingdom of Golanicja. After the orc wars ended, the leadership of the Granite Battlion was moved to Kovstepovi, and served directly alongside the Kings and Queens of Golanicja through the Imperial Era. In the Late Imperial Era, as the Crown faltered and teetered on the edge of bankruptcy, the honorifics and titles of the Protector of the Realm became highly political, and the role was separated from the role of Laird Marshal of the Granite Battalion, and the then Laird Marshal returned to Fort Granite to serve as head of the Order.

With the insolvency of the Kingdom of Golanicja, the Protector of the Realm in Kovstepovi ordered the the Granite Battalion to come and defend the capitol, but the Laird Marshall refused, and instead secured central Golanicja and left the Kovstepovi royals and their sycophantic political lackeys to dissapper or meet mob justice. The Granite Battalion instead forged an agreement with the Gatekeepers the secure central Golanicja from Coal Harbour to Shimmer, and west across the Iron Ridge mountains to Brinjevi and Zetisa, with the two groups providing the military backbone and stability that would enable many important cities in central Golanicja to avoid collapsing into unrest and violent revolution before Charters could be put into place and the rule of law re-established.

By the start of the 14th century, the Granite Battlion, still headquartered in Fort Granite, was mostly in the business of providing strategic security and military advice to major cities from Stonehall in central Golanicja all the way up to Saltspire at the north end of the Iron Ridge mountains where their melt waters feed into the Red Brine Sea. They maintain a force of only a few thousand active knights, with even the largest cities rarely hosting more than an echelon (perhaps 60 knights) to serve as elite warriors, military advisors, and personal guards to the ruling elite.

The Green and Blacks

The

The Knights of Knidrigan

The Knights of Knidrigan are a small Knightly Order that was formed in 344 by a group of knights sent as emissaries from Jumira to begin arming and preparing Waeyron for the eventual arrival of invaders during the Orc Conquests. This was when Golga was at the height of her power and everyone was worried the entire world would fall. The Knights of Knidrigan therefore began with an almost unlimited budget to begin ennobling knights, raising armies, and constructing fortifications. Before any of this could begin in earnest, however, Golga was assassinated in 345 by her own generals, and the nature of the conflict changed. Funds ear-marked for the Knights of Knidrigan were slowly clawed back, and the Order never reached a complement of 100 knights. Construction of their planned fortress in Knidrigan was halted after the completion of only a single tower, a barracks, an armory and a chapel. In the end, orcish invaders never set foot in Waeyron, and the Knights of Knidrigan remained a small order without any storied history.

Throughout the Imperial Era, the Knights of Knidrigan struggled to make themselves useful. Weayron was a comparatively peaceful, remote place. It was never a unified nation, and was never significantly involved in the conflicts of the period. Their numbers dwindled to fewer then a dozen, and gaps in the records suggest they may have been entirely defunct by the early 13th century.

With the end of the Imperial Era, however, a number of imperial knights from the collapsing kingdoms and empires of the time found themselves looking for a new home. Errant knights from all around the world ended up peldging themselves to the nearly forgotten Knights of Knidrigan - in their homelands, many of them were wanted as criminals and considered fugitive loyalists to their fallen crowns, but here they were reclaiming a noble status. It is not clear whether these knights were recruited by some remaining leadership of the order, or whether they just showed up and claimed they were now members - whatever the case, by 1260, the Knights of Knidrigan had grown to include as many as seventy knights, plus their squires and pages.

For the first hundred years after the Imperial Era, the Knights of Knidrigan worked hard to ingratiate themselves with the Great Houses of the major cities of Waeyron - providing military training and advice to powerful city councils and organizations. Whether or not the Knights of Knidrigan were indeed illegally reconstituted by fugitive knights of the Imperial Era is now largely a footnote to history. By the early 15th century the Knights of Knidrigan are a respected, if still small, order of Knights providing military support and military and stratgeic advice to powerful families, city states and organzations across Waeyron.

The Knights Stalwart

(Fort Stalwart)

The Order of Golmongarion

The Order of Golmongarion began as an offshoot of the Order of Lisaea, who questioned that organization’s central tenet of non-violence; first as it pertained to conflicts with the undead, and later, more broadly.

The Order was founded in 799, when Lord Grigor Orsum of Port Cevic, who had gained considerable power and influence defending Jumira from the threats of the expansionist Kingdom of Tulosz, was discovered to be a Vampire by members of the Disciples of Lisaea. The leadership of the Disciples refused to confront Lord Orsum and his thrall, but many within the Order felt that their oaths of non-violence should not apply to the undead. This internal conflict fractured the organization, and under the leadership of Patrien Kamron Zakari, a splinter group organized themselves under the banner of Golmongarion, declaring that the natural cycle of life and death was as sacred or more so than life itself, and that the undead were therefore an abomination. Patrien Zakari and his followers armed themselves and turned against Lord Orsum in a surprise attack, capturing him and binding him in silver chains until the sun rose and incinerated him. Patrien Zakari was slain in the fighting, and the leaders of the newly founded Order declared him to be a Saint.

The Order of Golmongarion evolved quickly from a breakaway sect of the Disciples of Lisaea into a militaristic order of religious warriors dedicated specifically to hunting down and destroying the undead and to persecuting those who would practice necromancy; including the erasure of accumulated magical knowledge related to its practice. Like the Disciples of Lisaea, the Order of Golmongarion is led by their own Copi Patrien (or Copa Matriona), and the Table of Saints are the Mas Patriens and Masa Matrionas who sit at the highest level of the organization. Most of the these are Knights, Priests and Priestesses, and they are legitimately devoted to attempting to literally destroy the Infernal Mol-Imit. It is unknown if such a thing is even possible, but they have spent centuries trying.

At several times in recorded history the Order of Golmongarion massed together to fight the undead on a significant scale. Aside from their inaugural triumph over the Vampire Lord Grigor Osum and his thrall and minions, the Order also brought an end to the zombie plague of Sudden Hill in the year 1013. Later, the necromancers who attempted to raise an undead army from the Bog of Grey Moss, south of Bovcevin in 1127 were also stopped - in this case, with the Order of Golmongarion eliciting confessions (under torture, admittedly) from some of the captive necromancers who admitted they were members of the Cult of Mol-Imit. These confessions were reframed and rewritten as ‘The 11 Heresies’ and used to justify subsequent, more aggressive purges.

The Order of Golmongarion is sometimes overzealous in their persecutions, and have on a few occasions accused (and tried, convicted and executed) priests and healers for supposed necromantic crimes. While many powerful people quite rightly fear them, their real victories and their effectiveness in keeping the undead at bay, are hard to refute.

The Stol Rosoi

The Stol Rosoi - which means Steel Rage in Kiniginobersk - is an Order of Knights created in Obersch in 393 by Irmgard Eisfaust prior to her ascension as Matriarch. The Stol Rosoi’s first major deployment would not be in Obersch, but rather in Kashdush, where they would help liberate Hashuin from Orcish occupation and enable the formation of the Spriggan Kingdom. They would return with Spriggan support to Obersch in 398 to retake the continent.

Having been created first as an elite military unit, they were made a royal Knightly Order by Matriarch Irmgard Eisfaust when she ascended to the throne in 404. Membership in the order is exclusive to Ursan born in Obersch. Since this was tied to a geographic concept, and not a political one (such as Obersch citizenship, which only existed when there was an Obersch nation state) it remained true even after the end of the Imperial Era. Admission is highly selective, and only the fiercest and most highly trained warriors are admitted.

With the end of the Orcish Conquests the Stol Rosoi largely served as the elite royal guard to the Throne of Obersch until the wars of the Imperial Era, when they returned to more active military operations. Their standard fighting unit is only a dozen strong, but is considered significantly stronger than a full infantry century, which is ten times as many. The Order has never constituted more than a couple of hundred members at any one time, and most of their deployments have seen at most two to three units in the field in support of a larger army.

Since their official creation as a Knightly Order in 404, the entire force has never been committed to a single battle at one time. The soldiers expression ‘to need the Stol Rosoi’ for something implies that the situation is hopeless.

Order of the Forge

(Furora)