Templars (Invidere)

In the Invidere universe, the Templars are an ancient order of warrior monks who have influenced world events since their founding during the Skyfall. In their broad capacity as the vanguard of mankind against the Shadows, they have variously operated as mage-hunters, religious clerics, mercenaries and bodyguards, and even political leaders. They were strongly associated with but independent from the Mad King's realms during the Imperial Era, reaching their height of power in the early 4000s after the Hundred Year Darkness concluded and left them largely unopposed by the heretic factions they had set out to eradicate. In the following centuries, especially after the violent disintegration of the Empire, they have gradually declined in martial strength and taken a more passive role in Aquilan affairs, entrenching themselves within the world's governments to steer history in a favorable direction. At present, their operations have come to an indefinite halt due to the Schism created by the followers of Ser Beryl.

*Thou, nature, art my goddess;*

*to Thy law my services are bound.*

## History

The order, first known as the Temple Guards, was formed by the followers of the goddess Rhea, who took human form shortly before the rise of the Empire. Led by the High Priestess Ophelia, the Mother's adherents devoted themselves to her teachings, striving to emulate her ideals of purity, modesty, and compassion for the weak. Rhea made her home in the secluded Temple Sidon which sat at the center of the abandoned city of Thel Olihim, where Aetomemnon, first god-king of man, was purported to have descended from the heavens to guide the young world of Aquila to peace. She and her devotees remained there peacefully for some time, concealing their presence from the ever-watchful Aeto who still sat upon his throne of power in Xolumir.

Tragedy struck when Aquila began to see the first signs of the coming apocalypse. As was prophesied by the Oracles of Kreona, the return of the Light presaged the wrath of the Shadows as the Ancient Fear fell upon the world and sowed the seeds of primordial chaos wheresoever it struck, corrupting the minds of men and compelling them to serve the dark agenda of the Fiend by granting them vile magicks not meant to be wielded by mortals. Aetomemnon was slain by one of the wicked daughters of Meghido, allowing his envious son Makrozoia to claim his throne and lay the groundwork for his thousand-year Empire to come; cruel monsters who had slumbered beneath Scylla since the Before Times rose from their watery graves to bring the remaining brave defenders of Aquila to their knees; the chains of the Aether were sundered, allowing the realms of both the Ephemeral Living and the Eternal Dead to overlap perilously; by the time the Sky fell with the calamitious death of Diocretius, blanketing the earth in a sea of flame and burying most of Aphelion beneath the blood-drenched waves, the Mother had been reclaimed by the Shadows, leaving her devastated followers to swear vengeance against the Ancient Fear and his legion of evil.

Led by the priestess Ophelia, the followers of Rhea gathered at the foot of Temple Sidon and conducted a prayer ceremony entreating the aid of the fallen Mother to help mend the broken world of man. Legend holds that on that faithful morning of remembrance, the three moons of Aquila aligned and an emissary of the Mother descended from the heavens to assure the supplicants that their prayers would not go unanswered. The angel's name was Solvanas, and it was at her suggestion that Ophelia and her cult committed themselves to avenging Rhea's memory by restoring peace to the forsaken land. The Guardians of Temple Sidon were founded, and though the order were at first content to merely serve out their capacity as the holy place's unwavering custodians, Ophelia quickly made her intent to expand their operations to the martial clear.

The Skyfall left Aquila in a state of pandaemonium. With the world of man seemingly forsaken, the embattered masses flocked to the few stable beacons of safety and succor, particularly in Kilran, where Aetomemnon's armies faced such indiscriminate punishment by the hordes of the Ancient Fear as to utterly rend the land, setting ablaze the once great fields of wheat and toppling the grand fortresses which would have defended the huddled serfs against the Fiend in any previous era. From the ashes of the dominion built by Aquila's first god-king rose his sole child Makrozoia, who was born with the spirit of a god but the flesh of a man. In spite of his lack of celestial might, the prince's shrewd hand allowed him to exploit the power vacuum and establish himself as his father's only legitimate successor, claiming divine authority to name himself sovereign over all the lands of man so that he may lead a united Aquila to a new age of prosperity in the dreadful wake of the Skyfall.     Ophelia and her Guardians cooperated with the prince; while his mercenary armies worked to restore stability to the oblasts south of the Xolumir capital, the Templars embarked on a crusade to cleanse the snow-topped hills of Mendea, which had been fallen under the influence of the blood cult of Dambalah.

Though the Mendean doomsday cults were disorganized enough to be sent scurrying into the shadows after a relatively brief campaign, word of unprecedented crises breaking out in flashpoints across Kilran and Ertdor continued to reach Temple Sidon by the day, not to mention rumors of scattered but formidable remnants of the Ancient Fear's armies building their own new spheres of influence on distance shores such as Occa and Audax. Though Ophelia would die valiantly in the siege of Dambalah's final stronghold in Belial, it was clear to her successors that the work of fulfilling the Mother's will was still far from finished, and the order's ruling council of Archzealots declared their intent to reorganize the ranks into a military brotherhood. Ser Alexander Lionheart was appointed as the first Templar Grand Master, immortalizing the fallen Ophelia as the order's first and only individual to ever hold the coveted office of High Priest.

Shortly after Makrozoia declared himself Sovereign over his new Empire, he entered into covenant with the Templars, enlisting their hardened Zealot Knights to serve as the field commanders of his monstrous Nightmare Legion. With sword and shield in hand and an army of warriors both man and monster at their disposal, the Lionheart and his champions marched across Kilran and Ertdor first in search of the Fiend's remnants, and then in relentless pursuit of any whom they deemed tainted by the Shadows of primordial chaos. Though they styled themselves as the Army of Light destined to secure a lasting peace for all mankind, the ensuing crusade saw countless thousands of accused heretics both guilty and innocent slaughtered with neither mercy nor remorse in a calamitous chapter of Aquilan history remembered today as the Hundred Year Darkness. Virtually all threats to the nascent Empire were utterly destroyed as the man thenceforth known only as the Mad King ascended his throne of corpses; meanwhile, the descendants of Alexander hung up the axe, retiring to their sanctum in Thel Olihim as all traces of the Old Ways were seemingly eradicated. The Empire adopted the doctrine of the Templars as its state religion; all practice of the unholy arts was outlawed under the punishment of gratuitous public executions, with the only recognized gods being the earth-mother Rhea and her children, the royal family of Aetomemnon. To the Templars, the institution was to be called the Church of the Heavenly Mother and based in the holy site of Thel Olihim, while within the royal echelons it was simply the Imperial Cult.

The Templars emerged from the Hundred Year Darkness at the apex of their power, having been rewarded generously by the Mad King for their capacity as his potent executioners. Their vassals were granted lordship over many realms in Kilran and beyond, allowing them to establish new strongholds of power across Aquila from which they could swell their ranks with willing warriors eager to secure their place in the new Imperial order. In the generations following the Darkness, the Templars slowly distanced themselves from the Empire, seeking to rehabilitate their image into peacekeepers and guardians rather than the zealous butchers of eld. They grew increasingly weary of their old ally the Mad King as well, having thwarted a series of plots to eliminate their sphere of influence, all of which were traced at least in part back to the unholy tyrant.

Over the centuries, the Templars continued to maintain strongholds throughout the Meridian, though with the world in an extended state of relative peace - albeit won at an unspeakable cost - the need for them to maintain their expensive foreign outposts dwindled, and it was time for the order to re-examine their operations once more. At the height of the Imperial era when the Mad King withdrew himself within his castles and laboratories, leaving the many realms under the Empire's banner unprecedented levels of self-governance, then-Grand Master Elidibus the Pure called a general assembly of the entire order to meet in their ancestral home of Temple Sidon. At this nigh-unheard of occasion, Elidibus and all his seneschals, provosts, governors, auditors, and commanders decided to formally reorganize the order into what is now regarded as the first corporation in modern history. At the top of the hierarchy would be the Circle, including the Grand Master and their most trusted appointed advisers, who would together comprise the formal executive of the Templars but largely govern their own regional chapters as semi-autonomous statelike entities thenceforth, maintaining a constant presence throughout Meridia without the constraints of a central bureaucracy in Kilran.

By the late Imperial age, the Templars were still relatively ubiquitous across Aquila, though their power mostly manifested in the form of extensive stakes in the world's economy rather than military might. The order controlled the debts of several sovereign nations and held majority stakes in many lucrative and powerful financial entities such as the Exchange in Dreiton. The core knightly brotherhood remained, but they had largely retired in their duty as mage-hunters, now humbly maintaining their remaining monastaries and serving as formidable mercenaries when the Circle required protection for its trade routes. By the 4600s, cracks were beginning to show in the Imperial infrastructure. The central government held little to no real power, as all of its subjects were de-facto fully independent political entities by that point. Worse still, rumors abound that the Mad King had been corrupted by the Old Ways, raising serious concerns as to the legitimacy of the monarchy itself.

The Templars, under leadership of Grand Master Septimus Furnace, feared that a general uprising against the Imperial court under suspicions of witchcraft would destroy their legitimacy, and so quickly devised a conspiracy to assassinate Makrozoia and install his sons as dual puppet rulers of a rejuvenated Empire. Prince Novrakosh and Helgrind were manipulated into believing that their reclusive father was planning to have them killed so that in the wake of his death the Empire would erupt into civil war due to the lack of an heir apparent, granting him retribution from beyond should his court conspire against him. The two gods confronted the Mad King in the throne room of Xolumir's imperial palace, and would have been defeated had the Templars not pre-emptively stolen the emperor's sword, Invidere, and given it to Helgrind, depriving him of his greatest powers.

The Mad King's apparent death was celebrated throughout the Empire as its citizens wondered how the realm would change under the hopefully kinder leadership of his sons. However, the temporary relief was quickly sullied when both Helgrind and Novrakosh began to openly covet the throne, preparing their followers to march into the palace and fill the power vacuum left by Makrozoia. The Templars, still under the command of Furnace I, supported Novrakosh when civil war seemed inevitable. They branded Helgrind a traitor to the Empire, accusing him of being tainted by the Old Ways just like his father before him. It became clear that the sons would never share power and a peaceable solution was impossible; a few short months after the death of the Mad King, the Kilran War began, splitting the continent in half between the supporters of Helgrind and Novrakosh. Though it was relatively clear that Helgrind had little chance of seizing the throne from the start, he prolonged the deadly conflict as long as possible, seeking to leave the Empire in a state of ruin once his brother eventually prevailed. After a long and bitter campaign, the Kilran War concluded with a climactic duel between the two brothers atop Mount Apollyon; Novrakosh indeed triumphed, but was careless in the moments following his victory, allowing Helgrind to afflict him with a deathly curse upon his dying breath.

As for the Empire, the rest, as they say, is history: After Novrakosh inevitably perished from his brother's hex, the royal court voted to dissolve itself, and the thousand year Aquilan Empire finally dissolved after generations of painful decline. The Templars survived the dissolution but were greatly weakened in their influence, with their resulting lack of imperial authority irreversibly diminishing their sway over the nascent citystates rising from the ashes of the Empire. 100 years after the fateful royal coup, Grand Master Josef Furnace, descendant of Septimus, made an unsuccessful powerplay in Olexia in an attempt to win Sivistys for the Templars, resulting in a staggering financial loss for the order.

Shortly thereafter, a faction which splintered off from the Followers of the Old Ways became ascendant in Ertdor, threatening to spill over into Kilran and inspire a return of the Old Ways which would greatly disrupt the world's fragile order if successful. The hordes of the Kokushi were highly organized and disciplined, dispatching their agents across the land to distribute occult paraphernalia and build hidden bases from which to conduct their violent raids. In light of the unprecedented threat, Grand Master Furnace mobilized the Knights Templar, calling upon all active strongholds to rally behind him and his right hand man in the Bastion to stop the Kokushi's plan to resurrect Prince Helgrind, whom they believed to be the rightful successor to Makrozoia. In concert with a band of young heroes called the Templars, the Kokushi were defeated, but their temporary victory began a chain of events which ultimately led to a turbulent summer that saw the Mad King and a horde of his Nightmare Legion briefly return to the mortal plane and wreak havoc upon huge swaths of Aquila.

Some years later, the independent sect of Templars based in Occa found themselves in conflict with the Outlanders when a plot to overthrow King Puffin of the realm of Medriaas turned out to be orchestrated by Commander Triton himself, pursuing an agenda of his own to revive and subjugate the slumbering spirit of the Mad King to protect Aquila from an apparently resurgent Moros. The Occan Templars, who followed their own interpretation of the Church and knew Rhea by the name of Thash, were ultimately defeated after Triton was possessed by Makrozoia and subsequently defeated by the Outlanders, permanently dispersing the Mad King's corrupted sprit throughout the Aether without hope of ever reforming. Triton was spared by the Outlanders after his defeat and became their ally in a quest to quell the Ancient Fear before it was able to return to Emanation.

The Templars were at the forefront of the ensuing conflict known as the Aether War, in which the Ancient Fear and his dark armies descended upon Aquila in pursuit of its assimilation into the Void. Grand Master Garland, having usurped his old friend and predecessor Furnace after he descended into madness, aided the Outlanders in their quest to defeat Moros, even joining hands with his rival and former black mage of the Kokushi Ben Holliday to meet the greater threat. With the righting of the ancient wrong committed by the Titans, the Heart of Moros was returned to him, and having reconciled with his consort Rhea, his rage was permanently sated, sealing himself and his love within the black hole at Emanation's center for all time.

Garland was struck by the revelations of the Aether War, which challenged the doctine of the Templars that had gone unquestioned for centuries. His subsequent attempts to reform and modernize the order led to his ostracization from many of the more conservative factions within the Templars, especially once it became apparent that the events of the alien incursion had caused the Old Ways to return in force throughout Aquila. Declaring the order to have lost its way, Ser Beryl Aster, another former friend of Furnace, seceded from the Templars and founded the Sin-eaters. She intended for the Eaters to fill the void left by the Templars when they began to lose their zeal for mage-hunting in the wake of the Hundred Year Darkness. Aster took many loyal knights and benefactors with her, including her ambitious daughter Jeanne, leaving what remained of the Templar order deeply fractured. Garland, for his part, went into self-exile and traveled south in search of new ventures; with the Grand Master position left vacant, many claimants have attempted to rally the support of the remaining Templars to little success thus far. The Circle have assumed collective leadership of the original order, retreating within the walls of their stronghold in the mountains of Olexia to recuperate their losses and plan the future of what remains of the once fierce Knights Templar.