The six holy orders founded after the Second Crusade to defend the Peoples against the Deceiver.
| Order | Charge | Motto | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Order of the Phoenix | The Holy City & the Most Holy; rooting out the Arts of the Corrupted | ”Revealing Light, Purifying Fire” | Active (West) |
| Order of the Eagle | Hazad | ”Soaring Prayers” | Active (East, sided with the Sultan in the Fourth Crusade) |
| Order of the Raven | Morrschatten | ”In Sacrifice, Meaning” | Active — neutral in the War of the Three Princes (GM) |
| Order of the Swan | Averoigne | ”Honor and Faith” | Active — its Knight Commander claimed the throne and died fighting for it; the order divided (GM) |
| Order of the Gull | Cardacci | ”Through the Storm” | Active — fought a demon alongside the Owl in 1735 (GM) |
| Order of the Owl | Everything the others do not defend | ”Vigilant in Darkness” | Dissolved Spring 1736; members executed (GM) |
Members of any Order Militant gain access to the War domain — see The Faith of the Maker.
The heads of the Orders Militant sit on the seventeen-member Divine Council that elects the Most Holy (Western Church) — which makes an order’s command a political prize, not just a military one. That matters for the Owl: Marc Abayante held that seat until his assassination in Summer 1731, and Jehanne d’Allais, installed by Michel d’Envers weeks later, held it at the Spring 1734 convocation that elected Baldessare Malipiero. See The Fall of the Order of the Owl.
How the Orders Work (GM)
From the GM’s Orders Militant primer (Sources/Orders_Militant_Eastern_Hazadi_Player_Primer_v2.md) — ordinary educated knowledge:
- Every ordained knight is a priest. A knight can marry, bury, bless, and conduct rites; the Orders need no separate chaplain class. Not every member is ordained — lay brothers and sisters (soldiers, sailors, clerks, healers, intelligence personnel, quartermasters) are the larger part of any Order, and a senior lay officer can matter enormously without ever being knighted.
- Progression: recruit → religious and military training → squire (or lay service) → vows → ordination as knight-brother/knight-sister. A squire is being formed for knighthood, not employed as a servant — and is trained for the career their Gifts suggest, which is not always the battlefield. Ranks above: knight-lieutenant, knight-captain, knight-commander (normally the head of an Order), plus order-specific offices.
- Rank beats birth inside the walls — a common-born and a noble-born knight of the same rank are peers, though the noble keeps their outside advantages.
- Local commanders have real discretion. Messages take weeks; chapterhouses act on their own authority, and the Orders are known for producing officers used to consequential unilateral decisions.
- Vows are lifelong but not celibate. Knights marry, own property, and can retire honorably — most often when they inherit a great title. Former knights keep the identity, the friendships, and the obligations.
- Gifts cluster in the Orders — deliberate recruitment plus Church examination funnels the Gifted in, and no Order has as many as it wants. Reputations differ: the Raven, Swan, and Gull run to martial Gifts; the Phoenix to investigation, detection, and divination; the Eagle values both.
- Jurisdiction is layered, not supreme. An Order answers to the Church; a ruler requests rather than commands; a knight cannot simply order clergy or lords about. Orders are accepted most readily where something is plainly beyond ordinary capability — Corruption, dangerous Gifts, supernatural threats — and resented when they meddle in ordinary disputes uninvited.
- They are elite institutions, not armies. Their weight is concentration: training, discipline, Gifts, religious authority, specialists. Crusades bring several Orders together with no permanent unified command — coalition politics every time.
- The Eagle is substantially larger than any single western kingdom Order.
The Raven’s history — the Betrayer Queen was its own head — is on Order of the Raven.
The Older History (S7 — library reading, handle with care)
The Balventia library adds a deeper and messier past than “six orders founded after the Second Crusade”:
- Imperial-era books record “the Holy Orders of the Five Courts” — orders named for the Heavenly Courts — patronized by emperors; the Phoenix was “once founded as the order of the day”; an order of the moon was declared anathema with its head Aurelius Balventius. See The Orders of the Five Courts for the full evidence table and what it might mean.
- A post-schism history of the Orders Militant — narrator of uncertain reliability, and critical of the western orders — adds: the Eagle started as a church guard that guarded the emperor in the early days of the Empire (compatible with the primer’s “predates the Sultanate, early Imperial period”); the Swan had secular origins and only later became religious; the early Owl was focused on reverence for the court of Stars; and the Gull is “a glorified navy.”
The tension to hold: the founding story above (all six created together, post-347) and the Court-order material don’t obviously fit. Nobody has reconciled them — see the rename theory on The Orders of the Five Courts.