Knights and Knightly Orders in the Sea of Stars (A to Z Challenge, K)

When the dragons carved up the world in the aftermath of the Gods War and the Sundering, most came to the realization that actually governing was dull and unpleasant, so they restored or established new power structures and placed themselves at the very top.  So far on top that they only needed to deal with major, as in populace destroying level, of problems.

One of the tools available to them were the military aristocracy, the knights, who the dragon could easily understand at least.  Most dragons were happy to take on the patronage of Knightly orders in their realm and several dragons (such as Ba’ai’i) even created new orders from the ground up to their specifications.  New knightly Orders have continued to be founded, about half of which are directly or indirectly sponsored by a draconic ruler, with those with a draconic patron more likely to be focused solely on martial achievement and military glory.

Knightly orders in the Sea of Stars are likely to work closely with magic wielders: the Eosiante Knights of the Sun are a quasi-religious order that stands with the Church of the Sun, though they are always careful to bow to the state and their distant dragon overlord.  The Laccini Order of Gold works closely with the necrourgists of that Kingdom often fighting side by side with unliving troops and wielding vicious magic weapons.

A handful of the old knightly orders, shattered by dragonrule, have become secret societies plotting to take back what was theirs.  Most of these have degenerated into simple criminal conspiracies by this point but they still lay claim to (a very tattered) noble heritage but a very few remain true to their original ideas, acting as knights errant in a world with a surfeit of dragons.

Notes: Knights just need to exist in a high fantasy game, of course samurai, martial artists and all sorts of other wandering heroes exist in the Sea of Stars too.

Cloth image by Daria and knight photo by narzissysiphus, both used under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.