The day after Liliam opened her meridians, I asked Lingfeng to bring me any reading material about the Templars that he could find, so I might understand what they are about. Know thy (potential) enemy and all of that. He had complied, so I was now staring at a couple of those thick-ass history compendiums, and was feeling a migraine coming over. They were not a pleasant read by any measure, but they WERE useful for understanding the world I was living in.
Basically, the current overall duty of all of the Templars was to safeguard the Silk Road. The “Silk Road” is a broad term, because it’s not just ONE road from point A to point B, but rather a myriad of many trading routes that all criss-cross and interconnect with eachother to create a stable unique network. The Silk Road was the only “safe way” for the passage of goods and people from the west to the east side of the mapamond and vice-versa. I also have to point out that “safe” is a relative term in this context, because the Silk Road still crossed quite a few dangerous zones that bordered monsterland Qi infested zones, but the presence of the Templars at regular intervals and inside of the caravans as guards and escorts made everything much safer. Only about 10 % of all cargo got lost every year, which in this context and period, was quite acceptable.
The other business that the Templars engaged in though, which nobody immediately associated with the “Holy Men” if you were to ask a random person off the street, was a heavy amount of coin transactions and “Pious” loansharking. Since they literally “owned” the only safe passage across the world, they had a system of magical communication relays that connected the west to the east which allowed for merchants to deposit money on one side of the world, and collect on the other side, without having to worry too much about thieves along the way. Bandits would only be able to steal a writ of money deposit paper if they attacked, which would be very hard to claim on the other side if you were not the real depositor or intended target, since most were “blood” contracts that identified the users with a small drop of their blood via some strange magical devices, when it came to claiming the money.
The “authentication” devices and the “network” was an invention of the mage’s guild, who had also sold the technology to the Adventurer’s Guild, an institution that had branches all over the world. It allowed for an adventurer or merchant who had registered himself inside a certain kingdom to leave and move onto another place of work without losing his coin deposits, rank or privileges. Basically, the Mage’s guild was milking cash from both the business side of the Templars as well as the endeavours of the adventurers without having to do much except perform maintenance on the communication system, which was not that hard.
For a backwater planet like this, I was certainly surprised to find out that some sort of an “internet-like” system was already in place, connecting the whole world from city to city, but I guess Momma System needed that sort of thing if she was aiming to please the “Player” accounts that would not have the patience to do everything “manually”. It enabled the existence of the Adventurer’s Guild as a global organisation, which was good for every humanoid race out there, since the adventurers were the “wall” that stood between the wild Qi infested and monster-filled areas of the word and civilisation as a whole.
The Templars main base was located inside the Empire of the Sun, which was a swathe of land that lay across almost 35% of the entire length of the Silk Road, and was a desert-oasis landscape on the bottom-half of its map and a mountainous green region on the top. The Silk Road crossed mostly the desert section of the Empire, so assume that’s why that Lady Hoho had called the Templars “Plated-Head Sand-Eaters”. The Empire of the Sun was a weird Empire, because it supposedly had an “Immortal Emperor” that had been at the helm of the place for thousands of years already, and was also the main reason the Empire of the Sun had NEVER, EVER been conquered by anybody throughout its entire history. It was an Empire with “fixed borders” that had never expanded nor had ever lost any land, and the neighbouring countries that surrounded the Empire had become smart enough to not try anything anymore in the direction of the Empire after so many failed attempts. For some reason, this “Emperor of the Sun” dude was so fierce, that nobody dared to cross him, so I smelled a paid user account, or even worse, some sort of System Game-Master figure. The Emperor had built his Empire on that particular spot on the map because of one major motive. The Empire was where the World Tree was located at. Within the “green” mountainous regions of the upper section of the Empire, a humongous Tree sprouted out of the Earth, and was kilometers long in both height and width. It was said to be the “spawn place” of all sentient races in the world, as the Word Tree was the “First Son” of Ghaaia, the Earthmother, the Holy Tree that had created the “seeds of life” for everything that could be considered animal regnum across the world, Humanoids included. The World Tree was also thought to “hold the world together”, because it connected all of the other continents with eachother through its roots, aka the spirit ley-lines.
In my opinion, the whole Empire of the Sun was just the System's way to create a “safe zone” for the fresh incoming Players, similar to a “starter village”, where they would be able to level safely without the fear of suddenly stumbling across the high level monster that would tear them to pieces, which was actually quite a common occurrence when it came to the REAL wild and unrestricted places of the world.
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As far as the Templars went, there were four major factions that I had to worry about. The largest and most important one was the Temple of the Sun who followed the God Soll, which was considered to be the Sun in the sky itself. Everybody usually called them the Sollarites, and were what you might call the “standard paladin package”. Healing and buffing, with a little bit of damage dealing on the side, all mostly holy or light based, elemental wise.
Saint Draun Mortdecai, the “Holiest” of all Templars, led the Temple of the Sun and was the wielder of the Holy Blade Chrisamier, an indestructible bastard sword of unfathomable heavenly power which was said to have been given to the Grand Templar by the gods themselves.
Wow Mom System, way to go with the copyright evasion on that sword name, sheesh!
Mortdecai was a mystery, since he never showed his real face, was as ancient as it gets, being over 700+ years old, and was surprisingly well respected for his level-headedness in all encounters and feared in combat. Apparently he had once taken down an Elder Fire Dragon all by himself in a direct faceoff, and that was his general excuse for not showing his “burned” face to the world. I called BS, because if he was so holy, then why could he not simply just use the light to heal his face off?
Besides him, the Temple of the Sun had a handful of other Senior Knights just like Fall, and I was amused by their names. Senior Knight Sord Kai, Arcanist Faayier Everburn, Senior Scout Harrow the Silent, Assault Leader Martell Moreton, Lead Diversionist Trapp Ackermann, Senior Knight Gravitas Johnson etc. They all sounded like sordid ways to die, which I assume was the intended purpose in the first place.
The second group was the Temple of the Flame. This was an off-shoot of the Temple of the Sun, a sort of a “little brother” to the main Order, where the Sollarites usually sent their more “fervent” believers in the warming properties of the solar rays, or better said the psycho arsonists that were too volatile to become regular Sollarites. Worshipping the incinerating aspect, rather than the light giving part of the Sun, the Flame Templars were renowned for their brashness and hot-headedness. They were also renowned for their very, very short lifespans. They were the first ones to jump into the fray and also the first ones to kick the bucket, just like it had happened during that Demonic Cultivator encounter a few days ago. Yet surprisingly, that Temple still had a huge following, with many new recruits queuing up for the slaughter, hoping to be able to take up arms and vanquish some “evil”.
And let me tell you, their definition of “evil” for the Flameboys was quite broad. These guys were the type to function based on the mentality that “you are either with us, or against us”, without ever noticing the shades of grey inbetween, in contrast to the “normal” Sollarites, which were a lot more mild in their approach to solving problems.
This of course, put the Temple of the Flame at odds with a bunch of other factions in the world, even with the more moderate ones.
They were almost the mass produced versions of Leeroy Jenkins for this planet. Still, their order had managed to persist for thousands of years, mostly because of the aid given by the Temple of the Sun when shit got dire. The “big brother” Temple just could not bear to see the disappearance of the “little brother” Temple, no matter how much of a numbskull Little Temple was.
Unfortunately, the presence of the Hero of the Flame inside of the Blue Mountain of Books Sect had also attracted the attention of the Templars of the Flame, and I knew that those guys would be very quick to judge if they ever found anything about me.
The third group was the Temple of the Harvest. Their symbol was that of a couple of yellow criss-crossing heads of grain, and represented the “growth and abundance” brought about by the Celestial Orb.
These guys were basically the business management section of the Temple of the Sun, overseeing the exchange of money, the traffic of goods along the Silk Road, the hiring and distribution of guards for the caravans, as well as employing a sort of a bank-loan system for the would-be entrepreneurs that seemed promising.
Basically, the guys that would be chasing down after your ass if you defaulted on the payments that you owed to the Order of the Harvest would be the Harvester Templars, and these guys acted exactly as you would expect out of asset reclaimers from a medieval world. Broken bones first, and if you did not pay even after that, well...sucks to be you, meet the fire. And the Harvesters ALWAYS reclaimed their assets.
The fourth and more remote group was that of the Temple Of the World Tree, or the Treestians as most called them. These guys were slightly weird, because they worshipped and fervently protected the World Tree instead of the Sun, but were still closely attached to the other Templar groups, since the World Tree was “The Holy Son of Mother Earth and Sun above”. Their symbol was that of a trefoil cross, seemingly depicting the World Tree in a simplified way. This specific group was also very popular in the Western Countries, as even the High Elves had outposts of the Order within their Empire together with the rest of the other western kingdoms. Heck, even the orcs and beastkin had allowed the Treestians within their borders. They were also known for their incessant “conversion” tactics and door to door preaching.
I could see it now, a couple of plated guys with swords knocking at the door and screaming “Have you heard about our Lord and Spawner, Jeezdrassil?”. I guess even in a different world you could not get rid of those sorts of people.
The only thing that I had to do now was stay below the radar as much as possible, and keep the fuck away from the Templars, especially the Flameboys. I just hoped they were not doing anything to Jin, since he was quite in a vulnerable mental state at the moment, after having lost his beloved ”grandpa” demon. I also needed to have that long-overdue “serious” talk with Lingfeng.