Die Kreuzritter

Besides, why would the Vaticine Church need a secret band of killer warrior-monks? They had the Inquisition already, a very public band of killer warrior-monks. What problems could the Church possibly have that a hand-picked group of Inquistors couldn't handle?

The Inquisition is the police force of the Vaticine Church. While they have a few "detectives," Inquisitors who excel at investigating odd circumstances which smell of sorcery or heresy, mostly they are a band of enforcers. Go here, find these people, stop them and correct them.

They are also unsubtle and unbending. They can be sneaky when they need to be - witness Jeremy Cook's abduction from Avalon. But their purpose is to make an example of enemies of the church, to elict either public confessions and renunciations or else to stage public executions. And even before Cardinal Verdugo was High Inquisitor, the group attracted the sternest, least flexible members of the Church. These doctrines over here were right and holy, and these over here were wrong and evil. The evil must be destroyed. There was no middle ground.

The Church finds it useful to occassionally occupy a middle ground. At least for a little while. After all, they don't claim to know the full extent of Theus's Truth yet. Sometimes, you have to suspend judgement while you gather facts and learn.

Die Kreuzritter were almost exterminated. But, just as not every Bianco from every branch of every bank was in the manorhouse that the Black Crosses burned, not every Kreuzritter knight from every monastery and every hospital was in Tannen in 1411. The survivors kept their heads down, lest the Imperator decide to finish the job. Word got out, slowly, to gather in Altamira in Castille.

The Hierophant, bending to the will of the Imperator, had accused them of heresy. That was the excuse he needed to attack the order en masse. They couldn't go to Vaticine City for aid - yet. They posed as an eclectic band of lay worshippers in Altamira for some years; the locals thought the "group of hermits" were a bit odd, but they were godly folk who offered healing without charge in service to Theus. Had there been a famine or other disaster in Altamira during this time, die Kreuzritter might have found itself scapegoated for it - but Theus smiled on them.

The Hierophant eventually died. Did the Order of the Black Cross avenge itself on him for his treachery? Today, even the Hochmeister professes not to know the full truth of the matter. After the new Hierophant was elected, a few select members of die Kreuzritter went to Vaticine City to speak with him.

While the Hierophant would readily admit, in private, to the injustice done to them, the Order could not publically be reinstated. The Eisen Imperator was simply too powerful to confront on the matter. Their lands were forfeit and their name tarnished. But the Hierophant hoped to make amends. He pondered the matter for several days, consulting with the monks occassionally, and finally rendered an offer.

The office of the Hierophant could use a group of highly trained, loyal, invisible men and women. Not assassins - well, not primarily assassins, anyway. But there were times and places where the Church wanted trustworthy people on the ground, investigating certain matters quietly. Particularly occult matters - too dangerous for bookish theologians, and too delicate to send the Inquisition. For instance, the Church had long tried to determine the true nature of the otherwordly creatures rumored to haunt the Glamour Isles. The native priests refused to pry into the "Goodly Folke" and the Inquisitors who went... well, didn't come back. They had been too rude, according to the local priests who'd interred the bodies.

Die Kreuzritter has, for roughly 200 years now, been an invisible hand for the Vaticine Church. When they need to send a special, secret emissary to consult with the Patriarch of the Ussuran Orthodox Church, they send a Black Cross knight. When someone needs to go to Cresent lands officially forbidden to the faithful, it's the same. But they have become the Church's best specialists in all occult matters: lost sorceries, ghosts and spirits, demonology. If rumors of Legion-worship or a Castillian fuego mage reach the Church's ears, die Kreuzritter will usually be sent in first, to determine the truth of the matter. If there is a problem and it is best solved quietly, they do that. If it is better left to the Inquisition, they are called next.

The Black Crosses hold the Inquisition in some contempt, seeing them as clod-footed, half-educated fanatics. The Inquisition, while not officially aware of die Kreuzritter, certainly has its suspicions that someone in the Church is attempting to supplant or supercede their Order. Hints that the Hierophant knew and approved held their own investigations in check; now that the Hierophant is dead and no replacement seems likely to arrive soon, Grand High Inquisitor Verdugo is stepping up efforts to learn more about his shadowy rivals.