Heart of Oak

New Haven's Paladins

Falcher knew little about these paladins or Torcall. From what Sura told him, the paladins were the enforcement arm of Huma designed to use Torcallism, as it had been nicknamed, as a justification for carrying out the law of the land. It sheds some light on why Gabriel never left the shadows of the alley to return to civilized society. It explained the heavy footprint of the city guard. It was a power grab by those in command. Sura called upon her followers and obtained a small stack of books about Huma and the Paladins and told Falcher to read up.

Most of the books were a slog to read through. They read like frog egg clusters on wet paper. A thousand pages later, he did find something interesting.

Emperor Ademus Torcall had used the chaotic period of the Phodusic Wars to establish a unified multi-city country, one of the first of its kind, late in the first era. With twelve cities under one banner through careful and thorough politics, Emperor Torcall amassed an army. The ninth legion became known as the Paladins of Torcall as they were some of the hardiest and most capable soldiers under the emperor's command. Under his banner, they marched with a degree of funding that the other eight legions never saw and had equipment that no other city-state could compete with.

Some cities challenged Torcall's ninth legion and lost, some heard the news and surrendered upon its arrival. There was one league of city-states that held their ground the best and resisted his reign for twenty years. This was the Commonwealth of Oskary. Consisting of sixty-two cities, they challenged Torcall's ninth with an amassed army of nearly two hundred thousand levies and mercenaries. The second and fifth legions were called upon and while able to save the ninth from a total loss, the first war with the Commonwealth was a decisive victory in its favor.

Twenty years later, after Torcall finished conquering the rest of the continent, he placed all fifteen legions on the Commonwealth's border and without any formal warning, marched. The Commonwealth of Oskary fell within two weeks after being unable to mobilize any meaningful amount of resistance.

Torcall spent those twenty years, downplaying the first Commonwealth War as nothing more than a probing attack. Persistent campaigning and propaganda efforts painted the Ninth Legion as undefeated and aside from that war, it truly was undefeated.

For the next few millennia, the Ninth Legion was repurposed from an offensive shock army of elite soldiers to guardsmen. Some would consider it a downgrade but becoming a guardsman was one of the best-paying jobs during the height of the Empire of Humanity. Of the guardsmen, there were the elites, the Royal Guard. The Royal Guard was under the direct command of the Emperor himself and as he amassed power through influence and physical wealth, he'd begun to accrue magical capabilities as well.

At first, it was unknown how or why but it's known today that a rare gene within Humans does more than give them access to mana. This gene doubles their sensitivity to it and allows them to essentially spellcraft at will without the need for the arcane language. Through Spellcrafting, Torcall made the ninth legion into what is known today as the Paladins of Torcall.

Blessed with Torcall's wisdom and strength, the Paladins are both formidable fighters and tacticians. To further strengthen them, beyond what their lifetime of rigorous training can do, they were granted heroic-class weapons. These weapons had even more boons, buffs, and effects to force fights in the favor of his men.

The Second Commonwealth War was the first sighting of these heroic weapons and the main reason any resistance met was quickly demolished. A largely unknown detail of Empirical history is that the Commonwealth had a large population of were-creatures and a sibling species to modern beastfolk that have since gone extinct. The heroic-class weapons within the ninth legion were specifically enchanted with spellcrafts designed to induce a form of holy smite against were-creatures and the half-breeds.