Origins of the Lunar Templars

[Mr.Moloch]

This history of the order is known only to members of the order, explained after they have sworn their oaths, the secrets contained within are considered too dangerous for anyone outside the order to learn because what is known to the enemy, empowers the enemy. It is widely understood that this is but the first volume, and that those who climb the ranks of the Templars discern more clearly the threats the order and the denizens of the Tears face.

On the Origins of the Lunar Templars and the Sacred Charge of the Tears vol. 1

Being an Historical Treatise by Brother Astor Helian, Keeper of the Fifth Archive, Citadel of the Silver Moon

"History is not written by the victorious, but by those who endure."

Many who encounter our Order believe us to be merely another company of Selûnite knights, founded to combat lycanthropes, undead, and servants of darkness. Such folk know only the shadow cast upon the wall, not the flame that casts it.

The Lunar Templars are older than the Fall of Netheril itself.

Our oldest surviving scrolls, though damaged beyond perfect recovery, place the founding of the Order during the waning centuries of the Empire of Netheril, when the archwizards had turned their gaze skyward and the floating enclaves still ruled the heavens. It was in those days that explorers first reached the celestial bodies known as the Tears of Selûne. Though many sought wealth or magical curiosities among those wandering stones, a small fellowship returned with a far stranger account.

Within the forgotten ruins scattered across the Tears they found evidence of civilizations older than elves, dwarves, or even the giants—builders whose names are lost to all but the oldest stars. Their halls contained relics of astonishing power, yet almost every ruin bore the same unmistakable signs: desperate fortifications, abandoned sanctuaries, and evidence of an enemy that had not conquered through war alone, but through corruption.

The explorers returned convinced that the Tears had not escaped some ancient calamity.

They had survived one.

The priestesses of Selûne who examined these findings reached a conclusion that would become the first doctrine of our Order. They taught that the Tears were not fragments scattered accidentally through the heavens, but places deliberately preserved. Selûne, they believed, had saved them from destruction so that one day they might be redeemed.

Thus was born the Lunar Templars.

The Order was founded not to conquer kingdoms nor to spread a faith, but to stand eternal watch over forgotten places where the mistakes of elder ages remained buried. Knights, priests, explorers, and arcanists bound themselves to a single oath: no relic too dangerous for mortal hands would be left unguarded, and no ancient darkness would be permitted to awaken through ignorance.

To this end the founders established the Citadel of Alumdra upon one of the Tears, where they could watch over the surrounding ruins while remaining beyond the ambitions of Netherese princes. Alumdra became fortress, monastery, library, and reliquary alike. Every expedition recovered relics, maps, and histories from abandoned temples and shattered cities. Every discovery was carefully catalogued before being sealed beneath the Citadel.

It is from this age that our traditions of exploration arise.

Unlike many holy orders, we have always believed that courage without curiosity invites disaster. Every knight is expected to become a student. Every scholar must understand the sword. Every priest must walk the forgotten roads before presuming to interpret the will of the Moonmaiden.

For nearly three centuries Alumdra flourished.

Then came Atropos.

The oldest accounts never describe Atropos as a world, nor as a god, nor even as a creature. Instead they speak of an eye opening beyond the stars.

Where its gaze lingered, nightmares became flesh. Ruins that had lain dormant for millennia awakened. The dead refused peaceful rest. Strange aberrant beings crawled from forgotten vaults beneath the Tears, while the very stone seemed to remember ancient despair.

Grandmaster Alaric Moonshield ordered every relic beneath Alumdra sealed.

Dame Seraphine Dawnmantle commanded the walls.

Scholar-Magus Vaelor Thrice-Wise collapsed entire vaults rather than allow what lay within to be reclaimed by the corruption spreading through the Citadel.

For forty-nine days Alumdra held.

It fell nonetheless.

The surviving Templars escaped aboard Netherese vessels carrying only a fraction of the Order's archives. Behind them the Citadel disappeared beneath darkness, becoming a place no expedition has ever fully reclaimed.

—Brother Astor Helian

Copied from the Fifth Archive.