The Platinum Order

The Platinum Order is a land of knights, ruins, monsters, and fear. This was once a land of wealth, of great cities and high castles; but so many lie abandoned now, flooded and infested with terrible creatures. The countryside is a misty land of forests and farms, ruled by a patchwork of knightly fiefdoms. Many of these shining knights isolate themselves from their people, silently afraid of knives in the dark. Heresy lurks behind every corner, as extremist priests preach fire and brimstone to overworked peasants, who are pushed to harvest greater and greater amounts of cash crops. Knights and their crusading warriors hide their coca distilleries among the ruins, running their petty fiefs like private narco-states.
This is a land deeply scarred by Ederstone - the site of a successful crusade that has now fallen into a deep decay.

Structure

The Platinum Order is a decentralized feudal theocracy, led by the Grandmaster. Surrounding the Grandmaster is the inner clique, a bureaucratic organ of veteran warriors and priests with close ties to the Perpetual Conclave of Desmia. The Grandmaster rules with the Conclave's permission, for as long as they require - but typically the Conclave accepts whichever candidate the inner clique elects. The inner clique's rule is strongest in the wealthiest region, Kalmana, particularly the insulated urban parts in the West.
Much of the rest of the Order's lands are ruled by highly autonomous lords or semi-independent chapters. The lordships are semi-hereditary and require military service to hold or inherit. The chapters are basically oligarchic councils of less-powerful knights. Both lordships and chapters are a mixture between the descendants of crusaders and warriors from other parts of Desmia who are promoted up within the crusade. 
The current Grandmaster is Tirnel Brighthelm, a new appointment by the Conclave and a relative newcomer to the Order. Tirnel was born to Avanan lesser nobility, but pledged his life to crusading abroad. He was brought into the Order in the late 1980s as part of the attempted reorganization by the conclave, and has proven himself as an expert warrior, tactician, and theologian since. His generosity has made him popular in Kalmanan cities and towns, but his association with the purges of the late 1980s makes him quite unpopular in the countryside. Once an idealist, he has since become ornery and reclusive, and there are whispers that he has picked a fight with the Conclave that is steadily escalating.

Culture

Purity and Ederstone

Much of this land has been touched by Ederstone - patches of it can feel strangely like Stildane at times. The use of Ederstone weapons have even produced a Starspawn population. The damage to the land and the people has left an atmosphere of demonic presence and corruption - monuments to demonic evil are everywhere, embedded in the very plants and animals. Some lightly mutated creatures are tolerated (depending upon their usefulness), but for the most part mutation is seen as synonymous with evil. This is particularly rough for the Starspawn population, who are shunned but tolerated by the Orthodox Desmian faithful and are actively persecuted by the Seruvian heretics. 
Everywhere in the culture, there is an obsession with familiarity and 'purity': the knights see the peasants as dangerous and infected with heresy, while the peasants see the knights as debauched and infected with demonic corruption. Communities suspect one another of corruption and heresy, and outsiders are treated with fear and revulsion.

History

Before the Order (pre 1505)

Before the Platinum Order, before the wars, the land now owned by the Platinum Order was a beacon of prosperity and stability. This territory and more was controlled by the Koshikari Dynasty, a grand empire that occupied most of Southeastern Desmia. The Koshikari were a Kalmanan family that united their home region in 1053 and merged with the ruling Tederi Dynasty of Odvin in 1059. They rose to prominence in the 1100s through 1300s, and were the primary engine behind the Pearl Crusade - the wars against the Borim invaders from the Northeast. When the Desmian priesthood gathered together to reform and organize the faith in 1480, the Koshikari hosted the newly formed Perpetual Conclave.

The Koshikari struggled to contain the Borim, and in the latter half of the 1400s ME they lost major engagements in the Northern isles that allowed the Borim to seize parts of the island of Traya. The Koshikari had overextended themselves in defending Desmian interests on multiple fronts, and with the rise of the Seruvian heresy they were suddenly facing a new front at home. Add in a mercenary rebellion in the mainland Koshikari lands that fused with an invasion from the neighboring mountains in the late 1400s, and the Koshikari were at the weakest and most disoriented at the start of the 1500s. In 1502 ME, the island of Traya suddenly fell completely to a strange new force: the Exalted Fleet of the Kivishta, armed to the teeth with monsters and Ederstone weaponry. The Kivishta did not linger in Traya for long, and in 1505 the fleet sailed Southward to invade the Koshikari mainland.

The Kivish Wars (1505 - 1630)

From 1505 to 1550, the Kivish launched a full-on invasion of Koshikari lands. The main fleet landed in the East, in the provinces of Odvin and Rengurka, while splinter fleets swarmed across the coasts. The Koshikari summoned all the forces they could to repulse this invasion, resulting in a string of horrific defeats. The only thing that prevented an easy Kivish victory over all of the Koshikari lands was the relentless resistance of local Desmian towns and villages.

Ezefka is the rebellious mercenary/invader kingdom
In the 1540s, a massive coalition of Desmian forces marched together to fight the Kivish to a stalemate. While most of the Desmian armies were crushed in the process, their stubborn waves of new armies were able to put the Kivish on the defensive. In 1550, the Kobold Priest-Queen negotiated a ceasefire with the Desmian coalition. The great power of the Empire of Avana agreed, and the others quickly followed. The Koshikari emperor, bankrupt and exhausted, agreed to join the ceasefire in 1551 - much to their subject's fury. Seruvianism spread like wildfire in the occupied lands, led and organized by the infamous heretic Tethros the Swift.
From 1557 to 1590, the Kivish regime collapsed into infighting. The Koshikari feebly attempted to intervene, but they lacked enough foreign support to make any significant gains. Finally, in 1590, the Koshikari were able to coordinate another lesser crusade into their former lands. The fighting, which dragged on for 20 years, was brutal, but slowly made some progress. Unfortunately for the Koshikari, another Kivish fleet arrived to conquer and reinforce the first in 1610, with mutated a massive mutated elder leviathan to boot. The lesser crusade doubled down against this flood of foreign firepower, to no avail. In 1628, the united crusading princes were crushed at the Battle of Gotlen, and the Kivish retook all the lands they had lost to Koshikari counterattacks. Other Kivish raids, Borim invasions, and outside incursions distracted the Desmian powers, and the Koshikari were again left to hold the line. The Koshikari sent a desperate plea to the Perpetual Conclave, which began organizing a Grand Crusade.

The Platinum Order is Born (1630 - 1740)

1630 was a busy year. It was the year that the Platinum Crusade officially began, under the purview of the Order of the Platinum Knights (called the 'Platinum Crusade' to market it as 'the crusade above all others'). Later that year, the Seruvians across the Southeast launched their own People's Crusade, which sought to carve out their own heretical utopia in the East. And towards the end of the year, the Koshikari dynasty fell into open civil war.
1630 to 1650 was a nightmare free-for-all across the land that shattered the Koshikari dynasty into nine component states. The war against the Kivish and heretics continued, though. The Platinum Order seized more and more de facto authority as the central crusading body of the former Koshikari lands. When horrific hurricanes surged across the land in 1710, the majority of the lesser Koshikari states outright collapsed. The Platinum Order stepped in as the formal government of much of former-Koshikari land in 1712.
In 1729, the Platinum Order won their first major field victory against the Kivish at Kuneth Fields - a monumental achievement, the first battle where Desmians not only won against a similarly sized Kivish force, but were able to capture and contain one of their Ederstone weapons. Desmian morale soared, and the Kivish seemed scared for the first time since they arrived. When the last Exalted Kivish fleet arrived in 1730, they continued onwards to Ralev rather than bothering to fight the Platinum Order. From 1730 to 1740, many Kivish warbands in former Koshikari territory abandoned their nightmare realms to sail Northwest, to join the invasion of Ralev. The Seruvian People's Crusade made incredible progress reoccupying their territory behind the Kobold lines, and in 1735 they placed a Desmian puppet government in Odvin.

Heresies Abound (1740 - 1781)

In the 1740s, the Kivish seemed to have gone from the greatest of threats to the least of threats. The fragmented Kivish were either fleeing, hiding in the mountains, or converting to Orthodoxy - one of their wizard-priests, a Kobold by the name of Zevrela the Wise, began a mass movement towards Orthodoxy on the island of Rengurka in 1739. The Seruvians, meanwhile, seemed to be infiltrating the Order and building a power-base in Odvin, and hives of feral Ederstone monsters had become a major threat to stability.

While the Platinum Order continued to battle the Kivish, the focus began to pivot towards Seruvians. When Seruvians (possibly with the assistance of the Victor's Circle ) attempted a coup of the Platinum Order in 1745, and were able to attract several local nobles to their banner, their heresy became the main focus. From 1745 to 1763, the Platinum Order waged a massive combination civil-war and invasion of the Seruvian realms to the North. The Platinum Order won the military conflict, but arguably lost the cultural one: while they took total control of the Seruvian territory, they did so using brutal methods that alienated the local populace. The Platinum Order had been able to rely on their role of Liberators to secure local cooperation and public order, but after 1763 they were seen by many as occupiers. To make matters worse, they began seeing themselves as occupiers; they treated local communities with suspicion, sometimes little better than captured Kobolds. Knights of the Platinum began ruthlessly taking local lands for themselves, exploiting the residents (who they saw as inevitable heretics in hiding) with the same ultra-violence that they wielded against the Kivish.

One Last Kobold War (1781 - 1800)

The wars with the Seruvians distracted the Platinum Order from a threat rising in the East. The Kivish, warring among themselves, had been divided between the radical Exalted Path zealots and those who wanted to settle down in Rengurka as syncretic Desmians. One Kobold, a charismatic priest and strategic genius by the name of Valaskr the Scourge of Rumek, united all the Kivish who still wished to fight. In 1781, Valaskr told all who followed her to abandon their lands for another Exalted Migration, through the Platinum Order to the weaker and less-experienced realms West. Valaskr's forces may have been small, but they were devoted, disciplined, experienced, and well-armed with finely bred warbeasts.
After centuries of Kobolds fighting in more-or-less the same ways, the Desmians were caught off guard. Valaskr moved quickly and ferociously, with aggressive mobile energy not seen since the 1500s. After losing a major field battle, the Platinum Order was faced with a choice: risk everything on an all-out attack on Valaskr's rapid attack, or prioritize keeping important lands safe. The Grand Master of the Order chose the latter.
Some call what was done "the great betrayal" or "the Platinum Crime". While the Perpetual Conclave and the Platinum Order deny that this was done to this day, archival sources do indicate that there is some truth to the accusations: that the Platinum Order shifted their forces South, lured Seruvians into the field to be attacked by Valaskr's forces, and made something of a corridor for the Kobolds to escape through. Valaskr's initial trajectory was to move through the South to attack the Holy State of Drinika, seat of the Perpetual Conclave, but they very suddenly moved North, where they faced remarkably little resistance. Some more conspiracy-minded scholars might even point to the way that the Kobolds spared many loyal towns while razing Seruvian-aligned settlements as proof that Valaskr and the Order brokered some kind of back-room deal, but the evidence for such a conspiracy is sparse at best. Orthodox scholars, meanwhile, argue that Seruvians simply tried to occupy the land the garrisons left behind and were therefore natural targets, and that the entire Platinum strategy was based around the assumption that Drinika was always the main target - and that the idea of a "corridor" only exists in retrospect. It is a matter of heated debate to this day.
Either way, the Scourge of Rumek slipped through the Platinum Order's lands and into the Kingdom of Elakrin in 1782. Valaskr would carve her way through the Desmian center before finally invading the Empire of Avana in 1791. It was in Avana that Valaskr and her forces met their end - Valaskr was slain by Avanan crusaders in 1840, and her last followers fled into the mountains in the North to join the Ralevan fleet. The Kobold threat in the South was finally over.

Stability and Decay (1800 - 1900)

Between roving monsters, Kivish dregs, and Seruvians, the Platinum Order has never stopped fighting. Minor Kivish factions remained a peripheral threat for decades, but by 1860 the only actual Kivish in the Southeast were the Rogue Fleet - a nomadic fleet of Kivish pirates with living ships, who were elusive but not exactly an existential threat.
Through the 1800s, the Platinum Order was guided by the philosophy of Grand Master Taynen of Odvin and his clique of like-minded knights: that the only way to defeat the Seruvians was to build a lasting peace, and that limited tolerance of heresy among commoners was necessary to dull its powers of conversion. Similarly, Taynen believed that deporting Kobolds to Rengurka for conversion to Orthodoxy was better than bloodthirsty crusading - Orthodoxy had won, it just needed to de-escalate the situation enough to starve out these rival ideologies. This philosophy brought peace and stability to the region for the first time - but it didn't succeed as fully as expected. The monsters were contained (somewhat), the Kivish were largely neutralized, and the Seruvians were forced to adapt their ideology, but other problems blossomed under the surface, unchecked.
The relationship between the Order and the populace was brought from open hostility to a begrudging peace, but it never fully healed. The Order's culture was also much more Avanan-Pakrayan than local - and the fact that locals were always treated with suspicion ensured that they could never advance socially. The fragility of the regime also allowed corruption to grow. As long as it wasn't open violence, bad behavior of knights went tolerated (if it was ever even detected) - particularly financial corruption. Seruvians and the Victor's Circle began infiltrating the regime, though the corruption was hardly limited to them.
Adding fuel to the flames was the rise of a new industry: coca wine and coca powder, an intense and addictive stimulant. Coca leaves from Izekra were introduced by Adavan crusaders in the 1600s, and they were bred to better suit the local climate in the 1700s. Chewing coca leaves for bursts of emergency courage and energy is a tradition in Izekra, and it was not used recreationally there or on crusade. What transformed the use of coca leaves was the work of High Alchemist Arvala of Ederum, a chemist commissioned by the Perpetual Conclave with reverse-engineering and mass producing healing potions for Orthodoxy in the late 1700s. Arvala tampered with coca extract and refinement in her pursuit of a 'Potion of Strength' - and produced the recipe for coca wine, and later coca powder purification, as a result. These recipes were distributed among the Platinum Order during the last Kobold wars as a potential weapon. During the peacetime, the knights began producing surplus coca wine and powder for sale. Reclaimed land (from monsters or the wilds) that was originally intended for distribution among the peasantry was instead used for coca production. Peasant labor was exploited for coca production as sales soared across the Orthodox world: traumatized Desmian crusaders and partying Avanan aristocrats alike adored the stimulant. Diluted coca wine was also useful for experimental medicines.

Modern History

In the 1900s, the Platinum Order began to fall under greater scrutiny by the wider Orthodox world. The great crusades were over. The Kobolds had fled to the mountains; the Borim no longer raided; the Empire of Nefka had fallen; the Samvarans were no longer invading with great fleets. Coca wine use became more of a recreational choice than a weapon, and coca addiction was recognized as a problem by the Perpetual Conclave in 1962. Heretics and demon cultists also became the target of the century, as outside invaders were no longer a relevant threat - and the Platinum Order's open secret of Seruvian communities in the North attracted a lot of criticism.
In 1976, the Perpetual Conclave unleashed an Inquisition into the Order's leadership. Some worried that the drug exports were part of a Victor's Circle or Seruvian plot to undermine Desmian society, and other states worried that the Order's loose rule was allowing pirates and bandits to infest the land. In 1981, the Grandmaster of the Platinum Order was arrested for embezzling Conclave funds, and a mass purging of the knighthood began. It was focused on heresy and cultism over financial corruption, and the more corrupt Orthodox knights were able to keep their drug and smuggling operations by cracking down on heresy instead.
The Seruvians again were able to attract local communities to their banner, as the Conclave bungled the 1981 purge and exploitation only increased. Local discontent only grew when the Conclave worked with Rengurkan mediators to broker a peace with the Kivish Rogue Fleet in 1983 - settling them in monster-infested land in exchange for an end to their piracy. This did bring an end to their reign of terror, but it only fed into local Seruvian whisperings of Orthodox weakness and corruption.
In 1987, a new Grandmaster from the Holy Republic of Pakray was installed and began a series of "anti-heresy reforms" that targeted local communities and cultures deemed insufficiently Orthodoxy. These reforms were largely muffled by the autonomous knightly class (who recognized that their dubious financial schemes relied on not waging war on the peasantry), but certain knights - those who were pious and bloodthirsty as well as those who were under investigation and wanted to distract from other shadiness - leapt to enforce them. In late 1987, the town of Henel in Odvin rebelled and slaughtered a number of local knights and a Conclave inquisitor - sparking a peasant rebellion that spread across the land from 1987 to 1993.
In 2002, the assassination of a local knight again triggered a peasant rebellion. The current order is fragile, paranoid, and corrupt. What comes next is anyone's guess.

Demography and Population

Between 2 to 3 million humanoids live under the Platinum Order. 85% of humanoids are human; 7% are Starspawn; 2% are Vesper ; 4% are Haltia; 2% are Kobold .
The majority of Kobolds that once lived here have since fled, and it is expected that the remaining Kobolds will migrate to more tolerant states in the coming years. The Starspawn, meanwhile, are not natives of Stildane - rather, they are bloodlines of Ederstone weapon survivors or those forced to withstand prolonged Ederstone exposure.

Territories

The Platinum order occupies several regions across Southeastern Desmia: the populous region of Kalmana, the devastated rural warzone of East Eraketh, and the once-prosperous and now-ruined land of Odvin.

Kalmana is roughly 230 miles across and 200 miles wide. It is subtropical temperate forest, well-protected from storms much of the year and filled with small lakes and rivers. The most populous and prosperous part of Kalmana surrounds the great lake ___, which is 30 by 30 miles across.
Odvin is much more vulnerable to storms - and once, it had the infrastructure to weather them effectively. But now the dams are broken, the rivers and reservoirs have changed, and the land is even more prone to flooding than it was before the infrastructure was built. It is a long floodplain, with small mountains running along the South, full of lakes and swamps. Odvin is 280 by 45 miles across.
East Eraketh has mountains cutting it off from Odvin and Kaluta. The coast is swampy and subtropical, but the elevated interior is mostly temperate forest. East Eraketh is 100 by 100 miles across.

Military

The army of the Platinum Order is almost entirely run by the mostly-foreign military aristocracy, which blend together fighting styles from across Desmia. Corps of crusading veterans and elite knights lead conscripted levies of hardened local survivors, all of whom are experienced in fighting guerrilla insurgents and feral monsters alike. 
Local levies in the North tend to be light infantry and skirmishers experienced in hit-and-run tactics and ambushes; levies from Kalmana, meanwhile, drill weekly with longbows and are known as some of the best long-range archers Desmia has to offer. The elite knights tend to either act as heavy infantry or monstrous cavalry - a number ride the Ederstone-touched panthers once bred by the Kivish as mounts. 
For shock-and-awe, the Order has two standbyes: their war-lobsters and the Death Knights. Kalmanan and Odven salt-water war lobsters are some of the largest and most aggressive, and the Koshikari mastered the art of training and using them in war. Many are large enough to strap light artillery on their backs, as well as archer-filled howdahs. While the saltwater behemoths are the most eye-catching, the vicious and unusually fast freshwater war-lobsters are also terrible to face on the field.
The Death Knights, meanwhile, are perhaps the most iconic and intimidating of the Order's forces - a special order of knights dating back to the Kivish wars, who give up their former lives and identities entirely in the name of crusading. It is said that, through the use of substances, rituals, and horrific training, that these men and women become immune to pain and fear. They decorate their armor and bodies with grim trophies, ride the most fearsome and unstable ederstone beasts, and often are kept on leashes or chains when in a Desmian settlement (mostly for intimidation purposes, but some of them do get so into the role that it actually is necessary). Aside from intimidation, their cultish and horrific behavior does serve a purpose: even when they are touched by Ederstone and made monstrous, their wills are so focused that their monstrous selves continue the crusade. Not many Desmians become Death Knights, and their Order serves as a dumping ground for the most unstable and violent warriors who cannot return to their societies.

Religion

The administration of the Order is thoroughly Orthodox Desmian, though the countryside has a substantial number of Seruvian heretics. Orthodox religion is strictly mandated here - heresy of any kind is illegal, as well as any kind of foreign religion. 
The Platinum Order's priesthood is divided between 3 different Ecclesia (or regional clerical bodies): Odvin-Rengurka, Eraketh, Kalmana. The Order once had great influence over all 3 Ecclesia, but their influence has since faded.

Foreign Relations

The Platinum Order often bounces around diplomatically, and is something of a foreign policy wild card. The Holy Republic of Pakray and the Empire of Avana compete for influence within the Order, and the non-hereditary nature of the organization makes victory for either party temporary. 
The anchor of the Order is the Holy State of Drinika. Outside of a recent minor feud with Holy Drinika, the Order and the Conclave are ancient friends.

Agriculture & Industry

The Platinum Order is quite agricultural, growing corn, wheat, buckwheat, and rice. Rural estates commonly grow cash crops such as coca, cotton, and sugar, which are then processed and shipped out of the urban centers in the Kalmana. Mining and foresting operations are fairly common as well. 
The breeding of Ederstone-touched crops or creatures does occur, especially along the periphery; the stranger and more arcane breeds are generally only farmed by the most far-flung communities.

Trade & Transport

Powerful guilds organize all artisan activity, but most of the Order's trade is done by outside merchants.

"We Guard the Sacred Lands"

Founding Date

1630 ME

Type

Military Order

Alternative Names

The Kalmanan March

Demonym

Platinum

Government System

Theocracy

Power Structure

Feudal state

Currency

Asalayan Dungeon Currency: Gold Dragons, Silver Eagles, Copper Bulls

Major Exports

Coca products, food, lumber, warriors

Major Imports

Luxury items, tar, steel, horses

Legislative Body

The Grandmaster's Council

Judicial Body

The Court of the Grand Warpriest

Official State Religion

Orthodox Desmianism

Location

Desmia

Official Languages

• Desmian language

Neighboring Nations

• Holy State of Drinika