Kingkillers
As a society only a few centuries away from their tribal roots, the Cobalt Protectorate government has seen its fair share of grasping, conspiracy, and intrigue on its way to the representative form it takes today. On occasion, individuals or groups of individuals have sought to take authoritative control over portions of the Protectorate in contravention to the precepts of Code of Evermorn and without the assent of the people. In these situations, it may fall to members of the Cobalt Knights to kick these would-be dictators out of the halls of power and restore order.
The Kingkillers are an elite investigative branch of the Cobalt Knights trained and commissioned to provide just such a check on authoritarian power wherever it might be found. Members of this branch are at once internal investigators for the Cobalt Knights leadership corps, sergeants-at-arms for planetary and system governments, and special operators embedded with allied governments for similar purposes. The Kingkillers have the power to eject leaders who attempt to overstretch their tenures or attempt to sieze power beyond their legally-permissible grasp - including through the use of force if required. Carefully vetted, instructed, and armed, the Kingkillers have been the causative force beind the collapse of numerous attempts to circumvent the lawful succession and limits of governing power over the course of their long and storied history.
Composition
Manpower
As they are, thankfully, seldom needed, the Kingkillers are a comparatively small group of veteran soldiers, representing about 0.5% of the total strength of the Cobalt Knights. The Kingkiller are not meant to be the sort of overawing force that can usurp the government in their own right, as this would also represent a danger to the political norms of the society. The force is, however, just large and present enough to remind Clan Lords and Elder Knights alike that they are to peacefully quit their posts in the circumstances and in the manners prescribed by the Code of Evermorn.
Structure
The Kingkillers have their own internal hierarchy that is a microcosm of the Cobalt Knights, wherein they function much like military police as found in other militaries throughout the Sealed Kingdoms Region.
Because they have the unusual and dangerous power to overturn government and military authority, it is crucial to the legitimacy of the Kingkillers that they remain solidly within civilian control and within the jurisdiction of the law. Upon the exercise of their remit - whether through force or simple arrest - a Kingkiller must be brought before a civilian court to provide justifications and public accountability for their actions. The Kingkiller themselves are not immune to prosecution and sentencing within the Protectorate Penal System should they prove to have acted outside of their own bounds as set forth in the Code.
History
The founder of the Kingkillers is widely regarded to be the Elder Patron Shank Moswen himself. Wurth Harkin, Shank, and the rest of the Harkinite Expedition returned to Evermorn from the liberation of Lepidos - casting down Elikaias Martram and his Occult Fraternity - only to discover that a young member of a noble family from Clan Mackinnon had orchestrated a coup d'eta against the then-nascent Cobalt Protectorate's government in their absence at the head of a mercenary army. Wurth, still wracked by guilt for having rained nuclear weapons on Lepidos to accomplish the goal of liberation for the Northern Lepidosian Monotheists, wavered on how to deal with the situation without destroying the fledgeling nation in the process. While Wurth demured, Shank did not, strangling the upstart in view of the entire Grand Council.
Since this event, while emergencies may extend the tenure of a Clan Lord by up to a year, only a scarce few have deigned to claim even this exception for fear of what might follow. Wurth and Shank subsequently established the Kingkillers and gave them a mandate to serve as a check on other such threats to the representative system, including those unwilling to surrender power, would-be leaders of coups, and those who would seek to pervert the foreign policy role of the Cobalt Knights to carve out their own little fiefdoms in the periphery. Counter-intelligence and counter-insurgency efforts aimed towards preventing the subversion of representative government have since also fallen into the remits of the Kingkillers as technology and social advances have increasingly enabled these avenues of attack.
Despite their grisly mandate, the presence of the Kingkillers in the halls of power have, by and large, been more associated with the protection of Clan Lords and other officials appointed through the Protectorate's system of merit sortition. After all, an attempt on the life of a political leader is often the beginning of machinations to replace him or her with someone more amenable to the attacker's goals.
Type
Special Forces
Overall training Level
Elite
Assumed Veterancy
Veteran
Used by
Ranks & Titles
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