The Venger Knights
Watch out for someone with a 600 year old grudge. Getting between them and their goal will always end up a bad place to be.
The Letter to the Romans famously states, “Vengence is mine; I will repay, says the LORD”, so I can only imagine that these the Venger Knights must have skipped that verse in their Bible reading schedule for they took it as their motto while they set out to settle a very old score.
The Knights Command, as I’ve explained on their page here, spread out across the world in the 1100’s close on the heels of any European army, explorer or decent-sized fleet of merchants. They discovered a lot and sent a lot back home to their various supervising Monarchs in Europe. But not everything, it turns out. It’s hard enough supervising someone working down the hall, but half-way across the world in the 12th century it was more than impossible.
(Rollover to see day turn to night)
Zarpulay overlooking Ormuz, Persia, 1309
Set up in 1203, the three things the Commander Knights were looking for were magic, weapons of war and beasts suitable for war. In 1301, a chap named Zarpulay was in charge of the ‘searching for beasts suitable for war’ job in Persia and the Near East. He found a few things he thought he’d keep for himself, slayed all the Commander Knights he could (most of them), then took their booty and set himself up as effective protector of the King of Baghdad.
Of the Commander Knights who survived his purge, a few remained loyal to him, so he had his own ready-made army too. A few Knights who didn’t think Zarpulay was the future of the Order (and had survived his murderous personality) managed to return to Europe and wasted no time in recalling the rest of the Knights Command from across the world to hunt him down.
The Knights Command returned to the Near East, destroyed Zarpulay’s forces (and those of the King of Baghdad, just to teach him a lesson) but though they didn’t know it at the time, they didn’t get Zarpulay. And they didn’t get the dragon he rode down to the coast at Ormuz where he built an Ark.
And so began a cat and mouse game lasting centuries.
RS