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Order of the Nite

This article contains significant spoilers for Game of Tomes in 2024 and the coming season. Read at your own peril!
While I would hope that most sane people would be on board with trying to save the world from the Undead, I'm well aware that some people are not sane. It certainly wouldn't surprise me if there was some cult out there that wants us all to be undead, or maybe tries to serve the will of the Night Monarch in the hopes that they'll be spared. There are always nihilists and fascists hiding in the woodwork.
— Queen Sable, addressing her Owsla in an intelligence meeting
  The existential threat of the The Undead Horde is a fact of life in the modern world that everyone must contend with. Most of the world is prepared to fight for their lives, and society has reorganized itself in the wake of 2020's zombie apocalypse to do what they must to face that threat. While certainly this has been a terrifying struggle, thus far, the world has managed to pull together for its own survival, and in many ways, it has even begun to thrive in the face of this challenge.   To some, however, the threat represented is simply more than they can bear. They recognize, in what they would call realism, and what others would brand as nihilism, that sooner or later, the living's luck will run out, and the world will be plunged into eternal darkness.   The Order of the Nite wants to be on the winning team when that happens.   Nominally, the Order of the Nite is a cult that worships the Night Monarch and wants to serve them, in the hopes that when the world is all dead, they will maintain their will and sanity; unlike most regular people who become Zombies. In reality, many of the Order's membership wouldn't really think of it as worship, it's just that they'd rather side with the toughest motherfilker in the valley as a practical consideration. Or perhaps they believe that being of a dark inclination, or being an edgelord, brings them more power, and don't really understand what being undead might actually mean. Maybe they played too many roleplaying games, and have some grand delusion of becoming a Lich Lord or a necromancer of note.   The leaders of the Order do not care. They are happy to put anyone to work who serves their agenda. Of course, those who are not truly loyal to the cause will be the first sacrifices made, when sacrifices become necessary.

Structure

The Ordo Noctis is organized much like an underground resistance movement. Tiny cells coordinate through coded messages or a single person with other tiny cells, to minimize who can reveal what, should anyone get caught. These cells are referred to as "covens" in the records of the Order. They are international in scope, and have been operating behind-the-scenes for centuries.   However, they do have a strict hierarchy, and that hierarchy is organized much like the Knights Templar. There are three main ranks: the Knights, the Sergeants, and the Chaplains.   Knights used to be actual knights, but these days, that rank refers to the people who are close to non-literomancer seats of power, whispering doubts in the ears of the wealthy and the politically significant, as they once did with the noble classes. In very recent times, Knights have been expanded to include hackers and cyber-warriors, as well as those who have some sway with the media.   Sergeants, who were once non-noble men-at-arms, refers these days to the people who do the "dirty work." These tend to be military contractors, criminal leg-breakers, pirates, and the like. They take on the more aggressive, potentially combat-oriented missions of the Order.   Chaplains are the spiritual leaders of the Order, ordained in the mysterious, secret rituals that serve as the Order's dark heart. They also acquire and interpret esoteric knowledge, and keep the Order's records — although there is no one location in which all of those records are kept. That is, unless one believes the rumour that these records are secreted away within the heart of the Vatican.   The Order is ultimately overseen by a Grand Master, who keeps their identity strictly concealed, even from the rest of the Order.   The relationship of the Order of the Nite to literomancers is complex. From time to time, literomancers are inducted into the Chaplains of the Order, so that their magical powers and literomantic knowledge can be utilized. However, they are very careful about which literomancers they approach in this way. Such a candidate must be completely devoted to their purpose, must have few living relatives, and must have almost no contact with other literomancers. In other words, they tend to pick up and radicalize the ones who have fallen through the cracks. For the most part, however, they prefer to manipulate and suborn the literomancers they use without truly bringing them in to the Order, since they cannot fully be trusted for obvious reasons.   At one time, the membership of the Order was strictly male, but over the centuries that practice has been abandoned, and now, anyone of any gender may potentially be recruited.

Culture

The Order of the Nite views itself as the heralds of the inevitable. Since there is no way to avoid darkness, it is best simply to embrace it, and to look to one's own future within the coming new world order. They see themselves as the shadows that are inevitable consequences of light, and prefer to remain in the shadows. Indeed, operating in the open is highly frowned upon. Keeping the Order's secrets is essential for survival, and exercising covert power is highly respected.

Public Agenda

The Order of the Nite has no public agenda. They wish to remain as unknown to the public as possible.

Assets

The Order has a number of chapterhouses throughout the world. A possible weakness in their careful planning is that they can often not resist setting up shop in anything that might have been associated with the Templars, although those "shops" will always be masquerading as something else (for instance, there is a coven of lawyers who operate out of Temple Church in London, although as far as anyone knows, they are simply members of the Inner Temple of the Inns of Court.) They never officially own anything in the Order's name, however.   When taken collectively, the Order has amassed a vast collection of esoteric knowledge and writings, although none of it is supposed to be stockpiled in one place. However, there is a faint rumour among those who have heard of the Order (which is precious few) that they keep many of these books and documents in a secret chamber in the Vatican. No one knows the truth of this.   Chapterhouses always conceal a small armoury for the Order's use. The contents of these armouries range from enchanted swords to modern firearms and explosives, and from poison to even a few chemical or biological weapons acquired from The Company.   Recently, the Order has also established a private server for their clandestine internet activities. The location of the server remains unknown.

History

There are as many conspiracy theories associated with the Knights Templar as there are stars in the sky. The best known is probably the idea that they secretly worshiped Baphomet, and were, in fact, some kind of Satanic order, or had become one over time; followed closely by the idea that the Templars were, in fact, an order of secret Literomancers in a time when literomancers were regarded as heretics and witches.   It is currently the official position of the Catholic Church that the persecution of the Templars was unjust, and had been initiated by a propaganda campaign and the threat of military action sparked by King Phillip of France, who owed the Templars a considerable debt through their groundbreaking banking system.   For the most part, this is true. However, another accusation that was leveled against the Templars was that they worshiped a mummified, severed head that was recovered at their stronghold on the Temple Mount. While most of the Templars had nothing whatsoever to do with this, and had no idea it was going on, there was a small, secretive cult within the Templars who were, indeed, keeping a severed head; the head of a Night Monarch. What they were doing with it was anybody's guess.   Uncovering the activities of the cult in this way was purely accidental; King Phillip's persecution was politically and financially motivated, and almost certainly, any of the Templars tortured or burned at the stake were innocent of any wrongdoing. However, the discovery of this severed head added fuel to the political fire, and no doubt contributed to things ending as violently as they did.   The Order, which was at that time just a cult, would have preferred to keep their safe haven hidden and intact, but the end of the Templars forced them to figure out another way to hide in plain sight. On Samhain of 1312, the year the Templars were dissolved, the Order of the Nite (or Ordo Noctis in the original Latin) was initiated in a dark ritual, the details of which have been lost to history.   Why this cult formed within the Knights Templar remains a mystery. It is possible that its mysterious founders simply stumbled on something they should not have in their broad travels and extensive scholarship.   Since then, the Ordo Noctis has been working behind the scenes to undermine Literomancers however they can, to break resistance against the Undead. It was they who began turning the political tide against the literomancers that brought an end to the Golden Age of Literomancy, by whispering poison into the ears of the nobility. It was they who helped to bring about the Inquisition. It was they who helped to break down the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which was a stronghold of the House Lapin, and it was they who encouraged both the Communists and the Fascists to imprison scholars and burn books. It was also they who leaked key pieces of information to The Company that allowed them to root out certain literomancers, and to find The Iron Tome.   They changed the English spelling of the Order's name when Erin Righ emerged as The Nite Qing in The First Word War.  

SPOILER: What the Order of the Nite is currently up to

The Ordo Noctis has been working against literomancers for a long time. It was they who murdered Alina Lapin, leading to Lapin's flight from Languedoc and the eventual creation of the Lapin Secret Library hundreds of years ago.   They seized the opportunity when Queen Sable Aradia started carrying the Iron Tome on her person to protect it, and sent a Sergeant of the Order to assassinate her and take the artefact. The assassin was killed by Owsla Commander DM Stretch and Prinx Tempest Kwake — which was fortunate for the Order, since their method of execution was fire, making it impossible to either question or identify their agent. The Bunny Queen survived the assassination attempt through the intervention of Erin Righ, who summoned a Litwalker to heal her. After that, they faded back into the shadows and contented themselves with manipulating the Company to do their work.   When using the GOT News Network and the Company as a front for their efforts to undermine and work against the Tome Knights failed, however, and even backfired as popular support for literomancers increased, the Order was forced to take more direct action than they have for centuries.   They sabotaged the wards that Lord Galakrond and Queen Sable Aradia were creating in Windy Willows "The Den", in the hopes that their Void powers would simply swallow the Willows whole, as the Void did with the city that was once in the Great Crater. The effect was far less dramatic than they could have wished.   They also kidnapped Dr. Wilhelm Mamby-Pamby, former head of the Centre for Filking Control, to gather information about the literomancers he was watching, in the hopes that some of that information might be used against them. They attempted to force Prinx Tempest Kwake's cooperation through a ransom demand, because they had uncovered the end-of-the-world prophecy When Fire Speaks of Trauma, and mistakenly believed this might apply to the Tomeverse, rather than the 1337 Speak Reality. This drastically backfired because of the mutual hatred the Prinx and the doctor held for each other. Dr. Mamby-Pamby remains missing.   Recently, the Badger Kings Darth Nikolas and Realm of Music have also gone missing. The Order is also responsible. This is likely because in their attempts to pursue leads regarding the Iron Tome and the Night Monarch in the Neutral Territories, the Badger Kings were sniffing too close to the Order.   They might also be responsible for the disappearance of Cryssalia the Penguin Prinx, and now, Regent EGryph as well.
 

SPOILER: What others know

After the sabotage of the wards, Queen Sable and the Owsla know that something is going on, and there is a hostile force somewhere that at least has it in for House Meles. However, they and the Brocktrees chose not to make that information public in the hopes that they could draw out the guilty parties by feigning ignorance. The disappearance of Dr. Mamby-Pamby gave credit to that hypothesis, although no one can be certain that the two events are related.   The Bunny Queen also strongly suspects that the original assassination attempt had more behind it than just the Company, because she feels the effort was a strong departure from their typical methods. Her suspicions, however, were mostly forgotten in the emotional turmoil of becoming aware that Lord Galakrond had been suborned by the Company, using mind-manipulating nanobots, to arrange her poisoning.   Queen Sable also wonders if the disappearance of the Badger Kings is connected, somehow, especially after the ward sabotaging incident. However, there is no evidence of that, and she doesn't want to focus her gaze on one hostile party when there may be multiple. The Owsla suspects that the unknown saboteurs may also have something to do with the disappearance of Lord Galakrond, and likely so do the Brocktrees, but the Bunny Queen and Princess Sunny know this is almost certainly unrelated for reasons they have yet to disclose.   She has not yet connected the disappearance of the Avis Leaders in any way, nor has she yet connected the murder of her ancestor.
This article is a work in progress, and may be subject to changes.
 
This article is part of a series related to streaming the Game of Tomes. For more information, see Streaming Game of Tomes.

Vigemusque in Tenebris "We thrive in darkness"

Founding Date
October 31, 1312
Type
Religious, Cult
Alternative Names
The Order of Shadow, the Cold Hearts, Ordo Noctis
Training Level
Professional
Veterancy Level
Trained
Demonym
Nitewalkers, Cold Hearts
Divines
Related Species
Related Ethnicities
"Shadow," a Sergeant of the Order of the Nite, plots against the Mother of Bunnies (except for the section that begins at 1:51 and ends at 2:38, entire video is relevant)
 
Warding the Willows: the Order of the Nite's act of sabotage
 
Right Sneaky B*stard: What Queen Sable, the Owsla, and the Brocktrees know
 
Weaving a Web: Queen Sable, Prinx Tempest and Lord Galakrond discuss their plans to draw out the saboteurs
 
The Kidnapping of Dr. Mamby-Pamby


Cover image: Iron Tome by Misades

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