Karkovian King's Guard

The Karkovian King's Guard is exactly what it sounds like - an elite force of knights and mages that is answerable directly to the king of Karkovia. However, their functions go far beyond guarding the person of the king.
The King's Guard is assembled from the highborn and lowborn alike who distinguish themselves in two key ways: loyalty to Karkovia and the crown and competence. The latter is defined somewhat more broadly than the first, which makes the King's Guard full of skilled mages, investigators, healers, and security experts in addition to the grizzled warriors that one would expect to fill the ranks of such an organization.
The Guard's wide range of capabilities mean that they have a correspondingly large range of jobs to do. They guard the person and holdings of the king and royal family, but also patrol the king's roads (it is important to remember that "king's road" has a very specific definition in Karkovia, and does not count even some busy thoroughfares, which are typically left to the liege lords of the territory they wind through) and provide security for the criminal courts. They also investigate nobility suspected of plotting against the throne.
The Guard enjoys a reputation of being extremely honorable, if not particularly compassionate. They abide by a strict code of conduct and are not known for being vindictive or cruel when taking prisoners into custody, but neither are they particularly flexible or prone to being swayed by any sort of arguments at all. If they have decided it is time to arrest someone, they will make the arrest and the justice or injustice of the circumstances leading to that are up to the courts to decide.
The Guard also maintains the various prisons and gaols around Karkovia that serve the Royal Court of Justice. When it is left up them, prisoners are treated fairly well, if somewhat coldly, but it is not always left up to them, and they are completely unswayed by the screams of victims if a royal torturer is sent in.

Type

Military, Knightly Order