The Order of the Knights of the Scar of the Sun is a cloistered order of twelve knights and twenty-four barlets, each scarred on the face, and one of the empire’s most powerful factions. Its seat is the castle of Primas; its motto, unknown to some members, is “hope is death.”
| Type | Knightly order |
| Spanish entry | Orden de los Caballeros de la Cicatriz del Sol |
Marks
Initiates are scarred on the face and carry a portable symbol, “a short v.” The sacred armors of the Order of the Sun, which “some still wear,” must never be worn by the uninitiated. Its “crossbows that are not crossbows” disintegrated armor at range; “the EDI gave them that.”
Seat
Primas was neither the Order’s first home nor empty before. Six-meter stairs descend to a hall almost ten meters wide on two rows of 1.5-meter pillars, preceded by two series of chambers where visitors are tested for worthiness and “marinated” by undue waiting. Outside, it is a cloister “on a fucking piece of mountain” — “some say a great oratory” — where “you bury yourself for life.” In a ceremonial place barlets were scarred and bathed in the master’s blood, which rose like vapor. On the tenth level below lay one of the most powerful factions, whose knights went “beyond the obsidian gates along the midnight circuit” (Obsidian Gates and Midnight Road).
Entry and rule
Recruits are sons, often younger sons, of important families; being sent there is also a punishment, like the Wall, for dissidents. Initiation demands blood and an ethical test: rulings on law and justice “sometimes even against the communal good.” In training “only three or four died.” Each knight’s place links two barlets across generations; this closed structure has lasted two or three hundred years, “and who knows if more,” with old privileges surviving change. Survivors rise fast in power, skill and sometimes influence, since the house sits over a mouth of the underground. The Order is fascinated with elves and once had half-elves.
Members
Knights are few: Veidun, Cualamón, Cuara, Cuaramón; Sir Sixto, rescued from captivity; Lumine, remembered with the Order of the Sun’s gear; Circisto, once of the order of light; Rudishva, founder of the Knights of the Cross of the Sun; and the Abbot, called to lead the order, scarred like any initiate.
Fall and revolution
After the ashes and a “very strong reverberation,” the Order fell into crisis and lost its armors and all its objects. It was infiltrated or co-opted by the ancients; Vallejo, signing as one of its knights, first reported that “the order of the sun was not what it seemed.” Under Malaquita came corruption, otherworldly connections and hidden technology. Another such Order, in Ardenbul, was corrupted. A revolution led by the Seekers now runs through it.
Related orders
Unsorted names: Cross of the Sun; Order of Light; Order of the Sun; Order of the Eye of the Sun (renewed, under a Pontiff); Order of the Sword (knowledge of portals and forms); Order of the Solar Lances (recruits for the solar faith); Order of the Temple, executed on the Isle of the Hall. Which are the same institution, and which preceded it at Primas, is unestablished.
Open questions
- Who took the armors and objects.
- What the EDI is, and why it arms a cloister.
- When and why the Order of the Temple was executed.
- Whether cloister, Primas and the realm below are one site; what the “short v” denotes.
- No founding date is known.