The Order of Saatti

Honor. The spear and the lance. The colour blue.

Saatti was a legionnaire — a soldier of foreign birth who led an army of foreign recruits in the empire’s early expansion. His name is remembered for the defense of Talins. Having taken the city, Saatti learned that a far larger enemy army was marching to retake it. Rather than subject the people of Talins to a siege, he led his army out to meet the enemy in the open field. His army was decimated. But when the victorious enemy turned to march into the undefended city, the people of Talins shut the gates in their faces and barred them out — and when reinforcements arrived, the enemy was caught in the open and destroyed.

That is the Order’s idea of honor: not the appearance of it, but the price of it.

Today the Order of Saatti keeps the rank-and-file order of the empire’s great cities and leads its common armies — and on the frontier, it backs the lords of Talinsthorpe, the Voznian dynasty that won Talins by conquest and has never fully digested it. Saatti’s knights fight with spear and shield: well-armored, disciplined, patient, and slow to forgive. Where their rivals raid, they consolidate. Their proxies hold the roads.

The head of the Order, where one is acknowledged, bears the title Knight of Honor.