The Order of the Red Dawn

The Order of the Red Dawn is a knightly order with its own state in Maleros.

History
The god Allotar was worshiped in south western Maleros for at least three centuries before the creation of the Order. He was worshiped as god of the sun. He may have originally been part of a larger pantheon but with the advent of monotheism on the continent his worshipers began to equate him with the all powerful god of other religions. Over time his worshipers dwindled and were converted to other religions. Soon there were no communities left worshiping Allotar. However, there were priests who carried on the faith. These priests traveled the land, mostly Maleros, giving aid to those who they deemed righteous according to the teachings of the scripture.

The order's first high priest was named Garren Highwater. He organized the priests and gave them structure and direction. He claimed to have spoken with Allotar and is probably the author of the scriptures currently used by the order. For about a century the priests gave aid to those who sought it. They were skilled in the arts of healing magic and were often taken on by armies as field medics. In the first great Malerosan civil war the priests sided with the losing side and were made outlaws and hunted down after the war. For years they were hunted down and persecuted as heretics. Most of the priests found safe harbor in villages that saw it as beneficial to have a resident healer. It was during this period of persecution that the priests began to take on a military nature.

The persecution of the order ended when a new emperor of Maleros came to power that was favorable to the followers of Allotar. By this time the priests had developed into a more organized order, rather than bands of disunited zealots as they had been before. The high priest Roran Sunshield moved the order's center of operations to the city in southern Maleros called Arathra. He created the order's hierarchy that remains in place today and wrote the first code of the order. The code outlines how a member should act and what the rules of the order are. It is not seen as a religious text but as secular law that can be changed by the council of the order.

As the order grew in numbers and in regional importance their actions became less local and more large scale. Companies of men rode to war with leaders that were deemed to be favorable to Allotar. However, at this point they still did not have their own state. They operated from the city of Arathra but only under the authority of the city's lord. This changed when the lord fell in battle and left no immediate heir. In a controversial and risky move the council of the Order decided to take control of the city and the surrounding land which it governed. The Malerosan emperor at the time was weak and busy with war elsewhere and made no move to stop the order's unprecedented power grab. The people of Arathra welcomed their new rulers although the lords of the land remained rebellious for some time after the coup.

After taking control of the city, the Order took steps to consolidate their hold on Arathra, which became the name of the region they governed as well as the name of the capital. It was soon obvious that the Order's numbers were too few to govern the entire kingdom. The high priest at the time, Lukias Vrethenthal, formed the first army of the Order. The army was not a part of the order but in service to it. The soldiers did not take vows to Allotar and were never consecrated as brothers of the Order. Just as the rest of Arathra they were free to worship their gods as they saw fit. The army soon outnumbered the knights, who were still the elite fighting units of the Order. The knights led the army on campaigns and into battle where they would fight as one unit.

Ideology of the Order
The ideology and religion of the Order is based on the scriptures of Allotar which were written some time before the formation of the Order by an unknown author.