Order Spotlight: Wise

The Order of the Wise, whose members were known less formally as slayers, famously claimed their founder to be the bodyguard of a magus many hundreds of gyres ago. This bodyguard was unable to prevent his charge from being killed by an unraveled magus, but refusing to accept this failure in his duty, the bodyguard hunted down and slayed the other magus, though this act was not without its cost. The bodyguard subsequently died from injuries received during the battle.

Following the example of this original warrior, soldiers across the orbs devoted themselves to training in combat techniques that would help a mundane combatant defeat a magical enemy should they ever need to kill a rogue magus. Gyres later, during a session of the Magistratum where official sanctioning of the fledgling order had been requested within the Empire, representatives of the order made rational arguments for the need to have soldiers who could assist in finding and defeating unraveled or otherwise rogue magi.

The debates that followed were fierce, for a body of magi were being asked to legitimize a group of soldiers who wanted to hunt and kill magi. One of the more esteemed members of the Magistratum at that time remarked that he was amazed at the wisdom in the arguments presented by the order’s representatives. A common expression in the Empire of that era was: “any words can appear wise posthumously.” The expression poked at the common occurrence of someone’s opinions being more highly regarded after death. This expression was subverted in the debates of the Magistratum when another one of the political magi of the era remarked, “I imagine that almost all of the members of this new order will seem very wise in a few gyres.”

Of course, that sarcastic comment was intended to express the belief that the order would not survive long because all of its members would be killed trying to fight insane magi. Instead, it led to the unnamed order adopting the name the Order of the Wise in a kind of willful obliviousness to the intent of the comment. The Magistratum eventually agreed to allow the new order to operate inside Empire, and the slayers did not all die out as once predicted. In the modern era, the Empire maintained a large force of slayers, provided them with extensive training and powerful defenses against magic, and used them against rogue magi and other threats. The Order of the Wise was active in many other nations as well, but the perception of them as an arm of enforcement for Empire colored perceptions of slayers for many.

The Order of the Wise required its recruits to do hundreds of bars of combat training before earning the monicker of slayer and a medallion emblazoned with a dagger across the palm of an open hand. Most of these amulets were thaumines that could protect the bearer from the energies of one or two combat workings, but they were slow to recharge. There was a lot of mistrust between magi and slayers. Despite the founder of the Order having started as a bodyguard to a magus, slayers of later generations were all too aware that any magi could unravel and become a threat. Magi reciprocated the animosity with the belief that any slayer could turn violent at any time, and were simply another variety of prejudice against magi.