By the end of the 12th century, the lineage had grown to almost a dozen Kindred residing throughout the Holy Land. While a few were directly related to Martin, most were European monsters who had followed the Crusade east. Martin took such outcasts to his bosom, as he had always done, and taught them to move with subtlety and guile. Better to skulk, hide and survive within Kindred society than be banished to the wilds and fall to the rapacious monster within. Yet the line faced rejection, both from the local Kindred, who felt Martin had become too westernized, and from the Sanctified and Invictus that had followed the Crusade, who saw Martin as a local heathen and threat.
Martin again adapted, adopting the organization of the knightly orders that accompanied Kindred of the two great covenants to the Levant. In 1183, Martin gathered his extended family and bound them together in an oath, christening his group the Most Noble Order of King Baldwin the Leprous (who was then the King of Jerusa-lem). After Baldwin’s death two years later, Sir Martin renamed his followers the Order of the Fallen King.
Though the Leper Knights never gained the respect of the other knightly orders of the period, they both outperformed and outlasted the vast majority. Martin taught his followers to cleave only to the words of oaths, discarding the spirit for a convenient loophole. He taught them to defend themselves, not only with weapons and armor, but with the fear of the diseases they might have. Members of the line teach their childer the following aphorism, attributed to Martin himself: “Be so unpleasant that they cannot bear to look at what you are doing. Smell so of filth that they keep their
noses out of your business.”
The lineage began haunting the various roads between the west and the Holy Land, feeding on the sick and infirm and spreading fear and loathing in their wake. The western covenants, too repulsed by the Order’s habits, failed to realize the wide-ranging network the Order had established.
A dark reflection of the Knights Templar, the Order began trading in favors and influence, allowing a Kindred to provide a service to a Leper Knight in Europe for the promise of a later favor in Jerusalem. Nomadic
Kindred leapt at the opportunity, allowing the Order to garner wealth and power at a startling rate. Members of the Order printed notes with special seals that attested to what the traveler was owed by the line. The Leper Knights of the Levant even honored the writs of those few vampires who survived the arduous journey.
With Martin’s blessing, the Order melded with the Invictus in 1317. Since then the Order has grown in size, always clinging to the outskirts of Kindred society, provid-ing necessary services that the majority of Invictus find too repellent to perform themselves. The Order continues to take in those who would otherwise founder in the Danse Macabre, teaching them to overcome their curse and work towards their own welfare rather than devolving into slaver-ing monsters.
Tonight the Order looks much as it always has. In Europe, where the bloodline boasts the most members, the Leper Knights organize into Chapters, each of which usually covers a small region (such as London and its environs). In areas with smaller populations, a Chapter may cover a larger geo-graphical area, but never so large that the Chapter cannot gather four to five times a year or easily communicate. No-madic members of the lineage, called Rovers, travel between the Chapters, providing information and aid to compatriots in distant domains. Thus the bloodline manages a rough communication system that spans Europe, allowing infor-mation within the line to pass between domains far more quickly than it does through other sources.
In the Americas, the Chapter system breaks down, and few such organizations exist outside of New England. More typically a small city may include one or two members of the line, while a larger metropolis may boast a small gang of Leper Knights (who often adopt a gangland attitude and fashion sense, if only to further their unwholesome image).
Groups of Leper Knights (even the New England Chapters) in the Americas rarely communicate across the vast expanses of wilderness and don’t benefit from the same information network that their European cousins do.
Reputation: The Order of Sir Martin has never enjoyed a particularly positive reputation among either its peers within the Invictus or in Kindred society as a whole. The Carthian Movement, especially, finds the Order distasteful.
According to the Carthians, they serve as exemplars of the worst mercenary tendencies of the Kindred, willing to take any assignment, no matter how degrading, for whatever table scraps the Invictus throw their way. Most grating to the Carthians is the fact that many of the Kindred the Order takes on were vampires who the Movement was eyeing for recruitment.
The Lancea Sanctum and Circle of the Crone have eerily similar opinions about the Order. Both groups feel that the bloodline wallows in self-interest, rebuffing any opportunity
for enlightenment or grace. In short, the line fails to uphold the will of God (or the gods). The Leper Knights don’t share the animosity, and in domains in which the Invictus has a strong relationship with either covenant, members of the lineage often attend mass or the solstice rituals.
While Kindred of the Order of Sir Martin almost univer-sally swear fealty to the Invictus, a rare few forsake the First Estate for the Ordo Dracul. Such Kindred are almost always elders who have decided that they want something more out of unlife than the riches that come with membership in the Invictus. These Kindred find enough familiarity in the Order to embrace it, and many become celebrated members of the Sworn of the Axe. Unfortunately, leaving the Invictus re-quires a Leper Knight to recant his sworn oath to the knightly order. The lack of reprisal such turncoats face often worries the Ordo Dracul, and the Dragons usually watch their new members with extreme care, making entirely clear what will befall them if the local Invictus begins showing signs of the Coils of the Dragon.
Concepts: Anti-Crone crusader, apparent AIDS victim, disease carrier, doctor-turned-murderer, extremist militant, gangland tyrant, information broker, spy in a foreign court, unceremonious prostitute, urban cowboy