Lothar Principals

Lothar Principals are symbolically and culturally relevant individuals within the Lothar Order, even though they do not have high-ranking political positions within the Knight Charter. The Lothar Principals are often compared to the Mage Knights of the Aelrrigan Order. However, the Mage Knights are individually much more powerful and wield more hard authority within the Aelrrigan Order. The Lothar Principals are without exception the mundanest of mundane people, who have often been working for decades within the Order to bring about the Regalian Empire they want to see. With some exceptions, the Lothar Principals are more a tale of honed skill and arduous work, rather than birthright or innate talent. Lothar Principals are designed to give players more context to the morals and guidelines within the Lothar Order and to exemplify that while the Lothar Order does heinous things, many of its members have very personal and varied reasons for why they support the mission statement, it does not all have to depend on religious fanaticism or just insanity. The Lothar Principals are open to being included in Player's Character backstories as mentors, teachers, and guides who have impacted their lives. The long-term intention is to have this page filled with 15 unique Principals, but due to the slow rate of art production, it will be more of a running project. The Principals are not identified by name. While their busts are commonly known in appearance and they move between Chapter Houses, their names are usually kept secret to protect their families.

• 
  The Sunkissed Knight
• 
  The Magnate Knight
• 
  The Whispering Knight
• 
  The Firebrand Knight
• 
  The Toad Knight

• The Sunkissed Knight is perhaps one of the few tales of innate skill and talent. Born to a Skyborn family in the Regalian Archipelago, the Sunkissed Knight experienced an early apprenticeship in mechanical engineering and faith-tech. The Sunkissed Knight's extended family were always Lothar loyalists and supporters but refrained from directly joining. His extended family continued to have a more hard-line stance against societal acceptance of Archon and were some of the staunchest opponents of the prevalence of Dragon Cultists in the Regalian Government. Through a freak incident of coincidence, the family got caught in the cross-fire between Lothar and Archon who were both after the same Vampire Coven while they were finishing up an exchange of weapon shipments for the Lothar. In the chaos, the Sunkissed Knight lost many relatives, which formed the basis for him to harden his hatred of the Archon, who he saw as interfering with Lothar business and playing into the hands of the Vampires who had likely orchestrated it. The Sunkissed Knight invented the Order's Sunlance Rifles, weapons that some say could be the next stage of evolution for Puretek, more powerful, and far more merciless in the eradication of the Occult.
• The Magnate Knight is one of the oldest still living Lothar Knights, who always lived a double life. At an early age as a beginning merchant, he fell prey to a group of Vampires in higher social circles in Calderliga, where Vampires still roam between the wealthy merchant houses for extravagance and opulence. As the plaything of these Vampires, the Magnate Knight was thralled and mind-controlled to kill his own wife and only daughter, leaving him heart broken. When Lothar Knights saved him, the Magnate Knight committed to working for the Lothar Order in secret. Publicly facing he ran an extremely lucrative fur trading business, in private he was trained to detect and slay Vampires. His un-marked ships remain the most preferred transit method for Lothar to move around the continent unseen between the crates and barrels of produce and merchandise. His coins reach far and wide to provide the Lothar Order with the means to continue their struggle. He himself is said to also be a competent fighter himself, but due to his advanced age he no longer faces Vampires, preferring to focus on the expansion of his banking business so that even after his death, coins may continue to roll.
• The Whispering Knight is the other half of the Magnate's coin. She is just as old as the Magnate, and the two joined the order at roughly the same time. The Whispering Knight is an extremely rare case of a cured Vampire who was accepted into the Lothar Order and fought her way up the rankings through diligence and skill. Her particular aptitude lay in the use of her charisma and skill in speech, both learned early while being a Vampire, but honed at the Imperial court over the decades. While the Magnate's coins roll, it is the Whispering Knight who makes the coins rub together at the Imperial Court. It is she who places well-curated bribes, conversations, and extortion to the right public officials and some say even the Imperial Family to ensure the Lothar Order stays in place. It is well known that even Emperor Alexander I respects her for her skill and venerable disposition. It is by her standard that the Emeritès style their work. The Whispering Knight's skill with a fencing sword was legendary in her youth, and even though she can best be described as decrepit and hunched, she still teaches the fine thrust work and poise, showing each lesson that her demeanor is merely a ruse to the eye of the beholder, who deem her old and weak.
• The Firebrand Knight was once rumored to have been an exceptionally handsome Viridian Knight who had won many tournaments and made a name for himself even in the noble circles that normally ease and forget the names of the horses they bet on. An unfortunate encounter with a fire-magic-wielding Pride Cult left him mutilated and in a permanent state of pain that was used to fuel his hatred for the occult higher and higher. He became endlessly frustrated in the Viridian Order not only because it refused to go after the Pride Cult, but also because his now disfigured state made him no longer prime exemplary stage material. He was silently removed from all public displays and occasions and essentially relegated to a place where the public could not see him, as if the Order was ashamed of his appearance. When he defected to the Lothar Order, he found that it was filled with those who bore the scars of their torment at the hands of the Occult proudly, and the Order made no distinction between its members. The Firebrand Knight now wields fire through oil grenades and gunpowder to his advantage, supplementing his immense skills with the sword. Both fire and metal, fueled by the hatred evoked from the constant pain.
• The Toad Knight is a living example of the reality that not every person who acquires Void or Exist mutations does so to become more attractive and increase their sex appeal. Far from menacing horns, a sensual tail, or beautiful glowing patterns, the Toad Knight is a grotesque ball of cancerous flesh that has lost most of its actual form. The Lothar Order is not sure what heritage the Toad Knight once was, or what he has become, but he has kinship with the Firebrand Knight in that both suffer a near constant state of excruciating pain. The Toad Knight is held alive by a cruel curse that prevents his death even if his body is perpetually consuming itself with extremely fast-growing cancer. In grief and rage at the condition inflicted upon him by Occult slum criminals for petty revenge, he discovered that his body physically reacts to the presence of Magic users, even if they are actively hiding. His pain had become a beacon that would burn even brighter if brought in the presence of Magic. As such, the Toad Knight is accompanied by other Lothar, using him as a detector for Mages who are hiding from the Order. It is said that the Toad Knight has the highest kill count of any Lothar member of runaway and renegade Mages. None could hide.