Hi folks! I would like to ask other players and GMs about an aspect of using Rose and Cross Knights in your campaigns.
The Rose and Cross seems like a great Secret Society for players who want to be wandering "Knights Errant" having adventures and doing good deeds all across Theah. But there have been a few interesting references in both 1st and 2nd edition to Rose and Cross Knights who also serve in other organizations. For example, the Core Book mentions five R+K Knights serve as members of Empereur Leon's personal bodyguard in Montaigne, and in 1st edition one of the later books had the Grand Master of the Order also serve as Captain of the Musketeers in Montaigne for a time.
I'm currently doing background for a new player character concept, and based on his background it might be interesting to have him serving as a royal guard and a R+K Knight at the same time, or being forced to resign from the Guard and seeking out the R+K to join them. So I was wondering:
1. Have any of you run or played in games as Hero R+K Knights who are also dual members of other groups like the Montaigne Musketeers?
2. If so, how did it work? Does this help provide more role-playing/adventure opportunities or did it cause problems for the group?
3. How did the GM handle the player's dual obligations to the R+K and their public regiment/unit/organization?
Thanks! Any feedback would be most welcome, as I've never been in a campaign that heavily involved the Rose and Cross, but might want to in the future.
It totally works, the best part is using those dual roles to make them have to find a way to avoid picking sides.
Remember that the first goal of the Rose and Cross is always to inspire others to do great things. Doing it in the tabard is secondary to doing the great deed so a Guard Captain, Musketeer, or Champion position is a great and very in character choice.
Thanks. While the 1e sourcebook has good information about the inner mysteries and rituals of the R+K, I wasn't entirely clear after reading it how the day-to-day life of a Knight works. For example, is a Knight who's also a Musketeer permanently assigned to Montaigne? (I suppose having a Knight as a prominent member of a beloved organization would be good PR for the Order.)
One situation I was wondering about would be: If a Hero was accused of wrongdoing by their organization, how would the R+K react? For example, let's say a bad Musketeer officer gave the Hero an order that would mean Corruption points (like shooting unarmed peasants who are protesting something). The Hero refuses, and is arrested for disobeying orders.
Do you think the R+K would mount a rescue? Hold some kind of court-martial to determine if the Hero was justified or not? Or expel the Hero in order to keep their patronage? I'm just curious how other groups would handle this, since I couldn't find much information on R+K that have an obligation to an elite guard or military regiment as well. I was curious if anyone had every played out a situation like this in their 1st edition campaigns, and if so how it turned out.
Given that the KotR&C seem to be the "noble heroes with noble ideals" group of the setting, in the scenario you posited, they'd probably do what they can quickly to assess if their member is innocent or guilty, and if determined to be innocent (even if it's just a case of "we know this guy well enough to know he would never do something so dastardly!') they'd probably take whatever steps they could to avoid an injustice being done to one of their own. Once that's done, they'll probably stage their own private questioning to make sure they've not been duped, but it seems that renegade R+C knights (at least in 1e) are about as common as hen's teeth in a field of four leaf clovers on an island in the Seventh Sea, so the Knight being questioned probably has nothing to worry about.
I think the fact that the KotR&C is also a political group with a fair amount of political clout (especially in Montaigne) isn't something to be overlooked. In the case of the Musketeer, the local chapter can probably ask their patrons to exert a bit of their own influence on the behalf of the wrongfully imprisoned Musketeer.
There's probably also the matter that a Musketeer who is also a known member of the KotR&C would give said Musketeer some degree of protection from petty superiors, as it could look very bad for the petty officer if word gets out that he tried to sully the name of a member in good standng of such a beloved group.
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