Encyclopedia Argent: "Worlde Famous" - persons and powers of influence in the realms

The Imperial Sentinels

Epic knights -personal guard of the Emperor

Overview

A corps of super-elite knights that guard and protect the Emperor, his family and the Palace. The Imperial Sentinels seem part of the Palace itself, as they stand at station their motionless, silent presence is ever watchful and unrelenting. Rarely seen on the battlefield, these mighty knights lead no armies, they seldom travel, and their armored companies train and barrack in the city itself. Their existence and expertise is totally dedicated to protecting the court of the Emperor, and they never deviate from that duty.

The majority of the Imperial Sentinels guard and patrol the Palace on foot, but a select few serve as dragon riders. A wing of 10 Silver Dragons and their chosen riders form the unit called the Cadre Draconus, they serve as the airborne arm of the Imperial Sentinels. The sight of a Silver Dragon and Sentinel patrolling the skies over Argent City is not unusual, though they are aloof and rarely interfere in the city below. The daily crime and violence in Argent is the jurisdiction of others.

Organization

There are approximately 300 knights, officers, and support personal in the Imperial Sentinels. The active knights are organized into three companies;

The Imperium Primus is the largest company, consisting of 150 Sentinels who form the Palace Guard, and normally there are 60 Imperium Primus Sentinels on duty, posted at stations throughout the Palace.

The Personae Contegus are the 30 Imperial Sentinels who guard the Emperor himself. This small company of knights never leaves his presence and normally there are 10 knights with the Emperor wherever he goes.

The Cadre Draconus are those few special Sentinels chosen by one of the Elder Silver Dragons, dragons who have sworn an oath of service to the Empire. There are 10 mounted knights in this company.

Equipment

Each knight wears the world-renowned armor called the Mantle of the Sentinels. These master crafted, heavy plate mail suits are magically imbued foci of powerful protective energies. The Mantle of the Sentinels can only be worn by members of the Imperial Guard. Each knight is also equipped with a massive shield emblazoned with the crest of the Emperor, and imbued with more powerful defensive spells, and each knight carries a Staff of the Word, a god -crafted artifact of eldritch power. The Imperial Sentinels are likely the most powerfully equipped military unit in the world.

Common Knowlwdge

I will not insult the intelligence of my reader. Therefore I must take care that I avoid the pitfall that is so evident in the journals of less talented historians. I must remember that my readers enjoy the privilege of citizenship in our great empire, praise the Emperor, where education, literacy, culture, and the other like gifts of a great society are common.
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I will not insult my reader; I need not remind that the Worlde is a varied and wondrous place. , Home to fell dragons, icy wastes, goblin hordes, elder forests, chivalrous knights, monstrous aberrations, courtly giants, and endless variations of peoples and lands.
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My good readers know that the cradle of civilization and the heart of human lands bestride that large and tempestuous sea called Hawkmoor Bay, that the vital city of Argent, the great and imperial city stands upon the shore of that sea. I shall forgo my desire to write at length about the ancient home of the elven people where it lies north of our empire and deep within the endless Forest of Solitude, there the eternal Court of the Seelie Queen exists both in this realm and in another.
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That the vast mountain chains which divide the known world, extending from the frozen northern coasts far, far south for thousands of leagues and eventually crumble into the blasted sands of the Shadow Waste, this mighty mountain range named the World-Spine is already well known to my good readers.
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I mustn't fall into an endless discourse on the culture and nature of the dwarves dwelling far west in the Iron Mountains and their great masterwork; the stonedwelve city-keep named Gorn.
Some familiarity is assumed, at least in tales and myths about the trackless expanse of the Brooding Jungle, the dark and primeval forest that engulfs much of the land in its steamy patience south of the Dwarven Mountains. I will waste no time here to discuss the "Roakol", the nomadic tribes of savage horsemen who dwell in the steppe lands far south and east of Argent. Their warlike, horse centered culture is not a topic I need discuss here.
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Neither should I bore my gentle reader with discussion of the strange oriental cultures nor peoples found on the many scattered islands in the West Sea, nor the gray eyed, fair-haired, northern barbarians who ply the icy seas at the top of the world.
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.No, I will skip the basic, common knowledge all men of culture share. The good reader is aware of the common knowledge of our world, but most citizens of our great empire do not know of the elven desert tribes called the Suza'ar Siia. Who live in the shifting, lifeless sands deep in the Shadow Wastes, or of the towering fortress of good, the Cathedral of Light that rises heavenward atop a mountain crest in the snow covered peaks of the World-Spine Mountains.
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Did you know of the Far Watch; a council of the eldest titans of sky and storm who meet in a secret and hallowed place once each century to discuss the fate of the land?
Or that many tens of thousands of tormented spirits wander lost and forlorn in the millennia old ruined land called the Ancient Dells?
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There is an endless potential of facts and stories in our world, a challenge in recording and cataloging suited to the genius and gilded pen of Eugene Ebeneezer Quillsworthy.

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Common Knowlwdge