Great Knight

First fielded by Northi not long after Hussars were becoming common on the battlefield, the Great Knight represented the quintessential heavy cavalry. With knight and mount both clad in heavy armor, the Great Knight was made to be a mobile barrier. Able to interpose their armored bulk for their allies and even project that protection into an aura around them, Great Knights were able to push through even the most heavily contested battlefields for their allies. And while there were countless stories throughout the ages of heavily armored knights turning the tides of battle, there were none as debated as the story of Sir Owain Morgan and Dame Madeline Benoit.

As told and accepted by Northi historians, Sir Owain Morgan was a dogfolk Great Knight without peer. Honorable beyond reproach and an unstoppable juggernaut on the battlefield, he had a list of successful battles attributed to him that stretched the imagination. In fact, detractors of Sir Owain’s tale would often point out that he must have surely known teleportation and time travel magics to be at so many battles at once. What could not be disputed was that Sir Owain certainly existed, his name recorded in the annals of the Bastion Knights. But his most debated feat was one that involved a Westrian knight, Dame Madeline Benoit, and the proliferation of Mage Knights into Northi’s military.

While there were many versions of the tale, the most accepted one in Northi followed a series of reasonably set in stone facts. During one of the many border skirmishes common between Northi and Westria as they vied for control over the Nuren Plains, it was said that Sir Owain led a counter attack against a Westrian skirmishing force. He led his men to victory and successfully captured many knights to ransom back to Westria, including Dame Madeline Benoit. While most of the knights and men at arms were released back to their homes, Dame Madeline was kept for one very important reason: to teach Northi the art of the Mage Knight. Historians for the Era of Knights could often be incited into argument around the idea as there were as many accounts for how Northi gained access to the skills of Westria’s holy knights as there were historians to argue about them.

But what was almost universally accepted as the truth was that Sir Owain, disgusted with his peers and superiors' lack of any decency to release Dame Madeline back to her family, took it upon himself to free the woman. There was little historical accounting of where they went or what they did but there were legends of a pair of knights wandering Lyr and helping those in need. And while those actions had never definitively been attributed to Sir Owain and Dame Madeline, what couldn’t be denied was when they both turned back up in solid historical record. 

They would found Morgan Ranch in what would later become Dacquoise, near the future site of the city of Madeline. It was there that the retired knights, happily married for an unclear amount of time, had begun taking on students and ranch hands to teach the art of horsemanship, knighthood, and magic. While the ranch itself did not last into modern times, the house itself was maintained and the legacy of chivalry was upheld by the descendants of those students. Collectively, and informally, they called themselves the Knights of Morgan and dedicated themselves to helping those in need whenever and wherever they were found.