Sir Garland of Laramy was a former knight of the Knights Templar who became a Pagan Mage.
Biography[]
Once upon a time, Sir Garland was one of the Knights Templar, those mystical soldiers of the Christian Messiah, supposedly founded by the Gabrielites. In 1313, the Church turned upon its Soldiers, hunting them to the ground as they now hunt us. After a year of hiding and evading the forces of his former brethren, Sir Garland surfaced in the Heart of the Holy Roman Empire. In the Cathedral, his armor gleaming and his tunic the brightest white, the Templar fore swore his allegiance to the Nailed God before the Cardinal, his Priests and the Holy Roman Emperor himself.
Now Garland was skilled in the Arts, and so before the Church men could seize him and pronounce him a heretic, he opened himself to the Mist Ways and fled out of that place, through the realm of Spirit. He journeyed deep into the Black Forest, a wood fabled to be the home of dark Fae and the Shifting Beasts, and there he made claim to an expanse of the woodland. Soon, Pagan folk began to gather in that grove, claiming it as a haven from oppression, persecution and Inquisition. And in 1317, Sir Garland established the land as his own fiefdom and called it Baerwald.
Such an act was a direct slap in the face of Rome, Christiandom and the Holy Roman Empire, so it is not surprising that the Church did all it could to destroy Sir Garland and his stronghold of the Old Religion. But the forces of Baerwald held true through every attack. For over one hundred years, the Pagan peoples of the Black Forest lived in this place, raising their children, growing their crops, and forming a bond with the other mystic denizens of the woodland.
Sadly, ten years ago, Baerwald finally fell to the numbers of the Gabrielite army. It is believed that Sir Garland perished in the attack. The Gabrielites made a grand show of producing a body and some armor they claim to be his. However, the Mystics of that place say that Garland escaped, wounded, into the forest where he now lives with the Shifting Beasts. Those he left behind have sworn bloody vengeance upon the Church and its agents. When I traveled through that region recently, I saw much warfare and strife between our people and the Christians who rule there. It is sad that such a peaceful dream had to end in death and struggle.
References[]
- MTSC: Witches and Pagans, p. 20-21