====== The Knights at the Time of First Contact ======

At the time of First Contact, the Knights of the Sun take many different forms depending on where around Focus they happen to be. On Hearthside they serve as the law enforcement and military. In more pious enclaves like Wayfarers' Haven they serve in a similar capacity. Wayfarers' Haven also sends its own knights to serve in the Spacer Confederacy's federal police. Within Partisan Territory they often manifest as terrorists or freedom fighters, depending on your perspective. Within the Allied Worlds they're usually relegated to community service and charity work, but on Welkinstead where practicing Wayfarers make up a statistically significant part of the population, they can legally serve as private security contractors. Lighthouses in more populous areas around Focus usually have a knight or two attached to serve as security guards so the lighthouse can remain open and freely accessible to the public at all times, as lighthouses are forbidden from locking their doors. Lodestar served in this capacity before the glassing of Pilgrim's Rest.



The knights as a whole are lead by a grand master. The organizational units that have a presence in a local area are called chapters, and each chapter is lead by a master (aka chaptermaster). The grand master is the chaptermaster for the principle chapter, which is an orbital monastery located within the orbit of Hearthside very close to Focus.



Many, if not most, knights no longer have mechs, but they are still heavily linked to mechs in the popular imagination, and many novice knights choose to take mech pilot training out of a sense of tradition. Lodestar trained as a pilot himself, and was able to construct a mech while on Earth using the Dewfall's fabricator and raw materials he bought using some loose pocket change, which was worth literal billions during the brief window between First Contact and the establishment of the mass router trunk between Earth and Wayfarers' Haven



Especially within the Allied Worlds where knights aren't part of everyday life, the old image of the lone knight and his squire striding forth in their mech to right wrongs and fight for justice has become a heavily romanticized trope, even in secular fiction.



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