Order of San Lauren

The Order of San Lauren, known fully as the Worshipful Company of San Lauren in the Wilds are a Chivalric Order headquartered in Valley Lodge, somewhere between the Frontier Counties and Zeemarch in Bastonia. They are the oldest of the worshipful companies which follow San Lauren, and as with all of San Lauren's worshipful companies, the Laurnentian Rangers are an order of rangers and conservationists first and a military force second. Jurisdictionally, they owe fealty to the Bastonian Monarch directly; in practice, they tend to be difficult to rule. The head of the order, its Lord Captain, is always a ranger and cleric of San Lauren. Unique among all chivalric orders, the Lord Captain of the Worshipful Company of San Lauren in the Wilds is a title into and of itself as the position is never held by a previously-extant noble without that individual first renouncing their inheritance in keeping with the example of the Saint they follow. While they are politically nearly renegades, religiously, they are the most devout of all the worshipful companies of San Lauren.

The blazon of the Order is vert, a saltire or; the saltire is frequently associated with San Lauren in Bastonian heraldry. High Ranking Officers, especially those who have been knighted or who have a position in church heirarchy, are further entitled to an additional blazon: vert, a saltire or; a stag rampant nature and this blazon in particular is associated with members of the order who are strongly aligned with San Lauren; ranger-clerics or clerics who make up the organizational core of the unit.

The Worshipful Company organizes itself into Lodges, each with their own captain and one or more units of 150 or fewer men and their Lieutenant - each such unit known as a troop - along with a number of administrative staff. These lodges maintain responsibility over certain geographic territories and act as rangers and scouts within that environment, targeting beasts and monsters in those areas and reporting the movements of other groups back to Valley Lodge. On rare occasions, Valley Lodge will send reports as far as Whiterock, but usually only after having made their own decision on the matter, which they refer to as their duty to inform.

As a worshipful company the Order of the Wilds is loyal to the common man above all. Unlike some of San Lauren's other orders (such as the Bavonian Order), this order frequently brings the fight to servants of the enemy, and wants for no peril in the Frontier Counties which make up much of their territory. On occasions, they act in ways that seem paradoxical. A Laurentian Troop might place itself between secular forces and a party from the Confederacy of Sages one day only to sack a village in the Orcish Nation alongside the same secular forces a week later.