Chapter 401: Side Story: How to Establish a Legal Armed Organization

Side Story: How to Establish a Legal Armed Organization

Against a backdrop dominated by conflict and chaos, violence is the primary factor for judging the value of individuals or groups, and the foundation of everything.

To put it bluntly, the structure of most kingdoms is no more solid than a joint-stock merchant consortium. At least the consortiums usually share common interests, whereas a kingdom is essentially an alliance of various military groups of different sizes.

These military groups generally have limited governance capabilities, so many of them adopt a "colonial" style of rule—centered on castles and fortresses, ensuring control over transportation hubs and major towns, while subcontracting the rest to vassal knights.

The crude method of bundling and dividing land, population, and taxes brought about a rapid short-term growth in standing professional military forces, but severely overdrawn the territory's control power.

This awkward situation often makes one feel that the lord is a farmer with the will but not the ability, periodically harvesting the fruits of crops growing freely on his own farm, rather than truly ruling the land and the people on it.

Even if you replace the people on the land with a new batch, as long as the castle is not affected, it has little impact on the ruler. A farmer only cares whether the wheat grains are plump; he won't care about the straw variety unless the straw mutates enough to hinder harvesting.

This means that between the lands seemingly carved up like a puzzle by various lords, there actually exists a huge power vacuum; perhaps only the key towns under direct jurisdiction are regarded as true subjects.

Even these citizen classes are gradually rising, seeking partial autonomy to break away from the lords' control. Some accumulate wealth, others combine with the Church; after gaining sufficient influence and military force, they force local traditional powers to concede.

Thus, free cities formed one by one, allying with each other to consolidate their autonomy, exchanging economic and tax capabilities for compromises from great nobles or the king.

The entire situation is chaotic, but there is one undeniable key point—violence.

Violence is the base of the king's crown, the foundation for a lord to maintain rule, and the guarantee for free cities. Everyone needs it.

Armed forces outside various traditional armies emerged accordingly, including militia teams spontaneously organized by cities, mercenaries accepting various payment settlement methods, brotherhoods and security corps with complex compositions but common goals, rangers, bandits, and other anarchic armed groups like routed soldiers.

Most of them exist objectively but are not very recognized.

So, does there exist a flexible, legal organization that is recognized by mainstream views, has autonomous decision-making and management, independent funding and operations, reliable military quality, qualified ideological construction, is allowed to possess territory, and undertakes special functions?

The answer is yes, such an organization does exist; those in need can consider establishing a Knights' Order.

Of course, this is not easy. A Knights' Order is not a simple army, but a special organization with religious, military, and administrative significance on multiple levels, requiring a large number of complex and high-difficulty prerequisites and going through a long, tedious, yet indispensable process.

In Kraft's view, the entire process is actually quite close to applying to establish a student club at a university.

First, a club needs an active and healthy activity purpose; a Knights' Order usually also needs a clear, at least noble, purpose and mission, such as defending holy lands, participating in wars, or resisting external enemies.

Undertaking medical work or resisting all acts that desecrate life is not impossible, but it seems less concrete.

Secondly, as a "legal" organization, a club needs approval from the school to be established; a Knights' Order also needs recognition from the Church or secular authorities, preferably both, as a prerequisite for obtaining legal status and resources.

The secular authority aspect is not too difficult; Duke Westmin's statement and authorization carry enough weight, and I believe no one would refuse his face; the Church side is slightly more troublesome, but with someone mediating in between, an agreement was actually reached.

The bishops and archbishops were willing to grant permission but were unwilling to meet face-to-face, or even hold a formal ceremony for this matter; instead, Green's direct superior, an old man who looked somewhat gloomy, handed over the corresponding documents and objects.

After receiving authorization, it was time to formulate internal rules and recruit members. A successful Knights' Order needs to establish a reasonable organizational structure and norms, recruit members, and build its foundation brick by brick.

Kraft roughly decided to divide the structure into a medical administrative department responsible for research and result conversion, and an external affairs department responsible for solving specific problems.

Recruiting administrative personnel was not too difficult; he could send letters to colleagues at Wendeng Port, Westmin Castle, and Rivers University. Even if acquaintances themselves had no intention, they would recommend students or juniors for screening.

High-quality external affairs personnel were the hardest to find. Among the people he knew, most with an armed training background had low educational levels, while the group with higher cultural levels generally had poor physical fitness and were not very suitable for contact with special work.

Fortunately, there was now a source. The Church was willing to release people, and those with their own intention to join were not many, only twelve, which was barely enough.

Surprisingly, a monk under Green who participated in this lake exploration suddenly decided to change to a new job; the significance of his joining might be greater than that of five or even ten new recruits.

Filling the core layer was far from enough; several times as many auxiliary personnel were needed, such as squires and craftsmen, responsible for daily miscellaneous tasks.

Among these people, marginal jobs could hire ordinary commoners, but those with professional skills were not so easy to recruit; one had to pay a price much higher than normal to secure their loyalty.

The Knights' Order would also recruit volunteers, such as wealthy nobles, who would provide some funding and equipment donations. The Xiguo family was very willing to make up this part in exchange for sharing new potions and detailed usage guides.

Both club activities and a Knights' Order must have their own activity venues. Venues can be applied for upwards, or solved by various means; perhaps not large, but they cannot be absent.

The scale of the Wood family castle could not meet this need, so the venue was naturally set within the monastery donated by the Church. That hilltop, including the surrounding land originally supplied to the monastery, was theoretically more private than private property; they enjoyed all rights, from picking up dry firewood to collecting taxes.

After solving the activity venue problem, it was time to think about how to obtain stable operating funds; relying entirely on appropriations obviously could not accomplish anything.

Although the newly established Knights' Order currently possessed wealth unimaginable to ordinary people, it was not very sufficient for an organization, especially since the actual liquid capital inside accounted for a small proportion.

They needed to develop their own industries, create industries with continuous income, meet daily supply and maintenance expenses that would absolutely not be low, and cover some expenses that would absolutely not appear on the surface.

Finally, a club needs to hold activities from time to time to demonstrate its value to the student body. And a Knights' Order also needs to join certain necessary activities, such as participating in Church ceremonies or providing medical charity services, to strengthen influence and gain reputation and support.

Perhaps the first comprehensive medical institution could be established, called "First Hospital Affiliated to the Knights' Order," "Rivers University Affiliated Internal and Surgical Combined Hospital," "Designated Teaching Hospital of the Tuberculosis and Rare Diseases Society," and so on; the name can be as long as possible.

He had even thought of the logo: just replace the ring in the Church emblem with a snake body, using a winged Ouroboros as the symbol, retaining religious elements while adding the familiar snake element.

To be honest, Kraft was not very good at these tasks. Compared to indirectly communicating with countless people through innumerable documents and influencing their thoughts and actions, he preferred frontline clinical work; although busy, it felt more real.

He immersed himself in busyness until an expected visitor arrived.

"You even dug Lei Mengde out from under my hand! Lei Mengde?!" Priest Green pushed open the clinic door and slammed a transfer application heavily on the table.

While he was still handling various approval documents for Kraft within the Church, the latter had silently swung a pickaxe and dug away one of the few talents the Church currently had who could withstand the most arduous trials.

This monk had accompanied them to the center of the lake, was not seduced by the underground evil twisted things, and instead suddenly decided to change his life plan at this moment, joining this gang that looked full of problems from any angle.

Coincidentally, the Knights' Order belonged to half a Church organization; a monk changing jobs was at most equivalent to changing departments for employment, not betraying faith, so theoretically, there was nothing to criticize.

Thinking that he himself had contributed to the establishment of the Knights' Order, the priest wished he could immediately declare the termination of the cooperative relationship.

"Don't be like this, my brother." Kraft ignored Green's indignation and even changed the form of address, very conscious of the identity shift. "Is this address correct? As lambs of the Heavenly Father, we are one family, equal and without barriers between us; no one is subordinate to anyone else, so how can we restrict a brother's freedom of choice?"

"What kind of lamb of the Heavenly Father are you?!" Green slammed the table hard, causing the water cup to jump up and roll off.

The faith environment was ruined by people like this; in these days, even a medical school professor who played with alien magic could openly dig at the Church's corner and claim to be a Church member; it was unimaginable what would happen in a few more years.

He was wrong; he originally thought he could completely tolerate the existence of a Kraft. However, when this guy, wearing the title of Knights' Order Mentor, wandered around and claimed to be a Church-certified devout believer, he realized he was wrong, and terribly so.

"To be honest, I was originally going to ask if you and Brother Wading had any intention to come and serve for a while; after all, having people familiar with Church operations would make the initial integration easier, spreading the Gospel of the Lord to more people through the Knights' Order affiliated hospital..."

"Kraft, stop, stop." The priest interrupted the professor's endless sales pitch. "Just for the sake of our precious friendship, can you promise me one request?"

"Of course, it is my duty."

"Pack up your people and things; before next Sunday, I hope your caravan is already traveling on land where the Cathedral of the Holy Mother cannot be seen."

"But isn't the church spire visible from all over Dunling?"

"Yes, that is exactly what I mean."