When I got to the fort, I was given a letter from one the Standard Bearers. It had the affixed seal of the Grandmaster. I opened it up and read it. He was displeased that I was causing so many problems. He excommunicated me from the order. I just scoffed. I had already reached the top level I could. I even got the master weapon. I just decided to let it go after that. There were gigger and better things to do. I told that to all the ones in the fort. The paladins nodded and allowed me to get my things. In the meantime, I sent a letter to the other Protectors and gathered my children. I went to Abel's fort and recruited him. He was loyal to me and left. All the Protectors did. We had nothing else to do in Sacrilmon. I decided to go north to Humora. We could do lots of things there. Chien, Chat, Leon, Abel, and Guy were ready to go almost immediately. Zeta, Eta, Theta, Iota, and Kappa did not care at all one way or another. Alpha, Beta and Epsilon were just happy to be rescued. Guy asked Alpha where their guardian was. "He died in battle. Those damn Omega Warriors got to him!" he spat.
I decided that it would also do us good to stay far out of the reaches of Limerick Jill and the Omega Warriors. We made our way to the forest and went through it. There was a lot of dense areas crammed with trees and some monsters and large creatures that would pick fights with us. We were able to get past them and clear the forest. I breathed a sigh relief when that ordeal was done. It would certainly slow down any pursuers that tried to follow our path. We went along until we found a city. It was named Fulton City after a legendary hero. I saw a country map and it updated my menu screen. There were five forts here. Two of them were occupied by the army. The others were taken by bandits. the one furthest northwest was different than the others. While most of the country was on the plains, there was the beginnings of the desert there. The next country to the northeast was Sandario which was all dessert. I don't think they would send any bounty hunters across a dessert for us. That is why we set our course for there. It took a week and the sand was irritating, but we did make it.
Sandario was a large country and had a sultanate style of governance. There were ten forts and sixteen villages. Eight major cities was where most of the political and infrastructural hubs were. I saw that of the ten forts, there was one that was up for grabs near the border. It was occupied by bandits. We made our way there and fought the bandits. Desert bandits were actually harder than regular bandits. They were still no match for me. We killed all of them and took over the fort. Since we were not in the generic Order of the Church of the Seven Roses, we could immediately found a new one. I named it the Order of the Rose Bud. The fort was made an outpost to get more initial recruits. Since I was the founder, I was the automatic Grandmaster. I immediately promoted Chien, Chat, Leon and Abel to the rank of Templars. That now meant that Guy, Zeta, Eta, Theta, Iota, and Kappa were the Standard Bearers of the order. Alpha, Beta and Epsilon were knights. The 10 recruits were made squires. It brought the number of paladins up to 26 men and women. That was a very good start.
Having that many meant that we could spread out and take more bandit held forts. Guy, Zeta, Eta, Theta, Iota, and Kappa became a unit again and took one for us. I was not surprised. Chien, Chat, Leon and Abel joined me and Beta. Four of the new recruits were led by Alpha and Epsilon. Each group took one and that brought our total to four forts. I had them all become outposts. We were all we had, so we needed to bolster our numbers. Abel, Guy, and Alpha became a commander of one the forts we took. I was the leader of the best fort. That happened to be the second one I personally fought for. Abel went back to the first one with Chat. I had lost trust in him after he had attempted to kill me. The outfit changed to distinguish us from the other order. Because of the location, our outfits became that of maluks instead of knights. The colors were still a grass green and white however. We had grown in number to 104 members. It was not long before the sultan sent an envoy to determine what we were doing. Diplomacy was always a good start to relations. I decided to go meet with them.
