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The Order of the Shattered Moon is a rouge Foedosian Knighthood Order that have went against their vows in order to form a nation of their own. Knighthood Orders typically afternoon as the Foedosian version of Huntsmen, having first formed millennia ago after the collapse of the last Foedosian Empire by the empire’s military elite in order to combat the sharp increase in Grimm that followed the empire’s fracture. Typically they are independent and tend to avoid involving themselves in politics, but a few Orders, including the Shattered Moon, have shirked these old traditions in favour of conquest.

They are quite feudal in of how their nation is organised. One’s own standing in the Shattered Moon is often decided by how much land they own, and land is primarily gained by being incredibly wealthy, being an exceptionally skilled warrior, or gaining the favour of somebody with high standing. These lands are worked by the peasantry, lowborns not lucky enough to have been born into aristocracy and too lacking in dust and/or combat aptitude to garner the attention of a Knight scouting for Initiates. These lands are defended by Knights (obviously) who are either lowborns that have shown unusuall martial prowess, the first child of a duke, count, or baron, or just generally any blue blooded individual volunteered by their parents at a young age. These Knights form the nations only, permanent standing army like in many other Foedosian nations. However these Knights will often be ed by levied men and women during times of war, levies being peasants and slaves with very basic training. However some groups of lowborns have received extra training or are veterans of previous wars, and as a result are often competent enough to form their own units without much from their Knightly superiors.

Land is controlled by Counts, Barons, and Dukes, often Senior Knights rewarded with land, and they are all relatively autonomous as long as they obey the Grand Strategos whenever they are needed. Counts, Barons, and Dukes with a large enough number of Knights and Levies are perfectly able of waging their own wars without dragging the rest of the realm into it as long as they don’t try picking on a target too large for them to handle. These wars aren’t usually wars and are mainly raids carried out to leech the wealth off a neighbour. However their Knights and Levies are expected to be provided to the Grand Strategos whenever war is declared and ONLY if a war is declared. Without a formal declaration of war no one is obligated to hand over their armies to the Grand Strategos.

The Grand Strategos is the head of the Order and essentially fills the role of a King, however they rarely bother with istrating their realm and instead focus on the security and expansion of their realm. They do have the final say on any law being ed though, and they do retain absolute power over the Order which they can exercise if they ever deem it necessary.

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The Order of the Shattered Moon is ultimately a martial organisation through and through despite also running a nation spanning half of Foedo’s Everbloom. A large chunk of their industry and economy is geared towards war. Whilst appearing very feudal they are far from actually being medieval. They rival Vale in of overall technological advancement, however their main strength is their level of advancement with dust which sures even Atlas. Their most notable accomplishment is the successful mass production of usable dust gems, a process that is incredibly expensive and laborious for the rest of Remnant.

All of their warriors, including the Levies, are skilled with the usage of dust. With how frequent dust is in Foedo it is more apart of everyday life then it is in Vale or Mistral. For Levies they only tend to rely on the crystal or powder forms, mostly for empowering a spear head with a certain element. Knights receive the beat kind of dust based equipment, with dust infused plate armour and dust powered longswords being an absolute requirement. How ornate a Knight’s equipment is and how powerful it is shows their status within the Order. The lowest Knight often having a bullet resistant steel and ceramic plate covered with ice and Earth dust placed on a grid like pattern to act as a sort of explosive reactive armour, and dust infused longswords and/or dust powered laser rifles. The Knights with higher standing commonly have mechanical, dust powered horses or even giant, flying, robot eagles or dragons. Their armour tends to be made from higher quality and often heavier materials with a larger reliance placed on gravity dust to make the weight easier to carry. Their weaponry is often a lot more outlandish and vastly more effective then their poorer brethren, varying too widely to list.

What makes the Order of the Shattered Moon unique to other Orders is their more extreme approach to dust usage. They ingest it. Shattered Moon Initiates have to consume a small vial of fire dust powder as their final trial before receiving the rank of Squire, an agonising process that sometimes leads to the volatile death of an Initiate. After their Initiation Squires will regularly ingest small amounts of dust as they slowly progress up to the rank of Junior Knight, slowly but steadily developing a tolerance and a resistance to the painful effects caused by dust ingestion. By the time they are halfway towards achieving the rank of a full fledged Knight, Junior Knights are expected to be capable of ingesting dust in the middle of combat and using the resulting effects to deadly effect. By the time they are a full fledged Knight then it is fully expected for them to be able to absorb an entire dust crystal into their body without crippling themselves with the pain.

This fact makes any Shattered Moon Knight especially deadly even when they are without their weapons of armour, as they could simply grab any bit of dust nearest to them and inject it straight into their bloodstream before unleashing elemental mayhem. In fact, a necklace with a dust crystal with a sharpened edge is often worn by Shattered Moon Knights at all times.

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The number of Shattered Moon Knights are estimated to be around 260,000, with 320,000 Junior Knights and an unknown amount of Levies but they are expected to number in the millions. The average Shattered Moon Dust Knight is comparable to an A or S Rank Hunstmen in skill, albeit often with much better equipment. Junior Knights tend to be on par with newly graduated Hunstmen.

The Order of the Shattered Moon fight mainly land based wars aided by immensely powerful dust cannons to bombard an enemy and to shoot down aircraft. Most Shattered Moon fortresses and cities tend to have a massive array of dust cannons capable of lighting up the sky with accelerated dust particles capable of knocking down an Atlesian Warship.

They do have their own air navy, which is minuscule compared to Atlas but still quite formidable. Their warships are predominantly composed of unusually nimble Frigate and Destroyer class warships, with propulsion merely being a few fire dust engines and afterburners as the entire ship is lifted by a massive gravity dust gem. These warships are, like previously stated, unusually nimble and surprisingly fast. Often stretching up to 170 metres in length, they’re capable of performing aerial manoeuvres that would normally turn its crew into a bloody mush if it wasn’t for the gravity dust preventing that from happening. Their main armaments are dust particle accelerators that fire a continuous beam that repeatedly explodes the impact zone. However the warships are quite vulnerable as they lack hardlight shielding and have thin armour so less gravity dust is required to lift them.

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Politically they are especially hostile towards non-Foedosian nations, such as the Four Kingdoms but mainly Vacuo and Atlas in particular. Raids have been sent down to Vacuo, which were mixed when it comes to success. Last year a raid was intercepted by an Atlesian patrol whilst out at sea. Most of the force had to retreat back to Foedo whilst the rest were intercepted and captured by the Atlas TES shortly after reaching the northern Vacuoan coastline. Those raids make them a very real threat to coastal villages near to the Foedosian Sea.

They seem perfectly content to stay within their own continent outside of the raids however. As long as nothing is done to instigate a larger conflict the Shattered Moon and the rest of Remnant seem to agree to leave each other mostly alone.

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