Kai Order - politics, ranks, history
Short Story of the New Order Kai
After the destruction of the Kai in 5050, Lone Wolf, being the sole survivor, knew that he could not lose any time in training a new force of Kai to face the darkness, should he die on mission; however, in the beginning, he knew to not be good enough to traing anybody yet.
During the journeys he undertook in the five years following the Massacre, he spent much time in Toran, Holmgard and Hammerdal, and in these place he met several young boys that catched his attention; he recognized in them the potential to become Kai and, despite not being completely a Master of the ten basic disciplines himself, he did his best to encourage them, offering them tips and bringing to the attention of King Ulnar the fact that these youngs might become the future of the Order, where he to ever die.
However, this approach changed when Lone Wolf finally reached the rank of Kai Master and recovered the fabled Book of Magnakai; armed with these instructions, he officially restarted the Order by enlisting the group of teen he'd benn training on-and-off during the previous five years. These children would later grow to become the core of the New Order, and become known, collettively, as "the Starting Five".
While he perfected his knowledge of the Book of Magnakai, and in the downtimes during his quest for the Lorestones (at least until the start of the Gnaag Wars), Lone Wolf collected another group of skilled youths with the potential to become Kai, finding some by himself and other being pointed to him by the allies he'd made during his quest, like his friend Banedon and Gwynian the sage.
This group of Kai would later come to be identified as "the second batch".
When the Gnaag Wars started in earnest and Lone Wolf fell into the trap laid for him by Gnaag and disappeared in a dimensional portal, it was this group of young, untrained Kai to form the backbone of the Sommerlending army and the various resistance groups that held their ground against the Darklords; trained by the Starting Five, as well as Lone Wolf's friend Banedon, this group of Kai had to face combat many time, forging their skill on the harshest of battlefields and becoming war veterans in the process. Nobody was brave enough to join the Order during this period, and over one-third of the second batch's members died during the wars.
After eight year, Lone Wolf finally returned, carrying with himself the Sommerswerd and rekindling the hopes of many. In a daring mission that he accomplished without any help, Lone Wolf killed Gnaag and destroyed the accursed city pf Helgedad, single-handledly ending forever the threat represented by the Darklords.
This triumphant return, signaling the second time Lone Wolf had stopped the Darkness, raised him to the level of a living legend, and for many youngs who'd been born during the wars but where too young to remember them, flocking under his banner of such an idol was almost natural - and it made the numbers of the Order swell considerably.
This new, third group of recruits was mostly looked upon very dispregiatively by the members of the second batch, who had had to suffer during the Gnaag Wars without anyobody coming to their help; they considered the newcomers as unwhorty of the title of Kai. When then Lone Wolf, now a Grand Master and skilled enough to start developing even new Magnakai disciplines, took a personal interest in the training of these newly minted Kai, the second batch displeasure came to encompass him as well - since, with his effortless actions and by winning the war on his own, most felt he had ridiculed their efforts and the sacrifices they made to keep Sommerlud safe.
The Starting Five, on the other hand, were just happy of seeing the Order grew strong again after having seen it dwindle during the Wars; since each one of them knew Lone Wolf personally, they knew that his unability to train the second batch was not born of uncaring, but instead of the fact that he, much like the rest of them, hadn't been ready to handle such a burden at the time.
For the third group, on the other hand, both Lone Wolf and the Starting Five where legendary figures, and they felt lucky to be taught by such skilled Kai. In regard to the second batch, opinion were more divided; some see them as war heroes and tried their best to prove them they were their equals and worthy of fighting alongside them, while others felt that the second batch's members were only afraid of a new group clearly much more talented than them and their arrogance just meant that they were the one unwhorty to serve under an hero like Lone Wolf.
As long as Lone Wolf was around to keep the New Order in line with his magnetic presence, skills and reputation, this internal strife was confined to mostly side comments and minor slights; however, now that he's disappeared and the Order is breaking into factions, there are those afraid that this division between the second batch and the third group might resurface with strenght, and break the New Order apart.
