Companions of the Noble Heart

The Companions of the Noble Heart were a knightly order of paladins devoted to the faith of Ilmater, the One Who Endures.

Activities
The Companions of the Noble Heart had the duty of seeking out and destroying the cruel, those people who tortured and enjoyed the suffering of others. The Companions were very aggressive in seeking out their chosen adversaries. They especially disliked the church of Loviatar, their greatest foes, and once they had slain all evil-doers within a temple of Loviatar, the Companions would happily destroy the building, right down to the ground.

Relations
The Companions of the Noble Heart were friendly with their counterpart order, the Order of the Golden Cup. They took somewhat opposing views, with the Companions as the more aggressive order, the Golden Cup as the more peaceful.

The Companions often joined other followers of the Triad of gods in crusades against the minions of Loviatar, the Maiden of Pain.

Abilities
Some Noble Heart paladins pursued the path of a holy warrior and a hunter in service to their faith. As hunters, they learned the skills of wilderness survival and tracking. They were dogged in the pursuit of tormentors, and could develop supernatural skill in following the tracks of Loviatans. Such hunters had only to touch the body of one recently harmed by a Loviatan to see the true face of their attacker.

Some were especially capable of destroying any object dedicated to Loviatar with a blow of their weapon. They used this to destroy Loviatan weapons, holy objects, temples, and even regular possessions owned by a lay follower of Loviatar. They could even smite such objects as if they were evil creatures themselves. Some even learned to smite evil more often, purely for the purposes of combating Loviatans and their works, and could resist Loviatan assaults upon the body.

Whereas paladins typically learned to cast remove disease, Noble Heart paladins could learn the spell delay poison instead, which they used to resist and protect against the poisoned weapons of their enemies.

Noble Heart paladins could practice freely as fighters and divine champions.

History
Around 1265 DR, the Companions of the Noble Heart were recruited to defend the Ilmatari priests of the House of Holy Suffering in Mussum—against their fellow priests of the House of the Broken God in Keltar. Archsufferer Bloirt Waelarn of the Keltar house had denounced those of the Mussum house for refusing to relinquish the Tome of Torment, the holiest book of the faith, and declared them degenerate, mentally ill heretics. The Mussum priests and the Companions attacked Waelarn and his followers, labeling them "false clerics" and "subverted by evil". An angry Waelarn summoned three other knightly orders—the Holy Warriors of Suffering, the Knights of the Bleeding Shield, and the Order of the Golden Cup—to his side and vowed holy war against the "unclean ones of Mussum" and their allies. The war saw the violent clashes of Holy Hill Farm in 1266 DR and Bronsheir's Charge and Weeping Rock in 1267 DR. Finally, Lord Sir Jargus Holenhond of the Golden Cup called an end to the bloodshed between true believers, insisted that the Tome of Torment be transferred to Keltar as planned, and blamed Bloirt Waelarn for the senseless violence, determining that he should be removed from office and sent into hermitage for the remainder of his years. The weary paladins accepted and carried out his judgment.

The Companions of the Noble Heart remained active through the 1360s and early 1370s DR.