Order of the Triad

The Order of the Triad, also called the Triadic knights, was a knightly order that served the kingdom of Old Impiltur for many years, from the 8 to the 12 century DR. These holy warriors had been gathered together from across Faerûn by the churches of Torm, Tyr, and Ilmater and united in service of their gods and the nation in which they found a home. They gave rise to the Triadic knights who populated various paladin orders of these churches in the 14 century DR.

History
When the unleashed demons of the Scaled Horde overran Old Impiltur in the Year of the Dowager Lady, 726 DR, and the half-fiend King Agrosh the Scaled even usurped the throne, the churches of the Triad vowed not to make the same mistakes that had led to the fall of Myth Drannor in the Weeping War only twelve years before. Thus, they united to declare the Triad Crusade, calling on noble knights all over Faerûn to answer their gods' call, come fight the fiends, and protect Impiltur. The paladin Sarshel Elethlim led this army across the Inner Sea to Impiltur in the, and opened the Fiend Wars. The conflict saw these knights of the Triad first achieve recognition.

After both the Fiend Wars and the Triad Crusade came to an end in the Year of the Proud Father, 732 DR, the paladin-turned-king Sarshel Elethlim made a royal decree to establish the Order of the Triad. It was intended to honor and house all the foreign knights of the Triad Crusade who had defended the realm against the fiendish hordes and lived to see its end.

Later, the knights of the Order of the Triad fought bravely and won fame in the Battle of the Moaning Gorge in the Year of the Moaning Gorge, 786 DR. They aided the Paladin Princes in routing Ndulu from Toril for a second time and banishing the demon lord to the Abyss.

Following the ascension of King Nord, the Order of the Triad earned great renown when the new king called on them to root out the remaining fiends. For nearly twenty years, the knights of the Triad traveled across the realm, in a great campaign to hunt down the demons that still plagued the lands.

The Order of the Triad continued to serve the Elethlim Dynasty with distinction and honor, until not fiends but plague finally claimed the monarchy over 922–924 DR. This culminated in the death of the kingdom's last royal heir, Princess Aliaa, in the Year of the Fearless Peasant, 926 DR. In the long Kingless Years that followed (926–1097 DR)) and in the early years of the Heltharn Dynasty (1097 DR onward), they held firm to their traditions and faith, yet their numbers waned to nil as the holy champions were gradually killed off by fiends and other foes and no more knights replaced them. Eventually, the Order of the Triad was no more.

Legacy
Yet its traditions and faith in the Triad survived in future generations, in the form of Triadic knights. A century into the new Heltharn Dynasty, in the Year of the Shrike, 1196 DR, King Imphras II was inspired to found a new holy knightly order to serve the monarchy and revise the Order of the Triad's traditions. The Most Holy Order of the Sacred Shrike would come to be known simply as the Knights of Imphras II Circa 1374 DR, its leading members were these Triadic knights.

Meanwhile, beyond Impiltur, in central and west Faerûn, Triadic knights served in the countless knightly orders dedicated to Ilmater, Torm, and Tyr, or the Triad as a whole. They were present in large numbers as leading members of the Knights Kuldar at Barakmordin in Tethyr and of the Janessar in Calimshan, both dedicated to the Triad. However, the majority, though not by much, were independent clerics and paladins who venerated the Triad apart from the individual churches with little if any opposition from them.