First appearance: Skypiercer Part 1
The Knights of Chaos were the emissaries of Faucius Golden Shield and the protectors of The Dread Fortress. On the night his throne was stolen, they bled themselves dry to carry his daughter out of the Void. Three centuries later that daughter walked back into the room where they died and found them still standing. Their story frames the whole of Skypiercer, and it ends with the order reborn under a new name at its head: the Grandmaster.
Story
Skypiercer Part 1: The Night of the Long Shadow
Three hundred years before the events of Skypiercer Part 1, screams rang through the Dread Fortress: “the Golden King is dead.” Faucius Golden Shield had been assassinated in the coup that came to be called the Night of the Long Shadow. Mercenaries burst into the chambers of his young daughter Elusia, and the Knights of Chaos cut them down before they could reach her. She snatched up the obsidian dagger that had belonged to her grandfather, a gift from her father, and the knights took her in hand.
Sir Boros, a large orc in black and red armor, told her this was “the king’s plan.” He escorted her to the Ceremonial Chamber, a hall of fanned arches behind twenty-foot iron doors. There Elusia drank a bowl of viscous gold liquid, and the knights slit their own throats. They stayed on their feet until every drop of their blood had spilled, and that blood opened a portal beneath her. Crossing out of the Void is extremely difficult, and it took the knights’ lives to do it. Elusia fell through to the realm of Cor’thun, beyond the reach of the usurper.
When the story returned to the present, Vythorn, the scholar who would one day be known as The Arbiter, confirmed what that sacrifice had cost. Of the knights, he said: “There are none that remain. All slain [on] the night of the Long Shadow.”
Skypiercer Part 3: Statues and Successors
In Skypiercer Part 3 (finale), Vythorn led Elusia and her companions into the Dread Fortress and brought them to the very room she had left from as a child. The Knights of Chaos were still standing where they had died, now turned to stone. Three of them were named: Sir Eros, Sir Rickson and Sir Boros. Vythorn explained that the usurper, Agdrel, kept them as trophies and came to the chamber “to remember his victory.” Elusia called them “the highest order.” She kissed Boros’s feet, then asked her friends never to make that same sacrifice for her.
After the Shadow King fell, Elusia revived the order. Using her ornate dagger, she knighted Kaja and Atalantos as her new Knights of Chaos:
“My trusted kin, for you are family to me now.” (Elusia, knighting Kaja and Atalantos)
She then asked the gathered crowd to become her acolytes. They knelt and chanted, and so The Acolytes were born in the same moment as the new order.
Personality and Abilities
The old Knights of Chaos were warriors first. They killed the mercenaries sent after Elusia, and they kept enough discipline in the middle of a coup to carry out their dead king’s final plan to the letter. The only knight described in detail is Sir Boros, a hulking orc in black and red armor who spoke for the order and walked Elusia to safety. Their last act was a blood rite: they gave their own lives to open a passage out of the Void, holding themselves upright until it was done.
The order is defined by loyalty to its ruler and devotion to the royal line. The new knights, Kaja and Atalantos, earned their titles as Elusia’s closest companions in the fight against the Shadow King. She chose them because they had become family to her.
Relationships
- Faucius Golden Shield: The king they served as emissaries; his plan was their final order.
- Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer: The child they died to save, who later mourned them and restored the order.
- The Shadow King: The usurper whose coup destroyed them and who kept their petrified bodies as trophies.
- The Arbiter: As Vythorn, he told Elusia that none of the knights survived and led her back to their statues.
- Kaja: Knighted by Elusia as one of the new Knights of Chaos.
- Atalantos: Knighted by Elusia as one of the new Knights of Chaos.
Memorable Quotes
- “There are none that remain. All slain [on] the night of the Long Shadow.” Vythorn (Skypiercer Part 1)
- “These statues are his trophies.” Vythorn, on Agdrel (Skypiercer Part 3 (finale))
- “My trusted kin, for you are family to me now.” Elusia (Skypiercer Part 3 (finale))