Paladins

The Paladins are the Theocracy’s militant religious order, operating alongside Templars, clergy, and rebel forces while presenting armed defense as a sacred duty. They are not merely soldiers: their armor, kneeling rituals, reverence for holy figures, and attachment to the Theocracy’s spiritual mythology make them custodians of a political religion whose authority is repeatedly tested by war, revelation, and regime change.

Nature and Religious Authority

The Paladins belong to the armed apparatus of the Theocracy, where military service and religious allegiance are inseparable. Around the ice-covered church beneath the statue of Saint Citri, armed Paladins and Templars stand with black-robed clergywomen, carrying submachine guns and staves. The arrangement makes the church both sanctuary and fortified position: sacred space is guarded by the same weapons used in urban combat, while clergy and soldiers share responsibility for preserving the institution’s authority.

Their faith is organized around holy figures whose presence is believed to have practical military consequences. Lita von Strongarm explains that Saint Citri, regarded as the founder of the Theocracy, is represented by a human-sized statue modeled on Sahaqiel. According to Lita, the statue’s presence limits the power of demonspawn attacking the city, making the sacred image a defensive resource as well as an object of worship. Because traitors know the statue’s importance, they search the city for it. The Paladins therefore protect not only doctrine but also a material symbol believed to influence the survival of the capital.

Alliance with the Reclaimers

The Paladins also appear as part of the Theocracy’s political resistance. During the planned assault on the Theocracy’s capital, Jack’s team is ordered to link up with the Reclaimers, a military faction composed of partisans, rebels, and Paladins under Lord-Commander Lita von Strongarm. Their purpose is not simply to hold a defensive line. After the hidden facility is infiltrated and the Green Bishop is removed, Lita and her followers are intended to replace what remains of the Theocracy’s government.

This arrangement places the Paladins at the intersection of rebellion and continuity. They oppose the Green Bishop’s regime, yet their participation gives the projected replacement government a religious and military foundation. When Lita emerges from the snow in gold-and-white armor, she is recognized as a seasoned warrior rather than an anonymous partisan. The surrounding fighters wear mismatched Templar armor and furs and carry Fiddler SMG-12s and Fuscilla-92 shotguns, equipment suited to urban warfare rather than long-range combat. The scene presents the Paladins and their allies as a fractured force held together by shared resistance, improvised matériel, and Lita’s authority.

Submission, Violence, and Defeat

The order’s sacred hierarchy is expressed through bodily submission. When Jack approaches Lita intending to shake her hand, she instead kneels. Later, after Jack breaks through the Theocracy’s defenses, Papal Paladins kneel before him and beg forgiveness. One of them identifies him as the Ripper man and prostrates himself before the figure who has become, in their eyes, something like an angel of death. Their gestures reveal how quickly military reverence can be transferred when the old power structure collapses: the Paladins’ submission is not only defeat but an attempt to interpret Jack through the religious categories they already possess.

Their defeat occurs within a wider collapse of the Theocracy. Only a dozen clergy remain in the besieged position, holding firm despite the certainty of Jack’s arrival. Nest agents attack him, but creatures that once would have terrified him are reduced to nuisances, their drained bodies falling beside his boots. The surviving Papal Paladins confront a victorious enemy who has entered the role of supernatural judge. The order’s weapons and titles cannot protect it once the spiritual and political center represented by the Green Bishop has been captured.

The Green Bishop is eventually bound and gagged in mana-suppressant shackles and carried away by Imperial commandos. With the head of the regime removed, Jack refuses to let Jessica’s team treat the remaining childlike abominations as an ordinary military problem, saying that he will deal with them himself. The Paladins’ defeat is thus part of a larger reckoning with the structures the Theocracy built: armed guardians, religious authorities, and monstrous instruments are all left exposed when the institution’s command breaks.

Saints, Revelation, and Political Reinterpretation

The Paladins’ devotion is destabilized by the revelation that their patron saint is present in a living form. Sahaqiel reacts with confusion when she sees the statue of her own likeness and denies knowing why it exists. Lita, misreading Jack’s reaction, explains the statue’s sacred identity and the protection attributed to it. The moment creates a sharp divide between institutional belief and personal knowledge. The Paladins possess an elaborate theology of the saint, while Sahaqiel herself does not recognize the political meaning assigned to her image.

That contradiction becomes more powerful beneath the statue’s six wings, where Jack encounters a choir of children singing in a language he does not understand. Sahaqiel understands the angelic language and weeps because she has not heard it since childhood. For the Paladins, the church is a place of military defense and sacred ceremony; for Sahaqiel, the song reaches back toward a lost angelic past. The order’s ritual world therefore preserves something genuine, but it also encloses that memory within institutions and symbols that may not understand their original subject.

Later, Sahaqiel’s presence is used directly in the management of prisoners. Jack stages a test of trust before Cintelli prisoners, with Lilith materializing and Sahaqiel descending beside him. Some prisoners recognize Sahaqiel and prostrate themselves when they see their patron saint clearly. The Paladins’ religious vocabulary is thereby appropriated by a new authority: Jack, Lilith, and Sahaqiel appear together as a deliberately arranged tableau, transforming belief into a political instrument while also exposing the emotional force that belief retains.

Place in the Emerging Order

The Paladins’ position becomes increasingly uncertain as the story moves from the Theocracy’s sacred monarchy toward broader human coalitions and successor states. Jack’s surrender appeal to Roland forces describes a future in which former enemies may lay down their arms, receive humane treatment, and live as free citizens in the Cordelica Democracy. The offer stands against the Imperial war doctrine that once forbade surrender while resistance remained possible. In this changing political language, religiously motivated soldiers are no longer defined solely as enemies to be destroyed; they become potential subjects of a new legal order.

At the same time, the Paladins remain visible within the coalition preparing for the final struggle. Sahaqiel’s assertion that the Infinity Machine is real provokes suspicion from a skeptical speaker, but her claim immediately raises the room’s tension as powerful mana stirs Jack’s soul. The Paladins’ presence gives Sahaqiel’s testimony religious weight, even as the scene shows that faith alone is no longer sufficient for political decisions. Their loyalty can support a campaign, but the campaign must also answer military, material, and existential objections.

The order’s symbolic world persists beyond the fall of the Theocracy. Jack later stands before the Lost battalion with Lita’s Paladins and Superbia at the front, while samurai led by Min and Imperial soldiers watch the prisoners. Jack tells the dissident soldiers that they were deceived, and Sahaqiel again serves as visible proof when she takes her place beside him. The Paladins thus help stage the transition from one sacred political narrative to another: their armor and presence testify to judgment, but the judgment is now directed toward reconciliation, legitimacy, and the construction of a new human community rather than the preservation of the old Theocracy.

Narrative Significance

The Paladins embody the book’s recurring fusion of religion, state power, and military violence. They guard a saint’s image with guns, kneel before commanders who can occupy the place of angels, and serve both a collapsing holy government and the coalition that intends to replace it. Their repeated appearance beside statues, choirs, clergy, prisoners, and political leaders shows how sacred symbols make authority visible and emotionally compelling.

Their deepest significance lies in the instability of that authority. The Paladins believe they defend an inherited truth, yet the statue at the center of their faith is linked to a living being who does not understand the role imposed upon her. Once the Theocracy falls, the order’s rituals do not disappear; they are redirected. Kneeling, sainthood, judgment, and protection become portable signs that new rulers can use. The Paladins therefore represent both sincere religious commitment and the political machinery by which institutions turn belief into obedience, warfare, and, eventually, a claim to legitimacy in the world that follows.