The Knights Templar are the guys with the Plan.  

They are the guys, to put a fine point on it, with the Grand Plan.  The Grand Plan has a large number of wiggly bits to it but in essence it looks like:

– Steal all the occult knowledge in the world;

– Kill all the Nephilim;

– ?????

– Profit!

In the Official Templar Publications and Documentation the Grand Plan is more formal on gold leaf with gold ink. When boiled down to its essence that’s what they’re about.  Come with us!  We kill Nephilim and we have a Grand Plan for the Magical Domination of the Earth!  Also, pie!  We have PIE.

In 1014BC, about the time when the great King of Kings were memories and the Pyramids slowly overtaken by the sands and Egypt herself was torn to shreds by another round of internal civil war and strife, twelve military commanders laid hands on the secrets of the Priests at Heliopolis and learned the truth of the Nephilim, Akhenaton and the 22 Major Arcana.  They conceived a plan to steal the Emerald Tablets which held the greatest of Nephilim secrets and learn them for themselves.  They were thwarted at the last moment and they, and their followers, disappeared into the sands to lurk and wait.  They become excellent lurkers. A thousand years later, the Templars felt they had an opening to unleash their Grand Plan with the Birth of the Fool but they were thwarted again by Nephilim in the guise of Romans in Judea.  Then again in the 12th Century they emerged, the Poor Knights of the Temple, to guard pilgrims to the Holy City and to search for the artifacts buried by the followers of the Fool at the Temple Mount. It stuck. 

Armed with the knowledge found in scrolls found under the remains of Solomon’s Temple, the Templars enacted their current version of their Grand Plan.  By the 13th century they spread through all of Europe as bankers and financiers for the Great and Mighty.  They owned the land.  They owned the world! And it would have worked too if it wasn’t for those meddling Nephilim who used their positions in the Church and the French Court to make the Templar Treasure Horde a tasty snack to desperate despots.  As being burned at the stake as a witch was the trend in the 13th century, the Templars partook.  They burned well.  Their forces dispersed with their occult knowledge and their money as far away from the French Court as they could go which, at the time, was Scotland.

The Templars reconvened underground and nursed their wounds and their hatred of the Nephilim.  This was well known territory: they had skulked underground for thousands of years, stalking Nephilim, and turning them into Elixers while slowly worming their way into power.  They could do it again.  So they did.  The Templars prepared to ride out another ten centuries until they could rise again. 

Never having given up banking, the modern Templars are the great brokers of occult services in the underground world.  Need someone capped?  They have assassins.  Need a spell cast using an Elixir?  They can get sorcerers and bottles of Ka-elements.  Have a Nephilim infestation and need an Orichulka sword?  They are the go-to guys to find that weapon.  The Templars long learned debts were worth more than hard cash (although cash is nothing to sniff at), and everyone owes the Templars with an extra 10% interest off the top.  They call in their debts when they need something done.  And one better do it, because someone else owes the Templars, too, and they’ll call in that favor to wipe you out for lack of payment, the bastards.  They sit like a giant, plump spider among all the other secret societies helping some and hindering others to work the levers of the Grand Plan.

The Head of the Templars is the Grand Master.  He rules the society with an iron fist.  Second to him are Eleven Bailiffs who rule eleven parts of the world.  Beneath the Bailiffs are the Commanderies, smaller units of geographical area ruled from secret Templar lairs.  Each Commandry is ruled by a White Coat and his Six Knight Companions.  Below the White Coat and his Six Companions are Knights, Squires and Pages.  A page is the lowest unit of Templar.

And one cannot have a paranoid secret society with Internal Affairs.  The IA wing of the Templars are called the Obediences.  The Obedience Heads are the Crosses.  What’s super fun is when the Obediences get into fights with their Commanderies and an entire Templar power node implodes.

The Templars keep two kinds of outside influences going: their Companions and their Farm.  Their Companions are groups and organizations who know of the Templar existence and work with them for monetary bribes or mild power gains.  They are not terribly well informed but they do give material help.  The Farm is a network if in the dark dupes who do the Templar’s dirty work without ever knowing the truth.  The Templars exercise the Farm liberally to keep from expending their own resources.

The modern Templar goals are simple: 1. Kill All Nephilim.  2. Enact Grand Plan.   Whenever Nephilim put their heads up and look around, Templars are there ready to lop their heads off with Orichulka swords.  All the plans, the plots, the conspiracies, they all ultimately come back… to the Templars.