Does the Empire have church militants and church-affiliated soldiers? Bishoprics, templars, crusader kingdoms, glebes, monastic orders, brotherhoods of holy warriors, fraternities, dueling cults etc. If the Empire does contain such groups, how are they structured and organized?
Did the medieval-era Eldrae societies have inquisitor and witchfinder-equivalents? If that is the case, do they still have similar institutions?
I wonder this; does the Empire have berserker units?
I’m imaging extremely calm and composed berserkers, maintaining a state of mental peace and equilibrium, and are also very fond of melee brutality.
Let me answer this one first, because it’s easier:
Well, you’re sort of half right there. They’re not specialized units; the “battletrance”, or more formally “Impulse Override System” is something they issue everyone in the IMS as part of their military-basic upgrades. It’s a simple neuroprosthesis that nullifies the fight/flight instinct, turning fear into a simple informational caution-warning system rather than something that can override your better judgement, and enabling you to fully concentrate on the mission rather than having to wrestle with your primal instincts.
Legionaries are terrifyingly calm in battle.
Of course, unlike many berserkers, they’re in full control of themselves the whole time and won’t damage anything they don’t intend to be pretty thoroughly damaged.
Melee brutality, though? Well, brutality usually implies some degree of cruelty or deliberate viciousness, and while you can’t take the blood rage out of the kaeth, they’re the epitome of the joyful warrior, one and all. Sure, they may smash your skull to tiny pieces with a warhammer that looks like it came straight out of a particularly over-the-top Exalted anime, but they’re not going to be mean-spirited about it.
(As for the eldrae, they do tend to think that the exquisite art of the two swords and other close-up martial arts are - without prejudice to their large dracosaurian friends - for settling affairs one-on-one between gentlemen, and that meleé in mass combat is brutish and distasteful.
Unlike filling the battlefield with enough microdrones to make the whole grid square unexpectedly explode before anyone in it realizes they’re there, which is obviously the epitome of civilized warfare. 
.)
Thank you very much for enlightenment!
May you please elaborate on the actual function of the N45gr Holmgang berserker combat armor?
Ah, I see the source of the question now!
The N45gr is the armor they give to the penal legion, those who have incurred a death sentence and are endeavoring to regain their honor by dying honorably for the Empire. The N45gr makes it easy for them to ensure that they do by suppressing all urge to self-preservation.
To try and address this, I must first issue a couple of clarifications.
The first of these being that a lot of these things assume a background rooted in Western - primarily Abrahamic - religiosity, and the Church of the Flame isn’t like that, for all its name translates as “church”.
If one must make Earth analogies, it’s more like ancient paganism spot-welded to Shinto for Platonists, with a dash of Zoroastrianesque dualism in which the role of cosmic evil is played by a spiritually generalized Second Law of Thermodynamics.
(“It is the first duty of all sophont beings to be suckage-minimizers. It is the second duty of all sophont beings to be awesomeness-maximizers. On these two things is the whole of the law based.”)
The other one is that the Empire didn’t have anything resembling a medieval period.
Which is really important in thinking about history and religion, because so much of it in the Western world is still wrapped around the great post-Roman hangover.
(If one simplifies dramatically - and I know I’m doing it, don’t write letters - it was the near-complete collapse of anything resembling civilization across most of Europe and then spending the next ten centuries scrabbling around trying to resurrect the ghost of what once was out of the wreckage. Everyone kept speaking degenerated Latin dialects and awarded themselves titles resembling “Caesar” because if they pretended really hard…
And the Church in Rome got to shape everything in its image because by preserving knowledge and offering at least some continuity with Roman civil institutions it was pretty much the only points of light in an Age that was, modern historians’ distaste for the term aside, pretty damn Dark.)
But if you look at the grand sweep of Imperial history (see this FAQ page for the overview), they progressed directly from the (equivalent of) the Classical period into the (equivalents of) the Renaissance[1], and then the Industrial Revolution, without bothering with the rather inconvenient collapse in the middle.
…okay, there’s one more.
The Flamics are much more interested in orthopraxy than orthodoxy[2], relately focus on emulation rather than worship as the key element in how one should relate to deities, and are explicitly anti-dogmatic inasmuch as you’re - individually and collectively - supposed to seek to learn more about the divine principles, a vast and potentially endless task, not rely on some age-old infallible and complete dictation of them.
So heresy, unlike the way Western religiosity would think of it on Earth, is not a matter of theological wrongthought. (If you are antidogmatic/discovery-focused in the way the Flamics are, you are going to spend a lot of time arguing over theological and practical differences in the Way, and you don’t get to suppress them by declaring them heresy. To do, in fact, would be - well, heretical[3].)
The Antithetical Heresies, those being the ones that the Church would be inclined to call heresy and come down on you for, are the ones that aren’t only heteroprax, but unenlightenedly heteroprax in ways that are specifically Entropy-serving. Wrongdo, if you will.
(As for, specifically, witch-finders, if anyone was looking for women living in cottages in the woods who knew an awful lot about herbalism, midwifery, and the like, it would have been the order of Gaëlenén, who would be very interested in persuading any such to join up and share their knowledge with the rest of the team.
To be fair, the Compassionate Order of Gaëlenén did have a templar - militant order - counterpart, whose motto wasn’t literally “If You Mess With The Healers, We’ll Make Sure You Need One”, but you get the idea.)
Also, for that matter, that the boundary between the secular and spiritual worlds is much thinner than it is in most Earth religions. To use my existing example, Gaëlenén is the god of health and healing, medicine, etc. The entire healthcare profession are, by definition, emulators of Gaëlenén, ergo all doctors, nurses, paramedics, et. al. are de facto at least lay members of the Compassionate Order. Similarly, Saravoné is the deity of law and justice, and the same could be said of every judge, deemster, arbitrator, and constable.
Indeed, if you work in any profession that has eikonic patronage, and it’s quite hard to think of one that doesn’t, you’re literally doing gods’ work all the time.
Urgh. That’s long enough for now. When I get back to this next and am somewhat less tired, I’ll talk about what specifics I have established in my notes, some historical goings-on, and what became of some of the better-known templar orders in the modern era.
More of a gradual continued “Naissance”, really, insofar as no-one needed to rediscover what was still right there. ↩︎
It is generally considered doctrine that the eikones care much more about whether you are acting in accordance with their will than whether or not you believe in them, or have even heard of them; to steal a quotation, “Therefore if any man swear by Tash and keep his oath for the oath’s sake, it is by me that he has truly sworn, though he know it not, and it is I who reward him. And if any man do a cruelty in my name, then, though he says the name Aslan, it is Tash whom he serves and by Tash his deed is accepted.” ↩︎
Technically, that’s probably the Antithetical Heresy of the Thoughtless Churl. ↩︎
(A quick footnote since I have been watching The Pitt recently:
In the modern era, one might imagine that said Gaëlenite templar order provides hospital security.
“If you attack any of the staff in this emergency room, I will break your arm. Then I will set it, because after all, I am a Gaëlenite.”)
((A quicker second footnote:
If you can imagine the gathering of medical staff at the start of each shift for the traditional recital of the equally traditional invocation[1]:
“What do we say to the god of death?”
“NOT TODAY!”
…you’re doing it right.))
Not a literal representation, obviously, but it captures the spirit of the thing. ↩︎
I can also them being the ones trained in compassionate restraint, for the unfortunate sophs who are suffering head injuries/substance exposure/bloodloss induced psychosis, etc. The ones who aren’t deliberately attacking the staff as much as reflexively lashing out at any contact due to pain or instincts, and who need to be firmly restrained by a trained templar wielding a padded blanket until the sedatives kick in.
Anyway. So, to finally get on with it -
Way, way back in history, many and various eikones have had militant orders, which as per the above, were mostly concentrated on addressing faults of praxis, insofar as the job of the Church as a whole is the promotion of eupraxia (“good/right actions”).
(The non-militant orders exist to help people who have fallen into dyspraxia (“faulty/unsuccessful action”) - which isn’t moral failure, technically, it’s situational and circumstantial, accidental, a wound rather than a sin. They help pick you up, teach you better, and resolve your conflicts so you end up back on the eupraxic path.
The militant orders, in contrast, are there to oppose people engaged in kakopraxia (“evil/malicious action”), guarding everyone else from them and crushing their seeds before they grow into poisonous flowers.)
In early historical periods - especially in the Ungoverned Era, but in all sorts of times when secular authority was relatively weak, they were all over the place. You can see Little Darknesses for a canonical reference.
Over time, as the Empire became ascendant, the militant orders - “templars”, in the translated local lingo - dwindled comparatively as these duties quietly passed into the hands into the secular authorities (which, in any case, naturally held large concentrations of the appropriate faithful), and it became no longer the done thing for vandals, book-burners, rakes, litterers, rioters, Tiktok influencers, and other entropic blights on society to be dealt with by wandering warrior monks, with a hearty cry of “Stop right there, akuma scum!” and a righteous wushu-style ass-kicking.
Well, mostly.
So, let’s look at some[1] of the specific templar orders from history, and where they are now:
As mentioned, Entélith (death, rebirth, and major transitions) and Pétamárdis (reuse, recycling, repair, and necessary decay), as representatives of those endings which lead to new beginnings, had a very strong order focused on defeating entropy-cults in general. (In the modern day, incidentally, they have a lot of physicists and ontotechnologists who are carrying on the war on Entropy in more metaphyical realms.)
Alathíël’s (knowledge, wisdom, scholars, literacy) templars merged almost seamlessly with the Repository’s Special Acquisitions folks, out there ensuring that whenever a library is about to burned, a museum is about to be looted, or a monument about to be destroyed, they’ll be there first to steal it… perform preemptive archaeology, ensure it’s taken proper care of, and never, ever give it back.
The Compassionate Order of Gaëlenén (health and healing) has been mentioned above, and still exists, providing hospital security, compassionate restraint, and guarding the healers as was ever their job. Continuing the job of its historical antecedents directly is that portion which works with charitable groups abroad, like the Sympathy, in ensuring that messing with the healers is still a great way to end up needing one.
Dúréníän and Kalasané, who between them patronize war, still have their joint templar order; it’s now effectively the chaplains’ corps of the Imperial Military Service, providing moral support, morale support, and occasionally fire support where needed.
Éléia-Líëran (love, marriage, family, relationships) still have an active templar order, out there looking for obstacles standing in the way of true love and happiness, and then beating seven bells out of it with a heart-shaped tungsten mace. Just because you’re a hopeless romantic doesn’t mean you don’t have teeth.
Kanáralath (philosophy, reason, logic, rigorous thought, truth) doesn’t technically have a templar order. It would be inappropriate, after all, a sword not being an argument and so forth. On the other hand, the regular priesthood of Kanáralath are basically superpowered Space Jesuits, who can crush their enemies readily enough with nothing but words.
Laryssan (the future, destiny, foresight, etc.) was always rumored to have a secret order of fate ninjas whose job is to ensure that people of particular importance to destiny are protected and important events play out just as they’re supposed to. The rumors continue, and the fate ninjas continue to be just as unconfirmable as you would expect fate ninjas to be.
Nimithil’s (authority, governance, wise use of power) templar order disappeared into the Three Departments of Impropriety and the Market Liberty Oversight Directorate, where it continues to be just as terrifying to the corrupt as it ever was, if not more so.
As Dúréníän and Kalasané’s templars became to the IMS, Saravoné’s - which already included many of the wandering deemsters of the Ungoverned Era - became to the judicial branch and the Watch Constabulary.
I’m not going to canonize the notion that Seléne (the silver moon, the cunning mind) has or ever has had a templar order of magical girls prone to declaiming ‘In the name of the moon, I shall punish you!’, but I’m not going to officially deny it, either.
Sylithandríël’s (nature) druids are less militant than they used to be (having the backup of the secular authorities in the application of force), but let he who harms nature and its fruits still beware their wrath. (I’m not saying that these idiots who decided that desecrating a garden was a great way to make their political point would have fallen out of a tree a few times on their way to arraignment, but I’m also not saying, etc.)
It is possible that the Unnamed (secrets, mysteries, and that which you are not cleared to know) still has a templar order, but since no-one knows if he, she, or it had one in the first place, it’s hard to tell.
And while officially Véválíäh (hearth and home, domestic life, hospitality) no longer has one due to the lack of anywhere in the Empire that isn’t a nice place to live, I think it’s generally understood that if that ever changed, it would reform before you could say “gentrification”.
And one of modern origin is the Church-as-a-whole sponsored Holy Order of Deoclasts. They’re about as close as Flamic religion has to a missionary order, by which I mean that they’re an antimissionary order. They’re the people who march into areas dominated by religions whose gods seem to be very much into groveling, sacrifice, and making their worshippers’ lives worse and more limited, and preaching loudly that their gods are really awful entropy-personifications and they should strongly consider smashing their idols, consigning their holy writ to the Library of Lies, and shopping around for better ones[2].