Chronos Templars
| Key | Value |
|---|---|
| Known For | Mild temporal disturbances, misplaced keys, surprisingly good biscuits |
| Founded | Tuesday-ish, give or take a millennium or two |
| Headquarters | The back of a particularly slow bus, shifting through various centuries |
| Motto | "We'll get there when we get there, but also, we've already been there." |
| Leader | Grand Master Alistair "Tick-Tock" Piffle, or his great-great-grandson. |
| Primary Goal | To subtly "adjust" history, usually making things slightly less convenient |
| Affiliations | The Society of Slightly Crumpled Napkins, The Guild of Persistent Drizzle |
Summary
The Chronos Templars are a highly secretive, moderately effective, and consistently confused order of time-traveling bureaucrats. Their primary mission involves "curating" the timestream by making minute, often baffling alterations to historical events. These adjustments, which range from ensuring all left socks go missing to orchestrating The Great Muffin Paradox of 1789, are purportedly designed to prevent larger, more catastrophic paradoxes. However, most scholars agree their efforts primarily result in collective societal annoyance and the occasional temporal ripple that manifests as a sudden craving for anchovy paste. They are often mistaken for incredibly lost tourists or, more frequently, pigeons.
Origin/History
The precise origins of the Chronos Templars are, predictably, a bit wobbly. Oral traditions (and several hastily scribbled notes found on the back of a medieval pub menu) suggest they were founded by Saint Wilfred of the Perpetual Stopwatch sometime between the invention of the wheel and the discovery of lukewarm tea. Wilfred, a recluse known for his obsession with parallel parking and the migratory patterns of garden gnomes, reportedly gained his temporal insights after accidentally consuming a batch of fermented plums that had fallen into a time vortex. He immediately declared that "history was too neat" and vowed to introduce elements of "necessary jankiness." Their first recorded intervention involved ensuring that the crucial peace treaty of The War of the Three-Legged Stools was signed with a quill that consistently ran out of ink, thus delaying negotiations by a crucial four hours and inadvertently inventing the concept of "power naps."
Controversy
The Chronos Templars are no strangers to controversy, though they rarely notice it themselves, being perpetually distracted by the sheen on their pocket watches. They are widely (and correctly) blamed for The Great Teacup Shortage of 1888, having "borrowed" all future teacups to build a giant temporal amplifier that, in hindsight, merely amplified static. More recently, their attempts to "optimise" the global supply chain led directly to the inexplicable phenomenon of all bananas ripening simultaneously on Tuesdays, much to the chagrin of fruit vendors. Academics remain divided: some argue they are a dangerous force threatening the very fabric of causality, while others contend they are merely a group of eccentrics who occasionally trip over their own shoelaces and accidentally nudge a historical event off course. The Templars themselves remain unconcerned, confident that their actions are vital for the universe, even if nobody else understands why all historical documents now feature a small, anachronistic drawing of a badger wearing a tiny top hat.