A Historical Guide to the Secret Societies of The Secret World

The Secret World is an upcoming MMO which lets you align with one of three secret societies: The Templar, The Illuminati and The Dragon. Each has its own methods, resources and ideologies, and each wants to sculpt the world in its own image. The Templars believe in eradicating evil, the Illuminati believe in power above everything and The Dragon believe in balance.

Each of these fictionalized factions has real life counterparts. We're going to take a historical look at some of the world's most successful secret societies, from which The Secret World draws inspiration.

The Templars

The Templars of The Secret World are zealots who want nothing else but to exterminate evil from the world by any means necessary. They're crusaders who are well funded and have been running their secret society since the time of Babylon. The Secret World isn't the only game to tap this historic entity. The Templars are also portrayed as outright bastards in the Assassin's Creed series. But who really were these clandestine warriors of the cross?

After the first Crusade, when Christendom had taken back Jerusalem from the Muslim empire, the historical Templars, or Knights Templar, started as just a couple of guys who were feeling really guilty. Maybe they lopped off too many heads in the Crusades, because that would do it for us.

They approached a few priests and asked them about becoming monks. But the priests knew that bandits were killing pilgrims on the road to Jerusalem, and they told them to bust a few skulls for God first. In short, the priests sent them on a quest to kill 10 bandits. We wonder if they had exclamation points above their heads.

In contrast with the wealth they would eventually acquire, the first Templars were dirt poor. They called themselves "The Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ" and sometimes, two guys had to share a horse, a phenomenon that eventually became the picture on their emblem.

Eventually, the Knights Templar had crazy Blizzard Entertainment-level money coming in from church coffers, wealthy barons and everyone who believed in the cause of keeping the Holy land holy. When Pope Innocent II issued a decree that they would be exempted from local law and had to answer only to him, The Knights Templar were set to become a powerhouse. Their wealth grew until they eventually owned the entire island of Cyprus!

One of the reasons the Templars have captivated conspiracy theorists and the makers of The Secret World is their eventual fall. King Phillip IV of France was in debt to the high rolling Templars and he thought, like Activision did with Infinity Ward, that if you don't want to pay someone, you should probably just get rid of them. Phillip IV leveled every accusation in the book at the Knights, including  heresy, homosexuality and witchcraft, which many of the Knights confessed to... while they were being tortured. People say weird things when they're on the torture rack.

Many of the Knights were burnt at the stake. Recent discoveries have shown that the Pope did not believe that the Knights were guilty of heresy and had cleared them of all charges but, because of the scandal the ordeal had caused, he officially disbanded the Knights Templar and let many of them go to their deaths.