First Appearance: Marc Spector: Moon Knight #43 (January
1993).
Appearances: Marc Spector: Moon Knight #43-44, 47-50,
52-60, Web of Spider-Man Annual #9.
Years Active: ?-?
As with the Cathari, there are two "Knights Templar" that you need to know about. The first are the historical Templars, and for more information on them go to the Knights Templar page. (You should probably read that page's information before continuing here.) The second Templars are the fictional, Marvel Universe Templars.
In the Marvel Universe the Templars exist, in the modern era, in various small factions around the world. These factions all have safehouses available to them, including one in Rennes-le-Chateau, and can travel to them and to other places via "teleportals." To quote one of the comics:
The Knights Templar have existed---in one form or another---since civilization's dawn. By infiltrating all special interest groups--through third-party agents with no traceable connection to our order---all significant social information filters back to us. The Templars function as the genuine historians of humanity...cataloguing the true version of history, contradicting and threatening the ruling elite...It is the duty of the Bloodline (who is a Templar) to protect the location of the Arcane Archives, which is the collection of all Templar information and history, and to commit to memory all additions made to the Archives during his lifetime, so that this information will survive for the next Bloodline to access.....The Templars have always tracked and protected one particular family lineage whose descendants share a unique gene-trait, unknown to the majority of them...they house the collective subconscious of all of their ancestors. If catalyzed---through a method known only to a few even in our own order---this gene-trait allows generational heirs to become the ultimate personification of the Bloodline...with full access to the combined knowledge and singular specialities of their entire family tree.
Only two Bloodlines are known of: Henri Remont, a suave and dashing pirate who used two swords, and Pierre Latrec, a lumbering psychotic with a high pain threshold. Both of these were active during the 18th century. It is noted in the modern era that "no five of our rank have gathered in the same location for well over 600 years," since the time of the original purge. A complication in the modern era involving the Templars has to do with the Hellbent, to wit:
The Hellbent are a hybrid species dating back to a time when the remnants of previous races still shared the Earth with early man...an outcaste shunned by both human and inhuman sires . The Knights Templar claim they swore a dark promise to Thoth himself long ago to protect these innocent Hellbent...in exchange for the powerful secrets of the god of wisdom and death---the very core of [the] Arcane Archives. The Templars "sheltered" their wards...for long millennia...because even they feared their own tainted legacy.The Hellbent on occasion emerge from their hidey-hole in Brazil to hunt humanity. To counter this, the Templars have bred a line of Hellbent, one each generation, known as the Manx, who does not stint at killing.
