Ranger Order

 

Ranger orders are typically paramilitary organizations who are charged with, or who have independently formed for the purpose of overseeing security over a large region of unexplored or undeveloped wilderness. In some cases, ranger orders are created by a nation or state by fiat, and given authority to patrol and secure frontier lands that the state has claimed sovereignty over. Sometimes, however, ranger orders are formed to patrol and protect frontiers that are generally presumed to be inaccessable or permanently hostile, such as regions bordering on wastelands inhabitied by warring nomadic tribes, or regions of hostile wilderness where dangerous mythical beasts are too numerous to confront.

Ranger orders sometimes fall into conflict with industrial guilds who seek to exploit and develop the same lands a ranger order seeks to patrol and protect. Under normal circumstances, the lands patrolled by ranger orders become subdued, controlled, and eventually developed over several generations, and the orders themselves sometimes devolve into ordinary policing entities. In many rural regions the local rangers are the equivalent of a town guard, with indivual rangers acting more as law enforcement than as officers of land oversight.