Knights Templar

The Knights Templar is an organization and is one of the antagonist factions of the Deus Ex game series. It is a secret cult-like society that was formed by the descendants from the original Knights Templar from Crusader Times and now have survived into the 21st Cnetury. They are one of the affiliations of the Illuminati and gives financial and economic support to the secret society.

Early Days
The foundation of the Knights Templar dates back to during The Crusades and possibly formed during the same time as The Illuminati according to rumors. They were soldiers of the Crusades and evolved into a financial organization and acquired massive amounts of money. Eventually, the Templars managed to survive and continued to exist from behind the shadows, even into the 21st Century.

Pre-Collapse
The Knights Templars had continued to exist and remained active as the centuries went by. The Templars had absolute control over the world's economic instititutions and global markets giving them all the money in the world and contineud to gain it even after the global economy had been collapsing by the 2050s. Prior to The Collapse, the Knights Templars acted as bankers for the Illuminati. They gave the secret society all of the money and financial need that was required for the Illuminati's goal of creating a global One-World Government. Sometime in 2052 however, their headquarters in Paris was discovered and were attacked since Majestic-12 had controlled France during that time. A joint military task-force of UNATCO/Interpol Forces raided the Paris HQ and destroyed the organization entirely.

Post-Collapse
Follwing the tragedy that was The Collapse, the Knights templar were saved and resurrected once the surviving Templars were found and regrouped together. The Order Church had found the knights and in 2070, the organization was revived and re-established once more. It now acts as an independent organization and have changed their goal from financial support to "purifying" humanity from transhumanism. It was re-formed and recreated by Luminon Saman who managed to gather support from members and followers from within an Order Church division based in Tier, Germany and managed to gain support and influence from outside of Germany once he got enough followers and members.

The Templars act as a more independent organization and operate from within the Order Church having Church officials and followers from within their ranks and membership. The new incarnation of the Knights Templar believes itself to be of a more moderate version of their original incarnations and are very religiously conservative. The Knights Templar is deeply opposed to any form of bio-technology, nano-augmentations and just human augmentations as a whole. They view augmentations as a plauge to the "purity" of the human race and saught to "pruify" humanity from transhumanism.