The Propitious Black Bats Brotherhood of the Wan Li Fortress

Did there ever exist in Imperial China a comparable organization to the Night's Watch? And if so, what's stopping from such a martial sect from developing? It could be like the myriads of Buddhist or Taoist monastic orders that invented martial arts, except their base of operations are sections of the freaking Great Wall.
 
God, how nerdy. With that said, EEEEEEEEE! This is an EPIC idea! As far as I know, no organization comparable ever developed. However, I can imagine a Chinese empire forced back to the Great Wall as its border attempting to create such an organization, and succeeding in many ways. Oh sweet baby Jesus. I just imagine an Asian Quorin Halfhand. :D
 
I've never seen or read any of the ASOIAF/GOT series, but just going from that Wiki article, I would say that if there's a martial sect at the Great Wall, I think the Chinese imperial court would be much more concerned and attentive to affairs, and much less likely to ignore them.

So, perhaps . . .

The best time frame would probably be the Ming Dynasty, against the Mongols and the Manchus. Let's say this order is based at the Wanli Temples, or 萬里寺, so you'll probably want to have one at the main passes (Shanhai, Jiayu, etc). Each temple will be constructed like a fortress, attached to the Wall directly. Each will have a Chief Abbot, but the overall head of the order will be somebody else, based from the greatest temple. Due to the Chinese tendency for centralization, I could actually see the headquarters being based out of Beijing. It would still be a hard life in one of these military monasteries, so the people that would join would be perhaps the outcasts of society, who flee for military service in order to escape debts or something, and in the process, get inducted into a highly disciplined order.

I guess that's a start.
 
I'm interested if there were any Chinese monastic orders not based upon Buddhism or Taoism. Sometimes I try to combine too many ahistorical ideas into one, but maybe a Confucian-based order focused on the protection of China as a country would be fitting to guard her borders?
 
I don't think that there was monasticism in China before the introduction of Buddhism. The idea of leaving your family and abandoning the possibility of descendants is not a very Confucian idea. And while there's the fact that Confucius and I think Mencius came from the shi 士, a class described as a sort of knights-errant, by the time of the Ming, Confucianism didn't have as much focus on military affairs, and Confucian scholar-officials largely looked down on the military.

Maybe you could go back even further with Mohism, which is more militaristic, or you could change Confucianism to be likewise, but you'd change China so drastically I don't know what you'd get.
 
Nah, forget about the Confucian monastic/military orders then. I think my idea of a Confucian-based martial arts order (as a counterpart to the Shaolin and the Wu-Tang) is a bit quixotic and probably misunderstands how Confucianism works as a "religion".

Back to the core idea- so what was the military units who guarded the Great Wall usually like? Just typical frontier border guards posted in the middle of nowhere, with all that entails? Watching Game of Thrones, they mention convicts choosing between mutilation or a posting at the Wall as their punishment. I wonder if similarly in Imperial China if being sent to guard the Great Wall was considered undesirable.
 
I think that, theoretically, there were military families posted to defend the wall, and military status was hereditary, and they were supposed to grow food to support themselves, but in reality, this broke down during the later years, and that's when I think there was the use of convicts and people of, ahem, humbler origin.

At the same time, I know that even at the end of the Ming there were families who had served the dynasty for a long time.

You should probably get more input besides from just me, in case I've been making a huge mistake.
 
Just one more thing- your first post about temples attached to the wall and an organization based around an abbot- did you think they would have any particular Chinese religion attached to it? Or would it have a temple organization but not actually be connected to religion? Interestingly, I'm pretty sure that's how the Night's Watch operates, it's similar to real-world European knightly orders (except with an apocalyptic vibe) but seems to be pretty irreligious.
 
Just one more thing- your first post about temples attached to the wall and an organization based around an abbot- did you think they would have any particular Chinese religion attached to it? Or would it have a temple organization but not actually be connected to religion? Interestingly, I'm pretty sure that's how the Night's Watch operates, it's similar to real-world European knightly orders (except with an apocalyptic vibe) but seems to be pretty irreligious.

Well, religion and state were always tied in very closely in China. I don't have Ming Dynasty specifics (and when people talk about the Great Wall being built, they mean the Ming ones, not the dirt ones under Qin and Han), but I do remember, for example, that at least Emperors of at least one dynasty, the Northern Wei, and maybe also the Sui, appointed a monk to run all official Buddhist establishments in the country. In other words, all of the temples built using state funds would be subject to state regulation. And during the Tang, in order to be ordained as a monk, one had to be approved by the government first.

So here's my idea. First, the temples will probably be Buddhist, since there's a larger Buddhist infrastructure. Second, the Emperor might commission a specific school, let's call it the X Order, with an official network of monasteries throughout the country. E.g., you might have an X monastery at the Jiayu Pass in Gansu, and another X monastery at the Shanhai Pass in Hebei. Each of these might have a Chief Abbot. However, because the Emperors probably don't want rogue monks at such vital parts of the Great Wall, the central X monastery in Beijing will be the headquarters, and the Grand Master might be a monk appointed by the Emperor.

As for the difference between knightly orders, those were the ones that were autonomous or answered to the Pope, right? In China, such a situation, of monks that only answered to their own order, would be seen as suspicious. In China, such a theoretical order would be under much more state scrutiny.
 
How about this- this order would also have the duty of protecting imperial envoys engaged in diplomatic negotiations with border tribes. Since unlike the wildings, the steppe nomads can often be bargained with so they turn against teach other.

One wonders how the Black Bats would fare during the fall of the Ming.
 
How about this- this order would also have the duty of protecting imperial envoys engaged in diplomatic negotiations with border tribes. Since unlike the wildings, the steppe nomads can often be bargained with so they turn against teach other.

No. This doesn't work. There's no reason for military monasticism when one could use regular soldiers.
 
It doesn't even necessarily have to be monastic, per se. It should be, however, restricted- those who have border duty at the Wan Li Wall are lifers.
 
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