Knight Templar / Webcomics

• The Adventures of Dr. McNinja: Doctor McNinja is typically a good guy, but he can get rather extreme when King Radical, a guy whose actions have been for the enrichment of the community, is involved. Subverted when King Radical turns out to be every bit the villain that the doctor believes him to be.
• Hardin from Beyond the Western Deep. Basically like Magneto as an anthropomorphic weasel.
• Captain SNES: The Game Masta: Alex's captor, Ryan, in the "present", acts like a Knight Templar.
• The Manumitor in City of Reality is willing to kill AV rather than allow her to remain magically transformed into a computer program because of his crusade against transformation magic. Fortunately, he comes around after saving the life of his protege... and being revealed as The Atoner.
• Raf Maliksh in Dominic Deegan: Oracle for Hire: as the Champion of Law, he took it upon himself to take whatever steps necessary to ensure order — including performing human (well, elf) sacrifices and massacring anyone even associated with the rebellion against him — and when he fell from power, he created The Chosen, a chaos-worshiping cult that he intended to 'purify' the world with. He was so deep in this trope that when he created a personification of Justice, it refused to even listen to him. Most other villains in this comic are this as well.
  • Celesto became the Champion of Chaos, but worked for a corrupted Chaos cult and refused to relinquish the power it gave him. He spent the rest of the comic fighting off an Eldritch Abomination, while making 'necessary' sacrifices that numbered in the hundreds. The only reason he wasn't hunted down and arrested was because the abomination had a kill count of thousands.
• Abraham from El Goonish Shive is a combination of Knight Templar, Punch-Clock Villain, Necessarily Evil, and Idiot Hero. After accidentally creating the Dewitchery Diamond, he made a vow to destroy the monsters it created, and was completely unprepared for it to create something that wasn't a monster. When Nananse convinces him that the letter of his vow might have been to kill anything created by the diamond, but the spirit was to protect people, and killing Ellen would therefore be violating his oath, he is utterly relieved to realise that makes sense and become The Atoner.
• Exterminatus Now
  • Rogue certainly is the most devoted to daemon-slaying amongst the four main characters. While the other three are slackers that could barely be assed to get up off of the couch if they didn't have to, Rogue has been trailed to be a daemon hunter. As such, he views the world through a black-and-white filter, even to things outside of the heretical. This leads him to do a temporary Face–Heel Turn when Rogue threatens to arrest all of Lothar's family, including his father and brother, because Lothar's brother Kyle accidentally sold a shipment of guns to dark cultists. Lothar snaps at Rogue's ultimatum, prompting a fight between the two of them.
  • Inquisitor Nadia Deket is famous for this amongst the Mobian Inquisition. They even had to change the rules for calling down the Exterminatus because she tried to do it too often. Apparently, the existence of even a vaguely daemonic influence is enough for her to cross the Godzilla Threshold.
• Othar Tryggvassen, GENTLEMAN ADVENTURER, of Girl Genius is devoted to ridding the world of all Sparks (super-geniuses, for lack of a better term) due to the damage and hurt that some of them bring to the world. He, however, is a Spark himself, and should he ever succeed in killing every other Spark on Earth, he intends to commit suicide. At least he's fair.
• Kore the dwarven paladin in Goblins, who killed an innocent child because there was a slight chance that he might grow up evil (he was "tainted" from having associated with the so-called "monster" races). The child comes from a genuinely noble dwarven clan and was kidnapped by the monster races. That's right — if you get kidnapped under Kore's watch, your life is over either way. In the past, Kore attempted to claim possession of a powerful axe from a good paladin. In their first encounter, the paladin was deafened; in their second encounter, Kore began by murdering the paladin's wife and children.
  • One theory for why Kore didn't become a Fallen Paladin if he's violating these rules? Because in the game's setting, believing that you're doing the right thing is enough, just as believing you've done wrong is enough. Being a Knight Templar is literally the only thing preventing his fall.
    Complains: Wait, hang on. This is a bunch of crap. You weren't being evil, you were fighting evil!
    Ears: That means nothing. Many villains are convinced they're the good guys and they believe those they hurt are evil.
  • As it turns out, Kore is using an aspect of the curse laid on him by the Pure, which traps the souls of all his victims in his body. He can act in accordance with the alignment of any of his captive souls without violating his own alignment.
• Homestuck: This is what Aranea Serket turns out to be. She does genuinely want to stop the Big Bad, Lord English, just like the protagonists do. However, she is convinced that she is the only one who can do this with her powers (which almost certainly would not work the way she plans to use them) in order to keep Lord English from ever being born. She's also willing to kill anyone who gets in her way, and directly murders three main characters and mortally wounds a fourth simply for going against her or having the potential to make her plans more difficult. Naturally, everything blows up in her face and she ends up single-handedly dooming the timeline with her attempt, and John has to use his retconning abilities to make sure that her plan never has the chance to take off at all in the revived timeline.
• In It's Walky!, after a particularly painful sequence of events, Sal snaps and goes on a quest to eradicate the evil that the Martians have brought to Earth, which eventually results in her coldly attempting to beat her own brother to death after he attempts to reach out to her, before deciding to wipe out everyone who was ever abducted by the Martians with an alien super-weapon — with the fact that this will also wipe out the entire continent of North America being of little concern to her.
• Kill Six Billion Demons:
  • Solomon David. Despite being a universe-conquering warlord whose empire punishes having children out of wedlock with having your child taken from you and being sentenced to a work camp for life, and "moral depravity" (enjoying some wine) with a twenty-five year prison sentence, he genuinely believes his Celestial Empire is a beacon of light and stability in the Crapsack World of the Multiverse: He is mocked by Mottom as "still believing you are the hero" during his introduction. King of Swords reveals Solomon is on some level aware that his empire-building is harmful both to his own enlightenment and to the universe at large, but he is too blinded by his pride to act otherwise and also believes he is the only one who can create a better way. 82 White Chain spends most of the final battle of King of Swords laying this out in detail to Solomon, who in turn dismisses her criticisms as "chaotic and bereft of purpose".
  • Jagganoth is revealed to be an extremely twisted case of this. He believes suffering is so built into the current fabric of Creation that the only moral thing to do, in order to save all future generations from it, is to melt the Multiverse down and re-forge it into a better shape, free of death and pain and suffering. This will of course mean the death of everyone else in the process. Once he has created a better world, he intends to kill himself to ensure the last trace flaws of the old Creation disappears with him.
• Vashiel from Misfile is one of these in his Backstory. Apparently, he went too far in punishing a city.
• Seymour from Nosfera fights and kills vampires and other monsters. That's fine and dandy for evil ones like Brahm, but he also goes after good ones too. Rather ruthlessly as well.
• The Order of the Stick
  • Miko Miyazaki is a Lawful Good paladin who is played as an antagonist because of her suspicions of the Order (initially because she mistook them for the Linear Guild), and is generally a Jerkass with an uptight, self-righteous, and haughty attitude. The rest of her paladin order (the Sapphire Guard) see her as an effective agent, but they barely tolerate her behaviour, and she's often sent on missions far, far away from Azure City. She becomes more radical over time because of her own paranoia and inability to put doubt on herself. This leads her to execute the head of her own holy order when she learns of him faking his senility, going behind the Guard's back to recruit the Order, and generally being a Chaotic Good managing a country built on Lawful Good. Even when the Twelve Gods she worships strip her of her paladin class, she still believes it is all a test from them, believing she's destined to accomplish something great. She even denies the heroes a victory by accident when she destroys the Sapphire holding the portal, despite her order's founder (back as a spirit) moments away from crushing the Big Bad and The Dragon. Only in her death does she begin showing signs she screwed up.
  • Redcloak is a Knight Templar who pretends to admit it. While he has legitimate reasons to hate the forces of 'good' (namely the Protagonist-Centered Morality that allows adventurers, paladins, and pretty much anyone in general to murder goblins without negative consequences or karma, even goblin civilians), his plans usually incorporate spite and racism for his amusement. Most of his motivation is just I've Come Too Far, and he refuses to back down from risking his own people because he wants their deaths to mean something. It took a Heel Realization for him to realize he was persecuting his own people en-masse, and even then he is still proud of his racism. His brother Right-Eye claimed that he worships a "vengeful petty god" and Redcloak's short-tempered behavior comes from being unable to grow up due to his zealous worship of such a spiteful deity, both physically and mentally.
• Paranatural: Mention is made of the "Cousinhood of Man," a supernatural organization dedicated to hunting down monsters. Not much is known about them, other than the fact that there are not many of their prey left, and they tend to cause innocent casualties during a hunt. It is the official opinion of the Paranatural Activity Consortium that they are "icky."
  Boss Leader: Like, really super icky.
• Filbert in Ruby Quest went totally off the deep end when the Metal Glen fell apart due to their use of the Cure (which turned out to be part of an Eldritch Abomination). He currently believes that there's an infection ravaging the facility, and that he's the only one clean. He's totally clean, and he'd like you to be too. Just sit tight while Filbert cuts the bad out of you...
• Mister Blank of Sam & Fuzzy is willing to go to any length to make Sam the emperor and then kill him when he passes off the title.
• Schlock Mercenary
  • The Gatekeepers were definitely an example of this trope, cloning everyone who used the Milky Way's warp gates, and torturing the clones to death for intel, in order to suppress teraport (i.e. teleportation/FTL) technology to maintain peace with the immensely powerful Paan'uri before Petey showed them that they were deceived all along and the Paan'uri were planning to destroy the galaxy anyway. Particularly notable is that they'd moved beyond simply gathering intel to torture and enslavement of the copies being an inherent way of life; when Haban is cloned, the torturer introduces his son, and regards the young Gatekeeper's first torture as a rite of passage.
  • The Paan'uri are living dark matter constructs that are damaged and can 'die' in the presence of teraports. Since their very matter exists on a different spectrum from the rest of the universe's life-forms, they are extremely tribal and seek the destruction of all normal-matter life-forms to keep their own utopia safe. They're openly described as sociopathic, and they do nothing to disabuse people of that perception.
• Seymour from Sinfest, a pillar of righteous Christian bigotry, who pointedly fails to recognize Jesus whenever they encounter each other and whom even angels consider too extreme.
• Sire features Emile who is descended from Inspector Javert and shares all of his Lawful Stupid and Implacable Man traits.
• Leono from Sluggy Freelance.
  Leono: Aylee, God will strike you down for this unforgivable betrayal!
  Aylee: (sigh) You're so lucky that God always feels the same way you do.
• In True Villains, the Paladin would surely count as this. He is so dedicated to his fight against evil, he even kidnaps children, and sanctions the use of torture on them.
• Templar in TwoKinds started out as the comic's equivalent of D&D / Warcraft Paladins; racist, but focused on protecting people and studying the philosophy of magic. Then a high-ranking official went crazy from a botched ritual while trying to resurrect his dead family and usurped the order, and they now ruthlessly hunt down the Beastmen to "protect humanity". Not helping matters is that their patron god is a jerk.
• Unsounded:
  • Kima Bell and his loyal followers genuinely believe they are doing their country a service by killing their queen and starting a genocidal war with Alderode, Cresce's long time foe. They think the Queen is too soft in her approach to fighting the Alds, and despise her for taking an Aldish defector as one of her husbands.
  • Most of the Lions of Mercy are dangerous fundamentalist Ssaelit who want to slaughter Gefendur followers and see nothing wrong with raping and killing Crescian children, since they don't see them as children covered by the religious doctrine they claim to follow since they're not Ssaelit. They consider doing so only helping to undermine the Crescian queen, thus helping their own country and faith.
  Sette: He’s like the paladins at home, like you: says he does as the gods say, but the gods ever tell him to do what he were planning anyway.
• White Dark Life has Altair, a veritable poster child for this trope. He blindly wishes to serve God by murdering all that "poses a threat" to Christianity. It's no wonder he and Mysto ^note herself a Knight Templar who wishes to exterminate the Abrahamic religions to ensure the safety of the Slavic religions (and would have reduced Germany to a smoking crater if she was around while the Nazis were in power; basically, she's a genocidal fascist who protects Slavics instead of Germans) butt heads in the roleplays.
• Miranda West in The Wotch turns out to be an extreme but subtle and secretive case of this.
• Professor Broadshoulders from Zebra Girl was cursed by a demon in his youth (the curse takes the form of a "yucky face" branded on his forehead), and swore to stop similar things from happening to anyone else. To this end, he tries to kill Sandra, who is a good person despite having been turned into a demon. Recently, it was revealed that the yucky face was actually a demonic third eye, which Broadshoulders opened, damning himself in an attempt to drag Sandra down to hell with him. Ironically, their fight in hell is what pushes Sandra over the edge, from just wanting to be normal to reveling in the infliction of pain.
• Sistah Superior from Magellan: A super-strong, Nigh-Invulnerable, energy bolt firing insane religious zealot who seeks to cleanse the world of sin. And by "cleanse the world of sin", we mean "murder everyone she sees as a sinner." And by "sinner", we mean "everybody." To the point where she doesn't seem to notice the alien invasion going on around her (or the carnage that brought) and opened fire on a group of the survivors/defenders.

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