Order Reborn

"Speak again the ancient oaths and return to men the Shards they once bore. The Knights Radiant must stand again."

— The Almighty, The Stormlight Archive

Long ago, there existed an order of people who battled evil valiantly but have since fallen into disarray and were ultimately forgotten. But as the Ancient Evil rises its head again, a new group of heroes will take up the fallen banner of their ancestors and defend the world that they passed down to them in their name.

The Order Reborn is a reincarnation of an extinct heroic organization that has been forgotten over time but resurrected by the distant successors to combat evil, new or old. It is probably based on the old principles but (ideally) with adjustments made to prevent it from meeting the same end.

Usually precipitated by the Last of His Kind, who will become The Mentor. The "order" being rebuilt is often The Chosen Many. A subtrope of The Order. Compare with Putting the Band Back Together and Split and Reunion. For this trope on nation-wide scale, see Resurgent Empire.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• "From days of long ago, from uncharted regions of the universe, comes a legend. The legend of Voltron: Defender of the Universe. A mighty robot, loved by good, feared by evil. As Voltron's legend grew, peace settled across the galaxy. On Planet Earth, a Galaxy Alliance was formed. Together with the good planets of the Solar System, they maintained peace throughout the universe until a new horrible menace threatened the galaxy. Voltron was needed once more. This is the story of the superforce of space explorers, specially trained and sent by the Alliance to bring back Voltron: Defender of the Universe."
• During Inuyasha, Naraku brought about the end of the Demon Slayers by luring their strongest away for a mission, and then leading a horde of demons to attack their village. For a while, Sango and Kohaku were the only ones left. By the time of Yashahime: Princess Half-Demon, they have recovered. Kohaku is The Leader of a new generation of Demon Slayers, which include his nephew, Hisu. Sango makes demon slayer tools and suits up for battle when needed.

Comic Books

• The Green Lantern Corps in The DCU in the arcs ending with "The Road Back". It also happened after the Arcs Green Lantern: Rebirth and Green Lantern: Recharge.
• The Nova Corps in the Marvel Universe went through something similar after the Annihilation: Conquest story.
• DC's Shadowpact is revealed to be an unknowing revival of an ancient order that appears once every few years, in different forms, with different purposes but under the same name. It is revealed, by the Phantom Stranger, that the Shadowpact always fails.
• The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen has had several incarnations over the years, including a 16th century version led by Prospero, and an 18th century team featuring Lemuel Gulliver and Lord Blakeney in its roster.

Film — Live-Action

• Star Wars: The Force Awakens shows that Luke restored the Jedi Order... but they were then wiped out by his nephew along with his "Knights of Ren". Disillusioned by this, Luke's gone into exile and in The Last Jedi denounces the Jedi saying they have to end, concluding their beliefs were a failure. The Rise of Skywalker though it's indicated that Rey is now a Jedi and may restore the Jedi Order once again, avoiding its past mistakes hopefully.

Gamebooks

• After gathering the Lorestones, Lone Wolf is able to re-establish the Kai Lords twenty years after their destruction.

Literature

• Inheritance Cycle is going this route with the Dragon Rider organization. Eragon was a big deal because he was the first such rider in decades, and could lead to many more.
• Deryni: This relationship between the Michaelines and the Knights of the Anvil is alluded to from time to time. When the Michaelines were suppressed in Gwynedd, many members sought sanctuary with the Anvillers, bringing their knowledge and some of their portable wealth with them. While the Anvillers have other influences (including Muslim ones), they seem to be a mixed human/Deryni military order that eschewed the spotlight of political prominence that Michaelines had, perhaps so as to avoid the Michaelines' fate.
• Harry Potter: The Order of the Phoenix was formed during the dark times when Voldemort and his Death Eaters were wreaking havoc on the magical community and was disbanded when Voldemort was thought to have been permanently defeated. Once Voldemort returns (despite the vehement insistence of the Ministry of Magic to the contrary), the Order reforms. Because it's only been 15 years since the Order had been disbanded, it is primarily composed of its (surviving) original members.
• Andrey Livadny's The History of the Galaxy: the Confederacy of Suns and its military are dissolved after 1000 years for lack of external enemies and the desires of the colonies for self-governance. After just 20 years, humanity is attacked by a previously-unknown alien race bent on crippling and, possibly, wiping us out. It is up to a few soldiers, headed by four veterans of the Confederacy to defeat the overwhelming enemy and restore the Confederacy for common defense. One of them, a young woman, becomes the first President of the Confederacy, despite having no prior political or governing experience. Later novels show a rebuilt Confederacy after only a few years, its mildest back to full strength, despite many of the ships and Real Robots being scrapped at the end of the first one.
• In A Song of Ice and Fire, the Night's Watch is a shadow of its legendary heritage. It was erected to defend against the Others but has now fallen into disrepair. While it was once considered an honorable calling by all, most kingdoms believe it to have lost its purpose since the Sealed Evil in a Can behind the Wall hasn't been active for thousands of years. Now, only those in the North consider the Night's Watch to be a noble calling, where second/third sons and highborn bastard sons from select Northern noble houses are known to join for the sake of honor and duty. The lack of support from many southern regions and the practice of 'pardoning' criminals in return for joining up (among other things) resulted in the Watch gradually becoming an Army of Thieves and Whores. Meanwhile, the Others have come back, prompting Jon Snow and others to believe that the order needs to be whipped back into shape. Once he becomes Lord Commander, he starts making drastic changes, many of them progressive, with this objective in mind — in an effort to save everyone, including the wildlings, from the Others. He secures a loan from the Iron Bank to pay for needed supplies, insists on daily combat training, makes plans to build glass gardens to grow produce in winter, etc. Some of Jon's initiatives are far more controversial, such as making peace with the wildlings beyond the Wall, who Jon brings south to shelter at various castles held by the Night's Watch in both a humanitarian effort to save them and to gain their aid defending against the Others. He also wants to save the wildlings as any human being who dies north of the Wall rises as a wight. However, some of these policies — such as saving the wildlings — are deeply opposed by some of his officers, and Jon eventually falls to a mutiny.
• Kindling Ashes: One of the goals of the Fire Souls is to re-establish the Flyer organization. Many of them have already learned the lore and skills necessary to become fliers.
• In The Stormlight Archive, the Knights Radiant, defenders of mankind, turned their backs on humanity and abandoned their weapons many years before the books, gaining the reputation of traitors and blasphemers. However, the return of the threat they once defended against leads to them starting to make a comeback, heralded by Kaladin. As of Words of Radiance, Shallan, Dalinar, Renarin and (secretly) Szeth have joined their ranks. Additionally, this is the explicit goal of the Well-Intentioned Extremist group the Sons of Honor: they seek to foster chaos and destruction to induce the return of the Knights Radiant and the Heralds, in order for them to fix everything wrong with the world.
• During The Beast Arises series, the Imperial Fists suffer terrible casualties until they are finally driven to extinction during the second invasion of Ullanor. In an attempt to prevent knowledge of this event from devastating the morale of the war ravaged Imperium, Chapter Master Maximus Thane of the Fists Exemplar convinced the Imperial Fists’ Successors to secretly rebuild their parent Chapter with members of their own brotherhoods.
• While not defunct, The Order of the Bat'leth from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine had long lost its way and became another empty symbol of personal glory. But in the Star Trek: Klingon Empire series, Chancellor Martok revives the Order's original purpose - to keep Kahless The Unforgettable's legacy and ensure that all actions that the Empire undertakes are done so with honor and those who would dishonor the Empire with their deeds are stopped.
• The New Jedi Order established by Luke Skywalker from Star Wars Legends is the archetypal example. They used to be a major force in the galaxy, then they diminished into Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda. Both of them lived in exile. Then they took turns training Luke Skywalker, who ushers in a new era for the Jedi.
• In the anthology novel Tales from the world of The Witcher, it's mentioned that decades after the events of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt a Second Conjunction of the Spheres occurred, resulting in the world being filled with new kinds of monsters, and new Witcher schools being established to confront them with stricter codes of conduct to legitimize them in the public's eyes.

Live Action TV

• High Guard from Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda. Granted, the High Guard are more of a Space Navy that an Order, but when stuck between the Nietzcheans and the Magog, anyone could put on the white hat.
  • Slightly subverted in that there were still remains of the High Guard in existence on the planet Tarazed that still kept the flame of the Commonwealth alive. But their entire fleet consisted of a few dozen slipfighters and no capital ships.

• In Power Rangers, this sometimes goes hand-in-hand with Great Offscreen War. Sometimes the Sealed Evil in a Can was originally sealed by a Ranger-like team and the new team are the successors to that power, led by the Old Master who was there for round one.
• Starting from the first season finale of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., the series revolves around Director Phil Coulson's efforts to rebuild S.H.I.E.L.D. after the events of Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

Tabletop Games

• The Fayvana from Fading Suns are a psychic coven that claim to be a descendant organization of the Phavian Institute, which was destroyed during the end of the Second Republic. The actual link is extremely tenuous; most people in the know think that they're an unrelated group claiming a legacy for themselves. Regardless, they are devoted to the ideals of the Institute.
• The Dragons from Feng Shui are repeatedly destroyed by the evil forces that they oppose, but they keep being reformed by new members.

Video Games

• Drakan: The dragon-riding Order of the Flame.
• The Elder Scrolls
  • Late in Morrowind's Thieves' Guild quest line, you are tasked with reestablishing the name of the Bal Malogmer, an ancient order of thieves in Morrowind who stole from the rich and gave to the poor, with an added dose of Karmic Thievery.
  • In Oblivion's Knights of the Nine expansion, you can reestablish the eponymous chivalric order that was disbanded some 200 years prior in order to battle the Big Bad of the expansion, an ancient evil being who has just emerged from being sealed in can.
  • Skyrim:
    • During the main quest, you can help re-form the Blades, an Ancient Order of Protectors who have long served the emperors of Tamriel as bodyguards and spies but were devastated by the Great War and were officially disbanded by the White-Gold Concordat. This term is enforced by the Thalmor who have been hunting the surviving Blades with overwhelming force wherever possible.
    • The Dark Brotherhood and Thieves Guild questlines involve bringing each guild back from the brink of complete elimination.
    • In the Dawnguard DLC, the titular order of vampire hunters collapsed in the 2nd Era and was revived by a Well-Intentioned Extremist when the threat of vampires resurfaced in the 4th Era. You can join up and help save the world from the vampire threat.
• Fallout 4: The Minutemen can be this, with the player's help. They used to be able to protect people across the commonwealth from threats such as feral ghouls and raiders, but are down to a single active minuteman by the time you arrive. If you side with them, you can bring them back to their former glory.
• In Lost Technology, the Dragon Knights of Fevnir were founded by the descendants of an order of dragon-riding knights two hundred years ago.
• Warcraft has the Order of the Silver Hand from the world. The Paladins of the Order served to defend the human kingdoms through the second war and a bit of the third war as Light-empowered healing-capable knights, but were disbanded in Warcraft III by a crazed Arthas when Uther the Lightbringer refused to help him purge the plague-infested town of Stratholme. Most of the Paladins themselves, including Uther, were killed shortly afterwards by Arthas and the Scourge after he became a rampaging Death Knight. Of those that lived, a large chunk went on to form the fanatical Scarlet Crusade, while the rest held onto a disorganized remnant at most, and were largely Knights of the Silver Hand in name only. Years later in World of Warcraft, when former knight Tirion Fordring's son Taelan is killed by the Scarlet Crusade, he reforms the order to combat both the Scourge and the Crusade. In Wrath of the Lich King, Arthas' failed attack on Light's Hope Chapel leads to the Silver Hand merging with the Argent Dawn (a good splinter faction of the Scarlet Crusade) to form the Argent Crusade, which would lead the charge on Icecrown Citadel. In addition, despite its incorporation into the neutral Argent Crusade, the Order of the Silver Hand does still exist as an Alliance-aligned entity, as new Human and Dwarf paladins are knighted as members of the Silver Hand. There's a bit of irony in this, as Fordring was exiled from the order by Uther for helping an old orc.
• Dragon Age: Origins
  • While there are other Grey Wardens on Thedas, you and Alistair are the last of the Wardens in Ferelden after the Battle of Ostagar. By the end of the game, your victory over the Fifth Blight redeems the Wardens' reputation in Ferelden — it's mentioned earlier that the Wardens aren't very popular in Ferelden due to a past Warden's attempted coup. In Awakening you have to start conscripting new Wardens after the ones from Orlais are all killed/captured by the Darkspawn, taking your journey full circle from conscriptee to conscripter.
  • At the end of the second prequel book, all that's left of the Wardens in Ferelden are Duncan and Alistair's mother, both relatively new recruits. Duncan is charged by his superiors in Weisshaupt Fortress to rebuild the order in Ferelden. He succeeds but not enough to stop the next Blight.
  • In Dragon Age: Inquisition, the upcoming third game in the series, this will be played straight, as the plot surrounds the return of the titular Inquisition, an ancient order which was disbanded 900 years before the present age.
• After the destruction of the Jedi Order in between the events of Knights of the Old Republic and Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords, Meetra Surik's apprentices canonically rebuild the Order essentially from scratch, given that none ever had formal Jedi training other than what Meetra taught them^note the Disciple is an exception as having been a Jedi youngling, but it is not entirely clear he canonically went with Meetra and in any case he never even got to be a Padawan (he had the potential, but the Order was severely short on available Knights as a result of Revan drawing many off to war and Mical simply was never picked until he was deemed too old.
• Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood
  • Ezio sets about rebuilding the Assassin order in Rome, after the destruction of their primary base in Monterigionni. Unlike most Order Reborn plots, the Assassin brotherhood's support infrastructure is still intact, but the membership needs to be completely rebuilt and reorganized in a hostile area of Italy being dominated by their enemies. Once Ezio starts recruiting dedicated Assassins, he can dispatch them to support other Assassin operations across Europe. While Ezio can only recruit up to 12 assassins, by the end, they can all achieve the rank of Master Assassin and, therefore, be able to have recruits of their own.
  • Ditto in Assassin's Creed III, where the Assassins were all but destroyed in the New World by the Templars (it helps that the Grand Master of the Templars' New World Chapter is a former Assassin, who knows all the ins and outs of his former comrades). Connor calls Achilles out on the fact that it happened on his watch. By that point, Achilles is an old man with a cane whom the Templars (usually) leave in peace as long as he stays in the Davenport Homestead and doesn't try anything. It's up to Connor to rebuild the Assassins by recruiting those dissatisfied with the British rule and sending them on missions to other colonies. The state of the Assassins in the Old World is unknown.
  • In Assassin's Creed Syndicate, the British Brotherhood of Assassins was severely weakened after the murder of Edward Kenway in his own home. Since then, the Templars have taken over London and kept it in their grip. It wouldn't be until the Frye twins decided to disregard their superiors' orders and went to London to weaken the Templars' hold on it that Assassins were able to return to the city.
• Following the events of Diablo III, Tyrael reforms the ancient order known as the Horadrim in Reaper of Souls to seal away the Prime Evil and combat other growing supernatural threats in Sanctuary.
• Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order: The game takes place several years after the events of Revenge of the Sith and much of the plot is driven the attempts of Cal Kestis, a survivor of the Jedi purge, to find a list of force-sensitive children so he can rebuild the Jedi order. Subverted in that upon finally finding the Holocron, Cal ends up destroying it for fear that the Empire would find the children and kill them or turn them to the dark side.
• The overarching plot of Overwatch surrounds the demise and rebirth of the titular organization. During its heyday, Overwatch was a peacekeeping force comprised of various heroes from around the world, but it was eventually decommissioned as a result of internal corruption, ideological disillusionment, and the relentlessness of its biggest enemy, Talon. However, with the world falling into chaos in the years following their disbandment, members of old and new decide to reunite and fight back once again as an unsanctioned, but highly capable ragtag strike team, because the world could always use more heroes.

Web Original

• This is what Cobra Kai became after a 34-year ban was lifted on the dojo. In the final episode of the first season, Miguel won the final round in a tie-breaker against Miyagi-do fighter Robby.

Western Animation

• Practitioners of Woo Foo in Yin Yang Yo! have had this happen constantly; in the back story, it's established that each time, part of the reason was that the fighters couldn't work together and lost because of it.
• Avatar: The Last Airbender: The Air Nomads were wiped out prior to the start of the series with only the title character surviving. Come Season 3 of the Sequel Series The Legend of Korra, a Mass Super-Empowering Event has caused new Airbenders to start popping up all over the world, and rebuilding the Air Nation is a major subplot for the season, though their numbers are still small than the original Air Nomads prior to the Hundred Year War.

Real Life

• The Olympic Games—first recorded in 776 BC in honor of Zeus. They went on every four years (stopping wars in the process, at least temporarily) until Emperor Theodosius I of Rome suppressed them in 394 AD. The concept was revived on and off starting in the 17th Century until an explicit International Olympic Committee was formed in 1890 (though no longer in honor of Greek mythological gods, the more general idea of different nations competing in competitions less brutal than war stuck). The first modern Olympics were held in 1896 and have occurred every four years since (save for some very major distractions.)

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