NO LONGER SUPPORTED
Real life has taken me away from being able to work on this mod for a while. I will eventually return to it though once things calm down, keeping a mod up to date in early access is very time consuming!


Previously released as Arkandian Knighthoods - I've decided to pivot and focus my attention purely on the mechanics of the Knighthood Chapters rather than worry about adding and supporting new cultures/kingdoms. This mod is extensible and will become even more so moving forward allowing other modders the ability to include submods that take advantage of the features.

I'm always interested in feedback and bug reports, while I'm a pretty nifty developer, I'm new to C# and 90% of the process involved in modding Bannerlord.
Since this is my first fairly substantial mod, I fully expect things to catch fire, I'd recommend a new game so it doesn't destroy any progress on your established ones, though I imagine it'll work fine.

Note: This mod is supported for the stable branch only, it may well work fine with the current Beta, but I won't update for it until it becomes stable.

Knighthood Chapters
In every Castle or Town, it is now possible to establish a Knighthood Chapter, if you own the settlement you can decide which chapter to establish.
Currently, there are 10 chapters, I'll likely add more and include various restrictions to establishment moving forward.

Knighthood Chapters can become extremely powerful once you throw enough gold for upgrades at them, each Chapter can be upgraded in 3 areas:

• Recruitment
• Equipment
• Skills
  

Every time you upgrade one of these areas the Chapter's knights become significantly better.
When you establish an order, several troops will join your garrison, whenever you upgrade something a couple more and from time to time more troops will also join the settlement's garrison. The higher your recruitment level the more likely it becomes and the more will join when it does.

If the Chapter is in a Town there is a small chance of some being available to recruit from that town's notables, all bound villages to a fortification with a Chapter also have a small chance to provide units for recruitment. The AI can and will recruit these if they can afford them, but it also means you can go and scalp a few from the AI once they've established chapters.

The AI will not sit on its laurels and may also establish and upgrade their own Knighthood chapters as time goes on so don't be surprised to see a few in battle.
If you lose the settlement, the chapter will remain but their loyalty will belong to the new owner. (This is under consideration, it might be better to just demolish any captured settlement's Chapter)
Currently, the chapter the AI uses is random, later, along with the player, there will be certain restrictions in place which determine which chapters should be built.
The AI is required to pay for chapters and upgrades and each chapter makes the next less likely, tempered by time, so the world isn't flooded with them, the rates of AI utilization are under heavy scrutiny and will likely change many times going forward until I'm happy with the balance. Initially, the rates are boosted until the first few are built and none will be built for the first month or two. I may well stick all this in some configs later.

Chapter Armoury
Each chapter also provides access to the Chapter Armoury. The armoury makes available to buy all equipment used by their troops
Upgrade your Chapter's equipment level and you also upgrade the items available in the Armoury, the armoury will also contain all equipment used by previous levels.
(A chapter with level 2 equipment will offer items from both Level 1 and Level 2)

Chapter Blacksmith
Every chapter has a dedicated blacksmith that is happy to put his hammer to work for their Patreon.
Chapter blacksmiths are capable of upgrading any of the equipment your hero has equipped. 6 levels of upgrades are available for every item and while they can be VERY pricey, they can also drastically improve your armour and weapons.
A lot of work has been done on this system to add new modifiers for every equipment class, the TW system seems to be very broken so I've done my best to fix it up. 
In later updates the blacksmith will offer more services (Which is why the menu is a little clickfesty right now)

This feature can create some very powerful items, especially body armour since item modifiers apply a straight addition to any params, including every area covered by armour, which seems very silly to me, ideally it'd be a percentage adjustment, but I can only work with what I have, I don't want to attempt modifying core behavior if I can help it.

Champions
You are now able to recruit a chapter member to serve as a companion, this is very expensive given how well equipped and highly skilled Chapter knights are, they'll have the same skills and equipment as a regular unit, but also have a chance to have spent their personal time training various utility skills.

Due to the way the Hero creator works newly recruited champions will be Level 0, but after a few seconds of time running will level up to reach their appropriate level at which point you can assign their focus points, perks and attributes.

Modders
It is possible to add your own Knighthood Chapters or disable the current chapters with a small amount of modding knowledge.
Upon loading the mod will scan ALL mod ModuleData folders for a file named knighthood_chapters*.xml (* = wildcard e.g: knighthood_chapters_mymod.xml)
You don't need to define this file in your SubModule.xml, it'll be found by this mod simply by existing.
The format is very simple:

<chapters>
<chapter>
<name>My Knighthood Order</name>
<id>my_knighthood_order</id>
<troop1>my_knight</troop1>
<troop2>my_other_knight</troop2>
<extra></extra>
</chapter>
</chapters>

(Note: for now Extra should be an empty node unless disabling an order, this will be used later and is included now for future save support)

Id should be unique for each Chapter.

You will also need to define the troops as per usual by adding your own NPCCharacters, there is a specific naming convention that should be followed:

There should be in total 9 defined units for each (so a total of 18 unit definitions per chapter): 

my_knight_1_1 - Level 1 equipment, level 1 skills
my_knight_2_1 - Level 2 equipment, level 1 skills
my_knight_3_1 - Level 3 equipment, level 1 skills
my_knight_1_2 - Level 1 equipment, level 2 skills
my_knight_2_2 - Level 2 equipment, level 2 skills
my_knight_3_2 - Level 3 equipment, level 2 skills
my_knight_1_3 - Level 1 equipment, level 3 skills
my_knight_2_3 - Level 2 equipment, level 3 skills
my_knight_3_3 - Level 3 equipment, level 3 skills

To disable one of the mod's chapters is fairly simple, for example to disable the Bringers of Light you will simply need to add the following entry to your XML:

<chapter>
<id>bringers_of_light</id>
<extra>disabled</extra>
</chapter>

You are free to disable all 10 chapters, but if you don't have at least 1 chapter it'll be pretty crashtastic... I could account for that but it kind of makes the mod pointless :D

Configuration Options
It's now possible to modify several configuration options using the configuration.xml file located in the ModuleData folder.
They should be pretty self explanatory.

Tons of New Items
A bunch of new items have been added, I'm not a modeler though, these items use the meshes and models of pre-existing and other mod items, eventually, this might change. You WILL need to download and use the epic Swadian Armoury mod: Link

Installation
Just use the manager or plop the folder in your modules folder and enable. Load order shouldn't really matter, but the further down the better.
I also strongly recommend using the Optional "Arkandia Settlement Icons" mod, this mod should be used in place of any other version of the Settlement Icons mod, works in exactly the same way, and will allow keeping track of Towns and Castles with Knighthood Chapters, this also has a dependency of Harmony: Link

Dependencies
Swadian Armoury mod: Link

Recommended Mods (May or may not be updated to the latest Bannerlord version, simply the mods I enjoy playing with)
Bannerlord Overhaul - Troop and Item Overhaul: Link (STRONGLY RECOMMENDED)
Calradia At War: Link
Fixed Launcher: Link
Cultured Start: Link
CompanionHoarder: Link
Interesting Companions: Link
Improved Garrisons: Link
Interesting Clans: Link
Houses of Calradia: Link
Change Settlement Culture: Link (I plan to implement something similar later)
Character Reload: Link