Act 13 Finale

Finale

Spoilers, the story just goes to a pause point… a reminder that the overall campaign involves teams of Knights in each of the seven cosms collecting a singular artifact from each. The Irish Knights found their artifact months ago [Months ago real time, in the game it has only been about three weeks].

This is more of a wrapping up of many loose ends to get to a point where the players felt ok with leaving the game for a while.

Last post was Day 143. [Last week there was no post due to personal reasons, a reminder that these Sunday posts might go irregular in the near future as I begin work on my Master’s thesis]. That all said let’s just get into it.

Day 144

We begin with a call from the Delphi, which is a minor miracle as Core Earth is practically all gone right now. The sat-phone only works due to the hardpoint in the House.

The phone call is a possible final summary of things on Ireland, as the Delphi can’t count on the phones any longer. The first order of business is that they have discovered several strange artifacts, including a stone of immense power that was found in Manhattan [Please read through Manhattan Knights for more information about that]. This stone is calling out to fragments of itself and the seers have determined that the Ebon Wand that the Irish Knights have locked in a case is one of these parts. As such they are sending in a team to collect the Wand and help shore up the House.

The rest of the report is about two other Houses, Limerick and Bangor.

Limerick

Has become the main House of the Delphi in Ireland. With the massive surge in power that rolled over the Isle recently [about 3 posts back] more than 40 Storm Knights were created in Limerick. They will be sending out several to shore up the other houses based on needs. Bangor has the most needs, and Dublin has the least. With the wall of fog surrounding Ireland and Dublin reporting that a third cosm is rising to ascendency, the head of Limerick is now the head of all Delphi activity on Eire, and all reports are to be sent on to Limerick hence forth.

Bangor

Bangor has been the neglected son of a House for the bulk of the time. Last time we heard from the town, a storm had driven a bunch of raider ships into the beaches, breaking them up and drowning a ton of Ulthorion’s raiders. [also about 3-5 posts back] Unfortunately the dead raiders did not know that they had died. Instead they all shambled back to their feet and immediately assaulted the city of Bangor. It was a hard fight, especially as Bangor only has 2 stormknights and they aren’t the brightest of boys.

Miraculously, the duo managed to fight off the zombies over the course of the last two days and managed to get the local populace all fired up to fight back. Bangor now has a standing militia of twenty soldiers full time, and about 2000 on standby. Quite a feat.

The final message is that the envoy coming from the ebon wand has already landed in Sligo and will be traveling across the country.

Kingdom of Dublin

After getting off the call and eating their breakfast the Irish Knights are interrupted by a knight from the North coming into their council room. He bears a message, an invitation to Gabriel’s holdings to discuss the Kingdom of Dublin and the Charter he’s drawn up.

Being cynical in nature, our heroes immediately begin to think of everything that could go wrong. While they have back and helped form the alliances that would form this new Kingdom, the trio has been worried about the term “kingdom” the whole while. They fear despotic rule… perhaps it has something to do with the fact that Ragnall is always cackling about how he’s in charge of the House and now that they have secured the castle on Tara, he’s been talking of moving there and ruling. So maybe they don’t fear Gabriel as much as they are projecting their fears of Ragnall onto the issue at hand.

Breakfast ruined, they put on their best clothes… well Ash at least sharpens his sword, and they head out.

The Charter

The Irish knights are the last to arrive, mostly due to the fact that Barry was also invited to the party and that meant getting out a minivan. They enter into a chamber with a large round table, obviously Gabriel has been inspired. Already seated around the table is Gabriel, Mammy, the Sage, the Grand Magus of the Academy, two yardie knights (one of which looks a lot like Idris Elba), and two of Gabriel’s knights. With the trio of Irish knights and Barry it makes 11 at the table, though in reality Barry is sitting off to the side.

Gabriel surprises them all by skipping any form of preamble and getting right to the point, and a pleasant point at that, “I want the kingdom to be a council of Seven.”

He then outlines the positions he wishes filled. Himself as king at the point of the table, Mammy and the Sage as personal and mystical advisors, Odo Bartholomew (Idris Elba) as the Knight of the footmen and representing the Yardies, Merrick one of Gabriel’s knights as the head of the Lancers, and two seats for the storm knights to fill. These last two seats he sees as being variable. He understands that the Knights are always dashing off to do different deeds, so he’s willing to have any 2 representatives from the house fill those seats.

Part of this talk comes about due to the fact that the House has now become a square and the fact that Ragnall keeps vacillating between staying in the House and moving into the castle.

There is talk of voting and just what the king’s limits will be and overall, it is a fully agreeable and inclusive charter, save for one thing…

The Hoodies

Davey brings up at the end that the Hoodies are not at the table. To which it is then revealed that the hoodies might no longer be human. The rumors where that the hoodies were bolstering their numbers with recruits from the Underground, possibly lurks.

But recently it has appeared that they have been replaced wholesale with inhuman creatures. A bunch of hoodies were recently in a fight with some of Gabriel’s men, they kept the bodies because several of them were mutated humans and some were creatures completely unknown. Whatever the Hoodies were into, it has taken them over or replaced them entirely. As of right now, King Gabriel’s first declaration is that the Hoodies are an infestation that needs to be dealt with. Any that are still human need to be saved and the rest need to be interrogated to find out what they want.

The Irish Knights agree but ask to see the bodies.

Hoodies Truth

After wrapping up the council business and coronating King Gabriel, the Knights are taken to walk in freezer in Gabriel’s Café. They are told how a group of hoodies approached them and asked to join Gabriel’s soldiers, that they wanted out of the hoodies… but once they were brought into the café they went berserk.

The bodies on the tables are stark pale, two of them look like mutated humans but the other three are not human at all. Their skin is the color of a fish’s belly, they have massive eyes. Davie remarks that they look like Gollum but no one here gets the reference. As Ash moves closer to the bodies, the purple scar tissue on his face writhes and burns with cold. He retreats from the bodies and states that they are completely dark tainted and should be burned. He makes further comment that they must be underground dwellers and then he leaves the room.

Ragnall moves in and looks closer at the creatures. Faded deep into the skin he finds tattoos that he doesn’t understand, but when Davey looks them over, they are mostly core earth metal and punk bands. As much as these bodies are mutated and inhuman, they started life as core earth kids.

The rest of their bodies seems to be made of light bones, almost avian, and steel corded muscles stretched under thin pale skin. Their nails are hard as glass, and sharp, and their teeth are all chiseled points. It’s most definitely a problem.

More on the Plate:

They put the Hoodies on their list to be dealt with later and then return to their home. The power structure in Dublin has been altered. Things are getting better. This is now a united strong point against Ulthorion and with the Druid magic and spirits sending their champion around the isle, soon Eire will be free of Aysle and the rest of the problems in the world.

They each pick a project to concentrate on while waiting for the envoy to arrive with their new recruits. Now that they have a unified force, they don’t actually have to go into the Underground themselves to deal with the Hoodies.

Ash:

Ash decides that he is going to reopen the Guinness brewery and he makes friends with some local dwarves. Creating jobs and making more friends will help in the long run. This is the beginning of the growth of the Dublin House Square to start reaching out to other blocks of people. Once Ash gets the brewery up and running, he puts Davey in charge of it. He then decides that his next mission will be protecting people on the road between Dublin and the Castle.

Ragnall

Is still torn between running Dublin House and wanting to move into the Castle. He decides to try out the castle for now as they await the envoy and he moves out there with a handful of retainers.

Many people from the countryside are drawn to the castle and he has his work cut out for him over the next few weeks. So much so that he needs Ash to run the roads and recruit more soldiers and help in the castle for him.

Davey

Takes over Dublin House, as he was meant to from the start. Between overseeing the Brewery and serving on the council he becomes an able administrator and he occasionally goes on raids into the Hoodies turf with his soldiers.

Fade out…

And with that we fade out of the end of the last game of Aysle… but fear not as the overall story is still ongoing. Next week we return to the Manhattan Knights to finish up a couple of story lines and also to try and get the Manhattan knights also up to the same part of the timeline.