Castle Complete!
ACT 11 Scene 2
Having finished the long discussion with the Keymaster, the Knights have decided to go to the castle on Tara Hill right now, and make it whole again. It has been concluded that they will make the castle into #2 the Core Earth castle at the height of its powers, but they will encircle Tara Hill with the Dwarven curtain wall from Castle 3. Then they will descend into the hillside and face the Shades below who have started to turn Ireland into its own Cosm.
Road to the Castle:
The knights pile into one of the army jeeps in their garage, and hope that it won’t turn into a turnip wagon on the way to the castle. They know their luck can’t last forever, luckily they still have over two dozen vehicles within the Aegis of the Hardpoint. As they leave, they put Cheryl in charge, much to the protests of Roland, who is left behind with Dante again.
Driving through Dublin they get the normal number of stares from the locals, only a slim percent of the city is still clinging to Earth norms. Streets that just days past had cars and electricity have become Tudor and older buildings with elves and dwarves trying to make a living. While Ragnall and Ash feel more and more at home, Davey Smith is further and further away from his memories of what Earth was like.
They quickly leave Dublin behind and Davey is able to put on some real speed toward Tara hill. But before they can arrive, the radio squawks and Roland and Cheryl can be heard arguing and garbled in brief bursts.
Problems at Home.
Davey sighs, they are within sight of the castle so he puts on more speed and arrives at the carport at the base of the hill, before Cheryl’s voice, alone, comes over the radio.
Davey grabs the radio: “Come again Cheryl, what’s the problem?” The rest of the knights get out of the jeep, stretching their legs. The car port has succumbed to Aysle, the burial mounds are the only clue to where it once stood, plus the pavement has given way to a large gravel area and the information booth is a ruined guard shack.
Cheryl comes back on and explains that she had to remove Roland’s radio privileges. He can be heard sniveling in the background. The reason for the call is that the Irish sent a runner. Something is happening in the Baron’s territory. The Irish have dispatched a bunch of their knights and are surrounding the neighborhood, enforcing a sort of police state. The “kids” (Dante and Roland) and some of the Garda want to go north and join in on the action.
Davey shares this news with Ash and Ragnall. Ragnall is wishy washy, on the one hand it would be good to take part in the action to keep the alliance strong, but on the other hand Roland is notorious for fucking things up. Ash nods in agreement, and then suggests “adult” supervision.
Davey: “Cheryl, get Ryan on the radio.” After asking the EMT what HE thinks of the situation it is agreed that Ryan will lead a time to bolster the Irish in the north, and that Dante and Roland can go under his supervision.
Ambush:
As Davey is talking on the radio, Ash catches movement up by the gate of the castle. Shadows are moving in the courtyard. As he watches a shadow slithers up the hillside and runs into the open gate. The gates have been left open by all three of the last “guests” of the castle, no one thought to close it up when they left.
Ash makes a comment that “people” are waiting for them in the courtyard. Davey laughs, and tells everyone to get into the Jeep.
They pile back in and Davey guns the motor up the hill and into the open gateway. Any ambush in the courtyard is going to be a bunch of men with swords or bows, they are not going to be ready for a steel jeep to thunder in and drive right over them.
The entrance to the courtyard is rather anti-climactic, shadowy flee the noise of the engine, disappearing into the main gate of the keep itself.
Taking it all in
The castle is currently configured as a mix of castle 2 and 4, it is mostly squat towers and stone work, but soaring Elven towers, grown into shape, are merged into sections of the stone work. And in the far corner of the keep a single crystal tower rises above the rest.
Keymaster points to this last tower as the source of the summoning of the Deep Ones. All but Davey jump out of the jeep and look over the courtyard.
Davey, turning to Keymaster, asks him to make the outer walls into Castle number 2. Keymaster nods and touches the walls for a few seconds, a ripple runs across the surface and moves around the walls. It is barely perceptible.
Keymaster; “It is done.”
Ash: “That’s it? You touch the wall for seconds and it’s done?”
Keymaster merely nods, and Ragnall clears his throat and points to a darkened corner around the right side of the keep. “Our shadowy friend who dove into the front door might have just come out of a side door; I just saw something move between those two out buildings.”
Shadow Assassins:
Ash heads off in the direction that Ragnall is pointing. To help his friend, Ragnall creates a globe of Magelight in the alley between the two buildings. A tall, lanky creature with mottled yellow skin hisses and shields its eyes from the light. The creature is covered in black bandages that smoke in the light and it draws a massive sword from its back.
The creature falls back into a shadow and disappears as Ash swings into the now empty spot. Usually he’s the one teleporting around the field of battle. The Assassin springs out of a shadow well outside the area of the light, but also away from its targets.
Ragnall summons a bolt of lightning from the sky and hammers it down into the creature, and is shocked when the assassin raises its great sword and deflects the bolt into one of the out buildings.
Ash tries a new gambit, he throws his sword, turning it into a spinning disc of death, and then teleports to behind the creature where he will then catch his thrown blade. The whirling blade misses the creature, but Ash catches the blade, and spinning himself around with it he manages to get a strike on the assassin.
Davey goes a little Nuts:
Still sitting in the Jeep, Davey guns the engine and tries to run over the creature. But it manages to dive away from the jeep. Davey puts the jeep into a hard, skidding turn and comes back again on the creature, this time bouncing it off one of his fenders. The creature gets back up and Ash closes in taking a hard swipe and opening a second, deep cut. Bleeding freely the assassin backs away.
Ragnall: “Fire in the hole!” Ash immediately dives as the old man throws a fireball at the creature. Seeing Ash dive the creature also reacts and rolls away from the brunt of the fiery damage, but as it regains its feet Davey hits dead center with the jeep and the assassin crumbles to the ground. The jeep sputters and dies as well.
Davey gets out, his body shaking and he laughs.
Ash: “That can’t be good for this conveyance… this… jeep.”
Davey slaps the hood, “These things are made for war, its fine.”
Ragnall: “I’ve found something.”
Things are looking up:
Surprisingly, in one of the outbuildings with a shattered roof, they find a large plastic crate with a mass of silk parachute on top of it.
Ash: “This cloth is fine material and these ropes are amazing!”
Davey: “Yeah, take all of that. I wonder what the Delphi dropped into this place and for who it was meant for.”
Ragnall, opening the lid; “This must have been meant for the previous masters of Dublin house, probably for the second mission in.” Inside the crate is deep foam and within the foam are blocks of grey clay.
Davey: “OK! That is not for you to play with, I’ll take care of this.” He carefully removes the blocks of C6 High Explosive [book says C6, not C4, so I assume a higher grade of explosive]. He then puts the detonators into a completely different pouch and places both into the jeep.
Ragnall: “What’s it for?”
Davey: “Blowing holes in walls, or collapsing parts of this castle.”
Ragnall smiles, its not a pleasant sight.
Davey loses touch, for a second:
Davey gets in the jeep and tries to get it started again. It gives him trouble at first. Refusing to start, but praying slightly to the car gods and turning the key for the third time the engine fires… and at that moment both the car and Davey “disconnect”… it lasts for less than a second, Davey is a realm runner and he forces both himself and the jeep back to Core Earth Axioms through sheer will.
Davey then goes on and on about if the hallways are wide enough for him to drive the jeep inside the keep. He obsesses for a while, and they do manage to get the jeep through the front doors and into the throne room. As they pass, Keymaster turns the castle into a stable version of #2.
Ragnall pauses him for a second. While he is well aware that they will be able to turn individual rooms back into any castle even after they make the castle a permanent feature of the landscape. Ragnall wants to open a few doors and witness some of the chaos for himself.
Lost Knight (Scene 3):
Ragnall opens a random door and a woman falls out into his arms. She is half starved and half mad, and sobs uncontrollably once she realizes she is being held by a fellow stormknight and not something from within the castle.
Crazed she is incoherent for a while, but they quickly piece together that she is a survivor of one of the two excursions from Dublin House, and that she has been wandering within the castle for the past month. Ragnall casts some healing on her to ease her mind and help with the battering exhaustion that wracks her body. She calms down and stares into the Ragnall’s eyes before she finally drifts into sleep.
Davey places her in the back of the Jeep and then turns to Keymaster.
“So, what do we have to do to get this keep turned?”
Keymaster: “You? Nothing. I just needed your direction. Give me two hours and this will be your new home.”
The next two hours is actually quite boring other than the nails on chalkboard screaming the crystal keep puts up as it is locked away. And finally, it is over and a permanent castle rests atop Tara Hill, now and forever.
Now What?
Davey drives the Jeep out of the castle before it is all finished and sits behind the wheel. He is still paranoid that if he leaves the jeep it will transform. The radio squawks again.
This time it is Ryan on the receiver. The details aren’t very clear but it looks like the Baron might have abandoned his territory, perhaps days ago. Either way, Daedalus is gone and the power void is being filled by Gabriel’s soldiers. The north is now a united front.
The “troubles” that drew them in where the Baron’s servants fighting over control. Many of his soldiers were creatures like himself that could not abide the light. They were quickly destroyed and his secret police where dismantled and outed to the populace.
After that it was very easy to establish a “police” force of knights in the area and absorb the populace back into a united Dublin.
It was turning into a day full of successes. Everything was coming up good, and as such the three Irish Knights were now suspicious of what great evil would befall them. They never have good things happen. Not without an equal price in pain.
Scane 4 Hall of Shades
Ragnall sighs, they still need to talk with the Shades beneath the castle and find out just who they were about to make alliance with. Perhaps this would be the moment where all of their good fortune ends.
Leaving Keymaster in charge of the castle, Davey drives them down the hill and around the side to the great stone doors in the side.
There is writing on the door, which Davey recognizes as Greek, meaning that the writing was added to the doors nearly a thousand years after they were originally built. The Gauls used to write using the Greek alphabet all the way back in the Republic Era of Rome, so this isn’t really a surprise. What is a surprise is that Ragnall can easily translate the Greek alphabet used to write Celtic speech.
Welcome to the Hall of Heroes
A simple welcome to a catacomb full of dead heroes, and yet no mention that those heroes don’t exactly rest here. There is then some colorful speech naming many of the dead who rest within. Ragnall skips over most of these as they are names he doesn’t know. The final two lines of the speech are what hold him:
Only the Worthy may Enter
Those who Can pass Shall pass.
Ragnall summons all of his faith and belief and then puts his hands on the warm rocks, and the door immediately opens. It is surprising how easy this is and the old Priest almost falls into the tunnel beyond with the unexpected quickness of the opening.
Green flames pop into life, igniting torches along the curving paths within the hill. The trio enter the tunnel and follow the main, largest path. The walls are carved with niches and within these niches rests the corpses of generations of druids and heroes of the Celtic (and proto- /pre-Celtic) peoples. As they follow deeper the shades of the dead start to form out of the walls, ghostly spectres who give off their own luminescence adding to the torches. These silent watchers grow in numbers until the path is choked with them, standing at attention and watching the Irish Knights as they wander deeper into the core of the hill.
Finally, they reach a large circular chamber with more paths branching, and here the first burials where made. Here the first high King and the First Druid, and the greatest of the Elder Heroes await.
But that is a story for the next installment of the Irish Knights.
