Manhattan Knights Act 7 Part 1

Coming Back to Manhattan:

Last week, we posted the stopping point for the Irish Knights Campaign. Just to get people caught up who are not reading every post:

I am running a Game of Torg Eternity, the basis of the campaign is in recovering artifacts from each of seven invading Cosms. The plan was to have a different group of characters in each cosm recover the first few artifacts and then shuffle the characters into new teams to go into the final cosm for the last artifact. More details are HERE the post that starts the entire series.

So far in these weekly Sunday posts we started with the Adventures of the Manhattan Knights and we have just wrapped up the adventures of the Irish Knights, shortly we’ll be starting the story of the Nile Avengers. But before we go to the Nile, we are heading back to Manhattan.

What’s going on in Manhattan:

We’re returning to the Living Lands and Manhattan for several reasons, some of them in game and some of them for “out-of-Game” reasons. First off, my story is taking place during the course of the invasion, as the game world is supposed to start about 1 year into the invasion. My Manhattan knights ran from about day 90 until 106 or so, but the Irish Knights ran all the way to day 144. So, I wanted to get the stories and the character experience points to match up.

Now, out-of-game we also had the problem that I had run the entire Aysle Portion of the game before the Aysle books were even available and it had caused some issues (I basically made up every bit of storyline and monsters for my Irish Knights game and only a few months ago got the books showing me that I had taken things in a far wilder direction. We all wanted to immediately go to Nile, but those books were still waiting to be released. We therefore went back to Manhattan to gain some more time as we waited for the release of the Nile Books.

Picking Back Up

The Manhattan Knight’s story paused after a harrowing rescue mission where super science and magic were wielded to stunning effect on the primitive Edeinos. Carlisle, Sasha, and Kimiko opened a portal from their ally’s mystical fortress and jumped into the middle of a war meeting to rescue their lost Delphi Agents. Everything went crazy as all parties reacted to the sudden attack and the mysterious man, Greymane decided to sever his ties to the Baruk Kaah, the lord of the living lands, with a bazooka.

All of that happened a week ago, as we start up this last bit of story with the Manhattan Knights.

Day 115

The knights are relaxing in the great Dome City and making an assessment of everything that has been happening in Manhattan since their arrival and the wars they caused amongst Baruk’s war leaders.

While the Knights were dealing with Baruk on Long Island, the delphi house in Brooklyn sent a force into the southern half of Manhattan to deal with Warlord Blunt. What they discovered was that half of the island had been turned into gosopog fields and that their captured storm knights had been tortured to death or turned into chemically induced zombies.

In a fit of rage the Delphi Stormknights burned the fields and destroyed a massive chunk of Blunt’s forces. Though to be honest someone had already thinned out their numbers and started the fires in the first place. Sasha takes credit for this, stating that Cyrus was unleashed on Blunt’s men and therefore the alien symbiote must be fulfilling his promise to kill all of the edeinos in Manhattan.

Cyrus is still missing. With Blunt missing as well, or dead, and Tusk being killed by Baruk, there are no warlords holding Manhattan. That won’t last for long, but the Manhattan Knights do have an invitation from some friendly edeinos who live in upstate NY.

Traveling North:

While Baruk is trying to regain control of his men and remove the threat of the mechanized undead that have invaded Long Island, there is a general lull in the tensions on Manhattan.

The knights and Kimiko’s cat-girl follower climb into an electric powered jeep and they travel north toward Bear Mountain. The jungles have come in so thick that there is barely any of New York state visible anymore, not that this trio of knights would recognize it, as not a one of them has ever been to New York before.

Some of the gaps in the trees are suspiciously like the old highways and when they reach the Taconic Valley, they see a few road signs still haven’t gone over to the Living Lands. The jungle draws back into hills and valleys, with sweeping grass and they more than double their speed. Kimiko, reading from an old map guesses they might actually be following the Taconic Parkway, and that might be why there is a hardened path sweeping before them.

Contact

Following the directions and crude drawing that Ghost, the edeinos hunter, had given them they move between a cleft in two high hills and while driving through the pass, they notice a figure emerging from the brush. Just like Ghost he is a chameleon melding with the brush at the side of the road. He disappears before they can close the distance but a second figure appears further along the path, this time fully standing out from the brush and waiting for them to arrive.

As the knights get closer, they remember that Ghost handed them a fetish stick along with the letter, and Carlisle pulls it from his bag and holds out of the passenger window. He waves it in the air and the figure ahead of them raises a hand in a waving gesture. A dozen cloaked and hidden edeinos rise from the grass on all sides of the truck.

The manhattan knights come to a complete stop and the first figure steps up to the passenger window. He is a slim member of his race and his English is poor to say the least. But looking over the four in the truck he gives them directions to park their vehicle ahead and walk in the rest of the way. The rest of the sentries all disappear back into the grass.

Parking

They find the parking area, more from the fact that there are a few vehicles already there and less from the broken English of the sentry. The area feels like a scenic reststop along the highway, despite that there is no longer any asphalt. All but one jeep in the lot has become a rusting planter, though even the jeep is starting to have creepers and grass wrapping around the tires.

The jeep stands out not just because it is still clean and intact but because the back of it is loaded with jerry cans of fuel, boxes of ammo, and half a dozen rifles and shot guns are still strewn across the back seat. West Point seals are painted on the doors. Carlisle hefts out a Mossberg shotgun and checks the action, the gun is still in perfect working order.

Sasha places her hands on the jeep and triggers her psychometry powers to read the vehicle’s past. Most of its past was related to cadets at West Point using it to chauffer people around the base. But the final owner was a stormknight , a core earther who has a strong resemblance to Indian Jones, but with out the whip. He was accompanied by a man who has a very strong resemblance to the old Doc Savage character. A massive golden Adonis, part caveman, part model, whose skin actually has a metallic gold sheen.

This duo had been raiding the armoury at West Point when they came under attack and the jeep was just a handy getaway vehicle. It’s been parked for four days.

The White Tail Tribe

Moving away form the jeep and parking area is a long slop down into a valley, almost an exit ramp. The valley is far to picturesque. A number of tents and semi-permanent structures form a village down below. All of the buildings have grass for roofs and even the tents have green moss and such hiding their sides. There is a permanent holy site/stage in the middle of the whole affair, that would be the most impressive sight in the valley. If the army wasn’t training.

On the field to their left three massive brontosaurus with armored platforms are lumbering across the pitch, racing toward them is a dozen sabertooth tigers with lightly armored riders on their back and at the rear of the cats is a trio of triceratops, also with armored knights on the back. As they watch the tigers break from one large unit into two smaller units that sweep through the brontos, and another dozen sabertooth tigers come in from hiding.

It is only training, but the brontos would have taken hundreds of small cuts before the wedge of triceratops smashed one of them from the ground. It is brilliant, it is strategic, and it is far too advanced for the living lands.

Next Week…

The knights are more than impressed, and they will finally meet White Tail, Avatar of Lan’lala and ally of humanity.