Tara Hill Castle

Apologies:

Before we talk about the Tara Hill Castle…

There was no post last week, as I have started a new job for the winter and the scheduling threw me off my normal routine. LAST WEEK, the Irish Knights battled a massive beast from beneath the sea and they won. Though Ash was nearly slain. The Knights had earned a rest and they wandered back home and tucked themselves away. We start off this post a little after 10 am on Day 143 of the Invasion.

This week’s post will mostly be story and consisted of LOTS of dialogue. In many of these posts I tend to gloss over the dialogue, only pulling out choice bits to give you a feel for what was happening at the table during the session. I will try to make this post as entertaining as possible, but remember that this part of the story comes after the players spent over 2 hours of real time battling the Kaiju. So, this part was about relaxing them and letting them work their brains and not just throwing dice around the table.

Act 10 Scene 3

We start the scene with the gathered knights and personnel once again sitting around their council table and enjoying a breakfast [yes I really do LOVE breakfast food as looking over my notes I have about forty scenes of my characters enjoying a hot breakfast before I make them face the rest of the adventures!]

This breakfast is rather somber, no one is talking as they drink their coffee/tea and push the food around their plates. Part of the mood is because of the bandaged and still semi-crippled Ash who is propped up in his chair and who says he’s ready to fight again, despite being nearly bitten in half. The other strange feature is the inclusion of the Keymaster at table. The fae creature’s odd yellow eyes and furred ears are slightly unsettling, despite his smile and delightful mien.

Dante and Roland spent their day yesterday interviewing the creature, and what follows is a compact version of their report. BUT… before they can report…

Magic Surge:

A rolling wave of energy washes across the whole of Ireland, though the knights are unaware of how far it reaches, the energy surges through everyone at the table. This has happened about four other times over the last month or so, and every time it seems to grow and more and more people can feel it. In the beginning it only seemed to affect casters and elves, but now even Davie can feel the energy rippling through his body and making him feel stronger, better.

The surge of energy nearly brings Ash to his feet, and has as great an affect on his body as the healing Ragnall gave him the night before. Interestingly enough, it was these waves of power that allowed Ragnall to learn sorcery in the first place, supplementing his divine powers.

As everyone recovers from this surge, the Keymaster’s eyes glow for a few moments and then fade back to dull yellow.

A final interruption, a signed thank you from Gabriel in the North is delivered. The letter states that he is going to have a meeting in a few days inviting the Dublin house, the White Witch, and even several of the Hoody leaders to talk about the unification of Dublin into the Kingdom of Dublin. There are some mixed feelings about that last phrase.

Dante and Roland’s Report:

As has been stated in earlier posts, the Keymaster is a fae creature linked to Tara Hill Castle. This appearing castle fades in and out of reality on a fairly regular schedule and remains solid for a limited time before disappearing again. The amount of time the castle has remained “real” has grown longer and longer. Interestingly enough every time the castle appears it doesn’t always look the same.

The Keymaster has revealed that there are in fact FIVE castles that are each trying to vie for dominance, to be the ONLY castle. He is bound to the fifth castle, and his job was to lock and unlock rooms within said castle. He literally can control which castle room appears. IN simpler terms with him as a guide, you could walk into the front door of castle number 1 and he could then close the door, and reopen it into castle number 2. The fifth castle is a very horrible place that should NOT exist in the mortal realm. As such the Keymaster is tasked with constantly shifting the rooms so that the Fifth castle cannot be the final castle.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

The Five Castles:

The first two castles are native to Earth proper, the second two are of Aysle, and the last is the Mirror Keep, a horrible Fae Wild Magick creation that taps into the other four castles and all timelines, all castles exist at the same time. But again, we’ll get to those details…

Core Earth Castles:

The very first Tara Hill castle was built by proto-Celts in 2000-1500 BC era when the Earth still had a viable Magic Axiom, before that power fully waned and was replaced by a rising social and tech axiom. These proto-Celts crowned their first non-Tautha king on the hill and built a crude keep that over the course of a century became a respectable keep. Their proto-Druids also carved the gateway into the side of the hill and created the chambers within.

The second keep was built by Brian Boru during the Dark Ages, and was built on top of the ruins of the original first keep. This was around 1003 AD and the fortress was his seat as the High King of Ireland [I AM totally adding fantasy to real Irish History, so forgive me to my few Irish readers]. In a way this castle is merely a reborn first castle, but its far stronger and larger than the original.

The Aylish Castles:

Bran Dul’gar was a dwarven fortress mountain, that was actually several castles. It had a massive outer curtain wall that had its own smithies, apartments, stables, garrisons, etc and rings the entire hill. Then there was a wall at the base of the hill covered with mechanized heavy ballistae and catapults; and later fit with newer cannons. The keep on top of the hill was also heavily armed with artillery, including anti-air measures and beneath the hill it was said thrived an entire city of dwarves and tunnels. It was a massive and near impenetrable fortress.

The fourth Castle is an elven fortress that never resided on a hill… but was rumored to once have been a massive floating sphere of stone and wood. It flew through the skies of the ancient lands of Aysle and one day landed. Half of the sphere sank into the earth and the other half became a hill fort. The outer walls then grew from dense timbers and the gates are naturally formed from thorny vines that only open with the proper command.

The Nightmare Castle:

The fifth castle is called the Mirror Castle, and is a wild domain that connects to all of the castles and copies all of them at the same time. It is all timelines, all places, all at the same time. The various pasts are all replaying within these rooms and every so often the true crystalline castle reveals itself. The fifth castle is only light and crystals, but Things live within it. Specters of the past and fragments of memory that have gained a sort of life inside the constantly replayed memories. Creatures of great evil that once resided in these castles, their image was captured in the mirror and these images have gained strength long after the deaths of their various casters.

Hence the man with no face, the blank mask, who rode into the castle and made it solidify got days, who then emerged with a wagon and 8 riders. That creature was a resurrected elder evil, who came into the mirror castle and reabsorbed his reflection to regain some of his lost power, and then he went into the ancient castle that locked away his cauldron and Arawn Deathmaster was reborn, to go and reconquer Wales.

The Keymaster

He was charged with trying to keep the reflections and shades bound within the Mirror Castle… in fact he was literally enslaved to do so. BUT, some of the Sidhe have decided that they want to release some of the chaos and they have interfered in the workings of the castle, and some have tried to assassinate the Keymaster.

Several of the elder evils have freed themselves and the various groups of Stormknights that came from Dublin House and who ended up in the Mirror Castle have fed it all of their Potential, their Possibilities. Things have grown powerful and the Keymaster found that the meddling of outsiders freed his shackles.

He slipped free and now he just wants someone to tell him what he should do.

Next week:

This is where Act 10 ended, as stated at the beginning the Kaiju fight took more than 2 hours of real time to accomplish, and this bit is highly cut down but also took several hours of gaming time to convey all of the information.

Next week we start Act 11… which actually some of the Keymaster paragraphs are actually from that session. He asks them what they want him to do… and it takes a bunch of debate but we do settle on the Fate of the Castle.