You live in a world on fire. Your elders tell you it wasn't always so. That once the gods were kind. That once men were good. That once the earth was your friend.
What has afflicted your land so?
[ ] An inquisition that cares for purity, not innocence
[ ] A furious pace of invention that leaves all behind
[ ] A revolution that consumes all it touches
[ ] A great war with no end in sight and no place for valour
[ ] A terrible peace that chains the mind
[ ] A plague that might end the world
[ ] An empire of steel and plaster
[ ] An invasion of otherworldly things
Your elders tell you stories of the knights of old, champions of the Old Gods, beacons of right and good. That theirs is a grand but fading glory, which no one seems to have the strength to preserve.
That night,
You dream an impossible dream…
[ ] To fight the unbeatable foe
"Captain!" the scout is doubled over, his hands on his knees, panting for breath. Water pours from him; he looks more like a drowned rat than a man. "Captain, it's coming!"
"That's bad timing," the Adjutant grimaces, "we need shot to pierce that hide, and the arquebusiers will be useless in this rain. We should fall back, Captain."
"And give it the villages in its way?" the Captain scoffs. "Tell the men to not worry about the match-cord. Focus on keeping the powder dry. I'll handle the rest."
It's bigger than he had anticipated, all spines and tough hide as it tears up the landscape and makes a beeline for their battle line. The rain battering off its form looks like it's shedding spines in a spiral behind it like some kind of great demented peacock. It'll tear through the pikemen in seconds if it gets close.
"First rank, aim!" he shouts, and the men ready their guns.
There are no triggers pulled - levering the matchcord into the firing pan would be quite useless with no burning matchcord. In unison, each of them opens the firing pan of his matchlock.
"Fire!" the Thunder Knight shouts, and at his gesture thirty perfectly placed sparks of lightning ignite the gunpowder. The guns' thunder fills the air and the balls strike the beast and it lets out a pained and infuriated roar, but keeps coming.
The Captain grins and puts a hand on his sword. Maybe he'll get to contend with it in person today. Maybe he'll get to bring the Storm. But before that...
"Second rank, aim!"
[ ] To bear with unbearable sorrow
The siege of the castle had lasted for months, and the undead just kept coming. They had mowed them down by the score and they just kept coming, just kept getting up. Where had they found all those bodies? Where had they found all that strength? Lord Vandomir has personally shot the ice witch with six crossbow bolts over the course of the siege and yet here she is, no blood, no pause in her step, striding up to him and his exhausted garrison and his broken gates.
"You win! You win! We surrender," he says, and offers his sword. Perhaps he can seek mercy for his men, at least - if he doesn't, he feels certain they'll end up joining the undead horde.
She keeps walking, beautiful, eternal. Her eyes never waver. He and his men might not as well exist. Her minions tear open the gates to the dungeons. The dungeons?! Is there even anybody in there?
"Sorry I took so long," the Snow Knight says down into the oubliette, and her voice is the quiet whisper of Winter as a frozen stairway materializes at her will.
The man that emerges goes pale at the sight of her. The poet Lord Vandomir's father had imprisoned for slandering him is old and bedraggled and barely fit to walk after so many years in the dark.
"I-I-I never…" the poet says, "I never did anything to deserve the attention of…"
She lays a hand on his shoulder, and it is not as cold as he expects. "You deserve to not be forgotten," she says.
[ ] To run where the brave dare not go
"Can't see why you'd want to go up there," the old man relights his lantern as he and his companion take the winding path up the mountain. The wind is getting stronger. "The animal kills anything that comes near, but leaves people alone otherwise. Best to just leave it be."
The Blood Knight is covered from head to toe in scars. Cuts, burns, worse. He carries no weapon. Wears no armor. But his every step is strength. The old man had underestimated him until he'd knocked a wild boar out with one blow and torn a hole in the forest from the shockwave of it.
"Not an animal, just unusual. We made a promise," the knight says.
"Childhood friend? Can't say that you look like the marrying sort," the old man chuckles. "Well, you're about even in the looks department." Rather than laughing, the knight scratches his chin.
"Hmm. That's a very different way to find out who's become stronger," he says at last. "There are so Many. I'll bring it up."
[ ] To right the unrightable wrong
"How?!" the baker looks at the coinpurse in his son's hands, his mouth agape. He can pay back- no, that's not the most important thing here. "No, you haven't been stealing, have you?"
"It's ours, papa!" the son fishes in his pocket and pulls out a notched and dented copper piece, "even had your first copper! It's everything the Skulls took from us."
The baker has to steady himself on the counter. His life flashes before his eyes. "That's even worse! You know what they do to people who fight back against them? We have to give this back right away."
"No, you don't get it! They gave it back. Said a Devil had claimed us and they didn't want any part of our business any more."
The baker looks at the coinpurse in a new light. A suspicious light before, now like it might bite off his hand.
"You haven't been making deals with-"
"No!"
The Dark Knight wraps another layer of shadow around himself and ghosts out the back. A little difference made, but there's so much more to be done. The Night is young...
[ ] To try when your arms are too weary
He adjusts his gas mask and pulls his fur coat tighter around himself. The black snow falls unending now, unmelting on the streets, and he crunches it underfoot with every step.
An engine of steel and strife and industry has made its nest at the heart of this city, pumping out black smoke that coats buildings and fills lungs. It has taken the sky. Without the light of the sun the warmth of the steel beast's heart is all that keeps the city from freezing. It has brought the people under its sway and now they think only of forging and fighting, growing harder and stronger and bigger just as it does. The plants are gone, and the animals have become tough, twisted, angry things.
They all work at its command or they do not eat, not even the meager bounty it provides. His limbs are so tired that he can barely walk. But he has a job to do waiting at home.
Down in the basement of his home he has dug deep. The Green Knight can remove his mask and take in the scent of loam. And down, down, down in the dark, cultivated so carefully and with such love, there are the smallest buds of something green.
It has taken the sky. It has not taken the earth. And someday soon the Wood will rise.
[ ] To reach the unreachable star
She is poise, grace, glory. Her blonde hair flares out around her and her head is backlit by the light of the evening sun. Her armor is polished until it shines, and the brightness of it is almost blinding.
She plants her sword into the ground before her, standing like a statue. "Boyar Zarov! You have betrayed your oaths, broken your contracts and abused the trust of your people! You have disgraced everything a noble ought to be," the Solar Knight declares, and her accusation is like the Sun's wrath itself. "What say you in your defense?"
"Piss off!" comes the reply from a balcony, "I don't answer to an up-jumped bastard and if you come in here I'll cut your balls off and feed them to the dogs!"
"So be it. Be judged!" she says, and all at once the rays of evening sun streaming down on the manor turn into tongues of flame.
[ ] To follow that star, no matter how hopeless, no matter how far
"This here's our road," the tall woman sneers at the shabby mass of rags before her, and her fellow highwaymen jeer at the spectacle of him. His face is covered by his broad hat, but all he's got on him is a walking stick, not even a knife so she figures he won't be much trouble. "Don't look like you can pay a toll, so why don't you get on your knees and beg and old Sparrow here won't sing today." She pats her crossbow for emphasis.
He looks up at her and nods seriously. She startles back at the sight of his eyes. Some have a thousand-yard stare. This raggedy man could look to the ends of the world and still have some distance left. "O Road," the Beggar Knight says, "I beg you, be gentle with those who would claim that which belongs to all, for I leave them in your hands."
She raises her crossbow, but she's too late. She doesn't even see him move before he's gone, and before she can finish turning around the walking stick impacts the base of her skull.
[ ] To fight for the right without question or pause
"Mistress?" she's not cut out for this, she thinks as her grip tightens on her spear. She's just a maid! She should be dusting busts, not busting bandits! Or revolutionaries, or whatever they call themselves. "Mistress, hurry up!"
"I've almost got it!" the wagon's occupant calls, and the maid hears a small explosion inside. "Don't worry, I meant to do that!"
Worried though she might be the maid is definitely not going inside. Interrupting the mistress while she's in the throes of Lunacy is an excellent way to get incorporated into whatever's being created - the Mistress is all about the "can I" and never about the "should I."
A hail of arrows streak out of the treeline and the maid hides behind her shield. Most are deflected - hunting arrows, mostly, but a bodkin pierces a full two inches through. Great, now she gets to look pointed death in the face while she's cowering.
"I've got it!" the mistress shouts. The contraption that the Lunar Knight is holding as she exits the wagon is halfway between a lantern and a hand cannon with what looks like a very delicate array of mirrors in between. "I call it the Moon Shot!"
She opens the shutter on the cannon and a beam of directed moonlight scorches the forest, cutting a neat and exact line through the trees. The maid can hear the enemy scurrying away from this strange new threat.
"Really, mistress? Moon shot?"
"When you make the inventions you'll get to make the names!"
[ ] To be willing to march into Hell for a Heavenly cause
The Death Knight tears off the end of the paper cartridge with his teeth. The first charge in the firing pan, the rest down the barrel. Plunge, wind, ready. Smooth, practiced, faster than the fastest soldier. Other Holy Knights might rely on divine power and strength for their arms, but he finds comfort in good artifice and ordnance.
The thing lurks in the shadow, chitinous shell and bulging muscle and the black and silver traces of the Unreal, vaguely humanoid but with a glowing red maw where the face should be.
"Don't think you belong here," he says with a tip of his hat, raising the wheellock musket, "maybe you should scurry on back Outside."
"Turn back now," it warns, its maw widening and gleaming in the darkness, "or face your death, human!"
The man smiles over his shoulder. A single glance at the other place he finds comfort, in the gentle woman he can never see but can always feel. Her hand is on his shoulder, steadying his breathing. Steadying his aim. Steadying his heart.
"Face Death? Naw," his gaze flicks back to the monster, "she's always one step behind me."
Hi SV! Another one of my strange experiments in questing, this one is about Paladins, righteousness, fighting the good fight and all that sort of thing. First we'll establish the crisis in the world and what sort of Holy Knight you want to be, then we'll sweep on to personal character generation.
