GM: Judd Karlman
Players: Cathy Caronia, and Sean Nittner
System: Mythic Bastionland
A messenger brought word from the north. The knight who died was Yago the Bloody Knight, who had gone south following the rumors of a giant spider.
As Sceptremass was upon us, many knights came to renew their oaths to Ezter. Day later Alskip and Spinjack arrived. Alskip had changed, they bore many eyes and moved in skittering jerks. They translated the chittering words of their lord Spingjack, the Lord of Hunters.
“My lord bids you a good day. The stone web you’ve built is impressive. She seeks to form a bond with you using words and oaths so that we may live in peace and so that she may hunt. She has heard your seers know wehre the best hunts may be. Perhaps if there is a hunt in the north, she may slay a monster that threatens your neighbors as means of recompense.
Ezter concurs that deeds are the way to end bad blood. Once Spinjack is knighted (if she is knighted, Bray interjects) her first task will be to make things right with the people of the Tower Majestic.
Bray wanted to learn something of Spinjack’s nature and proposed a hunt that they might learn of one another. We hunted the Paradise Cockrel, a flightless bird the size of a horse, the smell of a sodden hounds, and the claws or a raptor. The people of Blackmoat would eat well!
[Die of Fate result: 5]. The Veiled Seer and her acolytes welcomed Alskip and Spinjack into her glade. When they emerge Spinjack has been knighted. Here acolytes explain that Spinjack is swearing an oath to Ezter as her liege. To return ever year to renew vows. To follow the oaths of knights to seek myths, honor the seers and protect the realm.
When she emerged Spinjack told us that she asked the seer what she should work on to be a better Knight? Mercy.
Ezter tells Spinjack. You can see that it is traditional to wear the vestments of a knight. You should decide what that will be. In the meantime Alskip can carry Ezter’s banner.
She sent Spinjack to the north with the Mock Knight, a master study of humanity, to make amends with the Tower Majestic. A difficult task for any knight, a heroic one for a giant spider.
To the Three Crones
The knights of Blackmoat looked to Ezter to fulfill her oaths to the High Lord of Three Crones.
Ezter and Bray traveled west into the realm of the Three Crones. The first night is calm. On the second night we found our sides in a pasture and the ground shook violently.
A cowherd who had been sleeping in a tree woke up and called us to climb up to safety, but a knight does not run from danger. Yee-haw!
Bray and Ezter flanked the herd and curbed their fear, corralling them back into the pasture before anyone was hurt.
The cowherd Pasco jumped down and thanked them for their service and said that the cows were northern Shetlands, not usually prone to being startled, those shakes were not common in this land.
Axe Lake
Ezter sent her kestrel to find the source of the shakes and it led us to a lake with a stone made outside of it. The hawk preyed on a flame weasel who had seen a small island on the lake with with seven stone chairs. On each chair was a skull and on the back of each chair was a knights crest.
As we entered the maze, guided by the kestrel from above, we saw a portent carved in stone “All knights will feel the axe.” No surprise they named this Axe Lake.
At the end of the lake we tied up our steeds and Bray looked at her reflection in the water, it was blooded from battle. Was the a portent of the past or the future, only seers could know.
On the small island temple was a man sharpening an axe with a whetsone. He told us his name was Welluh, and he had been warned never to come to this lake this island, but here we were.
Bray looked at the skulls, each of them knights who had fallen.
The knights spoke with Welluh. “You all felt the pull too?”
We nodded and said something unnatural brought us here. He countered that this as natured intended. Sometimes changes are startling but that does not make them unnatural.
Welluh told us he grew up in the orchards as was told this lake held a tool and a weapon to cleave the world. He looked sorrowfully at us “It is a terrible fate be the axe wielder”.
“Welluh, what do you know of those who came before us?”
“They were knights who fell to the axe. The first sign of the end.”
“The end of what?”
“Knighthood. The idea that someone has to fight for someone else when we could just be talking.”
Bray countered that there always needs to be someone to stand up for those who cannot defend themselves.
“Do you know how patronizing you? Believing you know what is best for others? There are orchards all around. Put down your weapons and tend to them. Or say here and faced the horrible wrath.”
Ezter countered that we cared for the people of our land and gave them a voice.
“Oh, so there are good knights, and thus this fell institution must continue? I am sorry, I’m sure you’d make very good cider.”
We entered battle!
Even facing two knights at once, Welluh was not overmatched. He landed blows on each of the knights as they sought to catch his axe and wrest it from him, to little avail.
Bray smashed her shiled into his side knocking him into the water. Ezter blocked the most brutal of his blows. Finally his blade bit deep into Bray’s flesh, and in doing so he was cut himself [Mirror Knight ability Reflection of Blood]. While he was startled Bray hooked his axe again flung it into the water, kicking him back onto his knees. Ezter was poised above to land a killing blow.
“Mercy. I don’t know why, but I believed that the world needed to be cleaved. I was in my orchard when the earth shook. We had always been warned away from the lake but I came here and found this temple and the axe inside. When I picked it up my mind was filled the images of a world without knights.”
We sent him to return home and tend his orchard. Bray told Ezter that she would have to watch the Mirror Knight and ensure that the Axe did not overpower her. Then she gripped with with a mailed hand, hoping in vein that armor would protect her. She knew in that moment that it was her fate to end all of the knights, and unlike the apple farmer, she could do it.
Updated map with Axe Lake.
