Session 2.4 - Protectors of the Realm Report

General Summary

The Protectors of the Realm have passed the day in Camelot’s sister city of Burgess - though, to call the double-walled region and its limited port access a ‘city’ seems somewhat reductive, now that they’ve laid their own eyes upon it. Already they have encountered the three groups which appear to comprise Burgessian society alongside Mortelle, Deminatural, and Anima — the Nix, a race of the preternaturally beautiful with a fondness for nature and a love of color which enters the territory of the divine; the Pitic, a hearty race of builders and craftspeople whose very veins run hot with molten metal; and the mysterious Bestiare, an ethnic group filled with a myriad of shifterfolk and legendary beasts.

Their revelry was interrupted by the arrival of a messenger with a shock of ginger hair shaved into an undercut, glowing golden eyes with no pupils, a litany of golden scars, and two golden legs attached to his diminutive and presumably Pitic frame. This young man who smelled faintly of chocolate and glowing embers presented none other than Ser Griflynn, Knight of the Whispers, with a thick missive bearing the royal seal of King Arthur himself. A quick perusal, hasty searching of the soul, and some aid from Ivy by way of her unique linguistic prowess later, Griflynn directed the party to the whitesmithy of Larimar Lodestone.

It would be at Lodestone Smithy that the party gleaned a great deal of information about the messenger, Hellion of House Lodestone, the shop owner Lady Larimar, and the every day workings of their sister city. Griflynn would go on to enlist all 4 of the party’s princesses in her task, ultimately leaving the smithy with new insight into her long-estranged and recently awoken mother and her creations, the Pitic; the promise of new weapons for the whole of Camelot’s army and new weapons of her own before shifting her focus to gathering intel on the occupied city of Lychnis.

The party enlisted the help of Bathsheba “Vermilia” Amere in their reconnaissance, Vermilia only too happy to help look into the disappearance of Ser Leodegrance Lufu and her own family, the Ameres. With the aid of Tiptoe and an avian corsair the party found their way into Amere Manor where the remaining Ameres proved to be more or less hale and whole, splitting up after a startling display from matriarch Sojourne Amere to follow a path of secret signals which hopefully lead to Ser Leo, wherever he may be.

PART ONE:

SER LEODEGRANCE (?)

Shortly before the city of Lychnis erupts in a storm of flower petals and green light centered upon its marble-walled Rose District, alerting them to the ruckus within, Maven Spellsword Adaleis Lake and Princess Absabeth Pendragon are waiting on the hillside overlooking it. Keeping watch, ostensibly, listening into the quiet dark for any signs of trouble - Adaleis appears calm, focused, unperturbed, but Absabeth looks long after her twin sister beyond the entry gates. After several minutes she turns to Adaleis and asks how she contends with the vast differences between herself and her own twin, Lady. Preternaturally still but for the turning of her head at a sound to which she's become attuned, Adaleis offers that she and Lady possess different strengths which bolster one another much better than they contest one another - in Anima things are a little different, of course, because they live so long as a species, but twins are common there and siblings often rule side by side drawing upon each other in times of strength and of trouble. As Absabeth chews on this information, considering her own relationship with Ivy and whether or not her focus on her studies and the business of being a princess at some point interfered enough to make them as different as they now are, Sojourne Seileigh makes her point to the unwelcome guests in the city below.

Adaleis hears Lady's voice in her heard shortly thereafter, assuring her that everyone is alright and they might want to join the larger party while the city remains in disarray. Leis is quick to relay the message to a concerned Abi and the two are quicker still to race down the hill through the unmanned gate, drawing upon the party as they break from the Amere family. Malcolm thinks the better of his stature and, after several iterations, settles upon the form of a common housecat to accompany his friends further into the city. Vermilia surveys the area through the din and it isn't long before she spies just what she seeks: a bundle of deadheaded gallowblooms with one perfect bloom in the center. A message from Ser Leo - not only that, but a figure darting toward an alley from the very same direction in which the message lies. Malcolm (the feline) uses his newly unassuming physicality to get close to Ser Leo before announcing himself with a voice the size of his actual body, at which point Leo is reunited with his nieces and ex-fiancee and receives his first news of the world outside Lychnis' doors after 41 days under Avalonian occupation.

The joy found in the reunion is genuine but stowed for the time being, paling in the light of the work that still needs doing. Leo leads the Protectors of the Realm through the winding, crisscrossing streets of Lychnis: left, left, right, left, right, left, left again, and he disappears at the end of an alley only to abruptly reappear, his head poking out of a hole in the ground that now seems obvious on approach. The hole leads to a cistern that transports water to the greater Rose district and is, more importantly, what appears to be somewhere between one and two hundred assorted villagers who have cobbled together a home inside of it. The party begins to see the full extent of the damage that war in Albion has brought to its commonfolk as Leo explains that they've been living in clusters like this for weeks and only just gathered upon the realization that help must have come and thanks Vermilia for understanding his message. Leo calls over two identical looking individuals in roughly their early 30s who dressed in plain white work clothing of a dense and durable fabric that appears to be purposefully singed at all the edges in search of an update, catching Lady Lake's attention.

Lady nudges her sister and inclines her head to the more feminine of the obvious twins, who are chestnut brown of hair and golden-eyed: she is dressed not only in work clothing but in 'men's' work clothing, a lightly singed and heavilybloused shirt, tight placketed breeches with charred buttons, and burnt white boots. Down her back hangs a wide, thick golden braid with deadheaded gallowblooms woven all throughout; a single perfect bloom braided into the end. A devotee of Curieuse Goldenhand, Lady says with none too little respect in her voice. Her brother too, she murmurs as the devotee's mirror image leans his arm on her shoulder and the telltale pinprick scars of ritual deadheading peek out from under his sleeve. Before long Leo joins the two groups and introduces the devotees: Glynis and Godfrey Goodeve, the elder siblings of Gahariet Goodeve. Lady compliments Glynis on what she calls a Salvatrician braid and comments further that it's rare to see Salvatrician Organists this far into Albion and outside of Burgess, promising to take them both to the holy city of Mantic when the work at hand is done. Leo explains that the Goodeves are refugees from Ocassus, which yielded to occupation about a month before Lychnis and is now Mordred's staging post at the edge of the Uncanny Valley.

PART TWO:

OPTIONS & OBLIGATIONS

The collected group surveys the assorted villagers, both residents of occupied Lychnis and refugees from their sister to the extreme southeast. They weigh their options carefully: Options 1 & 2 being evacuation to the Uncanny Valley or Burgess; Option 3 to take only the sick, the weak, the young, and the elderly with a hold-in-place order for all remaining and capable fighters; and Option 4, to fight their way out. In the end, the party opts for Options 1 and 2 and chooses to divide and conquer - they choose to break into groups, each member or members of the party taking 20 or 30 under their wing. As the hundred plus in the cistern filter into the alleyway above Vermilia hesitates, informing Malcolm and his party that she has an obligation to her family and her home and will remain behind to help defend it. Before they part, Malcolm shyly asks Vermilia if he might kiss her, only for the red-hooded naturalist to have mercy on him and answer his inquiry with a kiss of her own. Tiptoe promises to stay by Vermilia's side and assist in any way she's able to before revealing her true Bestiare form: a manticore with a scorpion's stinger clicks its mandibles and leads Vermilia back into the fray, leaving only the party to disperse as follows:

The Lake Twins, Godiva, and Glynis agree to take the furthest evacuation route and lead several dozen into the safety of the Uncanny Valley beyond the extreme unsafety of occupied Occasus. Griflynn and Godfrey take perhaps the hardest row to hoe and agree to lead a group past an ever-stirring Camelot. Absabeth and Malcolm choose to lead a group between the two aforementioned routes, eventually cutting southwest to the northern gate of Burgess. Leodegrance will remain to collect any stragglers who may still be hiding in their homes or in other cisterns. With the plan set and a hearty distraction provided by Tiptoe and the Ameres in their entirety, there is little else to be said. In a flurry of motion, all rush the Damask, Garden, and Ekstase Gates. The element of surprise (and Glynis' curious ability to light her hands on fire coupled with Griflynn's even curiouser new weapons) is with them, and the Protectors of the Realm lead their charges into the ink sketch of an evening beyond the gates.

Griflynn and Godfrey are first to break from the larger group, disappearing quickly and quietly into the southernmost edge of the darkness - before they reach the gates of Burgess, they will narrowly avoid detection courtesy of the odd young Bestiare Malcolm was seen fighting during Camelot's siege, though any possible reasons for which escape them in the moment. Godiva fishes out the Ecouteama Tonic given to her by the Rogue Sisters and acts as the group's alert system to any and all noises. The remaining Protectors and villagers carefully skirt the edge of occupied Ocassus, narrowly missing three shadow-enshrouded figures in the distance who appear to be patroling thanks to Ivy's temporarily impeccable hearing. As they pick their way carefully through what is rapidly becoming marshland, Absabeth's eye is caught by the glimmering stone that seems embedded in everything from the city walls to the marsh itself. She reaches out with the greenest, newest part of herself and tries to touch the surrounding landscape.

Abi makes contact with something referring to itself as Fosforescenza and politely asks it not to alert anyone else who asks to their presence - after a few seconds of wordless musing Fosforescenza remarks on the hardworking people of Ocassus and the bad business of their unwelcome guests, promising to keep their passage a secret...but not before extracting a promise itself. Absabeth promises to return to remove the interlopers from the land belonging to Fosforescenza and says her goodbyes, assuring her sister and friends of their guarded passage before she and Malcolm, too, break off into the night. Only Ivy, Glynis, Leis, and Lady remain to guide the final villagers to the Uncanny Valley, and they've got quite a walk ahead of them. They are greeted in a familiar copse of trees by a familiar, booming voice: Dandy Lion has heard of their movements from Uncanny trackers and come to escort them in personally.

What could go wrong?

Rewards Granted

Protectors of the Realm
+3 XP to all for successful evacuation/liberation of Lychnis (in a single evening) after 41 days of occupation

Consent is Required
+1 Fight forward to Malcolm for Kissing The Girl

Missions/Quests Completed

MISSIONS

~~Reconaissance - collect intel on Lychnis + Ocassus; state of Ser Leodegrance~~
~~Infiltration - enter Lychnisian gate(s) under pretense or cover of night~~
~~Family Reunion - Reunite Vermilia with the rest of House Amere~~
~~Follow the Deadheads~~
~~Locate Ser Leo~~
~~Evacuate Lychnis~~
Rendezvous in Burgess (?)