The Knights of the Confederacy

Though outnumbered by The Patriot Regiment, the Liberators, and other mystery men fighting for the Union, the Knights of the Confederacy were able to stave off their country’s defeat for four long years. Courage and cunning were the team’s greatest assets, and they served the Knights well in their shadowy war with the Union’s super-agents. Though theirs was ultimately a Lost Cause, the Knights proved that glory, honor, and valor are not exclusively the victor’s province.

Structure

Achilles

Michael was unsure about many things, including his name. His Tennessee neighbors gave it to him, based on what he was mumbling when they found him stumbling through the woods naked, injured, and amnesiac. They nursed him back to health and helped him build a life for himself. A grateful Mike lived among them in peace and happiness, until the coming of the Civil War placed all he knew in jeopardy. He enlisted as soon as was able, ready to fight to protect his home and neighbors.
His friends were well aware Mike was strong as an ox, but even they were shocked when he single-handedly turned the tide at the First Battle of Manassas by leaping a quarter-mile into the Union ranks. Neither minie ball nor bayonet could pierce his skin, and only the reappearance of the legendary Yankee hero, Minuteman, saved the Union army from a total rout.
Modest to a fault, Mike thought he’d done nothing special, and only a direct order from the War Department persuaded him to leave the ranks and join what became the Knights of the Confederacy. Dubbed “Achilles” for the similarly invulnerable hero of myth, Michael’s homespun values made him the team’s anchor and acknowledged leader. Powerful as he was, his most remarkable traits were his innate goodness and sense of mercy, even in a time of war.
His virtue faltered only once, when Lee’s surrender at Appomattox and the atrocities of Sherman’s March pushed him over the edge. Michael resolved to throw himself into the blue ranks just as he’d done at the war’s beginning, only this time he’d drown the Yankee soldiers in their own blood. Before he could do so, however, Michael disappeared. Not long after that, some strangely clothed visitors told his friends “Mik-El” was one of them, lost in the outside world, and that he was now home among his people, leaving behind only a legend.

The Fouke Monster

The so-called “skunk apes” of the Arkansas bayous were found to be more than mere myth when the Knights of the Confederacy rescued one of them from a frightened Union patrol near the town of Fouke, in 1862. While the creature could only communicate through grunts and crude gestures, its gratitude was obvious. For the remainder of the War, the Fouke Monster remained a strange but loyal member of the Knights, fighting at their side and leading them through the mystic gateways joining bayou to bayou whenever an escape route was needed. Left abandoned at the War’s end, the Fouke Monster shed a final tear for his absent friends and returned to his swamps for good.

The Mermaid

As an infant, Varina Beaulieu was rescued from the sea by her sailor father, who regarded her as a miraculous gift from God. She never learned of her Atlantean origins or the true nature of her fantastic aquatic abilities, but the War filled these voids with purpose. Determined to keep the Union Navy far away from her father’s blockade-runner, she waged a one-girl war of sabotage, sinking Yankee warships seemingly at will. Northern sailors came to fear the so-called “Mermaid of Charleston Harbor,” and her reputation eventually led to her induction into the Knights of the Confederacy.
The Mermaid fought with a resolve that belied her years, all the more so when a young Confederate sailor won her affections. Their love endured until he drowned aboard the submarine Hunley despite her efforts to save him. Varina turned cold and bitter for the remainder of the War, until news of her father’s death in a Northern prison broke her spirit entirely. She perished in her home during the destruction of Charleston in 1865, her broken heart killing her as surely as the flames that engulfed her.

The Night Stalker

Thomas Pembroke was a scion of the Virginia aristocracy, darling of the Richmond social scene, and proprietor of a fortune in farmland and slaves. Thanks to an unchaste kiss from a comely lass with alabaster skin, he was also a vampire, damned to survive on the blood of the living.
To his credit, Thomas never fully embraced vampirism, and he resolved he’d only drink the blood of the wicked. His nocturnal acts of vigilantism were spoken of in hushed tones in the Confederate capital, and the evildoers of Richmond grew to fear the legendary “Night Stalker,” who dealt harsh and swift justice to criminals.
At Achilles’s behest, Thomas joined the Knights of the Confederacy, and despite their often-bitter disagreements, the two became close confidants. Only Achilles truly understood Thomas’s endless battle against his dark side, and he carried out his wishes when he ultimately lost it. After the fall of Richmond in 1865, Achilles found Thomas feral and blood-drenched in the ruins of his plantation, and he tearfully beheaded his friend, freeing him from his curse in the only way possible.

Nunnehii

Like many Cherokee, Yartunnah Watie turned his back on the old ways to please the white man only to walk the Trail of Tears. Slowed by age and a broken spirit, he had little left to believe in when the nunnehii—benevolent spirits of Cherokee legend—first spoke to him of the miracles made possible by the faith of good men. Yartunnah’s faith was in short supply, and it remained so until his people cast their lot with the newborn Confederacy, which—much to his surprise—dealt with the Cherokee fairly and honorably.
To Yartunnah, something worth fighting for was like spring water to a thirsty man, and he set out to use the nunnehii to further the Confederate cause. The spirits led him to Achilles, who was impressed by the old man’s powers but still more awed by his great wisdom. Achilles came to rely on Yartunnah’s counsel as the War dragged on, as did the other Knights.
The spirits served Yartunnah so faithfully that their name became his, at least to most who knew him. After the war, he hoped to use the spirits to restore his defeated people’s faith and lands, but it was not to be. Three days after his return to tribal lands, a Union cavalry officer shot Yartunnah in the back, wary of “some crazy old Indian preaching mumbo-jumbo.” The nunnehii honored Yartunnah’s dying request and allowed his spirit to join them.

The Ranger

Charles Napier was a Texas Ranger like few others, catching crooks with new-fangled techniques like searching crime scenes for evidence, as well as more traditional methods like his fists. One dark prairie night, his curiosity sent him after a strangely bright falling star that turned out to be a weird glowing rock. The stone’s glow faded before morning, and Charles thought no more of it until he suddenly found he could outrun a Texas tornado.
The forthright Charles wanted to use his strange abilities for good, but he also didn’t want to be branded a freak. Therefore, whenever his supernatural swiftness was needed, he donned a mask and a change of clothes and called himself simply, “The Ranger.” While the War was of secondary concern to him as a lawman, his sense of duty to his beloved Texas led him to join the Knights of the Confederacy. Thanks to his tremendous speed, he successfully maintained both his identities throughout the War.
Charles’s costumed adventuring came to an end in the closing days of the War. Frantically racing to warn of an impending Union attack at the critical juncture known as Five Forks, Charles tripped and fell, suffering compound fractures of both legs. The ensuing Yankee attack succeeded, prompting the fall of Richmond. Though barely able to walk, Charles nonetheless lived a long, happy life, raising eleven children on tall tales of a legendary Texas Ranger who could outrace the wind.

Divided Liberties

Whenever freedom is greatly threatened, the Spirit of Liberty has endowed young women with superhuman abilities to aid in the fight against tyranny. The Spirit is naturally intertwined with the free and democratic United States, and she was acutely traumatized when the country divided over competing notions of liberty during its Civil War.
Mirroring America’s split, the Spirit fractured into warring halves, both of which imbued a champion with their power. On the Union side, her surrogate was called Columbia, after the female embodiment of America itself. Her Confederate counterpart was known simply as “The Southern Belle.”
The Southern Belle was one Mary Prescott Hamner, wife of an Alabama Congressman. She embodied much of the good about the antebellum South with her cultured charm and grace, and she had a willingness to give all she had for states’ rights to govern themselves as they saw fit. On the other hand, she was absolutely committed to maintaining the wealth and privilege of the Southern aristocracy, including the slavery it was built upon. Like Columbia, the Southern Belle was of limited benefit to her country’s cause, as advancing herself on the Richmond social scene and overseeing her plantation remained higher priorities than waging war. Anything less would go against her—and her half of the Spirit’s–conception of freedom as radical autonomy.
Despite nearly killing each other during the war, both Amelia and Mary survived and returned to their mundane states when the Spirit reunited in 1865. Mary lived out her days in the ruins of her plantation, unable to cope with the bitter life during Reconstruction. She died an indignant and eccentric widow, unmourned by the people whose Lost Cause she once embodied.

Type

Adventuring Party