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AORP's Fate

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The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers:
I promised some 5 months ago that I'd get to this. So while I lack the focus to do the whole thing right now, I'll give you some glimpses of what was to be but never will. Some of this has been revealed as spoilers, but I know not everyone read that, so here goes.

First: Revelations.

The Grey Knight was in fact, Shea's brother Timmy. That probably isn't terribly surprising. Here's the back ground. Timothy was a prodigy in the Centrology religion. He was more devout and possessed more zeal than any other worshipper.
Until he found out that it was all a scam perpetrated by the religion's leader, the Predicant (and asssisted by an inner circle). He converted to Christianity and when the Predicant learned of this, he knew Timothy had to be dealt with. He therefore wiped his memory and left him in the wilderness to die of exposure.
Only Shea's family ties were stronger than her faith. While she retained her belief in Centrology, she returned Timothy's equipment to him and pointed him to a nearby tavern, where he met Brenna. The rest, was on all the message boards. If you didn't read it, sorry, too late.
Meanwhile, The Predicant learned of this betrayal. As atonement, he demanded that Shea accompany Cadamis to either reclaim Timothy's loyalty or kill him. At first she was eager to regain her religion's favor, but when Cadamis was actually killing Timothy, she couldn't go through with it, and she stopped him, earning herself the ire of her brother and eternal banishment.
See, she was a good guy, at least, eventually. Her only motive was to preserve what little family she had, and even that started to collapse around her. No wonder she hated Brother John.
Cadamis was another matter. He knew the PRedicant's plans and role, and he threw himself wholeheartedly into the role. He wanted power.
As for what those plans were, well... that's for another post.

Carl Magnus Du'Monte (of the Southern Du'Montes, not the northern) was in fact, a coward. No hidden superspy or covert angelic messenger. Just a spoiled rich boy who was overly enchanted with the perceived romance of the bardic life. I wanted him to develop into something more, but Dan refused, and at this point, I think it was better that way.
All the same, I was still going to give him a kingdom. I was really hoping Natira would come around. But that's what ruined Cheers, so I'm glad Izzy never gave in to that course of action either.

Cecelia, Brenna's mouse, was in fact, Natira's long lost brother. DIdn't know they changed gender when they changed form, did you? I don't think that was a surprise either. He was evil, btw. More on that when I reveal the evil plan.

Hans' axe, was in fact, forged out of a meteorite and was probably the most powerful artifact I introduced in the story short of Excalibur. Maybe even surpassing that. It was also the ancestral totem of leadership in Hans' home village. His uncle (who really had usurped the throne through treachery) and the rest of his kin were coming for it. I just hadn't had a chance to introduce it yet. I dropped hints to several characters, particularly in their backgrounds, but no one went for it. *shrug*

(cont).

The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers:
Revelations, Part II (concluded):

Uhm... I can't say much about Galford that hadn't been revealed without talking about the whole evil plot, so more on that later.

Archbishop Patrick was in fact a very evil man. Brother John was going to have to face up to repercussions for this later, having made an enemy of his planned replacement, Bishop Patroclus. Who was about as good as they come. Mormons may think of Gideon in this position.

The Vampire Judas and the long-lived Joseph were pretty much who you probably guessed they were. Judas Iscariot, the betrayer of Jesus and Joseph of Arimathea who buried the Savior and brought the Holy Grail to Britain.

The village that the African group had just encountered was Natira's home town. Why it was destroyed I'll reveal later. Though for starters, the artifact made by the three I had talked about (Joseph, the Jew, and the Muslim (yes, that's anachronistic, I know, but so are most of the Arthurian tales (nested parenthesis are fun!))) was here.

Arthur wins the war against Linus. WHo was supposed to be "Lucius" but by the time I had realized my error I'd already referred to him as Linus so many times that I left it. The King's return was going to be part of the falling action as wrap up. He was going to grant Carl a fat title in Amorica. Dan probably loves that fact. Everyone else is probalby groaning. He was also going to give Timothy a title, and try to get the female characters married off (hey, it's a sexist time). The males would have to marry too, of course. Finally, Brother John, if he chose to HELP the good guys in the end, was going to get a Bishopric (after all, Patroclus was going to be Archbishop), which I assume John would have taken for the tax revenues and then neglected responsibilities and used as a position to sell "artifacts" from.

Providian's dad was, in fact, evil. Sorry, Providian. I know you looked up to him, but I had to throw a twist in there somewhere. In fact, it was Providian's father who helped betray and murder Belfas during the Goblin Wars under High King Uther. You'll hear more on that later.

General Belfas was a good guy. Confused about the time and his actual condition of life. But a good guy. Insanely powerful, which you would have hated later (hint, hint) but a good guy

Goblins are pansies.

That's pretty much it for character's dirty little secrets. Let me know if I missed anything or you have any questions. Or if you have another dirty little secret you want to share.

The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers:
Dark Plans, Part I:

The Goblin Lady is the simplest of your nemeses to explain, as she has little knowledge of the other, larger enemy, though her threat was more immediately powerful.

I had toyed with the idea of making her Morgan la Fey, not sure whether giving Morgan such an overt role in opposing Arthur would be more damaging to the genre than inventing yet another villain. In the end, I decided that since I already had Judas Iscariot in a minor role, and the Predicant, that it wouldn't hurt to add to the canon one more time. Therefore, The Goblin Lady was an entirely new villain.

The Goblin lady is a powerful enchantress who hates Arthur. I never really worked out a reason why, but it never came up, so it matters little. Probably the best reason I'd eventually have had to come up with would be to make her a representative of the Foul Folk: those who dissented from the Faerie and work against it. Most of them are goblins, but still.

The Goblin Lady actually had two plans working at the same time. First, she feared that Arthur and the kingdom of the Faerie Grove would strike an alliance, so she began inciting the traditional enemies of the Faerie: the Goblins. (this is where she got her name, which I gave to her mostly as a placeholder, since she was y'know, the one beind the goblin attacks). As the second prong of this plan, she began poisoning the Faerie Grove using spells and demonic summonings. Ultimately, this meant bringing a demon into the world, but she wasn't thinking that far ahead.

When it seemed the time was right, she wanted to use these goblins against Camelot, but she wanted to weaken Arthur's forces first, so she took a page out of the "Knight Errant Generic Enemy Plans" book and established a plan she hoped would pull knights away a few at a time and they could be more easily disposed of. To this end, she got two of her thralls, a dwarf named Rupert and a diminutive illusionist named Rowena, to trick a knight or two at a time away from Arthurs court with a phoney story about a damsel in distress. Only Rupert wasn't going along with it very well, since he was only kept in line by fear. So Rowena had to abandon the party to help prepare for their arrival.

This "pull the knights away" plan was abandoned when, due to the unexpected onset of war with Lucius, there were a) not very many knights in Britain anyway, and b) even if there were, they woulnd't be hanging out in camelot waiting for random adventures.

The second plan is a bit more hazy and well, represents some admittedly weaker plotting on my part. The idea is that this plan was going to be forsaken as well, since there was little need to distract the Knights of the Round Table, but then the Goblin Lady encountered more resistance than she expected (primarily in the form of PCs, and some commoners) she decided to continue with it to weaken the world.

The Goblin Lady had captured the Questing Beast, and through a sick, dark age version of Dr. Moreau style genetic work, had bred it with dragons. The results were dragons that lived life much faster than things around it (in mechanics terms, they were permanently Hasted) but also aged much faster and ended up rotting from the inside out. This is what Cadamis and Providian and their group found after the ritual Cadamis performed at the well. Hatchling versions are what killed off half the PCs when I culled the ranks. The dragons spread too quickly, however, and a group of the PCs managed to (accidentally) release the Questing Beast (due to Sir Pellinore's interferance), so the plan wasn't as effective as she wanted. Especially since the dragons were spreading further than she intended, and weren't concentrated enough to be effective. Thus I was going ot be able to throw red, green, white, blue, and black dragons at the players as they travelled. But we didn't get to most of that. So sad.

So, what was this I said about the Demon? Sorry, you'll have to wait for a future update on that. Next up, some more revelations about the Faerie.

The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers:
Truth of the Grove:

As far as I know, only a few of you are familiar with the Faerie Grove. Most of the physical realities of the grove are unimportant. But the important religious ideal is their worship of a deity they call The Dragon or The True Dragon. The only true god in their mind, The Dragon is the source of revelation, prophecy, and benevolence. He created the grove for them to live in and perfect themselves -- which involves living in harmony with all around them. The goblins are their hereditary enemy for ancient reasons that are lost now. Currently, war with them is still justified because it is known that the goblins hurt the grove and want to destroy the faerie. All attempts at peace has failed, but still the grove has always refrained from offensive measures to clear the goblinoids once and for all.

There is a huge body of myth and religious history, a good deal of which has parallels in Christian story, though more of it resembles Spenserian and other Renaissance fairy narrative. The Faerie do nto shy away from pomp and ceremony.

But here's the thing.  The Faerie have undergone a great apostasy. No one knows the truth of their origins.

But you will in a second.

The True Dragon is actually God. The Christian God. The faerie. The ACTUAL faerie, not the humans that live symbiotically with the faerie, are fallen angels. These are not angels that warred with God as Lucifer did. But after humans were introduced to the world, many angels wanted to live with them. As they chose to disobey and leave god's presence, they lost their divine heritage and became ... more mortal. They now live primarily in a realm somewhere between heaven and earth, having totally forgotten where they come from or what they really are.

But God didn't forget them. And once they have repented, he plans to bring them back into service as full angels. Of course, they need to remember that they have NEED to repent first, and so he inspired men to live with them, beginning a gentle re-introduction to Christianity. This is also why he has allowed the Grove to sicken. The cure for their land lies in the destruction of the demonic forces I keep hinting at, but also in their re-acceptance of God's will and rule.

We'll see how that would come about in a few posts. But part of it was Galford's mission to establish diplomacy with High King Arthur.




Now that that's explained, there's one other minor point.

Julia (I think that was the character's name, it's been so long) was a sort of Deus Ex Machina I had set up if things got too far off. Her magical powers come from being trained by a Dragon. Or perhaps, THE Dragon. She doesn't know. She knew nothing about the Faerie Grove and little more about Christianity. However, she was exceedingly impressed with the goodness of htis dragon, and when he asked her to complete tasks, like watch after Hans, she obeyed, using the magic the dragon had given her. Her exact role was going to depend on what I needed to use her for to reconnect this all to the main theme in case you got too far off. That way, you could do whatever you wanted, but I could eventually still use much of my original plans.

Lieutenant Kije:
This isn't a pester, just curiosity...

You ever gonna finish this, Saint?

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