[Pendragon RP] 488 Adventure - "The Matter of Frankland"

Pendragon: Tales of Chivalry and Sorcery is the place to go if you want to play Pendragon. Cpt._Funkotron will be your GM, with assistance from CarrieVS.

Re: [Pendragon RP] 488 Adventure - "The Matter of Frankland"

Postby Scarik » Wed Jul 18, 2018 12:13 am

Persidius considers the man and with his Gallic accent and Roman armor it is easy to believe his intentions. Bleddyn surely will suspect him, but that will simply make it easier to keep an eye on the stranger for the meantime.

He stands up and bids Petrieus to rise then answers him in Latin, "Our cause is that of Uther, King of Logres and his promise to Praetor Sygarius to help him reclaim his lost lands. I am Caius Persidius Pacilus, Lord Wayford and I am marching to Caen to seek the Franks that escaped me yesterday and finish their power for good."

"So tell me, Sir Petrieus, what do you know of the defenses of the city and the loyalties of her people?"
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Re: [Pendragon RP] 488 Adventure - "The Matter of Frankland"

Postby Cpt._Funkotron » Wed Jul 18, 2018 12:53 am

"It's all Franks sire, all that remains of the Gauls and Romans of Caen are slaves and concubines, or fled to the surrounding villages or further afield to Londinium. I dare say an entire generation of their men folk lie rotting in that field. The walls are ancient but well maintained, raised by one of the Caesars in their day. It has four large gates, all of which leading to fixed stone bridges. The city is surrounded by a wet moat. They've added a new castle, stuck onto the side of the city walls, a bailey with rock walls and wooden towers, joined at the parapets by a drawbridge. That's the royal lodging and exchequer."
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Re: [Pendragon RP] 488 Adventure - "The Matter of Frankland"

Postby Scarik » Wed Jul 18, 2018 12:59 am

"That will make our initial occupation simpler then," Persi nods, "Are there others willing to take up arms that you know of or could find? The campaign season is young and our losses are already mounting."
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Re: [Pendragon RP] 488 Adventure - "The Matter of Frankland"

Postby Cpt._Funkotron » Wed Jul 18, 2018 1:05 am

"I have no doubt that I am the first of many." True to his word, another eight men present themselves to the British camp, all armed and armored, two on horseback, six on foot.
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Re: [Pendragon RP] 488 Adventure - "The Matter of Frankland"

Postby Scarik » Wed Jul 18, 2018 1:42 am

"Excellent," Persidius declares. "Let this be our first Gallic eschille. In fact, this is a cause for ceremony. Petrieus, I would make you a knight in the fashion of Britain as codified by High King Aurelius, late brother of our king, so that you may be an officer in the army of Logres. If you accept lend me your sword and kneel so that I may deliver the last strike that you shall ever endure without reprisal."

The Gaul kneels, Petrieus lord of Tourville, and once more offers his sword. Persidius inspects it while declaring, "In the name of the Lord let this be the last blow you ever suffer," then strikes him upon the shoulder with his mailed fist. "Rise, Sir Petrieus, Lord Tourville and take this sword," he calls as he returns the sword and the newly minted knight rises.

He speaks in a low tone aside to Diane to bring one of the armigers who has lost his knight in battle and when the girl arrives he says to her, "To do justice to your master I bid you faithfully serve Sir Petrieus for the remainder of this campaign by my order and howeverso beyond as your dignity demands."

"As befits a knight I also grant you a horse from among those taken from the Franks. You may go among them and choose so that you will always have a fresh mount for both travel and battle."

With that done Persidius then officially gathers the newly arrived Gauls and says to them, "Welcome, warriors of Gaul. I have chosen Sir Petrieus to lead you in battle as we march to end Frankish dominion of Caen and restore the rights and privileges of your king, Preator Sygarius."

As there are not quite enough of them to form a proper unit Persidius adds the newcomers to his own eschille and orders the army to set out for Caen.

Once there he intends to leave the full plan to the engineers as to how they should attack while making camp and setting the patrols. If the outer defenses are as Petrieus says then they should have no trouble treating them as they have done the smaller forts. They will scour the area for that they can to assist with the siege and to construct rams.
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Re: [Pendragon RP] 488 Adventure - "The Matter of Frankland"

Postby Ladki96 » Wed Jul 18, 2018 9:38 am

Siege tiiiime

Persidius climbs the ladder and, struck by a rock, falls into the moat. Terrwyn's heart jumps but then he is rescued, yay! She turns back and looks up. "Oh, you guys are so dead now." >:(

Many dex rolls later~

"Freaking finally. Stupid rock throwers. Stupid archers. Stupid Caen. Stupid Terrwyn." Terrwyn draws her blade and meets the axeman waiting atop. "Well, we are here now. Let's dance!"

Crit Crit!

The sword breaks the axe. The guy immediately throws his useless weapon down and wrestles Terrwyn and grabs ahold on her shoulders. They are both -this- close to the wall's edge. Terrwyn struggles in a panic and gaining the upper hand, pushes him back and away from her. He's left standing empty-handed like an idiot, and she runs him through.
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Re: [Pendragon RP] 488 Adventure - "The Matter of Frankland"

Postby KleinerKiller » Wed Jul 18, 2018 5:46 pm

Pre-Caen

In the wake of the massacre, Leiryn collects his breath and calms himself. He has felled more Franks than he could keep track of, and sustained only superficial wounds -- wounds that he, at least, considers superficial at the moment. The enemy's routing has gone far better than he could have expected, thanks to both sheer luck and the bravery of his allies and commanders. It's almost too good to be true.

Caen? Caen, he prays to whomever or whatever is listening, will be no different.

At Caen

Following right behind Terrwyn, Leiryn hoists himself up the nearest ladder. As he expects, he is immediately met with a hail of arrows and rocks, but he nimbly avoids each in turn and ascends at a pace that surprises even himself. His muscles burn from exertion and fail him only twice, allowing one arrow to strike true and a particularly hefty stone to nearly knock him to the ground, yet he carries on regardless.

Just when he starts to tire of climbing, his palm meets the rough lip of the parapet and he swings up, rolling onto solid ground once more. No sooner than he half-regains his footing, a wild-eyed Frank with an axe tries to cleave him open, but their weapons clash for only a moment before Leiryn fully scrambles to his feet and uses the momentum to charge into his assailant; the axeman stumbles backward to the other end of the wall, almost comically shocked, before his heel meets air and he plummets over the edge.

Despite his grim demeanor and aching wounds, Leiryn can't help but chuckle a little.
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Re: [Pendragon RP] 488 Adventure - "The Matter of Frankland"

Postby CarrieVS » Wed Jul 18, 2018 9:05 pm

Eliver too races up a ladder on the walls of Caen, drawing ahead of Terrwyn in spite of suffering a bloody gouge on his right arm when an arrow from above finds its mark. He shrugs it off and keeps climbing, then has to flatten himself against the wall as a rock is a rock hurled from almost directly above him. He cannot avoid it entirely, but despite a heavy bruise on his shoulders he has no difficulty remaining on the ladder - Persidius has not been so fortunate, he realises.

At least Miles is not attempting it - Persi as commander forbade him, and Eliver begged him not to try, and between the two he had no choice but to listen. Even were he not hurt, agility has never been the big knight's strong point.

El finally reaches up not to another rung of the ladder but the top of the parapet. Immediately, he has to jerk his hand back as a Frankish axe slams down where his fingers were a moment ago. The defender takes a swing at his head instead, but Eliver ducks and quickly stabs upwards before he can make a third attempt. His sword catches the axeman in the face and he reels backwards, dazed from the blow and blinded by blood.

With a moment's breathing space before any other defender is on him, Eliver scrambles up the last couple of rungs and vaults over the parapet onto the battlements. He looks around him and sees Leiryn getting to his feet at the same moment.
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Re: [Pendragon RP] 488 Adventure - "The Matter of Frankland"

Postby Cpt._Funkotron » Thu Jul 19, 2018 3:06 am

Once over the walls, the matter of throwing the gates open is academic. The defenders sprint back to the safety of the fort, but it is not long before the drawbridge ascends, and the king's garrison abandons the city to its fate.

Once inside, the Gauls go on a rampage. Petreius gives the cry of "Havok!" and his men begin to engage in total barbarity against the Franks within, soon to be followed by most of the rest of the army as they rush through the gates. Blood, plunder, and screams flow like a river through the streets of Caen. The britons and gauls are joined by the slaves of the town, rising up aginst their former masters with great ferocity.

A sack of this scale will take several days.
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Re: [Pendragon RP] 488 Adventure - "The Matter of Frankland"

Postby Cpt._Funkotron » Thu Jul 19, 2018 5:44 am

Plunder after the sack.

I've just realized I was apportioning too much loot per person up to now because I'm a numpty, this includes the correct previous amounts.

Persidius: 232 + 128 = £360
Eliver: 72 + 35 = £107
Bleddyn: 212 + 108 = £320
Miles: 64 + 32 = £96
Terwynn: 36 + 14 = £50
Leiryn: 84 + 41 = £125
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Re: [Pendragon RP] 488 Adventure - "The Matter of Frankland"

Postby Scarik » Thu Jul 19, 2018 8:35 pm

Rufus almost laughed at the sight of him after the fighting and surely would have had he not seen his brother's face first. It will be an amusing story soon enough but not quite yet.

Maybe its his injuries or the fact that he ignominiously fell of the siege ladder and then foundered like a skewered hog when his family is renowned for their strong swimmers. Maybe its the necessity of war and the fury of the re-armed Gauls. But the destruction weighs on him and challenges his ideals.

All be can do, he decides, is to hold back his household and his vassals from the rape and the bloodletting and comprt themselves as before: forage, even destroy, but raise arms only to those who fight. It may seem strange given they have few places to run and hide, but it is more than nothing. Perhaps they will escape through the gate he pulled Bleddyn's eschille away from to offer a meager chance to those who took it. Perhaps they will hide in the famed crypts and sewers of this old, Roman city and then escape later.

He prays that God will be merciful and forgive him that he has failed to be. Though Persidius wonders if He would care about the prayers of the excommunicated for the souls of pagans.

He rides through in the wake of the devastation with his guards until the reach the church square and he sees the grand cathedral in ruins. He stops, then dismounts, and walks forward dreading what he will find.

Once inside he is struck by the destruction and the disgrace. The floor is rotted away, the stained glass shattered, and refuse from animals is everywhere. He sees a glint and stops to pick up a piece of blue glass with a small piece of white still joined by the lead. He holds it up to the window and for a second he imagines the blue robes and white habit of the Blessed Virgin.

With the fragment still in his hand he wanders into the yard and to the catacombs. Rufus follows with a torch and lights it as they enter. In the flickering light they walk past centuries of Christian tombs that, without exception, have been broken and looted. The names of the dead and the icons of the saints are scratched out and disfigured. In some cases they are left in pieces, in others just eerily empty.

The shelves that once held the bones of the common citizens are cleared though bits of broken skulls still litter the floor and some skulls are left like trophies with their heinous wounds on display. From the stains it seems they may once have been entire heads; likely of the priests and the bishop.

Through it all he feels hollow, seeing glimpses of his own moral failures in these lost souls.

And then they reach new construction. It lacks the skill of the Roman tunnels, faced as it is with crudely mortared stone and supported with timbers instead of brick arches, but it is sturdy and meant to last many years. In it are more tombs but these are not open, the bones are not cast into the corners and ground into fragments, no blody trophies remain to taunt the dead.

Here he finds graveboxes filled with human ashes, worked with pagan runes and the icons of their bloody gods. They are stored with ritual and honor and dignity along with goods and symbols of the status of the dead. Persidius stops there and stares at them. He turns away and as he does he can see both the peaceful, Frankish graves and the destroyed, Christian ones.

With a snarl he turns back to the Frankish catacomb, seizes the first box in both hands and smashes it to the stones with all his strength. Then another, and another until his breathing is heavy and his heartbeat thunders in his ears.

"Bring everything the Franks have put here out and pile it on the Cathedral stair," he tells Rufus in a deadly, quiet voice through clenched teeth.

When they exit back into the sunlight Persidius's rage has turned cold. He watches as the boxes and goods are brought out and piled in two places: one for the remains and one for the loot.

"Bring oil and straw and burn the supports," he says without looking away from the stairs.

"Bring everything else from the city here as well and set camp in front of the keep. When the city can give us nothing more we will storm the walls and end the Frankish presence here."
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Re: [Pendragon RP] 488 Adventure - "The Matter of Frankland"

Postby Cpt._Funkotron » Thu Jul 19, 2018 10:05 pm

His will is done. One paticular item catches his eye, dregged up from the grave of a Frankish war-chief. A silver-thread banner capped with the goldplated skull of a vulture, with glowing rubies set into its eyes and feathers adorning it, held aloft by a pole of rigid black iron.
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Re: [Pendragon RP] 488 Adventure - "The Matter of Frankland"

Postby sunglasses » Fri Jul 20, 2018 12:04 am

Bleddyn was searching through a section of the town, not too far from other knights, but not very close either. The Gaul's had certainly done quite a bit of work. He was used to blood by now, but he certainly didn't feel like wading ankle deep in muck, mud, blood, and viscera. He wasn't presently on horseback, as he was wary of his horse loosing its footing in this mess. (And as superstitious as Bleddyn was, he ardently believed that if he caused his horse to become lame due to him not recognizing that the ground was perilous that the horse and all of its ancestors would haunt him until the end of his days and possibly beyond.)

He was near what was left of a hovel when he heard a soft movement, a mewing, and then a small voice say, "Shhhh."

"H-hello? I-is s-someone th-there? I-I m-mean y-you n-no h-harm. M-my n-name i-is B-bleddyn," he called out. He waited and continued, "I-I h-have f-food."

A small head peeked out of the darkened recesses of the ruin of a building. He has a shock of blond hair and is quite honestly, filthy, "Cibus?"

Bleddyn holds out some of his provisions and the small hands grab them quickly. He starts to shove them in his mouth before hesitating and pulling off a piece of meat and shoving it inside his shirt where a mewing can plainly be heard.

"Wh-where a-are y-your p-parents?" Bleddyn asks as he sees a small furry gray head poke out of the boy's shirt looking for more food. Bleddyn strips some dried meat for the kitten. The boy looks up from eating as cocks his head.

"Under dirt."

"I-I s-see. W-well. D-do y-you k-know h-how m-many w-winters o-old y-you a-are?"

The boy holds up 4 fingers.

"R-right. D-do y-you h-have a n-name?"

"Lutius," the boy then holds up the squiring gray kitten, " this' Mews."

"W-well, d-do y-you a-and M-mews w-want t-to c-come w-with m-me? Y-you c-can r-ride o-on th-the b-back of a h-horse, w-we'll t-tie th-this s-small l-loot b-bag on y-your b-back, a-and y-you c-can h-hold m-my d-dagger," Bleddyn holds out the sheathed dagger to the child. He grabs it and clutches it tightly in one hand, cradles Mews in the other and nods.
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Re: [Pendragon RP] 488 Adventure - "The Matter of Frankland"

Postby CarrieVS » Fri Jul 20, 2018 12:31 am

Leiryn and Eliver see off the remaining defenders on that stretch of the battlements and then sprint for the gates together. There's no time or need for words. But once the gate is opened and the surviving garrison set fleeing, there's a chance for those who were first within to catch their breath as the vengeance-mad Gauls and the mercenary soldiers are let slip from their leash to sate their appetites upon the city.

"Quick work," El remarks to the younger knight. "It'll be slower now though." Leiryn looks to be in little worse shape than he is, but perhaps more tired by the dash up and over the wall - or maybe it's just the grim, set look on his face that makes him appear so. "Do you suppose there's a drink to be found anywhere? I reckon it was thirsty work too."
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Re: [Pendragon RP] 488 Adventure - "The Matter of Frankland"

Postby KleinerKiller » Fri Jul 20, 2018 1:06 am

In the blur of the battle's end, Leiryn had barely even processed that he was fighting and running alongside Eliver. The pleasant surprise is followed up by an even greater shock: actually being engaged in a proper conversation. He has of course spoken since the start of this invasion, but he has mostly kept to himself around his allies and they have seemed happy to keep it that way.

"Oh, erm, probably," he mutters, making an effort to sound like he has his faculties in order. "Haven't put much thought into food or drink since we started. I guess I could go for one."

The awkward pause gives him time to consider his fellow knight. He has never known Eliver well despite being part of a number of battles with him, but he remembers that when Arcadia still walked among them -- he tenses up involuntarily, recalling his nightmares -- the two were friendly enough. He suddenly feels an urgent need not to let the casually extended branch slip away, and simply says the first thing that occurs to him to fill the silence. "You're a... good fighter."
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