Dread Knights

[Eleatic 1033]

 

 

Dread Knights.

 

Born from the over ambition of Blood Mages, these metallic constructs have been called many things over the centuries by the populace. "Abomination", is one, "Corrupt", is another. Paladins, Clerics, people of goodness originally turned to evil by gambling with it. Those who tempered subservience and once again became free. The Slaughters of Ozymandian Maegi, destroyers of their bastion.

 

They tried to return home, to be forgiven and welcomed by their families. They were turned away. They became mere bandits, unlead and astray, until one man who led them on a path of vengeance that they've been following ever since, whose name is only known now as Lord BIle.

 

Only still remaining by the willpower of their benefactors, the ominous and ever-present "Dread Lord", these knights have become displaced, disbanded, corrupt, enslaved thrice more, and essentially wiped from the world in their original form over the course of a century. Though like roaches tend to do, they continue on.

 

The Illness of the Knights has always been their rampant desire of conversion, or, at-least, that of the Dread Lords'. It is this which brings them failure, weakness. It is this which severs them from power, from greatness, from what they once were. 

 

Lords and Knights fell to it, where those of a breed not swell and hardy enough to endure were found, and just so did it fester as a rot, hampering the Knights, and all they stood for.

 

No longer. 

 

The Prowling of Athera for these purposes no longer appeals, and in lieu, they are selective. To regain the power they once held, they wander this world in search of those whom may be even slightly hold that great power that the knights before had. 

 

OOC.

 

A change in how we recruit has been needed for a long time, and especially so with the awful inactivity we've been facing over the last few months, due to the unfortunate lack of internet connectivity of my replacement, Soresan. However, in this, I've decided to overhaul our group and begin anew. Having seen my group, one I've been a part of for a long time begin to fade and wither, I refuse to let it continue.

 

With this new recruitment process a hierarchical, and most of all: BENEFICIAL cult system is now going to be implemented for those who seek us out. Those who serve us well, and show their abilities as cultists will be considered for Dread Knighthood, and even for those who are not cultists, we will be monitoring those role players we know are quality and try our best, to in lieu of organizing things through bland forum interviews, and generally inefficent tact, give players a role-play centric possibility to join our group.

 

A brief clarification is that we are not an Antagonist group as per LoTC definitions, but a Villain Group. That being, we create player-driven conflict for the purpose of it, and to provide roleplay.

 

 

Below is a guide which I composed to give anyone who is one of us an example of how to play their character, or for those fighting us to get an estimate of power. 

On Dread Knights - A Guide to Playing One.

--

Hello, Citizen. You've chosen, or been chosen, to relocate to one of our finest Dread Knight conversion facilities. This brief instructional dialogue will help you understand your Dread Knight brothers, and come to love them, now, let us begin.

 

Dread Knights, contrary to the normal knight, or to entities of a mortal coil in general, do not abide any particular moral code or rule. They are ordered to do work by their king, or, lord to do a certain task, and it will be done. Within their armor lay blood runes, of a nature lost to both the Dread Lord(though, the binding process not) and to the majority of the world. All knights, though, one or two in exception, follow this directive(that being, service to their liege) above all others. 

 

Now that the basic information is out of the way, let's get to the 'nitty gritty'.

 

But Dread Lord! How do you harm one of these things?!

 

A Dread Knight is, almost fully, immune to damage. It is a hulk, a dinosaur. It can withstand blows that would destroy, kill, incapacitate even the strongest man. Very few men in the world can harm it when not knowing where to strike, and those few are known as Clerics. The Cleric is, and always has been, the mortal enemy of our Dread Knight friends. Using magic garnered from a god, presumedly, the Clerical Order eradicates and attempts genocide on our kind, compassionate, immortal, Dread Knight brothers.

 

In order to Harm a Dread Knight(this information must be garnered, if used in a role play setting, through experience with the Knights, or noticing their rivets) one must either use Holy Magic, something hot enough to melt their armor(e.z. Lava, fire from something like a Dragon, and so on) or aim at the Rivets. If one managed to strike a knight in the helm, and dislodge one, two, or even three of the rivets, their helmet may very well fly off. This, however, does not kill a knight(removal of the helm), the knight in question will be blinded, muted, deaf, and only capable of berserking around.

 

If the Knight is attacked by holy magic, by a sufficiently powerful holyman, the bindings that hold the knights soul, the runes, in place, begin to fail. The knight becomes significantly weaker in attack, in combat prowess. In an attempt to combat this, some knights utilize shields to block the bombardment of the holy magic, though this can easily fail. Suffice to say, when struck with Holy Magic, the Dread Knights find their match.

 

I understand! but Dread Lord, why do Dread Knights do what they do? 

 

Dread Knights are, very much, the antithesis of a 'human'. They feel only pain, they are devoid of love, and they hate almost all living things like a passion. While I've just described a stereotypical teenage girl, this can easily apply to my knightly brothers as well. Due to conditioning, and jealousy, many (if not all) knights harbor a deep distaste for humanity. They feel, (and unable to place the blame, if openly, on their lord) as though they have been either ascended, or robbed of their livelihood. The destruction of mortal race comes as a facet of this, much like a little boy on the playground who lost his sandcastle in the tide, Dread Knights try to stomp on their little friends, too.

 

This is not to say, however, that a Dread Knight can not feel emotion. Much like a dull throbbing, a Knight may feel 'remorse' for killing someone he once cared about, and he might very much reconsider the entire affair(yet again, this is a rarity, as Knights very seldom show compassion or restraint in their unbridled bloodlust).

 

Oh, o-k. But Dread Lord, how do Dread Knights become the way they are? 

 

You see, Timmy, when a Daddy Dread Knight loves a Mommy Dread Knight very much, they tear off the limbs of their enemy and bind his soul into armor.

 

And that's where babies come from.

 

 

Oh, is this thing still on? Thank you, for reading and listening to our Dread Knight dialogue. Please wait patiently, and our next available Dread Knight representative will be prepared to escort you into a conversion chamber. Have a nice day!

 

(This is something I just started working on now, it will be clarified, fixed up, and rectified to more fully explain Dread Knight happenings and lore. Some issues may be expected, and I'd be happy if someone who knew somewhat more of DK lore could explain them to me VIA PM, so I may rectify the min the event of issue. Thank you for reading!)

[LPT 767]

I'm excited to Rp with thge other knights! :D

[Kickstarted and Running 965]

Magnus lets out a metallic growl, another generation. Inferiors.

[Jonificus 2724]

A heavy suit of armor lumbers through the lands of Athera, searching for his fellow knights. Hours become days and days become weeks before he finally stops and drops to one knee "Dread knight Vaurca reporting for duty, My lord."

[Eleatic 1033]

Fallen on the battlefield, ruined as the forces of so-called 'good' ravage the city of Embermoor, the Dread Lord hoists himself up upon his sword, his helmet five feet away, and unbeknownst to the ravaging conflict going along around him. He is stabbed in the back, and the Dread Lord loses his balance, falling again. Hours pass. It is only the click and recognition of a helmet being re affixed that startles him. He looks up to Vaurca, and a low, somewhat laughable cackle escapes his throat. "It's good your back. We took out a lot of them before the end, I suppose posterity may atleast recall that." The two walk along the battlefield, plundering the corpses of the fallen flesh, and taking whatever valuable armaments they may hold.

[Swgrclan 2636]

A letter arrives before the Dread Lord, carried by a ghoul promised with that of the decadence of life-force should it delivered this sealed message, black of wax, to the towering stature of armor. The feeble creature would drag itself away once the writ had been accepted, and upon breaking the ink-black seal, one would find a short missive headed by a most peculiar seal - the seal of the Black Sun Adherency.

"Hazk, venerable Dread Lord,

In the time since our last meet, I, Deathstalker Nax'ram, first of the Deathstalkers and knight of the Gravelords, have concocted a grand plot intended to bind all beings who hail under a darker plan together, into a single, tightly-knit alliance, bond, or covenant -- such a feat had been previously achieved by the Old Lord Vinzakra whose work, upon His disappearance, crumbled away and allowed the corruption of the divines to seep within to corrode the current covenant and taint the minds of the darkened with the faith of false idols and fools.

My mission is one of neutrality, and my desires humble, for as a mere servant to the Jailers of the Damned, I seek no titles or crowns as one who heads this organization, for us all to remain parted and tense toward one-another is detrimental to our survival in these times. Little of a defense had been raised in retaliation to Embermoor's recent attack, and it is the failure to defend our own collective territory that demands the regrowth of the covenant - or, rather, it's abolishment and replacement.

You see, before the battle of Embermoor took place, I had taken the time to observe the inner-machinations and happenings of the region's central fortress. My observations had granted me the acknowledgement that Iblees' rats have infiltrated our homeland, and tainted the ranks of the necromancers. Not only that, but those that followed an idol of Ikuras, too, supported the covenant, but cursed it simultaneously; for faith in the divines only brings us destruction. To clarify my rhetoric, venerable Dread Lord, I imply that all religious influence within the ranks of our covenant are cancerous, and they have led us astray and to ruin to the point where our forces had scattered and left the host to die. Ikuras is disease upon our flesh. Iblees is a scourge upon our heart. Among them, any and all other Aenguls, Daemons or naive Gods would bear the same effect -- to reinforce this, it is our prime enemy, the Clerics of the Aenguls, whom wield the power of tyrannical divines, that harm us most with their abhorrent powers.

​I have formulated the ideal of true independence within the Adherency of the Black Sun. This ever-repeating cycle of moving to land-to-land, worshiping false idols and then combating often-divine threats cannot go on, and it is by the hand of these very same divines that such an unending atrocity continues to transpire. But the very fact that Aenguls and Daemons strive to destroy our dark-souled kind with their Clerics and their arcane of light is a statement to our independence; we hail under no God, only ourselves and our own doctrines. Even necromancy, the most common magic practiced within our covenant, is it's own statement of divine defiance. It was stolen from the very same scourge we battle this day, and it has allowed me to defy the throes of death by being raised by the wise Gravelord Chrodraeos, in order for me to serve truly, and to bring order to what is left of our old covenant - to where, in alternative choice, I seek to change it for the better.

Even now I have attained the support of the Dark Shamans of Dom in my conquest for unity. Your blessed, ever-strong ilk of steel and fury were next upon my list to gather into the grand Adherency, and it will be by our collective will that we can unite all others under our cause of independence; to fight against Iblees, to assure our dark-souled kindred are no-longer harassed by the accursed god-slaves and lightbringers, and to linger this plane, and all others, ever-after as a unified entity only broken by a heavenly force yet unseen.

If you so desire, we may speak in person on the Adherency's more specific goals, so you do not feel entrenched into an agreement with details you did not initially anticipate. I await a swift response, brother of steel and spite; the fate and integrity of all dark-minded kindred depends on your wisdom.

God hast failed us, thus we must defy.

Signed,
Deathstalker Nax'ramaes of the Black Sun"

[[ As mentioned, stuff can be spoken of in detail in-game whenever you see fit. You have me on Skype. ]]

[ℤ∃ʁ∅ 823]

((Love this ! Totes thinking of being or trying a villain role :)

[Eleatic 1033]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0RVf_511Eg&list=PLE9C693C411368BE1&index=19

 

The Elven Guard lay sprawled on a table, bloodied and evidently assailed. Her right arm is severed, replaced. A gargantuan piece of metal fashioned to be likened to an arm is in the place of her flesh, and slotted inward to crack the bone. Rivets are jammed into her, halph-hazardly, to just barely secure the arm moreso. Her natural arm is sunken at the bottom of the River, and the footprints of two monstrosities can be seen walking out of the city.

 

The Dread Lord looks to the place of his formerly attatched arm, grunting, before speaking in a low voice, "Not soon forgotten."

[EndlessWord 10]

*Mortis lets out a horrific screech that chills all who hear it to their bones Challenging them to battle.