Brass Knights

The Brass Knights were a cult of cybernetic organisms operating in the Amazon rainforest for several decades. The Brass Knights originated with Dr. Felix Templeton, a 19th century American scientist. The son of a wealthy plantation owner, Templeton was fascinated from an early age by rumours of the experiments of Victor Frankenstein and wished to understand the fundamental wellsprings of life for himself. Templeton, pursued a medical career, quickly becoming an exceptional doctor. After his father died in 1859, Templeton inherited his plantation and turned it into a vast laboratory where he could study life. Templeton had previously performed unholy experiments on corpses but he now had live test subjects. During this time, Templeton was contacted by the Eternal Machine, a malign supernatural entity. The Eternal Machine provided Templeton with encouragement and for guidance and in return Templeton became it's devoted worshipper. In addition to biological experiments, Templeton began to build bizarre machines according to the Machine's designs. Having killed off most of his slaves with his experiments, Templeton sold his plantation and joined the Confederate army, being posted to Camp Sumter in 1864. Templeton continued his experiments on Union POWS before deserting in early 1865 having been convinced that the Confederacy was inevitably going to lose the war.

Templeton, along with many other ex-Confederates, moved to Brazil after the end of the war, continuing to practice medicine. However, in 1885, Templeton received another visit from the Eternal Machine, who commanded him to move to a less populous area. Templeton promptly vanished into the jungle. The missing persons rate in the area spiked for a time after his disappearance, ending in 1890. In 1955, a party of loggers entering the jungle were attacked by what appeared to be humanoid robots, seemingly made of rusted bronze and powered by clockwork. These reports reached the ears of the Global Occult Coalition, who covered up the incident and sent a team to investigate. The team discovered the Brass Circle, a huge ring of rusted bronze, covering up a primarily underground structure with incomprehensible walls made of gears, levers and other components. The team was forced to retreat after being attacked by the Brass Knights.

For several decades, the Brass Knights fought a secret war against the GOC, repeatedly raiding Amazonian settlements and engaging in skirmishes with GOC and other anti-occult forces. Examination of dead Brass Knights revealed that they were not robots but were in fact built around living humans. The eyes, heart and parts of the brain had been replaced by clockwork machinery, The skin had been boiled off and the body placed inside a mechanical armour. There were several different forms of the Brass Knights, with some being based upon animal forms or a combination of humans and animals. While most forms were armed with blades or repeating rifles, larger forms made of several people grafted together existed and were armed with gatling guns or decades of skirmishes, The Brass Circle and the Brass Knights were finally destroyed by a GOC magical taskforce in 1995.