Knights of the Summer Citadel

The Summer Knights

### Notable Members

Honey Smith, Eleanor Darling, Freth, Lacey Stain, Silk Greengallow, Bollo Burbage

The **Summer Knights** are a group formed by the remaining field agents of Bluebird's Team, after abandoning the ICA due to their mounting suspicions over their employer's intentions.

The group are named so for their occupying what is now known as Summer Citadel. Lady Honey Smith serves as the group’s official leader.

## History

### Formation

After acquiring Bingham's bomb as part of their most recent mission with the ICA, the field members of Bluebird's Team became conflicted over what to do. The increasingly dubious nature of their tasks with the organisation had cast their employer in a critical light which none of them felt they could any longer ignore. Discovering the severity of the bomb's destructive power, compounded with the lack of information they'd received from Bluebird herself, left the agents doubtful that Bingham's suggestion of bringing the device to the ICA headquarters in Axis was indeed a good idea.

However, knowing the bomb was being tracked by multiple parties seemingly left the agents with no choice but to take the bomb to the ICA laboratory in the hopes it could and would be deactivated. Whilst deciding how best to handle the situation, the agents were met by their colleague and trusted friend Caroline Tobin. Their first contact with the organisation since going underground in search of the bomb, Tobin confirmed the ICA to be active and in order since the Silver Hand's attack, though she became concerned upon learning the nature of their mission. Tobin revealed her true identity to the agents as Cordelia Smudge and informed them she had been tasked with observing and befriending them, as they had been hired specifically to combat the efforts of the Silver Hand and MONARCH.

Smudge, who had been a member of MONARCH before the schism, shared her own concerns that the ICA was no longer operating with noble intentions and told the agents to keep the bomb as far out of their reach as possible. Providing their pay and reimbursing their expenses, Smudge urged the group to hide themselves from the ICA while she investigated the goings-on at the organisation. Agreeing on a codeword for safe communication, the agents parted aways with Smudge and decided the safest place to relocate would be the floating castle in Daimeremos' Great Desert, where they had previously rescued Rolo Burbage.

### Acquiring the Castle

The agents managed to track Castle Mortis down with the help of the Court of Life Vampires and upon entering, were confronted by Brunhilde, who had been searching for them since the arrest of her husband. Before her undead army could attack, however, the Smash Bros made quick work of the witch, who cursed the group with her dying breath so that her castle would seal itself off from them and deny them its full power. With Brunhilde's death came a thunderous voice that revealed itself to be the large storm giant Njal, Arbiter of the Sacred Stone. Njal revealed to the agents that the floating rock on which they stood was cleaved from the land of his people, rulership of which was granted only by defeating the previous owner in a Test of Strength, as established by its first ruler Sir Hrothsbart of Gandersheim.

Despite this, Njal confirmed Brunhilde's curse to be the form taken by her Test of Cunning, only through which the citadel's true power could be obtained. Honey Smith was appointed official ruler of Castle Mortis by vote, which she chose to rename Summer Citadel. Consequently, the group chose to collectively call themselves the Summer Knights in order to distance themselves from their employer. Njal introduced the Knights to Aubrey, the knowledge spirit bound to the floating Citadel, who would guide them as they worked to attain the castle's full power and each of them set about creating their own personal strongholds.

Lady Honey naturally took up residence in the main castle building, with Bollo acquiring the castle's keep along with its troops and armoury, and Eleanor making her home the castle tower, complete with its library of spells. Freth took over the Bainbridge Warship Temple and converted it into his own Chapel of Lathander, officially attaining the status of Daddy Dawnlord for his own chapter of the Church. Lacey Stain and Silk Greengallow chose to return to Axis to form a base away from the Citadel where they could keep an eye on the ICA. Silk began working to convert his grove in the sewers into a bountiful location that would allow the group to travel between the city and Summer Citadel discreetly, while Lacey rented the tavern above the sewer entrance and established the Tits & Slither inn as a business front to gather intelligence.

### A Desert Reborn

#### *A False King’s Demands*

After a series of short excursions which saw the Knights freeing slaves, building dungeons, and hosting beauty pageants, the group was approached by Cygnus Sanel, Admiral Regent of Daimeremos. The Admiral made clear that he was unsettled by the Citadel's existence, saying that while his predecessors may have thought it a quaint oddity, he saw it as "the world’s deadliest and most capable retired secret agents amassing huge amounts of power and personnel on a militarised and mobile airborne fortress, in sovereign Daimeremosian territory." He offered the Summer Knights a choice: assist him in uncovering the secrets of the Great Desert, or leave. The Knights accepted the offer, and were given a series of documents from various military operations to review. Their primary objective was purely to understand what had happened to cause the desert to form, and why it was resistant to any efforts to reclaim the land.

The documents gave details of two operations: CUMULUS, a scientific attempt to seed rainclouds over the desert; and CHAUNTEA, an attempt to magically regenerate life in the desert. CUMULUS saw some success in creating rain, but the rain never made it to the ground, resulting in operational failure. CHAUNTEA also saw limited success with the spontaneous generation of plant life, but with no ability to water the plants, they quickly withered and died. The Knights quickly resolved to undertake their own experiments in the sands below the castle. They discovered the sand did not retain water like normal sand would, it simply flowed through the heaped sand and disappeared from sight. Further experiments to contain the sand in other containers yielded similar results, but curiously, passing the sand through the magical barrier surrounding the citadel removed this property and caused it to behave normally. The Knights began working on the hypothesis that a curse was affecting the land, and began searching for information on the origins of the problem.

Eleanor left for Axis, to research in the Pavilion library, while Lacey consulted her sage  Meth. Meanwhile, Honey reached out to Uktannu to get the elderly vampire's input as natives of the land. Combining their knowledge, the Knights learned of the fall of the  Empire of Zahra, precipitated by the death of the Crown Prince. History books in the Pavilion and Meth's library tell the well-known story of a great explosion which murdered both the Prince and the Lord Steward of Zahra at once. Without its chief advisor or an heir, the empire found itself on a precipice, and the arrival of the sands shortly after forced the population from their farms and homes. Deprived of its bread basket and capital city, the millenia-old nation quickly fell into crisis. Forced to sign away his crown to save his people, the Emperor ceded his nation to Daimeremos in the south, who took in the refugees.

Meth revealed that while this was the commonly accepted tale, a secret diary written by a former  Chancellor of the Wizard's Pavilion, Makubash, indicated that might not be the whole story. The encrypted diary entry mentioned a letter sent to the Chancellor from the Emperor of Zahra, but little else. Eleanor checked for this letter in the Pavilion archives, but was unable to locate it. She did, however, locate a reference in the Pavilion's financial accounts with a coded message. Meth assisted in decrypting this reference and discovered the Emperor made a substantial payment to the Pavilion for search and rescue efforts, specifically to do with the Prince. This piqued the Knights' interest, as according to the accepted history, the Prince would have been dead for about a week by the time this payment was made.

#### *The Search Begins*

The Knights rendezvoused with a pair of the vampire twins, who took them to the approximate location of the fallen capital. Silk used his magic to temporarily remove some sand to confirm their location, and they ventured to the city's outskirts to find an archaeological dig run by Dr Zheng, of the University of Menrva. He pointed them in the direction of the Royal Palace, with the promise that if answers existed anywhere, that would be the best place to look. The Knights found the Palace and entered through a hole in the ceiling of a grand dining hall. Seeing light in the room beyond, they entered to find a large gynosphinx relaxing. She answered some of their questions, in exchange for successful answers to her riddles. When the Knights answered incorrectly, she left with a frown, leaving them alone in the ruins of the old palace.

Plumbing the depths of the ruined palace, the Knights discovered several lost treasures including some ancient wine and mechanised guards, but most valuable to their mission was the discovery of the King’s private journal. In it, the Knights learnt of the history of Zahra as told by it’s Emperor. Crucially they learnt of the Prince – Sermé – his sudden betrayal of father and fatherland, and his curse that crumbled a thousand-year empire leaving the king to die alone in the ruins of his former glory. They took the journal, and exploring deeper into the palace also discovered the tower of Copal - Chief Mage of Zahra. The King’s Journal described a terrible murder occurring in that very tower, and so the Knights investigated and discovered Copal’s own journal which filled in blanks within the King’s tale. Copal wrote about the discovery of a mysterious talisman containing a powerful magical entity, known as Tartuch. He befriended Tartuch, and introduced Sermé to it, allowing it to help in the Prince’s magical tuition.

Too late Copal learnt Tartuch was a powerful devil and rushing home, confronted the incorporeal demon on the matter. His accusations caused Sermé to rush to defense of Tartuch, his young mind having been manipulated by the devil’s wiles. A fight ensued, and Copal was destroyed. Sermé fled the tower and the Empire, cursing the land as he left.

#### *A Return to Enisti*

Armed with this knowledge, the Knights redoubled their research efforts, and discovered the fringe tale of an ancient necromancer who also went by the name Sermé centuries after the events in Zahra. His actions were an eerie mirror of the Zahran Sermé’s, as he used his dark magical prowess to collapse a nation in what is now Enisti. Their only lead, the Knights returned to Broadford. There, they found the city they burnt to cinders being rebuilt by those who returned to its streets. They met Welfer, the eponymous proprietor of Welfer’s Wizarding Wonders, whom they’d missed in previous visits to Broadford as a result of his temporary death. From him they learnt of the fallen city of Tolemi, under which lay a labyrinthine network of catacombs populated by Sermé’s necrotic horrors.

The Knights left Broadford and travelled across Enisti to reach the ruins of the fallen city, and entering its necropolis soon found themselves engaged in combat with skeletons and metal giants. Their brief confrontation with the dark sorcerer at the end of the dungeon, however, proved to be a ruse and they were soundly berated by a halfling known as Freddo who explained they had torn apart a synthetic dungeon for children and low-level adventurers. Freddo showed them the entrance to what he called the “real dungeon” once they’d signed their liability waivers. The door was opened and the Knights made to crawl on their bellies into the darkness beyond.

#### *Hell on Earth*

The party emerged into a small room, noting the only feature: a long vertical shaft extending down into darkness. Lacey determined the depth was approximately 60 feet using a rope, and the party descended into the level below.

What followed was a series of personal traumas and shames made manifest and often dangerously material as the Knights battled their way through each member’s darkest moments from their past. Facing lovers spurned, enemies slain, and fallen friends they battled through monsters and their own self-doubt to penetrate into the lowest layer of the catacombs. After eight gruelling confrontations, they finally found themselves on the ninth, and there came face-to-face with Sermé.

Confronting him, they knew the truth of his origins and his deception, and corroborated their claims by providing him his father’s old journal. Upon realising he had been the pawn of Tartuch for the past eight centuries, Sermé rebelled, confronting his former puppet-master and offering his help to the Knights. But his liberation would not be so easy, and Tartuch turned against him - appearing only as a seething mass of shadow that assaulted the Knights, held at bay only by Sermé’s magical defences. Sermé’s pled with the Knights to slay him. Insisting he would survive, he explained that his temporary destruction would weaken Tartuch long enough for the Knights to locate his talisman, held with the vessel for Sermé’s soul in the Royal Crypt of Zahra. With the talisman removed from the vessel, Sermé would be free of Tartuch’s influence and wiling to help restore the desert. His strength faltered, Sermé’s magical defences crumbled, and the Knights were plunged into absolute darkness.

Each in turn was approached by Tartuch, and offered power, fame, glory, or fortune. Seemingly dissatisfied with their responses, he set upon the Knights in anger. Using his formidable power to control Silk and Eleanor’s actions at times, he managed to rebuff many but not all of the attacks. Freth’s holy power, channelled into the most humble of javelins, dealt a particularly harsh blow to the devil and in retaliation Tartuch banished Freth to his home plane of the Nine Hells. The rest of the Knights fought hard, pushing Tartuch to the brink and forcing him to flee. Vanishing in a whirl of shadow, Tartuch left the Knights in his throne room to find their way out. Discovering a vertical shaft longer than any they’d seen in the rest of the dungeon, they descended and found themselves floating in a formless black void. In time, the Knights noticed a small light and approaching it found a familiar looking door. Giving the correct password, the Knights were able to gain entry into the Blind Eye Tavern, to the astonishment of the patrons.

#### *An Unexpected Bargain*

Regrouping quickly, the Knights considered their position and asked for the doorman at the Blind Eye to drop them off in Axis. Once safely in the city, they began to gather the materials they knew would be required to attempt a crossing all the way to the Nine Hells. Eleanor discovered a small boutique magic shop in the heart of the city, across the street from Babs's former location before she moved to Notus. Eleanor was much relieved to discover the new shop was clean, quiet, and reasonably priced. She easily acquired the key items the team would require and met up with them at Tits & Slither.

In the meantime, Freth had reached Ossiea, the Archducal Palace of Glasya - Lord of the Sixth Layer of Hell. He engaged two wasp demons in combat, and grievously wounded one, but reinforcements arrived and soon overpowered him. Fleeing inside, he gained entrance to the palace's foyer and quickly clambered into a side corridor. Searching for a justification for his visit, Freth chanced upon a glowing artefact of unknown ability or origin, marked with the symbol of Lathander. He secreted it into his robes before being confronted by a devil with the head of a ram and tentacles for a mouth. Freth charged the devil, but was easily subdued by the devil's magic and carried to the throne room.

Once there, the devil presented Freth to Glasya, who was irate to see a follower of Lathander in her throne room for what she said was the "second time in three years." She was initially dismissive of Freth, but when her chief advisor Pazuzu informed her of Freth's status as a Summer Knight, she quickly became much more accommodating. Gloating, she informed Freth he would be held prisoner and well looked after while she contacted the Summer Knights to negotiate his release. Thinking quickly, Freth was able to warn the Knights of the unfolding situation before Glasya shot the Stone of Farspeech he was using from his hand.

On the Prime Material Plane, the Summer Knights received the communique and shortly thereafter, an invitation from Pazuzu on behalf of Glasya to come to the Nine Hells for negotiations. The Knights were offered full guest-rights under a convention known as The Covenant. The Knights spent the majority of the week learning the layout of Malbolge and acquiring materiel and magical goods to assist them should violence break out. Silk teleported the Knights to the palace gates as instructed and more wasp demons led them to Glasya's audience chamber.

Glasya was both welcoming and friendly in her demeanour, and Honey bartered with aplomb to secure Freth's release. Lacey requested a private sidebar, and when she and Glasya emerged from a small chamber to the side of the throne room, Glasya confirmed the terms of the agreement were acceptable with a single addendum. The Knights assented, and the final terms of the agreement were sealed. Freth was released in good faith, and the Knights were given a single mortal month to recover Tartuch's talisman from the Royal Crypt of Zahra with Tartuch inside. The contract would continue on, however, with Glasya able to call on a single favour from the Knights whenever she pleased. Honey and the other Knights were insistent, however, that the favour was not able to be used to cause direct harm to any magical nation the Knights were allied with. The punishment for breaking the contract was not made public after Lacey's sidebar, but was to Glasya's satisfaction.

With the contract fixed and signed in blood by Glasya and Lacey, the Knights beat a hasty retreat to the Summer Citadel.

#### *Lost in Menrva*

The Knights regrouped over breakfast and decided to split up in order to hasten their search for the Royal Crypt. Freth, Honey, and Silk travelled to Tits & Slither to liaise with Meth, who they felt might know about the history and lore of the crypt. At the same time, Eleanor, Bollo, and Lacey went to visit the Wizards' Pavilion to discover more about how Tartuch's power was bound to the coin, and the safest way to handle it.

Freth, Honey, and Silk quickly learnt that the Crypt was a closely guarded secret, to prevent tomb robbers from discovering its location. As a result, it's whereabouts were only known to the Royal Family, and an elite priest class who assisted in the burials of Emperors. With the Emperor long dead, and Sermé not accessible, the likelihood of finding the Crypt seemed low. Meth was able to offer a glimmer of hope, however, by informing the trio that as a contingency, the location of the Crypt was stored within an enormous diamond set in the Imperial Sceptre of Zahra. This wasn't exclusively good news though, as the sceptre was stolen from the State Museum of Daimeremos in an elaborate heist approximately 80 years prior, and has remained lost ever since.

Undeterred, Freth, Honey, and Silk teleported into Eleanor's Menrva apartment, and clambered out a window to the street. There they put in some face time with a couple fans, and were escorted to the State Museum. They discovered a special exhibit dedicated to the heist, which had become a local legend, and asked the curator if they could see the knife left behind by the robbers - now mounted in a display case. He asked for some authentication that the trio really were the Summer Knights, but after a series of unproductive attempts, Freth smashed the glass and stole the dagger. Silk quickly scried for its owner, only to discover that he was dead. The trio beat a hasty retreat, and made their way to a local dive bar to pay for information. They were quickly scammed, and started a bar fight, but Freth paid off the patrons and the trio departed.

They discovered they were scammed when they encountered Old Bessie, who informed them that their requested destination did not exist. The Knights instead settled for being put in touch with the descendants of the robber, and were escorted to a suburban home. Inside, they met a woman and her son, Nathaniel. After assisting with a monster-under-the-bed scenario, they were given access to paperwork indicating that Bridger's Auction House might have been suspicious payments to the robber's front business. They may their way there, but arrived in the late evening, and booked a room in The Sapphire Wand for the night.

## Relationships

* Court of Life Vampires - Temporary Allies
* Njal, Arbiter of the Sacred Stone - Benefactor
* Aubrey - Guide
* Silver Hand - Former Professional Adversaries
* MONARCH - Adversaries
* Brunhilde Von Berger † - Murder Victim

## Trivia

* Despite the name “Summer Knights”, neither the Knights nor the Citadel have an official affiliation with the Summer Court of the Fey. Their only connection is the obligation that Bollo Burbage owes to Astrantia, a member of the nobility of that Court.