Knightfall

The Dreamers are greeted within the Dream.

In the action-packed season finale, the Dreamers square off against the Knights of Sidhe for their most harrowing battle yet.

## Plot:

The Episode opens immediately after Emelya reveals herself by taking a shot at Ellák, outraged, he responds with a forceful command.  His will is imposed on Emelya and Lucius, the two visible party members and they drop to the stones, unconscious.  He loudly utters a threat to the safety of his prisoners, and the rest of the Dreamers leap into action.

Bursting from the safety of his cover, Doc knocks Cursed Hunter Epsilon into a pit at the start of the fight, while Saoirse and Gwendolyn come up the middle to hold the attention of Tarhos and Ellák.  Sir John frees Mance and Warbler, and the three of them manage to hold Suran’s attention.  The Entity, out of position, does its best to rush to Saoirse’s aid as Hunter Beta advances from behind her and begins to blast her with searing radiance from above.

Gwendolyn ducks in and out of cover, vanishing and teleporting after the invisible Tarhos lands a hit on her, she does her best to harry Suran and kite Tarhos around even through her gruesome injuries .  Saoirse dives to the ground to avoid ranged attacks as she crawls towards one of the other imprisoned soldiers.  Doc frees the imprisoned soldier on his side of the battlefield while Ellák and Hunter Alpha close in on his position.  Sir Hebron dashes in across one of the rickety wooden bridges to support him.  Warbler snatches up his bow and takes aim at Suran while Mance is snatched by the mage-knight’s telekinetic powers and dragged toward the edge of the pit, but a concentrated barrage of attacks from Gwendolyn, Sir John, and Warbler manages to disrupt his concentration and Mance is dropped back to his feet.

The Entity lands hard behind Hunter Beta and throws its handaxe to distract her from continuing to brutalize Saoirse.  The Hunter uses a sigil to freeze the Entity’s feet in place, but it lashes out with its grapple shot and tows Hunter Beta right into its hand.  The Entity somberly relays its sorrow that it could not save Hunter Beta from her curse, and then unceremoniously drops her into the pit.  Saoirse manages to free the captured soldier on her side of the field.

Emelya, at this point, begins to rouse from her slumber and lands a Faerie Fire directly on Suran and Tarhos, removing her invisibility.

Suran, wounded from his exchange with Sir John and company, erects a field of force around himself.  A Resilient Sphere, of sorts.  With unspoken agreement Sir John, Mance, and Warbler begin to roll Suran around and Mance, with a powerful throw of his hammer, topples Suran completely off the pillar and into the pit, effectively removing him from the fight.

The Moment of victory is short lived, however.  During the exchange Sir John has left himself open and Gwendolyn realizes he is about to be skewered by Tarhos.  So she begins to shout and cry out to draw the woman’s attention.  Taking the bait, Tarhos spins and teleports to Gwendolyn instead, materializing with her blade already pierced through Gwendolyn’s chest.  A cry of pain sounds out from her as the blue Tigh’Maevril blade begins to pull on her very life force.  Her blood rushes out of the wound and up the blade, into Tarhos.  Gwendolyn crumples to the ground drained of Bloodline and gasping her last breaths.

Meanwhile, Ellák uses his compulsion powers on Sir Hebron, trying to get him to walk off into the nothingness below.  The combined efforts of Doc, Mance, Warbler, and Emelya keep him from toppling off and the pitched battle between them and Ellák continues.

Seeing Gwendolyn fall, the Entity is overcome with anger and erupts into flames.  It snatches Tarhos over to itself with its grapple shot and then she and Saoirse begin to lay into her as best they can, with Saoirse even shoving a potion into Tarhos’ faceplate to temporarily blind her with a cloud of smoke.  Seemingly frantic for the first time in the fight, Tarhos lashes out ineffectually at the Entity and teleports away, heading for Ellák’s side of the fight.  The Entity gives chase.

During this time John and Saoirse rush to Gwendolyn’s side, trying to aid and comfort her in her last moments.  Gwendolyn grabs Saoirse’s tunic and pulls her in close to whisper something.

Back on Doc’s side of the battle, Ellák reaches out with his compulsion powers and snags control of most of the combatants around him, directing them to throw themselves into the pit, but before they can take that action, Mance, only feigning to be under his control, lashes out with his hammer and crushes in the back of Ellák’s helmet.

The Sidhe Knight topples to the ground without even a twitch.  Freed from the compulsion, the Dreamers watch in shock as Tarhos teleports next to Ellák’s motionless body and swears her revenge.  And then, with a flex of her power, the two of them vanish.

In the aftermath, the party captures and ties up Hunter Alpha, the lone survivor of the cursed hunters, while Doc rushes over to join Saoirse and Sir John around the rapidly fading Gwendolyn.  He reaches down to grab the dying woman’s hand, and hesitantly pulls off his mask for her and her alone, as he does with all those who die before him, revealing a half-scarred face, blackened and unpleasant.

> I was wrong, Gwen.  There will be one beautiful corpse.
>
> Doc, **Knightfall**

As he finishes speaking, Gwendolyn’s eyes have already lost the luster of life, staring motionlessly upward.

Shocked and still processing, the Dreamers are shaken from their thoughts by the sounds of a horrible scream from the pit below and then the mangled corpse of Suran is tossed onto the pillar near the party and leaping up from the darkness is an enraged Mordred.  He pushes past the party with ease and demands to know who did this to her.  When he learns that the Aes Sidhe were the culprits, he maintains that any hope with an alliance with them is gone.  And then, conjuring up his dark powers, shadows flow through Gwendolyn’s body.  She is lifted from the ground as the darkness courses through her, healing her wounds and then pulling air in to fill her lungs with breath.

The shadows dissipate, and Gwendolyn is left breathing on the ground, barely conscious.  Mordred, now radiating cold anger, turns to the Dreamers and tells them that if anything ever happens to her again, that he will exact his vengeance from them.  And then he vanishes as quickly as he appeared in the first place.

While everyone else tends to Gwendolyn, the Entity marches over to Suran’s body and desecrates it by ripping the blood out of it and forming a sword from it using her Nanite Weapon ability.  A grotesque mockery of the way that the Sidhe Knights turned their own blood into weapons.  It then turns and executes Hunter Alpha, severing his head from his body with the supernaturally sharp blade.  The Entity then directs the blood into a bottle proffered by Saoirse so that it can keep it on hand.

A few minutes later, the sounds of a force approaching ring out from the forest, heralding the arrival of Sir Gavron and the armsmen of Fort Dogwood.  With their help, the Dreamers get their injured carried back to the Fort.  Emelya and Saoirse discover that the crates littered around the battlefield are filled with rubble that has tiny veins of blue crystal.  Deciding that it might be useful, Emelya puts a crate of the stuff into her Bag of Holding.

### Back at the Fort:

Gwendolyn and Saoirse head to bed early, the former having been carried the entirety of the way back to the fort by Doc, and Lucius is laid down in his tent because he still hasn’t woken up from Ellák’s attack.  Doc, Emelya, and the Entity attend a celebration of sorts after the war party returns.

Doc meets a beautiful woman who calls herself Joey and flirts with him while he is telling the story of Mance, Warbler, and Sir John’s exploits.  She thinks he is a bard.  Doc spends most of the evening doing his best to get her to leave him alone because he thinks that she is a spy.  Eventually, she does get up and takes a different soldier back to her tent instead.

Emelya meets a very well dressed man with a featureless, faceless helmet.  He introduces himself as Sir Phillip and after a short conversation Emelya offers for him to accompany them to Caerle’on when their party sets out.  He graciously accepts.

The Entity gives Mance Suran’s helmet.  Mance says that he doesn’t normally do helmets, but he’ll make an exception for this one.

Emelya starts drinking some of the fort’s reserves of Dwarven ale and holds her liquor really well, and a gnomish man checks in with her.  His name is Fardlle Bodkin, and he’s a shady merchant who brought the Dwarven Ale and tries to interest Emelya in running drugs to Caerle’on for him, since the people of the city want his head.  He says that the shop that they are delivering too has a fish, a gold pouch, and a bundle of wheat on the sign, and to say that “Fardle Sent you.”

Saoirse, back in her tent, is spending the rest of the evening studying the Atlanti Bolt Thrower.

The Entity “helps” cook the evening stew, adding in such oddities as mud, a broken wagon wheel, and gold coins.  An unfortunate soldier tasted the stew and accidentally bit down hard enough on a gold coin to meld it into his teeth.  The Entity helped him remove it, but accidentally took three teeth out with it.

With that awkwardness behind them, Doc, Emelya, and The Entity head to take their rest as well.  Deep within the night the Dreamers awake within a dream, standing before surreal gates and greeted by a glowing, translucent figure that closes the episode by uttering:

“I have a dream, and all of you are in it.  I am gone, but all of you are here.  Time gone brings clear reality.  In our sleep we never know what dreams may come.  When we wake we get to choose.  I do not know you.  I do not get to choose.  But for some reason, you do.  Dreamers.  Chosen by fate.  Awake.”