- Joined
- Jun 29, 2012
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The Sunkissed Knight was busy at work as he always had been, scribbling notes and designs on his large lectern in the western hall of the Lothar Headquarters in Tirgenwald. This vast basalt-gothic citadel looked equal parts temple, fortification, and prison from which no escape was thought possible. The western hall was an extension of the main keep, leading into the west of galleries and the Black Chain hold, the infamous Lothar prison in which Mages and Vampires alike would disappear to be used as test subjects. The Sunkissed Knight's quarters and the Hall of Invention looked out over the Black Chain hold which was positioned at a lower ring of the fortress, so the western hall caught much of the dying light of the sun in the golden hour.
The Western Hall was filled with technological oddity, random inventions, half-abandoned projects, and desperate attempts to create parity between the Lothar and their enemies. The wall which the Sunkissed Knight in particular faced along with his lectern, was filled with what one can best describe as Wirtem grandmother clocks, hanging on the wall with intricate nutcracker arrangements and figure displays each time the hour would strike. Yet these were no normal clocks, instead of attuning the gears to time, they had been attuned to demonic energies and Magic, a veritable wall of magic alarm systems that had nonetheless not been put into production because they were too unreliable.
The Sunkissed Knight was attempting to improve the design of the Sunlance Rifles, accommodating for some design flaws that would cause these weapons to overheat after several times use. The desks behind him were strewn with Sunlance Rifles, any Lothar Knight's wet dream to be given the privilege of using these weapons to instantly incinerate Vampires upon contact. The Sunkissed knight signed at an obvious mental roadblock he had reached trying to resolve the mechanism improvements, instead turning his swivel chair around and absently staring at Grace's stained-glass-and-lead window that cast the whole room in a golden-purple glow from the light perfectly cast through it.
Then, all of a sudden, one of the grandmother clocks rang. The pointers circled over and over until both hit 12 and then the hatch opened, causing a small wooden figurine of a princess and soldier to dance out in the Wirtem Walz, circling and circling until the Sunkissed Knight grabbed a nearby wrench and slapped the clock over the top. These clocks would malfunction more often, the trigger mechanism was quite crude, and deemed not sensitive enough to figure out subtle Magic usage by weaker Mages. It was originally intended that each Lothar Knight home would be equipped with numerous of these clocks, but they had proven unable to detect low-tier Magic usage, thus allowing those Lothar to be lulled into a false sense of security.
The Sunkissed knight signed in annoyance once more, as the path of invention was hardly ever a clean ride to profit or success. The whole room was a graveyard of unfinished and rejected projects, some cannibalized by others to find at least some useful application. Before he could consider disabling the mechanism, however, another grandmother clock rang. This one had a series of Wirtem soldiers march out of the hatch in unison, their legs making stilted movements as if they were marching in order and passing through the next hatch. And then the next clock rang, a depiction of Theomar holding up the Creed and preaching to a choir, and then another clock, and another, and another. In less than a minute the whole wall, all forty-six clocks were ringing, the sound liable to cause a migraine if the Sunkissed Knight's attention was not drawn by other concerning events.
The whole Lothar headquarters started shaking as if there was an earthquake, but the Sunkissed Knight knew better. Earthquakes did not happen in Tirgunn, and the fact that all clocks were ringing at once when exposure to a Demon merely let a few of them off in the past, meant something very bad was about to happen. He immediately slammed his hand on a nearby alarm button, causing a signal to be sent to the top of the tower that spun up the raid signal. The low-rumbling noise started slow at first until the gears spun faster and faster, the signal reaching a higher pitch and maintaining it there. The wheels would spin slower for a while, and then reach back up to full speed. Before the second tone rotation had completed, the Sunkissed Knight heard hurried running down the halls on the granite flooring and shouting from the lower galleries.
The other Knights had also noticed the shaking, but now that he had triggered the alarm, the whole headquarters was put on high alert, with many Lothar reaching for their weapons and finding Battlestations. Vast artillery devices unfolded from the higher battlements, hatches opening and spires of barrels ejecting from them before dropping to be level with the horizon, Knights mounting them to scan for any potential approaching enemy. They were however ill-equipped for what would happen next.
The shaking was made all the more severe at the Western part of the Citadel, particularly the Black Chain hold, where the shaking seemed to be emanating from. The Sunkissed Knight held onto his lectern for dear life, resting his upper body on it both to secure himself also keep the papers he had been working on safely secured. The floor and walls around him started cracking in all places, and a quick thought to dash for the exit to try and make it to the staircase was overridden by the shock of the suddenness of it all. Behind him, the Sunkissed Knight heard the loudest rumbling sound as if a hundred cannons were set off all at once, followed by the hail of shrapnel ammunition pelting the stone all around him in the thousands. He did not dare look back for fear of losing his grip, and so closed his eyes as firmly as he could.
The shouting increased but became less about telling soldiers and Knights where to go, and more like pleas of mercy and fear. There were sounds of stone rumbling and cracking, of mudslides and pine trees being snapped like little twigs. A prayer the Sunkissed Knight tried to use to banish any fear of the Abyss and its denizens, repeating the call for Grace to protect not just himself, but his brethren and the Order as a whole. Even if the Order had specialized in the destruction of mortal Mages and Vampires, their work was rife with casualties, and there were certain forces that even they could not contend with. The Sunkissed Knight had correctly surmised that the Lothar Order had become the target of a Demon Duke, and what's worse, if that Demon Duke had been able to break all of the divine protections and blessings of their work on this place, it meant that the Duke had been invited in by someone within the Order by active malice, or unwilful unpreparedness.
By the time the sounds subsided, the Sunkissed Knight dared to open his eyes slowly, only to find himself staring back at the horizon and the forest, where once a wall had been. He slowly turned his head to try and look behind him, still holding onto the desk for dear life, only to find that the whole Hall of Invention and Western Hall was gone. The floor had sunk away, and as he scanned his eyes on what was left, he noticed that there was a perfect cut-out of light that had been cast through Grace's window onto himself, his desk, and his chair, and what little solid stone remained beneath him to give stability. He turned then to face the stained glass window which was somehow still suspended from the window frame, even though the lower portion of the window was gone. The Sunkissed Knight looked just in time to notice all the shards of the glass window give way one by one as the framing failed, as if the window that had cast the light around him had fulfilled its final purpose and was now inert.
He watched the shards sink into the abyss below where once the Black Chain hold had been, replaced by a massive sinkhole that had swallowed vast portions of the western side of the Citadel, the walls, and even some of the artillery towers. Needless to say, aside from the papers on his desk, and the clocks on the wall in front of him, his whole collection of projects and paperwork had been swallowed. The rumble had settled, and vast clouds of dust drifted across the scene, with the silence only broken by those damned clocks that were still ringing, until they too fell silent and the only thing the Sunkissed Knight could hear were the moans and painful cries of other Knights in the lower levels who were lucky enough not to be swallowed by the Abyss, but unfortunate enough to have met with other impermeable rocks on their body.
In the hours after the Sunkissed Knight was saved by a group of Urlan Knights who had climbed the precariously unstable stonework to pick him up and bring him down with what little papers could be saved. He was appraised of the damage by the others in the central hall which had been left relatively unscathed. The entire Hall of Invention was gone, including all the Sunlances and some of the best experimental weaponry of the Order. Several dozen Knights had been killed, but more alarmingly: their entire stock of prisoners was slain in the incident. Easily 300 Vampires that were kept imprisoned for all manner of experiments and tests were killed, and a few dozen or so Mages who had also had the misfortune of being imprisoned by the Lothar Order. The whole prison was gone, and the citadel was now vulnerable as the western curtain wall had been crushed. Repairs began immediately, but the Order was unable to process how to resolve their inability to proceed with technological research, as their entire R&D department had effectively been wiped out.
The Western Hall was filled with technological oddity, random inventions, half-abandoned projects, and desperate attempts to create parity between the Lothar and their enemies. The wall which the Sunkissed Knight in particular faced along with his lectern, was filled with what one can best describe as Wirtem grandmother clocks, hanging on the wall with intricate nutcracker arrangements and figure displays each time the hour would strike. Yet these were no normal clocks, instead of attuning the gears to time, they had been attuned to demonic energies and Magic, a veritable wall of magic alarm systems that had nonetheless not been put into production because they were too unreliable.
The Sunkissed Knight was attempting to improve the design of the Sunlance Rifles, accommodating for some design flaws that would cause these weapons to overheat after several times use. The desks behind him were strewn with Sunlance Rifles, any Lothar Knight's wet dream to be given the privilege of using these weapons to instantly incinerate Vampires upon contact. The Sunkissed knight signed at an obvious mental roadblock he had reached trying to resolve the mechanism improvements, instead turning his swivel chair around and absently staring at Grace's stained-glass-and-lead window that cast the whole room in a golden-purple glow from the light perfectly cast through it.
Then, all of a sudden, one of the grandmother clocks rang. The pointers circled over and over until both hit 12 and then the hatch opened, causing a small wooden figurine of a princess and soldier to dance out in the Wirtem Walz, circling and circling until the Sunkissed Knight grabbed a nearby wrench and slapped the clock over the top. These clocks would malfunction more often, the trigger mechanism was quite crude, and deemed not sensitive enough to figure out subtle Magic usage by weaker Mages. It was originally intended that each Lothar Knight home would be equipped with numerous of these clocks, but they had proven unable to detect low-tier Magic usage, thus allowing those Lothar to be lulled into a false sense of security.
The Sunkissed knight signed in annoyance once more, as the path of invention was hardly ever a clean ride to profit or success. The whole room was a graveyard of unfinished and rejected projects, some cannibalized by others to find at least some useful application. Before he could consider disabling the mechanism, however, another grandmother clock rang. This one had a series of Wirtem soldiers march out of the hatch in unison, their legs making stilted movements as if they were marching in order and passing through the next hatch. And then the next clock rang, a depiction of Theomar holding up the Creed and preaching to a choir, and then another clock, and another, and another. In less than a minute the whole wall, all forty-six clocks were ringing, the sound liable to cause a migraine if the Sunkissed Knight's attention was not drawn by other concerning events.
The whole Lothar headquarters started shaking as if there was an earthquake, but the Sunkissed Knight knew better. Earthquakes did not happen in Tirgunn, and the fact that all clocks were ringing at once when exposure to a Demon merely let a few of them off in the past, meant something very bad was about to happen. He immediately slammed his hand on a nearby alarm button, causing a signal to be sent to the top of the tower that spun up the raid signal. The low-rumbling noise started slow at first until the gears spun faster and faster, the signal reaching a higher pitch and maintaining it there. The wheels would spin slower for a while, and then reach back up to full speed. Before the second tone rotation had completed, the Sunkissed Knight heard hurried running down the halls on the granite flooring and shouting from the lower galleries.
The other Knights had also noticed the shaking, but now that he had triggered the alarm, the whole headquarters was put on high alert, with many Lothar reaching for their weapons and finding Battlestations. Vast artillery devices unfolded from the higher battlements, hatches opening and spires of barrels ejecting from them before dropping to be level with the horizon, Knights mounting them to scan for any potential approaching enemy. They were however ill-equipped for what would happen next.
The shaking was made all the more severe at the Western part of the Citadel, particularly the Black Chain hold, where the shaking seemed to be emanating from. The Sunkissed Knight held onto his lectern for dear life, resting his upper body on it both to secure himself also keep the papers he had been working on safely secured. The floor and walls around him started cracking in all places, and a quick thought to dash for the exit to try and make it to the staircase was overridden by the shock of the suddenness of it all. Behind him, the Sunkissed Knight heard the loudest rumbling sound as if a hundred cannons were set off all at once, followed by the hail of shrapnel ammunition pelting the stone all around him in the thousands. He did not dare look back for fear of losing his grip, and so closed his eyes as firmly as he could.
The shouting increased but became less about telling soldiers and Knights where to go, and more like pleas of mercy and fear. There were sounds of stone rumbling and cracking, of mudslides and pine trees being snapped like little twigs. A prayer the Sunkissed Knight tried to use to banish any fear of the Abyss and its denizens, repeating the call for Grace to protect not just himself, but his brethren and the Order as a whole. Even if the Order had specialized in the destruction of mortal Mages and Vampires, their work was rife with casualties, and there were certain forces that even they could not contend with. The Sunkissed Knight had correctly surmised that the Lothar Order had become the target of a Demon Duke, and what's worse, if that Demon Duke had been able to break all of the divine protections and blessings of their work on this place, it meant that the Duke had been invited in by someone within the Order by active malice, or unwilful unpreparedness.
By the time the sounds subsided, the Sunkissed Knight dared to open his eyes slowly, only to find himself staring back at the horizon and the forest, where once a wall had been. He slowly turned his head to try and look behind him, still holding onto the desk for dear life, only to find that the whole Hall of Invention and Western Hall was gone. The floor had sunk away, and as he scanned his eyes on what was left, he noticed that there was a perfect cut-out of light that had been cast through Grace's window onto himself, his desk, and his chair, and what little solid stone remained beneath him to give stability. He turned then to face the stained glass window which was somehow still suspended from the window frame, even though the lower portion of the window was gone. The Sunkissed Knight looked just in time to notice all the shards of the glass window give way one by one as the framing failed, as if the window that had cast the light around him had fulfilled its final purpose and was now inert.
He watched the shards sink into the abyss below where once the Black Chain hold had been, replaced by a massive sinkhole that had swallowed vast portions of the western side of the Citadel, the walls, and even some of the artillery towers. Needless to say, aside from the papers on his desk, and the clocks on the wall in front of him, his whole collection of projects and paperwork had been swallowed. The rumble had settled, and vast clouds of dust drifted across the scene, with the silence only broken by those damned clocks that were still ringing, until they too fell silent and the only thing the Sunkissed Knight could hear were the moans and painful cries of other Knights in the lower levels who were lucky enough not to be swallowed by the Abyss, but unfortunate enough to have met with other impermeable rocks on their body.
In the hours after the Sunkissed Knight was saved by a group of Urlan Knights who had climbed the precariously unstable stonework to pick him up and bring him down with what little papers could be saved. He was appraised of the damage by the others in the central hall which had been left relatively unscathed. The entire Hall of Invention was gone, including all the Sunlances and some of the best experimental weaponry of the Order. Several dozen Knights had been killed, but more alarmingly: their entire stock of prisoners was slain in the incident. Easily 300 Vampires that were kept imprisoned for all manner of experiments and tests were killed, and a few dozen or so Mages who had also had the misfortune of being imprisoned by the Lothar Order. The whole prison was gone, and the citadel was now vulnerable as the western curtain wall had been crushed. Repairs began immediately, but the Order was unable to process how to resolve their inability to proceed with technological research, as their entire R&D department had effectively been wiped out.
